The Agency, Volume II

by Sylvan, Dianne

  "You're not going to leave that in the sink, are you?"

  The old Sage, the baker Sage, would snap something sarcastic and banish him from her kitchen, but this is not her kitchen anymore. She is here by the grace of the Agent, and he and everyone else involved with the ceremony is in Rowan's apartment going over the final details. She's alone here with this asshole, and at this rate, the cake is going to be a disaster.

  She ignores him at first, not wanting to give him any excuse to get meaner. She can't take comments about what happened last time she baked, and she's already perilously close to tears from the stress.

  Finally, she says, "Please, Mark…if you'd like to help you're welcome to, but I do have a lot of work to do tonight. If you have a problem with my being here you really should talk to SA-7."

  Mark sneers. She's not sure if he hates the Agent because he's a vampire, because he's gay, or because he's just him, but it's obvious how he feels. "I'm just making sure you don't try anything funny," he says. "Chef Didier trusts you, but he's a foolish old man."

  "He's a foolish old man who can cook circles around you," Sage snaps. She's always been fond of Didier, a classically trained French chef who went out of his way to learn new ways of cooking to accommodate his diverse charges. He's had forty years' experience in the kitchen, and his wizened hands can still make a perfect hollandaise without so much as a tremor. He's also one of the few kitchen staff who still talks to Sage, and checks up on her regularly.

  Mark starts to say something snide, and she's almost frightened by the cruelty in his face, but a voice cuts in like the blade of a sword through water.

  "Do you need help, Sage?"

  Sage looks up gratefully to see SA-7 standing casually in the kitchen doorway, somehow more intimidating in faded jeans, leather jacket, and t-shirt than any human could be in full body armor. His words are without inflection, but the look he levels on Mark makes the baker go pale and back up a step, letting Sage breathe a little easier.

  Mark attempts to recover, saying, "Do you have clearance for this area?" as if he has no idea who he's talking to.

  SA-7's expression could be called a smile, but it's so predatory that it makes her heartbeat double in speed, and she's sure the same thing is happening to Mark, who swallows hard. The Agent reaches into his pocket and pulls out what looks like a wallet; he flips it open and flashes his badge at Mark.

  "Shadow Agent 7, Jason Adams, security authorization 47075-9. I have clearance for anywhere I goddamned well please. Now get your skinny ass out of here and let my baker work, or we'll be serving weasel-faced white boy Danish with breakfast tomorrow."

  Mark freezes, starting to stutter out some sort of reply, but SA-7 barks, "Go!" and he does, practically scampering, edging past the vampire with as much distance between them as possible.

  Sage nearly weeps with relief, and the energy in the kitchen changes instantly. She sags against the counter. "Thank you," she says, but she's shaky, and after a moment she adds, "I think this may have been a mistake."

  He comes forward and holds up something she didn't notice he was holding: a bottle of Shiraz. "Time for a break, I think."

  "Aren't you supposed to be planning your handfasting?"

  He pulls up a stool and plucks two glasses—well, glass measuring cups at any rate—from a shelf, pouring them each exactly six ounces of wine. He slides one to her. "The planning's been done for a week. Mostly the Elves wanted a chance to…well, be Elf-y together. Sara stayed because she's performing the ceremony, but all the Pagan talk was making me twitch a little."

  She sips her wine. "Are you a Christian?"

  "I'm not anything. I haven't been since I was human. Once you've been condemned by the Church and lost loved ones because of whom you sleep with, you tend to question your faith. I never found any answers." He turns his measuring cup around so his fingers fit into the handle. "I envy them. Believers."

  "Yeah." Sage hasn't exactly been among the faithful these past six months either—not so much because of a lack of belief as because of a lack of anything at all.

  He looks over at the designs for the cake, pulling the drawings toward him with interest. She had gotten Rowan's approval but it hadn't really crossed her mind to do the same with someone who wasn't going to partake of her work. She probably should have, now that she thinks about it, since he's the one paying her.

  "It's perfect," he says. "Are you covering the outside with rolled fondant?"

  She shakes her head. "Buttercream. I haven't been satisfied with my attempts to create fondant without gelatin, but the soy margarine works as well as the dairy butter. Frosting tastes better than fondant anyway."

  "I'm guessing there's coffee flavor in here somewhere."

  "Rowan requested it specially. I'm doing dark chocolate espresso filling on the top tier and raspberry on the lower."

  His smile is so affectionate that she finds herself melting. "That's him, all right," he says. "Is the filling going to be a frosting or a ganache?"

  She blinks. "Okay, how the hell does a vampire know about fondant and ganache?"

  He blinks back. "Alton Brown."

  Sage can't help it; she laughs. The last of her anxiety dissolves. "I should get back to work."

  SA-7 nods, slides off his stool, and takes off his jacket, draping it around the upright of one of the steel shelving units.

  "What are you doing?" she asks.

  "Helping you. What do you need done?"

