A Double Shot of Ghosts, Mystic Brews #3 ebook

“Admit it,” Elain said. “You’re stressing.”

“I am not stressing.” I shot her a glare across my espresso machine. Even the carved dragon atop it looked like it knew I was fibbing.

Elain sat at one of the tables in the café, nibbling on a pastry with an espresso next to her plate.

I hit the grinder button and filled another porta-filter, the handled metal cup we used to make espresso, with another round of grounds.

“One more quarter-gram,” I muttered, and wrote the new weight in the recipe I was trying.

“You don’t need to change it,” Elain said. Her thin mocha-coloured fingers curled around the teal-blue mugs we used in the café. Her brown eyes followed me as I darted around behind my station. “Seriously, Ebrel. This one is great. Just do what you normally do. Mr Fedimore will be impressed.”

“He’s the food and drink critic for three different international publications,” I muttered.

“He’s also fae,” Elain said. “You won’t get special treatment because of that connection, but you’ll get a fair and honest assessment from him. There is no critic more ethical than Niles Fedimore.”

“He could walk in at any minute,” I said, my nerves adding a breath at the end that was half sigh.

I was correct. Fedimore could enter anytime he liked. Aunt Rose had keyed the wards on the kitchen door to allow fae through an hour before opening. Fedimore, as a fae, especially a food journalist, wouldn’t be above sneaking in early to observe me… I mean us. Usually, only a few souls ventured in before we officially opened, and then only to help or to drop off supplies. Roger Billingsley, owner and publisher of the Mystic Mystery, our local newspaper, should be around with this week’s stack in a few moments.

“I know I can do better,” I said.

“You’re stressing. Almost like a pixie on her first date,” Nia said. “Mum would have you in the plucking chair to make you behave.”

“Your mom has a wing-plucking chair? Ouch!” I shuddered.

“Well, she doesn’t pluck as often as Nia says she does,” Mia admitted.

The two sisters were our pixie staff in the café. Here, they were in their “tall” forms, without wings.

“The naughty chair has cut-outs for our wings to slide through while we sit and calm down. Mum makes it like a… What do you Americans call it? A time-alone? For a naughty child?”

“A timeout?” I rubbed my shoulder while letting the high-pressure water dibble out of the porta-filter. I tapped the stopwatch app on my smartwatch when the flow stalled. After I noted the time, still within a second of the last espresso, I sipped from the cup, not sure of my own taste buds any longer. I had more than a dozen brew times, pressures, and weights written on my pad. The never-ending tasting was starting to numb my senses.

“Do be careful, Cariad,” Aunt Rose said. “When you worry, your little magic jolt to make the brew special can go sour. Worry too much, and it might turn poisonous.”

“Really?” I gulped back my fear.

“Yes,” she said and headed back into the kitchen. “I doubt you have to worry about that, though. Your foo-foo drinks will probably go sour long before you poison someone.”

“Here, try this.” I set the new espresso in front of Elain. “I hope it’s not sour.”

“Tastes the same as the last one,” she said after taking a sip. “You’re doing what Neirin calls feather barbering. Like a fletcher making an arrow, trimming the fletchings to make it even more perfect. Stop trying to get the most minute adjustments made. If the arrow hits the target, the extra tenth of a millimetre your last adjustment made doesn’t matter.”

“Mr Fedimore is the type to notice that tenth of millimetre,” I said.

“He’s got no taste buds at all,” a man said and slid into a chair at the back table. “Fedimore is a tromper at best.”

I recognised the new client and felt my stomach drop. If Niles Fedimore was the epitome of food critics in the media, then Gaspar Dufour was a wannabe hack trying to overshadow a true master. He had a few notable publications that carried his restaurant reviews, though none with the reputations as those that ran Fedimore. When it came to the battle of critics, most connoisseurs trusted Gaspar’s reviews as far as they could toss the portly critic.

Dufour was the last person I needed in my café when Niles Fedimore was due to visit. But I dared not cross him by tossing him out. He and Fedimore would have to duel in their own way. I’d just make espressos and keep my head down in whatever battle they waged.

“Relax, Ebrel,” Elain added. “You’ve got this.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” I said and forced a smile at Elain.

“I understand.” She said and pushed the new espresso back at me. “Drink and relax. Just be the barista you’ve been since you got here. Make the drinks you always make, and stop second-guessing yourself.”

“She’s right,” Nia said. “You’ve taught me how to make yummy drinks. The pixies tell me mine are almost as good as yours.”

“Her magic shot is a little different than yours,” Mia added. “If her hair is a happy colour, her tornados taste good. If she gets a snit going, no one wants her drinks. Her magic makes them sour.”

“I never get a snit going!”

“Do so! Right now, even.”

“Urrgh!”

