by Matt Wallace
The insult rolls right off him, barely noticed. If anyone else said such a thing to him it would probably wreck Darren for a week, but he knows Lena’s judgment never equals rejection, at least where he’s concerned.
“An angel,” Darren says, still mystified. “A real angel.”
“Yeah.”
Another memory hits him, and his eyes go wide.
“And the dog!” he practically yells. “That dog, he was actually G—”
“I don’t want to talk about what the fucking dog was or wasn’t!” Lena snaps at him. “And keep your voice down!”
Darren deflates.
Lena pours another egg mixture into her pan and tips it, forming a second omelet for herself.
“It happened,” she states with finality as she dresses the egg dish. “It happened, it was real. We were there. Just accept it and move on.”
Darren sulks in silence, picking at his omelet without taking a bite.
“Eat that shit or you’re going to wear it,” Lena warns him as she drops her own plate on the counter and begins devouring it in military fashion.
Darren takes a bite.
“This is good.”
“I know.”
Darren wolfs the rest of the omelet down.
“So,” he says, cautiously, after he’s finished. “Are we going back?”
Lena very nearly chokes on a cherry from her orange juice glass. She stares angrily at him over the rim, swallowing it down almost whole before she replaces the glass on the counter.
She stares at Darren as if they’ve only just met. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“What?”
There’s a knock at their door.
Lena looks over at it, then picks up her phone and taps the big button, reading the current time.
She looks back at Darren. “You gave the old bitch our rent check, right?”
He nods.
Lena exits the barely-a-kitchenette and walks to the front door. She has to squint to identify anyone through the jungle of scratches over its exterior peephole.
At first she doesn’t recognize the nondescript man in the black-and-white Adidas running suit, wondering if he’s a jogger who has lost his cell phone or something.
Then a name leaps at her from the shadows of her own mind like a tiger, and Lena almost recoils in the same way.
Allensworth.
His name is Allensworth.
He’s the man who delivered Ramiel, the captured angel, to Sin du Jour.
He’s the man who expected them to serve every part of it at a banquet for demons.
He’s the man who explained that expectation as if he were asking for a cup of sugar from a neighbor.
Lena turns away from the door.
“Oh, shit.”
“What?” Darren asks from his barstool.
“It’s the guy.”
“What guy?”
“I don’t know! He works for the government or the Devil or who the fuck knows? The guy, Darren!”
“Oh,” Darren says before it actually hits him. “Oh! Oh, no!”
Lena hasn’t felt this frantic or out of control since the first time her base camp came under fire from their unseen enemies in the desert.
“Miss Tarr,” Allensworth calls to her from the other side of the door, his voice not at all elevated and entirely audible, “a less forthright individual would probably forgo revealing to you that your voices carry quite clearly into this hallway. I can’t in good conscience stand mute, however.”
Lena shuts her eyes tightly.
Her lips silently form a stream of the worst curses she can call to mind.
Darren opens his mouth to say something then snaps it shut and just shakes his head.
Lena turns around and opens the door.
As she does, it dawns on Darren how clothed he’s not and he dashes from the barstool and down their apartment hallway.
Allensworth stands there, smiling cordially. He’s holding the end of a fine leather leash in one hand. The other end of the leash is connected to the collar of an adult Rottweiler, which sits obediently on the floor of the hallway, tongue hanging down from its mouth.
“What’s that?” Lena asks suspiciously.
“That’s Bruno. My dog. I was taking him for a walk. I actually don’t live very far from here.”
“Is he . . . is it . . . ?”
Allensworth tilts his head, brow furrowing with detached confusion.
“Never mind,” Lena says quickly, shaking her head. “What do you want?”
Allensworth smiles, reaching up with his free hand and unzipping the jacket of his running suit.
He reaches inside its folds.
Lena’s grip on the door tenses as she prepares to slam it in his face, her mind already listing and mapping the location of every nearby object that can be utilized in combat.
Instead she relaxes as he removes a thin sheaf of official-looking documents from inside his jacket and extends them toward her.
Lena looks down at the first page without taking it.
“What’s this?” she asks, dubious.
“Your employment contracts.”
At that moment Darren emerges from the back of their apartment, still fitting a North Harrison High School Lacrosse jersey down around his waist.
“Employment contracts?”
“Good morning, Mister Vargas,” Allensworth greets him.
“We didn’t ask for these,” Lena says quickly. “We didn’t agree to—”
“Miss Tarr, I’m simply a messenger this morning. I am not . . . or will not be . . . your employer. Your employer, prospective or otherwise, is Sin du Jour. Your boss would or will be Byron Luck. You’ll have to take the matter up with him in either case.”
Allensworth gently tugs at Bruno’s leash.
The Rottweiler stands at attention by his side, immediately.
“I will say,” the strangely polite man adds, “we were all very impressed with how you . . . the both of you . . . comported yourselves on what must’ve been a very trying first day.”
He leaves the doorway then, tugging Bruno along behind him and the dog trotting obediently.
It’s a few seconds before it occurs to Lena to shut the door.
