The Baker's Guide to Risky Rituals Read online

  Boots squeaked on the tile behind her, and Josie dropped her phone into her apron pocket and turned around. The tall, lean, unwashed blond was strolling over, plates stacked in his hand. He stared down at the dish bucket, and she could practically hear the debate in his head; to drop the dishes in like an asshole or set them down carefully. Mr. Bad News pulled her attention, arriving at the counter, pressing a bill down with his palm. She started to key in their bill on the old register when the dishes landed softly behind her—Blondie’s manners winning out—and Mr. Bad News spoke.

  “Keep the change.”

  Josie was about to say something that probably would have been rude—that unless that was a fifty under his palm, there wasn’t going to be change. Except then he pulled his hand away, and it was a fifty.

  So instead she said, “Enjoy your visit to Sweet Pea.”

  Mr. Bad News smiled again, although it wasn’t the sweeter, surprised version she’d drawn out earlier. “Oh, we aren’t visitors. We’ll be sticking around for awhile. See you around, Cupcake.”

  Josie frowned as he and the others clomped their way out her door, bells ringing sourly and a last whiff of bitter smoke on the air.

  The phone in her pocket rang and she reached for it, Rosa waiting on the line.

  “That’s totally them,” Rosa said as soon as Josie answered.

  “Totally them.”

  “They’re hot.”

  “They smell like…”

  “Leather? Sex? Bad decisions? Whiskey?”

  Josie frowned, staring past the black clad figures disappearing down the street and over to where Rosa hovered in her front window, black curls a wild mane around her head, dressed in some flowing red sheath or kimono or something.

  “You give a lot of thought to the way men smell?” Josie asked.

  “When they look like that, I do. C’mon. Bikers. Bad boys. It’s like a thing right?”

  It was a thing. “They smell like brimstone.”

  Rosa was silent for a stretch, and Josie could see her staring across the street into her windows, that full red pout of hers pursed tight. “I don’t believe you know what brimstone smells like, babe.”

  “I’m having an instinct.”

  “Oh, an instinct.” Josie honestly couldn’t tell if Rosa was being sarcastic or not. “Hey, I see June. Yeah. She’s watching them too. Kay, so if they’re like, werewolves or some shit, I call dibs on the big hairy one. Or Mr. Glasses. Hellooo, Sid Delicious.”

  “Werewolves? I think you’re getting high on those bouquets of yours,” Josie said, laughing and head shaking. She loved all her coven witches, but June and Imogen had too much on their plates most days to remember to laugh, and Josie had to admit that her moods ran more towards prickly than sunshine. Rosa reminded them all to laugh.

  “I’m definitely getting high in here. Haven’t opened a window in like three weeks. Hmm, Orlando Peabody just met them at the empty store front at the end. They’re going inside. June’s giving me a look.”

  “Coven meeting,” Josie guessed.

  “Coven meeting,” Rosa agreed.

  Their phones chimed in chorus and with a glance through each other’s shop windows, both women hung up to look at the new text in the group chat.

  Coven meeting, tonight 10:30.

  “Bakery,” Josie whispered, crossing her fingers.

  Bakery, June texted.

  I better be seeing some beignets waiting for me when I walk in that door, Rosa added to the group chat, and Josie grinned.

  Beignets were not on the Josephine’s Bakery menu. She learned to make them in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans with her Mémé—before Ramona Benoit hauled herself and her daughter north to Virginia for a man who didn’t want to be chased. There was such a thing as French beignets, made with buttery choux instead of yeasted dough, but Josie preferred to keep Mémé’s tradition, and she preferred not to put a price on it. It was good to make beignets for the people you cared about. It was less fun to imagine bagging them up and handing them over to neighbors who bitched about prices behind your back.

  Since her guests for the evening were her coven, she went ahead and stretched her magic for the project, stirring up the batter with her favorite wooden spoon, humming along to Nina Simone and thinking sweet thoughts. Good deals on blooms for Rosa’s florist shop, and healthy plants in her garden. A snappy winter to drive customers to June’s yarn store. Imogen was trickier, and Josie couldn’t think of anything the fourth witch in their coven might want aside from privacy. It would have to do.

