Bewitched, Bothered, and Biscotti: A Magical Bakery Mystery (21 page)

“Hello?” I called through the front screen. The cheery yellow porch light shone down
on us.

“Come on in!” Margie’s voice beckoned from inside.

I managed to wrestle the door open without dropping the salad—or the lemon vinaigrette—and
followed the surprisingly good odors issuing from the kitchen.

“Do I smell warm chocolate?” I asked as we entered. Sure enough, Margie stood over
a bowl on the counter, mixing up a dark batter. A can of cola sat next to the bowl,
and as I watched, she dribbled a bit out of the can into the batter.

“What on earth are you doing?” I asked.

“Hey, Katie! And you brought Mungo—great!”

“I thought the JJs might want to play.” I looked around. Bart was wedged into his
high chair, gnawing sloppily on Cheerios, but there was no sign of the twins. “Where
are they?”

She put her hands on her hips. “I farmed them out to my sister for the night. The
whole
night. It’s just you and me. And baby Bart, and Mungo, of course, but we are free
of bath time and whining about teeth getting brushed and the truly spectacular inventiveness
employed by a pair of four-year-olds who don’t want to go to bed.”

I laughed.

“And, darlin’, I’ve got wine.” She raised a glass from the counter and took a sip
of pink liquid. “Sweet and good. Getcha some?”

“Sure.” I set the salad on the counter and peered at the cake batter.

Wine glugged into a goblet from a jug in the refrigerator. She handed it to me and
said, “As for what I’m doing, I’m making Coca-Cola cupcakes for dessert.”

“Coca…you’re kidding.”

She looked genuinely surprised. “You’ve never heard of Coca-Cola cake? Good Lord.
And you a professional baker.”

“Yes, well…” It looked like I’d stumbled across another Southern specialty.

Now she began to dollop the batter into paper-lined muffin tins. “They’re one of the
only things I like to cook, or that I’m any good at, at least. The kids love ’em,
so I thought I’d make up a batch to surprise them with when they get home tomorrow.
And tonight we can have them all warm and yummy for dessert. They’re real good.” She
winked. “Way better than Twinkies.”

“Wow. I know how you love a Twinkie now and again.”

Margie whirled around and opened the oven, removed a pie, and set it on the counter,
then popped the cupcakes in to bake.

I leaned on the counter and peered at the gravy oozing out of the crust. Inhaled deeply.
“Chicken potpie? My goodness. You’ve gone all out tonight.”

She waved her hand. “Oh, honey, those cupcakes are my limit. My mother-in-law brought
over three of the potpies last week, all nicely frozen so I can just pop them in the
oven. She does make a nice potpie. You’ll like it.”

“Of course I will.”

“Listen, the inside of that thing is like molten lava,” Margie said. “Let’s take our
wine outside for a few minutes and let it set up.”

She extracted Bart from his high chair, swiped his face and hands clean, and carted
him out to the
playpen on the back patio. Mungo trailed behind me and took up station under my chair
as I sat down. My feet still hurt from sprinting in high heels that morning and then
spending the afternoon showing Nel the ropes at the Honeybee.

“We hired a new employee down at the bakery today,” I said.

“Another one? Y’all are going great guns down there.” She settled into a lounge chair
and took an appreciative sip of wine.

“Not exactly. Our other employee moved on. She found her own replacement, though,
and she’s very qualified.”

“Is she old?”

“Margie!”

“I’m just asking because that other one was so young, and someone with a little more,
shall we say, maturity, might stick around longer.”

“True,” I admitted. I hoped so. Never mind that Cookie was only four years younger
than me.

“So what are you going to be this Halloween?”

I frowned and shrugged. “No idea. I thought about going as a witch, but changed my
mind.” Or had it changed for me.

She took another sip. “Nah. That’s boring. You should go as something exciting. Sexy.
Wonder Woman or the Green Hornet or something.”

Laughing, I said, “Right. What are you dressing up as?”

“Oh, I’m too old for that.”

“You’re only three years older than me! And you’re still coming to the Honeybee
party, aren’t you?”

“Of course. But I’ll leave the Coopersmith costumes to Bart and the JJs.”

“I can hardly wait to see them.”

