E.I.D.O.L.O.N. (chapter 3?)

New material early Monday the 22st
for Dana: Sorry you've got so little to go on for your comments! Don't bother looking at the new section if you don't want to--I've been trying to finish it off before posting it, but it just keeps dragging on somehow, so I'm posting what I've got. Oh, and remember that character I said I was dropping. She's back. Bother.

The next morning, the power was out. A step out of bed immediately sent Shin'nen searching for slippers and sweater, but it wasn't until she opened the fridge to find it the same vaguely chilly temperature of the room around her that she realized what had happened. It wasn't much trouble, since the apartment, unlike its downstairs neighbors, was generally well lit. The lack of stove, toaser, and microwave, however, forced her to search for a cold-breakfast alternative, and the resulting meal of bran flakes and lukewarm milk did nothing to set her in a good morning mood. Grocery shopping, she decided, would have to be done.

When she'd returned upstairs the previous night, the mysterious cat had vanished, leaving a cat-sized hollow and pale cream hairs in her My Little Ponies throw on the table. Where Grimalkin had gone, Shin'nen could only guess—but she remembered her agreement to buy cat food, and added it to her shopping list. Did she need a litter box, too? Could she even buy that around here?

Better yet, she mused, would her checkbook handle it? She'd only managed to get in a week of workstudy after the money sink-hole known as the Christmas holidays, and without a computer she had no way to check whether even that had been deposited into her account. After a frown at her purse, stocked with giftcards to Barnes & Nobles, Sam Goody, and several stores completely useless for daily needs, she decided she'd just have to be frugal, and jump that hurdle when it came. Money was not something she wanted to think about.

After stocking a backpack with purse, her borrowed jacket, and a miniature Good Luck Bear—because the way the day was going she was going to need all the luck she could get—Shin'nen headed down the stairs to see how Asque was dealing with the energy crisis.

The wizard was seated at his desk as per usual, reading a slightly diminished stack of newspapers by the light of a kerosene lamp. It cast patterned shadows on the walls, barely broken by the few windows, shades, for once, pulled aside to let in the light. For a flailing moment Shin'nen forgot what century it was: 18^th? 19^th? 20^th? “The power's out,” she offered helpfully to remind herself that there actually was such a thing as electricity.

“Really? I hadn't noticed.” The sarcasm only half-filled Asque's voice, and Shin'nen suspected he'd forgotten he was reading by lamplight. “Most of Old Town is out; it is currently being investigated.”

Moving behind the wizard, Shin'nen snuck a glance at the paper over his shoulder. Across from a full-page add for Marcotte Jewelers, Asque was reading the obituaries. Cheery. “Well, I guess I might have to wander a bit for shopping. I need groceries,” she explained, “and cat food. Your stock up there is pretty pitiful, and it's all melting.”

Asque made a vaguely affirmative noise and turned the page of his newspaper. A thought occurred to Shin'nen. “Your little light show last night didn't have anything to do with this?”

“Hardly.” His tone seemed almost offended, and she immediately felt silly for asking. Flipping a few pages ahead, he indicated a small article with his thumb. The headline read: “Blackouts Cause Lines at Checkouts.”

“Sorry.” She skimmed the article, which seemed to largely consist of dates, numbers, and complaints about the increased time of buying unmentionables. “Wait—okay, this is a stupid question—but these blackouts here only lasted a couple minutes. How come we're still out?”

Half-shrugging, Asque turned back to his previous page and continued reading. “I would hardly pretend to know. My guess is that, as we are in an older section of town, some manner of conduit was damaged with the loss of power.”

“I guess that would make sense. Well, good luck with your . . . newspaper reading and whatever.” Reseating her backpack strap on her shoulder, she headed to the door, opened it—and found she could go no further, impeded as though another, invisible barrier had fixed itself where the door had been. “Asque . . .”

“Oh, yes,” he recalled, glancing up again from his reading and toward the doorway. “I have modified the wards to disallow you from exiting. I must admit, they had been formulated such yesterday, but I miscalculated your intent to leave. I assure you they are now sufficiently enforced.”

“Okay, wait. I already told you I was going shopping, and you didn't say anything against it. And what right do you have to keep me in here?” Slowly working up from confused to annoyed, Shin'nen hoped to achieve angry soon enough to disrupt that nonchalant tone in Asque's voice.

“Oh, I have no intention of keeping you here. I am merely impeding your exit. You're perfectly welcome to walk out that door—by all means, please do. You must merely modify the warding structure to allow you to exit.” He returned his attention to the newspaper. “Consider it practice. And please shut the door,” he added, “it's already chilly enough indoors.”

Anger sputtering around quite irritated, Shin'nen had to suffice herself with giving the wizard a particularly nasty look. She could hardly argue that she didn't need practice, but she needed food, and since that food also included chocolate, she felt he hardly had the right to block her way. She shut the door and, standing back, fumbled her magesight on and surveyed the network of emerald thread and white fire lacing across the wall.

