Magic Lies and Deadly Pies Read online

  She snorts when she looks at the little button, a kitschy slice of cherry pie swathed in a Pies Before Guys banner.

  “Look, I know this sounds crazy, but there’s a pie maker.” I hold out the hand pies. She doesn’t take one. “The pies can take care of what’s happening to you.”

  She looks at me like I’ve escaped from a locked psych ward, and I suppose that’s fair.

  “What, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach? What kind of fifties housewife bullshit is that?” She takes off again.

  “No, not like that. Well, actually, yeah, kind of exactly like that, but not how you think.” God, this is a nightmare. There’s a reason I don’t do this kind of recruiting. I take a breath. “Look, I’m not explaining it well.”

  “I don’t care. I have to get back to the office. I’m supposed to be there late. He’s picking me up at eight. I have to be there.” Fear makes the words sharp, and she speeds up like she might have already missed him.

  “He meaning the one who did that?” I ask, pointing to her neck.

  She tugs the ruffled collar higher. “It’s nothing.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Why do you even care?”

  Because it’s what I do, I want to say. Maybe pie can’t save the whole world, but it can save some worlds. It can save hers.

  “Keep the button. There’s contact info on the back,” I say. “Message it, say you’re from Saint Stan’s. If you can’t leave, you can get a pie that will fix it. You’ll be safe.”

  “Fix it how?”

  I shrug, decide to level with her. “Depends on the case. It’ll kill him or cure him. But based on the fact that he’s already tried to strangle you, I think the former is more likely.”

  She touches her neck. “You sell poisoned pie?”

  I shake my head. “No, not me.” Lie. “And not poisoned. It’s, well, magic. For real. Untraceable. It’ll look like a completely natural death.” Truth.

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “You don’t have to believe in something for it to be true.”

  We walk in silence for several blocks until we come to a high-rise office building. She pulls a key card from her purse but doesn’t swipe it.

  “How much?” she asks, voice hoarse as if the words are betraying her.

  I point to the button. “You pay it forward. The only price is passing along the pie maker’s info to someone else who needs it.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she whispers.

  Chapter Three

  The lights at Frank’s Roadside Diner are still blazing, and the diner parking lot is dotted with cars when I finally make it home.

  Friday is fish night and one of the only days Frank stays late. I pull around back and park next to Penny, the gleaming pink-and-white vintage RV I inherited from my mother. I’ll rehitch in the morning, when I can actually see.

  Through the thin door, I hear the scrabble of Zoe’s nails on the checkerboard floor, and I call a greeting to her as I unlock the van.

  Once I’m inside, she immediately launches herself at me with the full force of a creature who was convinced she’d never see the person who fills the food bowl ever again.

  “I wasn’t even gone that long,” I say, dropping down so she can jump on me.

  Zoe squirms all fifty-five pounds of herself into my lap and covers my face with doggy kisses. I let her, with minimal protest, because it wouldn’t be a stretch to say I owe the silly brown-and-white pit bull my life. When things went bad with that first pie, I could’ve lost it, lost her, lost everything. But I didn’t.

  “Okay, quick walkies, then it’s pie time,” I say. She bounds around my legs as I get the leash and barely sits still long enough for me to clip it to her collar. “We’re going, we’re going.”

  As we cross the back lot, I catch the cherry-red glow of a cigarette near the back door and wave.

  “Hey, Pie Girl,” Juan shouts. “Ovens on tonight?”

  “Please!” I call back.

  “Better leave me something good,” he says.

  “You know it,” I promise.

  Juan is second-in-command in the diner and will probably take over when Frank dies, since the old man is far too stubborn to ever retire. He was as surprised as anyone by the arrangement Frank and I struck—pies in exchange for parking and electricity. According to Juan, Frank did favors for no one and figured I must be magic.

  If only he knew.

