Page 20

Battle Commenced

“H ow are you doing?” Helena asked, thirty minutes later. Her presence wasn’t forbidden by the officials apparently, but Rafferty wished she would go sit down and let him co ncentrate.

“Fine,” he answered.

“So it’s a pot pie?” she asked, not getting any of the hints, leaning on the other side of the table and watching as he laid the crust he had made over the top of one of the provided ramekins. It was large enough to make one serving p er person.

“It was something I could make with the time available and the ingredients that remained.” He glanced back at the ingredients table at the far end. “There is even more of a strategy to this thing. You have to make food out of what is provided, and while they have provided quite a lot, there is still something you are going to want that isn’t here. It forces you to think.”

Helena noted what he referred to. “Why didn’t you use the pre-made crusts? I see someone else doing that,” she asked.

“Pre-made… crust?” he asked, his lip curling in contempt at the concept. “How… how is it pre -made?”

Helena laughed merrily. “I know you’ve been to hell and back, but you have been cooking up here over the last few decades right?” She then boldly leaned over to the other competitor next to them, laying a hand on a thin, red, opened box. “Are you done with this? Can I borrow it?” she asked.

“Uh, sure,” she said, then went back to working on her own creation.

Leaning back, Helena held out the box to him as he set the last cutout of a leaf in dough on his decorated savory pie and wiped his hands before taking it.

What little surface of the box there was showed an image of a pie and declared exactly what she said, two pre-made pie doughs. “Huh” was all he could say to it.

“You’ve seriously never used anything pre-made? It’s always been from scratch?” she asked, and again, he struggled to understand the question.

“Everything I’ve ever made has been with my own two hands,” he said, turning the box over.

“And a little personal magic?” Helena quipped, giving him a cheeky wink when he looked at her , alarmed.

“Very little,” he said dryly. “Only what I absolutely needed. Or what m y master—”

“Client,” she corrected.

He blinked, realizing her word coding was safer in this time period. “Client required.” He regarded the red box again, before dropping it into the shared trash bin between him and the table behind him. “While I can recognize the convenience of such… pre-made fare, I don’t see how one could use something like this and not be considered cheating? It is the work of someone else, not th emselves?”

“Time constraints,” Eleanor said, coming up beside him, wiping her hands on a towel. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not disagreeing with you, but this challenge is using toaster ovens and so many people have done really clever things with pre-made stuff that it was decided not to handi cap them.”

“I could see how this would have a public appeal, too, showing that good food can be made out of anything,” Hel ena added.

Eleanor nodded at her, then nodded at Rafferty’s potpie. “You better get that in, you only got thirty minutes left. That’s cutting it really close, don’t y ou think?”

Rafferty slid in his own pie into the heated oven and shut the door firmly. “I didn’t realize that I could have used pre-made, ” he said.

“Don’t worry. Yours will still taste better,” Helena assured him, giving him an encourag ing smile.

“Rafferty Lares, you are going on to the next round,” one of the officials stated, matter-of-factly. The cook he had been competing with swiped the beanie off her head with a curse. She spun once in a circle, then thrust her hand out to him to shake. It was clearly a formality. He could tell her anger was directed at herself, not him. There was a time he had done that dance himself. As soon as they performed the two-second ritual, she was al ready off.

“You have fifteen minutes to go to the bathroom and prepare anything you need to for the final challenge. I would go claim your table, too, and let the official know so they don’t break it down on you,” the official advised, and Rafferty took it to heart.

More than half the room was already in a state of “breakdown” as they kept calling it. Much of the audience had left, too, as their favored participant failed to advance, leaving half the bleachers empty. He moved back to reclaim his station, only to stop in his tracks as he spied a familiar pair of humans talking to an official near the end of the bleachers.

“Agents Sophia and Archon are here,” Helena said softly, coming up beside him with worry painting her face.

“Yeah,” he acknowledged as he kept his gaz e on them.

“Who?” Cindy asked, joining them, following his dire cted gaze.

