Mystic, Muffins, And Murder
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Synopsis
The characters you loved so much in the Magical Cures Mystery Series will be secondary characters as Lo Heal Park, the daughter of June Heal and Oscar Park, learns to find her own footing as she steps into her adulthood with her own story to live and to tell!
Release date: April 26, 2026
Publisher: Tonya Kappes Books
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Mystic, Muffins, And Murder
Tonya Kappes
Chapter One
The cinnamon rolls always told me when trouble was brewing.
Not through any great magical revelation—my aleuromancy wasn’t that reliable, and honestly, the gift didn’t come with an instruction manual so much as a series of increasingly inconvenient surprises.
No, it was simpler than that.
When the dough felt off from the first touch—too warm in the center, reluctant to stretch—it usually meant something was brewing outside the windows of Heavenly Desserts, my bakery.
The town of Celestial Falls had its moods, and the dough felt them before I did. I’d been kneading for twenty minutes when I accepted that that particular Tuesday had opinions.
Heavenly Desserts always smelled like brown sugar, butter, and cinnamon. I loved it. It gave my customers a cozy feeling, and it created the whimsical atmosphere I had always wanted for my little slice of heaven on earth.
The morning light filtered through the windows and landed on the honey-glazed donuts I’d just put in the donut display case. Soon parents would be shuffling in with their children to grab a tasty before-school treat for their little ones and a cup of coffee for themselves.
Little One. I giggled at the thought.
My name was, in fact, an acronym of “Little One.” Lo.
The oven dinged, and I headed back into the kitchen. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the oven’s glass window as I bent down to open the door to check on the muffins.
“Goodness,” I whispered, shaking my head when I noticed the flour in my hair.
I always had flour in my hair. It was basically a permanent condition at this point.
The wind chimes sang their lazy song outside the bakery door, where I’d had Orin Regulia mount them underneath the bakery awning. The light through the east windows was the soft gold of seven-thirty, before the square filled up and the day remembered it was supposed to be busy.
“Quinn.” I said this calmly as I grabbed a mitt to pull out the muffins and set them on the cooling rack. “What is that smell?”
Quinn Marrow materialized from behind the industrial mixer wearing an expression of profound innocence and a dusting of powdered sugar that had somehow migrated from his apron to his left ear. Quinn was an intern at the bakery, enthusiastic to the point of being a minor liability, and had the particular gift of making every baking disaster look like a choice.
“That,” he said carefully, “is a learning experience.”
“It smells like the muffins are on fire,” I said, referring to the ones he’d been creating for his class project at Unhidden Hall, A Spiritualist University.
“The muffins are not on fire.”
“Quinn.”
“They are adjacent to fire.”
I was already moving toward the second oven. The muffins were not, technically, on fire. They were, however, a color that nature had not intended for blueberry muffins—somewhere in the territory of deep charcoal that suggested they’d had strong feelings about the temperature setting and lost. I pulled the tray with my oven mitts and set it on the cooling rack, looking at Quinn with the particular expression I reserved for these moments, which he had once described to Wren as “the look of someone who loves you but is reconsidering.”
“Second batch,” I said and glanced up at the clock. “You do have time before you have to go to class.”
“Already started,” he said, and pointed at the oven with great dignity.
Wren Starling appeared from the stockroom with her flyaway chestnut hair half-escaped from its bun and her arms full of vanilla extract. Wren was three months into her internship at Heavenly Desserts and had not yet burned anything, which I suspected she held over Quinn like a private victory. She was small and earnest and had a tendency to apologize preemptively for things that hadn’t happened yet, which was endearing and also occasionally prophetic.
“The vanilla order came in,” she said. “Also the almond. Also, I may have dropped one of the almond bottles, but it didn’t break, I caught it, I’m very sorry, it’s fine.”
“It’s fine,” I agreed.
“Okay. Good. Also Quinn burned the muffins.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t say anything when he did it.”
“I know.”
“I just want that on the record.”
I left them to their détente and went back to my dough.
