Janet Evanovich: Wicked Appetite

“Where do the cars come from?”

“I don’t know. I never get an answer when I ask, so I’ve stopped asking.”

“Wulf is living in one of the high-rise condos bordering the park. He had his own elevator, so I’m guessing it’s a penthouse.”

“That sounds like Wulf.”

“It was nice. Beautiful art on the walls and elegant furniture. And Wulf wasn’t terrible. He was very quiet and civil, but there’s something about him that frightens me.”

“Maybe it’s because he burned you, and he kills people.” Diesel took the road through the park and turned toward Storrow Drive. “How did it go with your dad last night?”

“It was good except for the mashed potatoes.”

Diesel cut his eyes to me.

“Carl wanted to sit at the table and eat with us,” I told him. “So I fixed him a plate of steak and green beans and mashed potatoes.”

“You didn’t try to get him to eat mashed potatoes with a fork, did you?”

“Yeah.”

“Been there, done that,” Diesel said.

“Anyway, everything else was nice, and it was great to see my dad. I miss my family, and I wouldn’t mind living closer, but I don’t miss northern Virginia.”

Diesel hit the entrance to Storrow and went from zero to seventy in about three seconds. Traffic was all coming into the city, and we were leaving the city.

“I was waiting for you in front of your house,” Diesel said. “I didn’t expect you to come out the back door.”

“I didn’t want to wake my dad.”

Diesel’s brows knit together. “I usually sense Wulf. I don’t know how I missed him this morning.”

“It wasn’t Wulf. It was Hatchet. He stun-gunned me and brought me to Wulf’s penthouse. Why didn’t you just read my mind?”

Diesel grinned. “You don’t actually think I can read your mind, do you?”

“No. Of course not. That would be ridiculous.” I gave up a sigh. “How do you always know what I’m thinking if you can’t read my mind?”

Diesel slowed for traffic, changing lanes for the Tobin Bridge. “Lucky guess?”

I wasn’t sure what I hated more… thinking Diesel could read my mind, or knowing I was so transparent he always knew what was in my head.

“Anything happen in Wulf’s condo that I should know about?” Diesel asked.

“It turns out there are four charms. Wulf wants me to find the fourth one. I said I was working with you, and he said it didn’t matter. He said it’ll come down to a deal and a roll of the dice.”

“Why doesn’t Wulf have Hatchet find the fourth charm?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he thinks it’ll go faster with two people looking. At any rate, you apparently need all four charms to find the real Stone, and Wulf’s determined to find the Stone.”

“Do you have any idea who that fourth charm holder might be?” Diesel asked.

“Yes. Do you?”

He nodded. “Yep. I’m guessing it’s serial mom.”

That was my guess, too. She wasn’t at the reading of the will, but she was in the photo with the other charm holders. And she started having children at the right time.

“I need to get to the bakery,” I told Diesel. “I’ll be done around noon, and we can go talk to Melody. I imagine mornings are chaos in her house anyway.”

It was precisely seven o’clock when Diesel dropped me off at Dazzle’s. Clara was up to her elbows in bread dough, looking like she needed a vacation. Her hair was more eccentric than usual and shot with flour. Her expression was somewhere between a death in the family and royally pissed off.

“Where the heck have you been?” Clara half shrieked.

“I was kidnapped.”

“That’s no excuse,” she said. “You could at least call.”

I hung my sweatshirt on a hook by the door and buttoned myself into a clean chef coat. “I don’t have a cell phone. And anyway, I was unconscious a lot of the time.”

Clara pushed her hair back with her hand, and a glob of bread dough stuck in the hair just above her ear. “I was really worried. Ten more minutes, and I was going to start calling hospitals. How could you get kidnapped? Where was Diesel? I thought he was supposed to be protecting you.”

“My father unexpectedly showed up last night, and there was no way I could explain Diesel without creating a family crisis. So I kicked Diesel out. I guess it was a dumb thing to do, because Steven Hatchet was waiting for me when I opened the door to come to work this morning.”

“Who’s Steven Hatchet?”

“He’s the guy who sliced my arm.”

“You said it was a freak accident with your carving knife.”

I measured out the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder for the first batch of cupcakes. “I fibbed.”

Clara stopped working and looked at me. “I’m starting to get a bad feeling.”

“Steven Hatchet supposedly is an Unmentionable. And supposedly, we’re the only two people on the planet who have the ability to find certain empowered objects.”

“The SALIGIA Stones.”

“Yes. Unfortunately, Hatchet is a complete psycho nutcase who thinks he’s living in the Middle Ages. And now, his whole life is centered around impressing Wulf. He calls him his liege lord. And it gets even better, because Hatchet is an authority on toxins and torture.”

“Cripes,” Clara said.

I dumped butter, milk, the flour mixture, and vanilla into the big mixer and turned it on. “Anyway, Hatchet snatched me and brought me to Wulf’s condo.”

Clara had both hands flat on the island, leaning toward me, eyes wide. “You were in his condo? Omigosh, what was it like?”

“It was in a high-rise on the park in Boston. Beautifully decorated. Old Masters type art on the walls. They looked authentic, but what do I know.”

“What about his bedroom and his kitchen? Does he cook?”

“I only saw the living room.” Thank goodness.

I whipped up egg whites, added them to the rest of the batter, and filled the cupcake tins. I shoved the tins into the oven and started another batch of cupcakes.

A half hour later, I pulled the cupcakes out of the oven and set them on a rack at my workstation. Clara came over and looked at them with me.

“What are they?” Clara wanted to know.

“Cupcakes.”

“They don’t look like cupcakes. They’re all flat and lumpy.”

“I don’t get it. My cupcakes are always perfect. I’ve been making cupcakes for as long as I can remember, and I’ve never had this happen.”

“Maybe there’s something wrong with the oven. Maybe you forgot the baking powder.”

“I have a second batch baking in the lower oven.”

We went to the oven and looked in. Disaster. My chocolate cupcakes were oozing over their wrappers and dripping onto the oven floor.

“This is horrible,” I said. “How could this be happening?”

Clara’s face went pale. “You’ve lost it.”

“Lost what?”

“Your ability to make Unmentionably superior cupcakes.”

“That’s ridiculous. It was the flour or something.”

“It happened to me,” Clara said. “I never talk about it, but I’m going to tell you because you have to know. I used to be an Unmentionable. I come from a long line of Unmentionables.”

“Get out!”

“There was this guy I was dating after my first divorce,” Clara said. “He was really nice, and one thing led to another, and next thing, we spent the night together. And when I woke up in the morning, I was a Normal.”

“Are you serious? What was your ability?”

“Cookies. I still make cookies, and they’re okay, but I used to make cookies that were perfect. And my cookies made people happy.”

“They still make people happy.”

“It’s not the same. Everyone who bit into one of my Unmentionable cookies smiled. And then there was the other thing,” she said.