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“No worries,” Dakota said. “Can’t have everything, I guess. We’ll just be your anonymous, but totally hot and efficient, staff.” He saluted. “Onward!”
Frang stood next to the portal that overlaid the closed fridge door as Dakota, Gage, Melina, and then Hector followed Peyton through into a lush green Faerie meadow.
“Ready?” Finn asked Gany.
Gany lifted his rather pointed chin determinedly. “Absolutely.” He shifted the aprons to one arm and captured Finn’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “Let’s go.” But before they’d gone more than two steps, he stopped. “Just a minute.” He darted back to the platter that had held Peyton’s towering stack of scones, but now sported only three, thanks to the depredations of the Doghouse guys. Gany snatched the platter and offered it to Frang. “Would you like a scone?”
Frang blinked, peat-brown eyes going a little glassy. “For me?”
“If you want them.”
“Nobody ever gave mefoodfor a tip before.” He took one scone almost daintily, given that his fingers were the size of kielbasa.
“I’ll save some cake for you, too,” Gany promised, “in case you come back to pick us up again.”
This time, Frang’s eyes positively glowed. “Cake?” He grabbed the remaining two scones and shooed them forward. “Let’s go.”
“I’ve got to say, walking through my closed fridge door isn’t anything I thought I’d ever—” Gany’s amused words cut off with a gasp. “Gods, it’sbeautiful.” He scanned the landscape, from the burbling stream that bisected the meadow to the tree-topped tor that rose beyond it. “Is the sky actuallyorange?”
“Not all the time. It’s a color spectrum—red in the morning, violet at night, and everything else in between.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever—”
“No dawdling,” Frang said as he stomped past them. “Cake is waiting.”
“Well, then,” Finn said, “guess we better get moving.”
Laughing, they hurried after him as he passed the other weres and then Peyton, although he slowed reverently as he tiptoed past the cake. He stopped next to a boulder about fifty yards away from where they’d entered.
“Frang?” Hector said hesitantly, “this isn’t one of the approved FTA routes.”
“Screw the approved routes,” Frang growled. With a wave of one enormous hand, the boulder vanished as a portal opened into what was clearly a commercial kitchen. “There’s cake!”
Gany held his breath as the cart with the cake came to a gentle stop next to a long metal prep table and settled gently onto its wheels. Muffled conversation, clinks, and clatters filtered in from the main kitchen beyond a swinging door where the caterers must be preparing the wedding brunch. For a moment, a little spear of envy pierced Gany’s relieved satisfaction, but he sternly brushed it aside as though it were one of Eros’s unwanted arrows.
He couldn’t pine about lost catering jobs when his first wedding cake washere, perfect and beautiful and waiting for final assembly.
Which… might not happen. He sighed.Backup cake, remember?But even if they didn’t serve the cake to the wedding guests, at least his crew—Peyton, Melina, Finn, Finn’s werewolf buddies, and apparently Frang, who hadn’t left after he’d escorted them through the portal—could taste it later. AndsomehowGany would make sure that Del at least had a chance to taste it too.
Peyton’s arms flopped to their sides. “Whew! That was harder than I thought it would be. I feel like I just escaped from extreme arm day at the gym.” They rubbed their cheek against Nerida’s fur. “Thanks, love.” They patted the front of their apron, where one big pocket was divided in two by a row of vertical stitching. “Into your pouch now.”
Nerida nosed Peyton’s cheek, then scampered down, clinging to the fabric with tiny claws. Peyton held the left pocket open and she dove in. “Oh, I almost forgot.”
They reached into the right pocket and pulled out a handful of shiny objects. “It’s not monogramming, I know, but I made name tags for you all that match the ones we use at Nectar & Ambrosia. Finn?” They held out the little gold rectangle and Finn took it almost reverently. The other weres gathered around Peyton to collect their own badges.
Dakota donned his apron and pinned the badge to the center of the bib, in exactly the right place. “I feel so official.”
Finn, his own name tag in place, grinned at Gany. “I feel like I belong.”
Gany smiled back. “You do. And, um…” He bit his lip and peered up at Finn through his lashes. “I hope that after we’re done here, you’ll still feel that way.”
“I do. I mean, I will. That is, I’m sure, but…” Finn grimaced, squinting one eye. “There might be… issues. Werewolves aren’t really allowed to form, um, romantic relationships with non-weres.”
“Dude.” Hector’s voice was muffled because his chin was tipped all the way down as he tried to pin his name tag on. “That’s old school stuff. I’m pretty sure Tanner’s got that on his list of shit that needs to change.”
“Really?”
Hector finally fastened the pin. He patted the badge and looked up at Finn with a half-smile. “You’d know if you’d spent any time with us.”