  The diner pies are fun to make because they’re simple. Or maybe classic is a better word. Sky-high apple, cherry, chocolate cream, and lemon meringue, each infused with the barest hint of a nostalgic magic so they feel like home and happiness. I occasionally rotate other options in, specials for the week based on what’s in season or striking my fancy, but the diner isn’t the place to experiment.

  That’s what the farmers’ markets are for.

  Well, yes, okay, first and foremost the farmers’ markets are for money, but the reason I can count on selling out is because I don’t bring the kind of pies you find by the slice at Frank’s diner.

  I hustle Zoe along, get her back in the RV and fed, and grab the green apron from the hook by the door on my way out. When the diner is empty, I let her come in with me, but not on Fridays. Frank doesn’t take health code violations lightly, and fifty pounds of pit bull is definitely on the health inspector’s no-no list.

  The smell of frying fish hits me before I even reach the back door. I pick my way around the battered milk crates that are the official break-time seating of restaurant staff everywhere and let myself in.

  “Where’ve you been?” Frank barks, wiping his hands on a threadbare white apron.

  “Uh, pie delivery?” I don’t mean for it to sound like a question, but I’m still not used to accounting for my whereabouts, least of all to Frank.

  “You had a visitor,” he says.

  “I did?”

  “Some guy on a bike nosing around your trailer. Dog was barking her fool head off at him, only reason I even saw him. Chased his ass off, but you got yourself some kind of trouble I should know about?”

  “It was probably someone from the college. Did he leave a name?” I appreciate Frank’s watchfulness, but the last thing I need is him scaring away paying customers.

  “Didn’t ask. Smarmy bastard couldn’t even take his damn helmet off so I could get a look at his face, but I told him if he wanted pie, he could come inside and buy a slice like a normal person, otherwise he had to git. Didn’t like the way he was peepin’ in your windows like that.”

  Neither do I, but I try to shrug it off. The guy probably just wanted to place an order, but still, it’s weird that he’d show up behind the diner. I take regular pie orders when I’m parked at the campus or the markets, and all the other ones come through the Pies Before Guys account.

  “Well, he can always come to the market tomorrow,” I say, disappearing into the walk-in cooler to fetch the slab of pie dough I prepped yesterday.

  “You make sure my pies get done first, hear? And none of that fancy edible-flower shit either.”

  I bite back a smile. One time I did that, just one, but he’s never letting it go. “You got it, Frank.”

  “And eat something, will ya? You’re getting too thin.”

  That is hardly true, but I know he can’t say something just to be nice.

  Juan winks and slides a stainless-steel bowl across the prep table at me. Inside is a steaming mound of hand-cut fries, sparkling with flakes of sea salt. I inhale the sharp scent of too much malt vinegar and grin. Just the way I like them.

  “You’re the best,” I say, shoving three in my mouth and instantly regretting it. It’s like eating lava and I gasp for breath, steam billowing out of my mouth like I’m a demented dragon. “Oh shit, that’s hot.”

  “Every time.” Juan shakes his head, laughing. “You do it every time.”

  I pluck out another fry and blow on it
. “Patience is overrated.” I poke my pie dough to see if it’s soft enough to roll yet. It isn’t. “Except where pie is concerned.”

  “Speaking of pie,” Juan says, drawing the words out. He gives me his best begging-puppy face, which is pretty good thanks to the fact he has the kind of lashes that would make a Kardashian jealous. “In exchange for scorching your mouth, can I get a special pie? Pretty please?”

  I point a fry at him. “You destroy my taste buds with fiery, salty, malty goodness, and you think you deserve a reward?” I swallow the fry. It really is perfect. I nod. “Okay, yeah, fair. What do you need?”

  He drops a batch of fish fillets into the fryer and has to wait for the sputtering oil to quiet before he answers. “It’s Eric’s birthday.”

  “Ooh, birthday pie is nice. Doing anything special?” I unwrap my dough and use a bench scraper to portion it. There was a time I had to weigh it, but that was a lot of pies ago. When Juan doesn’t answer, I glance up to find he suddenly looks bashful, younger than the midthirties he is. I raise my eyebrows at him.

