Wicked Appetite (6 page)

“Congratulations,” he said. “Your house has been added to our route. We had an amazing sighting earlier in the evening.”

Diesel came up behind me. “What kind of a sighting?”

“It was an evil apparition,” the guide said. “He appeared in the upstairs window. He was ghostly white and dressed in black, and when he saw me watching him, he vanished in a swirl of ectoplasmic vapor.”

“Wulf,” Diesel said.

“That was a visitor from out of town,” I told the guide. “He always dresses in black. And he . . . smokes.”

“I could feel the disturbance in the air,” the guide said.

I looked back at Diesel. “Can Wulf disturb the air?”

Diesel did a palms-up. “Hard to say what Wulf can do.”

I retreated into my house with Diesel, closed the door, and threw the bolt. “I’m resigning. I’m turning in my special ability that we’re not even sure I possess.”

Diesel stretched and scratched his stomach. “I’m hungry,” he said. “I don’t suppose you have any of those cupcakes laying around.”

“Are you listening to me?”

“You can’t resign,” Diesel said, ambling off to the kitchen. “It would be irresponsible. Wulf could do really bad things with the Stones.”

“Not my problem.”

Diesel pulled the tray of lasagna out of the refrigerator. “Unfortunately, it
is
your problem. Wulf knows you have the ability to recognize a Stone. You won’t be safe until all the Stones are turned over to the BUM.”

“
All
the Stones? I have to find
all
the Stones?”

“That’s the plan.”

“What about my life?”

“We’ll work around it.” He tugged at my ponytail. “It’ll be fun. You can make the cupcakes, and I’ll eat the cupcakes. Play your cards right, and I might even be able to get you a date.”

“I don’t want you to get me a date. I can get my own dates.”

Diesel got a fork from the silverware drawer. “When was the last time you went out on a date?”

“None of your business.”

“Hah!” Diesel said, forking a noodle off the lasagna.

I took the lasagna from Diesel and sliced off a piece. I spooned some red sauce onto a plate, placed the lasagna on top of the red sauce, and nuked it. When it was done, I added fresh grated cheese and a sprig of fresh basil, and handed it to him.

“I could get used to this,” Diesel said, digging in.

Oh jeez.

That got a smile from Diesel. “It was meant as a compliment, not a marriage proposal.”

“How do I know you’re not worse than Wulf?”

“Listen to your instincts.”

I raised an eyebrow. My instincts weren’t comfy with any of this.

“Okay,” Diesel said. “Then listen to the cat’s instincts. He likes me.”

“How can you tell?”

“He hasn’t bitten me or peed on my shoe.” Diesel finished his lasagna, rinsed his plate, put it in the dishwasher, and headed for the living room. “We should be able to catch the end of the Red Sox game.”

“Pass. I’m going to bed. I have to be at the bakery at five
A.M
.”

Diesel remoted the television on. “Too bad. The Sox are playing the Yankees.”

I was making an effort to be a Red Sox fan, but I hadn’t yet achieved total rapture. So far, baseball for me was all about the hot dogs and peanuts at the ballpark.

“I don’t suppose I could convince you to leave?” I said to Diesel.

“I don’t suppose you could.”

I woke up in a panic. The room was black as pitch, and I was having difficulty breathing. My eyes adjusted to the minimal light, and I realized a cat was sleeping on my chest . . .
my
cat.

I rolled Cat to one side, and I bumped into Diesel. He was tucked in next to me, warming the bed, his breathing even, his expression softened by sleep. My first reaction should have been more panic, but the truth is, Diesel felt comfortable next to me. Go figure that. This big, handsome, probably insane, wiseass guy was in bed with me, and not only wasn’t I screaming in terror, I was actually hugely attracted to him. Not a healthy situation.

I looked at my bedside clock. It was 4:10, and my alarm was set for 4:15.

“Hey!” I said to Diesel.

“Mmmm.”

“You have a lot of nerve, sneaking into my bed like that.”

He half opened his eyes. “I didn’t sneak. I asked if you were awake, you didn’t answer, so I took my clothes off and got into bed.”

“You took your clothes off?”

“You didn’t notice?”

“No! Jeez Louise, I don’t even know you.”

“If you look under the covers, you’ll know me better.”

“I don’t want to know you better!”

“That’s a big fib,” Diesel said. The alarm buzzed, Diesel reached across me, and shut it off. “Do you get up this early every morning?”

“Five days out of seven.”

“Bummer.”

I scooted Cat away and crawled out of bed. When the weather turned colder, I’d sleep in flannel jammies. For now, I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt.

“Cute,” Diesel said, taking in my outfit, “but they’re not exactly sex goddess clothes.”

“I could be a sex goddess if I wanted.”

“Good to know,” Diesel said. And he rolled onto his stomach and went back to sleep.

I showered, blasted my hair with the hair dryer, and put it up in a ponytail. I got dressed in jeans and a fresh T-shirt, laced up my sneakers, and went downstairs, with Cat trailing behind me.

“He’s a big pain,” I said to Cat.

Cat looked like he might not share my opinion, and I suspected Cat had been bought off right from the beginning by that piece of pizza.

I poured some kitty crunchies into Cat’s bowl and gave him fresh water. I started coffee brewing, sliced a day-old bagel, and dropped it into the toaster.

This was my favorite time of the day. The sky was growing brighter by the minute with the promise of sunrise, and soon I’d be making cupcakes. Boats were clanking in the harbor below me. Seabirds were waking.

I slathered cream cheese onto my toasted bagel, poured coffee into my favorite mug, zipped myself into a heavy sweatshirt, and ate my breakfast on my back porch. Everything was good . . . if you didn’t count Diesel and Wulf.

I parked in the small lot to the rear of the bakery and entered through the back door. The kitchen was glowing with all the lights on, and the air was heavy with the scent of yeast dough rising in the oven.

