Back in the kitchen, I went to work, cooking for Jen the Werewolf and Tony the Wasp, who was a fairy. I had healed Tony’s physical injuries, and I was searching for Jen’s missing sister. But they each had hurts beyond my ability to heal with magic. So, I cooked for them to heal them in another way. I grabbed a panini loaf and some cold chicken breast I had cooked earlier. The chicken was seasoned with paprika and honey. From a cold bain-marie, I pulled out some bacon and cheese, which I layered on top of the meat and bread. I stuck the whole thing in the sandwich press and squeezed down. While it was heating up, I grabbed some fruit from the fridge and cut the smallest slice of cake I could. It was still more cake than I could ever imagine a fairy eating. I also wasn’t sure how well fairy could tolerate white flour and sugar.

Once I had the cake plated, I added some berries. The plate didn’t look right, so I drizzled the entire thing with chocolate. The fairy probably hadn’t had any chocolate either.

I set Jen’s sandwich down in front of her and placed the fairy’s plate on the table. I wasn’t sure how he would handle the mechanics of eating from a plate big enough to serve as a bed for him. When I came back to the table with coffee, I realized that I shouldn’t have worried. The Safe Harbor Café had taken care of the problem. The pixie sat cross-legged at the table, eating from a doll-sized plate with a tiny fork. As soon as I set down his coffee, it shrank too.

“What’s this brown stuff on the fruit and in the cake? It’s really good,” he asked.

“It’s chocolate. I wondered if you’d had it. It’s one of our best foods, I think.” I picked up his tiny coffee cup and peered at the liquid inside. It looked like the café had already sweetened it and added milk. I smiled as I set the little cup down.

The fairy picked it up and looked at it suspiciously. “This is the coffee? The stuff you said I would think would be gross?”

“Yup. Go ahead and give it a try. The Safe doctored it for you. I have no idea if it’s sweetened with enough sugar or not. But I’d guess it is. It’s got the same drug as the chocolate in it.” I sat down at the table with them. Jen ate her sandwich in silence. Seeing her eat my food made me feel like at least I was doing something, anything to help my friend.

“The chocolate is drugged?” Mr. Wasp exclaimed.

“No, no.” Lily objected, “It’s not drugged, but it has a drug in it. Nothing serious, just a mild upper.”

“I’ve never done drugs before. Are you sure it won’t hurt me?” he asked.

“Seriously, you’ll be fine,” Jen explained. “With your metabolism, it’ll burn right out of you anyway. The less like the humans you are, the less their drugs affect you,” she said between big bites of her sandwich. “This is good. I haven’t really eaten since I found out she was missing.”

“That’s not good,” Lily said. “You have to take care of yourself. It’s like when you’re on an airplane, and they tell you to put on your oxygen mask first. You can’t help anyone until you help yourself. It’s the first rule of first aid. Protect the rescuer.” Lily stirred another cup of coffee. I wondered why the café had doctored the fairy’s cup but not Lily’s. Perhaps Lily took it a different way each time. I felt oddly embarrassed that I didn’t know how she took her coffee. That seemed like something I should know.

“I know.” Jen sat at our table, yet she looked so totally alone. “I mean, I didn’t know that was the first rule, but I know what you mean, and I agree that you’re right. But it’s hard. We’re all so scared and stressed out. This crap doesn’t happen to us. We don’t go missing. I feel scared. I’ve never felt scared before. What if something has happened to my sister? What if something happens to me?” Having always lived in a world edged with fear, I couldn’t totally understand why she felt like she had been safe.

“When you’re the biggest flower in the field, you’re the first one the bees all swarm to,” said Mr. Wasp.

We all sat in silence and thought about that. Jen ate her sandwich. Lily drank her coffee. I sat still, just watching. The fairy picked up his coffee cup and sniffed it. We all watched him with interest. He took a microscopic, tentative sip and looked at us in horror. “What the heck is wrong with the lot of you? This is awful!” He made a terrible face. Jen began to laugh, and then her laughter infected Lily and me. I loved coffee, but the fairy was right. It’s terrible. It wasn’t just the absurdity of what he was saying. Or the truth of it. It was also Lily and Jen laughing that caught me off guard and propelled me into gale after gale of humor about nothing. Jen laughed the slightly manic laugh of release, but Lily and I just laughed and couldn’t stop. Every time I would think I had myself under control, I would look at Lily or at the fairy, his tiny face still pursued in distaste, and I would start laughing again.

