Chapter 8
Eight
The first week of their so-called partnership could only be described as a carnival of disasters.
It began, inevitably, with salt. Maude had carefully drawn protective lines across the warped floorboards, a ring of containment charms precise enough that Bailey himself might’ve nodded in approval.
Wesley, all broad shoulders and incessant humming, wandered through with a tray of rolls, sneezed, and scattered flour across the salt.
The magic bled instantly, merging protection with yeast. The result? Loaves that sang.
Not quaint little ditties, either—dirges. Funeral hymns that rattled through the room with such mournful intensity that Mrs. Haddingham bought three, cradling them like she’d just secured the soundtrack for her own burial.
“Most exciting breakfast I’ve had in years,” the old woman crowed, tottering away with her purchase.
Then Oli decided to help.
He arrived midmorning, as if summoned by Maude’s rage, sweeping through the door with the smug energy of a man who had never once in his life been told to leave.
He carried a basket of suspiciously expensive wine and was dressed like a romance-novel hero—loose shirt, boots that gleamed, hair swept back artfully.
“I thought the newlyweds might be thirsty,” he announced, ignoring the fact that Maude looked one tantrum away from setting the curtains ablaze.
“Perfect timing,” Wesley said, grinning. “Grab an apron.”
Maude nearly hexed them both. “Absolutely not.”
“Absolutely yes,” Oli countered, already tying the strings around his waist.
The next hour was hell.
Oli had the attention span of a magpie and the chaos of a hurricane.
He stole spells and enchanted piping bags to refill endlessly—“So efficient!”—and within minutes frosting geysers erupted, coating the ceiling in pink swirls and dripping onto Maude’s tonics.
Wesley doubled over laughing as Grim launched himself onto the counter, skidding through the icing like a sled, and knocked two bottles straight into Wesley’s rising dough.
The dough promptly sprouted legs.
Six sticky muffins leapt off the counter and began marching toward the door like a buttered army. Oli clapped like a delighted child. “It’s a parade!”
Maude shouted herself hoarse while Grim pounced on each muffin, growling with such ferocity that frosting splattered across the walls.
And the worst part? Somewhere in the frosting storm, Maude realized they were laughing together. Her Oliver—her greedy, chaotic, loyal Oli—was actually bonding with the bakery bastard.
The horror nearly felled her on the spot.
After that, things blurred together into a week-long nightmare.
Cupcakes that oozed shadows. A pie that wouldn’t stop screaming every time someone cut into it—high-pitched, dramatic, eventually punted into the alley.
Sugar mice sank their teeth into Wesley’s hand and scattered into the flour bins, tails whipping like banners.
Jam jars whispered petty secrets Maude never wanted to know (“Your neighbor steals spoons”), while a broom tried to unionize with the rolling pins, demanding “fair sweeping hours.” A child who ate a cursed eclair floated to the ceiling and refused to come down until Maude reversed it—while her parents applauded like it was theater.
The shop filled daily with gawkers. The Elixir Emporium, once comfortably desolate, now teemed with tourists who laughed at the “Haunted Bakery.” Some bought pastries. Others demanded potions with candied pearls. Against her better judgment, Maude let a few coin purses lighten her shelves.
Maude’s terms of truce—the painstakingly written list she’d taped behind the counter—proved worse than useless.
“No humming,” it said. Wesley hummed anyway, and every time he did, the dough rose higher.
One morning he whistled an entire ballad, and the bread inflated so violently the oven door snapped off.
“No tampering with experiments.” He tampered constantly, sneaking spoonfuls of frosting into her cauldrons “for science.”
By the seventh day, she was ready to commit homicide.
And then Wesley stopped laughing. It was subtle at first. One evening, when Oli tried to charm her into letting him host “themed evenings” in the shop—“Haunted Tea Tuesdays!” complete with an interpretive dance she refused to dignify by describing—Wesley’s voice cut in.
“That’s enough, Oliver.”
Maude stilled mid-glare. Oli blinked like someone had just slapped him with a trout.
“She’s not a spectacle.” Wesley’s voice wasn’t raised, but it carried, firm enough to cut through the clutter of shelves and half-baked curses. “She’s holding this place together with blood and string, and you’re treating it like a game.”
Oli’s easy grin faltered, guilt flashing across his face. “I was only—”
“No.” Wesley scrubbed a hand over his face, exhaling. “I know you mean well. And I’ve been an ass too.” His eyes flicked toward Maude, and the quiet there made her stomach dip. “Sorry.” He didn’t look away from her.
