Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser Series) (14 page)

I stood there in the pantry, my hand resting on a pound of single-origin Madagascar chocolate and just stopped. Stopped moving, stopped trying to think.

Then I began to shake — the adrenaline wearing off, I suppose — but this wasn’t some light tremor. I wasn’t in control of my body. I couldn’t even collapse to the floor. My breathing became short and labored.

A panic attack.

I was having some sort of panic attack in my pantry. This made no sense. Why now? Why not in the park over Hudson’s body, or while walking home with Kandy?

I managed to fill my lungs with air. The bones of my face ached. I raised my hands to my cheeks and realized my jaw was locked, and I had tears streaming down my face.

I made it out of the panty to the industrial sink. I gulped at the cold water streaming from the tap and allowed it to splash over my face.

My breathing calmed and my limbs obeyed me once again, though I still had sporadic nerve spasms pulsing down my legs.

I remembered to put the eggs and butter back in the fridge.

I made it upstairs and into the shower and sat underneath the hot water for as long as the heat lasted.

I climbed into bed with a wet head. I was seriously going to regret that when I woke — my curls didn’t do bed-head well — but I couldn’t force myself to stand in front of the mirror drying my hair.

I huddled beneath the covers, realizing I hadn’t bothered to call anyone … realizing that I felt in that moment like I had no one to call. No one who could make any of this better. I felt like I was on a precipice, and that a step in any direction would send me crashing down a rocky cliff.

This wasn’t my carefully constructed life. I had no well-honed recipe to follow. I was going to have to take each step forward in ignorance. But then, perhaps I always had. Perhaps any sense of control had been false, or based on a false understanding. Or maybe it was the teaching that had been flawed.

I closed my eyes, afraid my teeming brain wouldn’t allow me to sleep, but I did. I was blissfully unaware of murder, dark magic, and my ignorance for a few hours.

∞

Then Sienna showed up and ripped me right out of the sleep cocoon I’d wrapped around my beleaguered brain. And she was loud about it. Insistent. At least she’d brought fries. So she didn’t totally suck as a sister.

“You look like hell,” she said as she followed me out of my bedroom and into the kitchen. “And what’s up with your hair?”

I ignored her. She picked up and perched on one of stools by the kitchen island. I’d forgotten knocking it over. That had technically been A.H. — After Hudson — but before I’d known he was dead. B.H. — Before Hudson — all had been right in my world, at least to my knowledge. What any of that had to do with kitchen stools, I don’t know. It was just something my brain was obsessing over … something about the stools falling over, always falling over and crashing to the ground …

I attempted to focus solely on making coffee. I’d found beans in the freezer where I knew I’d stored them, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out where to put them in the coffee machine.

“How is it you don’t know how to make coffee in your own machine?” Sienna asked.

“It was a gift.”

“Ah. And how long did he last after he showed up with that?”

“The weekend.”

Sienna made a completely judgmental and unhelpful noise. I’d tried to force the guy to take the machine when he left, but that gesture hadn’t made the break-up any easier. I think the fact that he saw it as breaking up and I saw it as ‘had-a-nice-time-see-you-later’ was probably the very root of the issue.
 

Sienna had returned her attention to her spellbook, which she’d spread open on the island counter. I quickly identified this book as unsuitable by the glaringly obvious title,
The Riddles of Death
. Plus, it felt off … yes, a bloody spellbook felt off to me, like a tiny poisonous mushroom sitting in the middle of my kitchen counter.

“Sienna!”

“What?”

“Do you know how to use this or what?” I gestured toward the coffee machine. I knew it made actual coffee; the guy had used it a couple of times.

Sienna sighed, marking her spot in the book with a pressed-flower bookmark. I tried to push the coffee beans into her hands as she stepped by me, but she waved me off. “It’s one of those cartridge ones.”

She started to open and close my kitchen drawers, amazingly coming up with some sort of cartridge that she then inserted into the machine. I took an opportunity to steal a handful of her unprotected fries.

“You sure can pick them,” Sienna muttered. “You have an espresso machine in the bakery.”

“I don’t make the coffee. I don’t drink coffee.”

“But you want some now.”

“Yup.”

