Page 92 of Welcome to Fae Cafe

Kate set her phone on the counter and took the envelope. Her name was on the back in handwriting she didn’t recognize. She ripped it open to find a letter inside, signed at the bottom with Grandma Lewis’s messy, uneven signature.

She only read the first few lines before she walked out the door.

Kate didn’t recall the hike to Grandma Lewis’s house, but when she got there, she found the lights were out. There was no tea or baking smells seeping from the kitchen when she walked in, there were no dishes left out, nothing even to clean. Her grandmother had put everything away.

Her lip quivered as she took in the evidence, or lack of evidence, of her grandmother.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked the silence in the kitchen. A tear slipped from her eyes and burned down her cheek. “I would have been there. I don’t care how hard it would have been.”

Kate’s knees gave out; she crumpled and sobbed into Grandma Lewis’s entry rug, the letter slipping from her fingers. She sobbed until her throat and body hurt from it, until her tears soaked the ends of her hair. Until her fingers lost their feeling along with her heart.

A rush of cold flittered through the kitchen. Kate heard the door close, but she knew it wasn’t Grandma Lewis. She was lifted from the floor. Kate slapped a hand over her eyes as she shook, trying to hold her breath so she wouldn’t cry out loud.

She came against a warm body with a slow-beating heart, and his arms wrapped around her. He held her up as her knees wobbled.

“Cry however you want to.” Cress’s low voice filled the kitchen. “There’s no need to hold it in because you’re worried what I’ll think, Human.”

The strings holding her together snapped.

There was only one other time Kate had ever cried so hard, and she swore afterward she would never do it again. But her unrhythmic, melodic sobs echoed through the house; a soloist telling the story of a lifetime of warmth and wisdom that had reached its conclusion.

Moments later, she was swept off her feet and carried up the stairs. She was set down on the bed she’d spent many of her teen years sleeping in. Her bedroom door closed, and she was left to fall asleep that way with all her memories of Grandma Lewis close by.

Kate awoke in the morning to a crumbly, chocolatey, sweet smell. She rubbed her eyes, trying to remember where she was. Her feet were tucked into a yellow comforter, and a novel she knew well rested on the bedside table. Her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten in a while. Reminding her where she was. Reminding her of other things, too.

She sat up and inhaled the aroma of baking. It was a smell she’d known on many mornings throughout her teen years. She blinked away the dizziness, trying to sort out why evidence of her grandmother’s baking was leaking into her room.

The bedroom door squeaked when she opened it. She drifted down the stairs and tiptoed to the kitchen where the lights were on. The house wasn’t cold anymore—the floor was warm beneath her toes as though someone had gotten the living room fireplace going.

Cress’s back was turned when she peeked around the corner. He sild off the oven mitts and tossed them on the counter.

Kate was sure he knew she was there, but she cleared her throat just in case. “What are you doing?” she rasped.

“I’m makingfreshly baked chocolate chip cookies.” He finally turned and leaned back against the counter with his arms folded. He said ‘freshly-baked-chocolate-chip-cookies’ like it was all one word.

“Why?”

“You know why.” Cress’s gaze was heavy, and he didn’t blink.

This time, Kate didn’t feel like cowering or shifting her weight. She stared back as her mind filled with that moment in the narrow hallway of the café when Cress had put a hand over her mouth to keep her from saying something.

“You like me,” she said. It wasn’t really a question, but she wanted to hear him say it either way.

“Yes.”

“But I’m arepulsivehuman,” she quoted.

“Yes.”

“But you want me anyway?”

“Yes.”

Cress lifted off the counter and crossed the kitchen to where she was. “And I know what I have to do about it now,” he said. He chewed on the inside of his cheek. “I need to end my feud with the Dark and leave.”

Kate blinked. Of all the things she’d expected him to say, that wasn’t one of them. “Leave,forever?”

“Yes, forever. So that you can keep your happy life, Kate Kole.”

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