Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser Series)
Read Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser Series) Online
Authors: Meghan Ciana Doidge
Fully aware that the vampire was watching
Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic
- Dowser #1 -
Meghan Ciana Doidge
Published by Old Man in the CrossWalk Productions
Vancouver, BC, Canada
If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have told you that the best cupcakes were dark chocolate with chocolate cream cheese icing, that dancing in a crowd of magic wielders — the Adept —
was better than sex, and that my life was peaceful and uneventful. Just the way I liked it. That’s what twenty-three years in the magical backwater of Vancouver will get you — a completely skewed sense of reality. Because when the dead werewolves started showing up, it all unraveled … except for the cupcake part. That’s a universal truth.
The vampire stood at the door to my bakery.
My heart skipped a beat. The sun hadn’t even fully set — damn daylight saving time —
and the vampire wasn’t even wearing sunglasses or a hat. He was old, then. Or maybe young? I never could remember whether their skin got more or less sensitive with age. But then, I’d never seen a vampire before, so there’d been no reason to remember my vampire lore lessons.
I was a magical dowser of sorts. I found and attracted magical things, so it wasn’t completely weird that a vampire wound up at my door — except the wards protecting my bakery should have safeguarded me from magical detection. If vampires were even capable of detecting magic on that level. Again I had no idea. I lowered my eyes to nestle a sixth cupcake into the box I was currently packing. Maybe if I ignored him, he’d go away. Because that always worked, right?
The bakery’s seating area was standing room only. The line of customers at the counter stretched almost to the door, as it always did in the hours after work and before dinner. Three of us regularly worked the counter for the final two hours of any week day. I moved along behind the display case parallel with my very human customer, dodged my employees Bryn and Todd, and added another cupcake to the box. Dark chocolate cake with strawberry butter icing — one of my favorites. I called it
Love in a Cup
. I made up cute names for all my cupcakes, and the occasional cookie I decided to bake. My bakery was aptly, though perhaps unimaginatively, named “Cake in a Cup”. I certainly never pretended to be a wordsmith or anything. Not all my customers were fully human, but even the magically lacking seemed to believe there was something extra special about my baking. A magical ingredient. There wasn’t.
I glanced up to check on the vampire. He was still on the sidewalk but had moved farther along the window to peer through the paned glass. He seemed to be watching a little blond girl, who was maybe four and dressed in the prettiest pink ballerina outfit. The child had climbed off her stool and was straining her cake-crusted chubby fingers to reach for one of the trinkets hanging in the storefront window.
I placed an eighth cupcake in the box — a peanut butter-iced fudge cake I called
Bliss in a Cup
— without taking my attention off the vampire. He narrowed his ice-blue eyes at the child. With his short-cropped, almost-white hair, broad forehead, and lanky frame, all he needed was an uber chic ski jacket to look even more Scandinavian. He was probably sexy — in that angular, chiseled way — to anyone who didn’t know his love bites were deadly. I bristled and reassuringly brushed my fingers over the invisible knife I wore underneath my apron. No one was going to be snacking on any children in my bakery.
“
Sex in a Cup
,” the customer across the display counter requested. His voice was laced with as much innuendo as he could muster.
I reached for and automatically boxed this ninth cupcake — more chocolate butter icing with a wallop of cinnamon and cocoa in the batter. I ignored the come-on — with a smile that indicated my delight over his exuberance for my cupcakes, but which thwarted his attempt to start something other than buying them. The customer looked familiar, like maybe he’d been in the bakery a few times before. The vampire, however, was new. What the hell was a full-blood vampire doing in Vancouver anyway?
The vampire wasn’t interested in the child, whose mother had lifted her back onto her stool and directed her attention to the remainder of her cupcake. No one else seemed to notice the striking bloodsucker at the window, but then again, most people couldn’t see magic as well as I could. That was my little bit of talent. Well, that and the trinkets I made from magical bits I happened upon, but they weren’t powerful or useful. Just pretty bits to hang in a window and chime in the breeze.
One
Rapture in a Cup
, a yellow/chocolate swirl cake with cream cheese chocolate icing; a
Buzz in a Cup
, a mocha fudge cake with mocha butter icing; and an
Ecstasy in a Cup
, a double chocolate cake with lemon butter icing, rounded out the customer’s order. He liked chocolate almost as much as I did. Or he had a thing for anything provocatively named.
I crossed to the till, weaving for a second time around Bryn and Todd, who were moving a hell of a lot faster than me to fulfill customer orders. But then, being human, they weren’t distracted by the vampire examining my trinkets through the window.
I didn’t know vampires were attracted by shiny things, or I wouldn’t have hung so many in the front window. I really should pay more attention to Gran’s lessons. Too bad my grandmother was currently surfing in Tofino — yes, at sixty. The vampire might not be so bold confronted by a full-blood witch. I was only half, through my mother. I also had my mother’s eyes, medium blue or indigo, depending on whether a part-time, guitar-playing poet was immortalizing them or not. I didn’t know any guitar players. I also didn’t inherit the Godfrey petite stature, pert nose, or magical prowess.
My father was some Australian backpacker, whom my mother left — at sixteen — before she even knew she was pregnant. So all I’d inherited from him was my golden locks and sun-kissed skin. It didn’t bother me much, not even knowing my father’s last name or whereabouts. But then, I had Gran, and Gran was better than any other family in the world.
