Fairytale Ambrosia (The Knead to Know Series Book 2) by Liz Schulte Page A

voice was comforting in a way I hadn’t known for a while.
    I waited for him so say something, but he didn’t say anything at all. I tucked my legs under me and pulled a blanket over my lap. “Are you still there?”
    “Yeah, I’m still here. Sorry. I don’t know why I called.”
    I smiled to myself, a glimmer of warmth flickering to life in my chest. “Did you need something? Did you have another vision?” I silently hoped he’d say no. Was it really so terrible to want someone to call me for no reason other than just wanting to talk to me? Just because we hadn’t shared our personal lives, didn’t mean we couldn’t start.
    “Not exactly. More like a feeling.”
    “Oh,” I said, unable to keep the disappointment from my voice.
    “I had an overwhelming sense that you were in trouble or upset and it woke me up. I couldn’t go back to sleep without checking on you. Are you okay? Did something happen?”
    I basked in the kindness of his concern for just a moment before I shut it down. I had to learn to deal with things on my own. This was my life now and it was too dangerous, whether or not I wanted it to be, for a human like Boone. He didn’t need to know about Valefor or the men or really any of it. “I’m okay,” I said. “Thanks for checking.”
    “You know anytime you need to talk, Maggie, I’m always here. I understand, at least to a degree, how lonely all of this must be for you. I want to help. I want to be here for you.”
    My throat tightened. Out of everyone I knew, Boone was the only one who had the potential to understand, but even the amount he knew about the Abyss was probably too much. He was psychic, so he lived on the edge of this world, but he didn’t have to be fully in it. Not like me. Plus, if I told him I killed two demons tonight, was that something he could deal with? It would probably freak him out, and, selfishly, I wanted our friendship to stay intact a little while longer, which meant what I said to Phoenix was right. “I’m glad we met,” I whispered.
    “Me too.”
    I closed my eyes and let my head fall back against the couch, pretending he was beside me and that if I turned my head, opened my eyes, he’d be there, all scruffy and handsome.
    “You never sleep? Not at all?” He interrupted my fantasy.
    “Not really. Once or twice I’ve fed to the point of passing out, but I can’t just lie down and go to sleep.”
    “What do you do all night?”
    “Hide from the demons,” I muttered more to myself than to him.
    “I thought…don’t you…” He couldn’t even finish his sentence.
    Don’t I eat them? Why, yes, I do. But that wasn’t what I was talking about. It wasn’t real demons that could hurt me. It was the ones in my head that did the most harm. Those inescapable thoughts and memories that came when I was alone, that haunted me. And after tonight, I would have two more on my conscience. They opened wounds that would never heal, no matter how much of a vampire I was. I suddenly realized, could feel, that Boone knew my current thoughts. . . . “Yeah,” I said. “Silly, right?”
    “No,” he said. “Human.”

Chapter 5
     
     
    I checked on Izzy once more before I left for the bakery. Talking to Boone had brightened my mood considerably. But it also brought to mind the fact that I hadn’t done anything to find the woman who was going to be kidnapped. Not that I had a lot to go on, regarding her or the woman in white, but I had to try. What I needed was a place to start, and I decided that was with the kids. At least we knew who they were.
    I unlocked the alley door and went inside, flipping on the lights. I got out my notebook and made a list of everything I would bake for the day, starting with several dozen loaves of bread. While I collected ingredients, my mind wandered back to the case. 
    If the million mystery novels, TV shows, and movies were right, then truly random acts were rare—which meant that these people were connected, at least in