Seven Year Witch Read online

  Seven Year Witch

  Samantha Silver

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Also by Samantha Silver

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  “I think I’m going to throw up.” Ellie definitely looked a little bit green.

  “Relax,” I said to her gently. “It’s going to be fine.”

  “But what if it isn’t?”

  “That’s what you said the morning of the first weekend market, and it was fine. Remember?”

  “Yeah, but that was different. That was the market. It wasn’t permanent. This is permanent. Look around. Not only is it permanent, but it’s where a paranormal died. It’s where one of the servers murdered a customer. What if everybody decides this is a murder shop? What if nobody comes because they’re afraid they’re going to be poisoned as well?”

  I sighed. “That’s not going to happen, Ellie,” I replied. “For one thing, everybody knows that Bella is in prison now, and that she was the killer. On top of that, have you ever watched any reality TV? If anything, the idea that this place might be haunted is only going to make your new bakery even more popular.”

  We were currently standing behind the counter at The Witching Flour, the brand-new bakery run by Ellie that was scheduled to open in just a few minutes. Ellie had signed the lease on this place three weeks ago along with another witch, Lucy, who made custom magically enhanced enamel pins and sold them every week at the market. The two of them were sharing the property, with Lucy taking up the right side of the store and Ellie taking the left side and the entire back kitchen area.

  For the last three weeks, Ellie, Amy, Sara, and I had been working almost nonstop trying to get this place looking perfect for this, the big day: the day The Witching Flour opened to the public.

  And I had to admit, it looked absolutely perfect.

  Gone was the dark color scheme and tables and chairs that hid everyone away from one another. The walls had been repainted with bright colors in semi-abstract circles—pastel purples, canary yellows, seafoam greens, robin’s-egg blues, and more—giving the space a bright and airy look. The old rustic lamps were now new and modern, hanging from the ceiling and adding even more light.

  Amy had magically transformed the old dark planks of wood on the floor to a light oak, and the black tables and chairs that used to be here had been replaced with white metal Louis XVI chairs, topped with small pillows that matched the walls, and cute little white round tables.

  The bakery absolutely screamed “fun.”

  And now, with the smell of cinnamon buns wafting up through the space, the effect was absolutely perfect. The whole bakery gave off this impression of being the perfect place to come and get a great start to the morning, like walking into a giant, warm hug.

  Behind the counter, a chalkboard announced the pricing for all of the baked goods Ellie had made. For weeks now, she’d been practicing recipes and testing them on us. She had finally narrowed it down to about a dozen items, which she would rotate through, highlighted by her favorite—and the food she was most known for—cinnamon buns.

  Personally, I was a big fan of the whoopie pies she had come up with before the first weekly market.

  “Let’s go bring out the baked goods,” Ellie said. “I need to do something. I feel like if I just stand here thinking about how the day is going to go, I’m just going to collapse.”

  “Good idea,” I said, the two of us heading into the kitchen at the back, where Amy was waving her wand over some labels.

  “I’m just about finished making up tags for all the items,” Amy said, and I made my way over to her and peeked over her shoulder.

  “Wow!” I gasped. “These look so good!”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised, really. Amy was an incredible witch, and talented at everything she did. In this case, she had made up little square labels for all of the items and magically added a black border that moved around slightly like a fancy ribbon. In the middle was the name of each of the eight different items Ellie was going to have on display for today.

  It looked so incredibly classy it put Martha Stewart to shame.

  “Thanks,” Amy grinned. “Are you all set, Ellie?”

  Ellie nodded. “The doors open in fourteen minutes. I have all of the baked goods here. You’ve finished the labels, so we can go and put the food out. I have extra batter for everything ready in the back in case we end up busier than I expected, so I can always come back here and quickly make fresh batches of everything. Sara is outside, handing out pamphlets to people in town announcing the grand opening, and Tina is spending the day serving here with me.”

  We had to get a permit to allow me to act as a server today. In what I considered to be one of the stupidest rules in the paranormal world, different paranormals were assigned different roles, and the role of serving people in shops generally fell to fairies. For a witch to be allowed to do it, we had to get a special authorization, a permit from Western Woods city hall. Luckily, it wasn’t much of an issue—the explanation that I was trying to help a friend get her new business off the ground was enough—but I still hated the fact that we’d had to do it at all.

  “I just wish I didn’t have to spend the whole day working,” Amy said.

  “Well, that’s the first and last time you’ll ever hear Amy say those particular words,” I joked.

  “You know what I mean. I’d rather be helping you out over here,” Amy replied with a scowl, and Ellie laughed.

  “There it is. It’s not the fact that she’s working at all, it’s that she’d rather be working here. It’s ok, Amy. I still love you. And besides, you’ve done so much over the last few weeks I don’t know where I’d be without you. You’ve more than done your bit.”

