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She notices. “Hey! What are you… give me that!”

Her shriek cuts through the festival. Half of the crowd gathered nearby turns her way just as Vincent shakes his head. “No.”

He sounds so matter-of-fact in his refusal that I almost laugh—and that’s when I see what he’s holding.

A notebook.

An orange notebook.

My notebook.

Setting down my bowl of halfway whisked pumpkin pie filling, I abandon my station.

By the time I reach them, Cindy is trying to snatch the notebook out of Vincent’s hand while he holds it easily over her head. She’s not that much shorter than him, but Vincent has magic on his side, and I’m just glad that no one notices that his arm is just an inch or two longer than it should be other than me.

Vincent looks at me as I stop short next to them. He grins. “Hey, pumpkin. Look at that. I found your book.”

Because it is. It is my book. The same orange notebook with the black elastic strap that keeps the odds and ends and inspiration tucked inside the pages… it’s my book and, though I don’t know how, Cindy had it on her table.

Cindy’s face turns red. “It is not her book! Those are my recipes. Give it back!”

Vincent ignores her and hands it to me.

The second it touches my hands, I’m positive it’s mine. The cover is worn in exactly the right places. There’s a faint grease stain near the bottom from the time I dropped it beside a bowl of melted butter.

Then I see the corner. My thumb brushes over the tiny punctures there.

“It’s not,” I say quietly. “It’s my book. Look. See those little dots? My cat chewed the corner. Those are his fang marks.”

Vincent starts to chuckle, then hurriedly changes it over to a cough. That doesn’t mean that he looks any less proud of himself. The opposite in fact. Both because he marked my recipe book and because he found it.

Cindy scoffs. “So what? My cat chews things, too.”

Vincent slowly looks at her. “You have a cat?” Before she can answer, he shakes his head. “No. None of the Shadowvale cats would choose you. That’s just another lie.”

Cindy’s face turns an impressive shade of red, though I notice she doesn’t deny it.

Meanwhile, I’m staring at my book as, suddenly, everything about yesterday makes sense. The orange zest. Molasses. The black pepper… Cindy didn’t independently come up with the same unusual combination I spent months perfecting.

She stole it.

I don’t know when. I don’t know how. Tell you what, though, I know why and it’s because she’s just as big of a sore loser as I am. How much do you want to bet that she stewed over losing last year’s Harvest Pie Bake-Off to the point that she made off with my recipe book and tried to pass my pumpkin pie recipe off as one of her own?

But it is my book, and I wordlessly prove it by opening the front cover and showing her what’s written on the inside:

Property of Kate Bellamy

It’s my name written in ink in my handwriting because, damn it, this is my recipe book.

Cindy pales. For the first time since I’ve known her, she seems to have absolutely nothing to say. Her panicked gaze darts around, taking in the crowd watching for her reaction.

She shoves the book away from me. “What the hell, Kate? You wrote in my book!”

I honestly don’t know how she thinks anyone is buying this performance of hers, but I’m more determined than ever to show her up and kick her ass. As far as I’m concerned, the pumpkin pie rematch is still on. In fact, it’s going to be even more fair now because it won’t be my own recipe against itself. Nope. It’ll be whatever Cindy can come up with versus whatever I can create—and, to prove it, I fold the book shut and walk right over to Mayor Pete.

“Mayor?”

He looks startled to be dragged into this. “Yes?”