Page 8 of Fake It ’Til You Mate It

— gus

If I thought that yesterday’s minor disaster meant that Dough You Believe in Magic would be a ghost town, I would be wrong. I should’ve known better. This is a supe town, after all, run by shifters with more than a few witches. I sell charmed cupcakes proudly. Something like that was bound to happen, even if it was embarrassing that it wasn’t on purpose.

In fact, I had more than a few customers come in to see if there was a new batch of honesty cupcakes for them to buy. I had to refuse them all with a sorry shake of my head. I could just see it now. Unsuspecting supes being charmed into telling the truth—telling secrets—would definitely bring the sheriff back to my door.

Uh-uh.

No, thanks.

I did, however, guess something like that would happen. Following another one of Grandma Jean’s recipes, I made Lift You Up Meringues. Delightful little pillows with a tart cherry taste, one of the meringues promised a whole hour of a great mood with no crash afterward.

I sold out of them by ten, and started pushing the almond croissants I made just in case Roxy came by. There was no sign of her, but we definitely didn’t lack for customers.

It finally starts to slow around two. Taking advantage of having the store empty for a few minutes, I scarf down a magic-free danish, chase it with two slices of sourdough with my namesake smeared between the thick slabs of bread, before grabbing a lemonade from the small fridge I keep for personal use.

I’m just re-capping the bottle when the doorbell jingles, announcing a new customer.

And I do mean new. Around my age or maybe a few years older, it’s a female shifter that I’ve never met before. She has dark hair cut in a fetching bob, a flatter nose with wide-set eyes… and they’re pink. She has pink eyes.

I don’t know who she is, but at least I know what she is.

I give her my customer service smile. “Welcome to Dough You Believe in Magic. What can I do for you?”

She doesn’t quite hop, though there’s undeniably a bounce to the way she walks over to me, a grin splitting her pretty face.

“Hi. I’m Betsy.”

Betsy the bunny shifter. How cute. “Honey, hi.”

She waves her hand, brushing away my introduction. “Oh, I know who you are. Everyone in Moonburrow knows that you’re Jeannette Douce’s granddaughter.”

Jeannette… Grandma Jean. I nod.

“You’ve been the talk of Moonburrow since you arrived, and I’m sorry that it’s taken me this long to visit. Your grandmother made the most divine carrot cakes. If you added that to your repertoire, I’d stop by more.”

Something… probably my opossum’s instincts that I should probably listen to more than I do… tells me that I might ‘forget’ to look for that recipe in Grandma Jean’s recipe book for a while—a suspicion that is only proven to be more true when Betsy leans her elbows on the countertop, smiling up at me.

“So… I heard you spent some time with Sheriff Lobo yesterday.”

I nearly choke on her casual statement. Deny, Honey. Deny deny deny. “What? Where did you… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She lifts her eyebrows. “Hm. Maybe you need one of those honesty cupcakes that had Frannie admitting she doctors up her tail.” Leaning in, the bunny confesses, “We all knew it, but none of us had the heart to point it out whenever she’d boast about it. They say foxes are sly, but in my experience, they’re very insecure.”

And bunnies, I’m betting, are part of the gossip circle in Moonburrow.

When I don’t say anything about my unfortunate customer from yesterday, Betsy looks at me curiously. “What about you?”

I go still. Don’t faint, Honey. I’ve been so good. I haven’t dropped since I’ve been in Moonburrow, though the first time I caught Sheriff Lobo’s scent and realized what exactly that meant had me touch and go for a while there. I don’t want to faint now all because a curious bunny is sticking her wiggly nose in where it doesn’t belong.

“What about me?”

Her pink eyes darken slightly. “You’re a witch, sure, but there’s something else there… something… I don’t mean to offend or nothing, but a little musky.”

Huh. I know my scent-dampener is geared specifically to a wolf’s nose—especially an Alpha’s sniffer—but I didn’t expect any other shifter to pick up on my true supe side. Unless they spend time around opossum clans, the purple eyes might not tip ‘em off… but Betsy isn’t wrong. Opossums have a musk—and I have an excuse.

I click my tongue, catching Gus’s attention. He lifts his head from where he was—you guessed it—fast asleep. Tapping my fingers against the counter has my sidekick getting up slowly, stretching his oversized body, and doing that strange half-run, half-gallop that belongs to us opossums.

“This is Gus,” I say solemnly. “He manages Dough You Believe in Magic. I just bake here.”