Daisy Duke's Arc

Chapter 26 of 26

The sea-salt scoop had saved her delivery, but it left Daisy in a new trap. Every customer now wanted the cold treat, and the line hummed with it. She had bound only one batch. While she scooped and stalled, she'd forgotten the floor. Now the shop stood empty of her, and she rushed back through the Midnight Cafe door to find the automated feeder dry. Its cream tray sat cracked and licked clean. Beneath the counter, the entity's split ran wider than yesterday. Blue light seeped from the gap. The floorboards groaned upward at their edges. Daisy knelt and pressed her palm to the crack. Cold radiated off it. The feeder had emptied while she chased the queen's box, and the thing below had gone hungry. It was reaching again, wider now, hunting the half it lost. If she didn't quiet it, it would take the floor and the shop with it. She ran to her frozen corner for dream-cream and stopped. The batch was gone, spent on the line. She had nothing bound to feed the reaching. Panic climbed her throat. The meltwater fall shivered. Lyra Starflow surfaced, her starry scales catching the shop's light. She rarely came for anyone but her own errands. Daisy had learned that months ago. The mermaid searched the deep water for a fallen star and gave help only in trade. "It's starving," Daisy said. "I have nothing left to give it." Lyra looked at the crack. "Feed it what it wants. Not cream." "I don't know what it wants." "You do." Lyra lifted a cluster of black mushrooms from the water, their caps glowing blue, dark ooze dripping from the edges. "These grow where lost things wait. Bake them. Bind them to the ache of being split." Daisy took the cluster. The glow matched the light in the crack exactly. She understood. The entity didn't hunger for food. It hungered to be seen as broken, the way she'd learned before with the longing cake. A cold voice cut across the room. "Or I sell you a patch for the floor." Shiver drifted through the door, skull grinning, cloak in tatters. The shrouded merchant traded in wares no one trusted. "Seal the crack. Cheap. The thing below stays trapped and quiet forever." "That would starve it," Daisy said. "It's not a leak. It's a person, split in two." Shiver's hollow eyes did not blink. "Suit yourself." They faded back through the door. Daisy baked fast. She ground the glowing mushrooms into her dough and bound the flavor to the ache of a thing torn from its twin. She slid the cake into the crack. The blue light softened. The floorboards settled flat. The groaning stopped. The crack held, quiet and whole for now. But when Daisy stood, she saw the glow had not vanished. It had spread. Thin blue veins now ran up the walls, tracing the same longing through her whole shop.