Connie texts around midday: Cancel the cake samples. The wedding is off.
I use my apron’s hem to dust flour from my phone screen, hoping I misread. Now, I have no way of knowing whether this is just dramatics. Just like Connie has no way of knowing the cakes were in the oven by six o’clock this morning.
Panic’s needle stitches between my ribs. I worriedly thumb the ring tattooed onto my finger. If this is real, if my friend is teetering on the edge of engagement apocalypse, I need to know why. I want to slice my way to the center, squash all the filling out. Figure out how I can stop it from happening to me.
I text back, Swing by on your lunchbreak. When it takes her too long to respond, I realize she’s craving a grander reaction. I add, If she hurt you, I’ll pull some Sweeney Todd shit.
This earns a quick reply. It’s nothing like that. I’ll see you soon.
I frown at the piping bags aligned on the stainless-steel counter: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, cream cheese. Given the circumstances, sugar concoctions are hardly enough.
I cross to my purse hanging off the standing pan rack. I pluck out a vial of silver flakes: faystalk. Mist the plant faithfully with nymph’s tears and it gives the leaves invigorating properties. Snort a four-inch line and it’s like carbonating your blood. (Not that I would know anything about snorting anything.) But sprinkled in the petals of a chocolate buttercream rose, it’s just enough to haul up the anchor chained to your heart.
#
In this Sacramento suburban strip mall, Jacky’s Tasty Tarts gets hit with what I call the “kindergarten rush.” Come noon, the parking lot is swarmed by people leading children by tiny, sticky hands. Nestled in a corner lot between a supermarket and salon, the bakery has a prime location to sell afterschool pick-me-ups. Little ones scrunch their noses against the glass display case and pick out a cookie as big as their heads—a bribe to get them through grocery errands and haircuts. Their eyes sparkle and they forget about their lunchtime bully, or wetting their pants during circle time.
Say what you will about sugar, but my line of work brings out the most beautiful smiles. So long as they’re brushing religiously, anyway.
This young demographic is so deeply devoted to us, that I often second-guess the aesthetic we opened with. There’s a red, textured wall behind the display case, with silhouettes of women poising treats to parted lips. I haven’t seen any whining on Yelp yet, so maybe I’ve struck an acceptable balance of implied sauciness.
I’m wiping nostril prints from the display glass when Connie’s car pulls into the lot. I fetch the sample cakes and usher her into the corner café table. Humongous sunglasses and a veil of unwashed hair curtain her face.
I coo endearments and angle the plate so the chocolate buttercream rose blossoms in her direction. But Connie picks up the fork and slices though the cake’s tip. Typical. Most people save the frosted rose for last.
Between bites, Connie rambles about how she misses living an unobserved life, accountable only to herself.
“My mother was right.” Defeat rips her voice to shreds. “I’m selfish. Every relationship has to be on my terms, or I destroy it.”
“Mothers are never right,” I declare, rolling out the dough of the matter in my mind. I have no stake in whether Connie gets married, except… Well, the collapse of the only other lesbian union in my life doesn’t bode well for Riley and me. “No shame in being anxious. But you know, marriage isn’t for every—”
“It’s not about commitment,” she blurts out for the hundredth time. “I don’t suppose we could get married while living apart?”
I wince, envisioning the waterslide of despair I’d plunge into if my fiancé suggested we find separate apartments.
I’m no expert on anything except ingredient ratios and oven temperatures. But seeing a friend in need has a way of making you an authority on anything. My mind has half formulated a scheme in which Connie carves time out for herself, hours of purposeful solitude. But suggestions turn to slurry in my mind when I see the woman striding past the window wall.
Peanut Butter Pickle Girl.
The moniker sticks to the sludge coagulating on the walls of my brain. Guilt cinches the breath from my lungs. It can’t be helped. It pops into my head, the same way I look in the mirror and accidentally scrutinize where an excess of cherry turnovers has plumped me out.
Holly stands outside my bakery. A relic of a life—a version of myself—I left behind.
I can’t feel my face. Whatever dumb expression I’m making, I’m saved the indignity of Connie seeing. She’s closed her eyes in sync with her lips around that chocolate rose. Her muffled hum of delight might have stirred pride on any other day. All I can think of now is why Holly is here and what fresh hell stalks me.