The cinnamon roll batch was the important one. The morning regulars came for those first, before the muffins and the scones and whatever Quinn was experimentally attempting for that week’s assignment.
I pressed my palms into the cinnamon roll dough and felt it give beneath my hands. It was soft and warm from its first rise, the surface smooth but still holding a little resistance. That slight pushback told me it was nearly ready.
Another minute or two and it would be exactly where it needed to be.
I folded the dough over itself and leaned into it again, pressing forward with the heel of my hand. The motion was steady and familiar—push, fold, turn. Flour dusted the counter and clung to my fingertips while the dough slowly turned silky and elastic.
When it stopped sticking and began to stretch without tearing, I knew it was ready.
I gathered it into a round, smooth ball and set it aside while I dusted the counter again with a thin veil of flour. The rolling pin rested nearby, already waiting for its job.
The dough flattened beneath the pin with a soft sigh, spreading into a wide rectangle as I worked from the center outward. Each pass made it thinner and broader, until it filled most of the workspace in front of me.
Butter came next.
I scooped up the softened butter with an offset spatula and spread it across the dough in slow, sweeping strokes. The pale surface turned glossy as the butter melted slightly from the warmth of the room.
Then came the good part.
Brown sugar rained down in a generous layer, followed by a thick blanket of cinnamon. The scent lifted immediately, warm and sweet, the kind of smell that drifted through the bakery and had people wandering in from the sidewalk before the doors even opened.
I pressed the mixture lightly into the butter so it would stay put.
Then I started the roll.
Beginning at the long edge, I lifted the dough and folded it over itself, keeping the roll snug as I worked. The cinnamon and sugar were tucked neatly inside with every turn, forming thick spirals that would bake into those soft, sticky layers everyone loved.
The dough made the tiniest sound beneath my hands.
Pop.
I paused.
It wasn’t loud. Just a small bubble of air shifting somewhere inside the roll.
I kept working.
Roll. Press. Tuck.
Pop. Pop.
“Well, that’s new,” I murmured under my breath.
Usually the dough behaved itself. Occasionally it sighed. Sometimes it stretched stubbornly and made me work for it. But popping like a bowl of Rice Krispies?
That was different.
I leaned closer and pressed my fingertips lightly along the surface. The dough felt warm, almost lively, as if something inside it had decided to wake up before the oven even got involved.
Another tiny pop answered me.
Then the smell changed.
Not the cinnamon and sugar that was still there, rich and comforting, but underneath it was something softer. Warmer.
Like beeswax melting beside a window.
The flour dust on the counter stirred.
I froze.
It didn’t move much. Just enough to catch the corner of my eye. A faint swirl of white drifting across the wood like someone had gently blown across the counter.
“Oh no,” I whispered.
Because I knew exactly what that meant.
My aleuromancy was having opinions again.
The dough gave another quiet pop beneath my palms, and that time the kitchen didn’t look quite the same.
The sunlight spilling through the east windows shifted first. It deepened, turning richer somehow, until the light across the counter wasn’t morning gold anymore.
It was manuscript gold. The kind of soft burnished glow you see on old, illuminated pages in rare-book rooms—the ones with curling letters and tiny painted vines winding through the margins.
The air warmed around me.
And then the candles appeared in the dough.
Not real candles exactly. More like impressions pressed into the soft surface. Small, delicate shapes forming in the spirals.
Where the wicks should have been, the dough held the faintest red tint.
“Well,” I said quietly to the dough, “that can’t be good.”
The spiral beneath my hands twitched.
Actually twitched.
I stepped back half an inch and narrowed my eyes at it. “You behave yourself,” I warned.
Behind me Quinn laughed at something Wren said, completely oblivious to the fact that my cinnamon roll dough had apparently decided to become a magical forecasting device.
Again.
The flour on the counter drifted into faint lines.
Not letters exactly. More like strokes. Curves beginning to form shapes the way ink does when it first touches parchment.
Manuscript writing.
Or the beginning of it.
A slow shiver ran down my arms.
