Kierra blew a bubble and popped it loudly. “Does she have a number to call?”
“I can give you our home number,” Maddison said, wiping her hands off on the apron she was currently drowning in. She disappeared into the backroom that doubled as Priscilla’s office and reemerged a minute later holding a scrap of notebook paper with a few numbers on it.
“If she’s busy, there are some other ladies in the community who can make your mints,” Maddison said, handing the scrap of paper to Kierra with a smile that looked more genuine than Priscilla’s.
“Glad to see someone can give good service around here,” Kierra drawled, pointedly staring at her. Priscilla hadn’t had a heartbeat in over three centuries. Unless recently fed, she couldn’t blush or feel heat flush her face. Even so, she could almost feel her blood boil at the implication in Kierra’s comment.
“I want them both delivered to the Robshaw Inn Friday evening,” Kierra continued, turning away. “And if there’s anything wrong with either, I’ll have my father sue this place.”
“Understood,” Priscilla said stiffly, hands curling into fists at her sides. She was glad there was a counter between her and the woman, because if there hadn’t been, she might have shoved Kierra right out the door.
“Glad we worked that out,” Kierra said, waving airily behind her. The bell above the door chimed cheerfully as she exited.
“What a—” Anna began.
“Hush,” Priscilla said out of habit. Coarse language had become a lot more acceptable in recent years, but that didn’t mean she wanted it in her shop.
“But you heard her, Priscilla!” Anna exclaimed. “She treated you like trash. Are you sure I can’t spit in the cake?”
She sighed. “No, you cannot. And if you’re tempted, I suggest you leave. We can’t afford a lawsuit.”
Anna’s scowl was adorable, compared to Kierra’s fierce displeasure. Her button nose scrunched a little, and she averted her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I know better. But if she makes trouble for you next time, I swear …”
Anna cracked her knuckles audibly and Priscilla smiled. “I appreciate the sentiment, Anna, but I’m capable of showing Miss Cunningham the door if she makes herself a nuisance.”
“See?” Anna stage-whispered to Maddison. “Even when she’s threatening someone, she’s classy. Great boss or what?”
“Great boss,” Maddison agreed, smiling down at her stained apron.
Priscilla pretended not to have heard and rummaged through her supplies to locate the edible paint she’d need for the fondant.
“Humble too,” Anna continued, and the amusement was evident in her voice. “And pretty, and patient. Did I mention she’s a great cook?”
Maddison giggled again, and Anna’s snorting laughter joined in.
“That’s enough, you two,” Priscilla chided. “Back to work.”
“Yes, master,” Anna drawled in a serviceable impression of Igor.
Priscilla rolled her eyes and sighed. “Does that make you my minion then?”
“’Course it does,” Anna said with a laugh. Then she paused and cocked her head, staring at Maddison. “And what does that make you? Renfield?”
“Of course not. I have some dignity. I’m one of the brides in a B-movie spinoff.”
“Ah, right. Of course.”
“One of the direct-to-video sequels.”
“Shame, that,” Anna said.
“Less talk, more painting,” Priscilla instructed.
“Yes, master,” Anna replied with a cheeky grin.
Red Velvet Cake
Red velvet cake has been a classic for years. Understated, but still elegant, it has a more sophisticated feel than plain chocolate or vanilla. I’d estimate half the wedding cakes I’m commissioned to bake are red velvet. Thankfully, it’s an easy recipe to follow, and there isn’t a lot of taste testing involved on my part. Here’s the recipe I was trained to follow. Please enjoy!
—Priscilla Pratt
Ingredients
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 ½ tsp sugar
1 ½ tsp baking soda
12 tbsp butter (softened)
1 tbsp white vinegar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
2 tbsp red food coloring
Pinch of salt
Icing
3 tbsp flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup butter (softened)
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line two 9-inch cake pans with parchment paper and then grease them.