“And this all has to do with the terrible hair you’ve got going on?”

I really wasn’t interested in discussing my hair. “Whose spellbook is that?”

“Rusty’s mom’s.”

“And she gave it to you?”

Sienna shrugged. Miraculously, something resembling coffee poured into the mug she’d placed in the machine. I dove for it but it was too hot to drink, which brought my attention back to Sienna.

“The book is off, Sienna. Off enough that you shouldn’t be reading it.”

“Reading something can’t hurt me, Jade. And you know I can’t feel it like you can.”

“I’m telling you —”

“I hear you.” Sienna skirted by me to climb back up on her stool perch, but she didn’t immediately return to reading. Instead, she rested her elbow on the counter with her chin in her hand to look at me expectantly.

I tried sipping the coffee. It smelled amazing and tasted like shit. It singed my tongue, but as if proving something to Sienna, I took another sip.

“Why do you date guys who have no hope of understanding you?” Sienna asked. It wasn’t the question I thought she’d lead with, but it still wasn’t pleasant conversation territory.

“It isn’t a goal,” I answered.

“Take the coffee-machine guy. He probably loved coffee. That machine isn’t cheap. And when he buys you a present, making it glaringly obvious he’s not remotely paying attention because you don’t drink coffee — except for today — you dump him. Instead of working on it, instead of refining it.”

I didn’t have any response to Sienna’s observations about my love life. But seeing as how she hadn’t actually formulated a question, I kept quiet and took another punishing sip.

“You ignore your magic the same way. And you have a problem when I don’t.”

“I don’t do spells —”

“What about last night? You worked that spell, and I’ve been thinking about that door —”

“No.”

“Jade …”

“No, Sienna. Hidden doors are hidden for a reason. If that’s even what it is.”

“What else could it be?”

I shook my head and declined to continue the conversation.

“Fine,” Sienna said, changing tactics. “Are we going to talk about the fact you’re suddenly drinking coffee? Late night?”

“Early morning.”

“Did your werewolf finally show up?” A grin spread across her face. “Or your vampire? Is he still here? Hiding from the daylight in the closet, perhaps?”

“No. He doesn’t seem to have a problem with light. And he’s not my vampire.”

Sienna didn’t even remotely believe me as she slid off the stool to pad back into my bedroom. I sighed and gave up on the coffee. I dumped the remainder of the mug down the drain and liberated some cookies from the freezer.

“The bedroom is vampire free.” Sienna sashayed back into the kitchen and snagged a cookie. “I checked the closet, the shower, and under the bed.”

“You think I’d invite a vampire into my bed?”

“You had a date with a werewolf.” Sienna crossed to and flipped open her spellbook. I turned away, stuffed a frozen cookie — chocolate chunk coconut oatmeal — into my mouth, and fought off the threatening tears. Damn it! I’d hardly known him, and I was still crying about it.

“What time is it?” I never kept the clock on the oven set properly.

“Three o’clock. Why? You have another date?”

“Yeah. To visit the morgue with my vampire, as you call him.”

“What?” Sienna screeched when surprised. It wasn’t an endearing trait.

I sighed, crammed another cookie into my mouth, and fled to my bedroom because how the hell was I going to explain anything at all to my sister? How much was I supposed to tell or not tell anyone? I couldn’t remember anyone saying to keep my mouth shut, but I was more than a little worried about getting her involved.

Sienna was … well, she liked to dabble. Rusty was only one of a rather long list of magically touched boyfriends, who normally only lasted as long as their magic kept Sienna’s attention. Unlike me, she’d known both her parents and there was no question she was half-human. Though her binding ability was impressive, her casting magic was … insubstantial, like mine was. Well, like I’d always thought mine was — not that anyone had ever outright told me I was magically challenged. I just assumed that, based on the magic I saw swirling around my mother and grandmother. I had no such swirl, and neither did Sienna.

Lately, all I felt around my sister was a reflection of my own magic from the trinkets she wore constantly as her new fashion statement. Which made me realize that the vampire was correct in stating that I altered the magic of the bits and pieces I used to make the trinkets —
 

“What. The. Hell?” Sienna entered the bedroom seconds after me. I’d heard the stool she knocked over to chase after me hit the ground seconds before her second shriek, of course. Damn stools.

