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“Would mademoiselle like a canapé?” A tall brunet in a green apron paused to offer me a shiny silver tray. It was full of some kind of mushroom tarts that were oh my God wonderful.
I was about to grab another six when Pritkin dragged me away, past a long case stuffed with stuffed things: figs and eggs and peppers and tomatoes, all bursting with goodness and ready to eat. And then another with seafood: clams and calamari and salmon served about eighty different ways, including intriguing little roll-ups that looked like they had cream cheese in them. And then past another case with all sorts of meats and sausages, and one with a couple hundred cheeses, and then half a dozen with pastries, an explosion of colorful glazed and sugared and honeyed—
“Dinner first,” Pritkin said sternly, and pulled me away again.
“We’re not already there?” I asked, staring around. And realized that we’d barely covered a tiny bit of the huge room, with its gleaming marble floor and walls plastered with blackboards behind the counters, listing the day’s specials, and shelving crammed full of all kinds of things in baskets and jars, and an absolute mass of curved windows above it all that gave the room a giant greenhouse effect. It kind of reminded me of some of the church roofs in Russia, only transparent and rising up several more stories to show the darkly clouded skies outside.
They looked familiar, at least. Grumbly and laced with lightning, and dark enough that I was pretty sure I would have noticed a massive cathedral of food rising above the streets on the way here. How did they hide all this?
“This is magical London; we just came in through a side door,” Pritkin said, helping not at all. “Look, they’ll make you a sandwich with whatever you like,” he added, as we finally stopped in front of a polished wood and glass counter.
And, okay, yeah. Sandwiches were starting to sound better all the time, I thought, my eyes going huge at the selection. I finally settled on thick-cut ham with a honey glaze, sliced chicken piled high, three kinds of cheese, some spicy Italian sausage, even spicier brown mustard, mayo, boiled eggs, sliced tomatoes, and pickled asparagus, because when I asked for pickles they asked what kind and had only about a hundred different ones to choose from.
Seriously, they pickled everything. Plain old cucumbers were apparently passé. But they gave me a sample, and these were garlicky and good, and—
“Oh, oh! Can I have some of the bacon? The thick kind with the pepper?”
The guy making the sandwich cocked a bushy white eyebrow at me, probably because the big, torpedo-shaped roll with the generous dusting of black poppy seeds he was holding was already straining at the seams. I looked back at him hopefully. He made it work.
And then, of course, it was just a matter of picking out the right potato salad, which took a while because, again, they had maybe twenty kinds.
I finally settled for one with tiny whole potatoes in a vinaigrette, and Pritkin got the same—and nothing else.
“You aren’t hungry?” I asked him.
“I’m going to eat half of yours.”
I actually pulled the tray away. “You are not!”
“If you eat all that, you won’t want dessert.”
I glanced at the nearest case of mouthwatering goodies. Including glazed fruit tarts piled so high that I had no idea how you’d eat them. Or wobbly little jellies in a rainbow of colors that quivered whenever the case was opened. Or an array of French creations in gold cups that almost looked too pretty to eat.
Almost.
And some cream puffs that I swear were the size of my head.
Damn, I needed one of those!
“A third of my sandwich,” I said grudgingly, and Pritkin laughed.
The guy behind the counter started for some reason, like somebody had pinched him, and stared at him in shock. “Put it on my tab, would you, Bertie?”
The man nodded, and Pritkin and I moved away, him taking the tray because it had gotten heavy with food and the two beers in glass steins we’d also ordered. “You know him?” I asked, glancing back to where the man was still staring after us, looking like he wanted to cross himself.
“I was assigned to London for a while, doing training for the Corps. The center is just around the corner.”
Guessed that explained why there were so many war mages in here. Most of whom were also staring at us as we walked past. “They know you?”
“I trained half of them.”
“Yet they’re not coming over to say hello?”
Pritkin snorted. “No.”
We found a table. It was in another big white room full of them, which ramped up the greenhouse effect by also including scattered pots of herbs. It was connected to the food hall, but without any doors. They just sort of flowed together. There were some French doors on the opposite wall, flung open to show a round sort of hub, this one with a shiny wood floor. Multiple rooms appeared to branch off it—the apothecary stuff, I guessed—with lots of shoppers coming and going.
“After my—after Ruth died, I went looking for my father,” Pritkin said. “When I came back, I was . . . upset. Some of them encountered me before I calmed down.”