Because manuscript gold and candlelight in aleuromancy didn’t mean sunshine and happy customers.
It meant I was supposed to be watching for something.
The trouble was, I was still learning how these spiritual gifts worked. I had no clue what I was supposed to be looking for, or how I was supposed to go about looking for it.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do.
I kept kneading the dough to work in the cinnamon.
“Oh!” I yelped when it popped again, louder this time.
“Fascinating,” Wren said from behind me. She had appeared so quietly I nearly jumped out of my skin. “I’ve only heard about this power.”
“Me too,” Quinn whispered, leaning in like he expected the dough to start talking.
I didn’t have time to explain what was happening. Truthfully, I wasn’t entirely sure myself. I needed to focus on what the dough was trying to tell me.
Which made me briefly wonder if I was really the best mentor for these Unhidden Hall University interns.
I sighed and reached for the bench scraper. “Alright,” I muttered. “Let’s see what kind of trouble Celestial Falls has decided to serve up today.”
By the time I’d gotten the dough to cooperate and reached the end, it had become a long, plump log, heavy with filling.
I grabbed the bench scraper and sliced clean rounds, each one about the width of two fingers. The knife glided through the soft dough, revealing perfect cinnamon spirals inside.
One by one, I looked at each one to see if there were any more signs of candles and book manuscripts before I nestled them into the buttered baking pan, but I was happy to report that they were just cinnamon rolls.
In the round pan, they sat close together, touching just enough so they would rise into one another, puffing up and filling the pan. Then the oven would finish the job, turning the sugar into bubbling caramel at the bottom, sending the smell of cinnamon and butter through every corner of the bakery.
And if I timed it right, the first batch would come out just as the regulars pushed through the door looking for their morning cinnamon rolls.
“I’m going to go through the opening check list before I unlock the door,” I told Wren and Quinn, leaving them to finish up and pushing the dough’s message out of my head. When I walked into the bakery, I glanced up at the square through the front windows.
Shady Creek Books was already awake across the way. Della Monroe, the owner, was an early riser, and she’d had the lights on long before I’d even unlocked the back door of Heavenly Desserts. The warm glow from her shop windows spilled out onto the brick sidewalk and stretched across the quiet square like someone had laid a golden blanket over the morning.
I rested my palms against the front counter and leaned forward just a little, squinting through the glass.
The square was still half asleep. The air carried that cool early-morning softness that only lasted until the sun climbed higher and the shops started filling with people. A delivery truck rattled somewhere down the street, and the faint smell of fresh bread drifted from my own ovens behind me.
Across the way, Della moved past the front window of her shop with a stack of books tucked carefully against her chest. Her silver hair was pinned up in its usual tidy twist, and she walked with the steady, purposeful pace of someone who had been opening a bookstore at the same hour every morning for the better part of thirty years.
I was still watching her when a familiar voice stretched lazily across my thoughts.
“Well, now…”
I closed my eyes for half a second. “Good morning to you too, Skylar Blue.”
My fairy god-cat lounged across the top of the pastry case like she owned the place, which—if you asked her—she absolutely did. Her soft silver-blue fur shimmered faintly in the morning light coming through the windows, and her tail flicked slowly back and forth with the unhurried confidence of a creature who had never once doubted her importance.
She lifted her head just enough to peer out the window beside me. “Do you think,” she said in that slow Southern drawl of hers, “that your little dough trick had anything to do with Miss Della over there?”
I folded my arms across my apron and kept my eyes on the bookstore. “I don’t know,” I said honestly.
Behind me the bakery hummed with the quiet sounds of morning work. The ovens clicked softly as they held their heat. Somewhere in the kitchen, Quinn and Wren were moving around, the clatter of pans and the soft thump of cabinet doors drifting through the doorway.
But my attention stayed fixed on the square.
Skylar Blue made a thoughtful humming sound. “Mmm-hmm.”
I glanced down at her.
That particular hum meant she absolutely believed she knew something I didn’t.
