Chapter Eight
“Do you gals make cakes?” Rudolf asked Lee and Cat quite seriously as he stood on the other side of the case of pastries, cakes, and cookies at the Crying Cat Bakery.
Lee glanced at her wife with an exasperated expression. “Seriously, you say I can’t kill the king of the fae? Are you still standing by that statement?”
Cat laughed and toddled off toward the back. “Just you wait. He’ll kill himself off eventually.”
Lee groaned as she watched the other baker retreat into the kitchen. “I’m waiting for a certain someone to die, and it’s killing me.”
“You ladies are cute.” Rudolf slapped the counter impatiently. “But seriously. Cakes. Do you make them?”
“It’s a bakery,” Sophia pointed out.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t mean they make cakes,” he countered.
She pointed at the turquoise and pink cake with a unicorn decorated on it. “What about that?”
“It’s a unicorn,” he remarked. “What I need is a birthday cake for the Captains’ one year mark. Something with chocolate and not too much rum.”
“Are you sure about that?” Sophia asked.
He thought for a moment. “Yeah, you’re right. Lots and lots of rum. They have pirate’s blood in them after all, being captains and all.”
“You realize that they don’t, right, and giving them a name… Never mind.” Sophia abandoned her argument since it would only give her a headache.
“Yeah, we can make your triplets a cake for their birthday,” Lee stated.
“They aren’t triplets,” Rudolf corrected. “There are only three of them.”
Sophia smiled sweetly at the assassin baker. “Isn’t it great that he’s so attractive?”
“So great that it makes my trigger finger jumpy,” Lee replied. “But if you want to do something cool for your girls, who probably have everything already, I might have a suggestion.”
Rudolf looked relieved. “That would be amazing. They really do have everything. I was going to buy their pony a pony, but I’m up for suggestions.”
“Well, I need to check into it and see if it’s still around,” Lee stated. “It’s invite-only and very exclusive, but I might be able to get you in. I offed the guy’s wife a few years ago, and he owes me a favor.”
Sophia closed her eyes for a beat. “Again, best if you don’t share information about your assassin business with me.”
“I mean offed as in… Yeah, never mind.” Lee shrugged in surrender. “I can’t figure out how to spin that one.”
Sophia pointed at a chocolate chip cookie. “Is there anything magical in that?”
“By magical, what do you mean?” Lee asked.
“I mean something that will make me hallucinate—well, hallucinate more,” Sophia answered.
Lee tilted her head. “What answer are you looking for here? Is hallucinating more a bad thing? Or is that what you’re going for?”
Sophia sighed. “I’d prefer fewer hallucinations.”
Whatever Lunis was doing to help against the curse’s effects was working. She only hoped that it continued.
“There’s a touch of Tormenium nutmeg in there, since that’s my secret ingredient—” Lee’s eyes widened as her mouth slammed shut.
“What?” Sophia wondered why the baker had a sudden look of horror on her face.
“Well, now that I let that slip, I have to kill you.” Lee hung her head and looked disappointed.
“That totally sucks.” Rudolf nodded like he understood. “Can I call my wife first? She’ll be excited but pissed that I won’t be bringing home dinner, so I need to let her know to fend for herself…forever…”
“She’s not going to kill us,” Sophia said dryly and crossed her arms over her chest.
“I’m sorry, I have to,” Lee argued. “I’ll make it fast.” She pulled a knife from behind her back with a menacing look on her face.
“If the cookie isn’t poisoned, can I have one please?” Sophia asked, not at all flustered. “Ru and I have a meeting, so we’ll take the table in the corner since apparently no one wants to come in here, and we can have some privacy to discuss our business strategy.”
“Fine.” Lee put the knife down and trotted over to the counter. “I won’t kill you, but you must forget that I said the secret ingredient in all our food is Tormenium nutmeg.”
“Repeating it helps with the forgetting process,” Sophia imparted, then took the cookie Lee offered her before giving one to Rudolf.
“And there are no customers here because I shooed them all away,” Lee stated. “They kept buying stuff. That’s going to require me to go in the back and make more stuff, and that’s exhausting.”
Sophia glanced at Rudolf as they sat at the corner table. “Remember that we don’t take business advice from Lee.”
He snapped his fingers, and a pad and pen appeared. The ball point scribbled across the pad hovering in the air—taking notes. “Don’t take business advice from the assassin baker. Great stuff. What’s next for our business plan?”
Sophia sighed. “Get a new business partner.”
Chapter Nine
King Rudolf wasn’t a bad business partner. As usual, he surprised Sophia with his competence. The king of the fae had a very savvy business mind. In less time than she would have expected, they knocked out a business plan for their new company that they were calling Heals Pills. One of the next steps was to put the elixir in gel caps so they were easier to pop on the go.
Of course, for everything remarkably intelligent that Rudolf said, he’d follow it up with something about how magicians wouldn’t die out now since they’d find each other attractive enough after taking Heals Pills to breed.
Sophia was aware that one of the potential benefits was increased beauty, but her motive was to offer an option for ailments that couldn’t be easily healed through other means. Heals Pills would be huge, and help tons of magical creatures.
The pair probably would have knocked out a lot more, but Sophia got a message from Papa Creola. It read, “If you don’t want a mark on your soul anymore, then stop by the Fantastical Armory.”
She couldn’t help but laugh at his phrasing. Like she was going to say, “Well, I like not being able to sleep and having this brooding sense of doom in my spirit. Think I’ll keep it.”
After getting the message, she bolted out of the Crying Cat Bakery as fast as she could and sprinted all the way to the Fantastical Armory. When she entered the weapons shop, she found Subner unsurprisingly blowing smoke rings from a hookah sitting on the floor next to him.
“So you’re getting high too.” Sophia looked at the stringy-haired elf. “Same thing is happening at the Crying Cat Bakery down the way.”
“Like a true Nature’s child, we were born, born to be wild.” Subner repeated the words of Steppenwolf.
“Not me,” Sophia argued. “I was born to deal with weirdos, apparently.”