After another typicalnight of interrupted sleep, Cela rolled over with a groan when her alarm clock (found for her by Tyr in a box of things from the attic) jangled to alert her that it was her 4 a.m. getup time for her new bakery job. The babies immediately began to fuss.
There was no way she could put them back down and also get ready for work. Cela gathered them in her arms and went up the stairs to the second floor where Tyr’s bedroom was.
So far, she hadn’t been inside. The door stood half open, and she could smell him—a spicy, enticing male scent.
The urge to crawl into bed with him was desperate, almost overwhelming. She fought it down, pushing back against her griffin. It still didn’t understand why they couldn’t simply claim their mate.
“Tyr!” she called in a loud whisper.
When there was no answer, she came in, tiptoeing across the floor, and jostled the bed with her knee until there was an abrupt stirring in the darkness.
“Urgh ... what?” Then he came fully awake, sitting up; sheglimpsed the pale blur of his face and—oh gods—his bare chest. “Cela? Is something wrong?”
“Here.” She started to shove the babies at him, remembered the problem just in time, and set them on the bed beside him instead. “I have to get ready for work. You said you didn’t mind?—”
“Nngh ... no, I don’t mind.” Clearly still half asleep, he lay down, curling protectively around the babies. They immediately settled down, recognizing a familiar, safe person. Cela felt a strange tugging at her heart.
“You can put them down in the crib in my room if you like,” she said.
“Nngh. Have a good day at work.”
“I will,” Cela said, and she fled his room before she could succumb to the wild temptation drawing her toward him over all her common sense.
She took a quick shower and dressed in some of her borrowed wardrobe. She opted for medium-nice; she knew she’d be working in a kitchen, so a pair of clean jeans and a pretty top were probably good. Probably! She wished she’d asked Gaby if there were rules. She looked at herself in the mirror and wondered if she ought to do something with her hair, but she didn’t know what would work, so in the end she tied it back in a practical ponytail.
A car horn honked outside.
Gaby had said she would arrange for Cela’s transportation to the bakery since it was such an early start. Cela gasped a little, took a last look at herself in the mirror, and hurried out of the bathroom. She glanced wistfully up the stairs one final time, then let herself out into the gray dawn light.
There was a car parked in the driveway. Cela hurried to it, and realized as she reached for the door handle that itwasn’t Gaby’s big long car with all the space in the back; this was a small vehicle with just the two front doors.
“Hi!” said the stranger at the wheel. She was a few years older than Cela, with some gray showing in the extremely short-cropped dark hair of her spiky haircut. Her earrings were shaped like little skulls. “I’m Peyton, Gaby’s kitchen assistant. You’re Cela, right?”
“Right,” Cela said, feeling abruptly shy. Peyton stuck out a hand and Cela, after a moment’s pause because she wasn’t yet used to this greeting ritual, grasped and shook it. Peyton had a strong, confident grip and wore heavy silver rings on almost every finger.
“I’m handling the bakery opening today,” Peyton explained, backing out of the drive onto the highway. There was no other traffic; the world lay still in silvery early morning light. “Gaby’s dealing with sick kids this morning, said she’d be in later, but it’ll be great to have help. She said you don’t have much kitchen experience; is that right?”
“Yes, I’m afraid not.” Cela was unsure whether to be entirely truthful, but she decided it was best not to pretend she knew things she didn’t. “This is going to be my first job.”
“Oh, really?”
Peyton gave her a curious look, driving casually with one hand on the steering wheel. Music with guitars and a lot of bass played on the stereo. Cela desperately envied Peyton’s casual confidence and easy competence with modern human technology. Maybe, she thought, that could be her someday.
“So were you a stay-at-home mom, or what’s the deal there? College? If you don’t mind me asking, of course.”
“No, I don’t mind.” She was going to have to explain it somehow. Abruptly the bus driver’s words came back to her. “I was in a ... cult.”
“A cult?” Peyton’s eyes, framed in heavy black mascara, flew wide open.
Cela wished she had picked a different explanation, but now she was committed. “Yes, we were very—” She tried to recall the bus driver’s exact words. The driver was a human, so whatever human explanation she had concocted would probably sound sensible to another human. “—very back-to-the-land, you know, we, um, we weren’t Amish but we were kind of like that.”
This sounded like total nonsense to her, but Peyton merely nodded. “Oh,wow. I’ve heard of stuff like that, but I never met anyone from one of those before. So is that why you don’t have a car?”
“That’s right,” Cela said, relieved. It sounded like this was going to explain everything. “And—I don’t know much about modern kitchens either. Tyr has been showing me things, and I’m a quick learner?—”
“Tyr?”
“Oh. That’s the friend I’m staying with. I—I mean Terry.” She recalled that Gaby and her mate seemed to know Tyr only by his human name. She would have to keep that in mind, too. So much to remember!