  Sage's mouth is open, but she can't get any words to come out for several seconds. "Agent…"

  His eyebrow arches. "Let's drop the titles, shall we? Now give me a job—I can't help much with the tasting, but I'm damn good at pretty much everything else I do."

  "Um…okay…well, how about you start with the cake batter, and I'll get to work on the ganache since it has to chill?"

  For someone so used to being in command, Jason makes an excellent assistant; he knows enough about baking that she doesn't have to explain all the vocabulary words, and takes direction without complaint or contradiction. He's perfectly precise with measurements—he even levels off the cup of flour with the back of a butter knife without having to be told—and doesn't force her into conversation, but allows her to keep things at her own comfort level.

  The only thing that disrupts her state of mind is the fact that having him in such close proximity, she can smell whatever that cologne is he wears, and somehow it blends with the scent of baking cake and makes her pathetically horny.

  Once, their hands accidentally brush, and she jumps. He looks at her curiously. "Are you all right?"

  Sage starts to dissemble, but something of her old self has come back to her in the course of the evening with chocolate under her nails and flour in her hair, and she finds herself coming clean before she can censor herself. "You don't show up in mirrors, but I bet you still know how hot you are, right? Well, I haven't had sex in a year and it's starting to get on my nerves, and you're just really, really lucky you don't like girls."

  He stares at her a second, then laughs—a real, honest laugh, without any sarcasm in it, and it's actually a very nice laugh that she can't help echoing. He's neither put out nor discomfited by her words, but says, "That's more like it," and goes back to chopping a large block of chocolate into meltable bits, still smiling.

  "Seriously, though, can I ask you a question?"

  She's sure that his usual knife skills involve more stabbing and less dicing, but he works the blade like a professional chef, and doesn't even look at his fingers when he replies, "Go ahead."

  "How do you shave?"

  A chuckle. "By feel. It gets to be second nature after a few decades."

  "Have you ever left the house with, like, shaving cream on your nose, or your hair all in an uproar because you couldn't see it?"

  "Not that I remember. That's part of why I keep it cut so short. I have no idea how my sister manages to put on makeup and dye her own hair. Women have many arcane abilities."

&nbs
p; "This is true."

  By the time the tiers are baked, cooled, assembled, and given the first coat of buttercream that will keep crumbs from getting into the outside layer, Sage is enjoying herself. It takes hardly any effort at all, now that she's back in her natural element, to slip back into her old role, and to think of what she's doing as something more than simply making a pretty cake. It feels right, and something inside her that's been twisted around itself relaxes. It's nearly dawn by then, but she still has a lot of work ahead of her, work she'll do in the afternoon after she's had a few hours' sleep.

  Jason grabs his jacket to go after helping her straighten up the kitchen. The morning staff will be in to start breakfast soon; the cake is stowed safely in the walk-in fridge along with containers of frosting and decorative elements. She'll do the final assembly in the meeting hall.

  "There's supposed to be something on top," she says. "Rowan said his friend…what was his name, Arden?...is making something to go there. I hope it's ready. I left a space that's going to look kind of stupid without it."

  Jason nods. "It's ready. Rowan has it. I have no idea what it is, but if Ardeth made it, it's probably silver. He's a metalsmith."

  Sage unties her apron; she's wearing an old set of chef's whites, or at least, pieces of a set. She never did like the hat. "Well, I'm sure it'll be beautiful."

  "You are coming to the party, aren't you?"

  She starts to say she wasn't invited, but he gives her a look, and she smiles. "Yeah. I'll be there."

  "Good. Get some rest, Sage. I know you have the rest of the week off after this, but still, no sense in wearing yourself out."

  "I will. I am. I'm going now."

  He starts to leave, and she calls after him, "Thank you."

  Jason pauses and looks at her. "You're welcome."

  "I mean, for the help, yes, but also…thank you for asking me to do this. I feel…I feel a lot better now."

  He flashes her that disarming, dazzling grin. "Why do you think I asked?"

  *****

  Sage hangs back from the crowd, uncomfortable in her one decent dress and only pair of heels, drinking a glass of champagne and watching people eat.

  If anyone has qualms about the cake, they don't show it. In fact the faces around her reflect absolute bliss when they bite into the layers. She's spent most of her life watching those faces, reading the reaction to flavor and texture. As far as she can tell this is an unqualified success.

  It's fun as receptions go—music, dancing, food, laughter. Everything is elegant and understated, no doves, no bouquet throwing, thank god, The anomalies are the sort of thing one finds at the Agency. Elves, including a little girl who carries around a stuffed elephant. A Naiad. Vampires: one running the sound, the other with his arm around Rowan, both their wrists now bearing matching silver bracelets.

  She wonders what goes on in an Elven handfasting. There is energy, something weird she can't name, surrounding them both, settling slowly into them cell by cell. It's a binding of some sort, but so subtle they might not even be aware of it themselves.

  All the big-name Agency people are here, even the Director herself, looking as scary as always in her suit but softened just a little by a corsage of wildflowers pinned to her lapel.

