Death's Hexed Hobnobs Read online

  The next second he was gone, leaving her with a very angry were-jaguar and a lot of questions to answer. The New Year was not off to a great start.

  2

  “Good morning, Simon,” January said to the little black cat, who was watching her from the top of the kitchen cupboard. “Will you be taking coffee this morning, or just the usual tin of unidentified meaty bits?”

  The small cat meowed and jumped down to the floor, walking over to his empty bowl and staring up at January, piteously.

  “Meat surprise it is.”

  How January had ended up with a pet cat was a long story. After Lewis, the drummer in her covers band, had bafflingly decided to try and murder her and had wound up dead himself, she’d gone to his house to try and find out his motive for wanting her dead. There’d been a whole lot of crazy in that house. Lewis had been playing with witchcraft. The black cat had been his, but although January had tried to get it to stay at the house to be collected by the authorities when Lewis was reported missing, the cat had decided to follow her home. After that, she’d pretty much had to let it stay. Handing in a missing person’s cat to the local cat rescue might incriminate her.

  January glanced at the clock on the wall and finished her coffee with a sigh. An early start at Madame Rose’s Tearooms was never a fun experience after a full moon night. Unfortunately, Monday was her day to bake the special.

  “See you later, Simon. Try not to start a fight with Ryan. He’s bigger than you.”

  The cat blinked at her. She searched its yellow eyes for a moment, looking for anything more than just a cat. January shook her head and grabbed her bag. She was definitely getting paranoid.

  The frost was still on the ground when she walked out into the winter sunshine. January cast a loving look in the direction of her Lotus car, but decided to leave it on the driveway. Nice days like this one deserved to be appreciated, and she needed the walking time to think.

  So much had changed in the space of one night, and it was all because of Gregory Drax. You shouldn’t shoot the messenger, she thought, while she walked past sparkling fields of white. Knowing that someone was willing to pay for your death was better than remaining ignorant. At least now she could prepare.

  It was just a huge annoyance that that was all she could do. Holing up and hiding made her want to gnash her teeth, but Gregory was right – what more could they do until the old vampires decided to show themselves? They’d hidden their existence from the world, presumably for millennia. She didn’t think it was likely they were going to come out of the woodwork now.

  I’ll just have to survive whatever comes… then they’ll have to come out to play, she thought. A magpie flashed across her vision. January tried to ignore the traditional omen of ill luck. The way her life was going had nothing to do with luck.

  Tired of thinking morbid thoughts, she steered her mind onto the next problem of the day: what was she going to bake? The New Year was supposed to signify a fresh start. January thought that something citrusy could be just the ticket… with an alcoholic twist. After all, it was Monday.

  She opened the back door of the tearooms and was instantly met with the delicious smell of baking. Her nose twitched when she took in the sweet and spicy scent of walnuts and coffee. Then her eyes alighted on the cake itself, bubbling in the oven.

  It was quite a cake.

  There were four tiers of sponge all cooking in separate pans. They were just begging to be sandwiched together with buttercream and topped with some more walnuts.

  Danny - a new addition to the staff at Madame Rose’s - walked into the kitchen.

  “Hey, Jan… what do you think? This time around I think I’ve really got a rise from the mix! Maybe a little too much.” He shot her a guilty grin.

  Danny had started working at the tearooms three months ago, after Matt (the coffee maker) had been found murdered in the forest. Only January and Gregory knew that he had been a horse shifter who had been killing off vampires and trying to frame January for his crimes.

  “It smells amazing… but I thought I was making the special this morning?”

  Danny slapped a hand to his forehead. His dark, slicked back hair flopped forwards. “Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry! I literally got in a few minutes ago and knocked this up because no one else was here. I forgot all about the rota.”

  January shrugged and smiled.

  The rota was a new thing that had been put in place to stop Lucy (another waitress) from complaining about cake recipe clashes. The idea being that they wrote in advance what they were planning to bake. In practice, January generally wrote down vague ideas and changed them at the last minute, making sure her cakes weren’t the same as Lucy’s.

