Chapter 10
Poppy
MY LAST CLASS ON FRIDAYS is my elective, Kitchen Spellwork. I typically wouldn’t take such a simple class—I like to be challenged and learn new things—but I love cooking and baking so much that when it came available to me as a third-year, I had to take it.
But Aric is in this class with me, so now I’m left feeling a bit nervous as I sit at my desk in the middle of the classroom, notebook open in front of me, quill held just above the page.
Professor Sage stands at the front of the room, her ingredients and cookware displayed on the table in front of her as she instructs us on how to successfully use a leavening charm in cake baking.
Back home at the café with Mama, we don’t use magic in our baking—just good old-fashioned hard work and know-how.
But I wouldn’t mind being able to speed up Mama’s process just a bit—if she’ll let me, that is.
With the holidays coming up, the café will be overrun with cake and cookie and cupcake orders, and it’ll be packed with visitors who travel to Wysteria during the holidays from the outlying smaller towns and villages.
Mama never complains, but I know all the baking makes her wrists and elbows ache.
If she’ll let me help with some of my magic, maybe I can ease some of her strain.
“You’ll begin with your base: flour, your spice mix, and a pinch of salt,” Professor Sage instructs, sprinkling a dusting of salt into her mixing bowl.
Her moss-green apron is speckled with flour, and she’s using a long spoon in lieu of a hair stick to hold up her cinnamon-colored curls. She uses a brush of air magic to lift a wooden spoon from the end of the table. It drifts into her bowl, and she begins to stir the ingredients.
“Now, who can tell me why we stir clockwise in our kitchen spellwork?”
I know the answer, and no one else is raising their hand. It usually takes me a moment to get up my courage to raise my hand—it makes my skin prickle speaking in front of the class. But before I can get my hand into the air, another hand goes up from a desk at the front of the classroom.
Professor Sage lifts one cinnamon brow. “Mr. Vandermere?”
With confidence, Aric says, “It’s because going clockwise mirrors the sun’s path. It’ll help with growth and rising energy.”
The professor’s face breaks into a grin. “Brilliant, Mr. Vandermere. Well put.”
She continues instructing the class, but I’m not listening anymore.
Because as soon as Aric answered the question correctly, he turned to look right at me.
Now he’s holding my gaze as he gives me a big smile.
A few of the students seated at the desks between ours turn to see who he’s smiling at and seem confused when they realize it’s me—big orc runeball captains usually don’t smile at shy studious girls.
My face gets hot, and I look quickly down at my notebook, where I’ve been jotting down notes and doodling stars and moons in the margins.
I need some new rules, I think.
While Professor Sage demonstrates the leavening spell to the class, I reach into my bookbag and pull out my personal journal, the one I have our tutoring rules written in.
After ensuring the student beside me isn’t looking—he seems to be fighting the urge to fall asleep—I add a new rule to my preexisting list.
Tutoring Guidelines and Rules
Meet twice a week: Tuesday afternoons and Saturday mornings
No off-topic discussions—classwork and party planning only
He smiles at everyone—don’t overanalyze it
“All right, students. Pair up and grab your ingredients. We’ll have just enough class time left to whip up these apple cakes. Your roommates will thank you.”
Pairing up is always my least favorite part of this class. I usually get stuck with the sleepy guy next to me, which means I also do most of the work—but I don’t mind that part quite so much. I just wish we could work alone. It’d be so much easier.
I close my private journal and slip it into my bookbag. I’m just flipping my bag closed when a shadow falls over me. A big shadow. And it’s accompanied by the smell of woodsmoke and cedar.
Now I need to add that to my list. I’ll add it after class.
I sit up straight, and Aric Vandermere is standing over me, wearing his trademark smile, the one that shows off his tusks.
“Wanna be my partner?” he asks.
For a moment, the world around me freezes. Aric wants to partner with . . . me? He usually works with the dark-haired fourth-year witch who sits beside him. But now he’s smiling at me, and she’s looking at us with a confused, maybe even hurt furrow in her brow.
Behind me, my tablemate lets out a snore, and it jolts me back to reality. I think I’d rather work with Aric than with someone who’s half asleep.
“S-sure,” I say, and I can’t help that another tingle of heat is creeping into my cheeks. Why is it that I’m always like this around Aric?
“Sweet. I’ll grab what we need. Can you grab the aprons? I’m an extra-large.”
I nod, then join the line of students waiting to grab aprons from where they hang on hooks at the back of the classroom.
By the time I’ve grabbed our aprons, Aric has already secured a cooking station for us, and he’s arranging the armful of ingredients he procured: apples, flour, sugar, milk, butter, vanilla extract, and a bunch of spices. No leavening powder, since we’re using a spell for that.
Most of the other groups are having to make multiple trips, but with Aric’s huge arms and chest, he was able to carry everything over in one go.
That’s . . . helpful.
“Here you go.” I hand him his apron, and he slides it over his head and ties the strings, his broad chest bulging beneath the fabric.
