Chapter Five-Bella
Some people thought running your own business meant loads of free time and setting your own schedule.
Bless their sweet, clueless little hearts.
They couldn’t be more wrong if they tried.
See, there was always something to be done. Inventory, invoices, bookkeeping, payroll—check, check, check, and ugh, so much more.
And it wasn’t just the fact that these things needed doing.
Oh no. It was the fact that you—the boss, the owner, the queen of all you surveyed—were the one responsible for making sure they actually got done.
No magical paperwork Fairies.
No enchanted ledger that balanced itself overnight.
Just me, my coffee, my loyal staff—I paid them very well, including all the sugary bonuses they could eat—and my eternal to-do list that somehow grew longer every time I crossed something off.
Every morning—and I mean pre-dawn morning, when the world is still dark and the only souls awake are Ghosts and Vampires headed home to their beds or coffins—I was at the bakery, getting shizzle done.
Schedules didn’t make themselves, you know.
Not anymore than my award-winning Double Chocolate Cupcake Bombs, which—side note—can double as real bombs if left out in the sun too long.
(Long story. Don’t ask. And definitely don’t store them in your car in July.)
It wasn’t glamorous.
No one was filming me for a reality baking show as I hauled fifty-pound flour sacks or scrubbed frosting out of a mixing bowl the size of a hot tub.
And yet, I loved it.
Even the parts that made me want to hex my spreadsheet.
Because this was my bakery.
My passion.
My joy.
My thang.
My blood, sweat, tears, and real, old-fashioned buttercream went into every inch of it.
The moment I turned the key in the lock and stepped into that warm, yeasty air, the world made sense again—at least until someone tried to burn it down. Twice.
Which, for the record, made absolutely no sense.
Kinda like a certain Python Shifter’s refusal to just fade gracefully into the background like an old Instagram trend.
I mean, honestly.
How’s a Witch supposed to get over a guy if he keeps popping up everywhere like glitter after a crafting accident?
For fork’s sake, give a girl some breathing room!
(Donny’s been teaching me how to curse without actually cursing. Whaddya think? She says I’m at creative toddler level. And I’ll take it.)
And all this while I’m in the middle of my ongoing experiments in the Holy Grail of Witchy baking.
Calorie-free goodies.
Yes, that’s right.
Goodies that don’t stick to your thighs, belly, or anywhere else Great Aunt Edna liked to pinch and comment on at family gatherings.
And I’m not talking about the diet kind where you pretend swapping sugar for something that tastes like powdered sadness is just as good.
No, I meant full-on, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth perfection that wouldn’t add an inch to your hips, magically or otherwise.
When—not if—I cracked that code? My friends and I would be the happiest Witches in all of Castor’s Corner.
Possibly the world.
There might be parades.
Definitely fireworks.
I was proud of my goodies.
And no, I didn’t mean the ones I inherited from my awesome Italian and Viking ancestors—though, let’s be real, those were top tier, too.
I was talking about my baked goodies, not my Witchy-metabolism-proof curves.
Still, credit where credit’s due—nobody filled out a triple D-cup like I did.
I was basically the poster child for hourglass, but with extra sand around the middle parts.
The thing is, every other Witch in the known supernatural world seems to stay young and thin for hundreds of years.
The Goddess hands out eternal beauty like it’s candy on Halloween.
And me? I got the longevity part, sure. At least, I’m assuming I did.
But the magically maintain a size two without trying gene?
Yeah, that one skipped me entirely.
It didn’t matter how much I watched what I ate—and by watched, I meant actually gave in and tried starving myself that one time.
It was a disaster.
My magic went absolutely feral. I accidentally zapped my father right on his backside in the middle of Sunday dinner.
The man couldn’t sit for a week.
Lesson learned.
Hangry Bella equals hazardous Bella.
Still—every other Witch in town could inhale a dozen donuts and not gain an ounce.
Take Magdelena, La Befana herself.
She’s famous for hoovering half a dessert table without breaking a sweat.
She also loves my Undeath By Chocolate brownies so much, she demands them at all her Coven gatherings.
I recently sent her two dozen as a thank-you for giving me Petyr, my familiar.
She replied that she had eaten them all in a single sitting.
And yet, still thin as a broomstick.
Meanwhile, I just look at a cookie, and my jeans get tighter.
Not that I hate my body—Goddess, no. I loved my curves.
But keeping them in check? That was a full-time job.
