One by one, the three customers were taken care of, each leaving the shop with a pink bakery box tied up with twine. Renee turned to me and Aidan, her eyes glittering.
“What a lovely surprise! Lily, it’s always such a pleasure! And you brought the mysterious and oh-so-difficult-to-pin-down Aidan Rhodes. From what I hear, Aidan, you rarely go out anymore. Are you feeling quite yourself these days? You look a mite peaked.”
“I feel fine, Renee. Thank you for asking,” Aidan responded, his eyes not leaving hers.
The staring contest went on for several moments. I noticed behind the register a pile of vintage-style fabric swatches and a basket holding spools of colored thread.
“That looks like fabric from Lucille’s Loft,” I said.
“Yes, I’m planning on coming to the Magical Match Tea on Sunday! Lucille’s making us dresses. Isn’t she just the most exquisite seamstress you’ve ever seen?”
“Who’s your match?” I asked.
“Now, just wouldn’t you love to know?” she cooed. “That’s a secret!”
“Did you decide on a fabric? The event is just around the corner.”
“Lucille assures me it is all under control.” She glanced at Aidan. “So sorry you can’t come, Aidan, but it’s us girls only.”
“Actually, that’s not true,” I said. “The Welcome coven voted to allow anyone who wants to come with whatever match they want. The event is gender-inclusive.”
Renee tsked and made an exaggeratedly angry face, reminiscent of a toddler who didn’t get her way. I half expected her to stomp her heel. “Well, I don’t like that at all. This local insistence on everything being equal takes away the special, don’t you think? After all, men and women are not interchangeable. As we know very well, don’t we, Aidan?”
I had the sense she wasn’t talking about social norms.
“Renee, why did you send the cupcakes to Lily?” asked Aidan. “I assumed they were an invitation.”
“To her, not to you,” Renee responded.
“And yet we are here to speak to you together, a united force.”
“So I see. You know, Aidan, you really should relinquish your control over these young women,” Renee said. Her sweet, almost maternal mien was gone, replaced by steely-eyed ambition. “Lily could be so much more than she is, and Selena is ripe to become a powerful young woman. I think you’re afraid of the power they could wield without you and you’re holding them back.”
“With great power comes great responsibility—a lesson I fear you have yet to learn, Renee,” Aidan answered. “As for Lily and Selena, they make their own choices.”
“Just as in the case of that dear Calypso Cafaro? Would you say she made her own choices, Aidan?”
“We’re not here to speak about Calypso,” Aidan said.
“Oh, of course,” Renee said, looking at me. “We’re here to speak of some sort of unnamed ‘threat’ to your beloved San Francisco. Though why you think I’m any sort of threat is a mystery to me. After all, what’s wrong with trying the Renee way?”
“The Renee way?” I asked. “That’s a way?”
“It’s a lovely way!” She smiled. “Anyway, I’m just a humble cupcake baker. You two are the ones involved in murder and whatnot. It’s a shame, Lily, that your fiancé was involved with such an ugly thing.”
“He wasn’t,” I insisted.
She let out a quick laugh. “No? Strange that all the witnesses say otherwise.”
“It might have been a doppelgänger,” I said, though I still wasn’t convinced.
“A doppelgänger?” Now Renee laughed fully. “You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?”
“It’s the truth,” I said. “Or . . . maybe not a doppelgänger per se, but some sort of look-alike.”
Renee laughed again, and I had to quell the urge to vault across the counter and punch her in the nose.
“Then what do you think happened?” I asked.
“I think you sent your boyfriend to take out dear Tristan Dupree, for fear that he’d come to work with me. Very clever of you to pick up on it so quickly, I have to say.”
“Except it wasn’t Sailor. Oh, and thanks for spiking the cupcakes.”
“What cupcakes?”
“The ones you sent over with Jamie.”
“Why would I do that?” Still smiling, Renee shook her head. “My, my, my, your man kills my man, and I barely even hold a grudge. And now you accuse me of, what? Trying to poison you with cupcakes?”
I didn’t want her to know that she had succeeded in affecting my familiar. But still, she got my goat.
I could feel Aidan’s hand on my arm, though I couldn’t tell whom he was trying to restrain—me, or himself.
“Let’s get one thing straight, Renee,” I said. “Selena is a child, and she’s under my protection. And I’ll die before I’ll let you get to her.”
“That’s just fine, dear,” Renee said, holding out a cupcake frosted with black icing. “Here, I made this one just for you.”
I swatted it away, and the cupcake landed with a splat on the tile floor, icing side down.
Renee made another angry-toddler face. But her eyes seemed as ancient as the world itself as her gaze held mine. She gave me a slow smile.
“You’d best take your witch out of here, Aidan, before you both get more than you’re asking for.”
“Renee, we’re a united front, and we aren’t alone,” Aidan said, his voice steady and calm. “We have many behind us. You don’t stand a chance. Unless you want to leave town altogether, you’ll drop this challenge. We can all learn to live together.”
“That’s a lovely speech, Aidan,” said Renee. “Just as pretty and false as that glamour you insist upon hiding behind. Are you sure you don’t want a dozen cupcakes for the road? My treat.”
“No, thank you,” I said. “We don’t want anything from you.”
We left Renee’s bakery without another word. Each lost in our own thoughts, Aidan and I rounded the corner without speaking, heading toward the car.
I heard a rustling, and a man jumped
