The air was now thick with the smell of spiced apple and the warm buttery aroma of homemade caramel. Her father’s recipe.54 She’d paper-clipped an old picture of him to the page in her book. He was in his early to mid-twenties, probably still in medical school, standing in a kitchen even smaller than her own. He was dressed casually, a well-loved Isengard55 T-shirt further obscured by patches of flour and faded jeans. His hair was curlier than Saga’s—forming large loose ringlets that flopped over his ears in a manner that many spent fortunes trying to re-create. His skin was atouch darker than hers, and she thought his eyes were always brighter. She had his lips though, full and smiling. He was brandishing a whisk in one hand and balancing a mixing bowl against him with the other. She liked to think he was making the batter of the very recipe she had pinned him to.
Too sweet for breakfast, her mother would have scolded, but it didn’t matter.
There was healing in apples—wisdom too. While she did not expect to stop missing Saoirse, perhaps she could at least find more clarity on the matter.
Saga took a few pinches of ground cinnamon and nutmeg and sprinkled them over the apples softly sizzling among the butter in the sauté pan. Nutmeg for divination and cinnamon to speed the spell as well as grant personal strength.
Then a knock at the door.
Saga checked the clock above the stove and frowned. She took the caramel sauce off the burner and turned the heat for the sauté pan to a low simmer before padding across the room to the door.
Avery leaned against the doorframe, her eyes alight. She was disheveled, wearing the clothes she’d been in the day prior. Impossibly, with her hair mussed and shirt undone, she was somehow even more devastatingly handsome. “I’ve had a breakthrough,” she announced, her voice hushed and husky.
Saga cleared her throat. “Have you slept?”
“I passed out in one of Hygge’s armchairs for about an hour,” Avery dismissed. “The point is, I believe I know our killer’s true motive.”
“How did you come to that?”
“Eira Goff’s body ismissing!” She sounded gleeful.
Saga blinked as a million questions began to fill up her head. Instead of asking any of them, however, she politely offered, “Em… Do you want to come in?” She stepped aside invitingly.
“Yes. Well, no…” Avery eyed Saga, glancing toward the stairs, trying to decide something. “All of my files are upstairs, so I would have to bringthem down—wouldyou…” She trailed off and lifted her head so that she could lean just a little over Saga’s shoulder, sniffing the air delicately. “Whatis that smell?”
“A German baked pancake?”
Avery ran her tongue along her lower lip, and her body slackened against the doorframe as if the mere mention of the dish had caused her to swoon. “Oh?”
“With chopped apples sautéed in a cinnamon nutmeg butter sauce and homemade caramel.” Saga could swear she heard the half-fey faintly whimper like a puppy. “Would you like to join me for breakfast, Avery?”
The effort Avery took not to jump at the offer was comical. “Oh… No, I couldn’t intrude.” She could. She wanted to. She wanted to so badly, Saga thought the other woman might be salivating.
Saga practiced her own restraint in biting back a laugh to a simple small smile. “It’s far too large for me to eat by myself. Please. Stay for breakfast. We’ll go over the case.”
“I’ll go get the files.”
***
Ten minutes later, Avery was sitting on the faux fur rug in Saga’s living room, her back against one of the chairs and two cardboard boxes on either side of her. As Saga had finished cooking, Avery had caught her up on her findings and what she and Esteri had figured out.
Saga emerged from the kitchen, two plates in hand, offering one to Avery. “So, when you say ‘bring her back,’ are we talking aboutnecromancy?”
Avery carefully moved aside the mug of tea she’d been given shortly after settling in so that Saga would not have to maneuver around it to sit. “Resurrection, specifically.” The German pancake was steaming, golden, and perfect, topped with sautéed apples and drizzled delicately with caramel. “This is a masterpiece.”
“Thank you.” Saga took a bite of her breakfast before taking a seat on the floor opposite her companion. “Can they do that?” She asked betweenbites. “Resurrect her, I mean? I mean, if that was possible, I figure everyone would be doing it, right?”
Avery answered with a content sigh as she took her first bite. Her lips smiled around the fork and her eyes closed. Her head leaned back against the chair and for a moment, Saga wondered if she’d passed out.
“Avery?”
A deep inhale at last and she was alive again, gathering up another bite. “This is divine. What did you call it?”
“Baked German pancake, I guess? It’s sort of a family twist on apfelpfannkuchen.”56
“Gesundheit,” Avery deadpanned before returning to the matter she deemed far more urgent. “Does Hudson’s serve this?”
Saga shook her head. “It’s my dad’s recipe from when I was a kid. Besides, they take nearly an hour to make, and once they go cold they aren’t really worth eating. I think it’s the amount of egg in it.”