I took the customer’s credit card and rang through the order. Customers could run their own cards, but I thought it was better service to do so myself. He was talking to me again. I pulled my gaze from the vampire, who was moving back to the front door, to acknowledge him.
“Sorry? My mind was elsewhere.”
“I said that I own the law firm up the street. We just renovated.”
Oh. Nice. He was the reason I’d been woken before eight in the morning for the entire week. I always attempted to nap after I baked in the mornings.
“Great,” I replied as I handed him his card. “I hope you enjoy the cupcakes.”
His smile faltered. Perhaps I, a lowly baker, was supposed to be more impressed with his lawyer status. Then I felt bad for being uncharitable … it was just that the vampire currently testing the wards on my front door was starting to freak me out.
“Oh. Okay then,” the lawyer guy said. “Till next time.” He grinned, and I took a brief moment to notice he was rather cute. It wasn’t like the vampire was currently slaughtering my customers. I could pause for a moment to exchange smiles with a cute, potentially rich guy — leases on West Fourth Avenue weren’t cheap — who had nice straight teeth and an adorable dimple.
“Till then,” I called after him.
The lawyer didn’t even notice the vampire as he exited the bakery. But then, he was looking back at me. I was accustomed to men — even some women — staring. This time, I was pleased it meant the lawyer didn’t inadvertently make eye contact with the alpha predator in the doorway. The vampire was all but blocking the entrance.
He caught my gaze. I flinched. I couldn’t help it. His magic coated his pale skin with an icy aura. He lifted his hand to press against the invisible ward guarding the door, which stood open despite it being early spring. It had been unseasonably warm all day, but the weather could be temperamental in Vancouver. The runes etched in the doorframe glowed in response to the vampire’s touch. Runes were how Gran anchored her magic, though not every witch used them. I wondered if the vampire could see such things, or if he simply felt the magic blocking him from entering uninvited. I felt the ward magic shiver in response, but the vampire wasn’t trying to break through. He was simply … tasting.
The idea scared the shit out of me.
I let my eyes drift over him like he wasn’t the absolute focus of my attention as I crossed around the baking display case. I murmured greetings to some of my regulars, and, as unhurried as possible, wandered over to the bistro table where my foster sister Sienna sat sipping a latte and nibbling on a mocha butter-iced white cake
Thrill in a Cup
. I hated it when she paired similar flavors like that, but my sister did what my sister wanted. We both did. We were as similar in that attitude as we were dissimilar in looks.
I cleared my throat as I came around from behind to the front of the table. Sienna didn’t lift her dark eyes from the book of spells she was reading on her Kindle. I was momentarily distracted that such an ebook existed, and wondered where it could be purchased. Sienna seemed to be reading up on binding spells, which made sense given that was her specialty.
A breeze from the door — the unusual heat the day had provided was fading as the sun set — stirred a few of my trinkets and recalled my attention to the vampire.
“Sienna,” I hissed.
“What?” My sister glanced at me over the rim of her coffee. She’d skimmed off all the foam and was left with the creamy espresso underneath; her bored eyes almost matched the color of the liquid. “The coffee beans are burned.”
“The coffee is not burned.”
“Is too.”
“Sienna, there’s a vampire at the door.”
“What?” Sienna laughed and looked over my shoulder toward the door. “Where?”
“Right there! Tall, blond, and fangy.”
“You can’t actually see their fangs, you know. Ahead of time, I mean.”
“Sienna!”
“There is no vampire at the door, Jade.”
I looked over my shoulder. Indeed, the doorway was empty, and closed. The last customer to leave must have politely shut it behind them.
“Imagining things?” Sienna murmured, but her attention had returned to her book of spells. Spells that were above both our magic grades as far as I had seen with a glance. Which is why I rarely bothered to practice magic — it was mostly out of my reach. Sienna always liked to know, however, even if she couldn’t do.
“Right,” I murmured, tracking my eyes from the door along the French-paned windows. I’d had them especially built for the bakery when I opened last year. The mullions were painted white, as was the paneled wooden front door. I had been going for a French provincial look, but with the addition of the slat wood floor and the hodgepodge of trinkets hanging everywhere, I’d achieved more farmhouse than sleek old country.
The vampire was gone.
I was nowhere stupid enough to step out onto the sidewalk to look for him … okay, maybe just a quick peek. The sidewalk and street were empty of vampires, though. The sun was fully set, the last vestiges of reddish orange still tinting the sky to the west. It was suddenly chilly enough to see a puff of my breath. I folded my arms over my T-shirt-clad breasts, and a light breeze lifted my blond curls from my neck. At least it wasn’t raining.
I dropped my hands and smoothed them over my spotless apron. The sidewalk was teeming with after-work shoppers. Strollers competed with teacup pets, the dogs even pricier than the kids. But then, my customers could afford the price tags of both. I held the door open for one mother fresh from yoga and decided that I needed a class before dinner myself.
What the hell was a vampire doing in Vancouver? And why the hell had he wound up at my door?
∞
I locked up and sent Bryn off with the day-olds for the Kitsilano Neighborhood House. The kids in daycare loved my baking, and they didn’t need to know the rather provocative names. That was just marketing.
I didn’t worry about the vampire bothering Bryn or Todd on their way home. Vampires had their own code about that sort of thing, at least from what I remembered. I needed to drop by Gran’s house and pick up her
Magical Compendium
, which was a witches’ encyclopedia of sorts. I wondered if I could get an edition of it for my iPhone. I’d have to ask Sienna.