“Your magic pops up in the dough for the first time in weeks,” she continued, stretching her front paws out in front of her like a queen settling onto a velvet cushion, “and you just so happen to be staring at the one shop in the square that deals in books.”
I lifted one shoulder in a small shrug. “Technically she sells all books.”
Skylar Blue’s whiskers twitched with patience. “Sugar,” she said slowly, “that woman sits in that shop all day listening to folks talk while they browse the shelves. If something’s stirring in this town, she’s already heard about it.”
I watched Della through the glass as she set the stack of books down on a display table near the front window.
She paused there for a moment, adjusting one of the hardcovers so it faced the street just right.
A little knot of curiosity tugged in the back of my mind. Maybe Skylar Blue had a point.
Celestial Falls might look like a quiet little town on the outside, but news traveled through it faster than cinnamon through warm dough. And if there was one place in town where people wandered in, lingered, and talked about their lives without even realizing they were doing it—it was a bookstore.
I leaned one shoulder against the counter and exhaled slowly. “Still,” I murmured, mostly to myself, “I’m not sure what cinnamon rolls and candle visions have to do with Della Monroe.”
Skylar Blue’s tail flicked once more. “Oh, honey,” she said softly, “in this town everything eventually has something to do with something.”
Outside, the morning sun slipped higher above the rooftops, and the light through the windows shifted just enough to make the glass across the square flash for a brief second. For the smallest moment, I could have sworn the glow in Della’s window carried the same manuscript-gold shimmer I had seen in the dough.
I straightened slowly.
Skylar Blue followed my gaze. “Well, now,” she murmured. Her voice held just a touch of satisfaction.
“That’s interesting,” I said.
Shady Creek Books occupied a handsome old storefront directly across the street. It sat close enough to Heavenly Desserts that, on quiet mornings, I could just read the chalkboard Della changed every day beside her front door. I leaned forward and squinted through the bakery window, pressing my fingertips lightly against the cool glass as I tried to make out the words from across the square. The early light had that pale, buttery color that only showed up before the day got properly started. It spilled across the brick sidewalks and caught the edges of the storefront windows, turning everything soft and quiet.
Today’s quote was already written in Della’s neat looping chalk. A story worth telling always starts with the one you’re afraid to say out loud.
I read it once, then again more slowly.
Something about the sentence lingered in my thoughts in a way I couldn’t quite explain. It felt important somehow, the way certain words do when they settle somewhere just behind your ribs.
Across the square, the bookstore’s wind chimes rang. The sound floated through the still morning air and slipped easily through the bakery door that I had propped open for the fresh air. The tone was bright and musical, the kind of sound that usually drifted around lazily when a breeze passed through town.
Except there was no breeze.
The chimes rang again. Louder this time.
My shoulders tightened without my permission.
Celestial Falls was a town that had a habit of whispering to people if they paid close enough attention. Most folks heard nothing more than the creak of an old porch swing or the rustle of leaves, but living there as a spiritualist meant the whispers reached me a little more clearly.
And wind chimes starting to sing without wind was the sort of thing that made me pause. I noticed it the way I noticed most strange little things in that town—I tucked it quietly into the back of my mind and gave it a label.
Probably nothing.
Also, very possibly something.
Skylar Blue rested across the windowsill beside me in her usual position of absolute authority. Her silver blue fur shimmered faintly where the sunlight touched it, and her tail draped neatly over the edge of the counter like a decorative ribbon that had been placed there on purpose.
She lifted her head slowly and turned her golden gaze from the square to me. She did not say a single word.
That silence carried a weight that made my stomach tighten. “It’s just wind chimes,” I said out loud.
Skylar blinked slowly. Her expression held the patient look of a creature who had lived long enough to understand that the words ‘it’s just’ were almost always followed by something that was not just anything at all.
I shifted my weight and folded my arms across my apron. “They’re loud today,” I added, mostly because the quiet between us had begun to stretch. “That’s all.”
Skylar turned her attention back toward the square without another comment. Which, in Skylar Blue language, meant she was fully prepared to let me discover my mistake on my own.