To bake the cake: Combine the flour, baking soda, and a pinch of salt into a medium-sized bowl. Set this aside. In a separate medium-sized bowl, place the white vinegar, two eggs, vanilla extract, and buttermilk. Whisk until combined. Now set this aside as well and in a small bowl stir together the food coloring and the cocoa powder. This should form a paste.
Now mix together the butter and sugar (using a mixer) for 3 minutes. Add in 1/3 of the flour mixture and 1/3 of the egg mixture. Continue this until both mixtures are added to the sugar butter and mix well. Add the cocoa paste and mix together until everything is completely combined.
Pour the batter into your prepared cake pans and bake for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow the cakes to cool.
While the cakes are baking, cook the milk and flour in a small pot until it becomes thick, then cream the sugar, butter, and vanilla until smooth. Add this mixture to the flour/milk and whisk until it resembles whipped cream.
Frost the cakes and enjoy.
Chapter Two
The cake was finished by Friday morning. Much to her displeasure, Priscilla had been forced to pull an all-nighter, working past seven in the morning.
Maddison had whipped up the second gluten-free cake in short order, and her last act before leaving the shop at three in the morning had been to frost it. The swirls of colored vines were vaguely reminiscent of flowers, without actually forming the shape. It wasn’t an especially late night for a vampire, but Priscilla was sure Olivia would be waiting up for Maddison, demanding an explanation for why she’d been out so often and so long in the past few days. Maddison had been sent home with the three blood bags she’d been promised, and that, too, would require an explanation that Maddison didn’t have.
Priscilla could almost feel the lecture being composed as she loaded the cakes carefully into their boxes. From there it was a simple matter of loading the boxes into her vehicle. She hadn’t bought the red cargo van with her business in mind. That had been a happy accident. It had already been used when she bought it in 1999, and it was nearing a birthday soon. Anna was only a few years older than the car, which was a little funny in Priscilla’s opinion.
Priscilla had been forced to restrain a snort of amusement when a bashful Matthew Porter had given her the address for the wedding, rehearsal dinner, and honeymoon. It wasn’t her idea of a romantic getaway, but hey, she’d been dead for the last 300-odd years. Who was she to judge the youth today?
Robshaw Inn was one of ten haunted locations tourists could frequent in Bellmare. That might not have seemed like many, but given that Bellmare was such a small town, hovering just above 4,000 residents in any given year, it was something. Bellmare might have remained an obscure mountain town in Massachusetts if it hadn’t been for the rash of reality shows that had cropped up in recent years—America’s Haunted Hollows, Skeleton Key, Kerrian Covington: Ghost Hunter, Monster Mayhem, so on and so forth. Almost all of them had made a stop at one of Bellmare’s haunted houses at one point. It consistently made the top 25 on any list of paranormal locations in the United States.
It really shouldn’t have surprised her that Bellmare’s claim to fame would be monsters, ghosts, and all manner of creepy crawlies. Priscilla glanced back at her shop. It was the last building on the main thoroughfare that ran through town. The wide
windows on either side of her front door displayed cakes for sale and let passersby peek in to see what the daily special was. The sign above her door was painted with red lacquer and shone in the light from the wrought iron lampposts that dotted the streets. Fangs in Fondant was printed in scrawling golden calligraphy.
Anna had created the logo that now decorated the bakery’s sign, labels, and all other promotional materials. It was a simple black lip print with a pair of dainty, harmless looking fangs. It had gone over surprisingly well with the locals, and Priscilla had bumped Anna’s pay by a dollar in thanks. So she couldn’t throw stones at the networks or the television networks. She was capitalizing on the town’s reputation too, wasn’t she?
“Need some help there?” a voice called from behind her.
Priscilla had been so absorbed in her thoughts that she nearly jumped. As it was, she did wobble, and the top package containing the gluten-free cake threatened to slide off into the snowdrift that had gathered at the curb.
