Cutthroat Chicken (8 page)

“Fred,” the familiar voice continued, though the room around him melted. “Fred! Snap out of it!”

Fred blinked his eyes. Gone was the studio. Gone were his beloved Chicken Fried and Gravy Smothered. Gone was his revenge.

It was all gone.

He turned his head to stare at the woman who was calling his name.

“I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t watch any more cooking competitions,” Goldie Locke said, shaking her head at him. She had a crooked smile on her angelic-looking face. When she looked at Fred, that smile grew into a fond, almost sappy grin.

With her hair pulled into a high ponytail and wearing an over-size t-shirt over her pajama pants, she looked more like a child than a successful and powerful witch.

The look was completed by her bright yellow ‘chick’ slippers, which offended Fred. He ruffled up his neck feathers at the sight of those fuzzy
cute
little traitors. Chickens weren’t supposed to be cute. They were supposed to be scary.

The press had it all wrong. They were missing a hot market, with all their fluffy baby chicks everywhere.

Where was the scary?

When was the last time anyone had worn a silkie rooster costume for Halloween?

Goldie pressed a button on the remote and the TV snapped to black with Abe Braun’s mouth open mid-pun. “Those shows just make you angry. Not that I can blame you. It’s ridiculous how many chefs just can’t seem to cook chicken. It’s always raw, and then you get all worked up. They should know better.”

Fred growled in agreement. He flitted his wings and puffed up, until his beady eyes were almost lost in the fluff of his Silkie chicken feathers. He glared impressively at her.

Goldie reached down over the back of Fred’s favorite easy chair and tickled his chin, a fond smile on her face. “You should know better, too, Freddy-bug. That’s enough TV to last you for the next century. How about a midnight snack, instead? It’s not brains or anything, but I can make you a sandwich. I think we have ham. No chicken, of course. You know how I feel about your cannibalistic tendencies. I know you don’t want any onions. You hate onions more than anything, don’t you? Maybe a tomato? Lettuce? Do you want a pickle?”

She raised her eyebrows enticingly.

With a longing thought towards his thwarted dream, Fred hesitated for just a moment before letting out a contented burp and following his person into the kitchen.

Goldie Locke started to pull ingredients out of the fridge. She tapped her feet as she gathered her ingredients, making those ridiculous chick slippers of hers do a kindergarten dance on the smooth wooden floor.

Fred gave the slippers his worst stink eye as he perched on the counter, where he could watch Goldie’s every move. She was almost as good as watching TV.

If he was lucky, maybe she would slip in those stupid chickie things and fall on her face.

It was always amusing to see her fall.

The pickle jar let out a large pop as Goldie Locke twisted off the lid with a jerk of her wrist. She offered him the jar, letting him choose whichever pickle he wanted. He pecked cautiously, making sure they were dill pickles and not the sweet kind.

A chicken zombie only made that mistake once.

He settled down on the counter with his pickle, watching Goldie Locke make him a sandwich.

Sure, pickles weren’t exactly as fun as hunting down and murdering those people who betrayed all chicken kind, but they were pretty good.

Good enough.

For now.

~The End~

Excerpt

Chapter One

Closing the door of the house behind me, I tossed my purse on the couch and threw myself after it. I lay limply for a moment, wondering if I would ever have the energy to move again, then decided to get my  — oh, so stylish and oh, so painful  — shoes off before I cast off to drama land. If I was going to have a crisis, at least my feet wouldn’t hurt.

My roommate, Jessi, peeked her head around the door of the open freezer, a spoon dangling from her mouth. She looked me up and down, removed the spoon and quipped, “Prince Charming or Toad?”

I rolled my eyes at her. “Toad, of course.” I flopped back down, eyeing her spoon. “What do we have?”

She gave me another long look and disappeared back into the freezer. “I think you need Double Fudge Brownie Cookie Dough.”

I grinned. My roomie so got me. “Hand it over.”

She pitched it underhand and the pint came flying towards me, followed by a spoon. I dug into the rich decadence of the ice cream with a hopeful sigh. In my opinion, there were very few things in life that ice cream couldn’t fix.

As the first velvety icy mouthful slid down my throat, I let out a moan of pleasure, letting all the stress flow off of my shoulders.

SweetDreams Ice Cream had only been available in our grocery store for a few weeks and we were already hooked. It was so good I could even let a bad date roll off my shoulders.

“So...” Jessi flopped down beside me. I squinted at her pint. She was eating Chocolate Cherry Cocoa Bliss. I considered snatching it out of her hands and finishing it for her, but there was nothing wrong with me that ice cream was really going to fix.

“So, nothing,” I said crossly. “We went to dinner, talked, held hands...”

