Chapter 1
MOONBURROW
Mother decided we needed a new burrow.
I like this one. It comes with treats.
— gus
Cupcakes saved my life—or, at the very least, gave me a new one.
Grabbing the jar of sprinkles, pinching a few between my fingers and letting them settle on the pink frosting, I think about how ridiculous that sounds.
It’s true. Discovering that I have a knack for baking—bread, pies, pastries, but cupcakes in particular—was the second biggest shock I received after I relocated from Glenville to Moonburrow.
Should I have been surprised? Probably not.
Grandma Jean is a full-blooded witch, but that’s just what kind of supe she is.
My whole life, she’s been a baker, and while I hadn’t seen her in person since I left home the first time, that’s how I remember her: the scent of sugar and magic following in her wake as me and Ash scampered behind that, begging her for a treat.
My cousin was related to me on my dad’s side, but Grandma Jean didn’t care. She fed her little ‘possums, and my biggest regret after I moved to Glenville was that I only got goodies sent to me through the mail instead of fresh out of her oven.
Did I have any idea that I could make treats of my own?
Considering I was a whizz at nuking up some dinners or boiling a pot of water for pasta and that was basically it, not even a little.
That all changed when the fallout from being toe-tagged, then rising from the dead…
again… meant that the Glenville Police had more than a few questions for me.
I’m not the biggest fan of the police, human or supe. I never have been, and I was willing to do anything to stay off their radar.
Too bad that Mom got the initial call. She already sent over the forged documentation about my narcolepsy, but the cops came by for a nice chat anyway. By the time I finally had them off my back, I agreed with my parents: I needed to be around my own kind. They meant opossums. I just meant supes.
And that’s why, instead of returning to Virginia, I needed a backup plan.
I needed my grandmother.
Supes are long-lived. Vamps are basically immortal, while witches can last up to three centuries before they slow down; shifters get about half that.
I don’t know how old Grandma Jean is exactly.
I do know, however, that Grandpa Gary shifted to an opossum one last time before I was born, then fell asleep.
He reached the end, and while you wouldn’t look at Grandma Jean and think her a day over sixty, Mom told me she was getting ready to move on.
Me being, well, me, I freaked. I thought she was dying.
Silly Honey. Grandma Jean simply decided to do a tour of Europe, visiting old friends from the coven where she spent her formative years in France before moving to the United States and falling for my grandfather.
Mom thought that was good for her, but that left the question: what would happen to Grandma Jean’s bakery?
She opened Dough You Believe in Magic a few years ago.
It’s not her first bakery. When I was growing up, she owned a fancy patisserie in Northern Virginia.
After I left home, so did she, settling in a small supernatural town where her patrons were happy to eat some of her charmed pastries as long as she stayed away from black magic and curses.
I’m impulsive. Always have been, and I doubt that’s going to change now.
I offered to take the bakery—and the cozy apartment built on top of it—off of Grandma Jean’s hands.
Sure, I’d have to move to Moonburrow, but with that being only a couple of hours away from Mom and Dad, they begrudgingly agreed it was a good idea.
Not that it mattered. Grandma Jean loved the idea, and if Grandma Jean approved, not even Mom would argue with the matriarch of our immediate clan.
That’s how, two months ago, I was given the keys to the bakery and the apartment, Grandma Jean’s leather-bound book of recipes, and her blessing to do my best to take over Dough You Believe in Magic.
And it’s been great.
For the most part, I’ve loved living in Moonburrow, Maryland.
A shifter-run town, there’s enough of a coven presence to charm it against humans.
It’s not on any map. Drivers coming this way inevitably find that there’s a detour to take around it.
You can’t even get past the borders unless you have supe blood, but since it’s also the home to the Moonshadow Pack, that means vampires are out.
The long-standing Claws and Fangs war—between the predatory wolf shifters and their natural enemy, the fanged corpses—might be in a lull right now, but so long as we rely on the Alpha-led pack to protect the rest of us, Moonburrow keeps humans and vampires out.
If only it kept out sticky-fingered raccoons…
The front door to the bakery is kept locked until I open up for business at exactly eight o’clock.
It’s only seven-thirty now, but there’s no denying I’ve been joined by Roxy Kane, who must have slunk in through the back door.
How else can I explain her sudden appearance?
Unlike me, she doesn’t have a drop of witch blood, but there she is, joining me behind the counter, her black hair—and its trademark white stripes—up in a messy bun, while wearing ripped leggings, a leather jacket over her latest graphic tee, all topped off with an intense pair of sunglasses she’s wearing indoors just because she’s that kind of raccoon.
Or maybe she’s doing something to hide the dark circles under her eyes that are part of what she is, same as how my purple eyes give me away to anyone who knows anything about opossum shifters…
Before it hits me that she’s really there, she’s reaching around me, her arm halfway into my pastry case.
“Morning.” She waves with the hand not full of a chocolate croissant as she straightens up. “I’m testing your wares again.” A large bite from the croissant and a hint of a smirk on her face as she chews before she says, “Still good.”
I swat at her with my nearest counter rag. “Roxy! You can’t just walk in and take pastries!”
“I didn’t just take them.” She bites into it again with obvious defiance. “I’m taste-testing. Big difference.”
Sensing mine, Gus chitters in annoyance from his flour-bag throne.
“Oh, look.” Roxy smirks. “It’s your emotional support rat.”
Gus shows the raccoon shifter his fangs.
She bares her teeth back at my baking partner because, yup, maturity is as dead as Gus will seem to be if she frightens him into appearing lifeless. She might be considered a prey shifter as a raccoon, but add her size and her attitude, and I wouldn’t blame Gus for thinking she’s a predator.
