Page 37 of An Espresso Machine’s Guide to Love & Mischief

Fuck, Glosette’s chant must have echoed down the tunnel.

“A jest,” I say.

“Hehehe,” Glosette says, clearly not regretful of her chant.

I hadn’t planned on this part, but I’m left with no choice. “As a show of good will, your people are welcome to enter our realm first—”

Aero hisses in outrage. It’s a reminder that my father would never have allowed a Union-Andrew rat into our kingdom. Doing so now is a hefty risk.

If Queen Lettuce decides to use my invitation as a chance to invade, we could be exiled from our own station and rendered homeless in a city that already despises our kind. Or worse, forced to bow to her rule and grovel at the paws of Union-Andrews for the remainder of our lives.

Yet, if we do not work together, we may all end up dead at the hands of the city. “If the city chooses to spray poison along the University Line, your Mischief and your allies will have nowhere to flee. If the same happens along the Yonge Line, me and mine shall fall to that very fate.”

Queen Lettuce nods. “I seeith thy meaning. Seeking asylum beith one method to survive the city’s unjust cruelty. However—”

“My liege!” A hiss echoes from the back of the Union-Andrews.

“What be it, Applepeel? Come forth!”

A rat missing their right ear scurries up to Queen Lettuce. “Another shifter is dead.”

She raises a paw. “Not one of ours, then?”

“No, my queen. The killer doth run over a penguin shifter—”

“A penguin?” No one rataphoned me about the dead shifter, so none of my rats must have been in the area. This is why we need an alliance. “Why would anyone shift into a penguin to cross a downtown street?”

“Indeed, why?” Queen Lettuce says in agreement.

“It has to be the Roadkill Killer,” Princess Kale gasps.

“The Roadkill Killer?” I turn to Kale’s mother. “Queen Lettuce of St. Andrew, is your daughter suggesting the recent roadkill shifter deaths are connected?”

“’Tis not a suggestion, ’tis a fact.” She inclines her head. “Doth thou not know that every serial killer leaves a mark? The Roadkill Killer’s is a single red rose.”

“A single red rose…” I repeat, remembering one next to Smartie’s father. “Hell and damnation.”

My Mischief squeaks in worry. Fuck! First the city targets rats, and now someone is killing shifters, too?

My heart races with anxiety like a rat fleeing a cat. But I have to remain calm for my people. I have to remember to breathe. “How long ago was the penguin killed?”

“At least forty-five minutes ago,” Applepeel says. “It doth happened on King, betwixt our station and yours. It hath taken me this long to run here.”

I groan. “If we all had the Rataphone, we could have alerted each other sooner. Perhaps even tracked the killer, if we were to work together. One of our strengths as rats is to observe, to go anywhere we please without anyone noticing. But that only works when we have many rats watching everywhere at once and pooling our knowledge. Then we can evade the city’s workers and track this killer.”

“Thou asketh us to use that demon-bedamned phone that humans use? They walketh like zombies born of the earth, yet already dead.”

I shake my head. “A Rataphone holds no such power over rats,” I say, holding up the device for her to see. “It is merely a tool, developed by the rats of the Yonge line.”

“I want one,” Princess Kale says. “Can it take selfies?”

“Where doth thou learneth such a phrase?” the queen snaps.

I decide the princess is my best chance. “It can take photograms so we can record any problems we discover to share with our fellow rats.”

“Or to spy on our Mischief with thy mechanical trickery,” the queen says.

“That isn’t our intention,” I say—dagnabbit, now I’m beginning to speak in the royal we.