  “It’s okay. I’ll make a tray bake or something to go with your special. Honestly, your cake looks way more impressive than what I was planning,” she admitted, a little grudgingly.

  Baking was her passion. During rare flights of fancy, January considered using the money she’d saved up from being a bounty hunter to open her own bakery. It was a daydream she always finished by promising herself she’d consider it when life gave her a quiet moment.

  Right now, she wasn’t certain if that moment would ever come.

  “You’re the best, Jan! My slot was on Wednesday. Lucy’s baking tomorrow.” Danny pulled a face and January tried to hide her smile.

  Lucy’s cakes were infamous. They looked amazing, but cut into them and you were met with dry cardboard. She and Danny had been passing out secret copies of the baking rota to all of the regulars who wished to avoid running the gauntlet of Lucy’s cakes.

  “What do you think of a triple chocolate tray bake?” She said to Danny, who gave her the double thumbs up, a goofy grin on his face.

  The shop door bell rang and he walked off to see to their first customers. January smiled at his receding figure.

  Danny was a bit of an enigma. He had the best hair on a guy that January had ever seen. It was longish on the top and seemed to do whatever he wanted it to. He was also double-take good looking, but somehow managed to not be in your face about it because of his goofy personality. She’d never seen him around before, but according to Danny, he’d lived in nearby town Talvington all his life. Clearly, he was leading a quiet one.

  January opened the cupboard door and surveyed the vast and varied stash of chocolate. She paused for a second and then swept out the lot.

  When she said triple chocolate, she meant it.

  Half an hour later, there was the usual crash as Lucy came in and threw her obnoxiously large bag down on the counter. January winced when it nearly collided with the four tiers of well-risen cake that were currently cooling on the counter. Danny was pretty mild mannered, but she had a hunch they’d see another side of him if his cake was decimated before decoration.

  “Have you seen this? I just found this poster in town!” Lucy waved a brightly coloured A3 sheet of paper in front of January’s face.

  “What is it?”

  The writing was moving too fast for her to read.

  “A baking competition! There’s a shop in Hobbling High Street that’s been empty for ages, which is why the council are running this competition to find the best baker in the area. The winner will get a year’s free lease of the shop and some funding to turn it into a bakery, or a cake and coffee type shop. That’s what the poster says, anyway…” Lucy finished, her false eyelashes practically popping off her face in excitement.

  January looked at the poster again and wondered where Lucy had ‘borrowed’ it from. She was probably already thinking about cutting down on the competition.

  “You should go show that to Danny. He’ll probably want to enter, too,” January said.

  Lucy’s expression glazed. January quickly cottoned on that her little moment of sharing hadn’t been meant as an invitation for them all to enter. Ha! You should have thought that one through! She thought, with a secret smile.

  She turned back to her tray bake mix and added another layer of
chocolate, for luck.

  The prize for winning this baking competition was her dream come true. Sure, she didn’t need the funding, but wouldn’t it be amazing to be the justified winner and official best baker around? At the moment, she had zero qualifications or accolades. All of her cooking ability was due to hours of experimentation and a sprinkling of talent.

  “I think I’m going to enter,” she said aloud, to make it into a promise.

  “Me too, if you’re talking about the competition Lucy just tried to downplay to me,” Danny said, walking into the kitchen to see if his cake was cool. “Apparently it probably isn’t my thing?” He raised a dark eyebrow at January who giggled in an un-January like way. “You’ve got to admit, the prize is crazy good. It’s like, completely life changing. Wouldn’t it be insane if one of us won it?”

  “I already consider you my greatest competition,” January said with a smile, looking down at the walnut and coffee cake. “Watch out, or I may be tempted to start sabotaging your bakes.”

  Danny grabbed a spatula and held it out like a sword. “Step away from the cake!”

  “Of course, when I say sabotage, what I really mean is cut a giant slice out of the middle and eat it,” January said, reached for a knife and pretending to stab at the unfinished cake.