Large male hands shot out and steadied the package. Hands were funny things, really. They could tell you a lot about a person. What sort of job they had, for one. Calluses equaled hard work and repetitive motions. Tanned skin meant someone saw the sunlight more often than others. The size could give you hints about their height. The skin could tell you a lot about the age of the person in question. It was what was on the skin that alerted Priscilla to who this man was, even without seeing his face.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” the man said, not sounding apologetic at all.
“Thank you for the assistance, Tobias,” Priscilla said, turning to face him.
Tobias Kennedy was just shy of six feet tall, taller than she was, at five eight, though she’d towered over everyone for most of her human life. He was wearing a forest green shirt today and over that, a brocaded brown vest. He favored a brown duster when he was out in public, and she had to resist the urge to tell him that a frock coat would have suited the look better. Tobias’ sense of fashion was eclectic at best.
Though he tried to cultivate the air he’d stepped from a more urbane century, there were touches that tied him irrevocably to the century when he’d been born. He’d shaved himself bald, for one, and the spiraling runic tattoos that made him look vaguely menacing in the right light were another dead giveaway, as were his knuckles, spelling out the words life and death in block letters. Back in Priscilla’s day, the only men who had tattoos were a part of the King’s Navy or pirates.
Tobias’ face split into a mischievous grin, displaying three gold-capped teeth. “Not a problem, little lady.”
“I’ve told you to call me Priscilla,” she said, sliding the boxes into the back seat and securing them to the wall of her van with a thick bungee cord. She tested it once before turning back to face her companion.
Tobias shrugged. “Probably. I’m afraid I’m a creature of habit, Miss Pratt.”
Well, it was better than little lady, she supposed. She nodded. “Thank you for grabbing that box for me. If it had taken a tumble, I’d have been in big trouble with Miss Cunningham.”
Tobias’ face darkened. “Tourist?”
“Yes, Tobias. She and her husband are tourists,” Priscilla said. She’d almost forgotten Tobias’ hang-ups on the subject.
“We shouldn’t allow those folks to come here,” he said, reaching into his coat. He withdrew a tin of chewing tobacco from one of the pockets of the duster and opened it. The smell that met Priscilla’s nose was so repugnant, she had to hold her breath. He stuffed a wad of the foul stuff into his mouth and began to chew, in lieu of saying something awful about the tourists, she supposed.
Priscilla was no stranger to tobacco. It had been one of the colony’s main crops when she’d grown up. Now, with a nose that was sharper than the average human’s, she couldn’t stand the odor.
“It grows business,” Priscilla said with a shrug. “I’ll warn them away from your apothecary, if you like.”
“You do that,” he said, spitting a stream of juice into the snow.
Priscilla shut the back of her van and turned her back on the man. She’d never really understood Tobias, except to note that he seemed to take advantage of the town’s reputation more than she did. He’d cultivated the image of a vaguely menacing owner of an honest-to-God apothecary, and now he was turning people away because of an incident that had been over and done with for three years.
Shaking her head, she climbed into the front seat of her van and buckled herself in. She never felt truly confident behind the wheel of a car. It was a big metal death machine. At least if a horse ran over a person, they had a chance of surviving. However, she’d decided long ago to embrace technology as it came, lest she be noticed. So instead of letting herself work up to a proper panic, she turned the key in the ignition, cranked up her radio, and put the van in drive.
Tobias waved at her and, unable to be completely rude to him, she waved back. Golden teeth flashed once more before she completely lost sight of him.
The main roads through town were cobblestone. There were regular petitions put forward by the city council to have them paved over with asphalt, but thus far their pleas had been unsuccessful. While cobblestone was more difficult to repair, most citizens seemed to feel that preserving the history and mystique of Bellmare was more important than a little tire damage. There were enough paved side roads that it wasn’t necessary to stay on the uneven road for long.
