Chapter 24 #2
She jogged downstairs to the sounds of Victoria chiding Seren over something, but as Deryn entered the kitchen, they both stopped talking immediately.
“I gather I was the subject of your spirited discussion?”
“No discussion. Seren is a doofus. No news there. Let’s go. First Twin, give your sister the keys. You can walk; you’ll be late to the party as it is. You have to close the coffee shop.”
Victoria actually tapped her foot a few times, and Seren threw Deryn the keys to her Jeep and shook her head.
“Don’t ask. Good luck with this one. She’s on a roll.”
Deryn caught the keys one-handed.
“Speaking of rolls…” Victoria droned on all the way to the empty restaurant, closed early for the day to allow everyone to first vote and then to celebrate or commiserate.
They walked through the front door, passing through the dining room, and Victoria beelined straight to the walk-in freezer.
The unit occupied a prominent place in the building, and Deryn remembered that her aunt had had to drop a considerable chunk of change to fortify the basement underneath to make sure its weight was properly supported.
Not to mention the twenty grand for the unit itself.
Still, for a Michelin-starred spot, it was worth it.
The freezer worked like the well-oiled machine that it was. It was also huge.
Victoria pulled on the locking bar, which was mostly decoration and had no lock on it, before pushing the handle down, opening the heavy door. Deryn immediately wrapped her leather jacket tighter around herself.
“I keep forgetting how much of a baby you turn into when you’re near anything cold. Remember how Lizzy used to bundle you up ’cause if you were too chilly, your magic just spontaneously set fire to things?”
The moment she finished the sentence, Victoria turned to Deryn, the movement so fast that her braid hit her face.
“I… Der, damn it. It’s been over twenty years, and I still don’t know how to talk to you about her.”
Deryn stared, then simply walked into the freezer, Victoria on her heels.
She tried to fight the sudden tears, knowing they’d just freeze right away in the minus eighteen degrees.
She heard Victoria close the door behind them and waited for her aunt to speak.
When she did, Deryn was grateful that Victoria understood her silence.
There was a time and place for this conversation—one that was likely about twenty years too late—but not when they were hurrying to a party.
“Okay, so…” Her aunt motioned to one of the shelves. “This is it.”
Deryn took a step closer to where Victoria was pointing. It was all mise en place. She could maybe see what it was supposed to be—puffs of some sort, but they were far from the finished product. She turned to face her aunt.
“No way—”
“Deryn, listen, this just needs a little assembling—”
“I see why you didn’t ask for Seren’s help.”
“I mean, Seren is a decent cook. But you’re the chef!” Victoria made an exaggerated gesture with her arms.
“So are you! Don’t suck up to me. This is so underhanded. So sneaky. And underhanded. Yes, I’m aware I said it twice.”
Victoria grimaced, clearly aiming for sheepishness.
“Can we just… Pretty please? I confess the entire ‘getting caught going down on Renee Moss’ thing was not in my plans for today. And that it made the front page of the paper wasn’t something I signed up for either.
I mean, it’s Election Day, and the man lost by over forty points and then ran into my house to see my head between his wife’s legs—”
Deryn felt her jaw drop.
“OH MY GOD! I don’t want to know any of that! Why are you telling me this? Stop, stop, stop! Get the damn puffs, I’ll assemble them, and for the love of everything, can you not speak?”
Victoria cackled—actually cackled—and Deryn knew she had been played. She was about to say so when something clanged outside the door. Something distinctly metallic. Something like the steel bar that locked the freezer from the outside.
If Deryn hadn’t known from the sound exactly what had just happened, the lights going off the moment the door was locked gave it away. The red illuminating the exit painted everything in the freezer in an otherworldly, bloody hue.
Victoria stilled. Then took a deep breath.
“There’s an opening safety doodad by the door.
Right beneath the bulb.” Her voice was very quiet, very level.
“The bar must’ve fallen. The mechanism activates the thingamabob to trigger the whatsit to open it back up.
OSHA regulations. And there’s no lock in sight, I don’t have one, so it’s not like we’re trapped. ”
Deryn knew all that. Deryn had worked in plenty of restaurants and had been around enough professional kitchens to know all that. Her hands still went numb, and her breath was coming out in short, cloudy huffs.
