Heavenly Pleasures (9 page)

We were feeling so tired by our encounter with the supernatural that we took a taxi home and cooked an early dinner, for it was Sunday and I would have to get up on Monday morning to bake the world’s bread. On Monday morning Daniel was going back to Heavenly Pleasures to talk to the staff.

We had excellent pies made by the Other Bakery, which specialises in pastry as Earthly Delights specialises in bread, and hot chocolate with rum. Horatio was placated with kitty dins. Everyone in the building seemed unaffected by the scare of the night before. I could feel the place settling down for a nice long autumn nap, and soon Daniel and I did the same.

C
_HA
PTER SEVEN

I was woken by the alarm as usual. Daniel slept through it. That man could sleep through a major war. It must be a wonderful talent to have. I left him in the middle of my big bed and went down to start the rye bread, taking my cup of coffee with me. Jason came in. We fed the cats. We concocted the first rising of the day.

Jason now knows how I feel about mornings so, even though he was bursting with news, he kept it to himself until everything was proving and I had drunk my third coffee and eaten some toast and lemon butter. Jason had eaten three rolls with cheese and a leftover bag of stale baguettes which he reheated in the microwave and tore at with his teeth. Even the Mouse Police watched anxiously as he ripped chunks out of the fossilised crust. But he was a growing boy and it was two whole hours to breakfast time at Cafe Delicious. Finally he choked down the last of the baguette and I took pity on him, he was so obviously brimming with news.

‘So, Jason, what is it?’

‘You know that Selima chick who works in the choccie shop?’ he asked.

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‘Yes,’ I said cautiously. ‘And you know I’ve warned you about what I’ll do to you if you keep calling women “chicks”.’

‘Whatever,’ he shrugged. ‘She’s gone,’ he told me. ‘Run away.’

‘Does Daniel know?’ I asked.

‘Can’t see how he could,’ he said.

‘How do you know?’ I asked. Morning is not my best time.

‘Heard the Juliette ch … woman talking to her sister,’ he said. ‘As I was going past. On the way here,’ he added, to make it all clear.

‘How did you hear them?’ I pressed.

‘They were yelling,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help it. Chick’s been missing since Saturday. Can I tell Daniel?’

‘If she’s been missing since Saturday then there’s no rush. Daniel always says the first twenty-four hours are crucial and they’ve already gone past. You can tell him, though. When he gets up. Which won’t be for hours yet. We had to go to the prison to talk to Darren the God Boy yesterday and it rather took it out of us.’

‘Crazy dude,’ said Jason.

‘No shit,’ I agreed.

We made more bread. Horatio, who had been sleeping sprawled out along Daniel’s agreeably warm back, stepped downstairs and suggested breakfast. I went back upstairs to feed him and found Daniel silently making coffee. I did not interrupt. Now that I have actually found a man who doesn’t want to talk in the small hours I am not going to blow it by talking myself. I fed Horatio, found out that I had been flim
flammed, in that Daniel had already fed him, and went downstairs again. I would have to watch Horatio’s talent for playing both sides. Anyone who says cats are stupid hasn’t ever been defrauded by one.

First batch of bread in and out of the oven and Jason was making a new sort of muffin. I sat down, prepared to learn. Jason was quick and sure in his movements and a pleasure to watch. He had mixed the muffins in a few sharp strokes and then plopped a spoonful into the tin, followed it with a spoonful of cherry jam, and then the rest of the mixture. I waited until he slotted the muffin tins into the oven and closed the door, for muffins are acutely impatient of delays, and asked, ‘Why put jam in the middle?’

‘Well, if it works, it’ll be like a jam doughnut,’ he told me, wiping his floury hands on his apron. ‘People love doughnuts but they’re really fatty. This will be a low-fat doughnut. At least I hope. I never tried this before, it might go soggy. Any more coffee in the pot?’

‘Plenty,’ I said. ‘Have you thought about chocolate muffins?’

‘Yeah, but they never seem to have that real taste. Hey, perhaps I can ask the Juliette ch … woman about it. She knows her chocolate. There must be some trick to it. Like that French bread, the one called
pain
. Why do they call it
pain
? Not a nice name for a roll.’

‘
Pain
,’ I said, pronouncing it in French. ‘
Pain
is French for bread. You mean
pain au chocolat
, don’t you? My baking encyclopaedia might have an entry. Have a look while we time your muffins out.’

Jason dragged down the encyclopaedia and flicked idly through the pages.

‘If you go to the back of the book there’s an index. Look up
pain au chocolat
in the list under ‘p’, which is between ‘o’ and ‘q’, and it will give you a page number.’