“Kissed.” Jessi giggled.

I glared at her, then sighed. “Yeah... and ...”

“Toadsville!” Jessi giggled again.

“I’m so glad you think my personal life is so hilarious.” I said dryly.

She waved her hands. “No, no, I’m sorry. It’s just... Nathan was
so
a toad. You know it.”

He sure was. A giant, ugly, warty, slimy Colorado River Toad. He was nearly a pound of toxic waste done naturally.

Nasty.

In my limited experience the outside of the toad matched the inside of the man. Apparently I had just kissed a man whose insides were so gruesome that he was even more hideous than the average toad. Much as I hated bringing another toad home, I’d dodged a silver bullet on that one. If there was a perk to my personal hell, it was that I never dated a bad guy for long.

Not that I dated any guy for long.

I tried to remember why I had gone out with him in the first place, trying to ignore the huge ‘desperate’ sign that was blinking on and off like a huge neon sign in my brain. I sighed again. There had to be one good guy out there somewhere, right? One
single
someone who was not instant toad material.

“This is it,” I growled, licking my spoon clean. The ice cream was really good, insanely good even. “I’m done with men. I’m going to stick to ice cream.”

Jessi snorted. She’d heard it all before.

“I mean it this time,” I insisted. “I’m just going to focus on my work at the bakery and stop looking for a Prince Charming who obviously doesn’t exist.”

Tansy padded into the living room from her room, complete with pink halter top, baggy flowery pajama pants, and pink bunny slippers. Her light blond hair was gathered up in a rather messy looking ponytail. Her bangs were bound up in pin curls. Her eyes were slightly puffy. She looked like we had roused her up from a deep sleep. Even then she looked like the epitome of the angel next door. She held out her hand. “Ice me, baby.”

Jessi bounced up from the couch with far too much energy for that time of night. I shook my head as she disappeared back into the freezer. Just watching her exhausted me.

“Let’s see,” she said thoughtfully. “I think White Chocolate Strawberry Fantasy should do the trick.”

Jessi was quickly becoming our ice cream therapist. Not that you could ever go wrong with Tansy and pink. Even her car, an old ‘Bug’, was painted a brilliant rosy shade.

Tansy held out her hand and was soon deep in her pint. “This is so good,” she said around a spoonful. She paused, spoon in the air, as she regarded me.

I cringed, knowing what was coming.

“Toad?”

“Ha ha.” I searched in vain for another spoonful of fudgy bliss in my empty pint and sighed. “You guys enjoy my misery way too much.”

“Well, at least you’ll know Prince Charming when he comes around,” Tansy pointed out. “We just have to muddle through like everyone else.”

“We
think
I’ll know the right guy when he comes around. We don’t know for a fact. It may just be that I’ll be kissing toads until I’m ninety.”

It didn’t seem fair. I wasn’t flat out gorgeous like Jessi or even girl-next-door cute like Tansy, but I wasn’t exactly Hagsville either. Why I was stuck kissing toads instead of having a normal relationship, I didn’t know.

“I swear,” I muttered, “I am cursed.”

“We know,” my roommates chorused. They’d heard it all before. Many times.

My purse made a valiant effort to scoot off of the couch and I grabbed it just as it was about to slide out of reach.

“Oh, no you don’t!” I shuddered.

The worst part of living in the dating world of Toadsville was making sure the repulsive things didn’t get themselves killed before they reverted back to their human forms. Nathan was a particularly icky specimen of toad-kind.

I never knew how much human consciousness my ‘victims’ kept, but there was no way I was letting this nasty creature near my bedroom, even if I did have to keep an eye on him.

Luckily, or sadly, depending on how you looked at it, I was prepared for situations like this.

I carefully dumped my purse out over what we called the Toad Tank. The Toad Tank was half aquarium/terrarium and half doll house. My roommates and I had put it together amid shouts of laughter. There may or may not have been ice cream involved.

I am not responsible for my behavior when under the influence of ice cream.

There was a toady swimming pool on one side of the tank, and a comfy flat stone for sleeping.

Artistic Tansy had supplied a small re-purposed compact mirror and written ‘Beauty is in the Eye...’ around it.

Jessi had supplied the tank with miniature statuary, mostly featuring images of women kissing frogs. Lots of the women sported red hair, which I supposed meant they were supposed to be me.

I gave my purse another good shake over the tank. Out plopped an immense blob of mucus and slime. The size of an overweight pug, he sat blinking maliciously up at us, his chest puffing up as if he considered himself the pinnacle of male toad beauty.

My roommates, used as they were to me bringing home date refuse, gasped in horror.

“Yeah,” I said flatly.

