I jerked awake for the I-don’t-even-know-how-many-th time and blearily noted the moonlight streaming through the window was gone, replaced with the first hints of sunlight. I tugged my phone free from its charger and floated it across the room to me and sourly glared at the ‘7:17 AM’ on the screen.
To go back to sleep or to get up… On the one hand, I most definitely did not want to get up. I was quite cozy with Elle pressed against my back and her arm wrapped around me. On the other hand…
I’d had enough nightmares for one night.
Not wanting to wake Elle, I carefully began to slip out from under her arm. She sleepily muttered something unintelligible but otherwise didn’t react, and soon enough I was free. I shivered, feeling goosebumps prickling my arm as I pulled back the sheets and the colder air of the room washed over me.
My stomach was growling and I didn’t feel ready to try and drag myself into the shower, so I trudged out into the hall and towards the kitchen, idly noting Newter was back from a night of searching when I passed his open door and saw his orange tail poking out from under his sheets and onto the floor. I reached the safe house’s small kitchen soon enough and started poking around in the cabinets, trying to coax my sleep-addled brain to remember where the cereal was.
When I finally found it, I stared at the box, trying to remember what to do next. It was supposed to go in my mouth to make the hunger go away, but…
“Juniper?”
I sluggishly turned and saw Gregor was in the doorway. “Good muh-or-nuh-ing, Gregor.”
“Good morning to you as well. Are you all right?”
“No.” I held up the box for his inspection. He looked at it, then at me with a brow scrunch. He didn’t under-sit. “Wanna eat but buh-ox is too big.”
“Too big?”
I put the corner of the box in my mouth so he could see. Much too big to fit. Also, ew—the box didn’t taste like sugar tiger flakes at all. Gregor came over, and as he took the box from me, I made sure he knew. “Duh-zz-nt tay-stuh right.”
“It is still in the box.”
Oh! This bad-taster was keeping my sweet cat bits from me. How rude.
“Juniper, would you spin your coin for me, please?”
My coin? My coin! I’d left it in our room. Whoops. “Uh huh!”
I reached out to it and twisted it upright and into a spin, and within moments I was blushing. “Oh. Sorry.”
“It is not a problem,” Gregor remarked with a small smile. “Now, do you want cereal, or would you like to wait on a full breakfast?”
I tilted my head in mild confusion. Maybe my memory was off, but I could have sworn we didn’t have much food left yesterday. “Full? Thuh-ah-tuh we didn’t have much?”
“Yes. Melanie arranged for some supplies. They should be here soon, half of an hour at most, if you wish to wait?”
The wait didn’t sound appealing, but the thought of some bacon and eggs overruled that objection. “Please.”
“Very well. Please put these away, and I will get started when the food is here.”
I accepted the box of frosted flakes back, one corner of which was most definitely not slightly soggy, and tucked them away while he moved out to the living room. I stored the cereal and moved to join him, finding he had taken a seat on the couch and was starting to crack open a book.
“What-cha read-ing?” I asked.
“This? It is an older book by a German author.”
I blinked in surprise. I knew he spoke and read English and Icelandic, but I hadn’t realized he knew other languages. “You speak Ger-mun?”
He chuckled. “No, I am afraid not. This is a translation.”
“Oh. Is it good?”
“I have only just begun, so I cannot say.” Sure enough, if I had paid closer attention, I would have seen he was only a handful of pages in. “I have heard of the story by reputation however, and perhaps you have as well.”
He turned the book so I could see the title, Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I frowned. “De-ul with deh-vul?”
“Yes, that is the general thrust of Faust stories, and I am given to understand this one has such a deal, but it is also different. Look here.”
He turned back a few pages and pointed one of his transparent fingers at a passage while passing the book to me.
THE LORD
Know’st Faust?
MEPHISTOPHELES
The Doctor Faust?
THE LORD
My servant, he!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Forsooth! He serves you after strange devices:
No earthly meat or drink the fool suffices:
His spirit’s ferment far aspireth;
Half conscious of his frenzied, crazed unrest,
The fairest stars from Heaven he requireth,
From Earth the highest raptures and the best,
And all the Near and Far that he desireth
Fails to subdue the tumult of his breast.
THE LORD
Though still confused his service unto Me,
I soon shall lead him to a clearer morning.
Sees not the gardener, even while buds his tree,
Both flower and fruit the future years adorning?
MEPHISTOPHELES
What will you bet? There’s still a chance to gain him,
If unto me full leave you give,
Gently upon my road to train him!
THE LORD
As long as he on earth shall live,
So long I make no prohibition.
While Man’s desires and aspirations stir,
He cannot choose but err.
