Page 17

Bless-ed Fr ench Toast

“I ’m so glad you came,” Cindy’s mother, Ms. Hawthorn, said as she led them up the stairs of her house. It was a nice place. Had the touches of money to it without being ostentatious. Rafferty had cooked in several places such as this, all for various reasons, very few of them good. But Cindy’s mother didn’t seem like a woman who would summon a demon for any reason, even as she unknowingly welcomed a form er one in.

“Thank you for picking us up at the station,” Helena said, pitching her voice low to match the tenor of Ms. Hawthorn’s s oft words.

The matriarch waved it off. “She’s been in bed for ages. At first, we just let her rest, you know, after everything. Recover. But then she stopped getting up at all. She’s barely eating unless I sit there and make her. I’ve never known her to be like this. She’s always been such a go-getter. So driven. I am starting to get concerned.” And that was evident from the fretting she did with her hands. Rafferty was pretty sure she hadn’t drawn breath since they crossed the threshold.

“It’s okay, Ms. Hawthorn. I know some tricks to get her going again,” Helena said self-assuredly. Anyone else may have looked down their noses at such a bold statement, but Ms. Hawthorn seemed to take comfor t from it.

They reached a landing, treading softly over beige carpet, wearing only socks. It struck Rafferty as odd to be required to remove shoes at the door, especially since they hadn’t walked through mud or anything. Yet, he didn’t question it; he only followed Helena’s lead. She didn’t seem to thi nk it odd.

Past a banister that lined the hall, there were several doors, all closed. He guessed they were most likely the bedrooms of the family. Cindy’s mother stopped at the one at the end, knocking twice before cracking the door open.

“Cindy, honey. You have visitors,” she said with a soft, sw eet voice.

She opened the door wider, and Helena moved past. Rafferty only followed when Ms. Hawthorn looked at him with expectation in her eyes. All of this felt awkward. He hated it. He didn’t know Cindy. She wasn’t h is friend.

The inside of Cindy’s room was dark and sleepy. He could make out a bed against the farthest wall and some other furniture only by the light coming from the open door, or rather coming from the slit since Cindy’s mother shut it most of the way and retreated, giving them som e privacy.

Helena didn’t seem to have any trouble with the dimness, though it bothered him that his eyes weren’t adjusting as fast as they used to. She went straight to Cindy’s bed and sat down on the edge of it next to the l ying form.

“Hey,” she said with kindly warmth, and brushed at Cin dy’s hair.

“What are you doing here?” Cindy asked, her voice coming out small and heavy w ith sleep.

“We came to see you.”

“My mom called you, didn’t she?” she said bitterly.

“No, I came myself. I was always going to come see you,” Helena said, continuing to brush Cindy’s hair. It was how she would brush his own hair. He found watching her do that to someone else, even her longtime friend, maddening.

“What about your Winter Rose Ball event?” The other woman lifted her head a bit. “Has it already happened?”

“Yeah, it went well,” Helena lied, or semi-lied, neatly stepping around the things that had not gone well immediately after the things that had. “I’m sorry I couldn’t com e sooner.”

“What were you going to do, watch me wallow?” Cindy grumbled, laying her head back down. “I’ve fucked everything up. My career, my life. Did it all t o myself.”

Helena glanced up at Rafferty. The eerie feeling of her aura strengthened, and he shivered with it.He knew what she was tempted to do. He shook his he ad at her.

“Hey, Cin, would you like to get up? You hungry?” Helena asked, her aura pulling back. “We just had dessert on the train, but it’s almost time for a la te lunch.”

“We?”Cindylifted herheadand looked straight at Rafferty. “Oh. I reme mber you.”

He nodded his head to her in acknowledgment, only to realize she might not be able to see it in thedimness . “Hello.”

“What are you hungry for?”Hel ena asked.

The form on the bed shrugged.