I pushed away from the counter and forced my thoughts back to the task in front of me. The opening checklist waited beside the register, written in my own careful handwriting and smudged slightly with flour. Routine had a way of settling my nerves.
Lights on.
Coffee brewing.
Cash drawer counted.
Pastry display arranged so the cinnamon rolls caught the best morning light.
Behind me, Quinn and Wren finishing their morning work. A cabinet door closed softly. Metal trays slid across the prep counter with a faint scrape. The warm scent of butter and cinnamon drifted through the air, mixing with the rich smell of fresh coffee.
Time moved faster than I realized it had. One moment I was straightening the napkin holder beside the register, and the next, the front door opened with a cheerful jingle.
Grace Ogden stepped inside. She wore her usual cowboy boots and a graphic tee that read I ONLY DRINK COFFEE ON DAYS THAT END IN Y.
Which meant every day.
Which meant the shirt was less a joke and more a personal philosophy.
“Morning,” she said as she crossed the bakery floor.
“Good morning,” I replied.
Wren emerged from the kitchen at the same moment carrying a glass cake plate piled high with scones. The clear dome rattled lightly as she set it carefully on top of the display case.
“What are you doing out so early?” I asked Grace.
Grace didn’t answer immediately. Her eyes had already locked onto the scones. “Oh, I’ll take one of those,” she said, reaching toward the glass dome.
Her fingers barely made it halfway before I swatted her hand away.
Grace pulled her hand back with a grin that suggested she had expected exactly that reaction.
“Grace Ogden,” I said firmly.
She pointed at the scone she always chose. “The cranberry orange.”
Of course she did. Grace had ordered the same breakfast since the day we met. She saw no reason to change a system that had been working perfectly well for years.
“The visiting author,” she said suddenly as I slipped the scone into a paper bag. “You heard about the visiting author?”
“No,” I said as I poured her coffee into a thick ceramic mug. “But I do love books.”
Grace gave me a look that suggested this information was neither new nor surprising. “Shady Creek Books,” she said. “Big deal, apparently. Della has been fluttering around town all week getting ready.”
I set the mug in front of her.
Grace Ogden was my best friend in Celestial Falls—my best mortal friend, she probably would have said if she had known there were other categories.
She did not.
And explaining that situation was something I had chosen to avoid entirely.
Grace processed the world through stories. It was part of what made her good at her job at the Daily Siftings, the local newspaper. She was always chasing the next interesting thing before it fully happened.
She could drink coffee, eat breakfast, and take notes at the same time without ever looking rude.
“Patrice Holloway,” Grace said as she climbed onto the stool at the counter.
I leaned against the opposite side and watched her.
“Southern gothic writer,” she continued. “Big name. Della convinced her to come to Celestial Falls for a signing. Apparently she is hosting a book club and signing while she is here.”
Grace pulled out her phone and held it up so I could see the screen.
The cover of the book filled the display. Dark trees draped in Spanish moss stretched across the background. Candlelight flickered in the shadows between the branches. The title read The Binding Spell.
Grace lowered the phone and wrapped both hands around her coffee mug. “You should come,” she said. “It’s tomorrow, but she’s having a book signing tonight.”
“Book club,” I repeated slowly.
The words settled somewhere deep in my chest, and for a moment the image of the cinnamon roll dough floated right back into my thoughts. The soft spirals. The faint red candle marks. The manuscript glow that had filled the kitchen only minutes earlier.
I wrapped my fingers around the edge of the counter and stared down into Grace’s coffee for a second, watching the steam curl up in lazy white ribbons.
Was that it?
Was that what the dough had been trying to tell me?
I hated how vague my aleuromancy still was. The visions showed up whenever they pleased and left me to do all the guessing afterward.
A book.
Candles.
Manuscript gold.
Now a book club.
My heart ticked a little faster as the pieces nudged against each other in my mind.