“The agents there,” Helena answered. “They are looking for the demon that… a te Yosef.”

Cindy mouthed the word “oh,” apparently already knowing most of that story, then followed their gaze. “Does that mean… i t ’s here?”

“Not necessarily,” Rafferty said. “They could be keeping an eye on…”

More people walked by so Helena slid her hand down from Cindy’s shoulder to take her friend’s hand. “I’ll tell you later. Just trust me. We’re safe. From it at least.”

To Rafferty’s surprise, Cindy accepted that with a curt nod.

It was only then that he realized his delay had allowed the officials to start breaking down his chose n station.

“Wait, wait. I’m still working here,” he said, bursting his way past the two women to slap his hand on the table. It didn’t stop the official who had already disconnected the toaster oven and coiled the cord beside it, fastening a twisty tie to keep it together.

“Go claim one of the other tables, I’m not setting this back up,” he growled, and continued with his breakdown.

Rafferty thought about fighting it, but the ire wafting off this official held his tongue. He was right, there were other stations that no one had touched yet and what difference did it really make? With the agents here, the last thing he wanted was to cause a commotion and attract attention.

“What happened?” Helena asked as he shifted to his new table.

“They broke down my setup already,” he explained, wiping his hands down his slightly floured apron to disperse his own i rritation.

Helena’s eyebrows shot up. “What? That’s bullshit. What kind of way is that to run an event like this? I mean, this whole thing i s a mess.”

“It’s fine. They are all supposed to be the same. I need to decide what to do next and not worry about it,” he said, fixing his sleeve, which had unrolled itself, while letting his gaze wash over the ingredients table. An itch at the corner of his eye made him look toward Helena, who was smirki ng at him.

“What?” he asked.

“You look so damn sexy right now, you know that?” she said, her smirk evolving into a grin. She brushed a bit at his upper lip, removing some of the flour that had gotten stuck to his bristles. He was actually growing facial hair. “I’m going to need to show you how to shave.”

“You don’t know how to shave? How old are you?” Cindy asked, while he brushed his own face, realizing she was right, he was growin g a beard.

“I know how to shave,” he countered, getting annoyed. This was a distraction, and he needed to focus.

“Cake,” he said, confidently. “There isn’t really much left that can be made with the remaining ingredients.” Only to stop as he saw the other contestant who wasn’t Eleanor claim the last six eggs from the tray.

“Oh, come on,” Helena said, catching it at the same time he did. “That’s har dly fair!”

“It’s a competition,” Cindy argued. “It’s part of the c hallenge.”

“Thank you, little Ms. Devil’s Advocate,” his girlfriend and defende r groused.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I can make it without eggs.” And went over to claim his other in gredients.

He wasn’t surprised that when he returned, he found Agent Archon and Agent Sophia waiting for him at his table.

“Mr. Lares,” Agent Archon said, her eyebrows conveying a healthy amount of suspicion. “Imagine meeting you here.”

“Hi, Mr. Lares,” Agent Sophia said with that gently sympathetic smile. “Are you doing an y better?”

“Uh, yes, madame,” he said without thinking, then realized what he had said, then wondered if it would make him more suspicious or less. He had never called someone madame… at least not in this century. Or on this continent.

Agent Archon’s eyes narrowed at him, but he held his nerve, and his chin steady, his eyes looking at her without actually meeting her gaze. “Do you still believe you’re a demon?” she asked.

Now he couldn’t help but meet that pier cing gaze.

It seemed to be enough of an answe r for her.

“Do you mind if I ask what you are doing here instead of staying in the hotel where we told you to stay?” Agent Archon a sked next.

“Competing in a cooking contest,” he answered. It was the truth after all.

“Have you seen the demon Vassago around here?” Agent Sophia asked softly, taking a small step forward even though there was no one around near enough to overhear. “Has he been stalking you or haunting you or anything?”

