White Chocolate and Wands Read online

  White Chocolate and Wands

  Pacific Cove Mystery #2

  Samantha Silver

  Blueberry Books Press

  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

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Also by Samantha Silver

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  This was hands down the scariest thing I had ever done.

  To be fair, I wasn’t much of a risk-taker. Up until now, the scariest moment of my life had been when I ran away from the local Chief Enforcer after he caught me and some friends having broken into a murder suspect’s home.

  Still, this was about eight thousand times scarier than that. Maybe even nine thousand.

  Butterflies fluttered around my stomach as I stood in front of the door to the gift shop, wondering what was about to happen. Was this what wizards felt like when they were about to propose to their girlfriends?

  I really had to get my body under control. At this rate, I was probably just going to throw up all over my shoes, and that really wasn’t going to be a good first impression. No one wanted to buy vomit-flavored chocolates.

  Because after all, that was what I was doing today: for the first time in my life, I was going to try and sell chocolates.

  It wasn’t just that I had never had a real job. I had never sold anything to anyone. But these were chocolates I had made. I wasn’t just selling someone else’s product to someone. I was selling stuff that I had made with my own two hands, and my wand. If I was rejected now, it was more than just somebody rejecting my sales pitch. It was somebody rejecting a product that I was proud of.

  As somebody who had always worked as hard as possible to be successful in what I did, I had to admit, I was not good at accepting rejection. I really hoped I wasn’t going to have to face it now.

  However, if I stood in front of the store and never went in, there was no way they could reject me, right?

  Nope. That was absolutely not an option. The Numa family name was synonymous in Pacific Cove with chocolates, and while my parents’ company had been shut down and seized by the local Enforcers, my new company was just starting up. And I was going to get my first customer today.

  At least, I certainly hoped so.

  Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to open up the front door and step into the gift shop. My nostrils were immediately hit with a wave of interesting smells emanating from the wooden shelf on the left laden with bath bombs promising to fix every ailment under the sun.

  I looked around the shop. I had been here plenty of times before, of course; it was a great place to shop for little gifts to get people, and I liked to stock up on the bath bombs before going back to Spellford, since they really did work. The Lovely Lavender—a stress reliever—was particularly helpful when it came time for me to study for my exams.

  This time, however, I wasn’t here to shop. My eyes were immediately drawn to an empty space on the front counter where Pacific Chocolates used to be sold. Standing behind the counter was Maryanne Fiorelli, the ancient witch who had started this gift shop nearly sixty years ago. She had to be well into her eighties now, and she walked around the shop with the help of a knobbly wooden cane, but whenever anybody dared to suggest that it might be time for her to retire, she simply waved a hand and said she wouldn’t know what to do with herself if she didn’t have to get up and open the shop every morning.

  “Is that Megan Numa I see?” she asked in a kindly voice, and I made my way toward her.

  “It is, yes,” I said with a smile. “I was wondering if I might speak with you a moment, Maryanne.”

  “Of course, of course. I’ve always got time for you. How are your parents doing? Have you heard from them recently? Such a shame what happened, I can’t believe it,” she added, shaking her head sadly.

  “I saw them a few days ago,” I replied. “They seem to be doing ok, considering the circumstances.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear,” Maryanne replied. “Frankly, I can’t believe Chief Enforcer Lupo had the factory shut down permanently. I’ve had six people come in here the last week looking for work, and I sadly had to turn all of them away. I’m not the only one, either. That company was such an important part of the economy here. No matter what your parents did, closing it was a mistake. And now I don’t even have any chocolates to sell to my customers. Do you know how easy it is to sell local chocolates to people visiting Pacific Cove? And when they’re as good as the ones your parents made, it makes it all the easier.”

  “I might be able to help you with that,” I said. “After my parents were put away, I made a decision: I was going to quit my studies as a Healer and go into the family business. After all, chocolate is in my blood. My veins may as well have raspberry ganache flowing through them. So I got Grace to give me some lessons, and I finally got a couple of recipes down well enough that I think they’re ready to sell. Could I offer you a chocolate to try?” I asked, pulling a small box from my bag. It was a special sample size containing four chocolates in a diamond-shaped box. The box itself was a matte black, with the stylized logo of a phoenix rising from the ashes in a glossy red-orange color. I had to admit, it was pretty spiffy.

  “I would love to try one,” Maryanne said. “Are these made by you, then?”

  “That’s right,” I nodded. “Phoenix Chocolates.”

  “I do like that name,” Maryanne said, a twinkle in her eye. She obviously understood the origin and the reason I chose it. Carefully taking the box from me, she inspected the logo. “Very nice. Very modern. It screams ‘boutique chocolates’ more than your parents’ company’s logo did, in fact.”

