None of them explain why the bakery feels brighter after he leaves.
CHAPTER 6
KAUSS
Ireturn to Sweet Tooth Bakery the next day because I am a fool.
The morning rain has washed most of the blood from the alley behind the building, but not all of it. Thin brown ghosts remain in the cracks between the pavement stones where the runoff failed to reach, and the sight of them brings back the sound of Evie’s breath hitching against my chest. Halo wakes around me in its usual sour orchestra of rattling shutters, whining cargo skiffs, coughing engines, and voices raised too early by people who already know the day will ask more than it gives. The air tastes of salt, wet iron, frying oil, and burnt electrical insulation from a utility box sparking at the corner of Mercy. Above all of it, drifting from the bakery’s vents, comes cinnamon.
I stand across the street beneath the broken awning of a closed tailor shop and tell myself to leave.
The bakery windows glow amber against the gray morning. Inside, people move in warm silhouettes. The old woman, Darlene, stalks past the front counter with a coffee pot in one hand and murder in her posture. A dockworker laughs at something I cannot hear. Evie appears through the glass for halfa second, blonde hair pinned up badly, yellow sweater bright as defiance, bruised face turned toward a customer with a smile that still manages to look real.
My chest tightens.
I should not be here.
I told myself that in the tunnels last night while Al Simmons snored by the heater coil and Maren’s child coughed less violently behind the tarp. I told myself that while washing dried blood from my knuckles in runoff water. I told myself that Evie is alive, Nara is competent, Darlene is dangerous in ways not covered by military training, and my continued proximity only invites trouble. I told myself men like me do not belong in places that smell of sugar and coffee.
Then dawn came, and my feet brought me here anyway.
The front door opens. A customer steps out with a paper bag tucked beneath his coat. Warm air escapes around him, carrying butter, yeast, coffee, and Evie’s laugh.
I cross the street.
The bell over the door betrays me with a cheerful jingle. Conversation drops but does not die as completely as yesterday. Progress, perhaps. Or the locals have decided if I intended to kill everyone in the bakery, I would have done it already.
Darlene looks up from the register. “Well, well. The building inspector returns.”
I stop just inside the door. “I am not a building inspector.”
“You inspected my fuel line.”
“It was unsafe.”
“Still rude.”
“Still unsafe.”
Her eyes narrow, but her mouth twitches at one corner. “Coffee?”
“No.”
Evie leans through the pass-through from the kitchen. “That means yes.”
I look at her.
She looks better than yesterday, which is not the same as good. The bruise along her cheek has deepened beneath the concealer into a shadow of purple and yellow. The swelling around her eye remains visible. She holds herself carefully, favoring her ribs even while pretending not to. Her smile lands on me with more force than a plasma impact.
“You came back,” she says.
“I was nearby.”
“Nearby has excellent timing.”
“I came to check the locks.”
“Of course you did.” Her smile grows, and something in it warms the room in ways the ovens cannot. “That stool at the end of the counter has filed no complaints since yesterday, so feel free to resume intimidating it.”
