Sugar & Smoke

Jocelin

There were things in this world everyone was just meant to be afraid of. Heights were scary because if you fell from them, you’d die. Loud noises could be scary because they meant danger was near. Spiders were scary because… well… they’re spiders.

And then there was the dark.

Sometimes I wondered if fear itself was created in those shadowy corners where light and knowledge can’t reach, where you don’t know what’s coming for you until it already has its claws wrapped around you. I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t been terrified of the dark, and I supposed it didn’t really matter. I was afraid of it now, and in a way that was a good thing. Fear was a survival instinct after all, something that kept us from doing deadly things, or sometimes, just flat-out stupid things.

Like eating food while it’s still radiating with heat from the oven.

“Careful, it’s hot!” I warned.

Unlike me, Donna Barbet was unfamiliar with the concept of fear, and I watched her with a mixture of awe and concern as she took an insanely large bite out of the freshly baked pain au chocolat. At the very least, I had to admire her determination as she continued chewing, despite her very obvious distress.

“If it’s too hot, just spit it out, Dodo,” I said, biting back a smile.

The morning light streamed in through the glass pane of my little bakery, filling Sûre et Sucré with an inviting glow. Sure and Sweet, that was what the name meant, and it felt poetically true. The quaint patisserie was my sanctuary, and in this space, there was no room for darkness. The skylight, wall sconces, ceiling lamps, neon sign, and the Christmas lights we kept up year-round ensured as much.

Donna shook her head, cheeks puffed out in a way that made me think of a greedy chipmunk.

“I would never—” she muttered before gulping the pastry down. “I would never waste perfectly good bread like that. Besides, it would be bad for business if people saw someone spitting out your food.”

“I don’t think it’s much better for business to have the employees eat all the goods either.” I laughed and handed her a napkin. “Here, you’ve got chocolate on your chin.”

“And you’ve got flour on your face, JoJo. We’re a good team. Very professional,” she countered, licking at the crumbs on the corner of her lips.

I hadn’t known Donna very long, but she’d quickly become my closest, albeit only, friend. It’s not that I was antisocial, per se. I was just very good at being on my own and didn’t feel a remarkably strong urge to change that. Life was messy, and people were complicated. I didn’t see anything wrong with doing what I could to surround myself with things that felt simple.

Granted, Donna was far from simple. She’d been working in the bakery with me for less than a year, and while she was guilty of eating a fair share of our merchandise, I would have been lost without her. She knew what trends we should cater to, what fruits and flavors were in season, which customers were regulars, and which ones she could flirt with.

“Come on, Dodo. Help me set up pastries.” I wiped my hands on the light, floral apron tied around my waist.

I didn’t particularly mind the cliche my life had become: a Parisian girl with dark circles under her eyes from staying up too late reading, spending her days making baguettes and croissants. Stereotype or not, I liked what I did, and unlike my friend, I was a creature of comfort and simple pleasures.

As we lined up the fresh little tarts and cakes for the day, Donna leaned in close, her brown eyes glinting with curiosity as she spoke in a hushed tone.

“So… how’s Director Daniel these days?” she asked.

I resisted the urge to groan at the mention of my father. He was a large part of why I’d learned to content myself with cupcakes instead of human company.

When my mother died, her loss became the anger that fueled my dad and drove him forward. But her absence had soured in me, turning into something far more bitter than brave.

If Dad had his way, I would have become a detective or officer like he had. It’s what he’d always wanted, and it was no secret. For years, I watched him rise through the ranks of the French National Police, and by the time I started high school, he had become Director of the Criminal Brigade.

Now, I was a grown woman. Well, I was twenty-one and struggling to pay rent, but I suppose that was close enough to being a technical adult. Only, instead of following in my father’s footsteps to stop crime and protect the city, I baked bread.

I was content being complacent and leaving all the ass-kicking and gun-slinging heroics to those with a sturdier disposition than mine. In a perfect world, I would have loved to make my dad proud, to make a difference the way he did. But what could I say? I was made of softer stuff.

“Oh, you know, same old, same old. He’s always so busy with work that I hardly ever see him.” Which was quite alright with me, thank you very much. These days, it felt like my relationship with my father consisted mostly of me worrying about his work and him being disappointed in mine. Still, I preferred the tense silence to a shouting match.

Donna’s expression softened, and she offered me a playful smile as she poked me in the ribs. “You mean he loves what he does and is obsessed with his work? Wow, it’s like you guys have nothing in common.”

