Page 2 of The Soulmate Bakery

‘She kind of deserved it.’ I shrugged, continuing to assemble my ingredients. ‘Everly is a bully, and if she was going to keep making fun of everyone, then she deserved a little transfiguration.’

‘Fine,’ Raven allowed, aggrieved.

For a moment, I thought she was going to talk about the second point on my licence. We didn’t talk about that point – I got it during the worst summer of my life. A time I didn’t like to talk about. Raven knew that.

Instead she launched into the other thing I didn’t want to think about tonight.

THE INCIDENT.

‘But I still don’t think falling in front of Silas Moon warrants making a batch of soulmate cookies and potentially getting another point on your licence if someone catches you.’

The memory flooded my thoughts, and my brows scrunched together with actual repulsion.

‘It wasn’t just a fall,’ I said, horrified. ‘I face-planted at his feet. It was mortifying.’

‘Silas probably didn’t even notice!’ Raven cajoled, but I could hear the wince in her voice.

‘Oh yes, maybe he didn’t notice the girl in front of him slipping and sliding on the shop floor like a fish out of water,’ I said, deadpan. ‘You didn’t see his face, Raven. I did. He looked at me with those big blue eyes, his blonde hair all shiny, and he even bent down to help me. Silas Moon is the cutest werewolf in this town, and I humiliated myself in front of him. Again.’

‘You know, you could always just tell him how you feel,’ Raven teased. ‘You, Maya Reverie, have been in love with that werewolf since we were thirteen.’

She wasn’t wrong. I’d had a crush on Silas Moon for literal years. While I have lived in Maple Falls since I was born, the Moon family moved in when Silas was thirteen. In a pack of seven brothers, Silas was the youngest. He was shy and quiet; I didn’t think much of him in the beginning.

But on his first day, he’d seen a particularly nasty vampire named Trent picking on me. Now, Trent’s issues weren’t really with me. He had tried to throw the party of the summer but epically failed when Vale caught him sneaking drinks on to Golden Shell Beach. You might wonder what that had to do with little ol’ me. Well, after a painfully long lecture from Vale, my mother, the town’s mayor, had given Trent community service as punishment.

Trent did not like that. Or my mother. And consequently, me, the mayor’s daughter.

Anyway, Trent was midway to biting into my neck when Silas intervened.

It wasn’t grand or loud. He’d simply stood in front of me and told the vampire to pick on someone his own size. I’d been crushing on him ever since. Over the years, I tried to catch his attention, but every time I was within touching distance of Silas, I did something incredibly stupid. Tripped, gagged, stumbled – you name it, I’ve done it. If I wasn’t a witch who had studied magic, I’d say I was cursed.

‘You’re right, I’ve been pining after him for long enough,’ I agreed. ‘That’s why I need to do this. It’s time to prove whether there’s anything real there.’

‘OK, so go talk to him! Don’t bake cookies to make him fall in love with you.’

‘They’re not cookies to make him fall in love with me! Love spells are strictly forbidden, you know that,’ I stressed. ‘They’re Cupido cookies. Once I eat one, all they’re going to do is create a silver string that’ll wrap around my wrist and lead me to my soulmate. It’s not like I’m bewitching him. Ergo, technically it’s not illegal.’

Raven was quiet on the line, giving me enough time to get the final ingredient out of the pantry. The glass bottle was shaped like a heart with a silver stopper corking it shut; inside, a dark-amber liquid sloshed around. Vanilla extract. Ivy’s fancy kind.

‘Fine,’ Raven finally said, sounding resigned. ‘Fine, but just – just don’t get caught, Maya. OK? Because I cannot graduate this year alone, while you’re stuck living out a sentence of mortality for a year. The plan is to graduate together before I go off to MAC. I want us to have one last summer of fun before I go.’

A lump formed in my throat as I began to imagine Maple Falls without Raven. I tried to envision how I was going to take the popular route of an apprenticeship with Ivy; how I could learn more kitchen magic while Raven would be off at the Magical Academy for Creatures. MAC was a college dedicated to creatures who wanted to work in higher-defence positions – that’s your Coven members, town inspectors, curse breakers. Positions that required lessons in forbidden spells and defensive magic. The downside? It was a boarding school, and I would barely get to see Raven while she was there.

I didn’t want to tell her, but that was part of the reason why I was so desperate to cast the spell: once Raven went to MAC, I would be entirely alone.

Unless I had someone who would never leave me. Like a soulmate.

‘I promise,’ I vowed, and I meant it. With every fibre of my being. This was going to be a good year.

I was going to get the guy, graduate with my best friend and I wasn’t going to get another point on my licence.

The dough for the Cupido cookies was the same as your classic chocolate-chip cookie; I decided to shape the dough into hearts because why not. But before I could get to the fun part, I needed to add the final charmed ingredient: the vanilla extract. I took the heart-shaped bottle, uncorked it and ghosted my fingertips over the rim. In front of me, I flipped open the spellbook I found in the library to the page I had bookmarked. I had to translate the spell from Latin to English – I would say the spell in its original language, but I didn’t want to mess up getting the pronunciation wrong.

Amore transfige et cor meum liga, Cupido, quaeso, figam tuam reperi.

To pierce with love and bind my heart, Cupido, please land your mark.

I raised my hand and drew an air-heart above the vanilla-extract bottle, while I whispered the translated spell.