Daisy Duke's Arc

Chapter 6 of 22

The Void Chef came at closing, when the rose lamp flickered low. It slid through the cafe passage, worm-body dark with stars, eyes bright and glinting. Daisy knew why it came. Every new flavor she'd pulled through the door added to her debt. Now the Chef spread its starry length across her counter and waited. She counted her coins. Not enough. Not close. "I don't have your payment," she said. Her eye stung. "Not in silver." The Chef's eyes shifted. It pointed one shadowy tip at Daisy herself. At her hands. At the white petals ringing her eye. It wanted a piece of her. A flavor, a smell, a part she couldn't grow back. Harriet had warned her. The more she bound, the more the Chef would take. "Don't you dare give it your petals." Leslie Sweetspell swept in from the dark, candy gown swishing, her lollipop eyepatch catching the lamplight. She set a black food cart beside the counter with a bang. Purple panels, gold moons, a glowing sign. "I've watched witches trade themselves to hungry things," she said, sweet and slow. "They always come up short." She winked her one eye at Daisy. "There's a smarter way to pay." Skeeter tapped in behind her, cane clicking, emerald eye glinting. He rolled a strange thing onto the counter. A black crystal ball wrapped in two silver rings, dark and glassy. "A debt is a hunger," he said. "Feed the hunger, not the debtor. What sells a craving without spending a self?" Daisy stared at the cart. At the crystal orb. Her mind turned. The Chef wanted flavor. She made flavor. What if she paid in the thing she made best, not in pieces of who she was? She grabbed dough and worked fast. She shaped a fat tooth-shaped cookie and smoothed white frosting on top. Then she reached for the darkest thing she had, a twist of black licorice syrup, and folded its bitter-sweet into the batter. She spoke a new anchor. Not a day. Not a want. A grudge. Every ache of a debt someone couldn't pay. She tied the flavor to that old, sour memory the waking world never forgets. Then she pushed the tooth cookie through the passage and back. It held. Whole. She set it before the Chef. "A flavor for a flavor," she said. "I'll bake your debt into a treat and sell it from her cart. You get a new taste no one else can make. You stop taking pieces of me." The Chef leaned close. Its eyes flared. Slowly, it took the tooth cookie into its dark body. The stars along its length brightened, then dimmed, satisfied. The debt-count in the air unraveled and cleared. Daisy sagged against the counter, whole, all her petals still ringed round her eye. Leslie patted the cart. "Now you've got a place to sell." Daisy grinned. Her debt was paid, and she had a stall in the waking world at last.