Page 64 of Orc'd & Loaded
"Who sent you?"
The sprite spits a chunk of burning ash at his nose. He doesn't flinch.
"Boris." I stand, brushing soot from my knees. "These don't occur naturally indoors. Someone brought a nest."
"I know."
"Someone broke that door, destroyed our station, released a swarm of magical vermin onto our ingredients twelve hours before we cook for Reginald Vance, and vanished."
"I know."
"I'm going to find them and feed them their own kneecaps."
Boris sets the sprite down. It immediately starts chewing a hole through our parchment paper. He flicks it off with one finger and it tumbles, bouncing twice before righting itself and scurrying under the overturned shelving unit to join its friends.
Three more sprites emerge from our dry goods cabinet. They've shredded the smoked paprika packets. Red powder covers their tiny bodies, making them look like furious little devils dragging their bellies across the white tile.
"The nest." Boris drops to the floor, his massive frame hitting the stone with a thud that rattles the remaining intact dishware. He army-crawls toward the industrial oven and peers underneath. "Here. Packed into the gas line housing. Someone wedged a clay pot behind the burner assembly."
"Can you pull it out?"
A grunt. The sound of something ceramic scraping against metal. Then Boris slides backward on his stomach, holding a cracked terracotta pot. Black residue cakes the rim. Inside, a writhing mass of tiny infant sprites, pulse with dull orange light.
My stomach turns. Not from disgust. From recognition.
"That's a Marchetti pot."
Boris looks up from the floor. "What?"
"Marchetti. The terracotta is stamped on the bottom. Flip it."
He turns the pot. The maker's mark is pressed into the clay in neat serif letters. MARCHETTI CERAMICA, FIRENZE.
"Chef Dante Marchetti placed third in last year's festival." I grab my phone from my coat and scroll through the festival's registered competitor list. My hand aches as I grip the screen. "He's registered again this year. So is his sous chef, Leah Park."
"The one with the tattoo sleeves?"
"The one who just posted an Instagram story forty minutes ago from outside the town hall with the caption 'early morning prep vibes' and a fire emoji."
Boris's jaw tightens. The muscles in his neck cord like bridge cables. He sets the nest pot with exaggerated care, the kind of deliberate gentleness that means he wants to throw it through a wall.
"Later," I say. "We deal with them later. Right now we have a swarm eating through every ingredient we have left and eleven hours until service."
He nods. Once.
We move.
Boris rips the broken door completely off its remaining hinge and props it against the hallway wall. Fresh morning air floods the kitchen, and the sprites nearest the doorway hiss, skittering back from the sunlight streaming across the threshold.
"They hate direct light."
"Obviously." I'm already shoving open every window. The casement handles are stiff with age and I have to use my hip against the frames, slamming each one wide until the kitchen blazes with September sun. Sprites scatter from the counter like roaches, pouring off the edges and pooling in the shadows beneath the cabinets.
Boris grabs the overturned shelving unit and heaves it upright with one arm. A cascade of sprites tumbles from behind it, squealing. He stomps his boot against the tile. The percussion sends them fleeing toward the darkest corner of the room, where they cluster behind the mop bucket in a furious, chittering pile.
"Canvas sack," he barks.
I toss him the heavy flour sack from our ruined supply. He shakes the remaining flour out, drops to his knees, and sweeps the entire huddled colony into the bag with both hands. The sackwrithes and glows from within, pinpricks of orange light dotting the canvas like angry stars.