Maude swallowed, fingers tightening on the edge of the counter.
Wesley finally turned back to Oli, pointing toward the door. “Out. Let her breathe.”
Oli stared at him for a beat too long, then glanced at Maude like maybe she’d swoop in and rescue him. She didn’t. She just arched a brow, daring him to test it.
With an exaggerated sigh, Oli raised his hands in surrender. “Fine. But for the record, Haunted Tea Tuesdays would’ve been legendary.” He left without another word. The door shut, and silence crashed down.
Maude turned on Wesley. “You don’t get to—”
“I wasn’t defending you,” he interrupted, wiping his flour-dusted hands. “I was defending the shop.” Then he shrugged, rolling his sleeves higher as he turned back to the ruined counter. “And you looked like you were about to break. Didn’t seem fair.”
Her chin lifted a fraction but the fight slipped out of her. It was a small thing, what he’d said, but it was more than she’d expected.
“Don’t go getting all noble on me, baker.”
His mouth curved, slow and infuriating. “Still a bastard where it counts.”
She hated that her lips twitched. Hated worse that he saw it.
Wesley lingered a moment, still looking at the door. “You and he…” He trailed off, voice casual, almost careless. “Are you—?”
Maude huffed. “Oli’s family. Closest thing I’ve got to one, anyway.”
“Right,” he said quickly, tone smoothing itself out. “Didn’t mean to pry. He just seems... close to you.” A beat. “Which is good. Everyone needs someone like that.”
Maude’s brow arched. “Didn’t realize you cared so much about my emotional well-being, Rivers.”
He smiled faintly. “Don’t. Just making conversation.”
She tilted her head, studying him for a heartbeat too long before letting it drop.
The shop had slipped into that hour where even the ghosts got bored.
Lanterns outside sank to patient embers; the gutters whispered with runoff; Blightbend’s clamor dwindled to the clack of a distant cart and the soft hiss of starlight orbs dimming along the lane.
Inside, the Elixir Emporium—currently the Haunted Bakery, as Mistwood Hills had christened it—breathed a wary, sugar-and-sage quiet.
The yeasty warmth from the cauldron-mixer on Wesley’s side seeped over the chalk line that divided their “domains,” meeting Maude’s lingering nettle and nightshade like two strangers stuck sharing a pew.
She should’ve gone home hours ago. Grim would be perched in the window, a furry gargoyle judging her life choices. Her cut wrist tugged whenever she flexed her fingers, a low, irritated throb beneath the bandage. She’d told herself she would lock up after decanting the blackthorn steep.
Then Wesley started working.
He had his sleeves rolled to the elbow and a clean apron tied carelessly at his hips.
The flour-dusted world made a frame around him: scales, scrapers, a brass timer, a small bowl of water for smoothing stubborn edges.
He moved as if he was counting in some internal rhythm—four-beat measures, the same tempo he kept when he built dough from nothing: weigh, whisk, fold, rest. He always made it look easy, which was vexing, because nothing was easy anymore. Not for her.
She found herself leaning on her own counter, pretending to organize tincture labels while actually watching him.
The curse had left everything jittery—jars buzzed on their shelves; the chandelier tinkled as if impatient.
But the longer he repeated the sequence—roll, fold, quarter-turn, pat—the calmer the room felt.
The magic that usually prowled the eaves like a hungry thing seemed to curl up and breathe with him.
Huh.
She scoffed at herself for even noticing and pretended she’d only wandered over because she needed the mortar he wasn’t using. “You always do it exactly like that?”
He glanced up, a curled lock of hair stuck to his forehead. “Like what?”
“The ritual,” she said. “The obsession. The sacrament of butter.”
A smile curved at the corner of his mouth. “It’s lamination. Not a cult.”
“Hm. Looks cultish.”
He tipped his chin at the slab in front of him. “Want to see?”
Her first instinct—say no, bite, retreat—flared and went out. A different impulse rose, smaller and far more dangerous: curiosity. She was too tired to fight it. “Fine,” she said. “Enlighten me.”
He wiped his hands, then slid the dough toward the center of his bench. “This is détrempe—the base dough. Not sweet. Just flour, water, salt, a little yeast. It’s chilled so the butter won’t melt when we fold.”
She approached warily, as if the dough might bare fangs. It was cool and obedient under her fingertips, lightly floured, pale as bone. He nodded toward the square of butter on parchment—softened, then rolled thin. “That’s the block. We’re going to marry them.”
“Romantic,” she said, because she couldn’t help herself.