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A Slice of Christmas Magic
A. G. Mayes
A magical Christmas mystery perfect for fans of Debbie Macomber! A recipe for festive disaster… With Aunt Erma back in charge of her magical pie shop Susanna Daniels thought life would return to normal. But there is no ‘normal’ in Hocus Hills and as the most magical time of year approaches Susie finds herself in a race to stop a magic revolution. Add in the unexpected arrival of the one that got away and a mysterious dog named Duncan, and it’s clear that this will be one Christmas that Susie will never forget!
A Slice of Christmas Magic
A. G. MAYES
One More Chapter
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © A. G. Mayes 2019
Cover design by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover images © Thomas Marchessault / Alamy Stock Photo (window frame); Leeyakorn06 / Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com) (cakes)
A. G. Mayes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008319151
Ebook Edition © November 2019 ISBN: 9780008319144
Version: 2019-10-03
Table of Contents
Cover (#u397ace60-e031-5a46-a7c4-ccaafd70594e)
Title Page (#uef3d857f-ac19-5116-b2fe-15700f9887fc)
Copyright (#ub99ff169-102e-5c8f-9794-58ef2f1f6db4)
Dedication (#uc60687fe-5787-53a6-ab8d-695fe5b9d045)
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Acknowledgements
Also by A. G. Mayes
About the Author
About the Publisher
For Chris
and everyone who loves
pie, puppies, and magic
Prologue (#ua92752a4-d33e-5aa4-9524-bd000b219827)
From the outside, the cottage nestled in the snowy countryside at the bottom of a hill looked as if it belonged on the pages of a storybook, but for the Drake family inside life was no happily ever after.
Dennis and Stan, father and son, were playing chess by the fire when a woman with graying brown hair and sharp green eyes stormed in and threw back the hood of her cloak. The younger man felt all the muscles in his body tense.
“Did you get it?” she asked.
“No,” Stan answered quietly. Dennis stared at the board.
“What?” she asked sharply. Both men flinched. “We would be in control of all the magic in Hocus Hills by now if you two blundering buffoons didn’t fail at every little task.” She spoke as though all the magical residents in the town of Hocus Hills were just objects for her to possess.
“We thought Alice was our star, but then she set us back when she got caught. I should have never let her convince me she could control people through altered magic spices. She didn’t have the skills. I mean, cookies? Come on!” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t think her heart was in the mission. She was too distracted by the loss of her sister, Nellie.”
Sometimes his mother just liked to hear the sound of her own voice, Stan thought.
“We can try something else,” Dennis offered, not taking his eyes off the chess board.
“Of course, we’ll try something else,” Brenda snapped. “We need to figure the magic out. Only two days before Ivan gets here. Two!” She slammed her hand on the table and chess pieces bounced off the board, clattering to the floor. “He’s not as kind as I am.”
“We have a plan for getting new recruits,” Stan said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“We need more than your plans. We need more people before Ivan gets here. That part shouldn’t be hard though. There’s always magical people who want more than to hide out in a small town.”
She paced up and down the room, her shoes clicking sharply against the floor. Stan watched his mother pace.
“Erma, she’s always a problem. She’s been keeping those spices under lock and key,” Brenda was muttering under her breath now. “But think of how happy Ivan would be if we got her magic.”
She went to the fireplace and threw in a couple of logs. Sparks flew, and heat poured out as the flames rose higher.
“We need the rest of them.” She flung her hand at the spice bottle displayed on the mantel of the fireplace like a trophy. “You two can’t get anything done right. I’ll go out in the morning and sneak into the kitchen of her pie shop while she’s getting ready to open. She’ll have the spices out then.”
“What about her niece?” Stan watched the fire instead of his mother as he asked the question.
“I think I can take her,” Brenda said sarcastically.
“They still have the protection spells on the pie shop. You won’t be able to use your magic,” Dennis said.
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t need magic. I just need to be smarter than them. That shouldn’t be hard.”
Brenda pulled up the hood on her cloak, threw open the door, and was gone without another word.
Dennis bent down to pick up the chess pieces and the two of them got back to their game.
Chapter 1 (#ua92752a4-d33e-5aa4-9524-bd000b219827)
Dear Elodie,
My husband and I are expecting our first child in six weeks. He recently informed me that he won’t be able to make it to the birth because of a “work trip”. Elodie, I am beside myself. When I ask him if he can reschedule this work trip, he says those are the only days the clients are available. I find that a little hard to believe. I would think any client would understand rescheduling a business trip to be there when your baby is born. We both love our jobs, but I sometimes feel like my husband uses his as an excuse to treat me badly. What do I do?
