Hot cookies cooled on racks under the window where the sun shone bright. The store front of the bakery was abuzz with the morning crowd, but it was much stiller behind the doors of the kitchen. The sun reminded Ava how long she had been stuck and how much longer she had to go. She was already exhausted, there was no telling where she would find more energy. She was icing some cupcakes, meticulous as she piped leaves onto the flowers she had already created. She felt drained, and her flowers looked dull. Baking was fun, baking was her life and all she had now, but mornings like this reminded her that it was no where near enough.
Ava sighed and set the tube of frosting down. She could only ice so many flowers before she started to feel like she was wasting her time, no matter that she was being paid to do it. It was about time for a break anyway.
“I need a ten, I’ll be back.” Ava said to Maryanne who was folding a layer of butter into a batch of croissant dough. She nodded as Ava flew past her, eager to settle into the cozy chair in the corner of their back room. The room was more or less just a walk in closet, but it got the job done when it came to perusing the Internet while on a break. She trolled through her usual online haunts before she found herself falling back on an old habit: scrolling through Craigslist. She liked to pretend that this was not something she wasted her time on, but here she was. It was a problem. She was getting desperate and she was internally rolling her eyes about that fact. It had been six months since her Gift had been stolen from her, and each day without it felt worse than the last.
Ava never felt like her Gift was anything special, not like some people she knew. David had the Gift of Flight, the natural ability to just soar through the sky, whether he was in a plane or on his own. Caleb could pick up patterns and languages without more than a quick overview. He could code anything, speak anything, and probably knew too much. Which was definitely why he worked for the government. Even Maryanne’s was more useful than Ava’s had been – she was like a human recipe book. Everyone had their own thing, and Ava had liked her gift well enough, the Gift of the Arts, but she knew now how much she had taken it for granted.
A chance meeting with a Thief was all it took. Wallace was nice. He had been friendly and open and had taken her Gift from her in the most opportunistic of moments, when she was practically giving it away. So now that she had lost it, now that she felt so empty inside, seeing this ad on Craigslist had her spinning:
Power Lost? I can help.
Have you glitched? Are you stuck? Or maybe someone slipped in and took your Gift right out of your own two hands. Whatever it is, with my Gift, I can help.
It was signed, The Fixer, and just underneath that there was a phone number. After months of pretending that she wasn’t looking for help while she wallowed alone, she had found something. For once there was hope. Before Ava knew what had come over her she was firing off a text message. She was sure that she sounded far too eager and not at all cool, but she was also certain that this guy, this “fixer”, had seen much worse. Five minutes later Ava had a meeting lined up with him the following afternoon at the bakery. It was probably not so wise to set up the meeting at her work place, but she figured if he ended up being a creep she had Maryanne to back her up. That lady could be scrappy when she needed to be.
The rest of the day flew by. Just knowing that there was something finally happening made Ava feel better about everything else. Even she could admit that the rose cupcakes looked pretty damn good.
—
At two p.m. sharp the bell at the front door chimed and a guy who looked far too grimy for the clean bakery came in. Ava was working out front only because she was expecting him. Her plan had been to wait him out just a bit to make sure he wasn’t a creep but that seemed like it wasn’t going to work. He did not even bother to look around the bakery before making eye contact with her. Somehow he seemed to know in an instant that she was the one he was looking for. That was something that probably should have worried her, but still she untied her apron and came out from behind the front counter.
“Ava, right?” He asked with an outstretched hand. She grasped his hand firmly with a nod. His fingers were calloused.
“Yep. And you’re Leo, I take it.”
“Just like the lion, my Mom always says.” He plopped into the nearest open seat and reclined back into it, letting it stand precariously on the hind legs. Ava’s eyebrow twitched. She was a big believer in first impressions and already he was pushing it.
“So how do we go about doing this then?” She began, but he cut her off to rattle his spiel.
“Money up front, no guarantees. And then you’ve got to give me a little info.”
She nodded in understanding, slipping the money out of her pocket and into his outstretched hand.
“What do you need to know?”
“Well, I don’t really need to know anything, but it would help to know what you’ve lost and why you’ve lost it.”
He said it like he wasn’t asking for much, like it was nothing to give, and instantly Ava felt her shoulders hunch and her arms cross. She wasn’t the sharing type, especially when it came to this.
“I…was an artist. Now I’m not.” She shrugged like it was nothing. “A guy I knew, he took it from me. He was jealous I guess…I don’t know.” She shook her head.
“Did you frost all those cakes?” He asked her.
“Yeah, most of them.”
“Looks like you’re an artist to me.” He leaned farther back in his chair, even further distracting her from the topic.
“Can you not do that-”
“Look,” he interrupted her, making her twitch again. “I’m going to be straight with you…nobody can take your power from you. That’s a crock of shit. We can only borrow it, or maybe mirror it a bit.” He sighed with a shake of his shaggy head. “I usually just do a bit of a song and dance, take the money and go. But something tells me that’s not about to work with you. So there you go. You never lost it, you just feel sorta dim right about now I’m guessing.”
“But I haven’t been able to do anything…I haven’t been able to draw or paint or do anything.”
“You’ve been baking right? Not anyone can just do that frosting art stuff. Just because it’s not your usual medium doesn’t mean it isn’t anything.” He sighed. “Look, your problem isn’t some asshole stealing your Gift from you, it’s that you got to a place where you believed it could be taken from you at all. So there’s my wisdom for the night.”
He pocketed his cash and slipped out a cigarette from his pack that seemed to come out of nowhere.
“If you don’t mind me I’m going to move on. I’ve got things to tend to other than your bruised Gift. Thanks for the dough, though.” He smirked and bent his head in a nod. Then he pushed away from the table before slipping out the front door with another chime of the bell. It was like a period at the end of a sentence. Ava felt like a fool, yet there was a larger part of her that also felt a bit relieved.
That night she put a pen to paper, drawing Leo from memory in the dull light of her apartment bedroom. He had been almost like an angel, sweeping in and setting her straight. An irritating, probably lawbreaking, cursing angel, but still. Her Gift shined bright so suddenly, and she held it close as she sketched in his bedraggled hair. Her simple Gift had never felt so magical before. How could she have ever thought it was nothing? How could she have ever believed she was weak enough to let it fade away? Leo may have been something of a con man but he still knocked some sense into her. The sketch was rough, but it was there.
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