I hop to my feet, bumping the table and rattling the cake plate. “Maybe you should do yoga?” I try to measure the high-pitched panic out of my voice. I can’t hear if I succeed, can’t listen or focus or breathe.
“Yoga?” Connie echoes dreamily. She swipes her fork around for every last bit of chocolate cake.
“Anything! Just time for yourself.” I dart behind the counter and rummage around for a plastic take-home box. “We, uh, we introverts… You know how it is.”
“That’s true.” The faystalk is working. Connie holds her head higher and straightens her spine. She doesn’t even give me a funny look when I flip the cake plate right over the take-home container, squashing the top layer of frosting.
I shove the container under her nose. “Tell her to pick a cake.”
Her lips twitch into the day’s first smile. “I think I ate the best one.”
“Grooms have their own cakes, why not second brides?” I choke out the words past a somersaulting heart. I’ll bake a cake for every damn wedding guest, if my whole life isn’t about to melt like Baked Alaska forgotten in the oven.
Holly paces outside with a scrutinizing glare, like a parent patrolling the snack time of their peanut butter allergic child.
Peanut butter, peanut butter, shut up about the fucking peanut butter.
Past the panicked riptide of blood in my ears, Connie thanks me for being such a good friend. The faystalk is making her bubbly, happy to overlook that I’m practically pushing her out the door. Rest assured, I know I’m a terrible friend. I always have been, since six years old.
Connie bumps the door open with her hip, calling back a cheery farewell. The swinging door is caught between pink-polished fingers.
Peanut Butter Pickle Girl—Holly—is all angles, like she’s always been. You can draw a straight line from her pinned blonde hair, down the blouse tucked into a pencil skirt, all the way to her pinched heels. One elbow props up a clipboard while the opposite hand grips one of those magic fountain pens that never drip or smear. She strides toward me, steps clicking brusquely across the umber vinyl.
My brain can’t help but suggest how she must see me, almost a decade after I dropped out of university: heavier, faded red hair stretching from dirty-blonde roots, pores shiny and angry from hours of caked sweat.
And so what? you may be graciously thinking. How else should a talented baker look but fat and sweaty?
But to a girl like Holly, you may as well swap baker with sewer dweller. My skin curdles as her vision skates over me from head to toe.
“I wouldn’t have recognized you, Jacqueline.” She reaches into her purse and flashes me a silver badge. It reads, Sacramento County: Environmental Health Specialist. But she flicks it in midair and holographic letters read: Magical Malpractice Bureau of Investigation.
“Let’s take a seat,” she says in a voice of silk-wrapped razorblades.
Nothing to hide, nothing to hide, nothing to hide.
The phrase runs circles in my head ten thousand times, before I remember I do have things to hide.
My eyes sting from resisting the urge to glance toward the counter. She’s not the type to miss a detail. “I, uh… Sure, Holly. Let me just send my employee home and close up.”
“Actually”—she lifts her hand as if to stop me, as if I’m not paralyzed—“I’ll need to watch business conduct as normal.”
My brain swells in my skull, like batter in an overfilled cake pan. Desperate for a moment alone to think, I grab the empty plate to clear the table.
“Actually,” she repeats with the same intonation, “everything will need to stay right where it is for now.”
The plate falls from my limp hand, spinning and settling between us. I fumble onto the high bar stool, not a sliver as gracefully as she does. Her heels rest comfortably on the floor while my sneakers flail in midair. My hands grip the edges of my apron, yanking until I can feel the threads straining.
Holly masks a spellcasting gesture by grazing a hand over her tightly pulled locks. A dampening spell shimmers around us like a heat haze. It will muffle our conversation to customers and nineteen-year-old Owen at the register, who’s nursing a coffee before the middle schoolers storm the place.
“According to my notes,” Holly begins, without a glance at her clipboard, “eight years ago, you were convicted for illegal use of magic in a business catering to nonmagic clientele.”
Bile stings my throat, turning my smile lopsided like a kid about to vomit on their prospective first kiss. “Wouldn’t really call it a ‘business.’ I was a self-employed street performer. The magic got a little too good. You know how it is.”
I grimace when my ears catch up with my rambling. Perfect, pristine, polished Holly does not know “how it is” to be a university dropout, relying on sleights of hand to make a few bucks downtown.