  She rolled the dough out, trimmed the sheet into tidy squares, each step filled with good wishes for her friends. Kitchen magic was humble but effective. Work with love, and then offer it to the people who needed it, that was what Mémé always said.

  Josie was flipping the beignets in oil when the back door of the kitchen opened.

  “Hey, babe,” Rosa called in a strange, gruff and comical voice. “It’s yo big, bad, rough and tumble biker man comin’ to- oh, wait, hold up.”

  Shuffling steps stopped in front of the small altar and Josie heard Rosa murmur her hello’s to the Benoit family spirits. Ghede Linto and Filomez from Mémé’s Haitian Vodou side. It was only a small table altar, a small bowl of rum and pennies, some rough wheat stalk, little figurines. Subtle enough that Josie could tuck it into the corner and keep it tidy. It needed a see-me-not charm when the inspectors came, but it stayed put and she refreshed the offerings everyday. One thing a Benoit woman knew was that you didn’t offend the Loa in Vodou. Those spirits didn’t come to play.

  “Okay, yes hello,” Rosa said, sweeping over to the fryer and pressing a lipstick kiss to Josie’s cheek.

  “Keep your fringe out of the oil,” Josie greeted, flicking at the long red strings of Rosa’s top that dangled dangerously over the hot fryer.

  “The others here yet?”

  “No June yet. Never heard from Imogen.”

  “June probably went to pick her up,” Rosa said, shrugging, and watching the progress on the stove with avid interest.

  “Imogen has a car and she knows how to get here,” Josie said, trying to sound mild and landing more towards tart.

  Rosa hummed in agreement, and they shared an understanding without words. Imogen probably wouldn’t bother with their little coven at all if it weren’t for June’s less than gentle nudging.

  “Can I put the sugar on?” Rosa asked as Josie started to lift a basket of sizzling pastry out of oil and onto a paper towel lined tray.

  “Go for it. Sifter is just there,” she said, nodding to where the sugar and sifter waited on the counter.

  The back door was opening again by the time they were plating the beignets and coffee was bubbling in the pot. Josie tried not to look at Rosa when June walked in with Imogen, the sisters like a pair of ghosts with their pale hair and skin. Imogen walked straight to the altar, and June eyed her younger sister with a worried fold between her brows. Which, as far as Josie could tell, was the face June always made while looking at Imogen.

  The four women had been a coven for almost five years, their anniversary hitting on Yule in December. From what Josie gathered from Rosa, she and June had talked witchcraft for about a year before Josie moved to Sweet Pea, but it wasn’t until there were four that the coven started for real. Five years later, and Josie should have felt like she knew these women as well as her own family—better than some members—but that was only true of Rosa. Imogen was private—or disinterested—and June was…guarded, and primarily concerned with Imogen.

  “It feels strong, Josie,” Imogen murmured, her hands tucked into her pockets as she studied the altar.

  “I try.”

  “How’s the one in your apartment?”

  “I caught a word with Peabody earlier,” June said, cutting through the exchange.

  “Wait!” Rosa called out. “No business in the kitchen but Josie’s. Let’s sit. Grab some plates, Junebug. Imogen you’re on coffee.”

  June’s lip
s pursed but she grabbed a stack of plates, and Josie helped Imogen with the coffee mugs.

  “My altar upstairs is nice and juicy,” Josie whispered to Imogen. Imogen didn’t smile, Josie only ever saw her smiling while they worked magic, but her blue eyes cleared of their usual daydream fog as she nodded in response.

  The curtains were down on the shop, and Josie kept the overhead lights turned off, settling on a lamp in the corner to give the room a soft pink glow. Rosa passed beignets out to everyone, and Imogen sucked her finger before picking up the powdered sugar that had fallen onto her plate. June looked at the dessert like she’d never seen one before, but Josie knew in five minutes she’d have devoured them in some secret move no one ever saw take place.

  Josie slid a small shaker of cinnamon to Rosa for her coffee, and she turned to June and nodded. “Alright. What’s the local gossip?”

  “They’ve paid up front for six months of the corner property. Peabody says they’re starting a…motorcycle club?” June said, nose wrinkling.

