Since Sienna had died, I’d expanded my cupcake bases to include carrot and banana cake, as well as tested out a bunch of new frostings based on seasonal berries. Strawberry was still my personal favorite, with or without a chocolate cake base — which was a bit surprising, as I was a chocolate fiend.
We didn’t open until 10 a.m. on the weekdays, the same as all the other retail stores along West Fourth Avenue in Kitsilano. I wasn’t a coffee or breakfast place. I was Cake in a Cup, with a few cookies on the side.
To that end, I softened extra butter and zested some lemon for Citrus Chipsters. I was hoping Mory would like them. Yeah, I knew the fledging necromancer wasn’t a puppy. Would I feed chocolate to a dog? Ignore the fact that I fed chocolate to a werewolf last night. That’s not the same thing at all.
So I baked.
As I worked, I tried to keep my thoughts away from the events of the day before … it was more of a struggle than usual. Usually, just being in the bakery soothed me.
Around eight o’clock I became aware of Gran arriving through the back alley door. She was magically keyed to the lock, of course, and her magic — the taste of my childhood — was instantly familiar. She paused, without speaking, to watch me bake.
I looked up and she smiled but shooed me back to my icing with a wave of her hand. Her long silver hair was only half pulled back from her forehead this morning. The rest of it cascaded down her back in a frothy river that was reminiscent of Scarlett’s perfect hair. My own curls were tight and more unruly. The Godfrey hair was yet another thing I hadn’t inherited.
Gran hadn’t watched me bake since she came back from her annual surfing vacation and found the bakery basement full of shapeshifters, a vampire, and putrid blood magic. The fact that the surfing trip was actually an annual meeting of the witches Convocation — of which Gran was the chair — and that this knowledge had been withheld from me hadn’t helped our strained relationship.
She was wearing a necklace I was making for her. It was a work in progress, just like the one I wore, but with silver charm-bracelet charms rather than the wedding rings I collected. I hadn’t added to it for months.
Now that I vaguely understood how my alchemist powers worked, I’d begun to wonder what I was weaving into Gran’s necklace as I constructed it. Mine was a shield against magic, an extra layer of protection. The glimmers of the residual magic in the wedding rings were brought together and mortared with my own magic to create an extrapolation of marriage. Obviously, I believed that marriage offered some kind of heightened protection from the world, and I’d brought that intention to my work. Could I take Gran’s necklace and work on it with the same open heart as I had before? Or would I alter it if I tried to work on it now? Even weaken it?
Would we even forgive each other … ever? Would I forgive her for the half-truths I’d built my life on? Would she forgive me for … for what? I still wasn’t sure what I could have done differently about my parentage, or my sister, or whatever else I was currently doing wrong in her eyes.
I silently offered Gran a partly cooled tray of cookies as I stepped by her to wash my hands. I always got egg whites all over my fingers. She smiled at me in a way that made me think we might actually be able to make it through this rocky part.
Then Scarlett showed up. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. Of course, I was the one who started it three months ago. The one who’d reached out for help, to which she’d responded willingly and overwhelmingly.
“Jade,” she said as she stepped from the doorway to the upstairs apartment. “A courier came for you but wouldn’t leave the letter with me.”
“Really?” I checked my phone. It was 8:36 a.m. Did courier services usually deliver so early?
“I told him to come around the bakery after ten. Good morning, Pearl.” Scarlett offered Gran one of the blinding smiles that made people beg to do things for her.
Gran raised an eyebrow and regarded her daughter coolly with eyes the blue of deep water. “Good morning, Scarlett. I hope you slept well?”
“Indeed, thank you. Jade keeps a comfortable home.”
“You’re blessed she invited you into it.”
Oh, God. They were going to do that sickeningly polite thing that they did whenever I got stuck between them. Usually they just avoided each other, which I much preferred.
“Yes, she has a big heart. But I’m not her only stray today.”
Gran’s eyes flicked to me, her expression ready to turn to disapproval. I groaned inwardly. I really didn’t need Mory — or Mory’s request — brought into this mix.
I lamely attempted to change the subject. “Do you want a cookie, Mom?”
“No, my Jade. Thank you. After breakfast, perhaps, with my coffee. Pearl and I are going out.”
Oh? That was news. I was sure they hadn’t been alone together in three months. Yeah, it seemed my other hidden talent was driving wedges between people. Only in this case, I might have just shifted the wedge more firmly into place.
“Yes. We have things to discuss,” Gran said. She reached up to touch her necklace.
Scarlett’s gaze dropped to follow this gesture. Then she offered me a smile that might have been a little sad around the edges. Had she not seen the necklace before?
I felt pleased whenever I saw Gran wearing it, but now I wondered if it was just another symbol of power and hierarchy. A visual reminder that Pearl had been the one to raise me. But thinking of how young Mory had seemed last night, who would ever think a sixteen-year-old had the capacity to raise a child of unknown magical origins on her own? Not me.
Gran turned to exit through the alley door — locking the front bakery door required a key — and Scarlett followed. My mother was wearing a hand-painted skirt — a swirl of pinks, purples, and blues around her knees — that I had instantly coveted the first time I saw it. Of course, I would have paired it with a T-shirt and not looked anywhere near the polished perfection that Scarlett did.