It took forever for us to calm down. The fairy asked us several times if we were done yet. His disapproval radiated from his tiny face. I looked at him and gulped for air. “Really, it is awful. I drink it every morning—and have for years—and I think it’s awful. I have no idea why we love it so much. But humans adore it. We put it on the same level as chocolate. In fact, if I had to pick one, I would pick coffee over chocolate, every time.”

“You would pick this stuff that tastes like horseshoe fly guts over this chocolate stuff? Lady, you seem nice enough, but you are clearly insane. You need to do a healing on your own head if you think this coffee stuff is better. Maybe your friend here has shorted out your magic?” He looked at Lily.

“No, she’s right.” Lily raised her perfectly lipstick-stained cup in salute to the fairy. “I would pick coffee over chocolate. There’s just something about how coffee makes me feel. I’m on my third cup today.”

“Yuck.” The fairy smelled his coffee again but didn’t take another sip.

“I’d take chocolate,” said Jen.

“At least someone has some sense,” Mr. Wasp said.

“So, this is going to sound dumb,” I felt rude asking Jen this, “But since dogs can’t eat chocolate, why can wolves?”

“We do have a higher than normal rate of chocolate allergy,” Jen said. “Which is why most dogs can’t have chocolate, anyway. But since we’re human and not dogs, we can just do a skin test and find out if we are allergic. I’m not. So, I get to eat chocolate ice cream.” Jen finished off her sandwich when she was done speaking.

“But caffeine doesn’t impact you?” Lily asked.

“Normally, no. I don’t know if by sitting next to you I’d be able to feel it or not. You pretty heavily change my body, and I know you bring the vamps back from the dead. But you don’t make the pixie turn into a normal-sized human, so your magic must have some limitations on what it can change, like a tiny person with wings. My metabolism is probably as much a part of my body as his wings are. So, maybe you cancel it out, and maybe you don’t. Your magic’s not real precise, is it?” Jen said, sitting back in her chair. I had the urge to bus her plate right away, but I also wanted to sit here and talk for a while. I figured she could use a little normalcy. Or what passed for normal in the Safe Harbor Café.

“It’s not so much that my magic isn’t consistent. It’s that the way it interacts with different magics and beliefs that widely varies. And as you said, the line between what’s magic and what just is isn’t well defined. Why do I make vampire’s hearts beat, but ro-langs and zombies fall over in a true death? Why can I force a were to transform into a human, but I can only make a kitsune show its tails? My impact on angels is completely random. Any time I’m dealing with divine instead of the magical, it’s a crap shoot. Sometimes I make them pop out of existence, sometimes they make me more powerful, and sometimes, nothing happens. But it’s magic. And we live in a place where all the magics are blending together, creating new magics, faiths, and rules are changing all the time. So, who knows? It’s not like I’m doing anything. My magic just reacts to other people and things, and how it reacts has more to do with them than me,” Lily said and took another sip of her coffee.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you or anything,” Jen said. She turned her head to the side to show a bit of throat, as was the way of her people.

“Oh, don’t worry. You totally didn’t.” Lily smiled.

“Have you really met a kitsune?” Jen asked her.

“Oh, yes. The first time one came in with a broken leg, we couldn’t figure out what the hell she was when her tail popped out, but she didn’t change shape,” I said. “A whole family of them comes in pretty regularly now.”

“Huh. I’ve never met one,” Jen said thoughtfully. “We view them as a bit of an abomination, what with them being the opposite of us and going animal to human. They probably feel the same way. My mom’s quite rude about them, but she’s Korean, so, you know.”

My phone rang. I excused myself from the table to answer it. It was Ashley, the head witch, giving me the location of tonight’s meeting. She asked me to bring something from each of the missing women so that they could scry for them. I returned to the table and asked Jen if she could bring me something of Alice’s for the witches. She left to go to her sister’s house. Then I called Amara the dryad while Lily made a call to her boyfriend, Chris, to ask about the missing vampire. I used the café’s bark phone, and Lily used her cell phone. Since we were closing for dinner, we would have time to run out and pick up something owned by the missing dryad. Chris wasn’t sure if he could get anything or not.