At least I didn’t suffer alone. Donny and Evie were built the same—big bosoms, soft hips, the kind of bubble butts that made Shifters walk into lampposts, which was totally a perk by the way.
And we all shared the same appreciation for sweets. Scratch that—addiction. It was definitely an addiction.
Maybe it’s in the blood.
After all, my besties and me? Well, it turns out we have more than our chunky butts in common.
Enter Grandpa Al—legendary Warlock, shameless flirt, and total hound.
Apparently, fidelity wasn’t in his vocabulary. Which, honestly, explained a lot, including why his Ghost was missing his magical no-no square (thanks, Evie’s Nonna).
So there it was—proof positive.
Our special metabolism wasn’t just a fluke of fate.
It was genetic.
The three of us weren’t just besties, we were cousins. We shared the same bloodline. And sometimes?
Even the same jeans—the denim kind.
Made sense, right?
Anyway, it wasn’t easy being part of the select few supernaturals who suffered from tuchus gigantamous—an extremely rare and extremely stubborn condition passed down from my Aunt Edna’s side of the family tree.
Thanks, Auntie. Really. Love the genes.
Of course, being a baker probably wasn’t the wisest career choice if I wanted to slim down my, uh, assets.
But honestly? Of the three of us, I didn’t have much of a problem with it.
I liked myself—hips, thighs, triple-Ds, and all.
The way I saw it, you can’t spread joy with a side of insecurity.
Still, back to Petyr.
My familiar wasn’t your average cute-and-cuddly magical sidekick. He was unusual, true, but his powers were ridiculously cool.
He didn’t seem to have a limit to what he could do. I mean, where my Witchy magic had boundaries—strict ones—Petyr seemed to laugh at the very concept of rules.
My own magic? Kitchen magic. Domestic sorcery, as my Granny called it. Useful, yes, but not exactly flashy.
I couldn’t stop time or levitate buildings or hurl fireballs at annoying people in line at the DMV.
My spells were confined to food, flavor, comfort.
They worked best in the kitchen, with my hands in the dough and my heart in the recipe.
Evie’s magic was different—rare and wild.
She was a seer Witch, able to catch glimpses of past and future events like she was flipping through a cosmic photo album.
Donny’s magic was closer to mine. She could see and mend inner hurts, weaving confidence into her clients’ haircuts until they walked out of her salon taller, shinier, happier.
I guess of the two, I was more like Donny.
Our magic was about nourishment—hers of the spirit, mine of the stomach.
Not exactly earth-shattering, but it mattered.
Castor’s Corner needed a baker, and I was the baker.
Easy peasy, right?
Only, not so much. Because if I was so valued, why was someone targeting me?
“I check on storage, my Witchy,” Petyr told me before vanishing in that blink-and-you-missed-it way of his.
That little furball was faster than lightning when he wanted to be. Take the other day, I was moping in the kitchen, lamenting how much I missed my Granny’s special banana extract, made from the now commercially extinct Gros Michel bananas.
I’d just muttered that I’d give anything for a taste of it again—poof!
Petyr disappeared for hours.
When he returned, not only did he have three bushels of perfectly ripe Gros Michels, but he was also sporting an Elvis-style pompadour and humming “Teddy Bear.”
I still don’t know where he went, and frankly, I’m a little afraid to ask.
Now I had a huge barrel of banana extract processing in my storeroom, right next to the walk-in fridge.
Once it was ready?
Oh, honey! I was going to bake a storm of banana nut loaves so good, they’d make angels weep.
It would also be the perfect time to test my next guilt-free recipe.
Trying to create a magical hack for weight loss was an ongoing thing. Donny, Evie, and I had long since accepted we’d probably always be the three curviest Witches in the county, but still a girl had to have goals. And I could still dream.
It would be nice not to gain ten pounds every time I got a craving for pineapple cheesecake, a giant chocolate-covered cannoli, or my vanilla cream Napoleons with fresh strawberries.
Yum.
See, I’d learned to bake at my grandmother’s knee, perfecting her recipes before branching out into my own.
When I finally opened my shop, The Tasty Tart, it became an instant hit.
Not to brag (okay, maybe a little), but people lined up out the door for my pastries.
And now? My website and delivery business were booming.
People—and by that I meant supes from around the world—wanted my goodies.
But enough about all that.
Where was I?
Oh, right—Ryan packing up the firetruck, and Conrad stowing his gear before walking toward me.
Cue instant panic.