Sincerely,
Lonely Delivery
Dear Lonely Delivery,
My recommendation would be to go back in time and have a baby with someone else. Assuming that’s not a valid option, you should try to sit your husband down and have an open talk about your needs right now. He may be experiencing anxiety surrounding the birth. Now I completely agree that it shouldn’t be your job to soothe his nerves since you’re kind of busy growing a human, but sometimes life throws these curve balls at us. Tell your husband what you told me about using his job as an excuse. Try to keep your conversation productive and avoid accusations.
And congratulations on your first child!
Ask and I’ll Answer,
Elodie
I wiped a bead of sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand and surveyed the display case. It was packed full of pies. Only ten minutes until we opened.
Aunt Erma came out from the kitchen carrying a blueberry pie, her specialty. She wore a hat with felt antlers and jingle bells.
“What do you think? Do we have enough?” She stood next to me.
“Not if business keeps up the way it has,” I said. We’d sold out every day this week. Now that Aunt Erma was back and could teach me her secret recipes with her magic spices, customers had been pouring through the door.
She kept her spices under magical lock and key except when we were baking. As we still had a few pies to top off with a sprinkle of spice, the wooden box was sitting on the kitchen island. It was painted purple and covered in a glittery glaze with twelve glass bottles inside. Each one was labeled with a number written in green. Bottle number three looked a little different from the rest. That was the spice Alice had stolen, and the original bottle was still missing. Aunt Erma had replaced the bottle when she’d created a new batch.
The garbage can in the kitchen was overflowing so I wheeled it towards the back door, grunting as I tried to pull it into the alley without tipping it over. I took a deep breath and heaved the plastic bag out of the bin. A “meow” startled me and I dropped the bag. It burst open and garbage spilled at my feet. I held my breath as I made eye contact with a blue-eyed cat peering at me from behind the dumpster.
Just one month ago, before I knew anything about magic, Aunt Erma had been the cat in the alley. An evil woman named Alice had turned her into a cat and stolen Aunt Erma’s magic spices before opening a cookie shop and attempting to alter Aunt Erma’s magic spices so she could use them to control people. She was working with Stan, the pie shop’s former delivery man, and Stan’s parents, Brenda and Dennis Drake. Only Alice had been caught so far, and she was in some kind of magical jail. The exact details about what exactly was involved in magical lockup were still a little fuzzy to me, and no one seemed eager to fill me in. The Drakes were still on the loose, and they had escaped with one of the bottles of magic spice. A fact that had kept Aunt Erma and I feeling a little on edge the past few weeks no matter how much we tried to focus on our holiday pie preparation.
“Meow once if you’re human,” I said in a low voice. The cat meowed again, and my eyes widened.
“Are you talking to a cat?” Henry asked, appearing from around the corner. His brown eyes twinkled, and his wavy brown hair stuck out from under his dark green stocking cap. Henry was my almost boyfriend. We had been dating for a few weeks, and I think we were nearing that point in the relationship when I could begin to use the B word.
“How do you know this isn’t a person?” I asked, greeting him with a quick kiss.
“I’m magic,” he said with a smile. “And I know that’s Mrs. Peterson’s cat. He likes to do a lap around town every morning.”
I leaned in for another kiss, enjoying the giddy feeling of being in a new relationship.
“I have to go,” Henry said, sneaking in one more kiss. This time lingering for an extra moment before pulling away. “I’m in charge of the bingo game today, and I’ll never hear the end of it if I’m late.” Henry worked at the nursing home. “Do you need help cleaning this up before I go?” He motioned to the pile of garbage. The breeze had begun to carry some bits across the pavement, and if I didn’t clean it up quickly I was at risk of being ticketed by Sheriff Buddy for littering.
“No, no, I’ve got it. I don’t want to be responsible for keeping you from your bingo game.”
Once he was gone, I closed my eyes and quietly murmured a lifting spell that I hoped would take care of this mess. I tried to feel the energy around me, and channel it toward the garbage. I heard it shifting against the pavement. I focused harder. Even though I was new to magic, I’d already begun to accept that the impossible was possible.
A strange feeling made my skin prickle and my eyes snapped open. A couple pieces of garbage fell from the air back to the pavement. I saw a cloaked figure at the end of the alley. There was something familiar about the way she moved. It couldn’t be her, could it? We were both frozen, our eyes locked, and I shuddered. I think I moved first, but she sprang into action at almost the same moment. I don’t know what my plan was if I caught her. I hadn’t really expected something like this to happen. Of all the possible scenarios Aunt Erma and I had discussed, this wasn’t one of them. We didn’t think she’d show up in broad daylight. She disappeared around the corner. I was just seconds behind her, but she was gone. I ran to the next corner and looked up and down the street. I tried to catch my breath as my breakfast pie flipped over in my stomach and threatened to reemerge.
The street was beginning to fill up with morning shoppers, and a few heads turned my way. I forced a smile. I didn’t want anyone to guess that Brenda had just been here. It had happened so fast I almost questioned whether or not I had actually seen her. No, it was definitely her. I had to call Violet.