“I’ll have to check with Della about it,” I finally said, lifting my gaze back to Grace. “And I haven’t even read the book. Plus, I probably won’t have time.”
Grace took a slow sip of her coffee and watched me over the rim of the mug. “You should come anyway,” she said. Her tone carried the calm certainty of someone who already knew exactly how this was going to end.
I pressed my lips together and shrugged one shoulder. That way I wasn’t committing to anything just yet. But I was not closing the door either.
Grace lowered her mug and smiled into it, the way people do when they have quietly predicted an outcome and are enjoying watching it unfold. “Well,” she said as she slid off the stool, “let me know. Because if you go, I will.”
She grabbed her bagged scone and headed toward the door, pushing it open with her shoulder. The little bell above the frame jingled brightly as she stepped out into the morning sunshine.
I watched her cross the square for a moment before turning back toward the bakery.
The quiet didn’t last long.
Mayor Graham Rose arrived next. He came through the door with the slightly rushed energy of someone who had meant to stop in quickly but had already decided he might stay longer than necessary. His tie was a little crooked, and he carried a folder tucked under his arm that looked suspiciously full of town paperwork.
“Morning, Lo,” he said with cheerful enthusiasm.
“Morning, Mayor,” I replied.
He ordered a blueberry muffin.
Then he lingered.
And lingered.
And lingered some more.
Mayor Graham Rose was our mayor in the same way a slightly nervous golden retriever might be a mayor. He was enthusiastic. He was widely loved. And he had a habit of sniffing around situations that might not strictly be his business.
He stood near the counter with his muffin plate and asked about the new pastry flavors.
Then he asked where I sourced my butter.
Then he asked if the cinnamon rolls were selling well that week.
After about ten minutes of that, he leaned forward slightly and rested his elbows on the counter.
“So,” he said casually, “heard anything interesting lately?”
Something about the way he asked made the small hairs along the back of my neck lift again.
“Interesting about what?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing specific.”
He flashed the wide campaign-poster smile that had helped him win the last election by a comfortable margin. “Town’s been quiet,” he said. “That’s good. Quiet is good.”
The way he said it sounded suspiciously similar to someone saying I’m fine when they were very much not fine.
He took another bite of his muffin and gestured lightly around the bakery with the remaining half. “For some reason,” he added, “folks come in here, eat a pastry, drink coffee, and start telling you things.”
He paused.
Then he studied my face just a little too carefully. “And you hear all kinds of things, don’t you?”
“What can I say, it’s in the dough,” I teased, though it wasn’t untrue. “Who can resist a good, sweet treat?” I quickly followed up, since he had no idea of my spiritual gifts.
The mayor bought two muffins, carefully choosing the ones that had survived Quinn’s learning experience, then he left.
I watched him through the bakery window as he stepped out into the square. The morning sun had climbed higher now, warming the brick sidewalks and casting soft light across the storefronts. The town had fully woken up. A car rolled slowly past the courthouse, someone laughed near the flower shop, and the faint smell of fresh coffee drifted in every time the door opened.
Mayor Rose paused halfway across the square and glanced toward Shady Creek Books. Then he looked away again quickly, the way people do when they know they’ve been caught staring at something they would rather pretend they hadn’t noticed at all.
I leaned one shoulder against the counter and watched him continue toward Town Hall, his steps a little quicker than they had been when he first arrived.
Skylar Blue remained on the windowsill beside me, draped across the warm patch of sunlight like a queen surveying her kingdom. Her silver-blue fur shimmered softly in the light, and her golden eyes followed the mayor until he disappeared around the corner.
“He’s nervous about something,” I said quietly.
Skylar flicked the tip of her tail. She did not disagree.
The morning settled after that.
The rush faded into that gentle mid-morning quiet when the square moved at an easy pace. The bell over the bakery door chimed every few minutes instead of every few seconds. A few regulars came in for coffee. Someone picked up a pastry on their way to work. The scent of butter, sugar, and fresh espresso hung warmly in the air.
