Bewitching the Baker: A Paranormal Chick Lit Novel (Witchy is the New Forty Book 1) Read online

  Bewitching the Baker

  Elizabeth Kirke

  Witchy is the New Forty

  Book One

  a Paranormal Chick Lit Novel

  Chapter One

  My name is Violet. Go ahead and laugh, I’ve heard all the jokes and song lyrics before. Wait until you find out my two best friends are named Rose and Lavender. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it? Well, not really, I suppose. Our mothers were best friends and worked together at an enchanted plant nursery. They got pregnant one right after another and it was only natural the trio chose a name theme for their daughters.

  We grew up like sisters; sometimes I wonder if our mothers cast some sort of spell to bind us, because no matter where life seemed to take us, we always found ourselves drawn together again.

  Perhaps that was why at thirty-nine the three of us were closer than ever – sharing an apartment. It also could have had something to do with the fact that not one of us had a true career yet, we were all stuck in jobs that didn’t seem like they were going anywhere. That and none of us had a boyfriend to live with either.

  That one, though, could be blamed on The Worst Love Spell Ever, as we called it. It wasn’t a real spell, but it had become the butt of jokes and a good scapegoat to explain our mutual abysmal luck with dating.

  Of course, there were worse places to be than a nice apartment with my two best friends. Thirty-nine had been good to me, job and love life aside. With any luck, forty would be even better.

  ~~~***~~~

  I woke up and started to stretch but my hand bumped into something strange. Confused, I opened my eyes and frowned; I couldn’t see anything except purple. No, make that violet. I started to sit up and tried to push my way through the strange curtain of… balloons.

  I bit back a groan; my room was completely filled from top to bottom with violet balloons. There was barely enough room to displace the balloons and put myself where they had been.

  “This is ridiculous!” I said, trying to push my way through, torn between early morning pre-coffee frustration and laughter.

  “It is quite impressive,” agreed a soft voice.

  “How did you sleep through this happening, Belle?” I demanded.

  My familiar let out a chuckle and replied, “What makes you think I did?”

  “Thanks,” I grumbled.

  My two best friends and I already celebrated my birthday a couple of nights ago, so I really wasn't expecting anything on the day of, certainly not being attacked by balloons first thing in the morning. It was chaotic trying to get to my door; when I tried to open it there were so many balloons I couldn't even do that.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” I said an annoyance. “Wand!” I extended my hand and could actually hear my wand squeaking and squeezing its way through the balloons to my palm. The instant it hit my palm I curled my fingers around the warm wood and gave it the best swish I could manage considering the space constraints.

  I was planning on just deflating the balloons, but in my annoyance they started rapidly popping instead. I shrieked a little in surprise, causing a dozen more to pop.

  “Is that necessary?” Belle asked in annoyance from somewhere.

  “Sorry,” I said, ear still ringing from the cacophony of exploding balloons.

  On the bright side, the ones that had popped cleared the space out quite a bit and I was able to get a much better range of motion with my arm. I swirled my wand a few times and the balloons shrank down, releasing their air silently until they were all deflated and my floor was completely invisible beneath a layer of rubber.

  Belle crept out from under my bed. She set one black paw on a balloon and then lifted it disdainfully.

  “You should have considered that before you let those hooligans prank me,” I told her.

  She ruffled her fur in annoyance, then straightened and held her head and tail high. The deflated balloons curled in on themselves and rolled away, clearing a narrow perfect path for her to the doorway. Belle strode down it, not so much as a single hair on her paws touching the offensive latex. She sat down near the door and waited patiently for me. I laughed and pulled it open with some difficulty as it rolled over the thick layer of balloons.

  “I think forty would have been sufficient,” I muttered.

  Belle laughed, then hopped delicately a couple of balloons that the door dragged into her path, then left the room with a swish of her long, black tail.

  I followed, then turned back and gave my wand a few more quick swishes until the balloons were in a neat pile on my floor.

  “Happy Birthday,” Rose called merrily from a stool in the kitchen as I walked in.

  “Thank you,” I said, then arched an eyebrow at her and said threateningly, “Now, who do I thank for those balloons?”

  “Don't look at me,” she said innocently.

  I wouldn't have put it past Lavender to do it alone, but knowing them, Rose with her mischievous pranking streak had suggested doing something and Lavender had come up with the balloons.

  “I'd like to remind you, that my birthday is first. So, anything that you two tricksters do to me is going to come back around.”

  “Well, in that case…” Rose pointed to the counter and I spotted a bag with the logo for the bakery where I worked on it. “I hope you’ll remember the good too.”

  I laughed and headed to check it out.

  “I can’t bake like you can,” said Rose, “but I did cast a couple of spells on it, so it tastes fresh out of the oven.”

  A delicious smell wafted out as I opened the bag; breaking into a smile as I pulled out a still-steaming cheese danish. “Oh,” I breathed, “my favorite pastry!” I took a bite, savoring it. “If it makes you feel better, I can’t bake like this.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, you’re a wonderful baker,” Rose said.

  “I’m not,” I said. “My specialty is cakes, something like this is well outside of my comfort zone.” I held up the danish.

  “You could always learn,” suggested Booke.

