Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser Series) (2 page)

When did Gran say she’d be back? Tomorrow? Monday? Though I wasn’t exactly sure my grandmother could stop a vampire unprepared. I also wasn’t sure the wards on the bakery were much of a deterrent, not with the way they’d glowed in response to the vampire’s touch.

“Still lost in thought about your sexy vamp?” Sienna’s voice yanked me out of my head.

“There was nothing sexy about him,” I snapped in response. I hadn’t heard Sienna come into the office, and it always threw me to be caught off guard. The more magical the person, the less likely they could sneak up on me. My Gran had a terrible time masking her magic enough to play hide-and-seek or catch me sneaking back into the house after hours when I’d been younger and still living full-time under her roof.

I locked the deposit in the store safe in my small back office. I’d take it to the bank in the morning, after I baked. Most of our daily take was card generated anyway.

Sienna’s magic was softer, and almost as familiar as my own. In fact … I looked closer to see that my sister was wearing three of my trinkets like necklaces.

“What’s that? Hobo chic?” I crossed by Sienna to leave the tiny back room. Most of the store’s square footage was taken up by the massive kitchen, which was my refuge and my ball and chain. Not that I hadn’t chosen to settle down and take on the responsibility to run the bakery. I always strove to be the exact opposite of my mother, who at best guess was currently somewhere in Vegas or San Francisco. Scarlett Godfrey was a free spirit. Not even a child at sixteen could tie her down.

Sienna shrugged at my sarcastic take on her necklace, turning to follow me as I crossed through the kitchen. I ran my hand along one of the two long, steel tables that occupied the middle of the room. Spotless. The ovens filled the south side of the kitchen; the walk-in fridge and dishwasher station took up the opposite wall beside the exit to the alley. Nothing was out of place.

“I thought the extra protection, you know, from the vampire, would be a good idea.” Sienna said, referencing her trinket necklace. She almost purred when she was being sarcastic. She never had mastered the dry part of wit.

Ignoring Sienna, I smiled, as I always did as I crossed through the heart of my bakery. It would be waiting for me in the early morning, ready, willing, and swathed in stainless steel. It was heaven.
 

“The trinkets aren’t for protection,” I said, turning away from my sanctuary to deal with my sister. “And I wish you’d stop selling them under that guise.”

Sienna shrugged again. “A girl needs pocket money, and even the normals know there’s something special about your creations.”

I sighed and dropped the subject. I was as tired of complaining about Sienna’s joblessness as I was of her insistence that the trinkets were some sort of protective magic. I could feel magic. I collected pieces of things — buttons, pins, tie clips, and whatnot that had been in contact with enough magic to retain an imprint. But stringing such things together didn’t make them any more useful than they were on their own. It was just something I’d done — almost compulsively — since I was young.

“Are you showering before dinner? Maybe I should just meet up with Rusty first.”

Dinner, I groaned in my head. It had been my sister’s boyfriend’s birthday yesterday, but I’d all but forgotten the promise of dinner and dancing. I’d even baked a cake for Rusty yesterday.

“You’re not canceling!” Sienna picked up on my thoughts — or, rather, my body language. She wasn’t a reader, capable of actually delving into others’ minds.

“I’m not. It’s just I’m on the schedule to bake tomorrow morning.”

“So bake before you go to bed,” Sienna said, and then rewarded me with a crooked smile. “It’s never as fun without you. You attract all the right sorts.”

“Fine.” Yes, not only did I have an affinity for magical things, but things of magic — people specifically — were also drawn to me. It wasn’t as fun as it sounded coming from Sienna. If it wasn’t for the wards separating me from the vampire earlier, I would have assumed that was why he’d shown up at my door. “I’ll shower,” I said.

Sienna clapped her hands together like she used to when she was younger, before her mother abandoned her after her father’s death. That was when Gran had taken her in full time. It was difficult for the magically lacking —
normals,
as Sienna called them — to raise those with magic, even if only a half-blood like Sienna. I wondered how long it had been since Sienna had heard from her mother, but I didn’t bring the sore subject up. No matter how free-spirited she might be, at least my mother always showed up on the important dates.