“You’re not claustrophobic, baby.” Victoria laid a hand on her shoulder, and they walked the few steps back to the entrance together.
“No, not claustrophobic. Just…” Deryn didn’t finish her thought.
She reached for the little lever to release the door and turned it.
She did not know what she was expecting.
Perhaps the same sound as the bar made when it closed, signaling the opening.
But nothing happened. No sound came. Victoria leaned on the handle that unlocked the door from the inside and found it impossible to move.
Which meant only one thing. The bar was down for certain. The door was locked.
“Okay,” Victoria whispered. “What did you want to say earlier about not being claustrophobic? Just…what?”
Deryn tried pushing the handle herself. There was no give.
“Just that if this was not simply the bar closing due to some scientific thingy happening, then it’s sabotage. Which means someone is out there right now.”
“Oh.” Victoria had clearly not considered that possibility.
Deryn touched the door, patted the immense hinges, and gave the entire thing a shove. Nothing. Well, short of setting off a bomb, there was not much she could do.
She turned and found a nearly empty box, turned it over, letting the contents fall, and sat down on top of it. Victoria huddled up to her.
After a second and already cold enough to steam, Deryn took Victoria’s hand and let her power warm both of them.
“Kinda dumb to lock me in here with the Fire Witch, don’t you think?
” Victoria allowed her own, much weaker magic to join Deryn’s.
It was like a hug. Deryn realized she had missed it.
It was not as powerful as her sisters’, Victoria having her own, very distinctive gift, but Deryn had missed it just the same.
“Well, I only have so much time before it exhausts me, so… I don’t think it was really all that dumb.”
She tried to put a bit of a damper on the intensity with which power coursed through her, but she was so cold that she knew it was impossible to dial it down. Her power would do what it needed to do to make her feel warm, even if it meant she would only be able to sustain it for a very short time.
“Okay, all right, no need to panic. I’m sure someone will come and get us.”
Deryn raised her eyes to the imaginary sky.
“Like who? Seren knows we’re here, but before it occurs to her that we’re in trouble, we will croak. I don’t think I have more than an hour in me. Maybe a little bit more, but also, this is just a level of cold I don’t think I’ve ever been exposed to. And there are two of us.”
Victoria immediately pulled her hands from Deryn’s grip.
“Then you stay warm.”
Deryn snatched the hands back.
“Are you crazy? Jesus H, old woman! Stop wiggling and sit still. You don’t want me wasting my energy anyway. If I’m warm, then so will you.”
Victoria settled after a few attempts at pulling away again.
“There’s no reception inside here either,” she said.
“I know that. Remember how I worked here for a few weeks before you booted me out?”
“I was so mad at you.” Victoria sniffed, and Deryn looked at her, horrified. Still, she did not interrupt. “I was so mad at you for being who you are and yet making the choices you were making.”
Deryn found her voice. “And what choices would those be?”
Victoria sniffed again. “The jobs, the women, the parties. No, none of these would offend me if you were actually into half of them. Well, you were not into any of the women—the many, many women. But I hope that is changing. You’re thirty-five.
And you just can’t stop running. Been running since Lizzy died. And you’ve never stopped since.”
“You’re mad at me for…partying?” Deryn asked, her voice rising to an embarrassingly high pitch at the end of the sentence.
“No, more for wasting yourself. You are… Paloma is so right. You’re special. Unique. Fire itself. Everything you touch succeeds. You win contests, you have a résumé that would get you financing for any restaurant, any concept you wanted.”
Deryn just gaped at her aunt.
“I am literally a gazillion-time Bake Your Heart Out champion, Aunty.”
“Oh, so you won this last one too, then. Congrats, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“You could’ve won that with your eyes closed.
I stopped watching after the third. Why?
Because I wanted you to reach for something else.
Comfort in the known, sure. Maybe it would’ve still been comforting two or three times.
But you’re wallowing. You made it big early, and the past ten years, you’ve just been going through the motions. You make your easy money—”
“Nothing wrong with easy money, Victoria. You’ve been at the same restaurant for what, now? Forty years?”