“But”—I flit a shaky hand around the room—“I’m reformed. Made a fresh start. All my magic is for personal use. No business.”
Which is true. Essentially.
“We at the Bureau have questions. In a time of economic downturn, your small business is approaching its third-year anniversary.”
“We have a great location here!” I blurt out cheerfully, to avoid sounding too accused.
“It hasn’t escaped our notice that one of your many abandoned university majors was apothecary studies.”
Shit. They think I’m lacing my products.
The hem of my apron tears between twisted hands. I lean in, caught in a deadlock stare with Holly’s sharp blue eyes. “I’m not adding magic ingredients to anything I sell.”
“You’ll pardon me if I don’t take your word for it. To start, bring me one of every product you have on display.”
Her gaze follows me as I hobble to the counter. “Health inspector,” I mumble under my breath to Owen.
“No worries, boss!” The teen flicks his hand in a salute. “I’m changing my glove between every nutty and non-nutty order, just like you said.”
I smile weakly at him and pile an array of cookies onto a tray. I bring the batch back to Holly, who perches rimless spectacles on her nose. Specialized lenses, for identifying magical residue. Sweat beads along my brow and stings my eyes. My mind burns with an image of the faystalk I sprinkled on Connie’s cake. If any made it on the plate, the table, the floor…
I swallow down the knot in my throat. “Chocolate chip, double chocolate, white chocolate, snickerdoodle, oatmeal raisin. Enjoy.”
Holly breaks a cookie in half, staring hard at the inside. She chews slowly, swallows, and pauses before writing on her clipboard. No smile tugs at her lips, no hum of pleasure in her throat, no outburst declaring we should put the past behind us and be the best of friends. Neck stiff, I stand guarding her dessert tasting, too wary to duck into the kitchen and draw attention there. Had I been careless enough to leave the vial out of my purse?
“So.” I elongate the word, as people do when silence screams. “How long have you been working with the Bureau?”
“Straight out of university. I can’t tell you how pleased I was to see your file cross my desk.”
The way she says “pleased” churns my insides. I fight for enough breath to speak. “I don’t get around to seeing people from the old days now. I’m glad it’s you here, actually. I’ve always wanted to apolo—”
“It’s not uncommon,” Holly says, slicing through my words, “for someone like you to fit the profile of a repeat offender. People who lack merit in our world will make do with cheap tricks in this one.”
Past numb, prickling lips I whisper, “You can say that I don’t deserve my bakery. But you can’t say I didn’t earn it.”
“You’ll find I can say what I like.” She speaks in the eerie manner of someone who knows which cup the poison is in.
Nervous adrenaline propels me to fetch the next tray of cookies. Mindlessly, I recite, “Walnut maple, macadamia nut, peanut… butter…” I choke the word out, voice dissolving.
I thought Holly’s nonchalance was frightening, but that was before I witnessed her fury: nostrils flaring, eyes blazing blue.
It confirms my gut instinct: she is here to destroy me. It wouldn’t matter if I’d been squeaky clean for the past three years, because I spent a lifetime earning this.
#
A magical upbringing can be isolating. The age of cell phone cameras brought with it harsher penalties for risking exposure. Intermingling isn’t worth it, especially for children too dumb to comprehend the consequences of levitating their toys in nonmagical company.
We lived in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska. My father bred cockatrices on our ranch and my mother enchanted items that came and went via our magical mailbox. They didn’t have friends, so neither did I.
Come time for my first homeschool session, my social skills amounted to playing dead. Mother’s cool hands combed through my hair as she cooed, “Don’t argue, don’t fuss. Listen to whoever is leading the group and do exactly what they say.”
The appearance of goodness—obedience—is often more important to parents than teaching what it means to be genuinely good.
Before Holly was a cutthroat professional, before she was a reclusive university student, she was a little girl whose missing front tooth mirrored mine. She’d been in the program a whole month longer than me, which was enough to earn the respect of my six-year-old self. While older kids made astrological predictions and scryed through animals’ eyes, we folded paper without touching it. Mine always turned into a crumpled mess, but I was unbothered by Holly’s perfect folds.
I was just happy she’d eat lunch with me on the porch stoop.
Shoulder-to-shoulder with my first and only friend, I dipped carrots in hummus and prattled about how freshly hatched cockatrices slither circles in your hand.
