by Dodge, Lola
“Oh?” Her face lit up like I’d handed her a gift in purple paper instead of this huge problem. “I have all the recipes. Let’s reconvene in the house. I don’t want you mucking up the mojo in here.” She nodded to Wynn. “You’re off duty, partner.”
He stalked through the house door and pushed through so hard it hammered back and forth like a tornado had just touched down.
If Wynn wanted to go through life angry at me, that was on him. My stomach gurgled, and I set down my cookie, suddenly ill at the idea of taking a bite.
I couldn’t believe I was volunteering for a death magic bake-off.
“Come on,” Agatha nudged my shoulders. “Let’s have an experiment.”
“Now?” I was still achy and drained and possibly partly crazy.
“You’d rather sit in your room miserable?” Agatha held the house door open.
I sighed. “No.” I would be miserable if I sat upstairs, knowing I was waiting for my problems to solve themselves.
Another layer of wards tingled, this time almost pinching when I crossed from the kitchen into the house. The redrawn wards were stronger than ever and I was grateful I could cross over at all.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the barrier read me as a threat.
After grabbing a stack of pans and tools, Agatha joined me in the house kitchen in a clatter. “Set these down for me.”
I took the most precarious cookie sheets from the top of the pile and set them on the black-and-purple tiled counter. Agatha tossed me a fresh apron.
“What are we making?” I asked, looping the apron around my neck.
“You mean, what are you making? Macarons.”
“Really?” My voice lifted. I’d never been able to bake them because almond flour was right up the luxury chart with caviar and champagne.
“Really, cupcake.” Agatha pulled a tiny leather book from her apron pocket and thumbed it open to a page before smoothing it flat on the counter.
I practically jumped to read the text. I’d been dying to check out Agatha’s baking spells. She’d had me chopping nuts and weighing ingredients the whole time I’d worked in the shop.
Now I greedily drank in her secret recipe.
The first ingredients were more standard than I’d expected—almond flour, 10x sugar, egg whites—but then it got dicey. “A drop of my blood?” I read down the rest of the instructions.
After folding in dry mixture, use a silver needle to pierce the flesh, adding a single drop of blood to batter. Fold in, forming a pentagram and repeating the incantation:
Death be swift, death be true, sweetness be the death of you.
My eyes bugged out. “Agatha, this is—”
Intense?
Not at all sanitary?
“It’s what?” She tilted her head to the side like I was the one being slow. “You asked for a death spell.”
“But…” Yes, I’d asked, but there were so many problems with this spell. For starters, the health code?
Because we for sure weren’t supposed to serve people baked goods that contained bodily fluids, including blood. “Why do you have this recipe?”
“I have a lot of recipes there’s not much occasion for. Now we have an occasion.” She grabbed the carton of eggs from the fridge. “We’d usually age the egg whites overnight, but we’ll make due with fresh since this is just a test bake.”
Egg whites?
Who cared about egg whites right now?
I closed the recipe book and started to untie my apron. “I can’t do this.”
“I won’t force you.” Agatha shrugged. “But it’s worth testing whether you can bake out the bad juju. The sooner we get the death out of your system, the sooner you’re back in the kitchen and I’m understaffed.”
My fingers paused on what was left of the apron knot. She was right.
Even if the idea of playing with death magic made bile bubble in my throat. I couldn’t do nothing. “No one’s going to eat these, right?”
“Why? Anyone you want dead?”
“Agatha!” Did she take anything seriously?
“If you can execute the spell, we’ll burn the results in a ritual flame.” Agatha tucked a few stray pieces of hair back into the net that covered her bun. “That’s a big if. Either way, no tasters will be sacrificed.”
That was a relief. “I’ve never made macarons before.”
“Then I can teach you the right way. Grab a sifter while I get the almond flour.”
I tried to ignore the uneasy feelings swooping through my stomach while I dug our utensils from the messy kitchen drawers. Casting spells to harm—baking spells to harm—was exactly the opposite of my brand of witchcraft.