Clara was already at work when I walked in.

I buttoned myself into my white chef coat, rolled the sleeves to my elbows, and wrapped an apron around my waist.

“How was your night?” Clara asked. “Glo was determined to protect you from evildoers.”

“Glo arrived with a pizza, a guard cat, and her book of
spells. Diesel showed up, we ate the pizza, I kept the cat, and I’d rather not talk about the spells.”

“She didn’t turn anyone into a mushroom, did she?”

“No.”

“Then how bad can it be?”

Pretty bad, I thought, but with any luck Shirley woke up all fine and dandy this morning, wondering if she’d hallucinated the whole hideous episode.

Two hours later, there was no sign of Glo. Clara turned the
CLOSED
sign to
OPEN
and unlocked the front door.

“I’ll work the counter,” Clara said. “You can finish frosting the cupcakes.”

“Did you try calling Glo?”

“Yes. No answer.”

“She left her car at my house last night. I offered to pick her up when I came to work, but she said it was too early, and she’d catch a ride with her landlord.”

“It’s a real pain when she comes in late,” Clara said, “but at least it’s usually entertaining.”

Glo bustled into the bakery a little before nine o’clock and dropped her tote on the back counter.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I missed my ride with Stanley, so I thought no biggie, I’ll just conjure up a spell and pop myself over to the bakery.”

Clara and I stopped working and looked over at Glo.

“And?” Clara said.

Glo was wearing a black leather bomber jacket, a black, stretchy T-shirt, skinny black jeans, black Converse sneakers, and a long red scarf. She unwrapped her scarf and tossed it onto her tote.

“The spell seemed easy enough,” Glo said. “It wasn’t like I needed testicles of snarf or something. I mean, it was a simple spell. And I’m sure I repeated it perfectly. I don’t know what went wrong.”

“Something went wrong?” Clara asked, looking like she didn’t want to hear the answer.

“I was supposed to fly, but I couldn’t get up in the air and moving. I think at one point I might have gotten off the ground a little, but that was it. Honestly, it was so annoying. I finally had to come to work on my bicycle.”

Clara and I did simultaneous eye rolls.

“Maybe you weren’t using the right broom,” Clara said.

Glo’s eyes went big and round. “I wasn’t using a broom at all. Do you think that could be it? The book didn’t say anything about a broom.”

Clara pulled on a disposable glove and rearranged a bread display. “Everyone knows a witch needs a broom to fly.”

“Yes, but I might not be a witch. Do you think that would make a difference? Diesel said I was a Questionable. And he said Lizzy is an Unmentionable.”

Clara looked over at me. “Is that true?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Did you know you were an Unmentionable?”

“No. I thought bras and panties were unmentionables.”

Glo slipped her purple Dazzle’s Bakery smock over her long-sleeved T-shirt and buttoned up. “I bet there are lots of Unmentionables in Salem. Some of the Dazzles might even have been Unmentionables.”

“It’s possible,” Clara said.

“How about you?” Glo asked Clara. “Do you have a secret Unmentionable ability? Mrs. Morganthal said you used to be able to bake bread just by touching it.”

Clara snapped her glove off. “Mrs. Morganthal has conversations with vegetables.” She removed her apron. “I’m going to run out to the store. I’ll be back in a half hour.”

Even in a white chef coat, Clara is startling, with her electric hair and sharp features, and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to imagine her as a sorceress of some sort.

Glo manned the counter, and I returned to the kitchen. I filled the big pastry bag with vanilla butter cream and swirled the icing on three different batches of cupcakes. I decorated the tops with flowers, multicolored sprinkles, miniature edible gold stars, and chocolate jimmies. I pulled Clara’s loaves of raisin bread out of the oven and set them on racks to cool.

At precisely ten o’clock, Glo rushed into the kitchen. “Shirley’s here! She’s standing in front of the bakery with her back to the window, waving her arms and talking to herself.”

“What’s she saying?”

“I don’t know. The door’s closed. I can’t hear her. What should I do?”

“Has she got a gun?”

“Not that I can see, but she has her purse. She could have the gun in her purse.”

The bell tinkled when the bakery door opened, and Glo and I froze.

“Eeek,” Glo whispered.

“Stay here,” I told her. “I’ll bring the cupcakes out.”

I wrapped my arms around Shirley’s cupcake boxes, plastered a smile onto my face as if nothing unusual was going on, and I walked out of the kitchen and up to the counter.

“Hi!” I said.

Shirley pressed her lips together and passed me a piece of paper with crayon drawings of two cupcakes. One was obviously my Sunflower Lemon and the other looked like my Dazzling Red Velvet.

“Do you want these cupcakes?” I asked her.

She nodded.

I reached into the display case for a cupcake and she shook her head. “Go go,” she said.

“More than one?”

She nodded.

“A dozen?”

She nodded again.

“Of each? Are you sure you want to do that?” I asked her. “It’s a lot of cupcakes.”

Shirley nodded her head.

I ran to the kitchen and shoveled a dozen Sunflower cupcakes into a box. “Shirley’s getting an extra two dozen cupcakes,” I told Glo.

“The spell’s broken? She can talk?”

“No. She gave me a note.”

I filled a second box with the red velvets and carried them to the counter just as Clara walked in.

“Hello,” Clara said to Shirley. “How are you today?”

Shirley bit her lip. “Hmmp,” she said.

Clara leaned forward. “Excuse me?”

Shirley swiveled her head in my direction. Her eyes were approaching frantic. “Mmmph.”

“Shirley isn’t talking today,” I told Clara. “It’s hard to explain.”

Shirley vigorously nodded her head.

“That’s a lot of cupcakes,” Clara said, eyeballing the two extra boxes. “You must be having a party.”