Page 59 of The Blue Moon Café & 24-Hour Occult Emporium

Talula got the hint. “Let me just clear this off…”

“What is this?” Simon examined Talula’s scribbles and dictionaries.

“A cookbook,” Talula said, not meeting his eyes. She hurriedly stacked her notes and books in a pile. Despite his recent change of heart, in her gut she knew Simon would be suspicious of the book’s origins. He’d probably incinerate it in hellfire and roast marshmallows over its ashes (if he knew what marshmallows were). But Talula felt a tug of something whenever she looked at the book. A dangerous mix of hope, possibility, and rightness. She wanted to see it through. So she decided not to tell Simon where she’d gotten the book. “It’s in Jinn. I’m translating it because…I like to cook.”

“Hrmph.” Simon scratched at his ear. “A respectable pastime. It’ll keep your mental faculties sharp.”

“Thanks!” Talula piped before scooping up her translation materials and dashing up to her room. She came back down to reheat the sweet potato hash for an audibly panting Simon. As Simon went to town on his hash browns, Talula thought glumly about the fibs she’d told that day. Her gut churned with that sticky ooze of guilt. Talula hadn’t outright lied, but she’d definitely omitted some seriously important details. She knew she couldn’t go on translating the mysterious book while her conscience was in constant pseudo-crisis.

I’ll translate it. Then I’ll tell Simon everything, she thought. We can talk about what the book means when it’s finished. If it means anything.

Memory flashed—Dahlia’s face shined out at her, her eyes earnest as she handed Talula the book.

I’ll do the same for Dahlia, Talula decided. I’ll tell her what every single word means. Once I know what they mean, anyway.

Then, she’d let Dahlia shrug it off as hocus-pocus, and Talula could keep protecting the magical community’s anonymity while maintaining a mostly honest relationship with Dahlia.

Her sense of integrity vaguely soothed, Talula dumped Simon’s licked-clean plate into the dishwasher. She darted up the steps to her bedroom, back to the book.

After hours of work, Talula’s thumbs were sore from flipping through dictionaries. But she had a (deeply confusing) translation for the first recipe. At the end of the night, Talula double-checked her work. Then triple-checked. She went to bed convinced that her morning brain would reveal her mistakes. She woke up, brewed a cup of very strong tea, and reviewed the first recipe once again.

The Elemental Quiche

pinch of salt of the earth (freshly drawn)

four tomatoes sun-dried by hand

air-whipped eggs

garlic roasted with witchfire

The first four ingredients remained as bizarre and nonsensical as her first attempt at translation. The rest of the ingredients (flour, milk, butter, and the like) didn’t have that coquettish glint of magical incantation. But a note in the margins held a hint.

Like calls to like. Call in, then call out.

It was a puzzle. Or a riddle. Or a taunt.

Talula sipped her tea, thinking. It was obviously an exercise in elemental magic. The recipe asked her to draw salt from the earth. Air-whipped eggs made some sense. But sun-dried tomatoes? Was that one fire? No, the garlic roasted without an oven was definitely fire. But what element required the sun-dried tomatoes? Sun power? Talula groaned.

Like calls to like. Call in, then call out.

She stared into the distance, chewing on her lip so hard it bled, the red salt taste of it bright on her tongue.

Talula went very, very still.

She flicked her tongue over her broken lip.

Call in.

There was salt in her, and so many other bits of earth. If she thought about it, human bodies were organic and inorganic at the same time, filled with minerals and traces of metal that bound cells and built bones.

Like calls to like.

Following a pull she couldn’t explain, Talula walked through the back door of the kitchen. She knelt in the backyard, the chilled dew of the morning soaking her knees. She planted her palms in the yard’s patchwork grass. Goosebumps crept over her skin.

There’s salt in me, she thought quietly. She pictured the minerals inside her, grounding her. There’s salt in the earth.

Like calls to like.