Page 39 of Conquered Obstacles

And it took so much less of my power if I had the actual ingredients to use. The packaging to load up. The plastic to wrap the pallets up with even.

Very true. I was glad Jamie really paid attention like he should as the CFO.

But he wanted a coven of witches or warlocks to work with a coven of vampires. A small one, and the vampires could be overnight security, and the witches and warlocks could handle the Costco trucks picking up or the ingredient deliveries. Manage it all.

Hell, print our packaging out there even or something that could just run and run instead of spending money ordering so many fucking labels. I thought it was way more complicated than that, but he did have a point.

And apparently, Hades had found such a group. A perfect matchup. In Vermont of all places. The small nest of vampires got along really well with the small coven of witches, and they protected each other when need be. Evidently, there were some pretty powerful witches in the group, and every so often some stupid wolves or warlocks wanted to carry one off.

The vampires made sure they regretted even attempting it, and the witches helped the vampires get blood and their cover during the day. Everything from handling the DMV and government offices that were only open during the day to—everything. It was a very symbiotic relationship.

But they were hurting, and this would help.

A lot.

“Do it,” I agreed, thinking about how taking the meringues off the factory’s plate would be the best idea as well. Which was also why we told the factory that the decorations factory would be handling the rest of the Easter meringues until we got a new location up and running.

After lunch, I went with everyone to the warehouse Hades said I could use and made exactly what I wanted Poseidon to copy. Basically, a container of my frosted sugar cookies shaped like eggs and decorated for Easter… With one missing in the cardboard sleeve.

He nodded he understood and used his power to duplicate what I’d done.

“It tastes exactly the same,” Mary said in between bites. “This is your cookie. I would never doubt it after decades of having them.”

“Eating millions of them,” Kary drawled. “So they taste the same but without your power. And then you just fill in that missing cookie in each sleeve? That still might be too much for a church or prison.”

“True,” I muttered, studying the container. I made a bigger box with ninety-nine individually wrapped cookies. “One in a hundred shouldn’t draw any suspicion at all, right? What are the chances one church has a bunch of murderers and they are the ones that eat the cookies?”

“A couple trillion to one,” Dion said as he ate another cookie. “Even for a prison. Even max security prisons aren’t stuffed with all murderers.”

“Right, but your power doesn’t just punish murderers,” Mary reminded me. “One in two hundred for prisons. One in fifty for churches. Better safe than sorry.”

“And a press release thanking all of the bakeries that donated their time to help Jesus’s message of love but who didn’t want to be named to stay humble,” Dion muttered. “That would chap Father’s ass.”

I shared a look with Hades and Poseidon. Zeus wouldn’t care enough what the humans did. Only if they fed his power as he was owed in his mind.

Mary caught on and cleared her throat. “We don’t want him to get any prayers from this. We thank the bakeries who volunteered to help us bring a bit of sweetness for a better future while praying we don’t repeat the mistakes of our past.”

“Perfect,” I agreed. “Prisons are supposed to be about rehabilitation after all.” I shrugged it off when they all snorted. Yes, I felt the same, but in theory they were.

Hades joined in with Poseidon and we filled the huge warehouse, one side for prisons and the other for churches. I filled in the missing cookies, and they said they would get them all to the vampires to help distribute and we could do it again the next night since there would be a lot more churches than prisons.

I gave them questioning looks. “This is enough. I don’t mean to keep dragging you both into my ideas and—”

“We want to, Sister,” Poseidon promised. “We should have done more while looking for you. You suffered under a curse. Hades kept the underworld under control. I simply… Was. I studied and played with my power to learn some, but—I want to. I want to do more.”

“I enjoy us having these moments,” Hades admitted. “I will see you at the sprinkles factory to load up with meringues in a bit.”

I chuckled as he disappeared. It was as if he was too worried about hurting his image to admit anything sweet now that he was scary Hades.

I honestly thought it was cute.

We met up, and I loaded them up to the brim so Costco could come pick it all up and then some and it was all back on them, not us for once. Same with the other factories, and the managers would handle hiding it all or whatever.

It eased my stress a lot to know we were ahead of the numbers and curve. AMC already had everything they would get for the deal, and we still had a week to handle all our own orders.

And I had a fun night with Jamie.

So nothing shocked me more than when Colton was on the news Monday morning with some big press conference. We all froze when a customer was talking about it in line to pick up an order and hurried to flip on the program in the kitchen.

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