Salt and Silver

by Anna Katherine

  “I’ve never worked in a diner before,” said California. “You’ll have to show me.”

  “No problemo,” I told him. “You’ll love it. It will satisfy a need in you that you never knew you had.” I was only half joking.

  Now that it’s been almost a month, I call him Cal and sometimes we sing along to the same bad pop music on the radio while we clean the kitchen at night. Say what you want about Fall Out Boy and Britney Spears, but there’s no balm for the soul like a good slug of pop music.

  But Cal’s no Ryan. He doesn’t steal my soap or make bad decisions about his emotional life or get angry with me when I accidentally use my psychic Door powers to make customers buy things they don’t really want, like that skinny girl who bought the slice of key lime pie. I’m pretty sure she puked it up later, but I didn’t make her want it, I only made her want to buy it. Once she bought it, eating it was automatic.

  It’s weird, the way my powers work. I’m still learning about them. There’s no one to teach me, though, so I figure that pretty soon I am going to fuck it up beyond all repair, and I’m going to have to post a notice in The Village Voice for a psychic witch to come help me. Anyone but Narnia, that’s all I ask.

  And I’m all set to learn to live my life without Ryan. I’ve got it all planned out: I will be a badass older hunter, fighting elementals like Roxie, telling stories of my wayward youth, sung about in songs about the Hells, a legend among my generation, a myth for generations to come.

  Except then I turn around, belting out the sugary lyrics to the Hillary Duff song on the radio as I put more slices of pie in the dessert refrigerator, and there’s Narnia.

  Dammit, I said anyone but her.

  She’s wearing Anne Taylor, which I can only assume she’s doing because that’s what she considers slumming. She takes a seat in one of the window booths, facing me, and she shoves the menu aside in favor of staring at me. Her eyes are flashing again. Great.

  I pick up two slices of that key lime pie and a couple rolls of silverware and head over to her table. She makes a face when I put the dessert in front of her. I carefully do not use the Door voice to suggest that she should totally eat it, since that is probably bad etiquette with psychics.

  “Cal does a good job here,” I say, and take a bite of pie. Delicious. Notice how I am not asking about Ryan, by the way. I am many things, and I hope pathetic isn’t one of them anymore.

  “Really?” Narnia drawls. “How does he . . . compare?”

  Pathetic, no. Vengeful, yes. If I find out by the end of this conversation that Narnia has Ryan in her bedroom and has for the last month, she is going to eat an entire pie before I let her leave.

  I shrug casually. “He fights well. Nothing escapes. Then again, nothing big is really trying to get out these days.”

  She snorts. “Not surprising. I was not pleased when I realized I was going to have to write a study about you for the rec ords.”

  I blink. “Really?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up, I’m going to avoid as much actual contact with you as possible.” She shakes her head. “That’s not why I’m here, though.”

  “Oh?” I say. I am the queen of gentle inquiry. Watch me eat pie with casual aplomb.

  Narnia unrolls the silverware and pulls the fork out. She pokes at the plate. “What is this?”

  “It is key lime pie, shut up, and if you don’t tell me what is going on I am going to—”

  “Do what?” Narnia stares at me, and, rude, I can feel her in my head.

  Kick you out of my diner, bitch, I yell in her head. She flinches. I win.

  Sort of. She looks at me again, though keeps out of my head. “So you’re not going to, I don’t know, become a Door again? Try to cure poverty and world hunger and hangnails with the power of your Hell magic? Make me eat pie whether I want to or not? Thank you, I did hear that one.”

  Oh. Um. “Um,” I say. “I don’t think so.”

  She sits back, and after a moment looks around. “Not that busy for lunchtime.”

  “It’s doing better,” I say. A little bit at a time, I’m finding ways to make the diner better without a Door doing it for me. I’m letting Dawn do more of the menu writing again, for one thing, and paying for her to get cooking classes. Little things like that. It’ll work, eventually. And it’ll be real.

  Narnia abruptly nods. “Good,” she says. She sticks her fork into the pie and cuts a huge bite. Before she puts it in her mouth, she says, “I’m sure everybody will be glad to come back here.”

  Wait. What?

  She swallows and gets another bite. “Roxie’s been chomping at the bit, for one thing. I mean, I’ve had to keep you in quarantine for a month. And, of course, I was worried he was going to go rogue on me just to see you through the window.”

  Wait. What?

  “One semi-rogue and one mundane Door. No wonder you’re both trouble,” she says this time. “I should just reassign him back here and get both of you out of my hair.”

  I swallow and push my plate away. “Quarantine?”

  Narnia nods, and picks up the last bite on her plate. “All hunters out, except California—he’s going to end up being psychic, the proper way, and he’s got protections laid on him to combat any Hell magic you might’ve leveled at him. Except you haven’t. Cal’s had nothing but good to say of you, which makes me doubt his abilities, but he’s young yet.” She chews, and swallows, and picks up my plate and sets it on hers. “You were a Door, Allie,” she says as she cuts into my pie, hey, my pie. “You still are, or can be. Doors aren’t good. I needed to know how far you fell.”

  I clear my throat, and—“The Door said it gave me Ryan,” I say abruptly, and that was not planned, oh my god.

  Narnia rolls her eyes. “Doors lie, don’t you learn anything? I gave you Ryan. Idiot.”

  I’m grinning. Ear to ear. I poke Narnia’s stack of plates. “So you eat, huh?”

  “Are you kidding?” she says. “I eat like a horse. I was just staying away from your food because I’m not sure the health inspector’s ever actually been on the premises.”

  “Bitch.”

  We actually smile at one another. Go figure. She snaps her fingers, which I’m pretty sure is for dramatic effect, and the diner door slams open.

