Welcome to the start of the second act! And yeah, I make a lot of references to TD characters as customers/corpses. See how many people you know! Thanks for reviewing, What'dIMiss, Bloodylilcorpse, yeezynight14 and the guest reviewer (I had Zoey in mind, tbh).

Two weeks later, after one mail order and over one hundred casualties, the hairdresser and baker's lives had improved. Mal had ordered a special chair for his clients. His room now had a trapdoor with a chute that went straight down to the kitchen, so each corpse with a newly-slit throat would fly down and land in a basket placed by Scarlett, ready for her to skin and cook.

Cameron bought the story about Chris' heart attack, and even ended up eating one of the pies with his former boss' flesh in it. Scarlett had basically adopted him since. She enjoyed having someone to talk to about intellectual subjects, although she sometimes got annoyed when he knew more than her. Plus, he now got to act as the waiter in the bakery, and Scarlett paid him. Only a little bit, since she couldn't afford too much, but at least she was paying him, and his life was much better. Scarlett had just sent out new flyers for her bakery (and the few that had visited so far had exclaimed at the improved quality of the meat), and her business was steadily improving. Cameron had even suggested designs for the flyers by colour psychology ("Red and orange colours induce hunger," he explained, "but blue and purple suggest poison"), which appeared to have worked. The customer numbers crept up, at first slowly, then quickening. Every day, there was at least one more customer than she'd had the previous day.

Mal didn't discriminate against customers – he didn't care which ones he killed, since they were all good for at least three sausage rolls or two pies. He was careful to ask his clients questions to make sure that no one would miss them, and some escaped his salon unscathed. However, many did not. Once, they really did have Figure Skater on the menu, as two had gone in at the same time, and it turned out the only ones who would miss them would be each other.

Now, today was the day that they were expecting business to really take off. Customer numbers had been increasing day by day, and if Scarlett's estimations were correct, more than one hundred customers (since a lot of them were families) would be in and out during the day.

And she was right. People streamed in from ten minutes after she opened, to two minutes before she closed. Some of them just took away whatever they'd ordered, but those that didn't stayed (and clearly relished their food). Cameron's services as waiter were required more than ever, as there were so many customers that Scarlett had to keep baking new batches of her wares or sell out early. And from the amount of Mal's customers that were in her basket before noon, she'd have another long evening of butchery ahead of her once she closed.

By the time the bakery closed, Cameron looked close to collapsing. "Great day for business." he managed to say. "I couldn't believe how many customers there were! Then again," he grinned weakly, "I couldn't blame them. I've never tasted anything like your baking!"

Scarlett herself hadn't actually taken as much as a bite of her own food. Baking it she didn't mind, but she couldn't stand the idea of actually engaging in cannibalism herself. "It's sweet of you to say that, but I'm sure that my culinary skills will always have room for improvement. It's good that business has taken off so suddenly."

When Cameron finally left to go to the box-room he'd been given as his own room, Mal came down from his flat. "I guessed you'd want my help." he said emotionlessly.

"I do require some help getting everything prepared for tomorrow." Scarlett admitted. "I mean, how many people did you finish off today?"

"About fifteen. It would have been more, but a lot of them had families. One dumb blonde kept babbling about her boyfriend. Maybe it's good I couldn't kill her – she probably would've tasted like plastic Barbie doll. I'm pretty sure half of her was from plastic surgery anyway, and there wasn't too much meat on her."

"So what kind of customers weren't going to be missed?" Scarlett asked in interest as they went to the kitchen. She was genuinely curious about those she baked.

"Oh, you know the type." Mal shrugged. "Mostly women today. There was an Italian-American girl with some meat on her – just make sure none of her hair ends up in whatever you make her into. All she wanted was to have it styled, not cut, and it didn't lose its shape, even when it was washed!"

They found that particular girl in the basket, and Scarlett inspected her. Sure enough, she had a round (and probably tender) booty and round melons, although she was fairly skinny. Her mass of dark wavy hair matched Mal's description.

There were plenty of other good specimens, although most of them were skinnier, like a pretty Asian girl who had wanted hair extensions, and one of the few men, a dorky-looking ginger who'd asked to have his stubble neatened up. But probably the one that would produce the most tender meat turned out to be a plump young girl with long brown braids who'd asked to have her hair restyled without a fringe.

As days continued to pass, Mal started getting more anxious. He hadn't seen Geoff since the day Alejandro had come in, and he was getting worried. He knew Geoff trusted him, so he wouldn't have just up and left with Bridgette and forgot to even say goodbye to him...right? The thought of his daughter constantly weighed on his mind. It was pretty much the only part of his mind that had remained unchanged since he'd been exiled.

Geoff couldn't stop thinking about Bridgette, either. He knew she wasn't living at home anymore. He hadn't dared to write her a letter, but after a second time getting into the house, he found Bridgette's room bare. Everything that had been scattered around her room the first time had gone, from her single bed to her dolphin poster. He hadn't visited Mal since because he felt the first thing he had to do was find out where she was.

Actually, Geoff only found out about a week after Bakery of Savouries had become popular enough for more than one hundred customers each day. In fact, it was just by chance. He heard some people talking.

"Did you hear about Judge Burromeurto's adopted daughter?"

"She's grown unstable, not diagnosed yet, but he says he had to send her to a psych hospital."

"Well, of course, losing her parents so young...she seemed like such a sweet girl, too...he'd done his best to raise her right..."

"I wonder if she's allowed visitors."

In Geoff's periphical vision, he noticed two more people standing around, listening intently to the people talking. One was the dead-eyed woman who had told him who Bridgette was. After a few seconds, she hurried on her way somewhere.

The other woman was younger, only in her late twenties at most, although her face was wise. As the voices faded away, her pale eyes locked onto Geoff. "She's allowed visitors." she said in almost a whisper. "She wants to see you."

Geoff stared at her, not sure how she could know any of it. "How do you know?" he managed to say.

"I'm a nurse at the psychiatric hospital she's been sent to." the young woman said. "She's not unstable. She hasn't been diagnosed because she's all right, but we can't disobey a lawman in this town – Wawanakwa is built on corruption." She smiled weakly. "At least we don't live on an unnatural island – something artificial. That would be worse." She managed to smile at Geoff. "Here, I'll write down the address for you. Then go to your girl. I can help you find a way to discharge her from the hospital."

"But how do you know she wants to see me?" Geoff persisted. "How do you know who I am?"

The young woman gave a wan smile. "I see people's auras. Yours and hers are very similar, and they both have a pink glow to them. Here." She gave him the address. "Come soon."

When Geoff looked up from the address, the woman had disappeared.

Yes, we have a reappearance from the prologue. It was probably more pronounced than it was when she just made some predictions and warned Zoey to be careful of who she trusted. But I couldn't resist giving my favourite RI character a little more time.