“The trinkets don’t really match the goth look, you know.”

“I think they go fine. And it’s deconstructed, not goth. Welcome to the second decade of the twenty-first century.”

“That’s my sweater you deconstructed.”

“You weren’t wearing it.”

“At the time.”

“Shower, please. You smell like bakery.”

“Some people like it.”

“Like who, Jade? Anyone you’d actually consider?”

I turned away from Sienna’s almost mocking laugh and mounted the stairs to my suite above the bakery. Gran owned the entire block that included the bakery, which I leased from her through her corporation, Godfrey Properties. A real estate investment that had been passed down from her husband, of whom I had only vague memories. The storefronts also had apartments on the upper floors. The rents were high, but the view and the solid building upkeep made for long-term tenants.

When I renovated the bakery, I had stairs built to connect to one of the two suites that occupied the second floor. The apartment also had an entrance from the outside that I shared with the other, currently unoccupied, suite. However, I pretty much used the back alley exit from the bakery exclusively.

I think Sienna was currently bunking at Gran’s, being in between jobs. Which meant she was probably living full-time with Rusty, who was some sort of a stockbroker — he worked from home, keeping almost the same hours as I did. The stock exchange opened early on the West Coast.

I walked through my sparsely furnished living room toward my second bedroom, which currently operated as a craft room of sorts, and which boasted the most amazing view of the ocean and the North Shore Mountains. Kitsilano spread up from the beach in a slow-sloping hill. Many homes managed peekaboo views from their upper floors; I had a hundred-and-eighty-degree vista. The lights of North and West Vancouver spread out along the base of the snow-peaked mountains. The ski runs of Grouse and Cypress Mountains were clearly lit tracks above the residential area, even though mid-April was late for them to be open except to hikers and, maybe higher up, snowshoers.

I ignored the urge to open the large window and let the breeze in. It had a tiny Juliet balcony on which I’d planted chocolate cosmos and strawberries last summer. No matter the oddly warm weather we’d been having, it was still too early for the strawberries to flower.

The room was lined with shelves. I stood before the desk by the window — I liked to look at the mountains while I worked — and trailed my hand over the trinkets on the nearest shelf. I had thousands of them … bits of magical things, rocks, ribbons, knickknacks. One set of shelves was completely devoted to jade — jewelry, unpolished rocks, and chipped figurines. Yes, my name is Jade and I collect jade. The stone held magic like a sponge. My fingers strayed down to stroke the jade knife I always wore at my hip, covered by an invisibility spell — courtesy of my grandmother, of course.
 

It had taken me a year to hone the knife from a large stone I’d found on a remote hike outside Lillooet, and another year struggling with the spells I’d wanted to temper it with. It was practically unbreakable and would cut through pretty much anything now … well, anything I’d tested it on. Why I needed such a knife, I didn’t know. I just wanted it. Gran hadn’t questioned it, and had even supplied me with spells from her personal spellbooks on request. Some of the items needed to perform those spells had taken months to secure, and I took classes on how to wield the knife while waiting. It was the length of my forearm, just thicker than my thumb. It was perfect.

The vampire was perched on my Juliet balcony. My jaw dropped and stayed down. He was leaning against the ancient iron railing, which was in no way rated to take his weight. Juliet balconies weren’t meant to be stood on. He crossed his arms and looked at me. Coolly assessing, completely unruffled, though he had just climbed — or jumped — two storeys.

“Vampire,” I said, naming him before I thought it best to shut my mouth.

He tilted his head and said, “Witch.” I could hear him clearly through the glass, and hoped that was because it was single paned and not because he was somehow in my head.

The same wards that protected the bakery protected my apartment. Actually, the wards here were stronger, more focused. They were anchored to the walls and windows, covering the entire inside perimeter of the bakery and apartment. No one could enter the apartment without being invited by someone keyed specifically to the spells, such as myself or Sienna, who had a habit of living with me between boyfriends. Whereas the wards on the bakery had to allow human customers through. Anyone with a bit of magic in them had to request the right to purchase my baking, though once keyed to the ward they could come and go.