Well, so much for going out through the window.

After setting her backpack on the floor, Shin'nen began tentatively prodding at the network of knots and tangles that spiderwebbed the oak paneling of the wall. The structure held largely firm under her fingers, and where it didn't, a deeper poke elicited a jolt as though she'd touched an electric fence. After waving her finger and sucking on it for a moment, she mentally marked the place and proceeded onward. Nothing, however, seemed to move in a way that produced any effect, and she stood back again, subjecting the wall to the same perturbed look she'd earlier focused on Asque.

“ . . . Any hints?” she wondered to the wizard, but he merely turned the page of his newspaper and continued to ignore her. Growling nonsensically, Shin'nen stalked off to the basement in search of something actually useful.

There, on the worktable, sat a copy of the Book, with a note of what she recognized as Asque's neat scripting set atop it. “Might I suggest these titles?” the note said, followed by a list of several book titles and respective authors. Tucking the note within the Book's cover, she returned upstairs, sat at a desk facing the wall, and inked in the the first title on the list.

Obligingly, the book rustled slightly and filled its pages with A Primer of Basic Shields and Wardings, by Edmund Glaciere. It looked straightforward enough, if obviously designed for children of an older generation, and Shin'nen would have skipped directly to the chapter entitled “Inclusions and Exclusions: How to keep some in and others out” had she not noticed the note scribbled beside the author's name on the title page. It was in a similar hand to that of Asque's list, if a little more childish in its structured, formulaic lettering, as though its writer was still settling into the smooth gait of writing.

It read: “This man is an ignoramus.” There was a small diagram of a face with fangs beside the words.

Shin'nen was a little taken aback. Paging through the book, she found that this was hardly the only graffiti of the text: comments were written in the margins on at least every third page, criticizing everything from the author's methods to his grammar and punctuation. Turning back to the inside cover of the Book, she found a single line of penciled text in the same childish handwriting. “This Book belongs to Asque.”

On a whim, Shin'nen retreated to the Book's search function once more and tried out each of the listed books in turn. Each received disparaging comments from the childish hand, which varied in likely age and insults: the authors were systematically described as “idiot”, “utter prat”⁴, “imbecile,” and Shin'nen's favorite, in an especially young hand, “nincompoop.” All editions had the same level of defacement. “So Asque . . .” Shin'nen began, unable to keep a grin out of her voice. “If all these authors are 'nincompoops', how exactly are they supposed to help me get out of the building?”

Asque seemed puzzled for a moment, then Shin'nen watched as his eyes widened ever so slightly. She wondered if he hadn't noticed which copy he'd been using when he chose it by candlelight. The moment passed quickly, however, and when his face fell bland again Shin'nen had a hard time believing she'd actually seen anything. “Even idiots can have something useful to say. If I had listed any books I appreciated, you wouldn't be able to understand them.”

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Shin'nen mentally snorted, but returned to the books and their vicious young critic. The comments, she found, were actually quite helpful. By studying only those rare pages with mildly positive comments—or, at least, those with no comments at all—she slowly found the mess on the wall begin to resolve itself into something almost understandable. Taking notes helped, and, after what passed as a quick hour of study, Shin'nen was able to walk over to the wall, tug at a strand of the weave that mimicked the glow of her own magic, and pull it free. She waved a hand through the open door just as the power flickered back on. “Tada.”

“Congratulations,” Asque said over the top of his third paper, reaching out one-handed to dim the kerosene lamp. “You shouldn't have trouble buying your groceries now that the power is on.”

“Yeah, well.” Shin'nen slipped the Book into her backpack and angled for the door again, but paused at his desk. “If I leave now, you're not gonna reset that thing and make me do it all over again, are you?”

“Probably not.”

“Okay.” That was probably the best she would get out of him, anyway. She turned back to the door, but not before noticing that Asque had clipped out the article about the blackouts.

***

The cat was waiting outside the door, sitting serenely beneath a bare maple tree. “Where did you run off to last night?” Shin'nen demanded. “And why weren't you in there helping me with that door?”

'I'm sure that's none of your business,' Grimalkin said. Her ear flicked briefly. 'And cats are never there when you think you need them; only when you actually do.'

“Asque said I shouldn't have let you in.”

'Poor boy, must not have been raised right.' She stood, arching her bony back in a long stretch. 'You're buying my food, aren't you? There's a nice little mart two blocks that way.' She indicated the direction with a lazy wave of her kinked tail. 'The owners have a dog, but it listens to reason.'

Unable to think of a better alternative—her plan had been to wander in circles until she either found a grocery mart or got up the nerve to ask another pedestrian—Shin'nen agreed and, after reluctantly allowing the cat to lay itself across her shoulders and backpack, set off in the indicated direction.

