The following morning, I worked the lunch service alone. The landline that petitioners used to seek the spirit of the Safe Harbor Café’s aid rang while I made ice cream. I picked up the phone without interrupting the stream of white chocolate pouring into the hopper of the ice cream maker. If I let the white chocolate set for too long, it would seize up. “Safe Harbor Café—Harper speaking; how can I help you?”

There was the sound of distant wind, and a woman’s voice came over the line. She sounded almost half asleep, detached and dreamy. “Greetings, Guardian Harper. This is Amara. I’m not sure if you remember me. We met at a solstice party once. I am a dryad.”

I didn’t remember her. You would think a dryad would stick out, but at one of our solstice parties, it would take a lot more than that to be memorable. So, I answered with a generic, “It’s great to hear from you. How can I help you?”

I scraped the last of the white chocolate out of the bowl with a spatula. I thought very hard about licking it but decided that wouldn’t be professional. I set the whole thing in the sink, the long cord of the phone cutting across the room. In the background, the ice cream maker churned.

“One of my sisters is missing, and I was wondering if she came to you for assistance?” She didn’t sound upset, and her voice stayed just as sensuous and innocent.

“A dryad? No, we haven’t had one of those around—that I know of. Could she even come here? You guys don’t do too well away from your trees, do you?” I asked. I didn’t know a whole lot about dryads. I wracked my brain to try to recall everything I had ever learned about them. In the sink, the white chocolate sat, tempting me to sneak a taste. I could smell it from where I stood.

“We cannot leave the forests for long, but we are not tied to one particular tree, and we know about the guardhouse. If she were in trouble outside of the forest, she would seek shelter with you,” she explained. “The spirit of the Safe Harbor Café would manifest a phone for her if she made the correct offerings, right?”

“As long as she was inside our territory and asked for the spirit’s aid, it would help her. It doesn’t make anyone stick to the script if they’re really in trouble. You could just yell its name, and it would make you a phone if you needed it bad enough.” I didn’t tell her that there wasn’t always time for the diner to manifest a phone, nor did everyone ask for help. I asked, “What does she look like?”

Amara replied, “She’s young and pretty. She has curly brown hair and brown eyes. She’s Greek. Her name is Vasiliki.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for her. If she comes in, I’ll let her know you’re looking for her. I hope she turns up,” I told her, and I meant it.

“Perhaps she just went off with a man or something. It’s unlikely but not unheard of. I’m sorry to have bothered you.” Her voice still sounded untroubled.

“No bother. That’s what we’re here for, after all,” I told her cheerfully. If being asked about the whereabouts of a lovesick dryad was the most work I had to do all day, I would be having a great day.

We said our goodbyes and hung up. I checked on the ice cream. It was freezing up smoothly. None of the white chocolate had seized up and gone clumpy. With the last of the kitchen work done, I went out to the dining room and checked everything over one last time.

When Lily came in for the dinner shift, I was on the dais, sweeping around one of the tables. An entire family of kitsune had been in. The children had a terrible time staying in human form. The little fox kits were adorable, but I was never going to be able to sweep up all the orange hair. I’d already asked the spirit of the Safe Harbor Café to absorb it, but it had merely set the blue and chrome chairs upside down on the top of the table, which was a clear hint that it was my job.

Lily swept into the diner in a blue coat with a full skirt that flared around her like a bell. Her matching pillbox hat was angled low and toward her face, giving it a jaunty angle. Her lips were red from lipstick, cheeks red from the cold.

“Sorry, I’m late!” she said.

“You’re not late, are you?” I asked. The wind through the open door blew the fox hair across the floor. I chased after it, trying to sweep it all up again.

Lily hung up her coat behind the counter and came over to the raised area, where I swept. “Ugh, what left all this?”

“Kitsune kits,” I said, “at least they were cute.” The pile was large enough that I could have made myself a stole.

“Nothing is cute enough to excuse this mess,” she said, brushing fur off her heavy, V-necked, three-quarter sleeved, gold jacquard dress. “Anything interesting happen during lunch?”

“Aren’t kitsune kits interesting?” I tried to shove the fur into the dustpan, but it kept wafting away.

“Not around here,” she said.

“I did get a phone call about a missing dryad,” I told her.

“Don’t they need to stay by their trees?” she asked.

“That’s what I thought! But apparently, no, they don’t. Anyway, they asked me to keep an eye out for her. You don’t think it has anything to do with Alice going missing, do you?” I asked.

“I’d say no, but—I told Chris about Alice, and he said a baby vampire is missing, too.”

“Really?” I carried the dustpan full of orange fur into the kitchen, passing by the front door behind the long counter to the swinging door that separated the front of the house from the back.

Lily followed me. “Yeah, it’s sad. You know how hard the adjustment is for many vamps, and they don’t like to talk about it too much, but they lose a lot to suicide. But this woman, her name is Samantha, her sire is sure she didn’t kill herself. She’s been looking for her everywhere and causing all sorts of trouble. Everyone thinks she’s in denial. But maybe she’s right?”

I put the broom and the dustpan by the back door and turned toward her. “Maybe?”

“Harper, what are we going to do about all these missing women?” she asked.

I folded my arms. “I don’t know. I want to help them, but I don’t know anything about investigating. You know I’m not a big fan of the justice angle of our jobs.”

“I think we start by asking questions?” Lily looked from me to the diner itself. “What do you think, Safe?” As we watched the O in the neon open sign rearranged itself to look like a magnifying glass.

“I guess that settles it. We’re going to look for clues,” I sighed. If the café wanted us to investigate, we would investigate.

“Hey, do you think your ice cream is set yet?” Lily asked.

“That’s for customers! Leave it alone.”

“Ice cream helps me think. We’ve never done anything like this before, and I don’t know where to begin,” Lily said as she went into the kitchen and opened up the deep freeze in search of ice cream.