Rafferty felt something shift in the atmosphere in the room, as Helena kept stroking Cindy’s hair. “How about Bless-ed French Toast in a cup?” she said, emphasizing the ed of the word. “All you have to do is say yes and it ’s yours.”

She lay there, considering it a moment. “K,” she finally said, her voice becoming stronger, livelier. “But I should probably get dressed or s omething.”

“That’s fine, we can go down and get started, and you can join us when you’re ready,” Helena said, getting up. “Besides, I got a world-class chef here. Maybe we can find a way to take it all up a notch.”

Cindy looked to Rafferty, and he gave a s mall wave.

The former doctor finally sat up and grasped at her bed-mussed hair, running her fingers through it in a vain attempt to look presentable. “God, you should have said. I’m sorry you have to see me in suc h a mess.”

“ My apologies,” Rafferty insisted as he backed out to the hall. Honestly, this sense of embarrassment was ne w for him.

Helena said something, but he didn’t quite hear it before Cindy added, “Breakfast for lunch,” with a chuckle.

“Meal of champions,” Helena agreed, just as she appeared to fill the crack in the door.

“Thank you for coming,” Ci ndy added.

Helena turned around and gave her friend a gentle smile, her fingers resting on the doorknob. “It’s going to be okay, Cin. I promise. I’m here to fix ev erything.”

“Hel,” Cindy grumbled. “You can’t just fix this. No one can just fix this.”

Standing there, Helena clearly didn’t know what to say to that, so Rafferty interceded, speaking over her shoulder so as not to invade the woman’s privacy again. “We’ll see you do wnstairs.”

“Thank you,” Cin dy called.

Rafferty could see that it was hard for Helena to leave her friend, even for that short amount of time. With a small bit of encouragement from him, they shut the door firmly behind them and retreated down the hall to the stairs. They didn’t say much as they went down to the kitchen, Rafferty again following Helena because she seemed to know her way around t his place.

Cindy’s mother greeted them in the kitchen, where she was nursing a cup of coffee and staring off before they walked in.

“She’s going to come down, and we’re going to make French Toast if that’s alright,” He lena said.

The woman popped up from the stool that was pulled up to the kitchen island. “Oh, yes of course. Let me pull the griddle out for you.”

“Oh no, that won’t be necessary,” Helena said, extending her hand to stop Ms. Hawthorn. “We’re actually going to do it in cof fee mugs.”

“Coffee mugs?” Cindy’s mother repeated, blinking at the s uggestion.

“Yeah, it was our favorite dorm meal,” Helena explained as she knelt in front of her bag, unzipping it. “I thought something like that would help ground her, you know, r econnect?”

“Oh, that’s really clever,” Ms. Hawthorne said, pressing her fingers to cheek as she shook her head at herself. “I forgot you two met in college. It seems like you’ve been friends forever.”

“Cindy was my roommate all four years of undergrad, not after,” Helena said, directing the explanation to Rafferty.

He knew the words, but felt like he was missing the context, or rather the modern context , of them.

Ms. Hawthorn nodded, “I know that’s right, but it doesn’t make sense to me. How can I be a mother of a grown woman.” She chuckled and redirected to pull down a set of over large mugs. “Would th ese work?”

“Oh wow, yes!” Helena said, surprised at the size of the mugs, which to Rafferty seemed like they were more akin to s oup bowls.

“Do you need anything else?” the anxious mother asked. “We have bread and cinnamon. Syrup is in the fridge, and eggs. If you need anything I can run to t he store.”

“No, no, all that’s great, it’s all we need. We’ll take care of the rest,” Helena said, then she set a hand on the poor woman’s shoulder. “Is there anything you want to go do? We’ll take car e of her.”

There it was again. The eeri e feeling.

Only this time Rafferty knew what it was. Her demonic aura was bleeding through her human disguise, but Helena didn’t seem to be aware of it. She was instinctively trying to influence the human before her. The little flashes of hungry gold popped in her blue eyes.

