Page 40 of A Dash of Wolf

He set the phone on the desk and rubbed his face with both hands.

Tomorrow. He’d figure it out tomorrow. Right now he had a prisoner to see to. No way was he going to leave her alone in the station overnight. It was going to be a long night sleeping in the chair...but a part of him thought he deserved it.

And the other part of him started thinking about what he had to do to fix his mess.

17

The Bad-Day Brownies tasted like dirt. Not actual dirt. Adeline hadn’t made that mistake since she was fourteen and accidentally channeled frustration instead of comfort into a batch. But these were close. She’d taken one bite and spit it into the trash. Then she’d tried a Time-Twirl cinnamon roll and waited for the rush of a happy memory. Nothing came. She felt nothing. Just sugar and cinnamon and the hollow absence of magic.

She’d baked three batches since four-thirty this morning. All of them wrong. Luckily, she still had all the pastries left over from her frantic baking yesterday after she’d had lunch with her grandmother.

“Adeline.” Emory strolled into the bakery’s kitchen holding a croissant at arm’s length—big butter tears rolling down its flaky sides. “Your pastry is literally crying butter tears. We need to talk.”

“I know.” Adeline pressed her palms against the counter. “I know. I know.”

Emory set the weeping croissant on the counter and put her hands on Adeline’s shoulders. “Adeline. Your magic is off. Your customers can taste it. Penny Barlow tried a Cocoa-Courage Truffle and said it made her feel like hiding under a blanket.”

“That’s the opposite of courage, Adeline,” Princess Muffin Top observed. “That’s cowardice in chocolate form. Poor girl has probably been set back five years.”

Adeline groaned. She knew what was happening. Kitchen magic was tied to intent and emotion. When she was happy, the magic flowed. When she was focused, the baked goods practically hummed with purpose. But when she was hurting—really, deeply hurting—the magic went sideways.

And right now, everything inside her felt broken.

She hadn’t slept a wink last night. She’d driven home from the station and just sat in the Beetle Bus in her driveway for twenty minutes, staring at the steering wheel. Princess Muffin Top had sat beside her in uncharacteristic silence. When they’d finally gone inside, Adeline had crawled into bed fully dressed and stared at the ceiling until dawn.

All she could think about was the emotional pull she’d felt the entire day from her fight with Grandmother Lavinia to her confrontation with Mrs. Abernathy to her blowout with Mason.

And she couldn’t help but hear his words on repeat in her head as he callously dismissed her. “Go back to your bakery, Adeline. I’ll handle the law side of things from here.”

Dismissed and overlooked…just like she’d been so many times in her life.

“Go back to your bakery, Adeline. I’ll handle the law side of things from here.”

The words played on a loop in her head, over and over. They’d been so dismissive and hurtful coming from him. Like she was just some civilian interfering with police business, not the woman he’d kissed in the moonlight two nights ago. He’d spoken to her like she was a problem to be managed, not a person to be heard.

“Go back to your bakery, Adeline. I’ll handle the law side of things from here.”

She’d done the right thing. She knew she had, and she’d stand by her decision. She’d figured out who the vandal was, and once she’d confirmed it, she’d brought Mrs. Abernathy straight to him. She hadn’t tried to cover it up. She’d chosen honesty over coverup, and he’d punished her for it.

The overhead bell chimed, and Adeline looked up to see who’d entered her empty bakery—even Mr. Harwick and Herschel hadn’t stayed long today. She knew word was out on the street to stay away. She tried to school her face from showing disappointment when one of her regulars walked in. She shouldn’t be looking for him. If he wanted to see her, he knew where she worked.

She strode into the bakery and smiled at the married fairy couple who came in every Monday for Zest-for-Life scones. Why hadn’t she made those yesterday instead of early this morning? She held her breath as they took the scones and bit into them. They made it three steps before the wife turned around.

“Is something...off today, Adeline?” she asked.

“We’re having a minor magical adjustment,” Emory said smoothly as she steered the couple toward her coffee side of the store. “Can I interest you in a Honey-Lavender Latte? Absolutely no kitchen magic involved. Just good coffee and excellent vibes.”

The couple followed Emory through the archway, glancing back at Adeline with the kind of concern and sympathy people usually reserved for someone who’d just received bad news. Which, she supposed, she had.

The bell chimed again. And again Adeline looked up.

It was Granny Edna dressed in purple pants and a floral shirt. The elderly fairy crossed the bakery in four steps and pulled Adeline into a bear hug that smelled like Werther’s Originals and lavender hand cream.

“Oh, sweetling,” Granny Edna murmured. “I heard.”

“About Mrs. Abernathy?” Adeline’s voice came out smaller than she’d intended.

“About everything.” Granny Edna pulled back and cupped Adeline’s face in both hands. “Mrs. Abernathy called me from the station last night. She’s fine. Gerald—you know, your grandmother’s butler—apparently showed up at nine o’clock last night with a blanket, a three-course meal, and a stern lecture for the chief about loyalty and love. Can you believe that?”