The walk was silent for an awkward minute. Finally, Shin'nen posed, “I don't suppose you know what it was Asque was working on last night? I can't imagine it was all just to change the . . . wards like that.” The question sounded a little hollow to her ears—it wasn't that she didn't want to know, but she wasn't sure what her relationship was with this feline or what it was supposed to be.

Grimalkin shifted briefly on Shin'nen's shoulders. 'I wouldn't put it past him,' she said, 'but no. If you must know, that's why I left last night; these old bones don't sit well with that level of spellwork.'

“But what was it?” Curiosity was getting the better of her now.

'A finding spell.' Shin'nen saw the cat begin to clean herself out of the corner of her eye. 'A very complex one. I don't believe it worked.'

Frowning, Shin'nen stopped to wait out a traffic light. She found it hard to believe anything Asque did magically could not work. “Do you know what he was looking for?”

'No, and I don't think he did, either. Which would explain why he failed.'

Shin'nen nodded absently, registering a pause in the flow of traffic and the changing lights at the crosswalk. She was about to step into the intersection when a voice called out from somewhere.

“Hey!” Shifting her gaze about her, Shin'nen tried to place the speaker, but saw no one, not even a car with a window down. There was a light thump, and she spun about to find herself face to face with an angry, brick-haired young man. He wore a worn windbreaker in 90s bolds and an expression that made Grimalkin dutifully stand up on Shin'nen's back and hiss. 'Damn,' she said, 'and so close to that delicious salmon.'

“Hey!” he said again. “You've got my jacket! Why the hell have you got my jacket?!”

He was well-built, Shin'nen realized with a swallow, something that even the most outrageously uncharacteristic windbreaker couldn't hide, and his eyes were the same bloody red-brown as his hair. And he was mad. Oh, God. Shin'nen felt her shoulders arch inward in a parody of Grimalkin's own raised back.

The man glanced her up and down, then, as Shin'nen was debating how useful it would be to run, grabbed her wrist. His breath made plumes of white in the cold. “Okay, witch,” he said, and, trying in vain to break away, Shin'nen realized the name wasn't derogatory, but categoric, and stared in growing fear. “I can smell it on you. I don't know how you got it or why, but you're gonna hand it over right now, got it?”

'Leave my human alone, Walker,' Grimalkin hissed, and leapt at the man's face from Shin'nen's shoulder. “Walker?” Shin'nen wondered numbly as the man caught the cat in mid jump and tossed her lightly aside. The cat landed on her feet as per idiom, but seemed disinclined to make another attempt. One handed, the man then tugged at the zipper of Shin'nen's backpack and pulled the leather jacket free. Up close, he did smell the way the coat had: cinnamon and smoke. Oh, God, what if it was his?

“Aw, dammit, it's all wrinkled,” he was saying, still clutching her wrist with one hand as he surveyed his prize with the other. Wildly, she wondered how he could tell—it looked just as beat up as it had when she'd borrowed it, covered in flour, the day before. “But Bekka patched it up already, that's good . . .”

Bekka? Oh! Shin'nen stammered to find her voice. “I-I'm sorry—I didn't know it was yours—I borrowed it from Rebekka yesterday, at the bakery, and she said it would be alright as long as I returned it today, because I forgot my coat and it was a long walk back and--” She ran out of things to say.

The man's eyes narrowed. “Bekka lent it to you, huh? Hnn . . .” His eyes flickered over her again. “I dunno about that. You couldn't have got it anywhere else, but you could just as easily have swiped it.” After a moment in contemplation, hand still clamped around Shin'nen's wrist, he sighed a long breath of white. “Guess we'll just have to check with her. Come on.”

He began tugging her off in the direction of the bakery. “Come on, hurry up! I'll carry you if I have to! You're too damn slow!” As she passed Grimalkin, the cat jumped back to her previous position around Shin'nen's shoulders, whispering to her, 'Dragons. Rather thick-headed, aren't they?'

***

The bakery door chimed as the man hauled her through it, jostling Grimalkin off her shoulders. The cat, annoyed, flicked her tail and disappeared around the corner of the building. “Bekka!” he called immediately, searching the shop for the tall, flour-speckled woman. The bakery, however, was empty. Not surprising, Shin'nen had to admit, if word of the power outage had spread. No one really wanted to shop in the cold.

Now, however, the heat was on full-blast, and it made curls tickle uncomfortably against her face. “Bekka! Kris, where's Bekka?” It took a moment for Shin'nen to realize he was addressing a woman behind the counter. At first glance, Shin'nen had entirely missed her. She was the sort of person who blended into the background: small and slight, a study in pastels from the blonde of her hair to the pale pink of her fuzzy pink sweater.