Cindy’s mother creased her eyebrows. Clearly, it was affecting her too, or maybe she had seen Helena’s eyes flashing.

Ms. Hawthorn backed away to press her fingers against the spot on her forehead some humans would call her third eye. To Rafferty, it was a sure sign she thought something else was affecting her sight. “I do need a break,” the older woman conceded. Her faux cheerful worry she had been using to mask her weariness dro pped away.

“Yes, go ahead and take one. Everything is going to be better after this,” Helena pressed, a little too hard.

A shiver ran through Ms. Hawthorn; she flinched and backed away a few unsure steps. Her desire to escape the uncanny feeling warred with her understanding that this was her daughter’s friend, a person who should be safe. Someone she had known for years. She had no obvious, sensible reason to be unsettled by her or to mis trust her.

Helena’s eyebrows pinched a little at the mother’s odd shift. Still intent on her mission, Helena smiled encouragingly. “Go ahead and run some errands or whatever you need. We’ll take care of C indy now.”

“No. No, that’s alright. I’m just going to finish my coffee,” Ms. Hawthorn said, reassuming her seat, before clearing her throat and dragging her eyes from Helena to the open paper on the counter b efore her.

It was Helena’s turn to shift uncomfortably, glancing at Rafferty, but not knowing what else to say or do. He thought about leaning in and telling her to pull back on her aura, that it was causing the strange behavior in their hostess, but it lessened on its own anyway. With Ms. Hawthorn doing such a poor job pretending not to watch them, he thought it best not to draw more attention or act any more sus piciously.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked.

“Um, can you… get out some bread?” Helena asked, her worried gaze stuck on the brewing problem at the end of th e counter.

He turned to what looked like, and turned out to in fact be, a bread box. Pulling out the plastic-wrapped loaf inside, he brought it to the island where Helena met him with a cutting board and a serrated br ead knife.

“Um.” Helena shook her head, refocusing. “Chop up some of those slices into cubes and fill each of these cups.” She turned and went to the refrigerator. With a bit of clatter, she gathered up the aforementioned eggs, butter, and a small jug of milk from the door. “Okay, put like a tablespoon of butter at the bottom of the cup then put the bread cubes in.”

Rafferty paused mid-slice, having filled the first two cups with the bread cube s already.

“Shoot, sorry,” Helena said, realizing. “I should have told you that part first. That’s on me.” She shot a nervous glance toward Ms. Hawthorn, who still hadn’t moved or even turned the page of her newspaper. Every muscle in the woman’s body exuded tension an d anxiety.

“It’s not a problem,” Rafferty replied with the same detached voice he would use working under any chef, the kind that said everything was fine and under control. He simply pulled down a sheet of paper towel from a standing roll nearby and dumped the bread cubes onto it. He then eyeballed the butter to cut a tablespoon off, only to realize that on the paper, the producers of this butter had already measured out and marked how much was a tablespoon along the whole length of the paper. If that had been there before, he hadn’t noticed it. The tiny innovation made him smirk.

“Okay, then when you got that, here’s another bowl,” Helena continued, setting a small mixing bowl next to him. “Mix together the eggs, milk, and cinnamon, then pour over the cubed bread, I mean once you put them back in the cups. Pop each cup into the microwave at a time and cook it for about two to three minutes each. Maybe three since they’re bigger, and then we got it. Yo u got it?”

“How many eggs to milk?” Rafferty asked as he replaced the bread into the now butt ered cups.

“Oh! Uh,” Helena paused as she was pulling a book out of her backpack. “One egg per cup, three tablespoons of milk per egg. Cinnamon to taste. Then we add syrup to it after or more butter if you’re Cindy. I did whipped cream once, but, I mean, we had so much sugar on the train, I’m good.”

She set the book down on the counter and let it fall open. Only then did Rafferty recognize it. It explained the same rambling nervousness Helena seemed to be displaying. She was going to mix up one of her grandmother’s hedgewitch potions, written in th e margins.

