Emma checked the time and weaved past a jogger in yoga pants. She dodged a double-barrel stroller carrying a baby on one side and a corgi on the other. She sped up. After all, Viv was always there for her.
From fixing leaky pipes to apprehending murderers, Viv always showed up on time. Now she needed Emma‘s help. The barista had sunk her life savings into a new café. The clock was ticking: three days until the grand opening. If it didn’t go perfectly, Viv could be ruined.
And Emma? She was late. Guilt gnawed at her stomach as she craned her neck, trying to spot the small café from the path through the park. A month ago, she might have seen it, located next to an enormous theater covered in scaffolding. But spring had sprung, and new, fresh green leaves blocked her view.
Ahead, a fountain sprayed water into the air like a dandelion ready to be blown. In front of it sat a row of benches on which a black-and-brown cat sunned himself. “Hi, Captain!” Emma called as she approached the cat. For a moment, it almost seemed like he would reply. Then the wind shifted, and a large drop of water landed on his nose, causing him to run off. “Okay, see you back at home then.”
“Hey, Em!” Viv called from across the square. Emma looked up to see her tall, athletic friend waving. She was wearing overalls splattered with paint, showing off her broad shoulders and arms covered in tattoos. “I was just coming to get you. They delivered the furniture last night, and you’ve got to see how well it’s all coming together!”
“I am so sorry I’m late. I was applying for more jobs and lost track of time. That’s not an excuse. There’s no excuse! I—”
“It’s okay, Em! I’m not mad.”
“You’re not?”
“Let’s go see the new place.” They started walking. “You’re not really late. I wanted you here at nine, so I told you to show up at eight.”
Emma’s mouth dropped open. She wasn’t sure if she should feel relieved at not being late or annoyed at being so well played. “Seriously? I’m that predictable?”
“Let’s just say you’re predictably unpredictable. After all, you might trip over a body on your way over and have to find the killer.”
“True…” Emma decided to feel relieved. “So what are we doing today? Painting? Assembling furniture?”
“We finished all that last night. I was just thinking about how we could decorate for the grand opening on Sunday. It’s not like we’re starting from scratch. I’ve been running the old coffee shop since the nineties. Whenever we host an event, I take a few snapshots and throw them in a box. By now I must have old photos of nearly everyone in town.”
“Do you want me to hang them on the walls?” Emma asked. “That’s a good idea. People love seeing pictures of themselves. All the neighbors will come out just to see the display.”
Viv grinned. “You’ve got it! We’ll put the older pictures on the wall near the back of the shop. As you walk toward the front, the pictures will get newer. At the very front, we’ll have a blank wall and a Polaroid camera for people to hang up their own pics. That way, the people who just moved here can add themselves to the story.”
“Well, sign me up. Let’s hang some pictures!”
Viv rubbed the back of her neck and glanced away. “It’s not quite that simple. I’m not the best at… filing things. The pics are all out of order.”
They arrived just as a crew of white-clad painters finished disassembling the scaffolding in front of the small store. Inside, it was surprisingly cold, and it smelled like fresh paint. Viv walked down the narrow aisle and around the edge of the counter, which was covered with a huge canvas drop cloth. She reached under and pulled out a tattered cardboard box. “Here they are: every event, every party, every great night we had at Deadtown. Do you think you can put them in order?”
Emma eyed the box doubtfully. “Do they have the dates marked on them?”
“Negatory.” Viv grimaced. “Maybe you could guess the year by people’s clothes? Or maybe you could ask—”
“Don’t say it. You know I’m not a real psychic. Whatever power my aunt had didn’t make it down to me.”
“What happened to the tarot cards? It seemed like those were working out.”
“There’s too many of them! How am I supposed to remember the difference between the seven of cups and the eight of cups?”
“That’s easy. One cup.”
Emma laughed. “Just hand over the photos and try not to make any more dad jokes.” Emma reached across the counter for the box.
