Chapter 6 #2
“The witches are notorious for them.” He clicks his tongue again, glancing over his shoulder before stopping to pull on the trousers I brought him. “Now, I want to take you for the best cinnamon rolls you’ve ever tasted.”
“Don’t you have a shop to open?”
“I’ve opened the shop late on a single occasion in the fifteen years I’ve owned it. But it’s a special day and I want to go investigate with my mate.”
My lips quirk into a rueful grin as my cheeks heat once again. “Why did you choose this place to open your shop?”
It’s quaint. A lot nicer than Ambleby, whose grubby underbelly is the main reason I wound up there. You can’t take two steps without someone trying to steal your wallet or sell you bootleg potions they probably brewed up in their basement without a lick of magic involved.
“Cheap rent,” he replies without skipping a beat. “It was quiet,” he adds. “I felt like I needed quiet.”
At my incredulous look, he snorts. “I didn’t realise that the quiet comes with its own brand of chaos. But I quite like that. Reminds me of home.”
I’m about to ask where that is, when he lets out a little whoop, clapping his hands together. “Here we are.”
The air swirls with the eye-wateringly strong scent of gingerbread as a building appears in front of us. It’s painted white with a thatched roof and trailing herbs growing from the two large windows that are both steamed up and impossible to see through.
“I don’t remember seeing this place before.”
“Ah.” Kit grins as he pushes the door open, and the scent seems to double in strength, leaving my eyes streaming. “It appears sporadically, or whenever you really, really need a dose of caffeine. Sometimes it just appears when the owner likes you.”
I don’t need to ask which one’s the case for Kit, as there’s a little gasp from the counter.
“Kitty cat!”
“Hi Hilde.”
There’s a woman standing behind the counter, one whose appearance seems to shimmer as though she’s a reflection in water.
I blink and she morphs into an older woman with a kindly smile.
Another blink and she looks younger than I am, blinking at us with enormous eyelashes that touch the middle of her cheeks every time she flutters them.
I snort, and Kit gives me a stern look, elbowing me in the ribs. “Ouch, Kitty cat. Keep those pointy elbows to yourself.”
“How lovely it is to see you!” she exclaims. “A tea, nice and strong, and a coffee laced with syrup, I think.”
As we step up to the counter, she shimmers again. It’s as though she ages in an instant, her face perfectly made up with bright pink lipstick. I suck in a sharp breath and almost gas myself on the smell of gingerbread, swiping at my streaming eyes.
“Or have you come to order my special lunchtime banquet for your employees at the shop?”
“Ah, no,” Kit says, causing her shoulders to droop with disappointment.
“It’s just me at the shop, as you know, so no need for a banquet.
I actually wanted to ask you if you’d sensed anything odd around Port Yarrow recently.
” He then breaks into the same spiel as he gave the busybody squad while I peer around the rest of the café.
“Oh, I had really hoped you might want my banquet. Business isn’t exactly booming, as you can see.”
The tables behind us are mostly empty, apart from a pair of bickering vampires sitting by the window. But I can’t imagine that having a cafe that only appears when you feel like it isn’t the best business model.
Kit replies smoothly, “Just the tea and coffee and a couple of cinnamon buns, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Of course, of course.” Hilde beams at him before immediately getting to work, pouring tea and coffee before sliding them across the counter to us.
“You know, the last person I offered the banquet to Mr Godolphin a few weeks back,” she chatters away as she fills up a brown paper bag with buns.
Hilde hums as she continues, “I thought he might need a substantial lunch for all that walking he must do, but he wasn’t interested either.
He was complaining he’d seen lights over at the old coven house,” she continues.
“Thought it was odd since that lot moved on months ago, but I told him it was probably just young’uns messing about, or that perhaps they’d started up the old orgies again.
Of course, the council would have a field day if they had.
If you ask me, he was upset that his invitation had gone missing in the post.” Her face breaks into a smile before shifting into an even older version.
“He said he might just take a trip up there, check if the place hadn’t been taken over by hoodlums. I remember he said that because I couldn’t stop myself chuckling at him calling anyone a ‘hoodlum’.
” She shakes her head. “I told him to report it to the council, leave it to them to investigate, but he kept saying about how long they take to do anything, not when they can’t even get Mrs Higgs’ bins right. ” She shakes her head.
My eyes widen of their own accord. What is with the people in this town and their obsession with dustbins?
“So did he put in a complaint to the, uh, council?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” Her face shifts back into the younger version again, the one with the caterpillar eyelashes.
“But Gus would know over at the firehouse. He has a running log, you know, of all the complaints that are placed and all the ones that get resolved. He usually comes in around eleven for his coffee, so I’ll let him know you’re wanting to speak to him. ”
Hilde’s frown deepens until it looks etched into her face. “It’s funny, you know. It just occurred to me that I haven't seen Mr Godolphin since. He never came in for his usual Wednesday treat last week... or the week before.”
Kit and I share a long look as he gulps down his tea and hands over a handful of coins. Aster said that the sorcerers had moved to a new location a few weeks ago, around the same time the old coven house was abandoned and this Godolphin guy reported seeing lights on in the deserted house.
Seems we know where our next stop should be.