“It’s not the same.” I rolled my eyes but chuckled despite myself. I was proud of my little bakery and respected what he did, but my father couldn’t wrap his mind around why it mattered. It’s not like I was going to save the world by making raspberry tartlets.

“So, has he been working on any interesting cases recently? Organized crime? Psychotic serial killers?” Donna asked. I shot her a sidelong glance.

“He’s a police division director, not a secret agent.”

The last time I’d spoken to him, he’d asked how my ‘little cookie store’ was doing and then proceeded to tell me about a new case he was working on. It was something about a pattern he’d discovered in some old, unsolved murders across the city that spanned back several years. He hadn’t gone into the specifics, but it was enough to convey the insignificance of what I was doing with my life by comparison.

Good old Dad.

“I get it.” Donna nodded solemnly. “It’s classified, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, top secret,” I replied with a grin. “And if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

My friend’s serious facade broke, and she burst into a laugh. “JoJo, you couldn’t kill a fly if you wanted to.”

“I would definitely kill a fly. Especially if it was foolish enough to come in here. We run a bug-free zone in this bakery, please and thank you.”

She chuckled and took another enormous bite of the pain au chocolat, devouring it in its entirety without an ounce of shame or regret.

From there on, the conversation faded into little, forgettable snippets as the day went by. We had our regular stream of customers, though they were not nearly as many as I would have hoped, and the hours ticked by in a sugar-scented whirlwind. By nightfall, Donna was packing off to head home, leaving me to finish setting up for the next morning.

“Don’t stay out too late, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” she said as she made for the door. She knew I had a bad habit of turning my downtime into overtime.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” I waved her off and returned to the notebook on my lap.

I preferred to do as much of the prep work as possible in the evening. I was a morning person by occupation, not disposition. Though running a bakery demanded I be awake and opening the doors of Sûre et Sucré at obscene hours, I hated having to be out of my apartment before the sun even rose. That silent, sleepy space between yesterday and today always made me a little uneasy, like I was suspended somewhere that couldn’t be pointed to on a map or a clock.

It was on that note that I lost track of time, lulled by the soft music playing on the bakery’s speaker as I jotted down the recipes I would need for the next day and the ingredients I would have to set up.

So much for my good intentions.

It was dark and cold when I finally closed up and started making my way home. The city was almost quiet, with only a few straggling strangers wandering the cobblestone pathways. Music blasted from a few streets down, where a bar had kept its doors open long after the trains and buses stopped for the night. I’d overdone it, but I was satisfied with yet another uneventful day and the promise of an equally unsurprising tomorrow. So on that simple September night, despite my inherent fear of darkness and the many shadows of the late hour, it did not cross my sleep-slowed mind to be scared of anything at all.

I didn’t scan my surroundings with nervous eyes as I strolled toward my apartment. Instead, I hummed contently to myself, stupidly drowning any sounds that might have alerted me to what was to come. It wasn’t until I had finished going through my mental checklist of the next day’s specials that I looked up and noticed something was quite wrong.

La Rue du Chat qui Pêche, or ‘the street of the fishing cat,’ was the narrowest street in Paris. Beyond this tidbit of trivia, quirky name, and the fact that I used it as a convenient shortcut from work, the dark little alley was hardly special. At ninety-five feet in length and little more than five feet in width, it was small and unremarkable, with no architectural flourishes along the walls.

Or at least, there never had been before today.

Every morning and every night, I walked through the little alley on my way to work. Every morning and every night except this one, there had been no towering silhouettes pressed against the buildings on either side of me.

The lanterns’ glow cast sharp shadows along the massive bodies that should not be there, and my footsteps slowed as the song I had been humming faded into silence. Then, one of the shadows moved, and just like that, my old familiar fear flickered to life.

Somehow, the alley seemed narrower than it had a moment ago, like it was closing in on me. My feet staggered back of their own accord as my eyes traced the outline of the winged shapes perched up ahead. Surely it was just a trick of the mind or the lamplight.

Either way, I did not intend to find out. If my night was about to take a turn into horror movie territory, I would not be the dumb blonde who willingly walked into the creepy basement. No, I would be the dumb blonde who deliberately ran away from it.

I turned, fully intending to bolt right back the way I’d come, but the thin exit of the familiar street was no longer there. The sliver of light from the main road was blocked by a hulking form that quickly cut off any ideas I had of fleeing the now unfamiliar alley.

That wasn’t supposed to be there.