“Look at your hair,” Mia said with a laugh. “You’re all dark blue, heading towards purple.”

For sisters, Nia and Mia were similar. A strong family resemblance, but each of the pixies, even in their larger human forms, had natural coloured highlights in their hair. Nia’s hair normally glowed with light sea blue. Mia’s highlights were a few shades different on the colour wheel. Each darkened or lightened with the pixie’s mood.

Nia stuck out her lip, pouting. Her highlights shifted lighter.

Behind Elain, Gaspar Dufour put both elbows on the table and lowered his head into his hands.

“That was a rough night,” he muttered, his accent definitely French. “I could use a cup of strong coffee.”

I wasn’t sure what the food critic was doing in my café this early. Nor was I sure how to treat him, since he hadn’t emailed ahead to let me know he’d be arriving. Was he here to do a review? To undermine Fedimore somehow?

If he wanted a coffee, I could do that. A Yardley seemed to be just what he needed. Normally, it would be called a red-eye, or coffee with a double shot of espresso. I’d added a dash of caramel and renamed it for our local mayor, Yerdleh Yardley. He always seemed to be in a pinch and in need of extra caffeine to get over a rough patch.

“So what if you’ve got the top food critic in the world coming in to rate your coffee bar?” Elain said. “Just be you. April Storm, mistress of the espresso bar. You command the drips like Barti Ddu used to command the high seas.”

“He’s not rating just my espresso. He’s also looking at our pastries and tea time service,” I said. “Why isn’t Aunt Rose nervous?”

“Oh, I am, Cariad.” She said and brought another tray of pastries to the front. Her magical spectacles were again on top of her head. She kept them on a neck chain, like a stereotypical librarian with reading glasses. They were usually up on her head when she patted her chest looking for them. She slid an iced cinnamon bun onto a plate and set it in front of Elain. “Give this a taste, dear. New recipe I’m trying.” 

“You don’t look nervous,” I said, pulling a double shot of espresso for Dufour’s Yardley.

“Centuries of practise, Cariad. Worrying won’t do any good. I always bake when I worry. And when I’m happy.”

“That’s why you’re always baking,” Elain said.

I walked the Yardley in a tall ceramic mug over to where Dufour sat. 

“Merci,” he mumbled, but he didn’t reach for it. He massaged his temples and closed his eyes.

“You’ll be fine, Cariad,” Aunt Rose said and patted my arm. “You’ll get over your nerves soon. Just keep making coffee like you normally do. Set out coffee for the entire town if you need to practise. I’ll probably bake double my normal amount today.”

“I just wish I could bring Kyle in right now to work on the roasts,” I said. “He’d help get my mind off the impending sense of doom.”

“We discussed that,” Rose said. “Mundanes, even our friends, have to stay outside of the village. Once the store opens, the magic wards will relax and allow him in.”

“Besides, do you really want your mind on roasting on top of Fedimore’s visit?” Elain scooted her scone away. “If you two are going to keep putting food and drink in front of me because of your worrying, I’ll have to spend a month at the academy in PT to work off the calories.” She looked down at the new cinnamon bun and took up her fork again. “Oh well, what’s a few extra stone of weight, right?”

The back door in the kitchen slammed shut. That usually meant a delivery. Roger Billingsley pushed through the spring-loaded double doors from the kitchen, his arms full of bundled newspapers, his cell phone on his shoulder and his head tilted.

“Yes, I’ll wait,” he said into the phone.

“Diolch,” Nia said and took the bundle of papers from him.

Billingsley looked at Aunt Rose, his mouth open to speak, but his eyes darted down towards his phone.

“Owain. Roger Billingsley, old man. Better get down to Mystic Brews.”

We went still, none of us breathing. When the publisher of the paper called the local inspector and told him to get to your business, all we could do was wait and worry.

“Oh, a dead body,” Billingsley said. “In the alley behind. Smelled it on my way in.”

Elain sucked in a quick breath and was out the kitchen door in an instant.

“No, didn’t touch it. Knew to call you. Lady Elain just went out for nose about the scene.”

I glanced at Aunt Rose. Her pleasant grandmotherly face actually showed a few crinkles of worry. Nia and Mia both stood waiting. Only Dufour seemed oblivious, staring at the cup of coffee I had set in front of him.

“No idea who,” Billingsley said. “It was dark, and my hands were full. Barely got to my phone to call you.”

Elain came back in and took the phone from the newsman.

“Inspector? Elain. I’ve put a security ward on the body and the area.”

Owain said something to her. His voice was too muffled for me to make it out.

“Yes. Yes, I know him. Gaspar Dufour.”

My eyes jerked to the back table. Dufour reached for the cup in front of him. His hand slid right through it.

“Sacré… That would explain it. I am dead.”