“Gross,” Tansy whispered.

*~*~*

After demolishing another entire pint of ice cream under the baleful watch of my latest warty ward, I decided a long, hot shower was in order. I couldn’t believe I had actually let that thing near me. Was I really that desperate?

“No more men,” I chanted, starting the hot water blasting. “No more dates. No more kissing. I’m done! No. More. Toads.”

I kept chanting my new mantra as I poured half a bottle of sugar-cookie scented shampoo into my hair and started sudsily scrubbing out my miserable night. Once I started in on my equally delicious conditioner, I finally began to relax.

Images of fabulous desserts danced through my brain. Banana peanut butter crème brulee, I day-dreamed, or maybe a nice summery orange-scented bread pudding. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait for my four A.M. alarm and a full day of work.

I was one of those lucky few who truly loved my job. I knew that wasn’t always the case and couldn’t help but feel a little smug about it. Sugar High Bakery had been a job of desperation in my college days, begun with the advent of a ‘Help Wanted’ sign over a tray of late-night studying cookies. I’d figured ‘hey, I like food’ and applied. Very quickly after starting work there it had taken over my entire life. I had even dropped out of my pre-law program to take classes at a pastry school to the horror of my entire over-achieving scholastic family.

I had found my true calling in being elbows-deep in flour and butter. My bosses, an adorable older-but-not-elderly couple, had given me free rein with creativity after only a year and one highly successful brownie that was still our number one seller. As long as I kept up with their traditional offerings, to please the long-term customers, I could create what I desired.

I seemed to have pastry-scented dreams these days. Wherever I went, dessert inspirations filled my head. Someday I was going to own my very own bakery and fill the displays with all of my own creations. Visions of handmade truffles spiked with chipotle and my special cinnamon honey caramel chews danced in my head. I could almost taste the scent of baking bread on the air.

With a sigh, I pulled my hair up into a wet ponytail and dragged on my work uniform, a t-shirt and what I called my ‘artistic’ jeans, with the random rips, doodles, and patchwork flowers that I had painstakingly, and clumsily, stitched on myself.

I knew better than to try to sleep when this mood struck me. I would end up lying in bed daydreaming about pastry, sugar, and butter until I got up and did something about it.

Ten minutes later I was unlocking the door of the bakery. Moments after that, I was sifting flour while my block of butter softened on the counter and beckoned to my imagination. Puff-pastry nuggets nestled in a sticky sauce, ready for the oven. Mandarin-orange cheesecake and cupcakes formed under my hands. Rows of fresh bread slowly began to fill the cases. My own favorite jalapeno cheddar bagels came out of their water bath and into another oven. Flour and spices and magic filled the air.

Weeks into my early employment as a pastry chef, I had discovered that my rather capricious magic had been drawn to the pastry-creating process. Somehow my basic pastry skills and small gift in magic had combined to make me something more, a bit of a pastry genius.

Sometimes I thought that this exercising of my meager magic talent was the only reason my mother didn’t drag me, kicking and screaming, back to law school or into some ‘better’ profession, more suited to a child of her womb. Only here, with flour on my hands, did my magic really shine, sometimes quite literally.

My mother was proud of her long legacy of magic. In our quiet community she was considered to be the strongest practitioner in the entire Southwest. Her magic was of the Earth type. She could grow any plant in her extensive gardens. She could even start a small earthquake when truly annoyed (She didn’t ‘get angry.’ That would have suggested she didn’t have mastery of herself, which no one who knew her would ever even insinuate).

She had always blamed the capriciousness of my magic ability on the elusive father-figure I had never met. A long series of men had come into my mother’s life, and left, starting with my own father, whom she stayed resolutely silent about.

I had five half-sisters. Only the twins had the same father. Currently Mom was married to the head of the Western Magic Counsel, which meant she had been calling me with tons of ‘job opportunities’ she felt would be better for me than the bakery. The only thing that helped me keep my patience with her was that she always finished our conversations by asking me to send her a box of my goodies.

It tickled my vanity that even she couldn’t resist my baking.

My magic never worked the same way in two pastries. In some it could intensify flavors, others, well... my lemon meringue pie had a tendency to make people remember the very best day of their lives while they were eating it.

So, as I worked there was always a presence of magic in the air. It shimmered through everything in the bakery, enhancing, changing, and making sure every texture was right. My pie crusts were always perfect and my soufflés never fell. My oven always had exactly the right temperature, and I almost never burned anything.

Not that everything always went smoothly. Even magic couldn’t fix the mess I made when I mistook powdered milk for the flour. In my defense, I had a cold at the time, so the resulting goop was really the fault of a non-functioning nose, not my incompetence.