I wanted the people who tasted my food to be happy, not to keel over in a heart attack. If that was even how it worked?
The recipe hadn’t mentioned how it killed. Would it look like poison? Or maybe you ate a macaron and then died in a convenient car accident? Rubbing my arms, against a chill, I tried to focus on outcome instead of the recipe.
No one was eating any murder macarons and we didn’t even know if the spell was one I could execute. Even amped up by the vortex, my magic wasn’t all-powerful and this morning had shown exactly how skilled I was at channeling death magic.
At the rate I was going, I’d be scraping batter off the ceiling.
When Agatha came back, she thunked canisters of flour and sugar onto the counter, then cracked her knuckles. “Shall we?”
I tied my hair back, straightened my apron, and went to wash my hands. “I’m ready.”
She walked me through the recipe step-by-step, showing me how to gently fold the dough with an African blackwood spatula, and reminding me to keep my intention clear.
I needed a lot of reminders.
How were you supposed to keep thinking death, death, death when baking was so fun? While I stirred soft pentagrams into the batter, my own reddish magic flared at my fingertips.
I’d assume my power was back normal—I felt normal—but I’d been here before. Whatever I baked warped at the last minute.
Except maybe it didn’t when I tried to work with the death magic.
Agatha offered a silver needle. “Clench your teeth. And only one drop of blood.”
The needle looked like it was for an elephant instead of a human being. Queasy waves roiled in my stomach as I positioned my thumb over the bowl.
Death be swift, death be true, sweetness be the death of you.
The prick seared like fire. I drew the needle away before I passed out or it cut too deep.
A blood droplet formed, glowing doubly red with my magic. I squeezed it out and the fat drop plopped into the center of my bowl with a sizzle, followed by a curl of black smoke.
Not exactly delicious.
I stirred in a pentagram, repeating the incantation again and again.
Death be swift, death be true, sweetness be the death of you.
I’d expected the batter to turn an off-white color, but instead, it morphed into an unsavory gray, darkening as I folded. I glanced to Agatha, but she’d stepped away to avoid her energy messing with mine. She nodded.
So it was supposed to look like wet concrete?
Wonderful.
I spooned the batter into a pastry bag and piped it in little circles on Agatha’s Silpat mats. I wasn’t sure if the pentagrams on the silicone added anything at this point, but the little circles made great guides, so the macarons came out pretty even. “Now we let them set?”
“Usually yes but this recipe is modified.” Agatha offered over an obsidian bowl filled with cocoa powder.
At least, I thought it was cocoa until I caught a whiff. It was something more acrid than chocolate, sharp and stinging at the back of my nose. “This wasn’t in the recipe.”
“As if I’d write down the secret to a death spell? Keep your best magic where it’s safe, cupcake.” She tapped her temple. “Now give each macaron a sprinkle.”
“A sprinkle of?” I wrinkled my nose
at the bowl. The powder was coarser than cocoa.
“Grave dirt.”
Ew. “You feed this to people?”
Agatha lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “Does it matter what they eat if they’re about to be dead? Less talking, more sprinkling.”
Hesitantly, I took a pinch. The dirt warmed my fingertips, which started to glow the green-black color that had never been mine. At least this time, the magic didn’t spill everywhere or call for me to murder anyone. It seemed content to stay with the dirt.
When I sprinkled the littlest bit of dust on the still-wet shell of a macaron, a puff of green magic sparked. The wet cement color insta-dried to asphalt black.
I repeated the motion over each macaron.
Sprinkle, puff, sprinkle, puff.
The shells all blackened. It wasn’t like using my own power where I felt the energy draining and really had to sweat. That would’ve been nice.
Instead, I felt weirdly content. Like a lead blanket was weighing me down, but now it felt cozy instead of suffocating.
The death magic was part of me.
And that was not a cozy thought.
When the dirt was all sprinkled, I dashed to the sink to scrub my hands. Hard. My preferred ingredients were cinnamon and vanilla. Not blood or anything shoveled out of a cemetery.