I swapped my tank top for a cleaner one, then stepped into the bathroom to scrub on a defensive layer of deodorant.

Sienna paced the bedroom. I could see her in the bathroom mirror as she passed by the door. She was actually excitedly wringing her hands. “The morgue? Has there been another murder? Or is that just some sort of vampire date thing? No, wait, vampires actually don’t like being around dead things. Ironic, no? Jade! Are you going to answer me at all?”

I pulled my unruly hair back into a clip and didn’t bother with makeup other than light pink lip gloss. I got weird when I didn’t have access to my gloss, but getting glammed up further to visit Hudson’s dead body seemed very inappropriate. “Yes, there’s been another murder. No, it’s not a date. The vampire … they … want me to … they think I can help them trace the magic.”

Sienna came to a standstill in the middle of the bedroom. I had to dodge around her to pull on a fresh pair of jeans and a silk peasant blouse. I had no freaking idea how one dressed to go to a morgue, but I figured a T-shirt was probably too informal.

“They? Who are they exactly? And do you think you can dowse the killer?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but …” I trailed off. The image of Hudson’s body and my blackened trinket in the vampire’s pale fingers flashed into my mind and took all thought and breath with it.

“But what?” Sienna prodded.

But … I didn’t want Sienna any more involved than she already was. “But I have to try to help.”

“Why? Why you?”

I shrugged and dug a pair of Fluevog Joni sandals out of my closet. They were purple with green laces. “Is it still raining?”

“No,” Sienna answered, and immediately followed up with another question. “Have you called Pearl? Have you told her all of this?” Pearl, not grandma. Sienna never called Gran anything else. But for a moment, just now, it rubbed me the wrong way, like it was disrespectful to the woman who had sheltered Sienna since she was thirteen. But then, what else would Sienna call her?

“No, actually …” I dug around for my cellphone, which must have fallen off the bed while I’d been sleeping. I knelt to try to find it.

The doorbell rang. Sienna dashed out of the room before I even gained my feet.

I quickly grabbed the satchel slung across the back of a chair I’d rescued many years ago from one of Gran’s renovations, tucking the cellular into an inside pocket. As I crossed into the hall, I could hear as Sienna turned the bolt and unchained the front door.

“Oh!” my sister exclaimed as she laid eyes on my visitor. Then, her sly smile firmly entrenched, she turned to look at me around the door she held open. “Jade,” she singsonged. “Your vampire is here.”

And indeed, there was a vampire in my doorway. Well, a few feet from my actual door as he was most likely avoiding contact with the wards. Good to know he could still ring the doorbell, or maybe that was a bad sign. Maybe a vampire knowing where you lived was sort of like seeing the signature on your own death certificate. Wow, I was in a delightful frame of mind. The visit to the morgue was going to be a wild party. Right.

“Was that your sister?” Kett asked as the taxi pulled into midafternoon traffic on West Fourth Avenue.

“Foster, technically.”

“Ah. A witch?”

“Half, yes. You couldn’t tell?”

“Not through the wards. They are … impressive.”

“My grandmother’s.”

“Hmm, not entirely.”

I didn’t argue with him. I had, of course, contributed private spells and reinforcements to the defensive wards on my apartment under my Gran’s instruction. However, the impressive part was her alone.

“Southwest corner of Vancouver General Hospital, please. Laurel and West Tenth Avenue, I believe.” Kett leaned back from speaking to the taxi driver, who took a quick right onto Vine Street to loop back east toward the hospital. The morgue, specifically. I imagined all hospitals had morgues, but this was the first time I’d thought about it. Actually, I’d never even been to the emergency room at Vancouver General, not once in twenty-three years.

I realized I was subconsciously leaning as far away from the vampire as I could, and therefore cramming my left shoulder into the car door. Though he’d shown up at my apartment looking almost human, I was still riding in the back seat of a taxi with a vampire who was stronger, faster, and far more deadly than I. The fact that his skin looked almost pink-tinged didn’t thrill me either. I imagined that meant he’d recently fed.

“So … the morgue,” I said. “We breaking in?”