The Soulmate Bakery (Maple Falls #1)

Chapter One

Before you ask, it’s not really considered breaking and entering – if you have a key. Then it’s really, you know, entering more than anything else.

At least, that’s what I told myself as I stuck my key into the lock of the Wishing Well Bakery; the bell above the periwinkle door chimed, and I held my breath as I looked over my shoulder to see if someone would come rushing down the streets of Maple Falls.

It would probably be Inspector Vale. I could almost see him: hurtling from the police station situated by the town’s edge, grey hair flying wildly, furious golden eyes with a silver slit down the middle of each iris glaring, practically breathing fire at me – literally and figuratively since he’s a dragon shifter.

He’d probably drag me back to my house and give me the same speech he’d given me only a month ago.

Maple Falls is a town protected from those pesky mortals by ancient magic. We are safe and content here. And you running amok in the wee hours of the night ruins that peace!

The speech, while impassioned, always sounds a teensy bit dramatic to my ears.

I mean, Vale was right: Maple Falls is a town protected by ancient magic; a barrier that keeps the mortal eye from seeing us.

But even if a mortal did find their way to Maple Falls – aside from likely experiencing a mental breakdown at the sight of all the different magical creatures they’d find – they’d get pretty bored.

Because nothing ever happens here. And when I say nothing, I genuinely mean …

nothing. I’ve lived here for seventeen years, and there’s never even been a whiff of scandal.

Trying to find ways to entertain myself in this town is like an Olympic sport, and if they were giving out medals, I would deserve gold. Silver at the minimum.

But several minutes passed and there was no sign of Vale; no sign of anyone at all. Sighing with relief, I stepped into the bakery, closing the door quietly; the giant cupcake clock on the wall ticked loudly and caught my attention.

Midnight.

The time when wishes are made upon stars, when the darkness of the night becomes ten times more frightening, when everyone – including the residents of Maple Falls – is fast asleep.

And, if you’re me, it’s also the time bad decisions are made.

But, I’d like to stress, not this time. No, no, what I was doing in this bakery was going to be epic. Astounding. Life-changing. It was going to turn THE INCIDENT into nothing more than a very bad, soon-to-be-forgotten memory.

Or at least, I hoped it would.

As I walked through the bakery, I slipped my phone out of my pocket and dialled the first number on the list. Waiting for my call to be picked up, I continued to the kitchen in the back.

In six hours, Ivy Blackthorn – my boss at my part-time bakery-assistant job, a mid-thirties kitchen witch with bright-purple hair and glasses shaped like stars – would step inside and begin to fill the empty display cases.

The menu for this week: sunbaked apple cakes charmed to give you a warm flush on a cold day, chocolate crinkle cookies enchanted to soothe worries, and my very own creation, dreamweaver shortbread.

The dreamweaver shortbread was made solely with burned-out students in mind.

I found the spell for it in one of the old, dusty tomes in the Wandering Words Library, Maple Falls’ greatest source of spells.

I was searching for something that would help me sleep during exam seasons in my final year of high school; I was in dire need of dreamless sleep.

The spell had been easy enough to learn. It was in English, and there weren’t any intensely complicated finger movements I needed to grasp. Nothing like the spell I used to try and charm my unibrow away a couple of years ago.

It helped that I was good at culinary magic.

I could bake spells into desserts with ease because kitchen witchery is all about structure.

Play around with a recipe as much as you like, but the charm (or the curse) only ever had to go over one ingredient.

It was nothing like potions, where one drop could change everything, or charms, where one wrong finger movement could turn your hair from shoulder-length to a pixie cut in mere seconds.

Kitchen magic was safe, and the dreamless-slumber spell was simple.

After studying the correct movements and memorizing the incantation, I whispered the spell over the lavender that would be folded into the buttery vanilla layers of dough.

I then brought them to Ivy, explained everything I’d done, and she took the risk and ate the biscuits.

She had three dreamless nights of sleep.

And now, for the first time, one of my own baked magical goods was actually, properly, going to be sold in the bakery.

It was an omen, a sign, that this year was going to be perfect. No mishaps. No mistakes. No disasters. This was going to be the year.

‘I think this is a bad idea,’ came the voice of my best friend, Raven Hawthorne, from the phone that was now squished between my cheek and shoulder.