“S-she's in the back—we're running behind because of the power outage, and--” Kris' unassuming voice was quickly swallowed up as Rebekka swept out of the kitchen.

“Good Lord, Sammy, what are you doing to that poor girl? Kristina, the first batch is ready to go in—I think the oven should be hot enough now.” Nodding quickly, the woman vanished through the swinging back doors.

“She had my jacket!” He waved the article as evidence. Now that he was under the scrutiny of the baker, the man's certainly seemed to falter, like a kid reminded he wasn't suppose to tattle. “She was hiding it away in her backpack!”

Bekka's hand went to her hip. “Yeah, 'cause I loaned it to her yesterday! Which you'd have known if you'd have showed up this morning like you said you would. And then there was a power outage so only just got the ovens going half an hour ago, and that definitely wouldn't have been a problem if you'd just showed up!”

“Oh.” He released Shin'nen's wrist, and she rubbed it where her bracelet had pressed into the skin.

“Well?”

“Sorry,” he told Bekka, then at a raised eyebrow from the baker, glanced at Shin'nen and added a less sincere: “Sorry! But look, Bekka--” He spun his attention again to the tall woman and she cut him off with a glare.

“I have to apologize for Samiel, Shin'nen.” Bekka rolled her eyes, stepping around the counter. “He's an idiot, but generally not this much of an idiot. I hope he wasn't too stupid.”

Samiel was indignant and huffed steam despite the warmth of the interior. “That's not fair, Bekka! How was I supposed to know you'd loaned it to her? And why'd you do that, anyway?

“Like I said, if you'd have showed up—and you've got mine, so I couldn't give her that—and you look ridiculous in it, by the way.”

“What? What's wrong with it?” He peered down at the bold magenta and teal of the windbreaker, lip raised questioningly. “You wear it, don't you?”

Rebekka's eyebrow raised again. She snorted. “Yeah, but—ah, it's not worth trying to explain it to you. If you want lunch, go back in the kitchen and make yourself useful: knead some dough or something.”

Scowling, Samiel displayed what Shin'nen suddenly realized was a very impressive set of teeth, but grudgingly made his way to the back of the shop. The baker watched him leave, shaking her head slowly.

“So that's . . . the dragon you were telling me about?” He wasn't quite how she'd expected a dragon. Somehow, she'd always thought of dragons as being somehow more . . . refined.

“Yeah, that's Sammy. Ah—maybe you'd better stick with Samiel, though. He gets kinda stuffy about silly human nicknames. Sorry about the mix up, really,” Bekka added, honestly apologetic enough to almost make up for the dragon's lack of such. “He's usually late, but he usually shows up, so I didn't think it would be a problem. I guess he gets a little possessive over that jacket, though. It's kinda cute.”

Shin'nen wasn't quite sure about that, but she couldn't bring herself to make trouble. It always seemed so horrible to complain when someone was making apologies. “That's—yeah, it's alright,” she lied, and stuck on a smile.

Bekka gave her a pitying look. “Honey, you're terrible at lying.”

“Yeah, I'm working on that.”

There was a pause in which Shin'nen's expression half fell and Bekka's expression half rose, creating an odd parallel of halfhearted smirks. Finally, Bekka laughed, and Shin'nen wondered why it was that spending time with someone who was nice to her made her feel like she was suddenly a five year old. It was odd how it was so easy to speak your mind when someone was being rude, but when someone was nice . . . the words just slipped away and she wasn't sure what to do. Okay, she decided, confidence. You just need to work on that.

“Anyway,” Bekka was saying, “I'm guessing Sammy commandeered you before you got a chance to get lunch, so I'll see what I can whip up. I'm craving a potato soup—how's that sound to you? Sammy'll hate it.”

“Oh my God!” Shin'nen exclaimed, remembering her earlier promise to bring lunch today. Whoops. So much for confidence. “I was on my way to buy groceries and I ran into Samiel and I never got a chance to get anything to bring for lunch even though I said I would and--”

“Whoa, cool it there!” The other woman held up her hands in halting motion. “It's my fault you're here before you meant to be, so I owe you lunch anyway. You might have to help Kristina and Sammy back there with the baking a bit, though,” she admitted. “We are pretty behind with the power outage, and as soon as people find out the power's back over here we should start getting some of the regulars again.”

There was a soft “Oh!” of exclamation from the back kitchen, and the small woman's voice filtered out, saying, “Rebekka, there's a cat back here, and I'm not sure how it got in. Should—should I put it out? Is it okay?”

“Oh, Grimalkin!” Shin'nen knew at once, and brushed past Bekka into the back to scoop up the break-in cat. “I'm sorry, she's m—she's with me. I didn't realize she'd come in—I can . . . figure out something to do with her.” To the cat in her arms she whispered tersely, “This is a kitchen—you shouldn't be in here. Why'd you come in?”

