Page 21 of Hungry As Her Python

My own magic? Kitchen magic. Domestic sorcery, as my Granny called it. Useful, yes, but not exactly flashy.

I couldn’t stop time or levitate buildings or hurl fireballs at annoying people in line at the DMV.

My spells were confined to food, flavor, comfort.

They worked best in the kitchen, with my hands in the dough and my heart in the recipe.

Evie’s magic was different—rare and wild.

She was a seer Witch, able to catch glimpses of past and future events like she was flipping through a cosmic photo album.

Donny’s magic was closer to mine. She could see and mend inner hurts, weaving confidence into her clients’ haircuts until they walked out of her salon taller, shinier, happier.

I guess of the two, I was more like Donny.

Our magic was about nourishment—hers of the spirit, mine of the stomach.

Not exactly earth-shattering, but it mattered.

Castor’s Corner needed a baker, and I was the baker.

Easy peasy, right?

Only, not so much. Because if I was so valued, why was someone targeting me?

“I check on storage, my Witchy,” Petyr told me before vanishing in that blink-and-you-missed-it way of his.

That little furball was faster than lightning when he wanted to be. Take the other day, I was moping in the kitchen, lamenting how much I missed my Granny’s special banana extract, made from the now commercially extinct Gros Michel bananas.

I’d just muttered that I’d give anything for a taste of it again—poof!

Petyr disappeared for hours.

When he returned, not only did he have three bushels of perfectly ripe Gros Michels, but he was also sporting an Elvis-style pompadour and humming “Teddy Bear.”

I still don’t know where he went, and frankly, I’m a little afraid to ask.

Now I had a huge barrel of banana extract processing in my storeroom, right next to the walk-in fridge.

Once it was ready?

Oh, honey! I was going to bake a storm of banana nut loaves so good, they’d make angels weep.

It would also be the perfect time to test my next guilt-free recipe.

Trying to create a magical hack for weight loss was an ongoing thing. Donny, Evie, and I had long since accepted we’d probably always be the three curviest Witches in the county, but still a girl had to have goals. And I could still dream.

It would be nice not to gain ten pounds every time I got a craving for pineapple cheesecake, a giant chocolate-covered cannoli, or my vanilla cream Napoleons with fresh strawberries.

Yum.

See, I’d learned to bake at my grandmother’s knee, perfecting her recipes before branching out into my own.

When I finally opened my shop, The Tasty Tart, it became an instant hit.

Not to brag (okay, maybe a little), but people lined up out the door for my pastries.

And now? My website and delivery business were booming.