“Well, no worries about any of that,” Peyton said. She pulled into the alley behind the bakery and parked. “Gaby wouldn’t have hired you if she wasn’t sure you’re a good egg. She said you were going to be doing some of the basic assistant tasks to free up Gaby and me for baking, like deliveries and cleanup—does that sound right to you?”
“Yes, that’s what we talked about.”
“Great! I’ll give you a quick orientation and then get you started.”
Peyton unlocked the back door and let them into the bright, modern kitchen. She pulled out two pink aprons, handed one to Cela, and followed it with a small mesh bag that Cela gazed at in confusion until Peyton pulled a similar one over her own spiky hair. While Cela tried to emulate herwith the hair net and apron, Peyton briskly pulled off her rings and dropped them into a small plastic bag which she left in the same closet she’d taken the aprons out of.
“All right, I’ll give you a quick orientation and then you just follow my lead and instructions, okay?”
Cela knew she would never remember the names and instructions for all of the equipment that Peyton fired off at her. But she watched in fascination as Peyton moved around the kitchen with speed and confidence, pulling out baking sheets and slamming them down, moving huge bowls of dough that had been set to rise. This was occasionally punctuated by a brisk “Hand me that,” or “You can make the frosting, there’s a list of ingredients in that recipe binder there.” Cela had to race to keep up. However, she realized after a little while that Peyton wasn’t pushing her so hard that she couldn’t manage; Peyton seemed to have a good feel for when Cela needed her to slow down.
“How long have you been working here?” Cela asked as she worked with a mixer in the frosting bowl, after Peyton showed her how to use it.
“A couple of years. I started working for Gaby after her previous assistant quit. Before that I was a line cook in a prison, believe it or not.”
Cela’s eyes flew wide open. She could only guess what a line cook did, but she did have a general idea what a prison was. In some sense, she had lived in one. “What was that like? Was it dangerous?”
Peyton laughed. “Honestly, it wasn’t too different from most cooking jobs, except for going through security when I’d clock in and out every day. I’ve been a bit of a nomad in my life, waitressing and cooking, working in various diners. One of these days I’d like to have my own restaurant, maybe even get a culinary arts degree, but right now I feel like I’mlearning way more from doing it all hands-on than from any school.”
Cela nodded. She also understood the school of life. Peyton looked at her curiously.
“Were you home-schooled, with the cult thing and all?”
“Yes,” Cela said. “But I know how to read and all of that,” she added quickly, in case Peyton thought she couldn’t. She was actually a very good reader, and it had been useful for helping to get her up to speed on the modern world in which she now found herself.
“Wow,” Peyton murmured to herself. “By the way, feel free tell me off if you mind all the questions. It’s just really interesting to me, and I can be a chatterbox when I meet a new person. Did you grow up around here or farther away?”
“Far away,” Cela said wistfully. For a moment she could sense the island so strongly, its smells and sounds, the taste of sea salt on her tongue and the cries of the gulls, that it was almost as if she was there.
Then the feeling evaporated, but Peyton seemed to sense her pensive mood and didn’t ask any more questions.
By the time Gaby came into the bakery around seven-thirty, Cela had already had one break but still felt run off her feet. She was in good shape, so it wasn’t the physical activity so much as everything she was having to cram into her brain.
She found that she liked the deliveries best. The Brown Bear supplied baked goods to the local restaurants, coffee carts, and B&Bs. Cela couldn’t do the ones that required driving, but she got to wow Peyton by stacking a huge pile of donut trays and carrying them. She had temporarily forgotten to hide her shifter strength. However, since shehad already revealed it, why not just go ahead and do things the easy way?
“You guys must have gotten really strong from all the wood chopping and stuff,” Peyton said.
“Yes,” Cela said, grateful for the convenient explanation. “Yes, that’s what it was.”
She carried several baked goods deliveries to DeWitt’s Diner up the street, which she had come to understand was owned by Paula, Tyr’s ex. She didn’t actually deal with Paula directly, which relieved her as she still wasn’t sure how to relate to the other woman. The person who came to the back door of the kitchen to pick up her deliveries was a tall, thin, tattooed man with a friendly smile.
“Hi, I’m Mitch, Paula’s cook. You’re the new bakery delivery girl, huh?”
“I’m Cela.” She smiled back at him. She had the strong sense he was a shifter of some kind, though she couldn’t guess what he turned into.
“Here, let me give you a hand with those.” He whisked the stacked trays out of her hands effortlessly, confirming her guess about his shifter nature. She was starting to learn that humans simply weren’t that strong.
And then there were the tattoos on his thin, strong arms. Her gaze was drawn to those markings, with her almost automatic urge to check other people’s arms to know what clan they belonged to.
But these weren’t griffin clan tattoos. They were made of dark blue lines, a bird with delicately drawn feathers curling up one arm, and on the other, a twining dragon with curling whiskers and claws wrapped around his wrist. The back of one of his hands said LOVE; the other said PEACE.
Mitch noticed her looking. “Like the ink?”
“I was just interested.” She followed him into the kitchen. A little shyly, she pushed up her sleeve. “I have some too.”
“Oh, hey. Sister!” He turned to look, and frowned a little at the sight of her arm. “You’re a griffin?”
Cela’s mouth opened in shock. She hastily yanked her sleeve down, but the damage was done—though it meant she wouldn’t be prevented from talking about it, she realized a second later. “You know about us?”
