The Cappuccino Curse

A joke drink. A very unfunny string of near-misses. And a festival that refuses to stay merry. Three months into dating Detective Cal Ashgrove, Sage has settled into something she never quite let herself want out loud — an ordinary life, if by ordinary you mean owning a haunted café with a sharp-tongued talking cat, brewing love potions and truth-telling lattes, and closing early because half of Wickbrook Falls has decided her Midwinter Lights Festival novelty drink is to blame for every disaster hitting the festival at once. A runaway sleigh. A propane fire. A collapsing float that puts festival chair Odette Pruitt in the hospital. Biscuit tastes every batch of the Cappuccino Curse and swears it's clean, which means something a lot less magical, and a lot more deliberate, is dressed up as bad luck. Cal has three suspects, a motive with real numbers behind it, and a girlfriend whose reputation is on the line every time the gossip mill needs someone to blame. Sage has a problem of her own. Her brew-sight is getting stronger, and the visions keep pulling her toward the falls, toward an old carving in the rock she can't quite read and can't stop dreaming about, toward a piece of Wickbrook Falls history that's about to turn out to be a lot less buried than anyone wanted it to be. With the festival's grand finale two nights away and a saboteur running out of time, Sage has to figure out who's really behind the curse before the town's merriest night turns into its most dangerous one. Perfect for readers who love: witchy small-town charm · talking cat familiars · established-couple romance · festival whodunits · zero gore, all cozy. Book 2 of the Brew & Broomstick Mystery series — each book a complete case, no cliffhangers. Best enjoyed with a cappuccino (uncursed). The Cappuccino Curse is Book 2 in the Brew & Broomstick Mystery series: a cozy mystery with a magical menu, a deepening romance, and a small town with bigger secrets than anyone bargained for. TROPES: Cozy Witch Mystery, Established Couple, Small Town Festival, Talking Cat Sidekick, Hidden Magic Legacy

Six weeks of dating a detective had taught me a lot of things — how he took his coffee when he thought no one was watching him closely enough to judge (black, aggressively, like a man doing penance), what his real laugh sounded like versus the one he used on suspects, and that he still, even now, flinched a little every time Biscuit answered a question out loud in his head. But the thing that surprised me most, six weeks in, was how ordinary it had all started to feel. Not boring. Just — settled, in a way I hadn't let myself imagine wanting until I actually had it. "You're doing the thing," Priya said, not looking up from the pastry case, where she was arranging a fresh tray of gingerbread with the focus of a woman defusing a bomb. "What thing." "The thing where you go soft and stupid in the middle of inventory because you're thinking about Cal." She straightened a row of cookies with surgical precision. "It's very sweet. It is also making you write 'oat milk' on the syrup order three times in a row." I looked down at my clipboard. She was right. I crossed out two of the three oat milks and tried to look professional about it, which fooled exactly nobody, least of all the cat currently draped across the top of the espresso machine like a very unimpressed scarf. You are, Biscuit informed me, insufferable lately. It's been six weeks. I expected the glow to have worn off by now. "You're just annoyed nobody's fussing over you as much." I am a cat. I am fussed over appropriately, which is to say constantly, and it is still not enough. Biscuit stretched, unhurried, and resettled with her tail over her nose. Also, your inventory count is wrong. You have four bags of the good cinnamon, not three. I checked. She was right, obviously. She was always right about the count, which I'd decided months ago not to examine too closely. Outside, Wickbrook Falls had gone fully, aggressively festive sometime in the last two weeks without my really noticing it happen — string lights looped between every lamppost on Main Street, the gazebo in the town square wrapped in so much silver garland it looked like it had been gift-wrapped by someone with a grudge, and a banner strung across the street that read WICKBROOK FALLS MIDWINTER LIGHTS FESTIVAL in letters big enough to see from the highway. The whole town smelled like woodsmoke and orange peel and the particular cold that meant snow was coming whether the forecast admitted it yet or not. "We need something for the festival booth," Priya said, abandoning the pastry case to lean both elbows on the counter, which was her negotiating position. "Something fun. Something that gets people talking. The Espresso Hex made our whole reputation last fall, in case you'd forgotten, and I refuse to let the Lights Festival be the year we just… sell regular lattes like cowards." "The Espresso Hex almost got me arrested." "The Espresso Hex got you a boyfriend and a moderately famous café, so I'm counting it as a net win." She grinned, sharp and delighted, the exact expression that had preceded most of the worst — and best — decisions of the last year. "Come on, Sage. You've got a whole book of family recipes with actual, literal effects, and you're back here doing inventory like a woman with no imagination. Give me something fun. Something a little wicked. Nothing that ends with a body in the alley this time, obviously, but wicked." I opened my mouth to say no, out of habit