Priscilla trundled along at a snail’s pace, always taking extra care while she was hauling cakes. Hanging signs proclaimed the names of the businesses she passed. Just a stone’s throw away from her shop was Landry’s Grocer’s. She rarely went in, unless it was to buy food or drink for Anna. The supplies she needed for her bakery had to be ordered in bulk from a much larger retailer. She received a shipment every Thursday night at eight in the evening. She had to pay the retailer extra for overnight deliveries, another reason she was considering hiring on more help to keep the bakery open during the day.
Most of the town’s businesses were located on the square, at the center of which stood a truly impressive example of colonial architecture. It had once been a three-story house belonging to the mayor of Bellmare, but had since been converted into use as the courthouse. It was composed of brick that had faded to a soft orange with time. The white molding was wearing down over time and would need careful restoration in a few decades. The yard was edged with carefully tended shrubs. An early frost had killed the mayflower blossoms a month ago, and now the entire yard was coated in a light snow. The American and Massachusetts state flags whipped this way and that in the wind.
If Priscilla strained her neck, she would be able to make out the shapes of the gallows and stocks which remained a permanent feature on the courthouse lawn. They’d been non-functioning for years, but still drew a crowd of curious tourists when they weren’t obscured by drifts of snow.
She came to a stop at the four-way that would lead her out of town, noting with mounting trepidation that a beige sedan had crept up behind her. She couldn’t see the driver or the plates from her vantage point, but she had a bad feeling she knew who was following her. Sure enough, when she went through the four-way stop unimpeded, the sedan followed.
Robshaw Inn was located at the very edge of town, far away from the suburban sprawl that had begun sometime in the twentieth century. It had been considered something of an eyesore in its day, built as a baroque monstrosity amongst the more classical colonial-style buildings that had been the town’s foundation. The original owner, Earnest Robshaw, had been the spoiled son of a gold prospector who’d made his fortune in the early days of the Gold Rush, before cholera had claimed his life.
Earnest bought five acres, cleared the land of trees, and began to build. Robshaw Manor had been ungodly expensive to build, heat, and staff. When rumors reached the town that some of his guests died during his dinner parties, it became even harder to find maids. To cap it all, Earnest raised equally spoiled children, and wi
thin three generations, the wealth was spent. It was only the efforts of the historical society that had saved the building from demolition in the 1960s. The restoration and upkeep on Robshaw Manor was paid for by television crews wanting to shoot there, and the monthly ghost tours that ran through the circuit of haunted locales. Occasionally it could be rented, short-term, as a vacation spot. Nobody Priscilla had encountered had the sort of money required for such an undertaking—until now.
The owner of the brown sedan leaned on the horn as she slowed still further as she took the curve that led to Bellmare Bridge. The turn was not quite ninety degrees, and very dangerous. If taken too fast, a vehicle could jump the guardrail and plunge straight into the river below. There had only been three people to survive the experience in the last fifty years.
Priscilla glared at her rearview mirror. She couldn’t see her reflection in it. Typical. She could see the driver, as they came around the corner, and her heart sank.
It was Olivia Baker. Great. Priscilla turned off her radio and drove the rest of the way in silence.
Gravel crunched beneath her tires as she pulled to a stop in front of Robshaw Inn. The place looked like a castle that had been mixed with a badly painted Easter egg. There were towers and a gabled roof top, not to mention the pedimented doors, windows, and aedicules. The first floor had been built with brown brick but upon reaching the second floor, the architect seemed to have changed his mind and had switched abruptly to green siding. Then, on the third floor, the man seemed to go completely mad and changed once again, this time to candy-apple red.
The wrap-around porch boasted a dozen hanging baskets, each overflowing with yellow and white flowers. All in all, it was one of the strangest locations for a wedding that Priscilla could imagine.
She stalled as long as she could, checking her phone for a call from Anna that she knew wasn’t coming. She threw bits of rubbish into one of Anna’s abandoned salad containers and glanced into the back to check on her cakes. Everything was in order. She couldn’t put it off for much longer.
Fangs in Fondant Page 3