Wicked Whoopie Pies by Addison Moore (english novels to improve english TXT) 📕

way and glowers at me anew. It’s still hard to believe lovable, funny Noah came from such a sourpuss as the one standing before me. Both he and his brother Alex are doppelgängers of their father Wiley, my mother’s current beau, but I don’t believe they received a single genetic marker from their mother.

I’m thankful about it, too.

It turns out, Suze is a beguiler. She all but admitted it to me a few months back. I suspected as much when I caught her hosting her coven at my mother’s B&B in December. I believe the official name of the club was the Magical Mavens of Honey Hollow. It’s where she and her fellow beguilers get together and test out their powers to, well, beguile.

Much like my own supernatural supersensual quirk, beguilers fall under something known as the transmundane umbrella. Apparently, there are a myriad of superpowers that a transmundane person can possess, and those supersensual like me have the ability to see the dead—or a ghost of the dead to be exact.

Beguilers, on the other hand, have the ability of persuasion. Not only can they persuade people, they can persuade the elements such as wind, fire—or even cause an earthquake or two. But Suze confessed she wasn’t all that powerful. And judging by the trajectory her life has taken, I don’t know if she has any powers at all—unless, of course, they accidentally run in the wrong direction. If that’s the case, her life makes total sense—come to think of it, so would mine.

Suze smirks. “Leave it to you, Lottie, to make someone feel marginalized when all I wanted to do was add a little light to this day.”

“Marginalized?” I inch back. “I just said your poem was enlightening.”

Suze steps in close. “It wasn’t what you said. It was how you said it. I think I’ll go help Lily with the customers. They always seem to appreciate the things I tell them.”

I make a face as she stalks off toward the registers.

“People will appreciate anything you tell them as long as you’re handing them a cookie,” I mutter, snatching up a snickerdoodle off the platter before me just as a spray of miniature blue and green stars appears right here on the counter. And in less than three seconds flat, we’re treated to a ghostly little skunk with jet-black fur and a lightning white streak running right down the middle of its back all the way to the tip of its tail.

“Oh, thank heavens.” The tiny creature sighs. And judging from its voice, I’d guess this is a cute little girl we’re dealing with here. “I’ve been so very hungry. And I don’t have a single hankering for grubs anymore.” She hitches her pink little snout my way. “Would you mind if I had a cookie?”

“Help yourself,” I say.

Both Charlie and Carlotta laugh and coo as they look to the poufy little poltergeist and I suck in a huge breath and point to Charlie.

“You can see her, too!” I all but shout. And thankfully, not a single customer cares about my outburst.

Charlie takes a moment to scowl at me.

I’ll admit, it’s unnerving having Charlie around. It’s sort of as if my reflection somehow managed to escape the mirror and she’s perpetually angry about it with me.

“Yes, I see her,” she snips. “Did you think I was a nitwit?”

“No, but, I mean, I wasn’t sure if you were—you know, supersensual. So you can see the dead?” I all but mouth that last part.

“Of course, I see the dead. What’s the matter? You didn’t think I wasn’t as fun as you are?”

“Nah,” Carlotta warbles. “She didn’t think you were as special as she is. Lot’s been fed a load of special bologna all her life, and she’s believed every bologna word of it. That’s what’s gotten her in more than half the messes she’s been in. And that’s what’s landed her the men in her life, too. Not only does Lot believe she’s special, but she has the power to make others believe it, too.”

“Carlotta.” A dull laugh rumbles from me. “You make it sound as if I’ve cast a spell over Noah and Everett.”

She gives me a side-glance. “Is there another way to explain it?”

I shoot her a look for doubling down on the ridiculous theory.

Charlie raises a brow as she picks up another whoopie pie. “I can see now, it would have been a barrel of laughs if we had been raised together.”

“It would have been a barrel of tears,” Carlotta is quick to correct—and I’d have to agree with her on that. “Lot Lot doesn’t share her toys. She’s as greedy with men as she is in business.”

“I’m not greedy with men, or in business.” I’m not even going to bother asking how I’ve been greedy in business because I’m sure she’s about to extrapolate.

“Oh, come on, Lot.” Carlotta tosses up a hand as she’s about to prove my point.

“You met not one but two of the most handsome men in all of Vermont on the very same day, and you shoved them into your bed just as quickly.”

“Not true. Get to the part about my business,” I tell her. “My boobs are turning into bowling balls and I still have a ghost to question.” I hold out a strawberry whoopie pie to the disembodied among us and the cute little specter scoops it right out of my hand.

Carlotta gags and sputters. “You own half of Honey Hollow.” She swats Charlie on the arm. “She bamboozled Nell into giving her all her real estate holdings. Sure, Nell left a little cash to the rest of us, but that was about it. Your Uncle Will tried to sue Lottie Dottie here, but since she’s sleeping with the head judge down at the Ashford Courthouse, that didn’t go anywhere.”

“Everett had nothing to do with that case.” I nod to Charlie. “Nell and I were close, but I always believed she was Keelie’s grandmother. It wasn’t until she passed away did I