  Rosa nodded. “It’s what it sounds like. Sausage fest. With a tax break.”

  Josie snorted, and Rosa winked at her.

  “Right. So a club property, and then a year lease of Grimsby House,” June said.

  “Grimsby House?” Rosa cackled, head thrown back.

  “Those guys?” Josie asked. Grimsby House was a local historical darling, with all the Victorian trimmings the era had put into architecture, and in pastels no less. Josie tried to picture Mr. Bad News sitting in front of one of the Victorian picture windows, and the pieces just refused to go together.

  June shrugged. “Apparently.”

  “Okay… but… what are they?” Josie asked.

  “You don’t think they’re human?” Imogen asked, perking up in her seat, a dusting of powdered sugar on the tip of her nose, the magic of beignets.

  “They smelled funny,” Josie said.

  “Like brimstone,” Rosa added.

  Imogen’s stare whipped to her, the glass green color of her eyes sharpening. “You smelled them too?”

  “No, that’s what Josie told me on the phone. Not that I think she’s an expert on brimstone,” she added, raising a dark eyebrow.

  Josie ignored June’s glances between her and Rosa. They were allowed to have private conversations, weren’t they? “Or just bonfire. I dunno. It just wasn’t a motorcycle and road smell.”

  Imogen stared at her sister, and for once June ignored her. “I don’t think we should assume anything. But they did have a…presence. We’ll keep an eye out. They could be a coven.”

  Josie frowned and picked at her pastry. Coven was not the impression the bikers gave off. Rosa had felt closer when she said ‘werewolves,’ but that didn’t feel right either. ‘Evil’ was a bit of a cliché. Josie didn’t know that she believed anything was one-hundred percent evil.

  Especially not with a smile like Mr. Bad News.

  She hushed the thought. “So what are we planning for Samhain? Halloween is just around the corner.”

  Josie sighed as she finally made it up the stairs to her apartment. It was a cozy kind of chilly as she walked in, the windows left open to offer free access to the fall breeze, and the shift in temperature was refreshing after a day spent in a hot kitchen. She left the lights off, toeing off her sneakers by the door and stumbling on numb feet to her bedroom. A shower was in order, or maybe even a nap in the bath, but she had respects to pay first.

  When her mother, Ramona, had packed Josie up and driven them north, Josie had only just begun learning the Vodou faith and practices from Mémé. There were years of gaps in her learning as Ramona had taken her from one town to the next, chasing brief jobs and briefer relationships, but Josie had savored her visits back to New Orleans and summers of studying in Mémé’s cluttered kitchen.

  Her own altar was a low table in front of her tall bedroom window, and Josie settled in front of the spot, legs crossed in her lap. She set a plate of beignets down on a spare few inches of space on the altar, and lit two sticks of incense and the small collection of saints candles. Most of the Loa—the godlike spirits of Vodou—had a corresponding saint, and Josie had always loved the way the religion had found faith in common with the invading Christianity, while still preserving its own figures and flavors. Rosa’s family had immigrated from Cuba in the sixties, and settled just a couple towns away from Sweet Pea. Her paternal grandmother’s side prayed to the Orisha, who were another collection of the same saints, but inside the religion Santeria.

  Josie lit the Saint Philomena candle for Filomez, and added the silver dollar coin she found in her tip jar to the collection of coins she offered the spirit. She took in a long breath, closing her eyes and waiting for the buzz of her thoughts to settle.

  “Hello, sister,” Josie said, opening her eyes and kissing the smoke floating past her face. “Thank you for the prosperous day.”

  When she turned to Ghede Linto’s side of the altar she found his figurine—a small, delicate old man with a glossy gold cane—toppled to the side, and she righted it. “I see your warning, Ghede Linto. I’ve got my eyes on those visitors,” she assured him. She lit a gold candle for Ghede Linto, and set a thin clove cigarette burning in an ashtray in offering to him.