“Seriously, you should dress up as something fun. You could always be a zombie secretary.
Or a zombie baker! Just wear what you normally wear but with zombie makeup and dirt
in your hair!”

I started to protest, then paused. “You know, Margie. You’ve given me a great idea.”

She leaned back in her chair, looking pleased.

Beside his mother, Bart dragged himself to his feet and clung to the edge of the playpen,
staring at Mungo, who blinked placidly back at him. Then the baby let go, wobbled,
and sat down with a
thump
on the padded surface. His mouth formed an O of surprise, and then he laughed, which
set us off, too.

“Who are you taking to the party?” Margie asked, trying to sound casual.

“No one. Why?”

“Not your firefighter? Or your reporter?”

“It’s a party, but I’ll be working.”

“They don’t really like each other, do they?”

“Not so much.”

“A regular soap opera triangle.”

“It’s complicated, Margie, and it has nothing to do with me.”

She blew a raspberry, which made Bart laugh. She grinned down at him, then up at me.
“Sister, you are so full of it. And I think you’re on the edge of making a decision
between those two.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because the yummy firefighter hasn’t been over
lately, but the other one has. You look pretty intense around him, too.”

“Who needs a neighborhood watch with you around?” I said.

She took it with good grace. “Heck, I have to watch something besides these kids.
Let’s go dive into that potpie.”

The four of us went inside. I dressed the salad while Margie cut the pie into wedges.
She even knew to put some on a plate for Mungo, who wiggled his behind in enthusiastic
thanks when she set it on the floor in front of him. Sitting there at her kitchen
table, Bart mashing pie onto his face between happy baby squeals, chatting with possibly
the most normal woman in the world, I felt a slight shift in perspective. Spell work
was fine, and seeing the world through the eyes of magic was wonderful, but sometimes
I needed to remind myself that normal, everyday life had a magic of its own.

 * * *

It was after ten by the time Mungo and I left. Margie had put Bart down to sleep and
poured herself another glass of sweet pink wine, and we’d spent the next couple of
hours gossiping and laughing like schoolgirls.

Before leaving I’d snagged a copy of her recipe for Coca-Cola cake—those cupcakes
had turned out to be fantastically moist and yummy, not to mention that she’d frosted
them with Coca-Cola frosting. Who knew?

The fireflies zeroed in on Mungo again on the return walk, circling him in a sparkling
nimbus. The clouds had returned to seethe in the sky above. The temperature had dropped,
too. I shivered and hastened toward the carriage house door.

Mungo yelped, and suddenly the phalanx of fireflies
seemed to explode, flying outward from where they’d gathered around my familiar’s
head. Several dropped to the ground.

I twisted around, searching the shadows. The air felt electric, a storm brewing on
the horizon. Shaking my head at myself, I scooped up the little dog and hurried inside.

As soon as we got in the house, I checked his paws. “Did you step on something in
the yard?”

He whined, but I didn’t see anything wrong. When I put him down, he hightailed it
into the bedroom. I followed after locking the front door behind me. It took several
seconds before I discovered Mungo huddled in the corner behind the armoire. I knelt
in front of him.

“Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

His pink tongue snaked out and licked his black nose. His dark eyes blinked at me
in the dim light of the bedside lamp.

Frowning, I stood up. Why was he acting so strangely?

I got undressed and put on my version of pajamas: a pair of soft gray yoga shorts
and a white spaghetti-strap tank. As I tossed my clothes into the hamper, an arrow
of pain shot behind my eyes, then vanished.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, hoping it wasn’t the beginning of a migraine. I’d
gone through a spate of nasty headaches right after Andrew ended our engagement. But
when the pain didn’t return, I went into the bathroom and washed my face. I flossed
and brushed my teeth and reached for my brush to give my hair a few quick swipes.

Great. I’d brought in my Evan Picone suit from the
car, but left the duffel in which I’d packed my work clothes out in the Bug. I ran
my fingers through my hair, consulted briefly with myself in the mirror, and decided
it could wait.

The shooting pain hit again as I was climbing up to the loft, but disappeared just
as quickly. Still, I found myself gripping the railing with white knuckles. I needed
to put Dr. Eastmore’s murder on the shelf and get a good night’s sleep.

