Page 68 of Baking and Angels

“Rainbow pie,” he said as he removed two kettles, now whistling with boiling water, to replace them with four saucepans on each of the burners on hisstove top.

She made a look of disgust. “A dessert? Withspinach?”

He chuckled as he distributed the aforementioned spinach amongst the four pans, then dumped the boiling water. “It’s a savory pie. It’s going to have many layers and be full of color. Hencerainbow.”

“What are you doing to the spinach?” she asked next without missing a beat.

“I’m wilting it,” he said. “That way I can mix it with my prepared cheeses there, where you wereleaning.”

“Oh” was all she said and then she flounced away.

Rafferty wasn’t offended. A young couple walked up, their arms wrapped around each other as they watched him mix his wilted lettuce in with the ricotta and hard cheeses, adding lemon zest and pesto. When the white and green of the mixture was fairly even, he roasted some peppers quickly, then pulled the chilled pie crust shells from the cooler.

A meditative calm washed over him as he layered each pie with breadcrumbs, then squash, his spinach mixture, the peppers, building the colors, until he covered each one with another pie crust, then added bits of extra dough to make roses with vines and leaves comingfrom them.

By the time he slipped each pie into their waiting slots in the standing multi-oven, he had accumulated quite a crowd.

“What? No meat?” one of the onlookers asked, twiddling hismustache.

“You take one bite of my food, you won’t miss it,” Rafferty answered as he focused on cleaning up his station and setting up his plates, so he could fill them quickly.

“I can’t wait to taste his food,” an older woman commented, sniffing at the air. “It smells delicious.”

“He’s taking a really big risk,” Eleanor called from her own station. “He’s only limited to how many pies he can bake at one time. It limits how many plates he can fulfill. He can’t simply make more.”

“I have made enough,” he said, confidently.

Eleanor smirked and returned to her own dish. She seemed to be preparing to make stir-fry, setting her ingredients up in various bowls so she could chop and toss in one of the three electric woks she had prepared on her table. Next to that, there were three rice makers, steaming away. It was the complete opposite of his strategy: very little comparable prep with lots of fast, desperate work when it would come timeto serve.

All he had to do once his pies were done would be to plate them.

Until then he had some time to kill while he waited, and he had a need that he wasn’t used to dealing with. He loathed leaving his pies unattended though, so he waved Helena over.

“Yes?” she asked, leaning into him to ask in a soft voice.

“Can you stand here and watch my piesa moment?”

“Sure, are you okay?” she whispered back, looking warily around for any threat or danger. Damn, it was so cute.

“I’m fine. I just need… to use the privy.”

“Oh!” she said, “Theprivy, huh?”

He had a feeling it was the wrong word, but her teasing was a small price to pay for her help. “I’ll be right back,” he said, giving her a tingling kiss on the cheek as payment.

Nearby a group of teenagers giggled and whistled when he did that, only to have adults hush them for him.

It didn’t take him long to find a pair of doors with a male and a female figure printed on them. Entering, he found the space empty, which suited him just fine. Along the wall were urinals, and he chose to take care of his needs at oneof those.

“It isn’t as easy to go back as you thought it would be, eh?”

In so many ways, Rafferty was not at all surprised to see Vassago standing beside him. On some level, he had known the demon had been watching him while he prepared his pies but hadn’t dared to come too close. Not with Helena around for certain.

Glancing at the demon, Vassago had chosen his disguise well. He looked like he had before, a simple, unassuming man in a green official’s shirt. The whole ensemble was so average and forgettable as long as you didn’t look at his eyes for long enough to realize that the blackness there had no sparkle of life. They would just become whirlpools that would suck a person in if you dared to stare into themtoo long.

And Rafferty dared.

“Looking for your future, little chef?” Vassago asked, unblinking as his smile widened, showing too many teeth.

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