Penny & Her Heru Ch 12

Rent-A-Witch: Whynot Coven

A Cake, A Job, & A Historian

Three Weeks Later

"You’ve lost your mind." Bea pushed her plate away without tasting the small piece of cake on it.

"Me? You love coconut cake." I snagged the rejected cake sample and popped it in my mouth.

She crossed her arms over her chest and gave the table full of cake samples the stink eye. "Just get chocolate."

I flicked my eyes between her and Venn. He was standing in a corner of the lounge of Pink House with Heru and Toolbelt chatting too low for me to hear what they were saying, but that was fine. I was pretty sure what they were talking about between the smug look on Venn's face, and the feeling of want in my chest coming from Heru. I didn't need a divination master to know chances were good my sister was knocked up a month after her mating ceremony. Lucky for me even though Heru and I had been practicing I wasn’t.

"I need to try them all." I held a slice of Hummingbird under her nose. I knew I was right when her face turned green, and she shoved it away like it was radioactive.

Heru shook his head at me, but his smile said he thought my teasing was cute. Then again, he'd found everything I'd done since I moved into the barn cute.

Darla stepped in ruining my fun. "Bea, dear, why don't you go check on Bray in the garden?”

Bea didn't spare me or the table full of cake a glance. She disappeared into the hall with her gargoyle mate on her heels.

"Is she gonna be, okay?" Jackie picked up the empty plates with a frown. "Is she allergic to bananas?"

I'd only met Jackie an hour before, but I liked her too much to let her sweat. "No, I think she might have a bug. She should be fine in nine months."

Heru slipped into the empty spot where Bea had been and picked up a plate that looked ridiculously small in his clawed hands. "More like 14 months."

A plate fell from my hand and my entire body went slack. We'd talked about kids once a couple of weeks ago. He explained little girls were rare in his clan, and that I should get ready for little boys with tails and wings. He left out the fact it would take fourteen months of waddling around to have one.

"Let's focus on something more important, like when you want to start work." Darla snatched the empty plate before it hit the carpet. "I have a few people already waiting to schedule appointments with you."

Heru picked up a plate of cake at random and handed me a matching slice. "The ceremony is tomorrow night, so next Tuesday or Wednesday should work."

Darla smiled and clapped her hands together. "Perfect. I have someone applying next Thursday so you can sit in on the interview with me."

"This one is Black Velvet. Think Devil's Food and Red Velvet had a love child. All the smoothness of the Red Velvet but with the richness of the Devil's Food cake." Jackie passed Darla the last piece of cake that matched the one sitting on my plate.

Flavors exploded in my mouth when I bit into it. The cake itself was amazing, but the frosting could make a catholic nun do naughty things. "That’s the one."

Jackie nodded and wrote something down in her book. "Perfect. Three tiers, real red roses for decoration, and no topper. Right?"

"Perfect." I surveyed the rest of the cake slices on the table. There were at least five flavors that we hadn't tried yet. "What about all these? I don't want them to go to waste."

Toolbelt chuckled as he sat down in a wing chair next to Darla's at the same time Venn walked back into the living room. "Trust me, they won't."

A quick look at Jackie chewing on the end of her pen and I almost stopped them from demolishing the remaining samples. Luckily Darla asked if she minded them eating the samples before I could.

"Oh, go for it guys. I have more in the van if you want those too. I just drop them off at the nursing home when they aren't eaten." She clutched her notebook to her chest and squared her shoulders. "Actually, I wanted to talk to you, Darla. About a job."

"I thought you liked working at the bakery?"

Jackie’s curls bounced around her head as she nodded. "Oh, I do. I couldn't do magic for a living. I mean I use a little here and there to make the cakes turn out perfectly baked or keep buttercream frosting from melting in the summer, but who is going to hire me for that besides a bakery? It's for my sister, Tina. She’s an amazing historian and researcher. She’s been leading a research project in the Pacific, but it is wrapping up."

Darla stacked a couple of empty plates as she listened. "I thought you were from Virginia? Won't she want to go back there?"

Jackie chewed her lip for a second. "She wants somewhere quieter. Somewhere remote like the islands, so I suggested she come to Whynot, but there are no big museums or universities that she would normally work for here, but a Rent-A-Witch house always has a historian, right? Someone to make sure the spells aren't wonky or whatever?"

Darla tilted her head like a curious cat and studied Jackie until the poor woman gave up and started picking up the stack of plates.

"Give her my number and I'll talk to her."

Jackie’s face was transformed when she smiled. "Perfect. That’s perfect. I'll tell her to call Monday."

Toolbelt nudged Darla's foot with his. "What are the chances she will find her mate the moment she steps into town? Maybe instead of posting on a job site, you should put an ad on the dating sites. 'Rent-A-Witch Coven in Whynot looking to fill positions. Mates assigned with every job offer.”

I snorted when Darla kicked him. "Why are you even here?"

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