I roll my eyes, sparing a quick reassuring pat to Gus’s head. “He’s an opossum, and you know that.”
Of course she does. I’m an opossum, and back when we were in high school together, she never let me forget it. It didn’t matter that Onancock—and, yes, that’s the name of the small Virginia town I grew up in—was heavy with opossum clans. Roxy is… well, she’s Roxy.
She shrugs. “Right. Sorry. It’s just… the tail thing. He looks like an oversized rat.”
“Roxy—”
“Besides,” she says, brushing crumbs off her leather jacket, changing the subject, “I was just swinging by before you open to—”
“Steal baked goods?”
“Support local small businesses,” is her quipped response. She laughs. “With the utmost enthusiasm.”
I sigh, fighting a small smile. That’s the closest I can get to getting the feisty raccoon to admit that she is a big fan of my baking. “Fine. I can comp you one pastry a week. Not one every time I catch you with your paw in my display case.”
“Oh, Honey.” Roxy pats my arm like I’m adorable. “It’s cute that you think that you’re catching me instead of me showing you that I can get anything I want when I want it.”
I can’t help myself. I laugh, shaking my head.
Running into Roxy Kane is the third shock I received when I moved to Moonburrow. Last I heard, she was still skulking around Virginia, so when I picked up her familiar scent a few days after I arrived, I couldn’t believe I accidentally followed my childhood nemesis to the same shifter town.
But I did, and if I hadn’t forgotten how much Roxy teased and poked me when we were young shifters, she might’ve. At the very least, she seemed almost glad to see me when we actually met, though that could’ve been because she had someone to be her rascally raccoon self around.
Like, oh, now.
Moving around to the front of the display, she leans against my counter as though she belongs there. “So how goes it? The bakery thing working out? Moonburrow not as bad as you thought when you first caught me poking around your dumpster?”
True. I caught Roxy’s scent, convinced myself I was imagining it, but when her head popped out of my dumpster, I couldn’t deny that it was her.
“Yeah.” I fiddle with the ends of one of my twin braids. “Things are going great.”
Roxy studies me for a moment, her yellow eyes gleaming as though she can see something that I’ve spent two months trying to hide.
Here’s hoping she can’t.
Seconds later, she shrugs as she rises from her lean. “Good.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Why not? It might be nice to have someone around town that I actually tolerate.”
I pretend to swoon. “Oh, Roxy. That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
She shrugs. “That’s because I snagged a cupcake while you weren’t looking.”
Lifting her hand, she wags the cupcake that I’d just finished frosting and covering in sprinkles before she graced me with her presence.
“Anyway,” she says, “if you need someone to steal recipes, intimidate rude customers, dispose of bodies…”
Ah, jeez. Roxy…
“I’m running a bakery, not committing any felonies.”
She raises the cupcake a little higher, toasting me with it. “Both require good instincts and a pinch of luck. You’ve got this.”
Honestly? I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to respond to that, especially not when the comment came from Roxy Kane, so I just shoot her a bewildered look. “Thanks.” I pause. “I think.”
Roxy removes the cupcake liner, flinging it over to where Gus is —as usual—perched on his bag of flour, whiskers twitching. He hisses as the liner just misses him before burying his snout in the paper, searching for a few crumbs to devour and the traces of frosting to lick.
Another shake of my head. “Don’t tease Gus.”
“Don’t keep your pet rat in the bakery where you can get fur in the croissants,” is her cheeky retort.
Ignoring the way she’s teasing by calling Gus a rat again, the reality is that I have to.
I don’t really have a choice. Ever since Gus imprinted on my opossum, treating me like a member of his brood, I’ve been stuck with him.
I was lucky I could convince him to wait at the apartment when I went to work at the grocery store.
Now that I live over the bakery, there’s no way I can keep him from joining me downstairs.
Not that I would if I could. Roxy might know that I’m an opossum shifter, but I’d rather keep that to myself for the moment.
That means, if my scent-dampener charm fails, I have the excuse of blaming Gus for the eau de possum aroma permeating the bakery beneath the scents of yeast, cinnamon, vanilla, and sugar.
Besides, that’s one of the best things about a shifter-run town.
When you can never tell if an animal is a resident in their fur or their wild counterpart, who’s to say that I can’t keep an opossum in my bakery?
There’s no health department in Moonburrow, and a little fur never hurt anyone—especially when the fur she’s picking out of her teeth could be her own.
I keep all of that to myself, though. My former frenemy might have grown up over the last decade, becoming someone that I can tolerate, but it’s better if I keep my own secrets.
So I just wave her off as she heads toward the front door, the still untouched cupcake in her hand, waiting for her to take a bite. “See ya.”
“Make almond croissants tomorrow!”
I don’t even dignify that with a response to the pastry thief. Instead, I grab another cupcake and my jar of sprinkles, replacing the one that Roxy snagged from the display.
She must have stopped at the door because it’s still shut as she calls out, “Oh, and Honey?”
I look up.
“I should tell you that your back door lock sucks. Anyone could have broken in, not just a talented raccoon.”
With that last remark, Roxy disappears out the front door before I can come up with a retort to that.
Next to me, Gus pointedly uses his paw to knock that mangled, chewed cupcake liner to the floor. He chitters, and I can’t help but interpret his regal complaint without, you know, actually speaking ‘opossum’ while I’m in my skin.
I boop his nose. “Don’t mind Roxy, bud. She’s always like that.”