“He’s not a ghost, for Heaven’s sake,” Agent Archon muttered at her partner, before turning back to him, bracing her fist on his table. “I hope you haven’t done something unadvisable, like make a deal with Vassago or something? This is a strange way to get started in the culinary industry. A cooking com petition.”

“Looks fun though,” Agent Sophia piped in, grinning at the board. “I love cooking shows. I would watch the heck out of something l ike this.”

“Vassago has nothing to do with me being here,” Rafferty said, meeting Agent Archon’s eye. “If anyone does, it’s Helena, my girlfriend.” He nodded over at where she sat with Cindy, looking worried as they watched him talk to t he agents.

Agent Archon narrowed her eyes a little more, studying for cracks in his st eely mask.

Then she straightened. “We’ll leave you to your business, Mr. Lares,” she said, stabbing her hands into the pockets of her coat as she nudged Agent Sophia in the shoulder to head toward the doors.

Agent Sophia gave an apologetic smile and nod as she followed. “Good luck with the fin al round.”

He warily watched them go. “If they would just kill me, this would all be so much easier,” he muttered.

“Forty-five minutes left in the round,” the official declared over the speaker, and Rafferty focused on his work.

His hands flew as he opened the condensed milk and measured out what he needed, adding it to his dry ingredients, chasing it with his wets, including adding the apple cider vinegar at the end. Mixing it well, he felt confident in his creation, eyeing the available fruits to garnish with, or maybe even turn int o a glaze.

And then he opened his toa ster oven.

Cold.

“Crap,” he muttered, and dropped to his knees to check that the cord was plugged in. It was and when he quickly traced his fingers over the power strip they were all plugged into, he confirmed the strip was on and the other cooks all had power. “This would never happen w ith fire.”

He unplugged, gathering the cord up with the broken machine and spun to one of the tables that were still waiting to be br oken down.

“What do you think you’re doing?” a gruff, familiar voice intoned over his shoulder as he went to grab the hopefully workin g machine.

Rafferty nearly jumped out of his skin as he turned to meet the swirling whirlpool of black ink eyes of Vassago. The demon in human form grinned wide, his teeth looking normal at first glance, but too sharp the longer you looked. He also was wearing one of those green shirts the other officials wer e wearing.

“My toaster oven is broken,” Rafferty stated, the words falling out of him in a small voice, like a boy knowing he’d been caught and was in trouble, not because he had done something wrong, but because the bully had caught him. He could feel Vassago’s aura washing over him, emphasizing the fear and self-doubt that always lived in the background. When he had been a demon, he learned how to fight back against it, but he had never felt more fragile or mortal than he did at th at moment.

“No,” Vassago said, seizing the machine from his hands. “No substitutions. You have to use what you have.”

“It’s broken,” Rafferty repeated, knowing it would do li ttle good.

“What’s going on?” Helena demanded, suddenly appearing at his side, her fists planted on her hips, ready for a fight. The feeling abated some. Was Vassago using his aura to influence him? That wasn’t quite a violation of their agreement. A negative aura spread out from the one producing it, and the longer a demon was in creation the harder it was to suppress.

Realizing that, Rafferty steeled himself against it. “My toaster oven is broken. I’m trying to swap it out,” Rafferty said to Helena, willing her to be careful. Oldest trick in the book, get the target to fear that the demon had violated the agreement, so they violated it t hemselves.

Helena flinched as the demon’s aura washed over her, but she furrowed her eyebrows and wrinkled her nose. “Are you one of th e judges?”

She didn’t seem to recognize Vassago, but he was unsettling her. The pinch in her brow conveyed that she didn’t know why. Since she had only met the demon a couple of brief times and under a great deal of duress, Rafferty didn’t blame her.

Vassago gave Helena a small leer as he said, “The rules state that he has to use the equipment he was assigned when he starts the round. Switching out equipment in the middle is an automatic disqualification. It’s in the official rules. I didn’t wr ite them.”

“That isn’t fair!” Helena argued, now crossing her arms.

