Walking into the bakery felt like living a bad dream. Even the usually familiar smells of freshly baked bread and cakes couldn’t sift through the sick, tight feeling in her stomach. The bakery seemed different somehow, tainted.
Someone planted those lilac fairy cakes, somehow. Someone who wanted to frame me for the murder. And that meant… it had been premeditated. Not just because they’d baked the cakes that contained poison, but because they’d left more here for the controllers to find.
But how did they know the girl would come here? Who was being set up here - me, or the girl? It must be someone with a grudge for both and yet … I don’t think she’s ever been in here before. It’s a mystery. None of this makes any sense.
The tinny bell above the weather beaten brown wooden door rang out as Talbot Acres peeped his head around the door.
“Valencia? Are you okay? I thought I’d pop round and see how you were. It must’ve been a terrible shock,” he said, walking cautiously through the door as if he was afraid if he made any sudden moves, the whole building would collapse. He was tall and broad with an infectious smile and a mop of unruly blonde hair that had a life of its own.
“How did you manage to get past the controllers?”
“I told them I needed to speak to you urgently about your meat order, tomorrow.”
“I don’t have a meat order tomorrow.”
“We know that - but they don’t. Who was the girl?”
“You don’t know her, either? I’ve not seen around here before.”
“No. I’m sure I’d have remembered her if I had. Since when did you start baking lilac fairy cakes?”
“I didn’t. That’s the thing. She queued up here for a while because it was so busy this morning and there was only me serving. She seemed… I don’t know, distracted… nervous… edgy? She kept looking at the door every time someone walked in. I thought she was getting anxious because of having to queue for so long and she was running late for something, or she hated queueing.”
“And she bought one of those cakes, from here?” He asked, snaking his fingers through his thick hair.
“We don’t bake them here as you know, and… I don’t know how she managed to get it from somewhere else before she got ten strides away from this bakery.”
“But she did buy some cakes from you, though?” He asked, pressing for more details hoping it might lead to something.
“She bought two iced dream buns and a chocolate stardust wish slice. No fairy cakes,” Valencia said, adamantly.
“And yet she chose to eat the sickly lilac effort, instead? That’s strange. And those chocolate stardust wish slices -they aren’t cheap, are they?” He asked.
“How can they be? My flock of ravens have to go out every night and collect genuine stardust for those cakes. Most nights, they come back empty-handed. Sometimes the fairies can’t weave the stardust into a potential wish. I can’t charge Hebbles for wishes. A lot of work goes into them.”
“I wonder what she was going to wish for?” He asked, wistfully.
“I don’t think it’s gone to waste. The bag of my cakes she bought weren’t with her, they’ve vanished,” said Valencia, shuddering at the memory of the girl lying on the cold wet cobbles. She pulled the sleeves down on her knee length soft knitted black cardigan and tried not to think about it.
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“It’s odd. I think the best plan is to make some of your honey coffee. You’ll feel better for it and you never know, you might think of something if you sit and relax for a few minutes,” he said, dashing over to the stove to put the cast iron kettle on.
“I think I’ve been set up, someone’s framing me for this murder. If that’s true - and I think it is. I think it’s something to do with me being only a half-witch,” she said, feeling hot tears prick her eyes.
“Don’t be daft! This is too elaborate for that to be the motive! If it was, a stone through the window would’ve been more likely.”
Valencia saw he had a point but the man who’d told her about the girl seemed to know her father had been sent to Eddeland. Maybe the murderer needed to kill two birds with one stone? It was overkill, to say the least.
Sitting with a steaming cup of honey coffee in her hands, Valencia felt much more settled. With a clear head she ran through her brief interaction with the ill-fated girl with Talbot.
“So, you’ve never seen the man with the patchwork clothes who told you she was dead before, either?” asked Talbot, wincing at the sweetness of the honey coffee. He never understood how Valencia could drink half a dozen cups a day of the stuff. Just one cup a day set his teeth on edge.
“I think I have seen him before - I just can’t think where.”
“It’s a start. If we can find him, he might have something useful to tell us. Maybe he saw what happened to the girl before she ate the cake or…”
“Or who stole the cakes she bought off me.”
“Or if she spoke to someone before she died.”
“He knew she’d bought cakes from here. I’d like to know how we knew that if she didn’t have the bag with ‘Spellbinding Treats’ embroidered on it with her. Where is the bag of cakes now?”
“She must’ve had the bag when she took a bite out of the poisoned cake. What poison was used, do the controllers know yet?”
“The controllers didn’t say much. Does it matter? It worked, that’s all the killer cared about.”
“It might give us a clue to who did it.”
“Oh! I just remembered another clue! On the cake case, on the bottom, was a symbol. It looks like a Y.”
“Okay… does that help us?”
“Yes, whoever baked it wanted to claim it. ‘Y’ is our killer, whoever that may be. Also, those wrappers are bespoke, they’re very expensive.”
“More expensive than your Raven glitter and wishes?”
“Oh yes! Only the wealthiest bakers can afford those cases. And, thinking about it, the lilac coloring wouldn’t be cheap, either. I don’t even know what dyes make that tone of lilac, but they’ll be ridiculously expensive, I can tell you that much.”
“So, we have got a few leads to go on, then?”
“I suppose. I just wish it hadn’t happened. Things were going so well and now… I’ve lost my business and that poor girl’s lost her life.”
“We can get justice for her and your business back we just need to find some more clues then work out how they fit together. Who else was in the queue with the girl at the time?”
“There’s not much room for customers inside the shop because of the large counter so… four. Yes, four. The vampire, Mr Hesstal - he didn’t speak to the girl as far as I could see. Erm, the dwarf, Mr Nickel, Mrs Hubbard the witch and Mrs Peppickle. The rest of the queue snaked round the block outside.”
“Good. They could be potential witnesses. Did you see anything through the window?”
“No. I saw more customers, queuing. I might’ve seen that man, but I can’t be sure.”
“We can find this murderer and hopefully before anyone else is killed, or framed.”
“I hope we can find them quickly. Someone as dangerous as this shouldn’t be loose on the streets of Spellica. But one thing’s really bothering me - how did they manage to plant more of those cakes in here? I didn’t notice them lying around. They weren’t here till the controllers came in and carried them out.”
“To frame you, of course. It would’ve been easy to do when everyone’s attention was on the girl in the gutter. Then, they let the police ‘find’ them and everyone assumes the cakes were waiting to be sold to more unsuspecting customers and boom - you’re the main suspect. Clever, really.”
“I suppose. I wasn’t watching the bakery and none of the mob gathered outside was, either.”
“I’ll go and see what I can find out. You sit tight and try to think of anything else that might help us,” he said, putting his now cold tankard of honey coffee on the counter with less than half of it drunk.
The bell above the door trilled and a controller strode in.
“Excuse me, miss, we need to speak to your fairy bakers. They’ve got some explaining to do.”
Valencia put her tankard down and pointed the controller towards the back room of the fairy quarters wishing she’d thought about questioning the fairies before he’d turned up.
“Miss? Where are they?” asked the controller.
Valencia pushed past him in the doorway and surveyed the empty room.
“They’ve gone! I don’t understand! Where are they?”
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