  “Stop it! If you quit trying to maim my masterpiece, I might sneak you a slice later,” Danny promised.

  January lowered her weapon. “Trying to fatten me up, are we, so I’m too big to take part in the competition? I know your game…”

  Danny reached across and grabbed a chunk of chocolate that January had foolishly left out on the counter. “There. Now we’re both going to be fatties. Perhaps we’ll get extra points in the competition for how much we look like we enjoy our own work?”

  “Let’s face it… would you trust a cake shop run by a skinny person?” She commented.

  They both tried not to think about Lucy’s waif-like figure.

  A man with a blonde ponytail walked into the tearoom as the coffee time rush hour got underway. January finished serving up a slice of Danny’s towering coffee and walnut cake and slid over to see him, glad that Charlie Rose, the owner of the tearooms, had chosen to take today off.

  “I’ve finally got us a drummer,” Mike, the lead guitarist of Vicious Little Darlings announced.

  January’s eyebrows shot up. Ever since their last drummer Lewis had mysteriously disappeared (as far as the public was concerned) they’d been forced to use stand-ins for the few remaining gigs they had booked. After the shifter bar had been shut down and the local vampire population had nearly halved, both of the band’s residencies had been cancelled. Mike was meant to be looking for new venues to play, but pubs tended to book their bands up to a year in advance.

  “What are they like?” January asked, curious as to who would be brave enough to join a band where their predecessor was missing, presumed dead.

  “She’s pretty darn amazing!” Mike said, an odd sort of smile on his face. If January’s eyebrows could stretch even higher, they would have disappeared into her hairline.

  “Another girl in the band… that makes you the odd one out, Mike,” was all she could think of to say. She hoped Mike had actually checked that this girl could play the drums and hadn’t just fallen head over heels for her.

  “True… but I’m considering wearing makeup and marketing us as an all-girl band. It could mean more bookings.” January looked at him to see if he was joking or not.

  She couldn’t tell.

  “You might have to get rid of the beard.”

  Mike’s beard was a rather pathetic collection of blonde wisps on his chin.

  His hand shot up and covered it, defensively. “Maybe we’ll stay as we are. See you at practice tonight?”

  January nodded, still curious about their new drummer. “What’s her name?” She asked, not wanting to appear ignorant when they met later.

  “Leah… Leah Malone,” Mike said and barely managed to keep from swooning.

  January tried not to shake her head. She hoped Leah either put Mike down fast or took him up on the offer, or things were going to get pretty awkward. It’s too bad Mike couldn’t have been this lovesick for Lewis. Lewis might still be alive then, she thought and then scratched the idea. Lewis had been an obsessed psycho who was willing to kill to get his way. Even if Mike had returned the sentiment, it would probably have ended with Mike pushing up the daisies instead of Lewis.

  Love was seldom as fun as the movies made out.

  3

  January felt rather ridiculous searching the internet for ‘coven of witches nearby’. Fortunately, Ryan was out that evening, trying to work out a way to get the shifter bar out of debt and back to opening with a licence. She was hoping at some point she’d find a way to persuade him to let her bail the bar out. There was a lot of money sitting in her account doing nothing. It may as well go to good use – especially now she was the pack leader. She should be supporting her kin. So far, the right moment hadn’t come up, and after the unfortunate housing revelation Gregory had sprung upon Ryan, she wasn’t sure what his reaction would be when he found out she was in fact, rather wealthy. He knew she’d killed vampires for money, but she didn’t think he’d ever considered how much she’d been paid for it.

  January stowed these thoughts for later as the search results came back and she clicked on the first web page.

  She blinked as the screen flashed up with a starry background. Some truly horrendous font choices welcomed you to The Society of Witchwood Witches and Magical Practitioners. January sighed and reached for her coffee while her eyes slid down the page, scanning their preachy text that warned dabblers to stay away from magic. This really wasn’t what she was looking for. She wasn’t even certain these ‘witches’ were the real deal.

