“Where the heck are they?” Nikki asks no one, everyone, but mostly herself.
Rollo only shrugs. He and the rest of the kitchen line are milling about behind their rented moving truck.
Nikki tries her iPhone again, and again has no signal.
“Darren, is your phone working?” she asks, receiving no answer. “Darren?”
She looks past the small assemblage and spots Darren cloaked in shadow on the other side of the truck.
“Darren!”
“I have no reception, Nikki,” James offers, helpfully, but he frowns back at the darkened spot where Darren is continuing to ignore the rest of them.
Nikki angrily stuffs her phone back inside her smock. “Well, this is awesome.”
They’re somewhere just across the Virginia border, lost in the still-lush forests that exist in such places. The Sceadu have gone all out for the inauguration of their first human president (who is actually an incubus, but apparently politicians in the supernatural world are no more honest than their human counterparts). There’s a fifty-by-fifty platform of solid black onyx hovering twenty feet above the surface of a small lake. They can all see the robed, hooded figures stationed at regular intervals around the lakeshore. If you walk between them, you can actually feel the power radiating there, the magic they’re using to maintain the platform’s constant hovering.
Smaller slabs hover at an incline to form broad steps leading over the water from dry land. Atop the onyx surface, velvet tents of crimson and midnight blue have been erected around the perimeter. It barely needs to be lit by the ornate torches holding perfectly spherical fireballs; the onyx traps the silver rays of the moon and casts them brightly all about. In the center of the platform, a smaller dais has been raised, a stone rune serving as a podium.
Attendants are scuttling all around, servicing last-minute details before the throngs begin to arrive. Nikki and the severed half of the Sin du Jour kitchen crew watch them helplessly, at a complete loss.
“I’ve never known this staff to dawdle.”
It’s Allensworth, observing them behind his usual beatific smile. He’s wearing a nondescript black tuxedo, with the exception of bloodred lapels and a matching rose pinned to the breast. His Rottweiler, Bruno, is attending Allensworth’s side. The large canine rests obediently on his haunches, a red bow tie strapped around his neck in place of a collar.
“Chef Luck isn’t here with our other truck, Mr. Allensworth,” Nikki informs him, and immediately feels stupid for treating him like he doesn’t already know everything all the time.
“Byron and the others were unexpectedly delayed on the road. They’ll be along any time now. In the interim, we have a schedule to keep. I’m sure you can manage on your own to start.”
“We’re down half our staff and half our food!” Nikki protests.
“Miss Glowin,” Allensworth begins, unruffled, “you do, as a professional catering company, put redundancy measures into place to prepare for unforeseen circumstances, do you not?”
Nikki sighs. “Yeah. Yes. We have extra food. We can . . . I guess we can probably manage for a couple of hours as long as there isn’t a rush.”
Allensworth’s smile never falters. “Then please set up to begin service.”
“Why can’t I call anyone?” Nikki asks, holding up her phone.
“Powerful magic dampen such worldly signals,” Allensworth explains, effortlessly. “And we are, as you can see, surrounded by all manner of very powerful magic.”
Silently, he beckons Bruno and the two of them retreat before Nikki can question him further.
She’s left cursing inside her head. Rollo, Chevet, Tenryu, and James all gather around her. Darren continues to lurk somewhere in the background.
“All right,” she says resolutely a moment later. “All right. We don’t have servers, so some of you are going to have to carry hors d’oeuvres.”
Rollo snorts. “Why you get to tell us what to do? If Dorsky is not here, I am in charge of line.”
Nikki digs her fists into her hips and her eyes become Old West gunfighter slits. “Rollo, laughing at all of Dorsky’s stupid fucking jokes doesn’t make you his understudy. I’m the only one with any kind of title here, and I’m the only one Chef Luck would want running things and you damn well know it. Now, does anybody else have a problem with that?”
Rollo looks around for the support of his comrades and instead finds a bunch of strangers in white smocks staring at the grass.
“Cowards,” he mutters.
Nikki nods once, grunting. “Okay, then. Start setting up and then we’ll get prep done.”
They all disperse, even Rollo. Nikki is quick to take James by the arm, pulling him aside.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asks, nodding toward Darren, still slumped in the shadow of the truck near the tree line.
“I do not know,” James quietly answers. “He will not talk to me. Since he finally began talking to me, I could not make him stop, but now . . . nothing.”
“Can he work?”
James nods. “But it is like he’s not even knowing he’s doing it. The rest of him is . . . far away.”
“Well, that’ll have to do for right now. I’m sorry, James. I’ll get Lena to talk to him when they finally show up.”
James nods, trying to put on an optimistic expression because that’s who he is.
Nikki forces herself to smile back at him, kindly, because that’s who she is.