Upstairs, I opened the built-in cupboard and lifted a white box off the floor. Closing
the cupboard, I turned off the light and took it back down to my room. Placing the
box on the bed, I whipped off the top in one motion. A pile of frothy white lace spilled
out over the top.

Speaking of Andrew ending our engagement…

“Now
that’s
a costume,” I said to Mungo, laying my never-worn wedding dress on the bed. “How
fitting to be a zombie bride for Halloween, eh?”

But my familiar continued to hunker in the corner.

“Come on out.” I reached toward him. “I need a Mungo snuggle.”

He backed away, as far into the corner as he could get.

Then I realized he was shaking. “Oh, gosh. Honey, are you sick?”

He made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded like a negative. A badly frightened
negative. Now I was getting scared. Glancing at the alarm clock, I saw it was late,
at least for phone calls. Lucy and Ben would both be asleep by now. But I didn’t know
who else to call, and I needed help.

Mungo needed help.

Looking into his eyes again, I tried once more to
figure out what was going on. A sense of foreboding dropped across my shoulders like
a lead weight.

“I’m going to call Aunt Lucy, see if she can help. You stay here.”

He made another little noise, but at least it sounded like agreement. He lay down
and put his nose on his front paws, blinking up at me.

Okay, that seemed a little more normal. Quickly standing, I hurried into the living
room, where my cell phone sat on the coffee table.

I reached out my hand, but the phone was so far away. My movements slowed. Everything
slowed. The walls began to rotate around me. Dizziness unlike anything I’d ever experienced
made me stumble. I fell to one knee, hard, on the wooden floor. Pain shot up my leg.
The walls whirled. The ceiling turned. Yet I knew they weren’t actually moving.

Fear stabbed through me. This was way worse than any migraine I’d had before.

“Help,” I croaked. Maybe Margie was still up. Maybe she was outside and could hear
me. But my windows and doors were closed and locked tightly against intruders.

But someone was here. Inside the carriage house.

No.
Inside my head
.

This was no migraine.

I shook my head, trying to clear it, but that only made things worse. My stomach twisted,
and I retched. The phone was still on the coffee table. On hands and knees I inched
across the floor.

Nine, one, one. That’s all I needed to be able to do. Dial nine, then one, then one
again.

A yellow-green mist seemed to rise around me,
punctuated with streaks of maroon. Pain arrowed behind my eyes again, and this time
it didn’t subside. I squeezed them shut and felt myself fall, heard my body strike
wood.

There would be no help from emergency services.

Fight back, Katie. Fight back now.

It was the voice that had saved me from the falling pumpkins.

“Nonna?” I felt my mouth forming the word, but no sound came out.

Find the trigger. Push the trigger. I’ll help you.

Trigger? What the…?

I smelled gardenia. It was my grandmother’s favorite flower, and she always wore gardenia
perfume. Then I felt the mental nudge, and knew it was her. I opened to it, grasping
it and holding on to its intention. I opened my eyes, concentrating around the pain
so I could follow where it led.

A dog was barking somewhere.

A great darkness rose in my vision, boiling like the clouds in the night sky. I forced
myself to crawl toward it. My approach, halting as it was, seemed to make the dark
pause. The gardenia scent grew stronger. Something feral and lupine flashed through
my consciousness, the impression of cool white eyes and fangs. It was so familiar.
With a shock, something deep inside me realized it was
my
familiar, that Mungo had joined the fray.

I struggled forward, breath rasping in my throat, accompanied by gardenia and wolf.
The dark grew infinitesimally smaller.

Shrinking. And emanating surprise.

Closer and closer I crawled, inch by aching inch.

With a determined gasp, I reached out and touched it. For a moment the texture of
the black ran across my fingers, jagged and brittle like flakes of rusting metal.

I
pushed
.

A flash ripped across my vision.

A scream lashed the air.

And I fell to the floor again.

The scent of gardenia enveloped me. The soft touch of a warm pink tongue was the last
thing I felt before I lost consciousness.

I awoke to the acrid smell of burning hair and Mungo frantically licking my face.
I looked up at the high ceiling of the carriage house. Turning my head to the side,
I saw the peach walls and the built-in bookcase. On the floor in front of it, jagged
shards of Lucy’s milk glass spell bottle lay among a scattering of dried herbs.