A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

by T. Kingfisher

the zombie frog that crawled out of the canals. Poor thing had been downstream of the cathedral, and sometimes they dump the holy water a little recklessly, and you get a plague of undead frogs and newts and whatnot. (The crawfish are the worst. You can get the frogs with a broom, but you have to call a priest in for a zombie crawfish.)

the siren song of flour and shortening pretty much sealed my fate.

Her housedress is large and pink and has winged croissants embroidered across it. It’s quite hideous. Aunt Tabitha herself is large and pink but doesn’t have winged croissants flying across her except when wearing the housedress.

Constable Alphonse took a sweet bun, chewed it thoughtfully, and decided to go for a second opinion.

The gingerbread man began to dance a very respectable hornpipe. Don’t ask me where the cookies get the dances they do—this batch had been doing hornpipes. The last batch did waltzes, and the one before that had performed a decidedly lewd little number that had even made Aunt Tabitha blush. A little too much spice in those, I think. We had to add a lot of vanilla to settle them down.

He looked at me over his glasses. They had tiny, fussy metal frames, the sort of glasses that a bird of prey would wear if its eyesight was starting to go.

And if she was that important, why was she in our bakery, and why was she wearing mismatched socks?

Our ruler wasn’t a warrior queen or a teenage princess or anything like that. We’re not that kind of city. She was just a woman, rather pudgy, with tired eyes and deep lines carved into her face.

That giggle went straight into the pit of my stomach and played the xylophone on my ribcage.

Baking is much more rewarding. There are cookbooks to tell you what to do, and at the end you’ve got chocolate chip cookies to show for it.

He gazed at me in professional disgust.

but it was a walking around and doing stuff terror, not a curl up in the corner and whimper terror.

They say that when a Carex goes past, his footprints fill up with blood.