FINAL INTERVIEW
Bronko is approving purchase orders and debating what type of sandwich to make in the kitchen for his lunch when Lena storms his office without knocking.
Later he’ll decide on heirloom tomato and pancetta on garlic toast.
She strides and stomps across the room and slaps the employment contracts down in the middle of his desk.
“What the hell is this supposed to be?”
“Did you sign and initial them all?” Bronko asks, unperturbed.
Lena isn’t prepared for that. She’s mustered all of herself to so starkly confront a chef of his position and caliber. She expected hell in return.
“What? I . . . what? No! Why would you think we’d sign these?”
Bronko thumbs through the unsigned sheaf of papers and leans back.
“I thought I’d hired you and Vargas. Maybe I’m gettin’ old.”
Lena is deflated, or at least the mad-on she’d worked up so dutifully is.
“Chef,” she says, much quieter, almost pleading, “I can’t—”
“Are you speaking for yourself, or are you speaking for you and Vargas?”
Lena opens her mouth to answer, but before she can speak Bronko peers around her at his empty doorway and shouts, “Vargas! Are you out there?”
There’s no reply at first.
Then, meekly, Darren’s head appears around the side of the doorjamb like some absurd vaudeville skit.
“Yeah, Chef?”
“Get in here, for chrissakes, will you? Don’t let people do your talkin’ for you unless they’re your agent. Is Tarr copping ten percent of your checks?”
“No, Chef.”
“Well, then?”
Darren tentatively enters the room.
> Bronko regards them both, silently.
Lena isn’t sure what to say next.
“All right,” he pronounces heavily, dropping both thick hands atop his desk, “here’s the deal. You both did good, stepping up when I needed you to. It was only supposed to be a temporary gig. If you want, that’s how it’ll stay.”
Bronko opens his top desk drawer and removes a narrow manila envelope, the center of which is bulging.
He plops it down beside the contracts.
It makes enough of a thud to get their attention.
“This is your payout for the days you worked here, plus event pay, plus hazard pay, plus a bonus for you, Tarr, because you helped Nikki and me tweak what needed tweaking with the menu for the banquet.”
Lena’s lips tighten, as does something in her gut. Somehow, Bronko not saying she helped them come up with how to fake dishes that were supposed to contain parts of an angel to be served to demons is even worse than him saying it outright.
“You can have it now and walk,” Bronko continues. “In cash. Off the books. Or you sign these contracts for one year with a three-month probationary period for the amount outlined. Did you happen to look at what your salary will be?”
Lena folds her arms across her chest. “No.”
“She totally did,” Darren says without hesitation. “We both did. A lot.”
Lena turns on him. “Goddammit, Darren.”
“Principles or no principles,” Darren insists, trying to sound hard and failing, “we’re broke, El, and Chef knows it.”
“I looked,” Lena admits through clenched teeth. “It’s a lot. Especially for us at the moment.”
“It’s three times what you’ll make at any restaurant in Manhattan,” Bronko assures them as Lena’s eyes fall on the figure. “And that’s as sous-chefs, let alone working the line.”
It’s enough to give even Lena pause, but the skeptical bent to her features doesn’t relent.
“I’m not going to pitch you,” Bronko says. “For one I’m no damn good at it, and for another neither of you has earned the right to be courted. You’re good enough for the line. That’s all. And that means a little something extra at Sin du Jour. And the truth is . . . we need you right now. We’re prepping for a big event that’s going to require extra hands on deck.”
“What is it?” Darren asks.
“A wedding.”
Lena’s eyes narrow. “What kind of . . . wedding?”
“Goblins,” Bronko answers simply.
Darren actually lights up. “Goblins like Lord of the Rings? Those kinds of goblins?”
“No.”
“But it’s a goblin wedding?”
“It’s the goblin wedding,” Bronko corrects him.
Lena lowers the contract in her hands.
She looks at Darren, whose expression is that of a child silently beseeching a parent to stop the car as they pass a toy store.
Lena looks back across the desk at Bronko.
“Okay. If they aren’t Lord of the Rings goblins,” she begins carefully, “just what exactly are they?”
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF GOD’S CREATURES
Lena realizes Boosha’s workroom is less apothecary and more an arcane test kitchen—one that would’ve existed long before the concept of a “test kitchen” itself. It is a room from a time when cooks were also healers, scientists, alchemists, barbers, and who-the-fuck-knows what else.
Not to mention the fact that Boosha herself is not entirely human.
Lena and Darren watch as the ancient woman rummages through piles of books that look as though they might’ve been bought in bulk to decorate the set of a Universal monster movie from the 1930s.
“Goblins are most beautiful of God’s creatures by far,” she explains. “I have a little goblin in me myself.”
“Ma’am?” Darren asks.
Boosha turns and smiles a grandmotherly smile on him.
“I, uh, I’ve played a lot of D&D in my time—” he begins, nervously.
“He has,” Lena confirms. “A pathetic amount.”
“Goblins are monsters,” Darren finishes sharply, eyeing her.