I bit my tongue when an older girl kicked the back of my head and scoffed, “No wonder you smell like manure.”
Blood dammed in my face. My cheeks prickled with numb disbelief as I rubbed the bruise on my nape. To me, cruelty was as fresh a concept as friendship.
“Nuh-uh,” Holly muttered, face cool and stoic as she pulled a sandwich out from her paper bag. “Go away.”
“You smell even worse.” The girl leaned over Holly, sniffed, and gagged. “Is that pickles? In your peanut butter?” She shrieked as if the bread was slathered in jellied goblin eyes.
A course of “Ew!” mounted through the boys and girls around the yard. Holly’s lashes fluttered, fighting back tears. Anxiety clawed up my chest.
“Why would you be friends with her?” a boy asked me, face scrunched in disgust.
My instincts—to conform, to survive—kicked in, brought full clarity to my answer. I wouldn’t be friends with her. And I’d prove it. With a flick of my hand, I peeled Holly’s sandwich apart. One half, sticky with peanut butter, flew up to slap her in the face.
Cruel laughter underscored a swelling chant: “Peanut Butter Pickle Girl! Peanut Butter Pickle Girl!”
My heart pinched as Holly peeled the bread from her face, stumbling off the porch and onto the gravel. There she knelt, scraped and sobbing.
I never got good at magic. I could make a water bottle erupt in your face, a book bite you on the nose, your hair stand on end with static. Cheap tricks I used to bully Holly for years, to keep friends I can’t remember the names of now. To keep them from turning their disdain on me.
#
“I’ll need an account of every magic or spelled item at your residence.”
“My apartment?” My lips twitch downward as Holly makes roadkill out of a turnover. It seems disrespectful somehow, the way she’s prodding the food. Like a child poking at a slimy slug. “Why?”
“You live with a dullard.”
I can’t help but flinch. The cutting slang rings sharp. I hear her pleasure in saying it.
“Given your previous infractions,” she continues, “it’s crucial you establish that you’ve been lawful.”
My hand crosses to cover the tattooed engagement ring around my finger. If Holly proves I’ve been careless, she’ll ruin everything. Strip my business from me. Wipe me from my fiancé’s life and make her forget I ever existed.
I narrow my watering gaze out the window, toward the bustling parking lot. “At home, there’s a covert chilling spell on my broken refrigerator. And a couple plants on my balcony.”
Past a stony face, Holly’s eyes illuminate like a gluten-free child snuck into the bakery by a friend’s mother.
Quickly, I say, “All legal, grade D substances. Zapzinger, pepcress, faystalk. I order nymph tears for watering.”
“And the dullard?”
My teeth grind. “Riley can’t tell them apart from regular house plants. And none of them go into the goods I sell. I don’t grow them in high enough quantities.”
The door jingles. Dread surges from my pounding heart and swells my blood vessels to bursting. It’s a youth counselor from the LGBT shelter. Seeing I’m preoccupied, he crosses to the counter and exchanges pleasantries with Owen, who passes him a foil tray.
I’m staring too hard over Holly’s shoulder. Her eyes flicker after mine. She frowns and starts to stand. Before I can stop myself, I grab her wrist. Shock lifts her lips into a sneer, eyes flashing like she’s a second from hexing me. I hold fast anyway.
“Don’t go tearing those apart too. They’re just extra cookies. For the youth shelter.”
Holly’s nails dig crescents into my wrist, sending a jolt down my arm. I can taste her hatred as her hiss coasts across my lips: “You think so highly of yourself, don’t you? You’re nothing but a worthless drop-out, Jacqueline. You’re a bully and a liar and a cheat.”
The threat of losing everything keeps me from crumbling.
“I know,” I whisper past a cinching throat. “I’m sorry I screwed you over when we were kids. I was dumb and scared of being hated. Everyone ended up hating me anyway, even my parents. I should have stood up for you.”
The door chimes again on the counselor’s way out.
My grip slackens enough for Holly to jerk away. She straightens and tugs her blouse straight with a scoff. “Don’t bother apologizing. You did me a favor. I am who I am because of you.” She stalks toward the door, leaving a graveyard of crumbled sweets behind.
“How’d it go, boss?” Owen calls, stretching his arms overhead. “We still in business?”