My mother took a cookie as she passed my workstation. For some reason seeing her second guess something as small as an offered cookie upset me. It didn’t meld with the fun and flighty image I had of my mother.
“Mom?”
“Yes, my Jade?”
“Enjoy breakfast.”
Scarlett laughed. Her magic turned this everyday sound into an orchestra of joy and harmony.
Then she left.
I wondered if I could make a cupcake to match my mother’s laugh.
∞
Bryn arrived at nine to set up the bakery, fill the display case, and start the coffee. She was my full-time employee/part-time baker, taking the Sunday and Tuesday early-morning shifts. She had enrolled in a pastry chef course in the fall, though, so I might lose her Tuesday mornings. My other full-time employee, Todd, knew more about coffee than all of us put together. He usually covered Bryn’s days off and worked on his comic book series in the evenings. Tima, my part-timer, was still in high school and usually worked weekends.
“What pretty bits have you got there?” Bryn asked, as she crossed by me to pull a tray of Comfort in a Cup, a banana cake topped with buttercream, off the stacking shelf.
I followed Bryn’s gaze and noted I was — completely unconsciously — rolling the jade stones now imbued with the skinwalker binding magic in the palm of my left hand. I’d dug the stones out of my trashed Gore-Tex this morning and transferred them to my left jean pocket. I didn’t like the idea of leaving them lying around, even within my heavily-warded apartment.
“Trinket fodder,” I answered.
Bryn smiled. “Oh, good. We need a new one for that space in the window.”
I tried to return the smile as Bryn crossed back out to the store, but I was unsuccessful. I stuffed the stones back in my pocket and turned my full attention to the dark-chocolate buttercream icing I was supposed to be mixing. The bakery window was missing a trinket because my sister had used it to slaughter werewolves last spring.
Not that Bryn knew that, not that Bryn needed to know such things.
I hadn’t made a trinket since then. Gran had told everyone — everyone not an Adept — that Sienna was grieving for her dead boyfriend while traveling the West Indies. I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to say when she never came back. Gran probably had it worked out with a timetable and everything.
Bryn’s dark, thick hair was lightly wavy and currently chopped into a short bob for the summer, which was probably super smart given the heat in the bakery. I was suddenly struck by a vague sense of similarity between her and the teenage girl who had been with the skinwalkers. I hadn’t thought about it the previous day — being kidnapped was a little distracting — but Bryn was also First Nations from the North Shore. She was purely human, though. Not a hint of magical taste about her.
“Is your family from the Squamish band, Bryn?” I asked as she grabbed a tray of Serenity in a Cup, a carrot cake with cream cheese icing. A very basic, very solid-selling cupcake. It was the cinnamon that made the difference. I freshly grated the bark rather than using it bottled and already ground.
“Hmm? Yes. On my grandmother’s side. Why? You’re not thinking of doing something themed, are you?”
“No.”
“Oh, good. Native American art is so appropriated and overdone right now.” She crossed back to the store front.
Coincidence, right?
Or … had the skinwalker elder known me? The group had been debating something for hours while my body worked through the magic of the sleep spell. They could have killed us and burned the bodies in that time.
Unless.
Unless what?
Unless Bryn was a plant or something? That was insane.
I opened my mouth to question her. I opened my mouth to accuse her … of what? I’d hired her. We’d been in the same cake-decorating class, which I’d taken on a whim of Sienna’s, who had only made it through the first half of the first session. I rarely did more than pipe frosting on my cupcakes, or on occasion sprinkle them with shaved chocolate or sugared violets, but I’d enjoyed the class.
It was just a coincidence. A connection my beleaguered brain was attempting to make, because of the magic I carried in my pocket. The magic I was now responsible for. A responsibility that actually scared me more than I liked to admit.
I shut my mouth and iced the final batch of Cozy in a Cup, a banana dark-chocolate chip cake with dark-chocolate buttercream frosting.
∞
Kett walked in the back door from the alley just before we opened. It still freaked me out that he could just casually wander in and out of the bakery like that.
“Coffee?” I asked the vampire. Yeah, I hid behind sarcasm when rattled. Who didn’t?
Kett ignored me and offered Bryn a smile. She blushed and bobbed her head like an idiotic plastic bird. Okay, it wasn’t that bad, but I hated it when Kett played with the humans. Bryn appeared to find his icy blond looks irresistible. I briefly hoped he hadn’t fed on her — vamps could compel and adjust the memories of their victims. However, I knew that Kett was too strict with his rules of etiquette to confuse sustenance and … and what? His undead life? His responsibilities? Was I just a job to him or what?
Bryn retreated from the kitchen to open the French-paned front doors. My trinkets, which I hung liberally throughout the bakery, chimed. Though the glass cupcake display case took up three-quarters of the front of the shop, there was also just enough space for a small seating area. The mixture of high stools at round tables, wide-slat wood flooring, and paned front windows — everything painted white — was my attempt at a classy French provincial look. I hadn’t quite pulled off the classy part, achieving more farmhouse than sleek old country.