Behind the counter, Wren carefully restocked the display case. She moved pastries from the cooling racks with the kind of concentration that made it clear she still felt a little honored every time she handled them.
In the kitchen, Quinn clattered around with surprising productivity.
Even better, he wasn’t burning anything.
Outside the window, the square carried on with its ordinary rhythm. Della moved in and out of Shady Creek Books with stacks of hardcovers tucked against her side. The wind chimes beside her door hung quietly now, motionless against the frame.
Everything looked normal.
Which should have made me feel better.
Instead, the small knot of curiosity in the back of my mind refused to loosen.
I returned to the prep counter and reached for the dough that had finished its rise.
That batch was for maple pecan sweet knots, one of the bakery favorites that smelled like warm autumn mornings no matter what time of year it actually was. The dough felt soft and pillowy under my hands when I turned it out onto the lightly floured counter.
A soft cloud of flour rose into the air as it landed, catching the sunlight that streamed through the kitchen window.
The scent of yeast drifted upward first, warm and slightly sweet. Beneath it lingered the deeper smell of brown sugar and maple that had soaked into the dough during its first rise.
I pressed my palms into it gently. The dough gave beneath my hands with a quiet sigh.
Push.
Fold.
Turn.
My hands knew the motions without me needing to think. The counter felt cool under my wrists while the dough stayed warm and soft beneath my fingers. Each fold smoothed the surface a little more, each push stretching the dough until it reached that perfect balance between elastic and tender.
The kitchen filled with the soft sounds of baking work—the faint scrape of dough against the wood counter. The low hum of the ovens holding their heat. Somewhere behind me, Quinn dropped a spoon into the sink with a loud clatter.
Push.
Fold.
Turn.
The rhythm settled my thoughts the way baking always did, which was why it caught me completely off guard when the dough showed me something I had not asked for.
It came quickly.
It was not the slow glow of manuscript gold or candlelight like earlier. It arrived as something lighter. A flicker of sensation that brushed across my thoughts and disappeared almost as soon as it appeared.
My aleuromancy had been doing that lately.
The powers I had inherited were still settling into their new shape, and sometimes they misfired the way an old radio station slips through the static for a moment before vanishing again.
It was exactly like that.
I didn’t really see the vision at first—I felt it. A sudden shift in the air around me.
My hands paused against the dough as something passed through my mind like a memory that didn’t belong to me.
Then the image came. It was a woman I didn’t recognize. She stood somewhere bright, sunlight catching the jewels at her throat and scattering tiny flashes of light across the stones. Her hair moved slightly as she turned her head, and the sound of her laughter floated toward me.
It was a warm sound—confident. The kind of laughter that filled a room.
But there was something tucked inside it, something hidden just beneath the surface. A secret. The feeling of someone holding onto something just a little longer before letting it go.
The impression lasted no longer than a heartbeat. Then the dough rested quietly beneath my hands again. The kitchen returned to normal, and the moment was gone.
I stood at my kitchen workstation with my hands buried in the dough and stared at absolutely nothing.
The bakery around me continued moving the way it always did. The ovens hummed. Quinn clattered somewhere behind me. The scent of butter and sugar hung in the warm air.
None of it quite reached me.
“New power hiccup,” I said to the room in general. “Completely normal. Settling.” My voice sounded steady enough, which was impressive considering my brain was still replaying that flash over and over.
The woman with the jewels.
The laughter that sounded like it was hiding something.
I pushed the dough forward with the heel of my hand and folded it back over itself, trying to focus on the familiar rhythm of the work.
Push.
Fold.
Turn.
Sometimes my powers worked like that—they didn’t hand me answers. Instead they handed me impressions. Small pieces of something that only made sense later, when the rest of the picture showed up.
It was often less a vision and more the town itself tapping me on the shoulder and saying “pay attention.”
I was still learning how to do that. Paying attention to things that weren’t clear was not my natural strength.
I shaped the dough into neat rounds and set them into the pan. The metal felt cool against my fingers after the warmth of the dough. When the tray slid into the oven, a rush of heat brushed against my face, carrying the sweet scent of sugar and butter back into the kitchen.