I stare after Holly, whispering, “I’ll write you a recommendation letter. Just in case.”
He laughs.
But those cookies set aside for the shelter… I always claim they’re extras, but that’s a fib. I bake them special. A hint of zapzinger oil for calming anxiety. A bit of faystalk, for pep in the step. Bellaberry juice, to keep you feeling fuller for longer even if you haven’t eaten much.
If Holly tracks them down and tests them, she’ll ruin me. Hell, evidence or not, I think she’ll do it anyway.
#
Our car is in the shop. Teleporting and flying are way beyond my skill set. That leaves me bouncing in a bus seat all the way home. Every stop, I battle the stupid urge to jump out and run. The bus parks just outside our apartment complex, but I still have to sprint up three flights of stairs.
I’m gasping for breath by the time I fling the door open. I just nearly miss Riley’s head. She’s crouched down, patting the waterlogged carpet with every towel we own.
“Can you believe this?” She gestures helplessly. “Dishwasher sprung a leak. Maybe if we only eat rice for six months, we’ll get that house deposit saved up.”
But because she’s Riley, she still smiles up at me. It fades for every moment her gaze lingers on my face. She surges to her feet. “What’s wrong?”
Wheezing for breath, I just stare, stunned and stupid. Her hair has been let loose to breathe from box braids, settling in glossy black ringlets. Water dampens the knees of her jeans and a tank top bares her tattoo sleeve: a dragon made of curling reds and greens, jaws breathing fire along the back of her hand. Her engagement ring, a mirrored tattoo of mine, winds like smoke around her finger.
I’ve never felt less like I deserve her.
I spit out, “We gotta talk.”
“Oh, God.” She groans, sliding a hand over her temple. “You get infected with Connie’s cold feet schtick?”
I kick the door shut and lock it. “Okay. Okay. Okay.” I brush past her and start to pace the room. The discolored carpet sinks and sloshes, sucking my shoes down with every hasty step.
“Jacky? Babe?”
I twist my hands together, spinning on my heels to meet Riley’s worried gaze. I know I’m frightening her, but I don’t know how to start. I never intended on extinguishing the fire that lit my lying little pants.
It would be one thing if I’d earned this by using magical additives to generate buzz for the bakery. But I hadn’t. I’d used them sparingly, on donations or gifts. Never on anything I sold. Even now, staring down the dissolution of the life I built, I can’t even summon regret for indulging in those small plants I tended. They’re remnants of the only magical studies I halfway enjoyed. I could have abandoned magic altogether and Holly might still have found a way to pin me down.
This is about wrongdoing that stretched much further back than faystalk sprinkled on a friend’s cake.
I steel my breath and clap my hands. “Alright, watch this.”
Riley has done nothing but watch me yet, so she tilts her head in bewilderment. I extend an arm. A book from the shelf goes flying across the room and into my hand.
Riley bursts into a squeal. “How?”
I wince. She thinks this is another one of my sleights of hand, like the ones I did for her when we were dating.
“No, sweetie, look.” Biting hard on my lower lip, I concentrate on levitating the book toward her. She grabs it out of thin air, waving her hands around in search of a string.
“That’s wild. C’mon, you gotta tell me.”
“Uh…” I look around helplessly. A better magician could swap a lamp with an iguana and make their point easily. An idea sparks and I cross the room to take her hand into mine. I hold our interlaced fingers up to the fluorescent kitchen light and Riley grins at me.
Eyes narrow, I twist her tiny ring tattoo in circles. It’s something we learn how to do as children: draw little ink pictures, make them wiggle and spin.
Riley’s eyes bulge. She shakes her hand free and slaps her finger like a spider crawled across it. Nervous laughter rides the undercurrent of her voice: “Fuck, what the fuck?”
“I do magic, real magic. With me so far?” Faced with her blank stare, I blabber on, “Had to keep it secret. They might have wiped me from your memory. But it doesn’t matter now because I think they’re going to anyway. And I just need—”
The door thrums under the pounding of a fist.
I need more time.
“MMBI.” A man’s voice echoes in the hallway.
“Jacqueline!” Holly calls. “Open up.”