more than conviction, and then didn't, because somewhere behind my ribs a small, reckless idea was already unfolding — the kind Zinnia's handwriting in the margins of the recipe book always seemed to approve of a beat before I did. "There's an old entry," I said slowly. "I found it a few weeks ago and didn't think much of it. A luck-reversal. Small, temporary, self-limiting — the kind of thing you'd brew for a friend as a joke, not a weapon. It sours somebody's day a little. Missed buses, spilled drinks, that sort of thing." Priya's whole face lit up in a way that should probably have worried me more than it did. "A curse drink." "A curse latte, technically. It's cappuccino-based." I was already moving toward the recipe book, propped open on its stand behind the counter like it had been waiting for this exact conversation, which, knowing that book, it possibly had. "Zinnia's notes say it's meant in fun. For a rival. Somebody who's been insufferable about winning the gingerbread contest four years running, say." "I have never once been insufferable about the gingerbread contest." You placed first two years ago and have not stopped mentioning it since, Biscuit said, without opening her eyes. I would classify that as insufferable, yes. "Nobody asked the cat." The cat has excellent judgment and would like that noted for the record, Biscuit said, and resettled with the smug finality of a creature who knew she'd won. I read the entry twice, slowly, the way Zinnia's handwriting always demanded — looping and impatient and, in the margin, in the same different-colored ink as the Espresso Hex's warning, a small note: Harmless. Self-correcting by sundown. Do not brew angry, obviously, but also do not brew this for anyone you actually dislike. It's a joke, not a weapon. Keep it that way. I brewed it carefully, the way I'd learned to brew all of it now — intention first, ingredients second, the two folded together like the recipe book had always insisted they should be. Espresso, steamed milk, a dusting of cocoa and cinnamon on top, and underneath all of it, a small, deliberately gentle wish: a day of minor, forgivable bad luck, nothing that would actually hurt, aimed at someone I liked well enough to trust with a joke. "Test subject," I said, sliding the finished cup across the counter, "reporting for duty." Priya eyed it with the delighted suspicion of a woman who had — one long evening in November, full disclosure, fortified cocoa, a talking cat with opinions — learned exactly what kind of café she worked in. "If I trip and fall into the display case, I want it on record that I volunteered under duress." "You volunteered under literally no duress whatsoever. You've been begging me for a curse drink since October." "Under duress from my own personality, then. Cheers." She drank. Nothing happened for a long moment — long enough that I started running through the recipe in my head, checking for a mistake, the old anxious reflex from last fall creeping back in before I could stop it. Then Priya turned to set her cup down and caught her own elbow on the edge of the counter, hard enough to yelp, and two seconds later, crossing to the storage room, tripped over absolutely nothing and caught herself on the doorframe with a startled laugh. "Okay," she said, rubbing her elbow, delighted despite herself. "Okay, that's — that's very funny, actually. Ow. Funny, but ow." Two trips. No blood, no drama, nothing worse than a bruised elbow and a bruised ego, and by the look of her already-fading wince, she'd forgotten about it half a minute later, the way you forget stubbing your toe once the sting fades. Biscuit lifted her head just enough to observe the whole thing with the air of a scientist confirming a hypothesis. Harmless, she pronounced. Annoying, but harmless. As advertised. "See?" Priya said, triumphant, already reaching for a second cup like she hadn't just tripped twice in ninety seconds. "This is exactly what the booth needs. The Cappuccino Curse. People will line up around the block to hex their rivals for a laugh." I looked at the recipe book, at Zinnia's careful, looping warning in the margin, and felt something warm and a little proud settle in my chest — not the anxious, uncertain feeling from my first months here, but something closer to confidence. I understood this drink. I'd built it, tested it, watched it do exactly what it promised and nothing more. "The Cappuccino Curse," I said, trying the name out loud, and it fit, easy and a little wicked, exactly the way Priya had asked for. "Fine. We'll debut it at the festival. But if anyone asks, it's a joke item, self-limiting by sundown, and if you tell people it once put a curse on the Voss case I will revoke your employee discount." "I would never," Priya said, already writing CAPPUCCINO CURSE — ASK YOUR SERVER — WEARS OFF BY SUNDOWN — RESULTS NOT GUARANTEED on a fresh chalkboard sign in handwriting far too gleeful for someone who'd just tripped twice. Outside the window, the first real snow of the season had started, fat unhurried flakes catching the string lights and turning the whole square into something soft-edged and glowing, and I stood there a moment longer than I needed to, watching it fall, feeling — for the first time in longer than I could easily name — entirely, uncomplicatedly happy. It didn't last, obviously. It never does, in this town. But for one quiet afternoon, with snow falling and Priya bandaging her own dignity with hot chocolate and Biscuit smug on the espresso machine, I let myself have it anyway.