The moment Viv let go, Emma remembered just how heavy thousands of real, physical photos could be. With the counter in front of her, she couldn’t step forward to regain her balance, so she did the next best thing. She kicked her right leg behind her as a counterweight. But instead of meeting air, her foot collided with something more solid.
Someone yelped. It was Chef Jack, bent over in pain. Another man stood next to him, holding a box of pastries and trying not to laugh.
“What did I do to deserve that?” Chef Jack said through gritted teeth.
“I swear I didn’t mean to kick you.” Emma hunched over, pulling her arms tight against her body, wishing she could disappear. “I didn’t expect the box to be so—”
“Never mind,” the chef said, forcing himself into a more upright position. “I should have learned my lesson the last time you hit me.”
“Okay, children, that’s enough,” Viv said as one of the painters removed a drop cloth, revealing a polished steel countertop that gleamed in the light. A display case filled with small wire baskets stood next to it. “Jack, I see you brought me a package.”
“That’s right. We’ve got a whole assortment of pastries for you. These are the varieties we make every day, but if it turns out your customers want something special, we can always do a custom order.” He turned to the man with the box. “Well, don’t just stand there, Hank. Give it to her. You know these croissants won the Carmel Prize.”
“Impressive,” Viv said as she opened the box of pastries.
Emma peeked in too. It was filled to the brim with every kind of flaky, pillowy, creamy, crunchy french pastry you could imagine. Chocolate and almond croissants, Paris-Brest, Saint Honoré, kouign-amann—Emma had no idea what they were called, but the sweet, buttery aroma made her mouth water.
Viv closed the box and put it away, then flashed a smile at Jack’s companion. “New to town?”
“Not really,” he drawled. “I have been away for quite a while though.” He was thin and wiry with two-day stubble and limp brown hair that seemed permanently out of place. The double-breasted white chef’s jacket he wore was slightly too large, and his neon-orange-and-white sneakers looked hideous but expensive.
Jack butted in. “Everybody, this is my brother, Hank. Hank, this is everybody. Aren’t we all a big happy family now? Viv, I need you to email me your selections by tomorrow so we can deliver in time for your opening on Sunday.”
“Sure thing,” Viv said. “I think this is the start of a beautiful partnership.”
Jack gave her a probing glance, then sniffed. “Yeah. Come on, Hank. We need to remake that batch of madeleines.”
Hank replied as they walked away, but it was too quiet to hear. Whatever it was made Jack snap, “I told you I’d give you a job. It’s up to you to keep it.”
When they were out of earshot, Viv broke into laughter. “I can’t believe you kicked Chef Jack in the—”
“Oh, hush up,” Emma said, her cheeks flushing red with embarrassment. But then she started laughing too. When she stopped, her eyes glistened with tears. “I swear I didn’t mean to kick him. He was just—”
“So kickable?”
“No! I like Jack,” Emma shouted. “He was just there all of a sudden!”
“Right now I’m more interested in this box of pastries. I have a small dilemma.” Viv raised one finger in the air and mimicked a professorial tone. “I’m going to sell Jack’s pastries, but I don’t have room to carry all of them. Therefore, I must decide which ones in this very box I will stock.”
“Does that mean what I think it means?” Emma had forgotten all about the kick. Her mouth was watering.
“It means we will have to conduct a taste test.”
“Taste test!” Emma shouted.
“Taste test? What did I miss?” A wispy person with short blond hair and an oversized backpack joined them. On appearance alone, you might never have guessed they were a tenured professor of applied folklore.
“Riley! Get over here.” Viv produced a knife and began cutting up the pastries. “Everybody has to try one of each, and then we’ll vote on the top three.”
“So any news on the job front?” Riley asked Emma.
Emma shrugged. “I’ve been waiting to hear from an old colleague. He’s supposed to call me soon about a position at Oklahoma State.”
“Oklahoma?” Viv’s voice was tinged with disbelief. “You just fixed up your house. You can’t move back to Oklahoma!”
Emma shrugged. “Believe it or not, there aren’t many jobs for chemistry professors who took a gap year to become psychics. But there’s a good chance it will be a remote position. That way, I could stay in Undertown and teach online.”