My heart swells, a prisoner of my ribcage. I’m not ready to leave Riley behind. I snatch her hand again and drag her through the glass slider, onto the balcony. In my frenzy, plant pots tumble and crash to the courtyard below. My frantic gaze settles on the maintenance UTV parked underneath us, engine still running. I swivel my wrist and whisper a spell under my breath. I release Riley’s hand and vault over the railing.
“JACKY!”
There’s a moment where Riley’s petrified voice scares me more than the fall. But the UTV canopy bounces like a trampoline and tosses me face-first into the grass. My nose crunches against the ground.
I groan, pressing a palm to my face as I stagger up. People are starting to peer out of their windows. I gesture for Riley and slur past a mouthful of blood, “Babe, jump!”
Riley’s fingernails dig into her face, framing eyes wide with horror. A bang from our apartment causes her to whirl around. She screams and I can guess what she’s seeing, as my traps spring into action: explosions of cake glitter and flour, swelling into colorful smoke bombs. It’s two-bit magic; if I had it in me, I’d have taught my flambé torch to team up with the vodka bottle.
There’s screaming, cursing, sliding, thudding; I think one or both of the officers slipped and hit the floor. The chaos is enough to send Riley leaping after me. She bounces off the canopy, choking out a little scream. I scramble to break her fall and we flop to the ground in a tangle of limbs.
“In, in, in!” I shout, scrambling out from underneath her and into the driver’s side of the UTV. Riley throws herself in beside me and I gun it toward the parking lot. A woman standing on the lawn, stock-still with a furiously barking wiener dog, is one of many who will be filed under damage control by the Malpractice Bureau. Holly will have to comb the scene, assess who saw what. It will take precedent over pursuing me, which means we at least have a head start.
As I drive across the complex, I’m rambling: about the Malpractice Bureau, how Holly hates me, that I don’t lace sold goods, but sometimes I’ll bake pick-me-ups, but it’s more like natural medicine, not drugs or anything, and remember that one horrible night she finally blocked her parents’ phone numbers, because those brownies had some zapzinger in them.
There’s a bus pulling up to the stop and I slam on the UTV’s horn. The bus stalls long enough for us to stampede inside. “Axe murderer,” I say by way of explanation to the wide-eyed driver. I shove over all my change with shaking hands. The bus lurches and we settle into the back row, past a snoring man and a woman hugging her purse suspiciously.
I finally have a moment to level my gaze with Riley’s stricken face. I hear the audible gulp of a knot slithering down her throat. “Our apartment,” she whispers. “It went fucking nuts in there.”
“I laid traps. Just in case someone ever forced their way in.”
Riley slumps back into her seat, hands rubbing up and down her face. Nose throbbing and heart aching, I sit there for a while and let her think.
Finally, she asks, “We can’t go back, can we?”
I press my hands to my eyes, blinking back tears. “We can. They’ll just make you forget. And I’ll be… relocated.”
To a penitentiary, this time around.
“Obviously we’re not doing that. So tell me what we are gonna do.”
My heart twists. I’d be lying if I claimed I never fantasized that Riley might escape with me, might cling to me above all else. “Magic administrations don’t communicate well overseas.”
“No passports.”
“I can…” I flick my wrist vaguely. “Figure it out.”
Her teeth knead worriedly at her lip. “Will they catch us?”
“I don’t know. It’s a pretty safe bet if we can get on a flight. But, listen, are you—”
“Don’t ask if I’m sure. Not if you’re leaving behind the bakery.”
A piece of my heart breaks right off, like a crumbling cookie. “I don’t have a choice,” I whisper miserably. “It’ll get taken from me anyway. But you could wake up tomorrow and never know the difference. Just think about it, okay? I don’t want you to decide one day that you hate me for this.”
Riley leans in, forehead resting against mine. “If we part ways, it’s going to be because this”—she gestures between us—“doesn’t work. Not because some pig in the magic police is dragging skeletons out of your closet.”
“You’re nothing but a worthless drop-out, Jacqueline. You’re a bully and a liar and a cheat.”
“I am who I am because of you."
“She’s right to hate me,” I whisper.
“So what, I’m wrong to love you?” Riley’s thumb caresses my jaw. “I’ve got nothing to lose that’s better than you. We may as well make a break for it.”
I rest my head on her shoulder and close my eyes. I don’t wrestle with the idea of whether or not I’m worthy.
That decision will ultimately be made for me.