The Demon in the Pastry Shop

1: The Sound of a Song on Mute

Her hand knew his blood like water pouring from the faucet. Kit woke many nights to see its ghost in her palm long after she washed it away. She missed her husband's shape in her bed, but she never conjured lost thoughts of his touch. All attempts to remember how he felt only led her to the last time she touched him. Her hand pressed over his heart -the other one under his head as she cradled him on the sidewalk. Blood everywhere. She could never imagine his body past the thin sheet of blood that claimed him that night.

Kit heard of widows spending their time grieving in bed, unable to get up. She always made it to the kitchen table, but it was her seat there she could never get away from. Once she sat down, she expected him to follow. And he never did, of course. Despite her stomach growling, she would stay there, afraid that if she arose he wouldn't join her at the table and continue straight out the door to work. Of course, he never did that either.

If Jude hadn't been there, she would've withered away. Her father-in-law brought her meals and sat there, holding her hand until she ate them and after she managed a few bites, he would wash her face and lay out pajamas for her on her crumpled bedsheets.

Luca and his father were never that close. After the wedding, Kit went out of her way to try and include him in their lives. In their big plans. In their holiday meals. Back then, Jude was sheepishly thankful but never took her up on any of it. When his son was shot, he came to the funeral and then he came home with Kit. At the time, she thought he needed her support in the tragedy, but it quickly became evident that he came to take care of her. She needed that badly and thanked the Feline Goddess everyday for Jude. She wouldn't have made it to the first day of her new job without him.

And everything came back to her hands. Kit stood in front of the full-length mirror of her bedroom dressed splendidly, and perhaps a little too elegantly for the role of pastry shop worker, and she stared down at her hands. They were a light, dry brown color like the yellowy peeled inside of a birch tree. So pale, but they still looked crimson to her.

She bit her lip. She forced her eyes back to the mirror. The straight cut navy blue skirt. It was the first new piece of clothing she bought since his death. The clean, white button-up blouse. She wore that one a few times over on their dates because it looked so nice. Pearls hiding underneath the collar. Her ivory coiffure cut about her shoulders, coaxed into glamorous curls from the rollers she slept in. She looked lovely. Kit wanted to be happy because she loved looking lovely, but her golden aura only hovered tightly to her body. It wouldn't sweep outward in the way everyone expected from a Bell Spirit.

The floorboards creaked as Jude muddled in. As soon as his warm, squinty eyes found her there, he clapped his hands together and grinned gently, as though not to frighten her.

"Can I buy up the whole store?" he laughed, his voice thick with a cough-like husk. He touched her shoulder, "you'll do fantastic today. They'll be so glad they hired you. And wait 'til they learn how you bake a banana cream pie," he whispered at the end.

Kit swallowed, eyes trained down. Breath taut. She pushed her thumb against the joint of her ring finger in her hand. It was empty. Since he was a muse, Luca's blood was unique in its properties and it destroyed her wedding and engagement ring when she tried to stop him from bleeding.

She wanted to tell Jude that a banana cream pie is not something you bake. She didn't.

Jude covered her hands with his own umber-amber toned ones, defined with years of practice on the finest instruments. Jude was a muse spirit too, after all. He was a muse for musicians who loved hearty melodies tiptoeing across faint chord structures. Kit didn't like his music at first, but there were many things she grew to love about Jude.

"This is a good thing," he told her, touching her cheek, "I promise, this is a good thing. It's better than making this house your whole world. Because it's not. The whole In-Between is your world. All of it. Every single pastry in that shop is yours. Every customer that comes in is there for you."

Kit raised an eyebrow and glanced out to the side with a smirk. She wanted to tell Jude that the customers are there for the pastries and if the pastries were all supposed to be hers, then she'd be turning away a lot of people, so his metaphors were moot and maybe he should leave the speeches and affirmations to the muses who worked with words. She didn't say this.

"Do you want me to drive you?" he asked.

Kit shook her head.

"You're going to walk all the way?"

She nodded, sighing and patting the side of his arm.

"I see. It's a good way to clear your head," he agreed. As he left the room, he looked back and told her, "don't make too much noise when you come back tonight. I don't want to be woken up with that booming church bell ring of yours."

Kit smiled. It was a joke. Unlike his son, who fell in love with it, Jude had no clue what her chime frequency sounded like.

Because Kit hadn't chimed once over the last year and four months. It was the other reason she was nervous for her first day at the pastry shop. The owner hired a Bell Spirit.

Even though Kit let him know ahead of time, he probably didn't believe that she couldn't speak. Most people didn't believe it. After all, she spoke perfectly well before. She even sang. She chimed all the time. But something changed after the night on the sidewalk. Kit tried her best -so did Jude- but she couldn't squeak even the shyest note. So, after a year and four months, Kit had come to accept her new truth.

She was a Bell Spirit. And she was mute.