“Hm. What is ‘monster’?”
“Uh, well, ‘monster’ is a word that means—”
“I know what word means,” Boosha snaps. “I ask you what you think makes something monster.”
“I . . . well, something big and ugly that probably eats babies? I don’t know.”
Boosha clicks her tongue, pulling out one of the dusty old volumes and slamming it against her carved wooden pedestal.
“Image of goblins you have comes from angry, jealous lies. Lies made by men and women. Jealous they were of goblin beauty, goblin spirit, goblin perfection. They wanted their sons and daughters to stop running off with goblins. So they spread lies, painted pictures. They made monsters of goblins.”
“But if they weren’t monsters why would people believe any of that?” Lena asks.
Boosha turns the brittle pages of the tome rapidly. “People were even more stupid back then. Ah, here we are.”
She steps aside and motions for them both to examine the pages of the book.
The illustrations are old, faded, and crude. One page depicts children in their teens crawling, almost supplicating toward a lithe, luminous figure awaiting them with open arms.
The opposing page depicts the same young people in the same setting, only now they’re being torn apart by a monstrous fanged creature where the luminous figure stands in the first illustration.
“But they don’t turn into monsters?” Darren asks.
Boosha shakes her head.
“No. Mostly they are just very, very pretty. Their looks cast spell on most. Snare them. This is how they make their way in world. By their looks.”
“How’s that?”
“In past they were showpeople or thieves. Today they are in movies, mostly. All the very pretty people in movies are mostly goblin.”
Darren’s eyes are wide. “What, like George Clooney?”
Boosha shrugs.
“So what do they eat?” Lena asks impatiently. “These ‘goblins’ of yours.”
Boosha makes a “cluck” sound with her tongue, but she lets Lena’s tone slide.
“Gold is goblin delicacy.”
“Gold what?”
“Gold,” Boosha reiterates sharply.
“You mean like . . .”
Boosha reaches out and pinches the gold chain around Darren’s neck between the tip of her thumb and forefinger.
She rattles the chain while enunciating slowly.
“Gooooollllld-da.”
“Fine. They eat gold. I get it.”
“How do you cook gold?” Darren asks.
“Carefully,” is Boosha’s only answer.
“So aside from being . . . whatever . . . goblins . . . what’s so important about this wedding?”
Boosha stares at Lena as if she were the most ignorant of children in a classroom.
“Is royal wedding, dear,” she explains patiently. “Goblin prince is to marry his princess. Goblin king will be here for tasting this very afternoon.”
“Goblin king?” Darren marvels.
“Royal wedding,” Lena says to herself more than Darren or the old woman.
Darren can’t contain himself any longer.
“Who’s the goblin king?” he practically explodes. “Who is it?”
A HINT OF STARDUST
“He looks like—”
“I know.”
“But he looks exactly like—”
“Yeah. I know.”
“But he can’t be—”
“Sure he can.”
“You don’t mean—”
“Yes, I do mean.”
“No fucking way.”
“It’s actually him?”
“It’s him.”
“But he . . . he played the Goblin King in that movie.”
“Why do you think he took the part, kid?”
The ch
efs of Sin du Jour line the wall of the reception room like servants in the home of imperial Roman aristocracy. Each one dons their freshest whites emblazoned with the company logo, the walking, talking cartoon chocolate cake slice known among them as “Mr. Frosting Face.”
Darren is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Tag Dorsky, Sin du Jour’s sous-chef. Lena is trying to fade into the wall on Darren’s opposite side. They’re both wearing whites that look a size too big on their equally slight frames.
Dorsky is being surprisingly amiable with them both, considering it wasn’t a week ago Lena slashed him open in two places with a paring knife during a duel out in the courtyard.
Maybe he’s gotten over it.
Maybe he just wants to forget it.
More than likely he just wants to forget it.
The goblin king’s immaculate, slightly lupine features are kind, but reserved. A designer with an eighteen-syllable name undoubtedly made his suit, and it hangs stunningly on his slender frame. His hair, which has gone through so many famous and kaleidoscopic changes on decades of album covers, is now a simple, chemically flawless blond that falls loosely just past his ears.
He’s a beautiful man, even for someone who is supposed to be almost seventy in human years and who is god-only-knows how old in goblin years.
The queen is several inches taller than him, skin perfectly bronzed, perfectly smooth, and just generally perfect. She looks even more ageless than he does.
She’s also one of the most famous supermodels in history.
Lena can scarcely process what’s happening. It would be enough to find herself in the same room with these people when she thought they were simply celebrities and entertainment-industry royalty. Now she knows they’re not human. They’re goblins. More than that, they are the rulers of some invisible goblin kingdom that has infiltrated and conquered the highest levels of all popular media.
It’s a little much for a girl on a Monday morning.
Lena can see Darren has chosen to ignore the more fantastical aspects of the moment. He’s simply in awe of a legendary singer and a legendary model.
She decides he has the right idea. In fact, faced with too much to process, Lena simply shuts her brain down altogether.
Besides, there’s food.
