This was a place of rest, not battle.
“We won’t bring the fight here,” I told the house. “We don’t want Ricky or you to be involved. I don’t know what Raven wants out of this. Not really. But I’m sorry he involved you.”
The house seemed to be listening, seemed to be waiting. I wasn’t connected to it the way Ricky was, but it could make itself known when it wanted. Talking to it was a little like knowing a very large creature was watching you from just beyond the tree line.
I could hear Ricky’s and Lula’s voices upstairs, a buzzy, happy murmur. The room was far enough away from the kitchen, I shouldn’t be able to hear them.
That would be the house’s doing, then, letting me know they were okay.
“Ricky’s a good friend.” I placed a plate on the towel I’d spread on the countertop and used another towel to finish drying it. “Thank you for being here for her.”
The house went silent, the voices no longer in range. The birds had stopped giving Raven hell, and I could hear his slow sweet whistle as he called back to them in their own song.
The cupboard to my left flew open.
“Holy mother—”
A cookbook slammed down onto the counter, and a puff of wind blew into the room—even though the doors and windows were shut. The book flipped open to a page near the back.
“This better be good,” I muttered to the house. “About gave me a heart attack.”
The page had one recipe:Strawberry Angel Food Cake. The recipe was smudged with oil and stained red at the corner.Someone had dropped a strawberry on it, but the text was still legible.
Recipes that showed wear and tear were almost always the best ones. Still, it took me a minute to understand what I was looking at.
“This is her dessert, isn’t it? Lula’s favorite.” I placed my palm in the middle of the page, holding the book down, not wanting it to go anywhere.
Memories of when we’d first begun our journey on the Route popped like camera flashes behind my eyes. Those were dark, uncertain days. But every summer she’d make strawberry angel food cake.
She didn’t always eat it, especially not at first when she had been grappling with how to survive as half-vampire. But she would mix it up and bake it, just that small moment of normality giving her peace.
I couldn’t remember when she’d stopped making it, or why. But yes, the house was right. It had been her favorite dessert when we were alive, and for years afterward.
“Hang on. Let me find paper and pencil so I can copy this down.”
There was the feeling of a massive eye roll, which wasn’t something a house should be able to convey.
Then a drawer that had held silverware a minute ago, when Ricky had been in the kitchen, slid open. No silverware. Nothing in the drawer but a single index card.
I picked it up.
It was the strawberry angel food cake recipe handwritten in a tight, legible print.
I grinned and tucked the note card into my pocket. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Raven said, coming through the door. “What are you thanking me for?”
“I’m not.”
“Huh. Feels like you should. Is Ricky up with Lula?”
“Not sure that’s your business.”
The house gave me another eye roll.
Yeah, I knew Raven had agreed to play by the rules, but that didn’t change my opinion on trickster gods.
Raven strolled over to the table and rested a hand on the back of a chair. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The house has its thumb pressed down so hard on me, I can’t exhale without its permission. I feel like a game of darts. Want to play?”
