Chapter 32 #2
Puzzled, Talula wrote the word for salt on the order pad. Dahlia snatched it away and compared it to a page of the cookbook. “Look.”
The writing was identical, down to the swoop and slant of each letter.
Talula gasped. Then she wrote another word, “garlic.” She flipped the pages back to the first recipe. There it was again, as if she’d written it herself.
Which, Talula realized, somehow she had.
“Kiki didn’t write the cookbook,” Dahlia confirmed. “You did.”
Kiki and Simon both turned to Talula, jaws dropped.
“But the book is ancient; how could I have written it?” Talula felt even more lost.
“I don’t think you wrote it. I think you will write it,” Dahlia explained. “The eggs prove it.”
Confusion was giving Talula a headache. “What eggs?”
“The eggs you made this morning.” Dahlia hopped on her feet excitedly. “You used the ones in the fridge, right? They were old, like beyond old. They were in the fridge when I moved in. That’s why I wanted to throw them at Kristen.”
“That’s disgusting,” Kiki observed. “I’m glad to see you, but that is disgusting.”
“Am I going to get food poisoning before we’re murdered?” Talula groaned.
“No, just listen.” Dahlia pulled up a webpage on her phone. “I read the notes you left behind at my house, and I looked it up. Old eggs float. Fresh ones sink. You didn’t just restore these eggs. You turned back time for them.”
“That’s impossible—” Simon started to say, but he cut himself off. “Talula almost chucked someone into a volcano.”
Frustrated, Talula threw up her hands. “And I’m still sorry about it! But is this really the time to bring that up?”
“When you were working the Volta that night, you were looking for Pompeii. We saw a volcano.” Simon paced. “What if you were at the right place, but the wrong time?”
“Also, you sent me to Monaco in the nineteen twenties.” Kiki shrugged. Everyone turned to the jinn, wearing matching faces of shock. Kiki hooked their thumbs behind their old-school suspenders as if to say See?
Dahlia spoke, eyes glittering. “This book had all the information you needed for random things only you could have known after the fact. Like the health inspector’s quiche love and Damien’s mango allergy.
It taught you through food and little phrases that only became meaningful at the right place and the right time.
You wrote this book. Or, you will write this book. That has to mean something.”
“It means,” Kiki said simply, “that Talula is more powerful than any magical being here.”
Simon’s dark eyes met Talula’s. “Which means she’s the only one who can save us.”
“It also means that you have everything you need to make that happen.” Dahlia squeezed Talula’s hands.
Heart stuttering, Talula let that sink in. She reviewed what she’d learned. Elemental magic. Conjuring. Illusions. Time. But the book had given her more than just sorcery skills. Each recipe had a ripple effect, helping Talula protect her magical community and become more part of her human one.
A question niggled at Talula’s brain. “Kiki, I tried to conjure your ring, but Dahlia came along with it. Do you know why that happened?”
“The ring is made of the same metal as Damien’s cuffs,” Kiki explained. “They can only be removed by the wearer’s own volition. When you conjured the ring, it couldn’t be parted from its wearer. So the wearer came, too.”
A tiny gleam of hope sparked in Talula’s chest. “Could I do that with the hunters’ cuffs?”
Kiki squinted, as if staring at a problem set in their head. A wicked smile uncurled. “Conjuring isn’t technically harmful magic. But I made enough for his whole evil army, Talula.”
“All the hunters wear them, all the time?”
“Every single one of them. They have to.” Kiki nodded. “It’s something Damien insists on. Vehemently.”
“There was a loophole in the map; is there a loophole in the cuffs? A weakness?” Dahlia asked.
Kiki shook their head. “I made those before I learned of his hunts. The cuffs are as impervious as I could make them. They can only be broken by the same thing that will eventually break us all—” Kiki clasped their hands over their mouth. They turned to stare excitedly at Talula. “Time.”
The plan arranged itself in Talula’s head, ingredients assembling to form a daunting recipe. Terrified, Talula managed a weak smile. “I have an idea.”
She shared it. Simon called it ludicrous but helped adjust the magical parameters. Dahlia, with her plotting brain, tweaked it. Kiki offered insight into Damien and his likely countermoves. Twenty minutes before noon, their plan was ready.
“This is big, tricky magic,” Simon said worriedly. “You will almost certainly die.”
“I’ll try really hard not to,” Talula promised.