  Sage catches a glimpse of the Elven smith, Ardeth, who went out of his way to come over and compliment her on the cake. His topper piece, an Elvish symbol of some kind surrounded by vines fashioned of solid silver, apparently has something to do with the blending of two souls, but Sage admits that she was concentrating more on his mouth than on the words coming out. That accent is just too much.

  She drifts around the room, removed from the activity but not feeling especially lonely. She could go talk to Sara, but the trainee's popularity has made her harder to pin down these days, and she's gained a lot of confidence since she started. She seems to know everyone, and everyone seems to like her. Sage envies her.

  "Would you care to dance?"

  Sage starts, but it only takes a second to realize why she didn't hear anyone approaching.

  Jason is in impeccably dressed in his usual black, and though the strange energy signature is still all over him, he is obviously happy, his typical neutral expression bordering on a constant smile.

  "I guess I have to say yes to the groom," she says, setting down her glass on an empty table and taking his arm. "And I'd hate to have dug out these shoes without giving them some kind of workout."

  She's not much of a dancer, but fortunately he doesn't demand any acrobatics, leading her into a standard slow dance with his hand a comfortable weight on her waist. They move around the floor, and perhaps it's the aura he's giving off, but something else unclenches in her, and she finds herself grinning like a fool.

  "You did beautiful work," he says to her as they rotate around the axis that is, as it turns out, him, the center of the universe, facing briefly the table where what's left of the cake looks like it's been fallen upon by demon hordes. It was beautiful, she decides; a white base with vines and leaves that had turned out both realistic and tasty, if she does say so herself. She'd even made little marzipan acorns. "Worth every penny and more."

  "About that…" She glances over and sees Rowan dancing with Sara. "I've decided you should keep the money. Consider the cake a handfasting gift."

  "Too late," he replies. "I already had it transferred into your account. But, if you insist, we can work something else out."

  "Like what?"

  "I'd like to keep you on retainer. I don't really expect you to want to go back to the kitchen full time, and to tell you the truth I would hate to lose you as an Ear. But my Elf has been craving pie lately, and I hear you do something obscene with cherries."

  "Well…yeah, I do."

  "So, you stay an Ear, and once a week deliver something baked to our quarters."

  She tilts back her head to look him in the eye. "On one condition."

  To his lifted eyebrow, she explains, "Mark has to go."

  She recognizes the look on his face—amused, and just a touch wicked. She used to want to slap it off him, but now she wonders why; it's the same sort of look she used to wear a lot. "He was escorted off the premises as soon as he left the kitchen last night. He displayed threatening behavior toward a fellow employee, and he was absolute shit as a baker. They're sending a replacement Monday who will be under strict orders to stay out of your way."

  The song ends, and he indulges himself a little, giving her a twirl; she surprises herself by not falling over, and lands almost gracefully in a chair at a nearby table. Sage, laughing, offers her hand to shake. "Deal," she says.

  "Very good. Pie, next week." He looks past her shoulder and she realizes she's sat down at an occupied table. "Oh, and Sage—this is Frog. Frog, Sage."

  He walks away, and Sage, after a quick visual inspection of his ass, turns to her new companion. "Hi."

  The young man sitting there by himself blinks in surprise, as if he'd been completely lost in thought, and sure enough there are ink scribbles on the napkin in front of him, next to his empty cake plate, that look like equations. He's a bit geeky in his glasses, but cute, she decides, with long-lashed hazel eyes and dark brown hair that sticks out a bit haphazardly. Thin, but not skinny—she can see the edges of his biceps under his dress shirt. She knows exactly who he is, and wonders if he works out for his own health or because of the exalted company he often finds himself in.

  "So you're the famous Frog," she says. "Sara's told me a lot about you. You helped break Pentecost, right?"

  He still looks shocked, and it takes her a second to figure out why, but then she realizes that her dress has a low neckline, her hair is a bit wild from her spin off the dance floor, and she just twirled into his life, a breathless bright-eyed redhead out of nowhere.

  "That's me," he says. "And you're the famous Sage. You made the cake?"

  Here it comes. "That's me."

  He smiles. It makes his nose crinkle. "Then I'm going to have to marry yo
u."

  She laughs, and the sound of it amazes her—she hasn't laughed so easily in a long, long time. "Why don't we start with a dance?"

  Frog rises, and he's blushing. Actually blushing. But he comes around and pulls back her chair, and takes her hand almost gallantly. "Yes ma'am."

  She realizes she's blushing, too, as she stands up and takes his hand.

  The Lost

  Part One

  There is a cemetery tucked away in the middle of Austin, extending all the way from Shoal Creek Boulevard to Loop 1. The highway is visible from the newest sections, but the older areas are shaded by live oaks and watched over by a sovereign red-tailed hawk, and on most days the traffic noise sounds almost like the ocean. A whole section of the cemetery is devoted to Chinese graves, decorated with red paper and burnt-out incense sticks. Another holds the remains of children.