  I looked in the direction of the voice and spotted a large black cat lounging on top of a tall bookcase, casually cleaning a paw.

  “That’s true,” I said to him, “but you know have my sights set on decorating cakes.”

  Not that I would have minded learning to make danishes and other pastries, but cakes were my passion. I had been baking them for as long as I could remember. In fact, I was pretty sure I had baked the bulk of birthday cakes for both Lavender and Rose in our lifetimes. I loved decorating and frosting them as well; the thought made me feel a little bit frustrated and I quickly pushed it aside and focused on enjoying my danish instead.

  Lavender joined us just as I was finishing up.

  “Happy birthday, Vi,” she said as she entered the kitchen.

  “Thank you,” I said. “And thank you for the balloons; I can't wait to put them in someone else's room.”

  Lavender chuckled as she went to help herself to a bowl of cereal. “Maybe you'll forget by the time it's my birthday.”

  I rolled my eyes in amusement, seeing as hers was only a few months away, I doubted it; especially since Rose’s birthday would fall in the middle and serve as a reminder.

  “How are you spending your day?” Rose asked.

  “Working.”

  “It's too bad you have to work on your birthday,” said Lavender as she sat down.

  Rose and I exchanged a small smile; once that statement would have come from Lavender because she didn't work. Even though our mothers all
met working at the nursery together, it was something her mother did out of passion rather than necessity; she was from an old, incredibly wealthy family. As a result, Lavender never had to work or want for anything a day in her life… right up until she was twenty-five.

  When Rose and I both graduated and got jobs, Lavender’s mother decided that she needed to follow suit and learn some responsibility. Just like that, she was cut off from the family fortune until she got “a good education and steady job”.

  Lavender didn't think her mother was serious and spent a few years bouncing around various restaurants and bars, waiting for her mother to change her mind, casually changing jobs at the drop of a hat. It wasn't until she was nearly thirty she realized that her mother was serious and decided to really buckle down.

  Truthfully, neither Rose nor I were sure she’d have it in her, but Lavender found a job at a bar and put herself through school, working toward a degree in hospitality; a field she had started enjoying while working at restaurants. However, after years of trouble with unfair expectations of employees and obnoxious managers, she decided that she wanted to get out of the grind and actually own her own restaurant. Seeing as my dream was to own my own bakery, I encouraged it.

  Funnily enough, all three of us wanted to own and operate our own place someday. But obviously it hadn’t happened yet. Sometimes I wished that the day we cast the Worst Love Spell Ever we had cast a spell to muck up our careers instead, because it certainly seemed like they were going as poorly as our love lives and it would have been nice to find something to jokingly blame it on.

  After graduating Lavender had the rude awakening that she still couldn't easily jump into any sort of a management position and without access to her inheritance, she couldn't just outright buy a restaurant either. Instead, she was stuck working the same jobs for the same string of frustrating employers.

  Now, her sentiments that I shouldn't have had to work on my birthday came from someone who, if she actually had her own employees, would not make them work on their birthdays.

  Even though she was approaching forty her mother still didn’t seem to be taking any steps to giving her access to the money again. So, Lavender was stuck in the same place, just like Rose and I.

  “Well,” Rose said, standing. “I’m off to work. Cross your fingers Mr. Tea Name won’t be there.”

  “Maybe he's been fired for being a jerk,” Lavender suggested.

  “Don't I wish,” said Rose flatly.

  She went back and forth between dreaming about owning her own apothecary to sell potions ingredients or opening a tea shop, which had become something of a hobby for her. The apothecary where she worked had been great for the last few years and she had learned quite a lot, which admittedly made me a little jealous. As an added bonus for her, they mixed and served tea as well. But her but a few months ago Rose’s wonderful manager had been replaced by Mr. Whoever, who besides being curt and ill-tempered, seemed to have no idea how to manage the shop. Rose couldn't stand working with him and it seemed like every time there was an adjustment to the schedule, he was working more shifts with her.

  “Good luck,” I called.

  Shortly after Rose left, it was my turn to get ready for work. Just like my two best friends, I was so tantalizingly close to my dream job and yet so frustratingly far at the same time. I was twenty-nine when I realized I was chasing the wrong profession; trying to follow in my mother's footsteps by sculpting enchanted garden sculptures. As a result my home now was full of quirky pots and gargoyles that could water plants and tell you the weather and grow the perfect herbs, but I realized that it just wasn't something I was passionate about.

  I just happened to stumble on to cake decorating classes when I had a free period and absolutely fell in love. I found a job at a bakery to test the waters and had never looked back. At thirty, I vowed I would open my own bakery at thirty-five… well, that didn’t happen; I was forty and working in someone else’s shop.

  Truth be told, I probably could have saved up to open my own bakery, although I probably would have needed a loan and it may not have been the nicest place; the thing was, I hadn’t had the drive to do it. My baking was second to none; everyone at the bakery, even Tracey, the owner, agreed that I was the most skilled baker there. Everyone loved my cakes and recipes, but even though I always knew, and could whip up the perfect frosting for them – and even design them – I just could not get the cakes to look the way I wanted.

