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“Best chocolate cake in the galaxy,” Orel slurred. “Best kept secret in the Colony, too. If everyone knew how good this was, you’d be working day and night and you still wouldn’t be able to make enough. You know what your problem is?”
Cetus dropped his fork on his plate, where it made a satisfying clatter. “I suck at running a business?”
Orel shook his head. “Marketing. You don’t do enough of it. That’s why the other place sells so much stuff, even if it’s not as good. People know about it. I think of croissants and coffee, I go there. You gotta make it so when people think of chocolate cake, they come to you.”
“No. I’m not good at selling myself. I did enough of that back on Tito, and I sucked even more then.” He thought for a moment, then added, “I even got paid more for sucking on Tito.”
Orel giggled. “Dude, I did not need to know that. I don’t want to know the going rate for a blowjob on Tito or here in the Colony. What I care about is cake. And how I can have more of it, and eat it, too.” He frowned. “So you can have more of it, and…who’s eating it again? Oh, everybody. Everybody’s got to be eating your cake. Then you’ll be the one getting blowjobs, or at least getting offered them.”
“I don’t care about blowjobs any more. I care about cake,” Cetus insisted. And rum, though there didn’t seem to be any left in any of the bottles. “Why’s the rum gone?”
“Because we drank it. Now we’re all inspired and shit, and we’re going to solve the universe’s problems. Or at least your problems, my dude.”
“The problem is that people in the Colony don’t want to buy my cakes.”
“Not true. I’d eat nothing but your cakes if I could afford to. So would everyone else. Dude, everyone wants to eat your cake, or they would if they knew how good it is. I mean, who wants fresh bread when they can have cake? I mean, bread’s as impossible to get as chocolate around here lately. But cake…dude, if people want to eat cake, you need to let them eat cake.”
Cetus just shook his head. “The last person who said that got their head chopped off. I’m sure of it.”
“Dude, you worry too much. Nobody’s going to be after your head or any other part of your anatomy when they can have chocolate cake.” Orel produced two more tiny bottles of rum that by some miracle weren’t empty. “To letting the Colony eat cake,” he said solemnly.
Chapter Three
When Cetus woke up the next morning, he swore he’d never drink rum or anything else that came from Orel’s girlfriend’s distillery ever again. He couldn’t even face the kitchen until he’d had some caffeine, and he was all out of the instant stuff that passed for coffee in the Colony.
So he dug out some sunglasses to protect him from the bright daylight outside, and headed out into the city to find a place that would make coffee.
Even with the sunglasses on, he had to squint to keep those daylight daggers from turning his splitting headache into anything worse, so he was forced to follow his nose. Luckily, as a shark shifter, he had an excellent sense of smell, both in and out of the water. And his nose was telling him that there was real coffee in the Colony, and someone in Metropolis City was brewing it.
In Cetus’s experience, fate was a dolphin: laughing, smiling and playing all day long, or at least that’s what most of the universe believed. But as a shark, he knew all about the dark side of dolphins. Dolphins travelled in pods, attacking as a pack, and the one thing they attacked most were solitary sharks. Outnumbering them, targeting all their sensitive parts, effectively kicking them while they were down until it was easier to give up than get up again.
Today, fate was an orca, Cetus decided, as his nose led him to the door of his nemesis, the Bear Claw Bakery.
He considered walking past and not going inside. But he needed coffee, and they had the real stuff. Cetus sighed. He knew when he was beaten. He might as well go in and admit defeat.
The door hissed open, greeting him with more scents than he could handle. Coffee, definitely, but now he could smell buttery croissants, the tart sweetness of strawberries, the warm embrace of apple and cinnamon and…something savoury he couldn’t quite identify.
“Good morning. How can I help you?” The girl’s beaming smile was more painful than the light outside the shop. How could anyone be that cheerful this time of the morning?
“Coffee,” he growled.
“Triple shot espresso, coming up,” she said. “Unless you want cream and sugar?”
“Cream and sugar are for cake, not coffee.”
The girl laughed. “Unless you’re making tiramisu.”
Cetus hadn’t thought of that. Probably because it had been so long since he’d made tiramisu, and now he really, really wanted it. He was fairly sure there wasn’t any proper mascarpone in the Colony, made from cream that came from a cow, but he could make a pretty passable vegan substitute with soy and coconut cream.
But only if someone ordered it. Which they never would, at this rate, because all the customers he might have had were coming here instead.
“Do you make tiramisu?” he demanded.
She tilted her head to the side, thoughtful. “I could, I suppose, if you wanted to order one. I’d probably need a week’s lead time, though, to source the ingredients and make the sponge fingers from scratch. Those things can be finicky, and I’m a little out of practice at making them. Where I used to work before, it was easier to buy them, seeing as the bought ones were as good as the ones I made.”
Cetus’s shoulders sagged. So the rumours were true. Now the Bear Claw Bakery had a proper pastrychef, his business was doomed. He may as well admit defeat like a good sport. “I’ll have a croissant, too, thanks.”
“Absolutely.” She rang up the sale and took his payment, before the door hissed open behind him.
