Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Winners and Angry Losers
Gideon
Declan and I headed towards the stage, but I took one more glance back over my shoulder to make sure Az and Tulip were behaving.
We all cared about Perry. Bigfoots weren’t just shy; they were also one of the kindest species alive, and I understood the urge to protect him from the Karens and Chads of the world, but this was what Perry wanted, so we needed to let him try it.
I was relieved to see Az and Tulip sitting at a picnic table off to the side, away from the food truck. Hopefully, they would stay there.
We made it to the stage area just as Leon was speaking. The crowd of people standing around wasn’t large, something I’m sure Leon would complain about, but the people who were there all seemed excited to see who won.
A few more stragglers were still wandering up.
Malcolm Stewart walked up next to us, a scowl turning down his lips above his neatly trimmed beard.
Seeing him down here with us surprised me because I’d tasted his Dead Center Stout, and it was good.
He wasn’t the friendliest guy around, but he knew how to make a tasty beer, and I thought he had a good chance at winning first place.
“Hey, Malcolm. Shouldn’t you be up there with the other brewers?” I pointed at the stage where Ivan, Tessa, Roy, and a few others stood waiting.
He scoffed. “When I arrived with my growler full of stout, they informed me they never received my application so they wouldn’t accept my entry.”
“Oh, I hate to hear that. Your brew was good. Will you be selling at your booth?”
“I will. I have a couple of varieties available and Bull’s Eye Brewery t-shirts as well, but I was hoping to win the distribution deal that’s part of the prize.
I’m a great brewmaster, but I don’t know much about the business side of things.
Plus, the money would’ve been nice.” He let out a tired sigh.
He wandered off to talk to someone else, and I looked down at Declan. “That’s a shame for him, but good news for the other contestants. He was some serious competition.”
Declan grinned at me. “We can stop by his tent and try his beer. Maybe if we buy some, it’ll cheer him up, and he’ll realize he shouldn’t give up.”
He was like a ray of sunshine, so positive and thinking things would work out for the best. How he managed that after his parents kept the knowledge of magic from him, I had no idea, but it was one of the things I loved about him.
“I own a pub, Declan. I don’t need to buy beer.”
“Of course you don’t.” He patted me on the arm. “But you will, right?”
Like there was a chance I would tell him no. “Yeah, I will.”
He beamed at me, and that was well worth the price of a few bottles of ale.
Someone standing right in front of us, turned and glared at us before putting her finger to her lips and shushing us.
Apparently, unlike most of the people here, she wanted to hear what Leon was saying.
But it wasn’t nice to be rude, so I turned my attention to his speech.
“I’m so excited to see so many visitors to our wonderful little town.
Not a lot of people knew we had such talented brewmasters here in Ravenstone, but I did, and I’m so glad to be able to introduce the public to their amazing products.
But before I announce the winner of the first annual Get Hopped Up Beer Festival, I want to remind you that there are plenty of vendors here with ales, lagers, stouts, and everything in between for you to try, so be sure and check them out. ”
Leon turned and picked up three envelopes, then he looked out over the small crowd. Leon could’ve been announcing the winner of a Grammy for the amount of ceremony he’d built around three envelopes.
He paused between each name with the theatrical gravity of a man who’d been waiting his whole life for this moment. I supposed, in a way, he had. Leon didn’t do anything by halves, particularly when it came to his festivals.
“Third place goes to...” Another pause. The woman in front of us, who’d shushed me, leaned forward like she might tip over. “Tessa Morland’s Thirsty Thrower Brewery for her Wheel of Wheat Blackberry Ale!”
Applause rippled through the crowd. Tessa, a small woman with silver-streaked locks and paint-stained fingers, pressed both hands over her mouth before raising them in triumph. She was a local—ran the pottery studio two streets over—and the crowd’s warmth for her was genuine.
Declan clapped enthusiastically beside me.
Leon was already opening the second envelope. “Second place goes to Donny Pace of Fireside Brewery for the Campfire Smoked Porter! He was our only out-of-town entry, and hopefully, his second-place victory will encourage more for next year.”
A smattering of applause, a little thinner this time. The man who stepped forward was someone I didn’t recognize. Mid-thirties, broad through the shoulders, a slightly too-confident smile as he accepted his ribbon.
I turned my attention back to the stage, scanning the line of brewers. Ivan Petrov stood at the far end, arms crossed, jaw tight, waiting to see who got first. His coyote side was pushing close to the surface, making his eyes golden.
“Ivan is one of the best brewmasters around,” I said. “His dark lager had a depth and complexity that most commercial breweries spend decades chasing.”
Declan looked up at me. “You know everyone’s recipes?”
“Occupational hazard.” I shrugged. “Also, he brought me a growler last spring and asked my opinion.”
