Daisy Duke's Arc

Chapter 12 of 22

The stove worked, but the shop still scared people off. Daisy stood at the door and watched the waking world stream past. Nobody stopped. From the street, Pluto's Bakery looked dead. Dust on the windows. Frost creeping up one corner. A cracked sign no one could read. She had bread cooling on the counter and not a single customer. "They can't tell it's a bakery," she said. "They think it's a ruin." Skeeter tapped his cane on the floorboards, quick and sharp. Her ex, the crystal-boned dancer who once drew crowds so she could sell. He never gave a straight answer. "A house that hides its light," he said, "stays a house nobody visits." He swept his cane toward the dim front. "We paint the dark. We hang the shine. We point the wanderers in." He grinned. "But I bring the eye, not the hands." "Then who brings the hands?" Daisy asked. Beth Wonders stepped in, black wings folded tight, purple hair under a plaid cap. The cosmic witch could feel where magic ran thin. She said crowds wore her out, so she rarely came to loud places. She crossed her arms and looked around once. "This corner's freezing," she said flat. "That flower's the cause. It won't come out. I already know, so don't ask." Then, blunt: "I sound rude. I'm right, though." They worked fast. Skeeter called his design; Beth built it with star magic. She scrubbed the windows bright with a wave of her hand. She lit a black arrow sign over the door, its bulbs glowing pink and gold, pointing straight at the entrance. She set a small prism vase on the counter, and star magic drifted inside it like slow snow. But the corner stayed frozen. Beth pressed her palm to the ice flower and pulled. It didn't budge. Frost climbed her arm instead. "I can't move it," Beth said. "It's rooted in the floor. Kill it and you crack the whole boards." She stepped back and shook the cold off her fingers. "So it stays. And it keeps that corner freezing." Daisy walked to the flower. Cold rolled off it in a steady wave. Then she smiled. "Then that's my cold corner." She fetched a bowl of dream-cream and set it beside the flower. Within a minute the cream stiffened, sweet and firm. "Frozen goods," she said. "And a place to hold my ingredients." She turned the flaw into a shelf. By dusk the shop glowed. The arrow sign pulsed. The windows shone. The vase sparkled on the clean counter. A woman on the street slowed, then stopped. She pushed the door open. Then two more followed her in. Daisy handed over the first frozen cream and took the first coin. The line began. Pluto's Bakery was open, and the waking world could finally see it.