Ms. Hawthorn’s eyes locked onto it with round alarm. “What is that?”

“Oh.” Helena put her hand over the pages protectively. “Just my grandmother’s old church cookbook.” Belatedly, she lifted up the opened book in both hands to show the printed cover with its pencil drawing of a church and the year below it behind roughed-up, once-clear-now-yellowish plastic sheets. The title Trinity Church graced the very top.

Ms. Hawthorn’s eyes narrowed as she studied the worn page, but there simply wasn’t anything obviously wrong with it. Still, Rafferty waited, poised to step between the two women if one decided to irrationally attack the other.

To his relief, Ms. Hawthorn sat back down. She rubbed a hand to her temples. “I apologize,” she said, closing her eyes. “I haven’t been getting very good sleep lately. Every time I lay down, I keep thinking about what she al most did.”

Dammit, Rafferty thought. He recognized what was happening here. Another effect of the demonic aura. The longer someone was exposed to it, and the weaker willed they were, the more they spilled their secrets. Whether the demon wanted to know th em or not.

Ms. Hawthorn was no exception. “I blame myself. I wanted her to succeed so much. She had such a bright future ahead of her, and now it’s all just… gone!” She threw her hands into the air as if it were Cindy’s career turning to confetti.

“Don’t worry,” Helena assured her, setting the book down to leaf through. “She’ll bounce back, and everything will be fine. I promise.”

Ms. Hawthorn’s lips tightened. “Don’t do that. Don’t make promises we both know are impossible to keep without some sort of miracle.”

Helena’s aura strengthened again, invisible but stronger. “Well, I intend to do everything I can.” She found whatever she was looking for in the book. Then she went back to her backpack, which put her just out of Ms. Hawthor n’s sight.

“What are you doing with that?” he whispered quietly as she sank next to him to reach it.

She looked up, a little guilty. “What?” she mouthed. Then her lip pouted a little as she drew her mouth in tight.

“Helena—” he tried to warn, only to be cut off as he violently shivered. His mouth tasted of pennies and irrational rage flooded through him. Her aura grew even stronger, enhancing his fears. The urge to fight flooded his mind with visions of grabbing the knife and stabbing flesh over and over. Gripping the edge of the counter, his eyes widened as Helena removed three metal canisters from her pack that he knew for a fact had not existed momen ts before.

Helena remained oblivious to everything as she popped one open with a satis fied grin.

“What the hell are you doing!?” Cindy’s mother screeched at the top of her lungs, startling Helena. Bits of dried leaves leapt out of the canister at her flinch. She also dropped the third canister, which rolled across the floor toward the door.

With fierce enraged eyes, Ms. Hawthorn stood at the end of the counter, her hands gripping it with white-knuckle intensity like he was. If it hadn’t been made of granite, Rafferty could imagine her cracking it with that amount of force. She was also wobbling forward and back on her feet, wrestling between her fight and flight responses.

“It’s tea!” Helena said, truly confused, holding out the open end of the canister to show. “It’s just tea. I… I got the mix from my grandmother’s recipe book, to help with Cindy’s depression. It’s just tea, I swear!”

“It’s just tea,” Rafferty repeated, his voice steady and strong with reasonable assuredness that he had often used on his summoners who went into an utter panic at his presence. While he did not have the same demonic juice in it to influence his mark, it steadied Ms. Hawthorn all the same. Maybe it was because he understood what was happening that allowed him to maintai n control.

“It’s just tea?” she also repeated, clearly not believing it, looking to Rafferty, the only other human in the room, even if she didn’t realize it, for con firmation.

He nodded, his centuries of practice in the art of lying helping him not to ov ersell it.

“Is the Bless-ed French Toast ready?” Cindy called from the hall just as she entered the kitchen, actually dressed, tying her unwashed hair up into a ponytail. She stopped and picked up the canister that rolled away. Then she looked up at the scene in the kitchen. “What the heck is going on?”