  “Well, if anybody comes by today asking where to go for pastries, I know where I’m directing them,” Amy said. “I’m very excited for you, Ellie. This is a really great step you’re taking.”

  The three of us took the pastries out from the kitchen in the back to the front of the store, placing them carefully on the counter behind the layer of protective glass Amy had installed so people could look at what was available without breathing on the baked goods.

  I made my way to the front of the counter and looked at the display from the perspective of the customer, telling Ellie to move one plate this way to the left, or this one a little bit to the right, and after a couple of minutes, it looked absolutely perfect.

  “Are you ready?” Lucy asked from her little counter that she had set up. “It’s just about time for us to have our grand opening.”

  “I’d be lying if I said yes,” Ellie said. “A part of me feels like I still need years and years before I get to the point where I can have my own store, but now that I’m paying rent, I think it’s time to do it.”

  “If any of us can do this, it’s you,” I said to Ellie. Honestly, it was a little bit strange to see her being so hesitant about things. Ellie was the one of my friends who was always super confident, who knew exactly who she was, and who always dove headfirst into everything. To be so nervous about her shop opening was definitely out of charac
ter for her.

  Still, I could understand where she was coming from. This had been Ellie’s dream, to run her own bakery, and this was her opportunity to do it. If it went right, she would literally be living her dream. But if it went wrong, I knew that for someone like Ellie, who was so headstrong and ambitious, it would be absolutely crushing. I couldn’t imagine the pressure that she had put on herself to do this right, but I knew that if anybody could do it, it was her.

  “Look!” I said suddenly, glancing at the front door. There was a line. There were five or six paranormals already standing in front of the door, chatting idly among themselves and peering inside, waiting to be the first customers The Witching Flour would ever serve.

  “Oh, Jupiter,” Ellie muttered. “I hope I don’t disappoint them.”

  “You won’t,” Amy said, bringing out a rectangular plate filled with whoopie pies that had been chopped up into pieces. She placed them on the counter, the free samples meant to entice customers to try some of Ellie’s new products rather than the cinnamon buns everyone knew and loved from the café that used to be in this place.

  “I wish I had your confidence,” Ellie muttered. “Still, I guess it’s time to go.”

  Lucy made her way to the door. “Good luck, roomie,” she said to Ellie with a wink.

  “Same to you,” Ellie laughed. “May we both make billions of abras from this venture.”

  Abracadollars were the currency in the paranormal world, shortened to abras. The name had always made me laugh.

  I rushed behind the counter and set myself up, ready for the first customers of the day. I had practiced with the point-of-sale system—a simple app set up on Ellie’s iPad—and was pretty sure I had gotten the hang of it. I supposed I was about to find out.

  Lucy opened the door and a stream of paranormals came through, all ready to enjoy the goods from the first permanent location of The Witching Flour.

  I smiled at our first customer, the head of the coven, Lita.

  “Hello, welcome to The Witching Flour. Congratulations on being the first customer ever at our permanent location,” I said to the witch, who looked over the pastries with delight. Lita was wonderful; she had accepted me into the coven of Jupiter without a second thought when I had accidentally entered the paranormal world months earlier. I would always be grateful to her for accepting me as one of them, even though I was actually from the coven of Titan, a fact that we had only recently discovered.

  “I’m honored to be the first customer,” Lita said with a smile. “I have to get to coven headquarters, but there was no way I could go to work without first trying out the goods from a new witch-owned business in town. What would you recommend?”

  “Well, I always think a classic cinnamon bun for breakfast is a great way to go,” I replied. “I do recommend the whoopie pies as well, if you’re looking for something sweet to tide you over later in the day. We have samples of them here if you’d like to try,” I said, motioning to the plate in front of Lita.

  “That sounds great,” Lita smiled. “One cinnamon bun and a whoopie pie to go, please.”

  I entered the items swiftly into the iPad, took the money, and then grabbed one of the fancy compostable boxes Ellie had ordered and put the items for Lita in them. The box closed at the top, and I put a sticker with the company’s name and logo—a broom in the middle of a cloud of flour—on top to seal it.

  “Here you are, Lita,” I said to her, handing over the box with a smile. “I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you for supporting our new business.”

  “Absolutely. Good luck to you.”

  Lita turned and made her way to Lucy’s stall, and it was the sign of a good leader. The fact that Lita had come early enough to be the first customer at both stores showed how dedicated she was to her witches. I didn’t have time to dwell on the thought, though, as the lineup was getting longer, and I turned to the next customer, a wolf shifter I was fairly certain worked security at the local grocery store.

  “Hi, welcome to The Witching Flour. How can I help you?”

  “Hello, could I please get six excitement éclairs to go?” he asked.

