Content Warning: The source material uses outdated language regarding psychological conditions and mental distress. This is only replicated in quoted material in this guide. 

Fourteen-year-old Mona arrives at her aunt’s bakery in the morning and discovers the dead body of a girl on the floor by the ovens. The dead girl is not much older than Mona. She wonders if the girl slipped and hit her head on the ovens, then speculates that the girl was murdered. Finally, she runs for her Aunt Tabitha, who lives above the bakery. She is confident that her calm, competent aunt will know what to do.

Aunt Tabitha sends her husband, Uncle Albert, to fetch a constable and then asks Mona to make some sweet buns for the constables. Mona does as she is told. Then, to keep busy and maintain a sense of normalcy, she goes down to the basement to feed her sourdough starter.

Mona’s sourdough starter is called Bob, and it is alive because Mona possesses a minor magical ability that only works on bread and dough. When she first started working for her aunt at the age of 10, she was tasked with feeding flour to the starter, but she messed up and the starter dried up.