  “Staying home.” He draws in a breath and dumps the rest of the sentence in a rush, beaming. “And filling out adoption papers.”

  “It’s about time,” I say, laughing. I’m already concocting the magic in my head: love, luck, and a heaping dose of strength.

  Juan and his husband have been talking about adopting a kid since I came to Frank’s, but it’s never been the right time, they’ve never had enough money saved, they’ve been too scared. That last one is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, which I’ve told Juan a hundred times at least. They already have a zoo of pets, so I doubt adding a kid to the mix will be that much more work.

  “You guys are going to be great dads.”

  “I hope so.” He pulls the basket of fish out of the fryer as Frank reappears.

  The old man grabs a pair of metal tongs from the hanging rack and clicks them at us. “I’m not paying you two to shoot the shit.”

  “You’re not paying me at all,” I say sweetly, draping a round of dough into a deep-dish ceramic pie pan.

  “Damn good thing,” he says, loading up a pair of plastic boats with fish and fries.

  “You’d miss me if I left.”

  “Bah,” he says, and slings the tongs onto the prep table and bangs through the door to the dining room, muttering about his lack of servers.

  “He would, you know,” Juan says. “Miss you. I would too.”

  “So would everyone else when he went back to serving frozen pie,” I say, giving an exaggerated shudder. But here’s the thing: I do know. When I struck the deal with Frank, I was only looking to find an out-of-the-way place to park Penny for a while. I didn’t expect to find a family. But I sort of have.

  Chapter Four

  I’m jolted awake in the dark hours of the morning by Zoe losing her absolute shit.

  She’s in the tiny stairwell, barking loud enough to rattle the pie tins.

  I slap around for my phone, find it, and see that’s it’s barely past four. I can think of zero people who would be visiting at this hour.

  Or any hour, really.

  “Zoe, shut it,” I call. My alarm is set to ring in an hour and I’d really like to spend it sleeping. “Come on. Snug time.”

  She ignores me, her barks echoing in the small RV.

  I groan and roll out of bed. Maybe it’s Frank, but I can’t guess what would be so important it couldn’t wait until after oh-god-thirty. Then I remember what he said earlier, that someone had been snooping around, and I go still. I creep to the kitchen and peer out the window but can’t see anyone there. Zoe whines one more time, then trots up the stairs into the kitchen. I pet her and point to the bed. “Go.”

  She does, content that she’s scared off whatever was outside.

  Probably just a cat.

  Or the wind.

  I’m sure of it.

  Yet I pull a chef’s knife off the magnetic bar on the side of the fridge and inch toward the door, holding it close to my side. I hear nothing apart from my own beating heart. Fuck it.

  I throw the door open, leading with the knife, and step outside.

  Nothing.

  No cat, no wind, no prowling intruder. Just an empty back lot, lit by the sallow glow of distant streetlights.

  When the door slams behind me I jump, whirling with the knife up, but there’s no threat. Just an envelope, taped to the door.

  An envelope that wasn’t there when I went in for the night.

  Frank was right.

  Zoe was right.

  Someone has been lurking outside.

  I pull the envelope down, scanning the dark for signs of motion. Nothing. I crouch down and check beneath Penny for any hidden monsters before going inside.

  I’m too wired to sleep, but I take the envelope to bed with me anyway. Zoe climbs over me, curling into a ball between my legs before I even get the bedside light on. I have to stretch to avoid disturbing her.

  The envelope is white and completely generic. PIE MAKER is written on the front in sharp capitals.

  Inside is a single sheet of typewritten paper.

  Centered on the top, in caps, it says ORDER FORM, but it’s not my order form.

  It’s not even a form at all. It’s a note.

  I know who you are and what you do. If you want me to keep your secret you’ll do for me what you’ve done for them.

  My gut feels like I’ve taken a rolling pin to it, but I keep reading.

  I require a pie for each of the following:

  Kerenza Vallery at 1608 Lakeside Drive—Citrus preferred, NO stone fruit. (Allergic, will not eat.)