Squirming in her arms, the cat gave her the equivalent of rolling her eyes. 'It's cold outside,' she said, 'and I'm starving. Bakers have very good milk.'

“Does she talk to you?” Shin'nen was surprised again by Kristina's voice. The woman was staring from a stool at the long metal counter, hands still kneading at a floured mass of dough. “You—you are a witch, aren't you?” At Shin'nen's half-nod, she continued, “Rebekka mentioned you. I've been trying to find a cat who will talk to me, but so far I haven't had any luck.”

“I . . . didn't exactly find her,” Shin'nen admitted, shifting her grip around the dissatisfied Siamese. “More like she found me.”

'Put me down already. Let me go.' Annoyed, Grimalkin unsheathed claws into Shin'nen's jacket. She winced. “What should I do with her?”

Frowning, Rebekka surveyed the cat for a moment, then shrugged. “So long as she doesn't get into anything, I suppose I can't be too picky. I've got a guy who comes in twice a week walking his cat, and I haven't turned him out yet. Don't let the customers see her back here, though.”

Shin'nen nodded as Grimalkin finally wormed out of her grasp and tracked footprints in the white dust of the floor. 'Of course I won't get into anything. What does she take me for, a kitten?'

“What's she saying?” Kristina wondered, intrigued.

“She's, um, saying she won't get into anything; she's no kitten.”

Fascinated, the small woman continued to stare at the cat as she folded another quarter cup of flour into her growing mound. “A real witch's cat. Wow.”

“Cats,” Samiel snorted, uncovering a yeast-swelled pillow of dough from near the stove and lightly punching the air out of it. Dumping it unceremoniously onto the floured counter, he began kneading at it fluidly. “Don't see why anyone would want one. They've got the ego of something ten times their size.”

'And dragons,' Grimalkin countered, leaping to perch atop a stool and leering at the dragon, 'have the brains of a creature a tenth of their size.'

“See? There you go—it's insulting me.” The dough grew quickly again under the warmth of his hands.

“You can understand it, too?” Kristina wondered, mystified. A quick glance at the large clock on the wall reminded her to stop kneading, and she began dividing the dough into small pans.

The dragon snorted. “Who needs to? Cats are always insulting. And me, ten times its age—who's the wiser there, huh?

“The cat, obviously,” Bekka decided, brushing past to dig in the over-sized fridge. She paused to examine the dragon's handwork. “Though, mmm, I love those hands. Now if I can just get you to learn how to actually mix the dough, I'll hire you on the spot.”

“You can't afford me.”

Unconcerned, Bekka pulled a half-dozen items from the refrigerator's depths. “Sure I can—I'll give you a cow on holidays. Now where did I hide the potatoes?”

Samiel lifted his hands from the dough and stared at her. “Potatoes? I am not working for potatoes!”

“You show up late, carnivore, and you'll eat what I cook you.” Nevertheless, she waved a ziplock bag of half-thawed ground beef. “You're just lucky you're getting some cow on the side along with your taste of Ireland.”

The dragon frowned, but returned to his kneading at the promise of meat. “It's not my fault someone decided to schedule an impromptu art auction. You humans die and everyone around you forgets about proper scheduling.”

“You went to an art auction in that?” Discovering the potatoes forgotten under a counter, Rebekka did a quick head count and began sorting through the bag's contents for some of the root crop that hadn't begun to sprout.

“Yeah . . . ? They almost didn't let me in—can't figure out why.”

“Sammy, honey, you look like a reject from an 80s sitcom. With cross dressing. Put your own jacket on.”

“Is there anything I can help with?” Shin'nen asked Kristina, leaving the other two to their banter.

“Um, sure. I need to start on the bagels next. You can . . . get the ingredients?” The panned loaves were covered now, and she spun the stool to set them to sun in the window. “I need . . .” She frowned, doing a once-over of the counter. “ . . . stuff that's already out. I'm sorry, um . . .”

“No, that's okay, I'll . . .” Confidence! “ . . . make cookies! I know how to make cookies. Not much else, but chocolate chip cookies, I'm good at those.”

“Um, yeah. Okay.” She spun the stool to face her superior, who was busy chopping potatoes. “Rebekka, are chocolate chip cookies okay?”

“Sure—what? Sammy, those needed more butter. Don't make that face! Yeah, sure, that's fine; if they're good they can be a special to make up for the late start.”

As though she were translating from another language, Kristina spun her stool around and restated, “Okay. Cookies are okay. There's, um, cold ingredients in the fridge and dry in that big cupboard over there. I'll get you a bowl and stuff.” She pointed, then hopped off her stool and went in search of the mentioned utensils, reminding Shin'nen just how short the woman was. Like her high school math teacher, Kristina barely came up to her shoulders, which put her well under five feet to Shin'nen's five-foot four. Seeing her beside Rebekka was like a study in contrasts: short to tall, light to dark, twiggy to well-built, short-cropped hair to Rebekka's mass of pinned-up braid.

