Daisy Duke's Arc

Chapter 25 of 26

The cake with the humming crust sat on Daisy's counter. Nessa's water could not carry it. The collector lived on the surface, in the waking world, where Daisy sold her bread. But her shop was open. A line already stretched from the door, waking customers who came every morning for her buns. If she left to chase a box she'd never seen, the line would scatter. Hungry people don't wait. They go elsewhere and never come back. Daisy looked from the cake to the door and back. She could not do both. Feed her steady customers, or carry the queen's cake to a stranger she couldn't find. The meltwater fall shivered. Nessa rose from the dark, crown breaking the surface. She had heard everything. "You owe me the delivery," she said flatly. "Not just the cake." "I have a line," Daisy said. "If I close, I lose them. I lose the whole shop I've built." Nessa's onyx eyes did not soften. "Then you lose them," she said. "My waters have been still for longer than I can count." Daisy's hands shook. Then the sugar moth landed on the cake and went calm, and an idea landed with it. "I don't have to leave the shop empty," she said. "I'll feed the line first. Fast. And I'll make the cake work while it waits." She turned to the crowd at the door. "Free scoops," she called. "On the house." She ran to the frozen corner, where dream-cream chilled beside the ice flower. She bound a batch to the taste of the deep water, briny and cold and sweet. She scooped it into cups and passed them down the line. The waking customers took the cold treats, surprised, and stayed to eat. No one left. The line held itself together, licking sea-salt cream. With the crowd fed and quiet, Daisy grabbed the humming cake and stepped through the Midnight Cafe door into the waking world. She came out near a market that drifted, its canopies layered and hung with lanterns. Tall crystal posts glowed with starry lights along the crowded rows. She had never sold here. But the cake pulled in her hands, tugging toward a fountain at the market's heart. Pink and blue light poured up from its basins, stars flowing in the water. Beside it sat a stall of locked boxes. Daisy set the cake on the fountain's rim. The hum met the flowing water. One box on the stall began to rattle. Its lid cracked. A single note escaped, long and low, and slid down into the fountain's stars. Daisy carried the freed note back through the door in a cup of cream. Nessa took it, and her tentacles trembled. Far below, the still water finally moved. "Paid," Nessa said. But behind Daisy, her cold treat had spread. The whole line now wanted the sea-salt scoop, and she had bound only one batch.