Why does he look so good in a kitchen apron? And why am I even noticing how he looks? Maybe Alina’s romance books are messing with me.
Focus. Apple cake. Simple.
As Professor Sage lights a fire in the massive brick oven at the far side of the room, preparing it for our cakes, I grab a large mixing bowl from the shelf under our workspace and start to measure our dry ingredients into it.
“How can I help?” Aric says. “I mean, I know you make killer cupcakes, but I’m not too shabby in the kitchen myself.”
I look up, and Aric is smiling again. Does he always smile like that? His hair is pulled back in a braid today, showing off his many ear piercings, and a thin silver chain adorns his neck. I don’t recall seeing him wear that before.
I shouldn’t recall any of these details about him, I chastise myself. Cake. Focus on cake.
“Can you mix the wet ingredients?”
I’m about to tell him how to do it, but he gets right to work, whisking together the butter, sugar, milk, and vanilla extract. His arm muscles flex as he whisks with finesse, and I catch myself staring not once, but twice, then have to pull my attention back to my own mixing bowl.
“So,” Aric says as we work, “I started a list of ideas for the ball.”
A jolt of surprise goes through me, and I look up from my wooden cutting board, where I’m dicing up the sweet red apples we’ll use in our batter. “Really?”
Aric arches a brow as he looks down at me. “Of course. That’s the deal, right? You tutor me, and I help plan the ball.”
That is what we agreed on, but a big part of me didn’t think he’d follow through. I’m realizing that I don’t know Aric Vandermere at all. I thought I had a good idea of the type of guy he was, but now I think I was wrong.
“Yeah,” I say, returning my gaze to the cutting board and grabbing another apple. “So, what did you come up with?”
“Well, I figure the theme will be the moon, right? I mean, Blue Moon Ball and all.”
He actually gets me to smile. “Yeah, the moon. Well, the blue moon.”
“And what’s the significance of the blue moon? I dropped my astronomy class, so the sky is a mystery to me. Here, you ready to add the apples?”
“Almost.” I finish dicing one last apple. “Okay, done.”
Aric takes my bowl of diced apples, his arm brushing mine, and a wave of butterflies goes through me.
The blue moon, I tell myself. Focus on the blue moon.
“The blue moon is somewhat rare,” I say as Aric begins carefully stirring the apples into the batter we created with the wet and dry ingredients.
“It only happens every few years. It amplifies energy, so most spellwork, manifestation, and intention setting will be strengthened. But it’s also an opportunity for inner reflection and self-discovery, among other things. ”
Aric perks up and stops stirring. “Reflection . . .” He gets a thoughtful furrow in his green-tinted brow. “We could make that our theme. And we could use mirrors and water in the decorations. You know, reflective surfaces.”
I blink. That’s actually . . .
I crack another smile, this one bigger than the last. “That’s a great idea.”
Aric’s hazel eyes shine when they meet mine. “You think so?”
I nod, and the movement sends my glasses sliding down the bridge of my nose. “I do.”
He watches me as I push my glasses back up with a knuckle. He’s no longer focusing on the batter, just on . . . me.
Those butterflies flutter around some more, and I quickly turn my attention to our cake pan. “I’ll oil this, and then will you pour the batter in?”
Aric seems to shake himself out of whatever thought he was lost in. “Yeah, it’s ready.”
After I prep the pan, Aric carefully pours the batter in, sending up a delicious scent of apples, cinnamon, and vanilla.
He smooths the batter into the corners with a spatula, then looks at me.
“You remember the spell we’re supposed to use?
” He glances up at Professor Sage, who is currently demonstrating proper knife-handling etiquette to one of the groups.
“I was kind of distracted when she told us what it is.”
I grab my class notebook from the edge of our workstation and hand it over to Aric. As soon as he starts to read, his eyebrows lift. “Wow. Your notes are so clean.” He gives me a sideways smile. “Mine are a mess. Just chicken scratch. You’d think a little kid wrote them.”
This draws a laugh out of me, and Aric’s smile grows.
I’m going to have to reread my rules after class and remind myself of the one I added.
He smiles at everyone, I think. Don’t take it personally.
Aric rereads my page of notes, then sets the notebook down. “All right. You wanna say it with me?”
My face heats up. I nod.
We each hold a hand out over our cake pan, and we recite Professor Sage’s spell together, Aric referencing my notes while I say it from memory. “Levamentum dulcis, rise and breathe, by patient hands that mix and knead. Lightness shaped by craft and care, lift now and fill the air.”
In response to our spell, our batter bubbles a few times, but otherwise, it remains unremarkable.
Aric looks down at me, handing my notes back. “Was something supposed to happen?”
I reference my notebook, but I don’t have anything written down. I must’ve been distracted by thoughts of Aric and the new rule I needed to write down while Professor Sage was covering this part.
Though it’s almost physically painful to admit, I say softly, “I . . . don’t know.”
But Aric is unbothered, if his easygoing smile is any indication. “Well, let’s get it in the fire and find out.”