Page 46 of Baking and Angels

“Get out of here!” Ms. Hawthorn continued, a panting, red-faced mess. He ducked under a crock of flour, the white stuff going everywhere and covering half his back and shoulder as he scooped up the backpack by the handles.

Helena hadn’t retreated far, waiting for him as he exited the kitchen, her hand outstretched to him. “Areyou hurt?”

“No,” he laughed, as more things crashed behind them. Maybe he was going mad since he was starting to find this funny.

“What’s wrong with her?” she asked as she patted at his flour-covered shoulders, trying to brush it off, even as he was still determined to get her to go out the front doorto safety.

“I’ll explain later. We need to get out of here. Now,”he urged.

“Wait, what about Cindy?” Helena countered, moving toward the stairs, but Cindy was already coming down carrying a duffle bag and talking into a mobile phone.

“Dad, you need to come home,” Cindy said into it. She pulled on a coat from the rack at the bottom of the stairs and then sat on the lowest step to pull on shoes. “Because she’s lost her damn mind! And I’mleaving.”

In the kitchen, Ms. Hawthorn had stopped throwing things. From what little he could see, she had collapsed into screaming wails onto the floor, as if her heart had shattered into a million pieces.

Cindy stood up and gestured for Helena and Rafferty to follow her. “I didn’t do a damn thing.”

She listened for another moment and then hung upher phone.

“I’m done listening to him, too,” she snapped, then seized her purse. “Come on, let’s get outof here.”

“Cindy, I’m so sorry. I don’t understand what I did wrong,” Helena said as she grabbed her suitcase handle while Rafferty seized his own.

“Nothing. You’re ten years too late to have done anything wrong, just get me out of here,” Cindy growled, and they all went out the door into the cold,sharp air.

Cindy took a deep breath of it as the door shut hard behind them. “You’ve rescued me not a minutetoo soon.”

Then the door opened again. “You ungrateful child, where are you going?!” Cindy’s mother shouted. Her arms were wrapped around herself, and her face was the shattered ruin of the simple, well-off housewife she had been only an hour or so before. “Where the hell are you going?!”

“Out of this house!” Cindy yelled back, spinning on her heels to march down the street.

“How dare you speak tome like—”

Then Cindy spun back. “I’ll be right there. Can you take this for me?” she asked, passing the duffle bag to Helena before charging back. She pushed her parent back inside and shut them both in.

Standing on the cold sidewalk, they could hear the shouting continue albeit more muffled. Helena looked to Rafferty, her face drenched in guilt and worried.

“What did I do?” she asked hopelessly.

He worked his lips. “This happens when mortals are confronted by too much of something otherworldly. It triggers their instincts. They will fight or they will flee. Some freeze.”

“But I was just making tea?” Helena defended weakly. She understood what she had done but was struggling to accept it. “She went from zero to a hundred and sixtyso fast?”

“You didn’t just make tea, and you know it.” He could feel his own hostility rising toward her. Helena took a half step back, cowering away from the sharpness inhis voice.

“I was just… I was just trying to help,” she said, and a tear dripped downher cheek.

“Dammit,” he muttered under his breath. Then took a deep one in before blowing it out. Again, he had the urge to eat her bad memory of this incident. It was also occurring to him that maybe he did that a little too often in his previous existence, and he wasn’t as socially suave as he thought he was. Pushing that personal analysis away, all hecoulddo was wrap his arms around her, all while being careful to keep his own instincts under control.

“Just take a deep breath and let go of the need to help right now,” he said.

Helena’s aura flared a moment, even stronger, but then she nodded against his chest and took a breath in. When she exhaled the aura retreated, giving him some relief at last.

“Do you feel what you did?”he asked.

“Yeah,” she said thoughtfully. “Yeah, I do. Dammit. I did make it worse,didn’t I?”

“You’ve just got to be aware,”he agreed.

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