CHAPTER 4 BORIS
BORIS
The lunch prep station is a warzone of good intentions.
I have seventeen pounds of brisket dry-rubbed and resting on the back counter, a full cauldron of bone broth threatening to boil over on the hearth, and a cutting board buried under a mountain of rough-chopped onions that Tavvi, my prep cook, abandoned fifteen minutes ago because the fumes made him cry so hard he walked into a doorframe.
"Tavvi. The onions."
"Chef, my eyes. I cannot see my own hands."
"You are an Orc. You have survived cave bears."
"Cave bears do not attack the tear ducts, Chef."
Fair point. I grasp the knife myself, sweep the onions into a massive wooden bowl, and carry them to the hearth.
The broth is rolling now, fat golden bubbles cresting and breaking against the rim of the cast iron.
I lower the heat by nudging a burning log sideways with the toe of my boot, a move that would horrify every human chef alive but has served me well for thirty-seven years.
The front window catches my eye. Movement. Fast, erratic movement, the kind that usually means a dog got loose or someone's enchanted purchase went sideways at the farmers' market again.
I set the bowl down.
Through the glass, a cantaloupe-sized mushroom rockets past, trailing a faint shimmer of gold spores. It hits the mailbox across the street and rebounds at a sharp angle, sailing over a parked minivan and disappearing behind the hardware store.
Then another one.
Then three more, in rapid succession, bouncing off the sidewalk like rubber balls dropped from a rooftop.
Then Solene.
She rounds the corner at a dead sprint, her white chef coat streaked with something golden and powdery, her French twist half-collapsed, loose strands of dark hair whipping across her face.
She is carrying a bus tub in both arms and trying to catch the mushrooms mid-bounce like some kind of furious, elegantly dressed outfielder.
She lunges for one. Misses. Her hip clips a newspaper box. The bus tub goes flying.
She does not stop. She does not even slow down. She just abandons the tub and keeps running, grabbing at the air with bare hands, her face a mask of concentrated, murderous focus.
Another mushroom sails past my window. Two more follow it, one of them hitting my front door hard enough to rattle the hinges.
My hands are already on the counter.
I clear it in one vault. Both palms flat on the lacquered oak, legs swinging up and over, boots hitting the floor on the other side with a heavy crack. Tavvi yelps. The broth sloshes.
"Watch the hearth!"
I blow through the front door and into the street.
The air is thick with golden spores. They shimmer in the sunlight like pollen from some alien meadow, coating everything in a fine, glittering dust. Mushrooms bounce in every direction.
One hits a fire hydrant and launches twenty feet straight up.
Another ricochets between two parked cars in a rapid zigzag before pinging off a street lamp and arcing over the roof of the hardware store.
Solene is forty feet ahead of me, still sprinting.
"Rostova!"
She does not turn. She snatches a mushroom out of the air with her right hand. The impact spins her sideways.
I close the distance in six strides. My legs are longer. My lungs are bigger. I have been splitting firewood since dawn and my blood is already hot.
A mushroom flings off the sidewalk directly in front of me, rising fast. I snag it at the apex of its arc.
The thing squirms in my grip, dense and springy, pulsing with kinetic energy.
It kicks against my palm like a living thing.
I tuck it under my arm and grab a second one that glances off a parking meter.
"Rostova! How many?"
She whips around. Her eyes are wild. A smear of golden spore dust runs diagonally across her left cheek like warpaint.
"Seventy-two pounds! Six crates! Someone cut the straps!"
"Cut?"
"Cut!"
That stops me for half a second. Deliberate. Someone did this on purpose. But there is no time for that particular fury because three more mushrooms are careening toward the intersection and a delivery truck is pulling through the light.
I sprint past her. The truck brakes. The mushrooms bounce harmlessly off the front bumper and scatter into the crosswalk. I grab one out of the air with each hand, a third with the crook of my elbow, and body-block a fourth against me. It rebounds off my sternum and I catch it on the backswing.
Solene reaches me. She is breathing hard. Her pristine coat is destroyed, covered in golden dust, the top button torn off. She holds five mushrooms in a precarious armful, her chin pressing down on the top one to keep it contained.
"We need cold water," she gasps. "Below thirty-four degrees. It kills the kinetic charge."
"My bar. Ice bin behind the counter. Two hundred pounds of ice."
Her jaw clenches. Something passes across her face. Pride warring with arithmetic.
The mushroom under her chin makes a break for it.