He gave me a look compounded of respect and resentment. Jason had never heard of an index before. He found the page, though, and soon was stammering through an entry on the sort of brioche that had chocolate in the middle.

‘Aha,’ he said. ‘There is a trick to it. See, if you cook chocolate for as long as you need to cook the bread, it goes dull.’

‘No way around that,’ I answered. ‘And in any case, who cares if it’s dull? It tastes just as good. Your muffins are ready.’

He levered one out of the tin, looked at it, sniffed it, then bit. He yelped with pain as a stream of hot jam trickled down his chin.

‘Ouch,’ he observed. ‘But it tastes real good, Corinna. Just let it cool down a bit.’

Like most Jason muffins, the cherry ones were superb and I told him so. I ate one with another cup of coffee and then my remaining synapses kicked in.

‘Oh, Lord, I forgot about Soot,’ I groaned. ‘I promised I’d help look for her and I forgot all about her. The poor little thing!’

‘Nothing to be done until we finish the baking,’ said Jason practically. ‘Then I can go and ask if Kiko or Ian have seen her. Anyway, maybe someone’s found her by daylight. She’s a black cat. They’re pretty hard to see in the dark.’

‘You’re right. Are you going to make some more of those muffins? I’ve got an order for Health Bread, see how much bicarb we have.’

‘I still don’t believe people eat that stuff,’ said Jason, going into the storeroom for more cherry jam and finding the bicarb.

‘I don’t care if they eat it,’ I said. ‘I just care that they buy it.’

Time passed. We finished the bread and the muffins, sorted out the orders for Megan, stocked the shop, and Jason started the scrubbing while I opened the shutters. It was a bleak day outside. Mrs Dawson came in briskly, rubbing her gloves together. Today she wore a brown cashmere jumper of the finest knit, a heavy woollen coat and her usual tailored trousers and sensible shoes. She had thrown over the outfit a pashmina figured with golden pheasants and vines. She was a very decorative figure. Her cheeks were as red as apples and her blue eyes were very bright.

‘Chilly morning,’ she observed. ‘Going to rain, I believe. The great advantage of an early morning walk is that one can spend the rest of the day in guiltless luxury. I, for instance, have a pile of books, a nice view of the weather, and a warm apartment. And, I hope, some of your bread and the excellent Jason’s muffins.’

‘These are cherry, and they’re really good,’ I said honestly. I sold her three muffins and a loaf of rye bread. ‘Can you keep your eye out for a small black kitten?’ I added. ‘She might be lost inside the building.’

‘And if I find her?’

‘Call Kylie or Goss and they’ll fetch her.’

Mrs Dawson nodded and took her leave. I heard Jason laughing with the carrier as he handed over the bread, and then his footsteps as he went down the alley to ask Kiko about Soot. Escorted, no doubt, by the Mouse Police in search of raw endangered species of the Antarctic Ocean. It was very quiet, one of those little oases of calm that cities sometimes have, which vanish a moment later as if they had never been.

Horatio sauntered into the shop, leapt up onto the counter, and took his accustomed place. Daniel followed him, and kissed me on the back of the neck.

‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I’m going to talk to Heavenly Pleasures.’

‘First catch Jason, he has something to tell you,’ I said. ‘And Soot is still missing, so grab her if you see her. And I love you,’ I added, overwhelmed with affection, burying my cold

nose in his warm neck.

‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I’m going,’ and he went.

Kylie came in, all blonde today, pale hair and blue eyes. She took her place behind the counter, within easy stroking distance of Horatio. There was no news of Soot. I took a muffin and went to see Meroe.

The Sybil’s Cave was a very small shop with a great many things in it. Meroe was sitting in her big chair with a spread of cards laid out before her. Belladonna was stretched along the high back, stropping her claws. The fact that the black cat had returned to her perennial occupation presumably meant that she had forgiven Meroe for Lucifer’s intrusion into her well-regulated life.

I ducked under a lot of hanging dream-catchers, removed a bundle of Wiccan magazines from the other chair and sat down. It does not do to interrupt a witch, so I put the muffin down on one corner of the table and perused a magazine. Its leading article was ‘Evil in the Modern World’ and I grew steadily more depressed as I read it. I didn’t think all this calling of the light and contemplations on peace were going to cut any ice with the likes of al-Qaida or the good old Military Industrial Complex. I sighed and Meroe said, reading my mind as she often did, ‘But you never know what will turn a scale. We would be negligent not to continue trying.’

‘I suppose you are right. I brought you a muffin.’

