Page 81 of The Blue Moon Café & 24-Hour Occult Emporium

Talula knelt to the floor and gingerly picked up the herb. She took a sniff. On an absurd whim, she looked up at the ceiling.

Nope, no dill leaks in the roof, she thought.

Talula held up the herb, examining it with a little awe. It wasn’t an apple, like Simon had hoped for. Or even the thing she’d been trying to conjure. Still, Talula couldn’t help but clutch the little green sprig to her heart and laugh victoriously.

The world was closer than she thought.

Grinning, Talula tried again. Her gaze softened as she pictured the door to the Voltlette. She let the details fill up in her mind, as if she were standing right in front of it.

Knock knock.

In her mind, the door opened. Talula realized her perspective was moving, like she was watching a movie. The drawer where she kept her honey stash appeared. Talula reached for the honeycomb—with her magic, she realized, not her hand—and blinked back into herself.

A faint mist of blue twined around her fingers. For a moment, the air over her open palm looked smudged, like the space above her hand had gone out of focus. Just as soon as it had happened, the world pulled itself back into definition, bringing with it a jar of honeycomb. Talula held it up, like a trophy shining in the morning light.

Feeling a little buzzed from the magic, she checked the list and reached again.

Soon, Talula had conjured a honeycomb, a jar of pickles (from her fridge at home), and a cabbage (with a bit of dirt on it from one of the house’s overgrown planter boxes). She arranged them on her countertop. Now that the first ingredients were checked off, “secret butter from the baker” was next.

Talula bit her lip. She remembered the farmers’ market rumor she’d heard about what made Mrs. Bochart’s pastries so incredible. According to market myth, Mrs. Bochart made her own butter from organic milk from local grass-fed cows. This butter was supposedly the dairy product of the gods, always so fresh that it could turn even the stalest bread into a sensation.

But the ancient spellbook couldn’t mean Mrs. Bochart’s secret butter…could it?

Chills crept over Talula’s skin. Come to think of it, how did a book that looked so old contain the names of modern countries and cities?

It could only be one thing—time magic.

Time magic was one of the rarest, wildest kinds of sorcery. It showed up seldomly, and when it did, big things happened. Big, reality-obliterating things.

Warily, Talula closed the book, turning it over to examine the cover’s looping calligraphy. She paused—the book had been written in Jinn. Although they couldn’t time travel, some jinn were able to keep one eye on the past, another on the future, and a smug grin for all the ignorant idiots stuck in the present with them. So while jinn couldn’t exactly manipulate time, they could find little loopholes in which to play small anachronistic jokes (without destroying existence).

The simplest explanation was this: a jinn had peeked into the future, taken pity on Talula, and written the cookbook to help her. She could think of only one jinn who would do such a thing. Kiki. Kiki must have written the cookbook. No wonder they’d had such a cat-who-ate-the-whole-flock-of-canaries smile when they’d met. The jinn must’ve known Talula was only weeks away from uncovering the book. And thanks to Kiki’s promise of honesty, Talula could feel reasonably confident that the book wouldn’t secretly try to wreck her life (or time and space, for that matter).

Overcome with affection and gratitude for the jinn, Talula picked up the book and gave it a hug. More determined than ever, she refocused on the ingredient list for Near and Far Fried Chicken Sandwiches. Specifically, Mrs. Bochart’s secret butter. But Simon had said for conjuring to work, a sorceress needed to know exactly where the desired object was or have a strong emotional connection to it. Talula had never even been to Mrs. Bochart’s house. How was she going to envision her door to get the butter?

The world is closer than you think. Just knock.

She may not know what the door looked like, but maybe…she didn’t need to? Talula closed her eyes. In her mind, Talula created a door, the kind of door Mrs. Bochart might like. She imagined it painted light blue with a small pane of stained glass. She summoned her magic, focusing on the butter, on finding it beyond the door. Talula reached for the doorknob and pulled.

She looked into the most organized industrial refrigerator she’d ever seen. Jars of fruit preserve were neatly labeled and lined up. Gallons of milk filled an entire shelf. And slab upon slab of wax-paper-wrapped butter filled the rest of the shelves. Talula moved closer and reached.

When she blinked back to herself, a slab of cold butter lay in her hands. Carefully, Talula peeled back the wrapping. She had no idea that fresh butter had a distinct scent, of fat and cream, of culinary lusciousness. Talula, being an upright citizen and a general force for good in the world, had reservations about stealing butter from her hopeful baking mentor/conspirator in the Samhain crisis. She thought about returning the butter. Then she thought about the baguette stashed in the Voltlette.

She should at least have a taste.

A significant amount of butter and half a baguette later, Talula decided that she could live with the ethical ambiguity of stealing Mrs. Bochart’s butter, just this once. She put away her snack—it was time to knock on some doors.

Behind a 1950s diner door, Talula nabbed a piece of freshly fried chicken thigh.

Behind a sleek metal door, a neat row of perfect, fluffy brioche.

Behind a scarlet, intricately carved door, a cluster of chili plants.

With each “knock,” conjuring became as second nature as reaching into a kitchen pantry. Finally, Talula arranged all the ingredients on the counter, beaming at her magical mise en place. She conjured the recipe’s few non-geographically-specific items into the spread with a shrug. She figured that Kiki hadn’t had the patience to come up with more hyperspecific items to conjure (and mayo was magical no matter where it came from). A faint blue sparkle of sorcery hung over the room, tickling Talula’s nose. Then, just because she could, she conjured her apron from its usual hook behind the café counter.

Now it’s time for the real magic.

By lunchtime, Talula had completed the recipe (and sent digital payments to the restaurants she’d “borrowed” ingredients from). From her mix of conjured ingredients, Talula created a fried chicken sandwich on buttered brioche with chili-infused honey and pickled mango coleslaw. Talula had raised her eyebrow at the addition of mango—who puts mango on a fried chicken sandwich?—but the results were dumbfoundingly delicious.