“No, it isn’t fair,” Eleanor agreed, stepping up to the other side of Rafferty, crossing her own arms. “His equipment isn’t working.”

Vassago narrowed his own eyes at Eleanor, which made his leer seem hungrier. Rafferty’s heartbeat sped up. His deal didn’t extend protection to her, he hadn’t known her until a couple of days ago, and Eleanor would clearly be the perfect target for a demon lik e Vassago.

“You’re not allowed to mess with me,” Rafferty said, his ears ringing in his panic. Why were the y ringing?

“I didn’t,” Vassago said. “It’s not my fault either if the equipment gets broken. I didn’t do it, nor did I make the rules. Like I said, I’m just enforcing them. The rules are the rules. Finish your dish or be disqualified.” It was clear that he was mocking him, but mocking wasn’t a violation of t heir deal.

With that, the demon turned on his heels and walked back to the official’s table, having done whatever he needed to at the crucial moment he needed to do it. He may not have broken the toaster oven, since he couldn’t have even made sure that Rafferty ended up with it. That would have been a violation, but enforcing existing rules made by others at the exact moment it hurt Rafferty insulated the demon from the “spirit” of the agreement.

It was ve ry clever.

And the only reason the demon would do that was because… “He’s made a deal with someone,” Rafferty said softly, putting it together out loud.

Helena looked confused by what he said, but Eleanor spat on the scuffed gym floor with contempt. “Yeah, but good luck doing anything about it. Even if you could prove he took a bribe, in the grand scheme of things, these stakes are way too small to get anyone to make a di fference.”

She stared down Vassago, but the demon-in-human-clothing noticed her and simply shrugged as if to say, “Not up to me. Take it up with a higher authority. Oh, wait, there i sn’t one.”

Eleanor sneered after him, then she looked at Rafferty with regret. “I’m sorry I can’t do anything to help you. I’d let you use my oven, but there won’t be time to finish up my dish and get yours in. I’m using up every bit of space in there.”

Rafferty looked to the ingredients table and the refrigerators beyond, his ears still ringing. What was he go ing to do?

“Rafferty, I could…” Helena was saying, but he didn’t register it. What he did feel was her hand touching his arm, her skin pressing his, her strength flooding into him. It was like golden light turned into a warm liquid, and he felt the freezing in his muscles let go. His mind cleared of Vassago’s fog, and he could th ink again.

“I can fix it,” he said, as his eyes zeroed in on the one thing that no one had touched. The ice cr eam maker.

As if he had been brought back to life from stone, he quickly snatched Helena’s hand, kissing the back of her knuckles as his eyes locked with hers. He could see she didn’t realize what she had done, but he could explain it, and chide her for it, later. For now, he just needed her to know how gratef ul he was.

Then he was off, his long legs eating up the meters between him and the ice cream machine. Grabbing up a half-pint-sized measuring cup, he slid it under the spout to test. To his surprise, the machine was already preloaded with ice cream base, so all he needed to do was dispense it. Filing that under how-is-that-not-cheating, he accepted it as his advantage and left the ice cream unpulled to return to his station. Snapping out the industrial cooking sheet that came with it, he grabbed his batter and proceeded to dump the whole thing onto the sheet, spreading it out with a spatula.

He glanced up at Helena, who had returned to her seat next to Cindy. Their mouths were moving, clearly talking, but he couldn’t hear it. Her worried eyes met his, but he smiled back with a wink. This was when he thrived the most, when things had gone terribly wrong in the kitchen, but he knew he could fix it. And make it better than it had be en before.

Having prepared his batter into the thinnest layer possible, he charged again, this time toward the refrigerators. Opening the frozen compartment, he had no compunction against throwing out whatever was in his way inside onto the ingredient table next to him and shoving his cooking sheet inside. The two officials who were supposed to be assisting with the ingredients just stood there flabbergasted at his boldness as he charged past them to the ice crea m machine.

Leaving nothing to chance, he test-pulled the machine again and a smooth, cold swirl of ice cream emerged. This time he tasted it. It was vanilla . Perfect.