The vampires destroyed everything from a new initiate’s former life. Since the missing woman had only been a vampire for a few weeks, she hadn’t had time to acquire a lot of new stuff, and she didn’t have any of her old stuff left. I was scared for Alice, but the missing vampire made me sad. At least Alice had her entire family and pack looking for her. The baby vamp only had her sire.

“Chris said if he finds anything, he can drop it off here. So, we don’t need to wait around for him.” Lily smoothed the front of her dress down as she spoke, although it had been flawless to begin with. “Unless you think we should?”

“I don’t know. I feel like one of us should be here. Especially if we’re going to be closed during normal business hours.” I wanted to find these women and help them, but I was worried that someone would show up injured, and I wouldn’t be there for them in time.

“We’re not open all day, every day, and people still manage to get a hold of us. The Safe can just manifest a phone by the door, and people can call us in an emergency.” As if it agreed with Lily, the café made the wall by the front door shimmer as it created a phone.

“Okay, if you two are in agreement that it’s okay to go out tonight, then I guess it’s okay, and we can all go together to the dryads’.” I looked at Mr. Wasp, who was seated on the sugar holder. “Would you like to come with us?”

“No, I don’t want to travel around in your metal boxes that go too fast. If you don’t mind, I’d like another plate of fruit and cake, then I’m going to take a nap. Do you have somewhere warm I can hang out and wait for you?” he asked. I felt guilty that I hadn’t offered. After being so ill for days and then regrowing a major body part, he had to be starving and exhausted. Between the dark magic and the missing women, we were having more than our usual amount of excitement at the Safe Harbor Café.

I went into the kitchen and made him another plate of fruit. I also included some almonds since he would need the protein, and I had no idea if he could tolerate animal flesh or not. I couldn’t imagine that he had a lot of experience eating human food, and now was a bad time to introduce new things to his diet. When I finished making his plate, I set up a small empty cambro by the side of the refrigerator. The motor put off enough heat that I figured he would be warm. I turned the container on its side and lined it with a clean dish towel. Over the top of the cambro, I laid two more towels to make a sort of fabric door so that he would have a safe place to rest. I put a pitcher of water and a glass next to it and figured the café would manage to shrink them down to the right size and keep them full while I was gone.

I called out to the fairy. “Mr. Wasp, please, if you come with me, I’ve made you up a bed.” He nodded to Lily and then flittered over to me. When I turned back, the cambro had transformed into a wooden box, and the dish towels had become linen curtains. When the fairy pulled aside the curtain, I could see a clean room filled with light and space. A molded chair sat next to a bed that stood high off the ground on skinny legs. The space was decorated in neutral colors, which made it feel larger than it was.

He stood in front of the curtains and fingered their rich cloth as he stared into the doll-sized room. He turned and faced me. “Thank you for your care today, Guardian, and for the assistance of your partner. And thanks also to this great building for the gifts it has bestowed on me. When you go out in the woods, take some of my dust with you. Here, hold out your hand.” I held out my hand, and the fairy alighted onto my palm. He then shook himself all over like a cross between a living saltshaker and a wet dog. After he shook, his shoes, which were polished black and the size of my pinkie nail, were covered in a mound of fine grit glitter. “There you go. That should be enough for both of you.” He flew off of my hand and headed back to his room.

“Thank you, Mr. Wasp, but what do I do with it?” I asked, staring at it.

The fairy looked at me like I was slow. “It’s fairy dust. Touch it to your foreheads. Nothing in the woods will harm you. Or almost nothing. I don’t like this. Something is hunting you. I don’t know what. But it’s not safe. Here inside your home tree, you’d be okay. But you’re blowing against the wind to find these women.”

“Thank you. Lily will protect me. But this is too much. I can’t accept this. Really. We helped you because that’s our job. I’m grateful that you appreciate it, but I can’t take a gift as priceless as this.” The dust glowed, lit from within by its powerful magic. I had no idea what putting it on Lily would do. It was magical, but it was also a physical marker of fairy friendship. Everything in the forest would be able to sense it. I wasn’t sure if that would be enough to protect Lily or it would all vanish as soon as it touched her face.

“Ha. Don’t worry about it. I’m just protecting you because, otherwise, I will never get a ride home or a ride to the trial to face my attacker.” The fairy dismissed me and hurried inside his room. But this was a gift greater than that. This was the gift of part of his magic. Now I had to see if it could survive Lily’s nullification.