“Have you eaten?”
“I have. I will spend the evening adjusting to the time change and resting in contemplation. Please call me Qoros. It’s the name I have chosen for this journey.”
“Please call me Dina. If you need anything, simply ask the inn or call me by name.”
I left and shut the door behind me. We had until midnight. In every known account of the Drífen visiting, they always arrived just a couple of minutes before the clock struck twelve. That left Orro with roughly seven hours to come up with the Grand Burger, and I hadn’t heard him yell “fire!” since the tea with Caldenia.
I had a feeling that something had gone terribly wrong.
5
I sat at the kitchen table, facing Caldenia. Two glasses of water and two plates waited between us. The first plate contained a freshly purchased Grand Burger. The second held its exact replica. It looked like the real thing—plump sesame-seed bun, thin patty, a stack of lettuce, pickles, and tomato, and melted yellow cheese. It smelled like the real thing.
We had now bought thirty Grand Burgers, which had caused no end of fun making by the Favor delivery driver. Red Deer wasn’t that large, so we had gotten the same delivery driver three times in a row for an identical order of ten burgers each. When she made the final delivery, she asked if the Hamburgler was renting a room or if we were just making a documentary about fast food.
To the right, Orro stood completely still in the kitchen, like a monument to culinary failure.
Caldenia and I regarded each other like two duelists. Both burgers had been cut in half with surgical precision.
“Shall we?” Caldenia inquired.
I picked up my half of the Grand Burger and took a bite. It tasted just like the other four Grand Burgers I had tasted in the last four hours. I swallowed, drank some water, and picked up Orro’s burger. The first burger he presented to us several hours earlier tasted like heaven. The second was too chewy, the third was too mushy, the fourth was too salty. Taking another bite was kind of scary.
I inhaled and bit into the burger.
Cardboard. Soaked in meat juice.
Caldenia picked up a napkin and delicately spat into it. “You know I live for your cooking, dear, but this wasn’t one of your better efforts.”
Orro moved. Claws fanned my face and the two plates vanished, their contents hurled into the garbage. Orro leaned against the island, his back to the countertop, his face raised to the heavens, his arms hanging limp by his sides.
“I cannot do it.”
The defeat in his voice was so absolute, I wanted to hug him.
“Of course you can’t,” Caldenia said. “You simply cannot make bad food.”
“I should be able to replicate it. It’s a simple dish. I have all the ingredients.” He sounded so hollow.
“This hamburger is not natural,” I told him. “Most dishes evolve naturally. Stews have meat and root vegetables because livestock is slaughtered in early winter and root vegetables keep well in the cellar through the cold months. Spring salad is called that because it’s made with the leafy greens and grasses available in early spring. The hamburger is an artificial construct. Cows are slaughtered in winter, tomatoes are best in late summer, lettuce is in season in spring, and that’s not counting the extra cow required to produce the milk used to make cheese for the patty and butter for the bun.”
Orro stared at me.
“It’s mass-produced, inexpensive, and meant to be quick and convenient, but still pack enough calories to be filling.” I couldn’t tell if I was making any headway. “They use a particular cut of meat for it, likely the cheapest possible, and they add things to it, which accounts for the texture and moisture of the patty. No matter what I do to ground beef, it doesn’t have that texture.”
“But you don’t have my training and experience. I have tried everything,” Orro said, his voice still flat. “I added fat, I added stock, I emulsified the meat. I have tried corn starch, oils, and spices. For the sake of this hamburger, I have committed the sin of adding MSG and silicone dioxide. It’s all for naught. I’m a failure.”
He spun around and marched out of the kitchen.
I took a deep breath and slowly blew the air out.
“We have to let him stew in his despair,” Caldenia said. “Otherwise, we may never again be served a decent meal.”
“That’s a bit harsh, your Grace.”
“Coddling never leads to improvement.”
The inn’s magic brushed against me, as if someone had tossed a rock into a placid pond and the waves from it splashed against me. Someone had crossed the inn’s boundary.
It was past nine, and Sean was still out.
I called up a screen from the northeast side of the property. Four people in dark clothes crept through the brush. They wore black balaclavas that hid their heads and faces except for a narrow strip around the eyes and carried submachine guns.
I pivoted the screen to Caldenia with a flick of my fingers. “Rudolph Peterson’s ninjas.”
Caldenia rubbed her hands together. “Would it be too presumptuous to ask for one? I’ve been eating these dreadful hamburgers.”
“You know our policy. Gertrude Hunt doesn’t serve sentient beings as food.”
Caldenia rolled her eyes.
The four “commandos” snuck through the bushes, painstakingly careful where they put their feet. The original plan was to pretend to be just a normal establishment, but guns upped the stakes.
If Sean were home, he would hunt them down, put their heads on a pike, and then present it to Peterson like a shish kebab.
I tapped my fingers on the table. The leading ninja, a man, judging by the height and the shoulders, sank into the ground up to his knees.
Everyone froze.
The intruders scanned the brush, listening for any noises. When nothing out the ordinary happened, two of them stepped closer to their leader and tried to pull him out. I let them work him free and then sank the one on the left up to his hips.
Everyone froze again.
It took them three minutes to get their friend out. They huddled up and made fancy hand gestures, some of which included forceful pointing, making fists, and drawing lines across their throats. Finally, a consensus must have been reached, because they backed up a few yards, fanned out, and started north, trying to skirt the troublesome patch of ground.
I let them take ten steps and then sank the one on the right down to their knees.
Caldenia cracked a smile.
They pulled my victim out and formed a single line, the leader taking point. He unsheathed a large knife, hacked off a sapling, and tested the ground with it. The ground held. He raised his hand and moved two fingers, motioning the team forward. They started moving again, single file, each intruder putting his feet in the steps of the one in front of them.
I let them take fifteen steps and sank the last ninja into the ground down to their waist. The masked human frantically pawed the ground, as the team kept moving.
“Help,” the ninja hissed in a female voice.
The leader whirled around. The balaclava hid his face, but his body radiated “what the fuck” with every cell of his being. The two other gate-crashers grabbed their sunken friend and tried to pull her out. I held her still.
They strained.