‘And a problem,’ she said, shaking back her long dark hair. I have no idea how old Meroe is. She could be a youthful sixty or a weathered forty. She always wears a long skirt and top, both black, and some sort of shawl or wrap. Today’s was a length of brilliantly scarlet Chinese silk, a bright note in an already bright shop.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I met a man who is undoubtedly what Jason would call an extreme nutcase. He thinks he is a messiah. But he looked at me and I had to drag myself away.’

‘Do you believe in the devil?’ asked Meroe.

‘No,’ I said.

‘But you believe in evil,’ she pressed. Belladonna shredded some more upholstery with an unsettling sound, like a knife being whetted.

‘Well, yes, you can’t read a newspaper and not believe in evil.’

‘This man believes in himself with such power that he can convince other people to believe in him as well, isn’t that true?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Until Daniel rescued one of his slaves and punched him in the nose, he had a group of fanatic followers. Indeed, he might still have. They might have set that bomb hoax.’

‘Hmm,’ said Meroe, turning over another card. I don’t know the meaning of tarot cards, but this one looked benign. It was a naked woman dipping water up from a pond. The sky was dominated by a star. Meroe made a tutting noise.

‘The Star,’ she said. ‘Not helpful. All things are strange, is the meaning.’

‘There’s a tarot card that says that the future is unpredictable?’ I asked.

‘Certainly. I know the man you are talking about. This spread is for him. I have been trying to work out if it was him, and what he is likely to do next. He is certainly evil. He is very angry with Daniel. He would always try to injure him by sidelong methods—he is too weak and scared to attack Daniel directly. Therefore he is likely to attack …’

‘Through me,’ I said. A cold shudder ran down my spine.

‘So I will provide you with this,’ said Meroe, looping a thin ribbon over my head. I examined the pendant. It was a small bag made of white silk. It had something crackly— paper?—inside it, and something hard. It smelt of oranges. I might not be magically protected—I really didn’t believe in magic—but at least I would smell nice.

‘Will it work even if I don’t believe in it?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Meroe, smiling her witch’s smile. ‘Does the light come on when you press the switch? You aren’t required to make sacrifices or chant prayers to the god Electricity. Evil is bound by metaphysical laws, just as Good is. This will protect you and yours, and I will conduct a working to reflect any evil back onto its perpetrator.’

‘Sister Mary said he was faking,’ I protested, tucking the little bag into my shirt. ‘He was chanting and calling on Beelzebub and had some sort of fit.’

‘Oh, he was faking if Sister Mary said so,’ agreed Meroe. ‘But he is evil. Sister Mary knows about evil. She will take care of what remains of his soul, and we will take care of his nasty habits.’

‘Is this a spell?’ I asked suspiciously.

‘Just a working,’ said Meroe, which didn’t answer my question. Meroe knows that she would be very good at Evil if she gave the left hand path a try. She stays away from outright curses. Mostly. Remembering those dark brown eyes and that feeling of horrible suction, I figured that Darren deserved all he got.

I left the muffin, bought a Wiccan magazine for Kylie, and went back to Earthly Delights, where everything was going beautifully. Goss was serving a queue of customers and Jason had joined her, supplying and wrapping as she took the money and gave change. They were working very smoothly together. Considering that only four weeks ago Jason had refused to come out of the kitchen at all, I thought this a significant improvement.

‘Cherry muffins need twenty seconds in the microwave to be ace,’ he told the customer. ‘Hey, Corinna.’

‘Hey, Jason,’ I replied.

‘Daniel wants you to go to the choccie shop,’ he told me. ‘Dude’s real angry about not being woken up.’

‘I’ll go now,’ I said. ‘If you can manage?’

‘Sure,’ he said blithely. Goss nodded at me. I went.

Out into the lane and past Mistress Dread’s leather shop and in through the gold-lettered door of Heavenly Pleasures, with its cherubs and clouds. Juliette came out of the kitchen when the bell rang and waved me inside.

‘Corinna,’ said Daniel. He drew me aside behind a large machine which was burbling to itself. He looked like a dark angel who is disappointed in humanity.

‘The girl is missing,’ he said to me, his voice deep with reproach. ‘Jason says he told you at five. Why didn’t you call me?’

‘Because you were asleep,’ I said.

‘She’s run away,’ he told me. ‘A lot can happen to a girl in a few hours. You know that.’

‘Is it your problem?’ I asked. He took his hand off my arm. I felt entirely disconcerted. As I usually did, I attacked. ‘No, consider it. Is it your problem? Aren’t the police looking for her?’