  Ryan’s standing in the doorway of the diner, Stetson in hand, half-smoked hand-rolled cigarette in the other, and he’s staring at me.

  “Holy . . .” I gasp a little. “Ryan.” I glare at Narnia. “You did not tell me he was here,” I mutter.

  She smirks, and finishes my pie.

  “Allie,” Ryan says. He drops the cigarette and hurries toward me.

  “Holy shit,” comes a voice from the back. “This is Ryan?” Cal comes through the swinging door, where he’s been washing pots. “Ryan?”

  “Who’re you?” demands Ryan, looking from Cal to me. Dawn pops out of the pass-through and is watching avidly. I think I can hear her cheering.

  “Cool it, you jerk. He’s the new hunter guarding the Door. Since my old hunter fucking disappeared!” I yell.

  “I had to go!” he yells back.

  “Oh yeah?” We sound like little kids.

  “Yeah!”

  We’re toe to toe now, and I’m not backing down. “What was so important that you left me covered in the blood of my friends?”

  “I didn’t leave. You left,” he says.

  “Well it’s not as if I went to Newark, I have been here this entire time and you knew it!”

  That sets him back. And, okay, if Narnia had some magical thing set up where he couldn’t get to me, it wasn’t really fair either. We’re both a little taken aback, and that seems to reset him to whatever he meant to say when he came into the diner.

  “Allie, you’re one of the strongest mundanes I’ve ever met,” he tries, and I stop him right there.

  “I’ve walked through Hell, I have an air elemental as my avatar, and I am a Door to Hell—”

  “I was there,” says Ryan, and he
shoves his Stetson on his head like some kind of weird battle gear.

  “Then you’d know that if there’s anything I am, it’s not mundane. Try again,” I order.

  “Allie, you’re so damn powerful, I just—”

  “Had to go hide behind your pet witch?” I hear Narnia mutter behind me, but I am beyond that. I put a hand on my hip and cock it out. That’s right, bitch, I am so happy to see you I want to die, but fuck if you’re getting off the hook.

  “I was scared!” he bellows. “Not about the Door thing, fuck the Door thing. Do you want to know what I wished, when you asked me to wish something? When you asked me if I trusted you, and I fucking do, I trust you more than I’ve trusted anyone, and—Look, every other woman—I told you this, they all died. I killed them, with the demons and the Doors and the hunting. None of them could do what you did and live. None of them—”

  “None of them were me.” I fold my arms across my chest. “And I don’t know what you wished, because no one’s been around here to tell me.”

  He backs up and leans against a booth. His lamia leather gleams in the sunlight, and his mouth looks really kissable. I wouldn’t mind kissing it, if kissing happened to be on the menu.

  “Allie, you’re the first woman I haven’t had to protect. You’re the first woman I’ve loved who’s survived what I do. You’re the first woman who could stand beside me—hell, you could take me out if you really wanted to.” His gaze is clear and direct. He’s not bullshitting. My heart is exploding.

  I skip right to the important stuff: “You love me, huh?”

  And he says it, just says it, like I haven’t been waiting for this moment for six years—almost seven, at this point. Seven years, and he just says it. “I love you, Allie.”

  I move closer to him, arms still crossed.

  “And?” I say grimly. As grimly as I can, considering I want to dance around the stupid kitchen.

  “And when you asked me to, I wished that you would kick the ass of every fucking demon in the world. I wished that you knew you could do it even without my wishing it. I wished—”

  I reach for him and he’s there, in my arms.

  “You are such a jerk,” I say into his neck. I wrap my arms around his waist; he’s lost some weight. A few meals of Sally’s Diner’s special beef stew will take care of that.

  “I’m sorry,” he mutters into my hair. “I told Narnia that if she didn’t pull you out of quarantine I was going to go open a Door and find you myself.”

  I am clearly a bad influence. “I . . .”

  He pulls back. He looks worried. “I mean, if that’s what you want. I—we—it doesn’t have to change, if—”

  Oh, so insecure. Gotta fix that. “I love you too, you know. I don’t want you to protect me, I just—I just want you to stand beside me.” It’s the right thing to say. When I tilt my head up, he looks a little relieved; I want to kiss him. But: “If I wasn’t a Door, I’d be a Fedora,” I say stupidly.

  “That’s all right; I’m a jackass either way.” His hand is in my hair, deep in it, cradling my head.

  “At least we both know our flaws.” I’m breathless, leaning into him, on my tiptoes so that our faces are even.

  “I—I—” he stutters.

  “You’d better be sorry.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’d better be so much more than sorry.”

  “I’m so much more than sorry, you don’t even know. Mostly because I’ve spent the last month thinking of all the right things to say and—” He stops and laughs, a real, genuine laugh. “I’m sorry, Allie.”

  “My name—” He shakes his head, but I put my fingers over his mouth. I’m barely speaking, my voice is just a breath, just a hint in his mind. “My name is Autumn. You can call me Allie.”

  “My name is Rian,” he says, and there’s that hint of his accent rolling through. I can’t wait to learn where it’s from, where he’s from, what he’s all about. I can’t wait for all the fights we’re going to have; I can’t wait for the future. “You can call me Ryan.”

  And then our mouths are touching. Our mouths are finally touching, and he’s finally back, and everything in the universe feels like it’s slotting into place. I have my diner back, I have my Door with its disgusting demons that need to be killed, and I have Ryan.

  I pull back just enough to say: “Don’t tell Narnia, but I still have the purple tentacle monster. I got it a really big dog bed.”

  His arms come around me and hold me tightly to him. He laughs, and I can’t resist: I knock the Stetson off his head, and it falls to the floor while we just kiss and kiss and kiss.