“Into the oven,” Agatha said.
I followed her instructions, even though this whole thing made me queasy. I set the oven timer for ten minutes and crouched down to watch the macarons bake.
Their color darkened.
At five minutes, Agatha handed me a length of cloth that I assumed was some kind of shroud and I rotated the baking sheet. When the timer dinged, the macarons were midnight black.
Holding my breath, I pulled them from the oven.
I mixed a simple vanilla filling while they cooled, but from the energy leeching off the tray, I knew the spell had worked. No need to taste-test. The cooked black shells seemed to suck up light, and I felt a weird smile on my face whenever I glanced at them.
I forced my lips to straighten. The death magic was part of me for now, but I wasn’t trying to make friends with it.
Agatha leaned against the wall with her arms folded while I piped filling onto the baked shells. I stacked the finished ones on a plate. Black with a sparkling white filling, they looked disturbingly like killer Oreos.
Stepping back from the stack, I waited for them to implode.
The filling started to ooze a little, but the macaron shells held. A roaring success compared with my messed-up sugar cookies, but it felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach.
This wasn’t an ability I wanted.
I wanted it to go away.
Careful not to touch the macaron itself, Agatha sliced one in half with a silver knife. She squinted at the inside before giving a little nod. “Success. Did that drain off some of the death magic?”
“Maybe the opposite.” Now I could feel death worming inside me, twisting through my own power like a visitor with blood on its shoes. “I can feel it more now.”
“Yikes.”
Yikes? “Any other ideas?”
Agatha carefully moved the entire plate of macarons into the bowl of a stew pot and pressed on the lid. “You have to embrace death magic if you want to bake with it, let alone control it. The power might get stronger before it goes away. Now, I’m off to burn these before anyone has a bad day.” She hauled the stew pot off toward the backyard.
When I closed my eyes, I could feel the alien chill invading my spirit.
Let that get stronger?
Not happening.
Not unless it was my last, last option.
I had to find another way to make the death magic go away.
Five
I spent the next few days in Agatha’s library digging for better answers. She had a few volumes on necromancy that finally answered my questions about the Wus’ Servants.
Servants were made from spirits who had strong lingering feelings of guilt, unworthiness, or other unfinished business that kept them from passing into rest. So mostly people who were convinced they belonged in hell.
Except there wasn’t a hell, so they could only wander the earth, turning ghost or torturing themselves. Necromancers could reanimate a spirit’s body, giving it a chance to work out its issues and find peace.
Or not peace, depending on the necromancer? But I’d never gotten a sense that Blair and her mom were resurrecting people for dirty purposes.
It was interesting but did nothing to help me purge my own death magic.
Whether or not I could raise the dead wasn’t a question I wanted answered, even if Blair kept messaging me midnight invitations to the cemetery.
Halfway through a chapter on spirit-gathering artifacts, my stomach started rumbling. I marked my place with a stray chunk of angel quartz and checked my phone.
It was four a.m. A weird hour anywhere else, but primetime at Agatha’s Bakeshop. Agatha and the other bakers would be downstairs kneading and portioning dough, filling doughnuts, and frosting cakes.
I’d offered to at least help wash dishes, but Agatha didn’t want me hanging around and I couldn’t blame her. Resigned, I headed to the house kitchen for a snack or maybe a full meal. I vaguely remembered eating a turkey sandwich, but the way my stomach was eating itself, that might have been yesterday.
Or the day before?
Wynn lay flat on his back in the hallway. His sword rested at his fingertips.
I tiptoed and held my breath, but all attempts to sneak were useless with him. The floorboards creaked when he hopped up to follow me downstairs.
We were safe inside the über-wards cast by the entire Spellwork Syndicate. I’d mentioned that to him at least ten times, but he wouldn’t stop following me. I’d had to renegotiate the right to keep the office door closed after my slip-up in Santa Fe, and I wasn’t going to argue with him and risk losing what little privacy I had left.