  “Absolutely,” I smiled. “Big day planned?” The excitement éclairs were magically enhanced chocolate éclairs designed to give the eater a boost of energy. Sara had been the one to give Ellie the idea, telling her that something that could give her the same boost of energy she got from listening to upbeat music before a competition would be awesome. That was how the excitement éclairs were born.

  The wolf shifter smiled. “I have five pups that are going for their first hunt this afternoon; I figured this will help get them excited for it. And, of course, one for me.”

  “Good choice. And hey, if they become too much for you, we also have sleepy strudel, an easy post-hunt treat that will put them out for good if you need some time to yourself,” I added with a wink and a smile, and the shifter laughed.

  “I may very well come back and take you up on that. A whole litter of wolf shifter puppies for the day is definitely enough to drive anyone crazy. My wife will probably come by later and be a permanent customer as well; she was a huge fan of the café that used to be here and was thrilled to hear the baker from there took over this space. Good luck with the launch.”

  I handed the shifter his box of éclairs and thanked him as he headed off, already greeting the next customer. I definitely had a busy day ahead.

  Chapter 2

  The first few hours flew by in a complete blur. Ellie came out when I was helping the third customer—I had a feeling she had just been slightly overwhelmed for the first two and decided to take a minute to herself in the back—and with her packaging up orders while I collected the money, things began moving along at a rather quicker pace. The cinnamon buns practically flew off the shelves, and I was glad that Ellie had made so many of them, as she was going to be selling at least a hundred of them at the rate they were going.

  I didn’t have the chance to breathe until around eleven, when we’d already been open for three and a half hours. There had simply been a constant stream of people up until then, and when the crowd finally died down and I had a moment to myself, I looked around the shop.

  Most of the serving plates were half-empty, with Ellie constantly rushing between the front of the shop and the kitchen at the back to refill them as order after order had come in. That was what she was doing now, in fact, slipping past me with a freshly refilled plate of do-good do-nuts, a chocolate glazed donut that gave the eater the desire to be kind—a necessity on particularly stressful days where the urge to snap at people is high.

  The tables were mostly filled, which surprised me. Considering we didn’t do any coffee—Ellie wanted to think about adding a coffee machine in the future, but was so overwhelmed with everything else she wanted to start off with baked goods alone—I actually didn’t really expect most people to come in and sit down while they ate their baked goods. But sure enough, there were only a couple of empty tables, and I let out a small squeal of embarrassment when I saw one of the empty ones had turned into a makeshift spot to leave dirty plates. We had been so busy I hadn’t noticed we had even needed to bus the tables, let alone had the opportunity to actually do it.

  I rushed out to the table and cast a quick spell to take all the plates and cutlery back to the kitchen at once. Stacking them all up on the counter next to the sink, I rushed back out and cast a quick cleaning spell on the table. There. Now it was available for any more customers who needed it.

  Speaking of customers, just then, a witch I had seen around town a few times but that I didn’t actually know made her way to the counter. “Hi there, I’ll be with you in just a sec,” I said with a smile, rushing back over to her.

  “Wow, such great service already,” the witch said, rolling her eyes. Her dark red curls were perfectly coiffed, and her pursed lips covered in bright lipstick. I would have been shocked, but I had spent enough years working retail in Seattle to know that for some people, retail wo
rkers were scum and it was fine to be as rude as you wanted toward them.

  “Sorry about that,” I said, flashing a smile and slipping behind the counter once more. “It’s our first day open, so we’re just ironing out a few kinks. What can I get for you?”

  The witch tapped her finely manicured nails on the counter as she looked at the selection. Of course she complained about the slow service but didn’t even know what she wanted yet. “Let me see. Are the cinnamon buns as good as the ones they used to sell here? Those were good; I don’t want anything sub-par.”

  “They’re the same. The Witching Flour is owned by the witch who used to bake all the cinnamon buns for Hexpresso Bean,” I replied, and the witch eyed me suspiciously, as if I had just said that to make her feel better and was completely lying.

  “Alright. Well, I’ll have one of those, then.”

  “To have here, or to go?” I asked.

  “To go,” the witch replied, rolling her eyes as if I should have been able to read her mind. I took her money, packed up the cinnamon bun for her, and wished her a good day.

  “See you again,” I said cheerily as the witch left. After all, just because she was rude to me didn’t mean I had to be rude back.

  As soon as the door closed behind her, I popped my head into the kitchen, where Ellie was busy putting a tray of cookies into the oven.

  “Give me a shout if you need a hand, ok?” she said. “I’ve just realized we’re running low on a few things, so I’m going to try and get a few extra batches of the cookies and the whoopie pies in the oven. Plus, that way I didn’t have to talk to Rosa Lynn.”