  Brittany Cline at 11B Morgan Ave—chocolate

  Emma Rogers at 212 Crable Street, Unit 8—any flavor

  Deaths can be slow and agonizing or quick and painless. Your choice. Payment will be tendered in the form of my silence. I assure you that is more valuable than money.

  You owe me.

  There is no signature.

  The paper shakes in my hand, and I force myself to breathe steadily. I tell myself it’s just an adrenaline dump, a fight-or-flight response triggered by the threat of exposure. I will not panic.

  I grab my phone and check the Pies Before Guys account. No messages. All murder-pie orders come through the app, no exceptions. Even the support groupers I talk to personally have to go online because, as far as they know, I’m not the Pie Maker, just a satisfied customer.

  I reread the note slowly, attempting to channel an inner Sherlock I don’t have. It’s so wrong I don’t know where to begin. First of all, Kerenza, Brittany, and Emma are obviously women, and I don’t kill women, no matter how much they deserve it. There are already too many men out there slaughtering the female of the species. It’s a line I refuse to cross.

  I read again.

  There’s no referral. All murder-pie requests have to come with a referring sender. Pies Before Guys is strictly a word-of-mouth service, and a referral is literally the only way anyone can even find out murder pies exist. It’s not like I take out billboard ads.

  And there’s that comment about money, which is something I refuse to take for murder pies. It’s another line I won’t cross. It was one thing for my foremothers to profit from their cheerful, harmless magic, but I’m not just whipping up coiffed confidence or love bouquets. There’s a difference between being an avenging pie maker and a hired gun, at least to me. My services can’t be bought, only earned.

  I know who you are and what you do.

  But they don’t, not really, because if they did, they would know I can’t choose whether the death is fast or slow like they suggest. I can only set it in motion.

  But they know enough.

  They know where I live, and that’s a violation I cannot abide.

  I take where I live very seriously, because Penny isn’t just my home, she’s my legacy. She has held generations of Ellery magic and is the last link I have to my mother.

  When I was fifteen and Mom got
too sick to work, a man came to tow Penny from our driveway, and I watched her roll away with tears streaming down my face and an ache in my heart that had as much to do with the van as with my mother. In my head, the two had become inextricably linked, and I knew deep down that once Penny was gone, Mom wouldn’t be far behind.

  I was right.

  It wasn’t until my seventeenth birthday that I realized neither of them was truly gone.

  I was in the kitchen, weaving wide strips of pie dough into a desperate wish-laden lattice. I knew there would be no cake, no candles to carry a wish now that Mom was gone, so I was baking it into my own birthday pie. The spicy scent of cardamom wafted up from the sweet apples as I worked the pastry strips over and under each other, trapping the magic between the crusts. The movement was soothing, the pattern just complicated enough to keep the worry at bay. I crimped the edges into deep scallops and brushed an egg wash over the top. I considered a sprinkle of sugar, but Dad never liked pies that were too sweet, so I just slid it into the oven and set a timer.

  The stranger arrived just as the pie finished baking, as if lured by its scent. The firm knock had Zoe up in an instant, barking like the world was ending. I set the pie on a wire rack to cool and shushed the dog.

  I slung my dish towel over my shoulder, arranged my face into a semblance of cheer, and opened the door.

  And almost fell right over.

  A familiar, heavyset Latino man stood on the porch, holding a fat envelope. But he wasn’t what threatened to take my legs out. Behind him was a pink RV.

  Penny.

  “Daisy?” the man asked.

  I nodded dumbly.

  He smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling with merriment as tears flooded my own. “You look just like her. Happy birthday!”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. It had to be an apparition. A trick. “How do you know it’s my birthday?”

  The smile widened. “I’m Aramis, a friend of your mom’s. Or rather, the son of a friend of your mom’s. She did my mom’s hair when she was at Cedar Grove. My mom looked forward to those appointments all week. They really helped keep her spirits up at the end.”