  A part of me swelled with pride at Maryanne’s words as she carefully opened the box and picked up one of the truffles. So far, truffles were basically the only thing I knew how to make. I knew how to temper chocolate, and I knew how to make truffles. I had only one potion that I could make well enough to add to the chocolates, but for now, that was enough.

  Maryanne carefully ate one of the chocolates, and as soon as it hit her tongue, she closed her eyes and sighed.

  “Oh yes, this is good. This is very good,” she said, nodding. “Your parents must be so proud.”

  “To be honest, I haven’t told them yet,” I admitted, and Maryanne opened one eye to get a good look at me.

  “Why on earth not?”

  I shrugged. “I think I’m afraid I might fail. I don’t want to disappoint them. They’ve gone through so much already; I don’t want to start this business and be awful at it. Besides, they wanted me to become a Healer. I’m sure they’d rather I go to Spellford and continue my studies.”

  “My dear, I know your parents very well,” Maryanne said. “In fact, I knew them when they were teenagers. Your mother came in here once and stole a little something—it was so long ago I can’t remember what—and your father actually convinced her to come bring it back and apologize.”

  I laughed. “That does sound exactly like my dad. It doesn’t sound like my mother, though.”

  “Oh, she grew up fairly quickly after leav
ing the Academy, but your mother was a bit of a wild child. Anyway, the point is, I’ve known both your parents for a long time, through a lot of stages in life. And there’s only one thing they want for all three of you: for you to be happy. If you tell them what you’re doing, as long as you’re happy, they’re going to be thrilled for you.”

  “But they’ve always pushed me to be a Healer. As I grew up, they always got me to take classes at the Academy that would help me with it and pushed me to get good grades so I could get into a Healer program at a good university.”

  Maryanne smiled at me. “You don’t remember, do you?”

  “Remember what?”

  “When you were about three, maybe four years old, something happened to you. I’m not entirely sure what it was, since I wasn’t there, but you were taken to the hospital, and the Healers there took care of you. After that, all you would do whenever I saw you was talk about how you wanted to become a Healer. You stopped after a little while, but that’s where the push came from. Your parents genuinely believed that was what you wanted from life.”

  “Oh,” I said, not really sure how else to reply. My entire life, I thought my parents were those typical parents that wanted their kids to become Healers because it was prestigious and a way to earn an excellent living in the paranormal world. And yet here I was, learning for the very first time that I had been the one who wanted to be a Healer? That they took a four-year-old’s idea of a career and just ran with it?

  Why had they never told me that story?

  “Does making chocolates make you happy?” Maryanne asked gently. “Like, truly happy? More so than studying to be a Healer?”

  I nodded. It really did. It wasn’t that I hated studying. I just preferred making chocolates. It felt a lot more right, a lot more natural to me.

  “Then do that,” Maryanne said. “And tell your parents. No matter what happens, if your business fails or if it succeeds, they will be proud of you. All they’ve ever wanted was to see you happy. Showing them that this makes you happy is the best thing you can possibly give them right now.”

  I couldn’t help it; tears sprang to my eyes. I couldn’t believe I had gotten my parents’ motivations so wrong all of these years. It was like their arrest was a catalyst for change in every aspect of my life. If Maryanne was right—and she had no reason not to be, as she had been a fixture in town for longer than my parents had been alive—then I didn’t have to worry about them being upset about my studies. I could tell them what I was doing.

  “Oh, dearie,” Maryanne said, placing a hand on mine. “It’s going to be alright. Your parents love you so much. No matter what happens, you should know that.”

  “Thank you,” I stammered out quietly, not trusting my voice.

  “Now, you listen to me. These chocolates are phenomenal. As you can see, I’m definitely missing out on sales by not having any chocolates available to buy. How big are your boxes, and what’s your wholesale price?”

  I swallowed hard and forced myself to go back into business mode. After all, I was a business owner now. I pulled out a sheet I had created the night before that listed all of the sizes I had available for the chocolates and the wholesale prices I had come up with, along with a suggested retail price.

  I had initially priced my chocolates fairly low, giving myself only a small profit margin. But as I was doing it, my sister Ashley looked over my shoulder and shook her head.

  “You need to charge more than this,” she said.

  “Why? People won’t buy it if it’s expensive.”

  “Wrong. Those chocolates look good. That box is very fancy-looking. People will pay money for fancy. If they see a fancy box and see that it’s super cheap, they’re going to think there’s something wrong with it. Charge what you’re worth. Your chocolates are worth a lot.”

  I had followed my sister’s advice and tripled all of the prices, and now, as Maryanne looked at my price list, I held my breath in anticipation. After all, what if she decided that all of my prices were too high? What if I had overdone it? In that case, I wouldn’t make any sales, and I was going to leave here empty-handed.

