Page 45

Nowhere El se to Turn

“W hat do you mean he’s gone?” Helena asked as she stared down éliott, despite his being a foot taller than her. The chef’s cousin, who stood before her clearly wanting to be anywhere else in the world but exactly where he was, muttered in French a moment.

“I do not know exactly where, madame,” he said, going green around the ears as he switched back to English. “But … he left this morning.”

“When is he coming back?” Helena demanded. This can’t be happening. she thought, even though she kne w it was.

All éliott could do was shrug a shoulder.

She wanted to run her fingers through her hair in frustration, but it would have undone her French twist (ironic) and the little red crystal hairpins that held it all together.

“But I don’t understand what happened?” she insisted.

“It sometimes happens with him,” his cousin tried to explain. “Not for a long time, but he gets to the point where he can’t… he can’t take it no more and he…” He stuck a finger in his mouth and popped his cheek like a bottle cork. “And then he run away.”

Helena wanted to scream, but it would do no good. “Okay, okay, so what has been finished? Where are things right now?” She glanced at the clock. It was already three hours before appetizers were supposed to be served. They were already sunk, but she chose to not giv e up yet.

“Nothing is cooked,” éliott admitted. “The food is here but no one to pr epare it.”

“But where is hi s staff?”

“They all quit. He…” éliott struggled for a moment. “Burned their bridges.” He shrugged as he knew he wasn’t using the idiom right, but it got the id ea across.

He looked back at the small crowd of people behind him, all dressed like him with matching rose embroidered shirts and festive aprons. “The wait staff are all here,” he said, but that didn’t really help things without food for them to serve. “We have t he wine.”

That too wasn’t much help. This was a disaster.

“Okay, I just … need a minute to think,” she said. “I’ll be… Is there somewhere private I can go to mak e a call?”

éliott surged forward and went to open a nearby door for her. She nodded and went through. It was the loading dock where it connected to the kitchens. There were many twists and alcoves all over as well as cleaning staff and workers. But they only cast an incurious eye at the ballgowned woman and continued on with their own business. Desperate for somewhere to be, she plunged through the maze looking for somewhere secluded where she could make the call she needed to make.

At last she came across a room marked, “Hazard, do not enter,” with worn caution tape crisscrossing it. She almost went by it, but a familiar wrong feeling skittered across her skin when she touched the door.

“No, it can’t be,” she said softly, then tried the handle, expecting it to b e locked.

But i t wasn’t.

Slowly, she opened the door, which gave an ominous horror movie creak as it swun g inward.

“Hey, ma’am,” a voice interrupted thickly with an accent she couldn ’t place.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, jumping back to face a mustached janitorial worker in c overalls.

“You can’t go in there. It’s off limits,” he said ominously, pointing as if she hadn’t seen the caution tape. “Bad things happen in there.”

“What sort of bad things?” s he asked.

He shrugged. “Don’t know. It was a while ago. They just tell us to not go in there and leave it alone.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, holding up her cell phone clutched in her hands. “I was just looking for somewhere private to mak e a call.”

“You can’t make a call in there. You’re better off going outside.” He indicated the way she had come. “You take a left at the junction, that will take you outside,” he said.

“Oh, okay, thank you,” she said and turned to go the way he i ndicated.

Walking slowly, she could feel him watching her until she was just about to the corner where she was supposed to turn. Satisfied, the janitor went on with whatever he had been doing, assured that he had done his duty. As soon as he was gone, and she was confident no one else was around, she scurried back to the forbid den room.

She shut the heavy door behind her and was immediately plunged into absolute darkness. Wherever she was, the room was small; she could hear her own breath gasping. The wrong feeling had grown stronger.

“Okay, okay, okay,” she whispered to herself as she fumbled with her phone until she got the flashlight feature to come on.

Sure enough, she was inside a small, concrete room. There was no real sign of what it could have been used for at one time, but the gray concrete of the floor sank in the middle toward a single, dinner plate-sized drain. Beside the door was an old yellow janitorial bucket on wheels with a mop sticking out of it, along with a rusted canister with “Purifiy!” written across it and a small bag of something white spilling out. With the toe of her shoe, Helena pushed the bag up to read it.

“Sidewalk Salt?” she read. Furrowing her eyebrows, she cast the light from her phone onto the concrete floor. At first she didn’t see anything except the tiny shadows leaping up from the roughness of the surface. Then almost to the drain, she stopped and backed up. Faintly imprinted in the concrete was a small symbol. She didn’t know what it meant, but she recognized it. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she backed up and let the light shine down on the rest of t he floor.

“A summoning circle,” she breathed. While it seemed like a crazy coincidence, she imagined that yes, a place like this where a lot of high stakes events took place, she could believe someone else would also be desperate enough to summon a demon for help. “Why the door is unlocked though beats the hell out of me. That definitely doesn’t make me feel comfortable.” But she really didn’t have time to focus or debate that clear OSHA violation. It was working to her advan tage now.

She moved to the edge of the circle and sucked a breath in to hold it a moment. Am I really going to do this? she thought, doubt making her hesitate. But she didn’t have any other options, not even failure.

“Lares, I need you,” she w hispered.

Instantly, the faded summoning circle flashed to life, the lines of fire whipping over the concrete. In its center a kneeling creature with wings and horns flashed like a shadow, only to be replaced by a man in a blue chef’s shirt and black pants with a cook’s toque set on top of his head. Then the circle died, leaving the figure in the circle of her phone’s f lashlight.

Slowly, he raised his head. “What would you command, my mistress?” he asked.

She regarded her friend, her lover … her demon before her. She knew what she was going to ask, but facing him now, it was like she had never seen hi m before.

“I just want…” she started, hesitating again. “I just want to know what can I do? How do I so lve this?”

Rafferty stood up in one smooth motion, then braced his feet in a sort of parade rest, bringing his hands to clasp behind his back. “You ask me to cook for you,” he said simply, his expression detached.

She furrowed her brows, then shook her head. “No, no I can’t do that. I know that to ask for such a thing… I have an idea what it w ill cost.”

“If you thought you had another option, you wouldn’t have come to me,” he sai d coldly.

“No, I’m sorry this was a mistake,” she said, backing up to the door and turning away. What was going on? Why did she feel so unsettled facing someone she cared so much about? It had been a couple of weeks since she saw his face. She thought she should feel elated to see him again, but dread sat in her heart instead. She needed to get out of the room, where it was easier to think.

Suddenly, he was behind her, his hand pressing into the door before she could open it. The speed of the move startled her so much that she dropped her phone, plunging them back into darkness.

“Just ask me,” he whispered into her ear, making her shiver, but also frightening her at the s ame time.

“ Rafferty?”

“You didn’t ask for Rafferty. You asked for Lares. Lares is here,” he said. “And if you command it, I can cook for you.”

His fingers came around her face in the near dark to grasp her chin and turn her to face him. His starburst eyes flashed in the darkness, glowing eerily. “Just ask me,” he breathed.

This is how they do it, she thought, remembering everything he had told. They make you trust them and then when you are vulnerable and weak…

“You said you trust me,” he said, cutting off her thoughts. “Do you trust me?”

He isn’t a monster. He isn’t a demon . He’s my…

“Yes, I trust you,” she breathed, wishing she was as sure about that as the first time she had said it.

“The n ask me.”

She cupped his cheek and her demon went still, looking deep into those starburst eyes, she leaned forward. Closing her eyes, she kissed him. “Rafferty, will you help me?” s he asked.

“As you wish, my m istress.”