‘You think all my ideas are bad ideas.’ I rolled my eyes and pulled out all the utensils I would need.

‘Because all of them are bad ideas,’ Raven shot back, with the kind of brutal honesty that could only come from someone who’d known me my entire life.

‘I resent that.’

Raven ignored my complaint and continued berating me instead. ‘Did you stop and think whether this could, I don’t know, lead to another point on your licence?’

I winced. She wasn’t wrong. Every witch got a licence at thirteen, which meant we could cast the spells we learned without supervision.

Well, any spells that weren’t forbidden, that is. Those were your love spells, trying-to-convene-with-the-dead spells or anything that manipulated another person’s will. Anything that could change a creature – or hurt one – was strictly banned.

‘You already have two points on your licence, Maya. One more and the Coven will take away your apprenticeship eligibility and you’ll be magic bound for a year.’

A shiver ran through me at the thought of being stripped of my magic for a whole year. Stuck in Maple Falls, magic-less, apprenticeship-less, waiting out a sentence dealt by the Coven. It was a fate worse than death – at least to me.

‘You’re right.’ I gave into Raven’s argument, but then a familiar indignation stirred inside me. ‘But come on, the first two points shouldn’t even be there!’

‘You removed Everly Catacomb’s fangs when we were sixteen,’ Raven said, not even missing a beat. ‘That’s the equivalent of severing off one of her limbs, Maya.’

‘She kind of deserved it.’ I shrugged, continuing to assemble my ingredients. ‘Everly is a bully, and if she was going to keep making fun of everyone, then she deserved a little transfiguration.’

‘Fine,’ Raven allowed, aggrieved.

For a moment, I thought she was going to talk about the second point on my licence. We didn’t talk about that point – I got it during the worst summer of my life. A time I didn’t like to talk about. Raven knew that.

Instead she launched into the other thing I didn’t want to think about tonight.

THE INCIDENT.

‘But I still don’t think falling in front of Silas Moon warrants making a batch of soulmate cookies and potentially getting another point on your licence if someone catches you.’

The memory flooded my thoughts, and my brows scrunched together with actual repulsion.

‘It wasn’t just a fall,’ I said, horrified. ‘I face-planted at his feet. It was mortifying.’

‘Silas probably didn’t even notice!’ Raven cajoled, but I could hear the wince in her voice.

‘Oh yes, maybe he didn’t notice the girl in front of him slipping and sliding on the shop floor like a fish out of water,’ I said, deadpan.

‘You didn’t see his face, Raven. I did. He looked at me with those big blue eyes, his blonde hair all shiny, and he even bent down to help me.

Silas Moon is the cutest werewolf in this town, and I humiliated myself in front of him. Again.’

‘You know, you could always just tell him how you feel,’ Raven teased. ‘You, Maya Reverie, have been in love with that werewolf since we were thirteen.’

She wasn’t wrong. I’d had a crush on Silas Moon for literal years. While I have lived in Maple Falls since I was born, the Moon family moved in when Silas was thirteen. In a pack of seven brothers, Silas was the youngest. He was shy and quiet; I didn’t think much of him in the beginning.

But on his first day, he’d seen a particularly nasty vampire named Trent picking on me.

Now, Trent’s issues weren’t really with me.

He had tried to throw the party of the summer but epically failed when Vale caught him sneaking drinks on to Golden Shell Beach.

You might wonder what that had to do with little ol’ me.

Well, after a painfully long lecture from Vale, my mother, the town’s mayor, had given Trent community service as punishment.

Trent did not like that. Or my mother. And consequently, me, the mayor’s daughter.

Anyway, Trent was midway to biting into my neck when Silas intervened.

It wasn’t grand or loud. He’d simply stood in front of me and told the vampire to pick on someone his own size.

I’d been crushing on him ever since. Over the years, I tried to catch his attention, but every time I was within touching distance of Silas, I did something incredibly stupid.

Tripped, gagged, stumbled – you name it, I’ve done it.

If I wasn’t a witch who had studied magic, I’d say I was cursed.

‘You’re right, I’ve been pining after him for long enough,’ I agreed. ‘That’s why I need to do this. It’s time to prove whether there’s anything real there.’

‘OK, so go talk to him! Don’t bake cookies to make him fall in love with you.’