Dahlia leaned her lips to Talula’s temple. “Please, please keep yourself safe.”
Talula tilted her head to catch Dahlia’s mouth in a soft, slow kiss they knew they didn’t have time for. When they broke apart, Dahlia stood, and Simon followed her lead.
“Guard her with your life, Simon,” Kiki demanded. “She’s my favorite human.”
“Mine, too,” Talula whispered.
Simon gave Talula a long, serious look. “You be careful, my dear.”
Then, Simon and Dahlia left.
Talula counted her breaths, in and out. “Are you ready, Kiki?”
The jinn tightened their headscarf and popped their hat back on with all the grim militance of a soldier donning their uniform before battle. “Whenever you are, sweetheart.”
Talula took a moment. Centered herself. Reminded herself of her strength. Pictured Dahlia’s sleepy face as morning light gilded her cheekbones. Then, as always, Talula put on her apron.
“Let’s do it.”
At noon on the dot, Talula opened the café door to Damien and a few of his men. “I have what you’re looking for. Call off the attack.”
“When I see where you’ve got the latest additions to our hunting menu, I’ll tell my guys to stand down.”
“Fine.” She moved out of the way so Damien and the other hunters could enter the café. She locked the door and flipped the Open sign to Closed. “Follow me.”
The men followed Talula through the Employees Only door and down the basement stairs. When they rounded the corner, Talula heard their shocked gasps. The Volta was particularly active that day, rippling blue through its new protective archway.
“What is this?” Damien eyed the Volta with interest.
“It’s a small branch of an ancient well of power.
The branch has been channeled into a portal.
” Talula placed herself in front of the blue whirl of magic.
“We use Samhain as a cover so magical beings can visit their loved ones safely. A few have already gone through, but they’ll be back here before midnight. More will come.”
“And we’ll be stocked up on prey for the next hundred hunts.” A dark hunger contorted Damien’s handsome face as he took in the Volta. “You’ve given us a very pretty barrel to shoot in, Talula.”
“Then call off the kill order.” Talula tilted her chin so she could meet his hollow eyes.
“Didn’t your mother teach you to play hard to get?” Damien tsked at her. “I’m not calling anything off. Not until I see this thing in action. How soon until the next visitor gets here?”
“Sooner than you think, you toad-dicked troglodyte,” Kiki purred.
Damien spun on his heel, following that familiar voice.
“Hi, honey,” Kiki called from the basement’s stairway, leaning over the railing with their hat tipped toward Damien like a ’20s mobster. “Did you miss me?”
Damien froze, shock paralyzing him for a scant second.
It was all the time Talula needed. She tapped into her conjuring ability, focusing on the protective cuff, on all the protective cuffs.
Talula’s magic stretched and stretched, creating blue-rimmed trapdoors all over Pine Hollow and all over the world.
In a blink, those trapdoors dropped their targets right into the basement of the Blue Moon. On top of Damien.
Trophy hunters in various states of rage and confusion were piled on top of one another, limbs flailing. Just as she’d planned, it was chaos. It gave Talula just enough time to make her next move.
Talula locked eyes with Kiki. The jinn gave the sorceress a stoic salute and disappeared.
Talula reached for the Volta and let its might pour through her.
Her nerves burned with magical overdrive.
This time, she was braced for it. She let the Volta’s power reach into her magical center, rooting into her very core.
Wrapped up in the Volta’s magic, she made her request to the Volta.
In response, she sensed ferocious determination from the portal.
But there was a pressing against her mind, a message communicated in amorphous images and feelings.
Fear seized her muscles as she realized what the Volta was trying to tell her—that she’d need to channel the entirety of the Volta’s power, unfettered, to pull this off. And it might just kill her.
Damien turned and locked eyes with Talula, his snarl a murderous promise.
One she’d never let him keep.
Without hesitation, Talula shattered the spells that contained and controlled the Volta and its ancient power source.
There was a deep, subsonic boom that she was sure rippled through the bones of every organic being within a five-mile radius.
The Volta’s enormous, unstable wellspring of raw magical power was unleashed.
Through Talula. She was haloed in blue-white light, the portal behind her a swiftly expanding schism in reality. The hunters gaped at her.
“Welcome to the Volta, assholes,” Talula called, her voice resonating with pure magic.
And the Volta swallowed them whole.