  To my surprise, however, Maryanne nodded slowly, looked up at me, and smiled.

  “I think I can definitely make this work. Let me order a few boxes from you to start with, and we’ll see how well they sell.”

  I left the shop about five minutes later with an order placed for twenty boxes of different sizes, and I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. I had made a sale! I was in business.

  Chapter 2

  As soon as I got home, I began working on the order for Maryanne. I had promised I would be back with all of her chocolates by the end of the afternoon, which meant that I was going to have to get going. After all, she had ordered the equivalent of around three hundred individual truffles, which I was now going to have to make up and organize in the properly sized boxes.

  My sister Andrea was at work, and while Ashley had the day off, she had gone out earlier, so I had the house all to myself. I carefully laid out all of my ingredients—Grace, the woman who had taught my mom how to make chocolates and was now passing the knowledge down to me, had kindly offered me a large supply of dark, milk, and white chocolate to get me started, along with the promise that she would take me to buy more soon.

  The first step was to make the potion that would go into the truffles, a happiness potion to make people feel even better when they tasted one of the chocolates. I made my way through the pantry and grabbed all of the ingredients, then carefully mixed them together according to the instructions. I found myself with a cauldron full of potion that would definitely be enough for the three hundred chocolates I had to make.

  I carefully measured out the dark chocolate I would need for the truffles into one cauldron, added the potion to the chocolate, and then heated up some cream in a second, smaller cauldron, making sure not to let it get too hot and burn. I carefully poured the cream over the chocolate and stirred the mixture until it became silky smooth. When all of the chunks of chocolate had disappeared, I lifted up the cauldron and moved it to the fridge. It was heavy; this was my first time using the large cauldron, and I had to make space in the fridge beforehand so that it could take up the entire bottom shelf.

  “That smells delicious. Can I have some?” my familiar, a corgi named Sherlock Bones who just went by Sherlock, asked.

  “Chocolate is poison for dogs,” I replied. “Sorry.”

  “Ugh. I bet that’s an urban myth started by witches that wanted to keep all the chocolate to themselves.”

  “You know, while I can definitely imagine that being the case, I also don’t want to risk it. So no, you can’t have any truffles. But you just had your breakfast like two hours ago; you can’t be hungry already.”

  “Just because I’m not hungry doesn’t mean I don’t want to eat.”

  I eyed my new familiar up and down. We had only been together for a couple of weeks now.

  “Well, maybe that’s why you’re looking a little bit pudgy. It must be hard walking on those little legs when you’ve got a bit of extra weight around the middle.”

  “Hey, I’m just big boned. All corgis are.”

  “Right,” I said with a smile. “Anyway, why don’t we go for a walk, get a bit of exercise, and after that you can have a treat? I bought some dried liver bits the other day that I’m sure you’ll love.”

  “Oooh, dried liver sounds even better than chocolate,” Sherlock announced, trotting off toward the front door excitedly. I laughed as I followed after him. It was nice having a familiar. I had never had one before, and I was definitely just getting used to having a dog around the house, but we were starting to settle into a nice routine.

  Sherlock ran around my ankles in excited circles as I made my way to the door, slipped on my shoes, and opened the front door to let him out. Sherlock made a beeline out the door, running as fast as his short little legs would allow him for about thirty feet before he reached the gate at the end of the
property and promptly peed on it.

  “Got to let the other dogs know whose place this is,” he explained as I rolled my eyes and laughed.

  “Where do you want to go today?” I asked, and Sherlock looked around.

  “I don’t know! Wherever you want. The entire world is so exciting. It’s all so wonderful to explore.”

  I had to admit, Sherlock’s enthusiasm for just being outside was infectious.

  “Alright, how about we go up into the woods for a little bit, come back along the beach, and then go through town?” I suggested, and he let out an excited yelp.

  “That sounds wonderful!”

  One of the things I loved about Pacific Cove was the network of trails behind the town in the woods. The Pacific Northwest was known for its lovely forests, and Pacific Cove was no exception. Witches and wizards had created a network of trails that had started off as ways to get ingredients for potions, but over the years, they had eventually morphed into a series of hiking trails.

  That said, taking the trails was still the easiest way to replenish potion ingredients, as the fields of wild basil, for example, still existed as they had when witches and wizards had created the trails hundreds of years ago.

  But now, on top of being an easy way to access potion ingredients, hiking along the trails was also a great way to keep my overly energetic dog happy. For the next hour and a half or so, we walked through the forest, meandering our way through the huge pines. Despite it being late November, it was unseasonably warm, and I found that even in the depths of the forest, a light jacket was all I needed to keep the light chill in the air away from me.