I catch it before it clears her shoulder. My hand closes around it an inch from her ear. My knuckles brush her jaw.
We both freeze.
The mushroom writhes between my fingers. Solene's pulse hammers against my knuckles where they press her jaw. One heartbeat. Two.
Then she jerks backward, chin snapping up.
"Your bar. Go."
She pivots and runs. I follow.
We dump our first haul into the ice bin behind the counter. Tavvi stares. The mushrooms hit the ice and shudder once, twice, then go still, their golden shimmer dimming to a dull bronze. Solene was right. Cold kills the bounce.
"Canvas," she says, already scanning my bar. "Heavy canvas. Burlap. Anything with weight."
I point to the storage closet. "Grain sacks. Back wall, top shelf."
She disappears. I hear her drag the step stool across the floor, hear the rough scrape of canvas being yanked down in armfuls. She returns with four massive grain sacks, the kind I use for bulk barley shipments. Each one could hold a grown child.
"These will work. You catch. I'll bag."
"Other way. You catch, I bag. My hands are bigger."
"Your hands are bigger, which means you can catch more at once."
"Which means I can hold the sack open wider."
Her mouth opens. Closes. The arithmetic wins again.
"Fine. Hold them open. Wide. And don't drop any."
We hit the street.
The scene has escalated. Golden spores hang in the air like a glittering fog.
Mushrooms ricochet between buildings, off car hoods, against windows.
Mrs. Ellison from the dry cleaner stands in her doorway clutching a broom, swatting at one that keeps bouncing off her awning in a persistent loop.
Two teenagers across the street have their phones out, filming.
A large mushroom rockets off the sidewalk six feet to my left.
Solene is already moving. She dives, snatches it at knee height, and pivots toward me in a single fluid motion.
I hold the grain sack open with both fists.
She drops it in. The mushroom hits the canvas, bucks once against the heavy weave, and goes still.
Too much mass in the fabric. Nowhere to bounce.
"One," she says.
"Sixty-one to go."
"Seventy-one."
"Right."
A cluster of four comes bouncing down the sidewalk in a staggered formation, each one hitting the ground at different intervals, filling the air with a rapid percussive rhythm like someone firing popcorn kernels at a snare drum.
Solene charges them head-on. She catches the first two, one in each hand, tucks them against her ribs, then hooks the third with her elbow and knees the fourth upward just long enough to trap it against her forearm.
I have never seen reflexes like that in a kitchen or out of one.
She dumps all four into my sack. The canvas bulges. I cinch the drawstring tight and grab the second bag.
"You played sports," I say.
"Volleyball. Division one. Setter."
That explains the hands.
A mushroom screams off the fire hydrant at a wicked angle. I lunge sideways and snag it before it takes out Mrs. Chen's front window. The impact reverberates up my arm, dense and electric. I toss it gently into the sack Solene now holds open at her hip.
We fall into a rhythm without discussing it.
She reads the trajectories. I cover the range.
My wingspan is nearly seven feet. I can reach across a full lane of traffic and pluck a mushroom out of its arc without moving my feet.
When one goes high, I jump. When three come at once, I catch two and body-block the third, letting it bounce off me into the open sack she holds against my stomach.
She moves around me like I am a fixed point on a map. Darting left, darting right, always circling back. Her spatial awareness is surgical. She tracks six mushrooms at once and prioritizes by trajectory, calling out positions in clipped, rapid bursts.
"High left!"
I reach. Got it.
"Two low, coming off the bumper of the blue truck!"
I drop to one knee. They smack into my palms simultaneously. I toss both over my shoulder without looking. The soft thump of canvas tells me she caught them.
"Three more on the roof of the bakery. They'll come down on the north side."
I am already running. They drop in a cascade, one after another, and I catch them like falling fruit, cradling each against me before turning to find her right behind me, sack gaping open, jaw set, eyes bright with something that is not quite anger anymore.
We work the street in widening circles. Sweat soaks through my apron. Her chef coat is beyond salvation, more gold than white now, the sleeves pushed above her elbows. Every time she makes a difficult catch, a sharp, involuntary grin flashes across her face before she kills it.
She does not want me to see her enjoying this.
I see it anyway.
Twenty minutes. Four full grain sacks cinched tight and lined up against the wall of my tavern like sandbags. Solene counts under her breath, fingers tapping against each bulge of canvas.
"Sixty-eight." She straightens. Scans the street. "We're four short."
A distant thwack echoes from somewhere behind the hardware store.