Shin'nen went first to the refrigerator to search out the margarine and eggs. 'Get me something to eat,' Grimalkin complained with a yowl, startling Shin'nen from a perch atop the fridge. Shin'nen bit her lip, then glanced toward Bekka and the mass of vegetables on the counter. “Rebekka, is there something I can give the cat?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Gotta feed the carnivores.” She motioned with her knife toward the melting bag of hamburger meat. “She can have some of that when it's cooked.”

Glowering, Samiel turned toward women and cat. “What? How come the cat gets my meat?!”

“Oh, come on, Sammy. It's a quart freezer bag. You weren't gonna get the whole thing, anyway.”

“Not a full quart. Not even half! It's a gyp.”

Crossing her paws over the fridge door, Grimalkin flicked her tail. 'Sharing dinner with a dragon. How unrefined.'

“Don't you start, too,” Shin'nen sighed, making her way back to the counter where Kristina had deposited a small steel mixing bowl and various utensils. After retrieving the rest of her ingredients from the heavy-doored cabinet, Shin'nen took up a stool beside the small woman. “Sorry about making all the ruckus in here.”

“Oh, it's always like this,” Kristina assured, voice barely audible over the whir of an electric beater. “Samiel likes to argue. It's awfully quiet when he's not around.”

Unwrapping sticks of margarine, Shin'nen nodded. That certainly made sense. Already the banter had become an atmospheric background noise, and she found it difficult to imagine the kitchen with only the scraping of spoons against bowls and the occasional question/answer. It was only after she'd poured in the white sugar that she realized the margarine sticks were still rock-hard from the fridge. “Ah, shoot!” Too late to microwave them now. She shook her head slowly at the mess. “Is there some way I can . . . um . . .”

“I'll get it.” Reaching over with a floured hand, Kristina drew a symbol into each of the rock-hard sticks and muttered something too soft for Shin'nen to understand. The margarine obediently softened, adding a small puddle the granulated sugar.

“You're a witch, too? Does everyone do magic in Portland?” Shin'nen asked, then immediately felt stupid for asking.

Kristina looked sheepish and hid her look under the pretense of adding flour to her mix. “No, I guess we just tend to . . . congregate? I mean, with a dragon visiting and all, it's hard not to . . . Anyway, I'm not very good. I've only been doing this for about a year; this was just one of the more useful charms I picked up.”

“You'll have to teach it to me sometime,” Shin'nen decided, patting in a fourth-cup of brown sugar. “I know nothing, practically.”

Brown eyes wide, Kristina folded in flour as she glanced at Grimalkin. “But you've already found a cat! And a much more appropriate name, too—I mean, Kristina. It just doesn't fit, really.”

“I was a New Years baby, and early,” Shin'nen snorted. She appreciated how much easier it seemed to talk to Kristina; the woman's timidness made her feel like she could give something back to the conversation rather than just receive its benefits. “So Dad was drunk and Mom was freaking out and apparently 'Shin'nen' sounded like a decent name at the time. Then they decided somehow that they liked it, and so I was stuck with a messed up name in the middle of all the Ashleys and Amandas of southwestern Minnesota.”

“See, then it's fate!” Kristina waved her bowl scraper in emphasis, showering the already white counter in more flour. “A girl born at the turn of the year, grows up ignorant of her powers and then goes an exciting adventure to gain her birthright!”

“I wouldn't exactly call it 'exciting.' More like 'obnoxious.'”

“And you're already working with the Eidolon people,” she gushed, unfettered by Shin'nen's comment. “All the prestige and knowledge and all those books, all right there!”

“Yeah, well.” Shin'nen stabbed at a stubborn chunk of brown sugar that had caramelized itself into a solid ball. “Maybe the organization is great, but I'm not so sure about its employees.” If the ball was Asque's head . . . “You could probably get some stuff from them if you wanted it. It seems to me like they're supposed to help with stuff like that.”

“Oh, no, I don't think I could . . .” Kristina said, excitement dying down. She stared into her bagel mixture. “I need to figure out some stuff first. I don't know how they feel about interspecies relationships . . .”

“Interspecies?” Frowning, Shin'nen narrowed her gaze, then glanced across the room. “Wait,” she whispered, “you and Samiel--”

“No!” Kristina exclaimed, a little too loudly. She blushed furiously, dumping in a little more flour, then added in a softer voice. “Oh, no. Definitely not. I'm . . . dating a vampire, you see.”

It was Shin'nen's turn to outburst. “A vampire?” She could feel her face going into a horrified expression, and she clasped a hand over her mouth. “Is that okay?” she asked around her fingers. “I mean, I'm sorry—was that really . . . speciesist of me? I really don't know anything about vampires, really, so I don't know . . .”

