The Magic Cake Shop by Meika Hashimoto

witchy aromas. She looked around and drew a small, quiet breath.
    She was surrounded by thousands and thousands of spices. Packed in glass jars on shelves that reached far up beyond her sight, they filled the shop with dusty browns, brilliant oranges, deep blues, cool greens, rich reds, and brilliant golds. Emma had never seen more colors in her life. She saw powders and liquids and jellies and shriveled dried twisted things with sockets that might have once held eyeballs. The ingredients jostled and jumbled her senses, until she couldn’t tell if she was breathing in color or tasting smells.
    Emma felt she had just begun to touch the tip of a vast and ancient world. A curl of excitement grew in her stomach as she ran her fingers over the jars, reading and looking and sniffing.
    “What do you think?” whispered Mr. Crackle.
    “It’s marvelous,” Emma whispered back.
    “ Magical,” whispered Albie.
    “What’s all this whispering about?” whispered a fourth voice.
    With a start, Emma, Albie, and Mr. Crackle jolted around. The dessert box, still strapped to Mr. Crackle’s back, swung into a jar filled with pale yellow grains. The jar plunged to the ground.
    Two inches from the floor, a hand shot underneath the jar and brought it firmly upward, back to the shelf.
    “Gregor Crackle, mind that thing on your back,” scolded a tiny woman with tortoiseshell glasses and dark red hair. She slid the jar back into place, then turned to her visitors. “You are an exceptionally careful man, and I would expect no less of you while in my shop. I do apologize for startling you. Now, please introduce me to your friends and let me know how I can help.”
    “Hello, Mabel. You’re just as to the point as I remember.” Mr. Crackle gingerly unstrapped the dessert box and set it on the floor. “Mabel, meet Emma and Albie. Albie’s my official cutter control person—he keeps the snooty people in line. Emma’s a lovely young lady whose unlovely uncle is forcing me to make the Elixir of Delight. Emma and Albie, meet Mabel, a dear friend who won the Supreme-Extreme Master of the Kitchen Contest a year before I did. She remembers recipes frighteningly well.”
    Mabel looked sternly at Mr. Crackle. “Gregor, stoptrying to flatter me. I was born with a photographic memory, that’s all.” Her eyebrows arched. “How the devil did you get your fingers on the Elixir of Delight recipe? If I remember my cooking history lessons correctly, it was buried in the catacombs under Tuptiddy City in AD 18 and no one has seen it since.”
    “I received the recipe from a very unpleasant man who poisoned me and won’t give me the antidote until I make him the elixir.”
    “You seem remarkably unflustered about being poisoned, Gregor.” Mabel lifted her eyebrows. “What exactly were you poisoned with?”
    “Joobajooba extract.”
    “Joobajooba extract?” Mabel frowned. “Is it compounded with anything?”
    “Powdered wolf fangs and nightshade.”
    “Hmm. How ironic.”
    “How so?” asked Mr. Crackle.
    “The unpleasant man who poisoned you does not have the antidote.”
    “What?!”
    “The antidote requires the Elixir of Delight.”
    “What?!”
    “By itself, joobajooba extract is combatable by a simple mixture of sugar and pickled cabbage juice, but if you add wolf fangs and nightshade, you also need ten drops of the Elixir of Delight to properly get rid of the poison.”
    “WHAT?!”
    Mabel sighed. “Gregor, you sound like a squawking duck.”
    “Sorry, but where—How do you know this?”
    “I read books. The antidote is in the 1567 edition of
Lugo Looby’s Obscure Poisons and Their Antidotes
. I wouldn’t worry, though. You are a smart and capable baker and should have no trouble making the elixir. Now, let’s see your shopping list.”
    Mr. Crackle’s hands shook as he gave Mabel the list. She lifted up her glasses and studied it.
    Emma went up to Mr. Crackle. He looked down at her.
    Emma took his hands and gave them a