I leaned sideways to look through the open pass-through doors to note — yes, a little smugly — that there was already a line outside. Bryn greeted a customer with a pleasant ring in her voice. He responded in baritone. I’d have to lay eyes on him, but by the sound of Bryn’s voice, he was worth the effort.
“Hanging around the bakery today?” I said to Kett. Yeah, I was still feeling snippy. “Scarlett is having breakfast with Gran.”
“I’m aware.”
Of course he was. All-knowing stick-in-the-mud.
Kett cast his gaze to my hands and raised an eyebrow a sixteenth-of-an-inch. I was rolling the skinwalker magic-imbued jade stones through my fingers again. I had to stop doing that. The magic in the stones obviously rattled me. I wasn’t sure of its purpose or what to do with it. Not like my necklace or my knife. The magic of those grounded me. I actually felt naked, incomplete without them. Even now, even while baking cupcakes, the blade was invisibly strapped over my right hip.
“There’s a necromancer upstairs,” I said.
Kett’s growing look of interest left his face in an icy wave. Vampires really didn’t get on with necromancers. Necro-controlled zombies were like vamp kryptonite, though it took a powerful necromancer to actually raise a body. Or a witch fueled by blood-magic and willing to eat her boyfriend’s organs to steal his latent powers.
Hopefully — in both cases — such a person was a rarity.
“She’s behind the wards of the apartment now,” I said, “but I’d appreciate you not killing her if she happens to wander down into the bakery.”
Kett looked affronted at this suggestion. Not that I knew so by his facial expression. It was the slight tightening of his shoulders that tipped me off. Yeah, I really was hanging out with him too much if I was actually starting to be able to read him. Now I felt bad about teasing him with the necromancer announcement.
“She’s just a girl —”
“Rusty’s sister.”
Freaking vampire always knew everything. I don’t know why I even bothered to talk to him. Oh, yeah, right. Because Gran had kept me ignorant half my life. That’s why. Never mind that the information had been there for me to seek and I hadn’t bothered to look. I was still pissy about it.
“I have customers,” I said.
“So you do.”
I thought about stabbing him in the stomach, but I’d done that once before and it hadn’t fazed him any more than my sarcasm did. Or any more than the cold shoulder I turned his way now as I stomped into the bakery to help Bryn with the opening rush.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The courier showed up just after ten. I knew that because I actually looked up and saw him barrel into, then bounce right off, the wards protecting the bakery.
He stumbled back and rubbed his nose, affronted and perplexed. So he was magical enough that the wards excluded him from entry, but not enough to be able to feel the barrier before running into it.
Kett was up and moving — at human pace, because the bakery was currently full of the magically lacking — toward the front doors while my mouth was still hanging open in surprise. I’d never seen someone bounce off the wards like they were a screen door before. Any of the Adept in Vancouver could either already enter the bakery or knew to catch my eye and request entry with a wave. The wards on the bakery weren’t as complex as on my apartment. I had always been able to invite people through verbally, or even with a nod of my head. Though now I was beginning to understand how that might have something to do with my ability to manipulate magic with subconscious intention.
The courier wasn’t wearing a recognizable uniform, but he was carrying an official-looking bag and dressed in a generic blue top and gray pants. He also really needed to wash his thin hair, which might have been dirty blond if it was clean. He stepped back as Kett loomed to block the door. Not that Kett physically needed to block a warded door. I gathered this display was for intimidation purposes. The vampire was an inch or so shorter than the courier.
I wiped my hands on a tea towel rather than my apron, which I liked to wear for show even though the pink ruffles clashed with my jeans and Converse sneakers. The bakery and yoga studio were pretty much the only places I didn’t shoe myself exclusively with Fluevo
gs. My hands weren’t dirty, just clammy. I didn’t like the set of Kett’s shoulders. I also didn’t like that Kandy had just appeared behind the courier on the sidewalk. Like I said, the bakery was full of human customers. Humans didn’t do well caught between Adepts at odds.
The werewolf’s T-shirt was a slightly more lime version of her hair, which was back to its normal vibrant green.
“Hey,” I heard the courier say to Kett as I rounded the corner of the display case. A breeze stirred my trinkets in the doorway and they tinkled. This sound was normally a comfort, but today it sent a shiver of worry down my spine. Why was this obviously magical person dressed like a courier? Not that the Adept didn’t have jobs as I did, but like I said, Vancouver was a really small community. I might not know every magical person among the two-million-plus human residents of Greater Vancouver, but I should know anyone with enough magic to be bothered by the wards so much that they couldn’t enter.
“Hey,” Kett replied. The vampire’s hands were in his pockets as if he was laid-back, easygoing. His voice was a welcoming drawl. I didn’t like the look or sound of either.
Kandy wasn’t any better. She was sporting that predator grin. Her eyes narrowed, maybe from the sun but probably because she was honed in on prey. Or, more specifically, imagining ripping the courier’s spine free from the back of his neck.
“I … that was weird, hey?” the courier asked.
Jesus, only seconds had passed. How had I noticed so much and moved so close to the door in seconds?
Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic (Dowser Series) Page 9