“Oh, no, that's alright. It was . . . kinda weird for me, too.” She covered the bagel mixture with a cloth and reached for one of the sunning bowls to punch down its risen dough. “But Brian hasn't been a vampire long—only five years, so he's really not that much older than me—and we're looking for a way to turn him back. I mean, it's never been done before, that we can find, but we figure they can't have tried everything, so . . .”

“Yeah, that . . . makes sense.” Shin'nen nodded slowly, forcing herself to stop thinking of vampires as creepy, evil bloodsuckers and think instead of people. It almost worked. Thinking of vampires with names like “Brian” helped. “That's . . . really awesome that you're looking for that. That he's willing to give up . . . immortality? For you.”

“Yeaaah . . .” Kristina had gone all mushy-eyed, which Shin'nen found a disturbing combination as the pixy-like woman forcefully punched out air from a shapeless mass of dough. “He's so sweet. Almost a year and a half we've been together, and he's willing to give up his eternity.”

“So . . . does he ever, you know?” She pantomimed vampire-biting her hand. A scent of sizzling meat and fragrant cheese-potato had begun to fill the kitchen, issuing from the pot and pan under Rebekka's care. “Do they even do that?”

“Oh, no.” Separating the bagel dough into round biscuits, Kristina shook her head. “I mean, yes, they do, of course, but Brian gets his from a butcher. I did let him, once, though,” she admitted, cheeks pink with the memory, “on our anniversary. Not from the neck, of course! I mean, but it was . . . okay. Kinda intimate. He's really a sweetheart.”

A timer dinged somewhere, and Kristina hopped off her stool again to retrieve a batch of golden caramel rolls from the ovens. Shin'nen watched her, mentally picturing the tiny woman cuddling under Count Dracula's cape, powder-blue-flatted foot popping Princess-Diaries-style. That was stupid, of course, she told herself. Brian probably wore polos or band screen Ts and cargo pants. She'd spent her whole K-12 career being told not to judge people by how they look or where they come from, but she'd never thought she'd need to apply that to vampires.

“Soup's on!” Rebekka declared, holding up a recently-tasted ladle of steaming pale beige. “Get it while it's hot!”

Barehanded, Samiel retrieved a rack of loaves from the oven and peered at the bubbling concoction. “I don't care about the soup. Where's my meat?”

Bekka put a hand to her mouth and fanned herself theatrically with the other. “Oh, forgive me, your lordship; prithee wait anon for thine cattle.”

“No one ever talked like that.” Setting the loaves on a rack to cool, the dragon scooped a handful of half-raw ground beef from the skillet on the stove. He ate the clumps like cheese curds. Shin'nen wrinkled her nose.

“How would you know? You're barely 200.” Rebekka was digging in another cupboard now, searching for suitable bowls and spoons for the finished lunch dish. “And don't eat it like that!”

Mouth full, Samiel gave her an expression of “why the hell not?” and moved to help himself to another handful. Rebekka slapped his hand away and imposed herself between him and the stove, taking a moment to shift the remaining beef in the pan before portioning out a bowl of soup. “No more meat until it's cooked. Here. Potato.” She shoved the bowl at him.

Shin'nen leaned over to whisper in Kristina's ear. “So they're always like this?”

“Every single time!” Kristina dug holes out of the bagel rounds and snuck a fingerful into her mouth. “Mm. Makes everything kinda exciting, doesn't it?”

“That's one way of putting it.” Shin'nen finished stirring a bag of chocolate chips into her mixture and gave Bekka a wave. “Should we bake these now or wait until later?”

“Whenever you like; it's not like the ovens won't be turned on.” Rebekka was passing out bowls to the rest of the room and set a steaming portion beside Shin'nen's mixing bowl. “Or we could just eat the dough.”

“It tastes better cooked, actually,” Shin'nen admitted, self-conscious of her amateur cooking among the professional bakers. “My mom's is better to just eat, but I like to make it this way so I actually end up with cookies and not just an empty bowl.”

“That's fine! Hurry up and bake them, then—I need some more sugar in my diet. It'll take a minute for the soup to cool down, anyway.” Shin'nen obediently began portioning rounded teaspoons onto a baking sheet, her nose playing ping-pong between disgust at the scent of cooking meat and euphoria at the other tantalizing aromas of the bakery.

Ten minutes later the four were squashed around one of the tiny deli tables in the shop proper, finishing off bowls of potato soup and starting in on the first of a cooling batch of cookies. Shin'nen felt glad to be sandwiched between the two women; after the over-warm bruise of his hand, she wasn't yet much inclined to be in close proximity with the rest of him. He'd surprised her in eating all of his forced bowl of vegetarian soup, but she remembered a classmate's cat and its strange fondness for fresh lettuce.