  She was about to click back to the search results when something caught her eye. It was only as she’d shifted her gaze that it had become visible, fuzzy and super-imposed on top of all the witchy drivel.

  If you can read this, call us and tell us!

  January blinked again and it got clearer. For a second, she thought it must be some strange delayed advertisement, but then she felt the back of her neck tingle and knew it was magic. She pulled out her mobile and went to the ‘contact us’ page. Her fingers hesitated before pressing the call button. The last time she’d followed the advice of magic writing, she’d ended up locked into a life as a vampire bounty hunter. This is hardly the same, she thought and pressed call.

  It wasn’t hard for January to spot the group of people she was meant to be meeting for coffee. Out of all the visitors to the chain coffee shop, one group was louder and more female than the rest. After calling the coven and telling them that she could see their little invitation, she’d been asked to their coffee morning meet the next day. Fortunately, it was her day off from Madame Rose’s - although she dreaded to think what Charlie would say if she saw January in this particular coffee shop.

  “Hi, I’m January,” she said, feeling seriously awkward when all of the smartly, but brightly dressed women turned and stared at her. There were a couple of men present, January noticed, but they were definitely overshadowed by their female counterparts.

  “Welcome! Welcome to our little group.” A large lady in her early thirties with pale ginger hair stood up and thrust out a hand in greeting. January offered her own in return and it didn’t escape her notice that the woman’s fingers tapped her wrist lightly as they shook. Witch’s handshake, January thought and wondered where she’d picked that up from. Was it instinct?

  The woman whipped her hand back like she’d been scalded.

  “Who… I mean what…” She cleared her throat and frowned. “Who are you?”

  January was definitely taken aback. Normal people were unable to detect her ‘other’ nature. On the plus side, her reaction made this group of witches seem more promising. They might actually be able to help her figure out her own magic.

  “I’m a shifter,
” she said, as quietly as possible, wondering if that was what the woman meant. Hopefully she hadn’t just sprung a whole new world on this group. She looked around and saw that her watchers were all exchanging wide-eyed looks. So they did know what a shifter was.

  “You’re January… you’re the unicorn, aren’t you?” One of the men asked, and now January knew they were definitely neck-deep in the supernatural side of Witchwood.

  “Yes, how is it you know that?” She asked, pasting a light smile on her face to show she was simply curious.

  The man shrugged. “Anyone who’s anyone knows that. You’re all that gets talked about in the supers’ bars around here.”

  January pricked her ears up at that. She knew she was being spoken about, but had not heard of these ‘supers’ bars. The only supernatural places she knew of was the now closed Bingley Bar and The Witchwood Wand, Gregory’s vampire pub. She was also insanely curious as to who, or what, went to these other bars. Unfortunately, asking would show her ignorance.

  “Are you a witch?” A younger blonde woman asked, her forehead creasing.

  January knew how she felt. She was just as confused. “Erm… well, no. I’m just trying to find some stuff out,” she admitted, instantly reminded of the writing on the website warning off dabblers. “I can see things like the magic writing and you all know what I turn into - that’s not exactly normal. There’s some other stuff too I’m wondering about, so really I came here to find someone to talk to. I don’t actually know anything about magic yet,” she confessed, with another false smile. The way this group was scrutinising her had put her on edge.

  “Well… that is interesting!” The first woman said when the awkward silence had passed. “We’ll just start the meeting off as usual then, shall we? January, feel free to grab a coffee and sit in and listen.”

  January nodded and went off to buy herself a cup. Her mouth twisted as she handed over the money. This was definitely not what she’d had in mind when she’d come looking for answers. She felt like she was an exhibit at a zoo. It was just the same as when the visiting shifters stared at her on the full moon night. Perhaps I could get one of them alone, she thought and looked back at the group, trying to pick someone who looked like they knew what they were doing. A couple of witches met her eye and then looked to their neighbours. January got the message. They would be sticking together.