But it would take at least ten minutes, fifteen would be better, to chill his dough in th e freezer.

Vassago could do a whole lot in that time.

Despite the agreement, he was leaving nothing to chance.

So, Rafferty needed to make it expensiv e for him.

“Helena,” Rafferty said, not raising his voice very much, but knowing she could hear him all the same. “I need y our help.”

Sure enough, across the space, his beloved perked up, her eyes fluttering in surprise. She said something to Cindy and then got up and came directly ov er to him.

“What do you need?” she said, her fingers rubbing together.

He grabbed her shoulders and planted a quick kiss on her forehead. “Just stand here and don’t let anyone near the machine,” he said. “You can’t help me, I’ll be disqualified, but you are allowed to watch. Watch the machine.”

He could tell she wanted to do more, but she only nodded. “Yo u got it.”

Leaving the only person in the world he could trust to stand guard, Rafferty went back to the ingredients table and grabbed up more sugar, butter, cream, and salt. This was going to take all his remaining time, but he knew he could do it. Everything in his world zeroed in on the caramel sauce as he set the sugar to melt in a pan on the hot pad provided. That was working at least.

As soon as his caramel was ready, he poured it into a bowl to cool, and he rushed back to the freezer. Pulling out his cake batter, a finger test told him it was firm, but not frozen. Which was fine, he could work with that. Returning to his table he glanced at the clock.

Seve n minutes.

He didn’t even have time to curse as he laid his sheet down to carve up the batter. Then he went back to the ice cream machine. Helena’s influence worked, as it served up four dishes of ice cream in short order. Using his longer fingers, he gathered the glass dishes by their short stems and returned to his prep area. Rolling up the cake dough into spirals, he stabbed them into the piled ice cream, then reached for his caramel. It flowed from the end of the spoon over the creations.

“Five…” Vassago called over the speaker, “four… three… two… one! Utens ils down!”

Rafferty slammed down his spoon onto his table with a might y clatter.

All four dishes were ready t o present.

He was out of breath as he took up another tray and set the dishes on it to take up to the judging table. Glancing again at Helena, she was jumping up and down and cheering with Cindy. Only then did he hear the roar of applause from the gym all around them. Apparently, they hadn’t been the only ones invested in hi s success.

But as he approached the judging table, he saw Vassago whispering something in the ear of the judging official. He retreated as soon as he reached her, offering his tray.

“I’m sorry, sir, but apparently you’ve been disqualified,” she said, only to shrink back as the room erupted into screams and boos. “The challenge in the event was to use… was to use a toaster oven and this dish…” she tried to explain, but the room wouldn’ t let her.

“His toaster oven was broken!” Eleanor shouted, coming up beside him, again to his defense. “What the fuck was he suppos ed to do?”

“But the rules state…” the judge said, clearly unprepared for this level of pushback.

“What’s the point of the rules if they aren’t fair!” someone els e shouted.

“This i s rigged!”

“What was the whole point…!”

And more shouts echoed in the gym’s space, drowning out any individ ual words.

At last, the judge took Rafferty’s tray in shaking hands, cowering from him as if he had been the one who had been shouting. “Look, we’ll take it, but we’re going to have to discuss this…” And then she retreated away after setting down the tray with the rest of the entries, to the huddling group of green shir ts nearby.

With nothing else to do, Rafferty turned to Eleanor. “Thank you, but you didn’t have to d efend me.”

She huffed as she recrossed her arms. “I want to win, but not like this,” she scowled. “And besides, I’m the one that encouraged you to participate, and then they go pull this shit? What the ever -loving…”

“Are you alright?” Helena asked, cutting off Eleanor’s color t o hug him.

“Yes, I’m alright.”

“What is going on?” Cindy asked, joining the m as well.

“They are deciding my fate,” he said, and somehow, he didn’t feel sour about it. Instead, he wrapped his arms around Helena’s waist and squeezed. “Thank you. For being her e for me.”