  The magic she worked with her coven was well outside of the realm of Mémé’s Vodou, but that suited Josie. Her family’s practices felt private and spiritual, more to do with gratitude and prayer than any serious workings. June and Imogen approached witchcraft like a technical skill, and it fascinated Josie to listen to them negotiate the elements of a spell, like old alchemical scientists. Mémé’s works always seemed more like a recipe, improvised to suit her mood and what was available on hand.

  “Send my love to Mémé,” Josie whispered to her spirits. “And Mama, if she crosses your path.”

  When the smoke became too thick, she rolled back and groaned as she dragged herself back to standing. Definitely a night for a nap in a warm bath. She’d probably have to set an alarm on her phone just to make sure she didn’t stay the night in the water, though.

  The smoke lingered around her ankles as she rose, and Josie smiled at her altar. It was good to have the Loa looking after you.

  Some days, Bell wondered if the Devil wasn’t a bit of a prankster. Morningstar certainly had an off sense of humor, especially when it came to one from the Bowels of Hell—the unaffectionate name for the winding Metropolis of the Underworld where demons ruled and resided. It was not a place where amusement flourished, but the Devil—Morningstar, informally—found ways of keeping the others on their toes. Like this for instance.

  Grimsby House was a Painted Lady Victorian. In pastels, no less. Mansard roofs and scrollwork, spindles and knobs, with a wood-worked gargoyle face screaming down from the highest peak to the cluster of demons at the gate. It was every kitschy, sweet trend of Victorian architecture smacked together in a monstrosity of a house.

  “It’s grotesque,” Ashtaroth said, smile barely visible beneath the tangle of his beard. “And I say that as one of the principal influences of the style.”

  Bell glanced at one of the two demons he trusted on this mission. Ashtaroth had chosen a massive human frame, perhaps to counteract his general air of optimism and obnoxious good humor with pure physical intimidation. Ash was no King of Hell, or even a Great Duke, but he was one of the most determined demons Bell had ever worked with. He puzzled through intricate problems and had the creative mind of an artist. He also lacked the ego of some of the other members of the MC, which was a relief to Bell. Ash would do the work with enthusiasm and not challenge Bell’s decisions, a perfect soldier.

  “Apparently, it was chosen because it came furnished. A bed and breakfast that went up for auction,” Pie said, and Bell and Ash groaned at the thought of what they would find as furniture.

  “The outside can’t be any worse than what we’ll find inside,” Dante said, in unnecessary warning.

  Bell, who wasn’t feeling optimistic, grunted in agre
ement and unlatched the ironwork gate, hefting a small duffel onto his shoulder.

  “I could burn it down,” Aim offered. Bell wasn’t sure if he was being serious.

  “Save it for on the way out,” Bell said, and then eyed the bushes surrounding the wrap around front porch. “But the twinkle lights can go.”

  Vinny spat in the grass and the faint bulbs all popped and blinked to darkness at once. It was an improvement. Not much of one, but Bell would take it.

  The key to the front door was a massive old skeleton with a rose wrapped in thorns at the handle that matched the floral arrangement stained glass window. The tumblers made a satisfying thunk in the lock as Bell turned the key in the door and then pushed in.

  It could be worse, Bell told himself as he stepped inside. There could have been a great deal more pink.

  The alarm system beeped as they entered, and Pie crossed the hall to key in the code as one by one the demons in their black leather boots stepped onto the lush rose colored entry hall carpet.

  “We’ll take the basement,” Aim said, as Barbie lurked at his back. “It’s got to be less… all of this.”

  Bell wasn’t sure what kind of accommodations the basement had for anyone to sleep in, but for all he cared Aim and Barbie could spend their nights as bats, hanging from the plumbing. They were a pair of unknowns to him. Aim was all smiles and the constant threat of something being set on fire. Barbie was silent and sour, which would concern Bell if it wasn’t clear that Aim spoke for the both of them. He would have Pie keep an eye on them until the mystery of them cleared.

  Pie joined him at the center of the entry hall, gazing in the opposite direction over the rim of his thick glasses. King Paimon was reliable, orderly, precise, and an old war friend of Bell’s. Bell had made the request to have Pie on the mission specifically, as his second-in-command. Where Bell excelled at finding strategy in foreign environments, Pie would ensure they followed the letter of the laws of Hell.