“Ugh, I hate online classes. By the way, I was looking at the book we found.” They reached into their backpack and extracted a small old volume.
Emma saw the book and froze. Her heart pounded as her memory was pulled back to that winter night when they’d entered the summoner’s lair and taken the book. She could still smell the sickly-sweet odor of wood alcohol and feel the heat of the fire she started to escape. When Emma returned to the present moment, she was surprised to find Riley midsentence.
"…spent months cross-referencing the engravings with other primary sources—” Riley’s words cut off as Viv’s powerful hand squeezed their shoulder.
“As much as I love to listen to the two of you being nerds, we have a taste test to finish.” Viv handed Riley and Emma two small napkin-wrapped pieces of pastry. “According to the cheat sheet Jack gave me, this one is called a… kouign-amann? How do you pronounce that?”
The pastry resembled croissant dough stuffed into a muffin pan with sugar and baked to a thick, brown layer of crunchy caramel. She inhaled the buttery aroma mixed with darker, more complex scents from the deeply caramelized sugar. As she was about to take a bite, the postman walked through the door.
The postman was a tall, clean-shaven older man with thinning gray hair and thick-rimmed glasses that hid his bushy eyebrows. His blue postal uniform stretched taut across his chest. In one hand he carried a bulging blue mailbag, and with his other, he pushed a hand truck piled with brown cardboard boxes. “We’ve got a delivery here for a… uh… Deadtown Express? That you?”
Viv raised her hand. “It’s me. I’m Deadtown Express.”
“Great… Here we go.” He pulled a small box from his hand truck and gave it to Viv. “That one’s certified, so I’ll also need to get your signature.” He handed her a clipboard and a chunky black fountain pen.
She signed, then looked up, frowning. “Are you sure you don’t have any other deliveries for me? I’m expecting twenty pounds of green coffee beans.”
The postman took the clipboard and tucked it into his bag. His eyebrows waggled as he shook his head. “No, nothing like that. I don’t even have to check my manifest. If I was lugging around twenty pounds of coffee all morning, I’d know.” He glanced at Riley, who was placing the book back in its box. “Say, if that’s going in the mail, I can take it for you. Save you a trip to the post office.”
Riley looked up, confused. “Oh. No, thank you.”
The postman tipped his hat. “Well, I’ll be getting back to my rounds. Say, when is this place going to be open? I was just thinking I could use a little cup of coffee.”
“Grand opening’s Sunday.” Viv smiled. “Why don’t you drop by, and I’ll give you a latte on the house?”
“I’d love to, but I’m off weekends. Maybe I can take a rain check until Monday?”
“Totally. Have a good rest of your day,” Viv called out as he left. Then she turned to her friends. “Nice guy. I wonder if Manuel’s on vacation. He’s our mailman at the other location.”
“Probably added some new routes,” Riley said around bites of pastry. “They’d need to with so many new people moving in.”
“True.” Viv was frowning again. “I just… I need those coffee beans for the grand opening. I ordered them special from a supplier in South America. They should be here today.”
“Maybe they’ve been delayed, but you have time,” Emma said, picking up her pastry and sniffing it. It smelled like buttery heaven. “It’s only Thursday.”
“I don’t have time.” Viv went quiet, and her gaze fell to the floor. When she spoke, her voice was flat, distant. “Coffee roasting is a process. Every batch of beans is different, and it takes a little trial and error to figure out the best temperature and time. Once you get that dialed in and roast the whole batch, they need a day to rest before you can use them.” She sighed, her shoulders slumping. “With all the construction going on, I forgot to place the order until last week.”
Emma’s expression softened, and she set the pastry down again. “Seattle has a thousand coffee shops. There has to be somewhere you can buy green coffee.”
“Most people I know order directly from the growers.” Viv paused, then leaned her head to the side. “Actually, there might be if it’s still around. There used to be a weird import/export company over in Georgetown that got regular shipments of green coffee beans. I went there once, years ago. Deidre told me about it. It was… weird.”
