Page 44 of Baking and Angels

It was Helena’s turn to shift uncomfortably, glancing at Rafferty, but not knowing what else to say or do. He thought about leaning in and telling her to pull back on her aura, that it was causing the strange behavior in their hostess, but it lessened on its own anyway. With Ms. Hawthorn doing such a poor job pretending not to watch them, he thought it best not to draw more attention or act any more suspiciously.

“What do you need me to do?”he asked.

“Um, can you… get out some bread?” Helena asked, her worried gaze stuck on the brewing problem at the end of the counter.

He turned to what looked like, and turned out to in fact be, a bread box. Pulling out the plastic-wrapped loaf inside, he brought it to the island where Helena met him with a cutting board and a serrated bread knife.

“Um.” Helena shook her head, refocusing. “Chop up some of those slices into cubes and fill each of these cups.” She turned and went to the refrigerator. With a bit of clatter, she gathered up the aforementioned eggs, butter, and a small jug of milk from the door. “Okay, put like a tablespoon of butter at the bottom of the cup then put the breadcubes in.”

Rafferty paused mid-slice, having filled the first two cups with the bread cubes already.

“Shoot, sorry,” Helena said, realizing. “I should have told you that part first. That’s on me.” She shot a nervous glance toward Ms. Hawthorn, who still hadn’t moved or even turned the page of her newspaper. Every muscle in the woman’s body exuded tension and anxiety.

“It’s not a problem,” Rafferty replied with the same detached voice he would use working under any chef, the kind that said everything was fine and under control. He simply pulled down a sheet of paper towel from a standing roll nearby and dumped the bread cubes onto it. He then eyeballed the butter to cut a tablespoon off, only to realize that on the paper, the producers of this butter had already measured out and marked how much was a tablespoon along the whole length of the paper. If that had been there before, he hadn’t noticed it. The tiny innovation madehim smirk.

“Okay, then when you got that, here’s another bowl,” Helena continued, setting a small mixing bowl next to him. “Mix together the eggs, milk, and cinnamon, then pour over the cubed bread, I mean once you put them back in the cups. Pop each cup into the microwave at a time and cook it for about two to three minutes each. Maybe three since they’re bigger, and then we got it. You got it?”

“How many eggs to milk?” Rafferty asked as he replaced the bread into the now buttered cups.

“Oh! Uh,” Helena paused as she was pulling a book out of her backpack. “One egg per cup, three tablespoons of milk per egg. Cinnamon to taste. Then we add syrup to it after or more butter if you’re Cindy. I did whipped cream once, but, I mean, we had so much sugar on the train,I’m good.”

She set the book down on the counter and let it fall open. Only then did Rafferty recognize it. It explained the same rambling nervousness Helena seemed to be displaying. She was going to mix up one of her grandmother’s hedgewitch potions, written in the margins.

Ms. Hawthorn’s eyes locked onto it with round alarm. “Whatis that?”

“Oh.” Helena put her hand over the pages protectively. “Just my grandmother’s old church cookbook.” Belatedly, she lifted up the opened book in both hands to show the printed cover with its pencil drawing of a church and the year below it behind roughed-up, once-clear-now-yellowish plastic sheets. The titleTrinity Churchgraced thevery top.

Ms. Hawthorn’s eyes narrowed as she studied the worn page, but there simply wasn’t anything obviously wrong with it. Still, Rafferty waited, poised to step between the two women if one decided to irrationally attackthe other.

To his relief, Ms. Hawthorn sat back down. She rubbed a hand to her temples. “I apologize,” she said, closing her eyes. “I haven’t been getting very good sleep lately. Every time I lay down, I keep thinking about what she almost did.”

Dammit,Rafferty thought. He recognized what was happening here. Another effect of the demonic aura. The longer someone was exposed to it, and the weaker willed they were, the more they spilled their secrets. Whether the demon wanted to know them or not.

Ms. Hawthorn was no exception. “I blame myself. I wanted her to succeed so much. She had such a bright future ahead of her, and now it’s all just… gone!” She threw her hands into the air as if it were Cindy’s career turning toconfetti.

“Don’t worry,” Helena assured her, setting the book down to leaf through. “She’ll bounce back, and everything will be fine. Ipromise.”

Ms. Hawthorn’s lips tightened. “Don’t do that. Don’t make promises we both know are impossible to keep without some sort ofmiracle.”

Helena’s aura strengthened again, invisible but stronger. “Well, I intend to do everything I can.” She found whatever she was looking for in the book. Then she went back to her backpack, which put her just out of Ms. Hawthorn’s sight.

“What are you doing with that?” he whispered quietly as she sank next to him toreach it.

She looked up, a little guilty. “What?” she mouthed. Then her lip pouted a little as she drew her mouthin tight.

“Helena—” he tried to warn, only to be cut off as he violently shivered. His mouth tasted of pennies and irrational rage flooded through him. Her aura grew even stronger, enhancing his fears. The urge to fight flooded his mind with visions of grabbing the knife and stabbing flesh over and over. Gripping the edge of the counter, his eyes widened as Helena removed three metal canisters from her pack that he knew for a fact had not existed moments before.

Helena remained oblivious to everything as she popped one open with a satisfied grin.

“What the hell are you doing!?” Cindy’s mother screeched at the top of her lungs, startling Helena. Bits of dried leaves leapt out of the canister at her flinch. She also dropped the third canister, which rolled across the floor towardthe door.

With fierce enraged eyes, Ms. Hawthorn stood at the end of the counter, her hands gripping it with white-knuckle intensity like he was. If it hadn’t been made of granite, Rafferty could imagine her cracking it with that amount of force. She was also wobbling forward and back on her feet, wrestling between her fight and flightresponses.

“It’s tea!” Helena said, truly confused, holding out the open end of the canister to show. “It’s just tea. I… I got the mix from my grandmother’s recipe book, to help with Cindy’s depression. It’s just tea,I swear!”

“It’s just tea,” Rafferty repeated, his voice steady and strong with reasonable assuredness that he had often used on his summoners who went into an utter panic at his presence. While he did not have the same demonic juice in it to influence his mark, it steadied Ms. Hawthorn all the same. Maybe it was because he understood what was happening that allowed him to maintain control.

“It’s just tea?” she also repeated, clearly not believing it, looking to Rafferty, the only other human in the room, even if she didn’t realize it, for confirmation.

---