Leon lifted the final envelope with what I could only describe as barely restrained joy.
“And the winner of the first annual Get Hopped Up Beer Festival, taking home first place and the distribution partnership with Kettlebrook Regional...” He drew in a dramatic breath.
“Roy Pruitt, for his Ravenswood Red Ale!”
The applause this time was solid. Roy was well-liked.
He was a big, ruddy-faced man in his late fifties, who’d been brewing in his garage for over a decade before he’d opened the brewery.
He moved across the stage with the energy of someone twenty years younger, pumped Leon’s hand, and held his ribbon aloft like he’d won a championship bout.
Declan cheered. I clapped, but I kept glancing at Ivan, who hadn’t moved. Hadn’t clapped. He just stood there with his arms still crossed, staring at Roy like he was doing complex and unhappy mathematics in his head.
“You’re doing the thing,” Declan said.
“What thing?”
“The squinting, scanning, filing-things-away thing. What did you notice?”
I almost smiled. Three weeks, and he could already read me. I wasn’t sure whether to be charmed or unnerved. I settled on both.
“Ivan didn’t place,” I said.
Declan blinked. “Is that unexpected?”
“For Ivan? Yes. Like I said, his lager was good.”
He followed my gaze to where Ivan now stood slightly apart from the other brewers, watching Roy accept congratulations. “Maybe the judges just preferred the others.”
“Maybe.” I didn’t say anything else, because Leon had launched into another speech about the importance of local craft brewing to the regional economy, and the woman in front of us had turned around again, finger already raised in warning.
Declan pressed his lips together.
I looked straight ahead.
The crowd began to drift as Leon wound down, the energy loosening into the pleasant, purposeless wandering of a festival afternoon.
Roy and the other winners came down the stage steps into a small knot of well-wishers.
Leon was already orbiting them, straightening his sweater vest and looking extremely pleased with himself.
I was considering whether to congratulate Roy when I heard it.
Not the words at first, just the tone. Sharp, low, and angry. It wasn’t loud, but my sensitive hearing picked it up.
I turned.
Beckett Hayes, Roy’s former apprentice, had planted himself directly in Roy’s path.
He was in his late twenties, maybe, lean in the way of someone who worked with their hands.
His jaw was set, and his eyes were dark with the kind of fury that had been building for a while before it finally found its moment.
“You didn’t deserve that.” His voice was quiet enough that only the people immediately around them could hear, but that still meant a fair number of festival-goers had stopped moving and were watching. “Everyone who matters knows it. That recipe is mine. You took it and called it yours.”
Roy’s expression went from surprise to something carefully composed. “Beckett—”
“Don’t.” The young man, Beckett, took a step closer.
He wasn’t shouting, which somehow made it worse.
“You fired me. Fine. I can live with that. But you didn’t just fire me.
You took my work and put your name on it and then won a distribution deal with it.
” His voice cracked on the last few words, the anger fracturing into something rawer. “That’s not fine.”
The crowd had gone quiet, and I could see Leon at the edge of my peripheral vision, going a spectacular shade of red.
Declan touched my arm. “Gideon.”
“Yeah.” I was already moving.
I stepped into the space between the two men.
“All right,” I said. Not loudly. I didn’t need to be loud. “Let’s bring it down.”
Beckett’s eyes cut to me. Up close, he looked younger, angrier, and more exhausted than he had from a distance. Whatever this grievance was, he’d been carrying it for a while.
“This doesn’t concern you,” he said.
“It concerns everyone within earshot, which, right now, is most of the festival,” I said evenly. Beckett was a human, so he had no idea how much this concerned me. “Whatever this is, is between you two, and a crowd of strangers isn’t going to solve it.”
Roy had the grace to look uncomfortable. “He’s right, Beckett. Here in front of everyone isn’t the place.”
“Oh, now you want privacy.” Beckett laughed, short and humorless. “You weren’t worried about that when you submitted my recipe under your name.”
“I told you—”
“Later,” I said. The word came out with the alpha weight that I had no right to have, but both men stopped. I held Beckett’s gaze until I felt him recalibrate. “This can be dealt with properly. Not here.”
A long beat.
Beckett glanced at Roy. Then at me. Then back at Roy, and something in his expression settled into something colder and more deliberate than the hot fury of a moment ago. He took a step back.
“Fine,” he said. He smoothed the front of his jacket with one hand, the gesture oddly precise. “Fine.”
He turned to leave. I almost let out a breath.
Then he paused. Just for a moment. Just long enough to look back over his shoulder at Roy with an expression that had nothing impulsive in it at all.
“You’ll pay for this,” he said quietly. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Then he walked away into the crowd and was gone.