I seriously needed chocolate.
In the kitchen, I grabbed a candy bar from Agatha’s stash—the big cookie jar on top of the fridge. It took the edge off my frustration, but my stomach kept complaining. I probably also needed actual food.
I pulled out the carton of eggs and some vegetables to make an omelet that would probably turn into a scramble when I messed up the flip. Rummaging in the fridge for a stick of butter, I caught Wynn out of the corner of my eye.
For once, he wasn’t tuning me out or sleeping. Was he actually peering toward the fridge? “Have you eaten anything?”
Wynn shrugged.
So, no.
My lip twisted. I was locking myself in the library all day, every day. Was he not taking breaks to feed himself? “Do you want an omelet?”
“No.”
“Okay.” But I was still making him an omelet. Otherwise, I’d be sitting eating while he watched me eat on his empty stomach.
No thanks.
I cracked a few extra eggs and sliced double the veggies. When I flipped the partly cooked mix, it didn’t get totally wrecked. It actually looked like an omelet.
When it was finished, I cut it in half and brought two plates and two sets of silverware to the table. I set a plate in front of him. “Want ketchup?” I was already heading back to the fridge.
“Ketchup? For eggs?”
“Yes?” I grabbed the bottle and squirted a blob onto my plate.
His nostrils flared.
I let out a heavy breath. “Every breakfast place in the world has ketchup on the table. It’s normal. And delicious.”
“In your world.”
“Isn’t it yours, too?”
“Unfortunately.”
I fought the urge to scowl. What a ray of sunshine, that Wynn. He took a tentative bite of the eggs, lifting the forkful to his lips like he was my poison-taster instead of my bodyguard. His expression didn’t shift to hint whether he approved of my cooking, but he shoveled down the rest of the omelet in record time.
That was as c
lose as I’d get to his seal of approval.
I chewed my breakfast a little slower, craning my neck and trying to catch the noises that echoed from the bakeshop kitchen. I caught the clatter of pans and occasional snatches of chatter, but I couldn’t quite tell what they were talking about or baking. After a while, a vanilla pound cake smell drifted down the hall.
Would it be so bad if I just poked my head in?
I was pondering the consequences when someone rapped hard on the back door. Startled, I jumped in my chair. Wynn was even faster, drawing his sword and lunging between me and the threat.
But what threat came knocking at five in the morning? Curious, I peered around him.
“Coming!” Agatha’s voice echoed down the hall. She stopped short when she caught sight of me. Her chef’s hat was askew and pieces of her red-brown-black-gray hair stuck out the edges. “What are you doing awake?”
“Early breakfast?” I gestured to my plate. “Who’s that?”
“A customer.”
My gaze shifted to the black bakery box in her hands. It was smaller than a donut box, the size we used for cookies or mini tarts. But why would Agatha be selling cookies out the back door of her own shop?
Agatha didn’t tell me to leave, so I stayed put at the table, even curiouser. She waved off Wynn, who sheathed his sword, but didn’t sit back down.
She opened the door but not the screen. “You’re early, Xavier.”
“Sunrise is early.” The man wore fancy sunglasses that reflected Agatha’s image and a crisp navy suit that would’ve been immaculate if not for the collar. Because if I wasn’t imagining things, his white shirt was spattered with blood. Fangs peeked out over his dark lips as he grinned my way. “Who’s the cutie?”
Cutie? I ducked back behind Wynn. I hadn’t showered in days, and I for sure didn’t want any vampires thinking I was cute. His energy reeked of death like an aura of gray smoke seeping from his skin.
I found myself leaning in instead of away.
Yuck.
“Be nice to my apprentice.” Agatha unlocked the screen and shoved the box his way. The vamp produced something glittery that Agatha palmed before I could see.
“Is that death I smell?” Xavier lifted his nose in the air, giving an appreciative sniff. Wynn shifted when the vamp did, fully blocking me from view. Thank goodness. If anything, the undead should fear me right now, but I didn’t want to be on the vampire world’s radar.