  My cake decorating skills were sorely lacking and that was why I felt as though I couldn’t open a bakery. It didn’t seem right own and operate a bakery if I couldn’t make my cakes look as good as they tasted.

  Once I was ready, I headed off for another somewhat unfulfilling day at work. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy most aspects of my job. In a sense, I enjoyed all of it. It was a lovely little bakery and all of my co-workers were great; I got to spend all day baking and when I worked at the counter and interacted with customers I got to hear them oohing and ahhing as they looked at and sampled my creations. I even had free rein to experiment sometimes and come up with specials and designs.

  My frustration stemmed from anything frosting related. Our bakery had a signature “swirl” that we put on every single cupcake. We had a few standard fonts we practiced for writing messages on cakes and each employee had one or two fonts they were particularly good at. Beyond that, everything else was quite basic; simple frosting layers, dollops with different piping bag tips, and the occasional attempt at something fancier.

  Aside from the signature swirl I hadn’t learned any new techniques or tricks since starting the job. I kept hoping I’d have a chance to learn somehow, but the years slowly went by – thirty-five came and went – with hardly any time to experiment and no local cake decorating classes to take. Now I was forty and sometimes felt no more experienced than I had been when I started; although admittedly I could do the signature swirl in my sleep now.

  Today, however, there was an unexpected change of pace when I was called into the kitchen for what I thought was a meeting and was presented with a birthday cupcake, a small assortment of gifts, and a card from everyone. I was touched by the gesture. Sometimes I felt like a failure leaving the bakery at the end of the day, once again without learning a new icing technique, but as I crowned off ten years of dreaming of being a cake decorator, I still had a bit of a spring in my step as I swung the bag carrying my gifts.

  Thanks to my co-workers I had a small assortment of new baking utensils, a coffee mug, a couple of gift cards to other local places, and, much to my amusement, a magic candle. The gifter jokingly told me that I gave off a “witchy vibe” and that when she saw the candle, she thought it would be perfect. Considering everyone I worked with was magic-less I knew that she couldn't possibly have known I was actually a witch. I wondered what sort of witchy vibe exactly I gave off. Probably, a cynical voice told me, it was single, forty, and owned a black cat. I decided it probably wasn't that far off and humored her by reading the paper wrapped around the candle. Apparently it was an “enchanted wishing candle” and I was supposed to write a wish on the reverse side of the paper, then burn it, and let the candle burn out completely. It was a cute idea; not at all how real magic worked, but cute nonetheless. Not wanting to hurt her feelings, I made sure I brought it home with everything else.

  Even though we already celebrated Rose and Lavender went ahead and conspired to order dinner from my favorite place. They even humored me and watched one of my favorite shows, Cake Magic.

  It was a reality baking show featuring several bakers and the simply incredible cakes they created; despite the name, Cake Magic was made by magic-less people and there was no real magic. But I swear, the things that my favorite baker, Chef Sorrel Glaze, could do with frosting was nothing less than magic. He was incredibly talented and it didn't hurt that he wasn't bad to look at either. The icing on the proverbial cake was his low soothing voice; I could have listened to him talk about cake decorating all day long. I had
, in fact, on more than one occasion when a new season came out. Then again, I had a feeling I could listen to him read straight from a cookbook and I’d still be happy.

  This particular episode, I was pleased to see, featured Chef Sorrel working on a wedding cake for, ironically, a famous wedding dress designer. The cake, naturally, was going to look like a wedding dress. There was a brief montage of Chef Sorrel and his assistants rushing around getting the cake baked, with a few mishaps and stressful moments, and soon the baker was standing next to an impressively large tiered cake. I watched in awe as he draped it with impossibly thin fondant and started piping on complex lacework and adding edible pearls and delicate sugar flowers that looked like they should have broken when he picked them up. At last, the camera panned around the cake and the dress it was modeled after. In all honestly, it was almost hard to tell which was which.

  With our familiars curled up in our laps, the three of us watched a few episodes before turning in for the night. I left my new baking tools and mug in the kitchen and carried the rest of my gifts into my room.

  “I wish I could learn to decorate cakes like that,” I said as I got ready for bed, thoughts occupied by Cake Magic.

  “I know you will,” Belle said confidently, settling down on my bed.

  I shot her a grateful smile, then pulled the card and candle from my bag and set them on a shelf. As I set down the silly wishing candle, I paused and looked at it.

  Granted it wasn’t real magic… but wasn’t that sort of the fun of it? I carefully peeled off the parchment-like paper wrapped around it and read the instructions again.

  “What's that?” Belle asked.

  “It’s a wishing candle. It says…” I glanced down and read the instructions out loud. “Write your wish on this enchanted parchment and burn it in the flame of this magical candle. Allow the candle to burn until it stops of its own accord and your wish will come true.”

  Belle sat up and curled her tail elegantly around her paws, then tilted her head and looked at me like I was crazy. “So, what is that?” she repeated, sounding quite a bit more skeptical now.