Shin'nen's own resident cat was seated atop another of the tables, kinked tail lashing impatiently as she waited for the bipeds to finish their meal, her own satisfactorily completed at least five minutes prior. She seemed to have little patience for the pace of human life—so dreadfully hurried at times, so horribly slow at others—but that may be said of any cat and any human trait.

The two bakers weren't making any comment on the cookies, which Shin'nen decided to take as a good, if mixed, sign. At least, she told herself, they weren't complaining, though they seemed much too polite for that. Of course her baking left much to be desired beside that of those who made their living in baked goods, so she could hardly judge herself against them. Even so, she was glad to keep away from the subject of her cookies and their obviously college freshman taste.

In a rare banter lull, Shin'nen took a moment to survey the bakery's main shop once more. During their meal, Rebekka had paused twice to help arriving customers, all of whom she knew by name and purchase of choice. It seemed like a decent arrangement, but she had also seen a half dozen people stop outside the thick glass windows to investigate the scent from within, only to continue on their way.

There was no denying the shop needed work. Between the cracking paint and mismatched seating, she was hardly surprised few tourists stopped by, especially considering the impressively stylish bakery she'd noticed a few streets down. It seemed like such a rude subject to bring up, but . . . “Rebekka, have you, um, ever thought of remodeling?”

“Hmm?” Whether she appreciated Shin'nen's cookies or not, she certainly appreciated cookies in general, and had to pause in her third to consider her question. “Oh, eh, you noticed that?” She sighed, smiling jokingly. “I've really been meaning to for a while, but I just haven't had time. I feel like if I'm going to do anything, I should really rearrange things, and that would mean closing shop for at least a few days. Whether we attract new customers or not, there are a lot of people who have come to depend on us, and I don't want to leave them hanging like that. I've got tradition to uphold.”

“Tradition?”

“Open six days a week all year, excluding Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years,” Kristina quoted. “It makes vacations a mess, and we have to hire temps around holidays, but it's been like that for over a hundred years.”

Bekka began collecting dishes together. “This bakery has been in my family for four generations. Days like today make me wish we still ran the ovens on gas or wood, though I certainly wouldn't feel that way when the fuel bill came around. Of course, if someone would show up when he says he's going to . . .”

The dragon made a face. “Yeah, yeah, I got it already.”

“Here.” Bekka handed him the stack of ceramic bowls and respective spoons. “Go deal with the dishes.”

“I am not washing dishes!”

“Sammy, don't be dumb. Just put 'em in the dishwasher.” Shooing him off toward the kitchen, she sighed.

“I don't think your customers would desert you if you had to close shop for a few days.” Shin'nen was taking stock of all the things that could use revitalizing in the room, wishing she had a decorator's eye for designing spaces. “And . . . I don't really have any idea what to do with it, but I'm more than willing to help. You've been so nice—I feel like I should at least help out this much. And considering how my practice session with Asque went last night, it'll be ages before the robot man lets me go home.”

Rebekka considered the offer for a moment, then shrugged. “Alright, sure. You're hired. It's slow in the afternoons, so maybe we can start planning something tomorrow. That sound alright, Kristina?”

“Ooh!” The small woman was almost bouncing in her chair, wearing a smile that somehow made her look like she'd escaped from a Cecilia Mary Barker watercolor. “I've been waiting for this! I've got so many ideas! I'll sketch something out tonight!”

Rebekka's excitement was more subdued, but she laughed throatily. “I guess that means we're on. Oh!” She leaned in her chair to peer out the wall of windows. “Looks like Mr. Wellington's coming. I'd better quick make sure those bagels are done.”

She seemed hesitant to leave her company, so Shin'nen stood up hurriedly. “I'd better run, anyway. I've still gotta get some groceries, and I should get back for some studying before Asque sends out the flying monkies.”

'About time,' Grimalkin complained, leaping down from her table perch and again up to Shin'nen's shoulders. Shin'nen winced at the unavoidable claws to through her shirt and did her best to maneuver on her jacket and backpack with the thin cat weaving about.

“Alright,” Bekka agreed, already halfway to the kitchen. “See you tomorrow, then. I promise Sammy won't haul you back here again.”

Kristina stood as well, offering an awkward bow of her head. “It was nice to meet you. You'll have to tell me your thoughts about Eidolon sometime.”

“Soon as I figure them out for myself, you'll be the first to know. Um, give my regards to Brian!”

“Sure.” She resumed her post behind the counter with a shy smile, and transferred her attention fluidly as a greying man chimed through the door. “Good afternoon, Mr. Wellington. Rebekka's just getting your usual together; it'll be just a minute.”

With a final wave, Shin'nen chimed the door herself in exit, moving out into the flow of pedestrian traffic.