Page 15 of Hungry As Her Python

The happy one.

The one who didn’t need a man to make her day brighter.

The one who welcomed whatever excitement the new dawn brought, whether it was a delivery of perfect strawberries or a sudden frog rainstorm.

That was the beauty of my hometown.

Anything could happen at any given moment in Castor’s Corner.

A supernatural population meant that expecting anything else was simply foolish.

I was rarely foolish.

Unless, of course, we were talking about my experiences with men—which, er, yeah, let’s not unpack that just yet.

Despite my best efforts, I’d been a confused mess these last few weeks.

And this was so not my norm.

Evie and Donny were usually the ones fretting about all the weird curveballs life threw us, while I reveled in them.

I’d always liked surprises.

Some of them were even good ones.

Take this morning, for example.

Surprise number one: Sunshine in the forecast after weeks of clouds and cold.

Nice surprise.

Surprise number two: When I pulled my hair into its usual ponytail, my freshly trimmed ends (thanks to Donny’s magical scissors) bounced into soft curls all on their own.

Totally unexpected.

Totally cute.

Another win.

Surprise number three: I found a crumpled old scratch-off lottery ticket at the bottom of my Vera Bradley bag (one of my three hundred seventy-two, give or take). I scratched it off, and I won $4.

Hey, for a small business owner? That’s practically a windfall.

So yeah, the day was shaping up nicely.

My magic was humming, my recipes for the Summer Solstice Festival were planned, and my besties were getting married at midnight on the big night.

I was baking their cake—free of charge.

Not because they couldn’t afford to pay me (please, between Evie’s inheritance and her mayoral salary and Jaxson’s Sheriff-Wolf-whatever income, they were set), but because some things were too important to put a price tag on.

This was my gift.

From my hands, my magic, my heart, straight to theirs.

I was pulling out all the stops—tier upon tier of perfection, each layer more decadent than the last.

Hours of sketching, planning, and recipe testing had gone into this baby.