I closed the oven door and wiped my hands on a towel before washing them in the sink.
Water ran warm over my fingers, rinsing away the last bits of flour.
I tried very hard not to think about the flash again. Luckily, my phone dinged before my thoughts could circle back around. I reached for it on the counter.
It was Ace. How’s the morning going? Thinking about swinging by for coffee if you’re not swamped.
I read the message twice.
Pretty good, I typed back. Quinn burned the muffins. Come by anytime.
Three dots appeared almost immediately, then his reply popped up. A laughing emoji, then On my way.
I set my phone down on the counter and looked at it for a moment longer than necessary.
Ace was the local vet. He was young. Friendly. Easy to be around.
And, yes, single.
We had gone out a handful of times over the past few weeks. Dinner once. Coffee twice. One long walk through the park that had ended with us sitting on a bench watching the sunset over the river.
We’d had fun together.
But somewhere along the way, I’d realized that the spark I’d thought I felt at the beginning had not exactly grown into anything stronger.
“Oh no,” Skylar Blue’s voice purred lazily inside my head.
I turned slightly and narrowed my eyes at the windowsill.
“Don’t you ‘oh no’ me,” I muttered under my breath.
Skylar Blue lay stretched across the sunlit wood with her tail wrapped neatly around her paws. Her golden eyes blinked slowly at me in a look that suggested she was enjoying my discomfort entirely too much.
I could have sworn she rolled her eyes.
“Fine,” she said sweetly. “I won’t text Orin.”
I froze.
“I didn’t say anything about texting Orin,” I said.
Skylar Blue tucked her paws more comfortably under her chest. “No,” she agreed. “You just thought about it loud enough to rattle the windows.”
I ignored that.
Mostly because she was right.
I had no idea where the sudden urge had come from. For most of my life I had made a very dedicated effort to keep my distance from Orin.
He had been a complication back home.
A charming complication. And a stubborn one too, considering he had followed me all the way to Celestial Falls after my parents had finally agreed to let me move there.
Which was not something a person did casually.
Still.
Orin hadn’t texted me.
He was perfectly capable of texting me if he wanted to say something.
There was no reason for me to text him first.
None at all.
I turned away from the window and grabbed the mixing bowl. “Fresh batch of muffins,” I announced to no one in particular. “That’s what we’re doing now.”
Which was exactly what I did next.
I measured the flour carefully into the bowl, the fine powder slipping through the sieve in soft white clouds. Sugar followed. Then baking powder. A pinch of salt.
I whisked the dry ingredients together with a soft shhh sound against the metal bowl.
In a second bowl I mixed the wet ingredients. Eggs. Milk. Melted butter that smelled warm and rich.
The blueberries went in last. They rolled gently through the batter as I folded everything together with a spatula, leaving faint purple streaks behind.
The work kept my hands busy, which meant my brain couldn’t wander quite as far.
By the time I scooped the batter into the muffin pan and slid the tray into the oven, I realized I had successfully not texted Orin for the entire duration of the process.
Progress.
I wiped my hands again and wandered out to the front of the bakery.
The square stretched out beyond the windows in the gentle light of late morning. People moved along the sidewalks. Someone paused outside the flower shop to admire a display of potted herbs.
Across the street, Shady Creek Books stood with its door propped open. The wind chimes beside the door swayed softly.
There was still no breeze.
I leaned against the counter and looked at the chalkboard propped beside the bookstore entrance.
Della’s handwriting curled across the dark surface in careful white chalk. A story worth telling always starts with the one you’re afraid to say out loud.
I read the sentence again, twice.
Something was coming.
Celestial Falls knew it.
The town always seemed to know things before I did. It spoke in strange little ways that you could hear if you paid attention long enough.
Wind chimes that moved without wind.
Quotes that appeared at just the right moment.
The quality of the morning light.
And the way a batch of dough had reached out and handed me a glimpse of something I had never asked to see.
end of excerpt
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