My pulse was loud in my ears. I wasn’t sure that had ever happened before. I wished I’d gone to that yoga class … though maybe the vampire would have just followed me there, where I’d be unprotected.

My hand involuntarily strayed to the necklace I wore. I also collected vintage wedding rings, pairs if possible, all magically imbued. I soldered the rings like charms on a bracelet to a long, thick gold chain, also vintage. It wound three times around my neck easily. The magic in the rings was barely discernible, but still I collected them together like a magpie. I wore the necklace constantly, even in the shower.

The vampire’s gaze stayed on the knife at my hip. I’d taken off my apron, the sheath worn over my jeans. The supposedly invisible sheath. He could see through my grandmother’s magic.

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. He was old, then, and powerful. That was worse, even though it meant his control was probably unshakable — the bloodlust sated by centuries of drinking — because I didn’t know that the wards would keep him out.

“What have you been up to, witch?” The vampire spoke so quietly that I barely heard him through the glass. Okay, so he wasn’t in my head. The wards were stopping that at least. As I tried to remember my lessons, I was pretty sure that that was one of a vampire’s talents. Along with immortality, strength, invulnerability, and the pesky need to drink blood for sustenance.

I wasn’t too sure he couldn’t also hear the beating of my heart, or cut through witch magic like softened butter.
 

Belatedly, I remembered to not look him in the eyes, and he laughed as I tore my gaze away from his. He laughed like I was easy prey. Suddenly furious, I clenched my fists and glared at him. He wasn’t smiling; could you laugh without smiling? It was odd. If it wasn’t for his eyes, which were again locked to mine, he could have been carved out of stone. Dense ice, actually. Expensive jeans, cashmere sweater, and all.

I stepped toward the window and lifted my hand to the latch without even deciding to move.

He smiled then, pleased with himself. He was obviously trying to compel me through the wards. Powerful bastard.

I clenched a fist with the hand I’d lifted toward the latch, then dropped my arm to the side. I smiled back at him. Two could play the smiling-without-mirth game. Not that I’d ever been compelled before — that was more than a little frightening — but still, I covered well.

He frowned and dropped his gaze to my chest with a raised eyebrow. But it wasn’t my breasts that impressed him, though I’ve been told more than once that I was a perfect handful. It was the necklace.

Maybe Sienna was somehow right …

He pulled something from his pocket, a long string of blackened and crumpled objects. I stared at this item without comprehension for a long moment before my brain figured out what I was seeing.

One of my trinkets, burned and crushed.

I flicked my eyes questioningly to the vampire. He was waiting for my reaction. Well, I was mad.

“Why? Why would you ruin it? What did you do? Run it over and then set fire to it?” I could see a piece of sea glass hanging wired in the middle … it was one of my new favorite trinkets. And he’d destroyed it.

“Not me, witch. You,” the vampire said, and he slipped the trinket back into his pocket. No … not a pocket. He must be wearing a spelled satchel or something. If I looked closely, I could almost make out a shape. The wards worked both ways, keeping magic out and in, so I couldn’t be sure.

“Why would I do that to one of my own pieces? I make them.”

“Why do you make them, witch? What purpose?”

I frowned at his question. “No purpose, just because the pieces work together … like they’re meant to be.”

The vampire shook his head as if disgusted by me. The condemnation hurt, even though I had no idea where it was coming from or what he meant by it. Or why his opinion should mean anything to me at all.

“Next time, I come in,” he said, his voice empty of warning and more terrifying for it.

“Let’s see if you can, vampire. I’m game.” I wasn’t, not even remotely, but I was good with the bravado. I placed my hand on the knife at my hip but didn’t draw.

The vampire showed me his teeth. It wasn’t a smile. It was the lip curl of a predator. “No. I sent a request. I’ll await official confirmation. I won’t have the Conclave question my right to your blood truth.”

I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Request? Conclave? Blood truth … well, that one was half obvious. He was a vampire, after all.

Then he left. Just like that. He dropped, or climbed, or perhaps disappeared quicker than I could track him.

I didn’t wet my pants, but I was glad I hadn’t drunk anything all afternoon. Usually I was an eight-glasses-a-day sort of girl.