“What’s their name?” Emma reached for her phone. “I’ll give them a call.”
Viv frowned and shook her head slowly. “I… don’t remember its name, but I remember the location.”
Emma stood up straight and nodded to herself. Forget about the photos. Forget about the job applications. Here’s a chance to repay Viv for everything. “I’ll go. Just give me directions and a shopping list, and I’ll have your green coffee beans to you by lunch.”
“Really?” Viv blinked. “I’d go myself except there’s so much to do here. Not to mention I’m apartment hunting.”
“Of course. It’s no problem at all. Just let me stop by my house to drop the photos.” She turned to Riley, who was putting the fancy book box into their backpack. “You wanted to talk with me. Can we chat while we walk?”
The smell of freshly cut grass, the dew-damp green lawn, and the chittering birds in the trees above all struck Emma as she and Riley exited the café. And the colors: emerald-green leaves against the blue sky, brilliant green moss against dark brown bark, white and purple flowers against rich black loamy soil.
Emma closed her eyes, inhaled, and enjoyed the feeling as the light breeze lifted her hair. The only thing that spoiled it was the jarring sound of the crows as they tried to scare off any predators that might come for their hatchlings.
“The book makes me nervous,” Emma said. “Maybe it’s how we got it. Maybe it’s the title.”
“It’s an ironic title: The Gift of the fae.”
“It’s what my aunt used to call our ability to talk with ghosts. I can’t help but wonder if the book is tied to my family.”
“I’m certain that it is.”
“What do you mean?” Emma turned toward the professor.
“What do you know about the fae? About the fair folk?”
“They’re fairies, right? The little Tinker Bell guys who live in mushroom houses and fly around, scattering pixie dust on everything?”
“Those would be pixies. The fae are… worse.”
“How?”
“In every possible way. They’re less like Tinker Bell and more like ancient, multidimensional beings that are indifferent to humanity yet have a strange predilection for taking people.”
“They kidnap people?”
“They buy them.” Riley shuddered. “All the lore agrees. The fae only enter homes when they’re invited. They always keep their word. They never take anything or anyone without making an honest trade. Imagine that you’re a peasant in Europe in the fifteenth century.”
“I’m not sure I want to picture that.”
“You live in a small village in a little hut with your wife. Life is repetitive, even boring. Every day you go out and work in your garden or chop wood in the forest. Your wife tends the house. Your kids scamper around. It’s lovely.”
“I guess some people might think that’s lovely.”
“Now imagine that you return home from helping your feudal lord with his planting to find that your dinner isn’t waiting on the table. Your wife doesn’t seem to care. Instead of performing her duties, she wanders around the homestead with a faraway look, singing folk songs to herself.”
“Sounds like she’s depressed,” Emma quipped.
“Probably. Some people would say that’s not your wife at all. They’d say that the fae stole your real wife and replaced her with a strange copy, a changeling. Nobody is surprised when a few days later the changeling has an accident and dies.”
“She was obviously depressed. They didn’t treat women very well back then.”
Riley shook their head. “No, they didn’t. Most changeling stories were obvious cover-ups for ordinary tragedies, but I’m starting to think the truth might be more complex.”
They had reached Emma’s house and were standing by the front stairs. Emma turned to face Riley. “Why the change of heart?”
“Because of the book we found. The Gift of the fae. It tells you how to negotiate deals with them… awful deals.” Riley shook their head in disgust. “You can trade your family members for wealth, power, or knowledge. The changeling is part of the deal. A kind of courtesy that the fae provides to keep the villagers from asking too many questions.”
Emma stood there, stunned. Her mom had told her about the source of her family’s psychic powers. An ancestor of hers had gone to the crossroads to make a deal with something. Could that something have been one of the fae?
A loud caw brought her back to earth. Something black and feathered rushed by, narrowly missing her head. Emma saw that it was a crow as it glided up and beat its black wings against the bright sky. “Let’s get inside before these birds kill us!”
