Page 63 of Orc'd & Loaded
She writes in sharp, angular letters. I draw crude pictures of the plates next to each entry. She doesn't complain about the drawings. Progress.
"Dessert," she says, tapping the chalk against the slate. "The chocolate cake."
"Already perfected."
"It needs acid. A blood orange reduction. Just a thread across the top."
"Blood orange."
"Trust me."
Two words. They land in my heart and sit there, warm and heavy. I pull a bottle of aged cider from the shelf behind the bar, uncork it with my teeth, and hand it to her. She drinks straight from the neck. Wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
I take the bottle. Drink. The cider is sharp and cold and fizzes against my tusks.
"We're going to win this," she says.
"We're going to bury him in flavor so deep he'll need a shovel to dig out."
She laughs. Actual laughter. The sound rolls off the stone walls and fills the empty tavern the way a hundred rowdy patrons never quite manage to. I store it somewhere safe.
We blow out the last candle. Lock the heavy oak door. The iron key turns with a grinding clunk, and the enchanted deadbolt glows blue for a moment before settling. The street is empty. Wet from the earlier storm. Puddles catch the moonlight and throw it back in silver coins.
She leans against my arm. Just for a second. Shoulder to bicep. Then she straightens, squares her jaw, and walks across the street to her own door with the kind of stride that says tomorrow belongs to her.
I wait until her light clicks on upstairs. Then I go to bed.
The town hall kitchen door hangs from one hinge.
The top hinge. The bottom is sheared clean off, screws ripped from the frame, and the heavy oak panel swings inward at a drunken angle. Splinters litter the stone steps. The lock mechanism lies six feet away in the decorative hedge, brass faceplate bent double.
Solene drops her knife roll.
I push past the broken door. The kitchen inside looks like a battlefield after the losing side has fled. Our prep station, the long marble counter we spent two days scrubbingand seasoning, is cracked down the center. Someone drove something heavy into it from above. The stainless steel shelving unit behind it lies on its side, bowls and measuring cups scattered like shrapnel.
And the soot sprites.
Dozens of them. Each one no bigger than my fist, coal-black and smoldering, with pinprick orange eyes that blink in unison when we step through the doorway. They swarm over our ingredient crates. One gnaws through a burlap sack of heritage grain flour, spewing white powder into the air. Another sits inside an open jar of the Korathian fire salt, rolling in the crimson dust and giggling, a thin, crackling sound like burning newspaper.
Solene's hand closes around my wrist. Squeezes. Hard.
"Boris. Every single marrow squash is gone"
CHAPTER 15
SOLENE
The enchanted mushrooms. Every last one.
I drop to my knees beside the shattered pine crate where sixty pounds of Bellwether Farm marrow squash should be sitting. The wood is scorched black from the inside. Tiny claw marks gouge the grain in frantic patterns, and a fine layer of ash coats the burlap lining like dirty snow.
A soot sprite perches on the rim. It blinks at me. Burps a tiny ember.
"Get. Off. My. Crate."
It doesn't move. It tilts its coal-black head and makes that crackling giggle again, and a shower of sparks drifts down onto the ruined burlap.
Boris's hand closes over the sprite like a man catching a fly. He lifts it to eye level. The thing squirms between his massive fingers, its orange eyes blazing with indignation.