MEPHISTOPHELES
My thanks! I find the dead no acquisition,
And never cared to have them in my keeping.
I much prefer the cheeks where ruddy blood is leaping,
And when a corpse approaches, close my house:
It goes with me, as with the cat the mouse.
THE LORD
Enough! What thou hast asked is granted.
Turn off this spirit from his fountain-head;
To trap him, let thy snares be planted,
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
And him, with thee, be downward led;
Then stand abashed, when thou art forced to say:
A good man, through obscurest aspiration,
Has still an instinct of the one true way.
I paused my reading, feeling very confused, and not because of the old-timey language—though that had been a bit difficult to parse. “Mef… Mef-ist…”
“Mephistopheles.”
“Him. He’s the deh-vul?”
“I believe he is a stand-in here, yes.”
I didn’t bother to hide my incredulity as I asked, “And God muh-akes a bet with him? That suh-eems…”
“Foolish?” Gregor supplied.
“Was gon-na say mor-on-ic.” I couldn’t help my smirk as I added, “But you’re nice-er than me.”
“You say this, but you have not seen me angry before,” he said with a chuckle before his expression shifted to something more somber. “When I still lived in Charleston… I did some things I am not proud of for unworthy reasons. Were I asked, I would have described myself as a bad person.”
“Gregor, I…” It was rare for him to talk about his past. I could count on one hand and have fingers to spare the number of times he had mentioned something in passing about his life before joining the crew, and I had known him now for months. What was I supposed to say to this sudden opening up, especially this particular topic?
“If I may,” he gently interjected. “I do not know if it is possible to make up for the bad one did before, but I do believe we have a choice. Whoever we were, we can change.”
He reached over for the book, which I carefully handed over, still feeling unsure. “I am grateful to Melanie for many things, but the greatest of them is that she gave me the chance to be something more than… what I was.”
Neither of us said anything, and that just worsened my agitation. A pregnant pause meant I was supposed to say something. I was too tired for— no, it probably would’ve gone over my head even if I hadn’t been up half the night after waking everyone up and threatening them with my goddamn knives.
“I thuh-ink…” I started to say only to immediately trail off from a lack of confidence, but it was too late. He was looking to me now, the spell broken. I wasn’t just supposed to say something now—I had to say something. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I thuh-ink you’re a good person.”
Dumb. That was so dumb, absolutely the most basic bullshit I could have said. Gregor had every right to laugh at me, but the problem was I was right. He was a good person, and that meant that instead of rightly calling me an idiot, he smiled at what I said and replied, “Thank you. You are kind to say so.”
Thankfully for everyone involved, we were interrupted by a rhythmic rapping on the exterior door. The delivery was here, and I had been too swept up in being a goddamn moron to notice. Gregor set his book aside and moved to take care of it, giving me a brief reprieve to collect myself.
It took him a few minutes before he was back, his arms lined with hanging plastic bags full of food, and it abruptly hit me that I was literally sitting around doing nothing while he hauled our food around.
“Need hel-puh?” I blurted.
“I can carry everything to the table, thank you.”
That still didn’t sit right by me, so I pressed forward with the only logical follow up, “With coo-kuh-ing?”
He looked to me in surprise that settled into a vaguely pleased expression. “I would not say no to some help. Are you comfortable cooking the eggs?”
Hindsight was a funny thing. “Uh… No.”
“The bacon?”
My brain scrambled frictionlessly for a moment as I tried to figure out to admit the problem tactfully. “No…”
Gregor’s head tilted in mild confusion. “I believe we have the materials required to make pancakes?”
I needed to just admit it before I dug myself an even deeper hole. “Gregor, I… duh-on’t know how to cook.”
“Oh, I see. You had mentioned life with your mother was not ideal, so I had expected she never cooked for you and that you did it yourself. I suppose I am happy to be mistaken about your mother not keeping you fed.”
My eyebrow twitched. I had actually gone hungry more often than not and had stolen money from her to buy things at convenience stores the rest of the time until I was old enough to steal from others. But I wasn’t going to touch that topic with a thirty foot pole.
He tapped his chin consideringly. “I have never taught another to cook, but if you are patient with me, I am willing to try.”
Pretty sure it’s going to be the other way around… “Okay.”
In short order we put away everything we didn’t need—bacon, eggs, and bread for toast—and Gregor retrieved some smaller items we needed and had already had on hand.
“Making toast requires only a toaster and timing, so we will leave that aside for now,” he began, his tone lecturing but without the condescending tone my teachers in school always had. He pulled two large skillets out of the cabinets and set them both on the burners, and as he turned the heat on, he continued.
“You may be tempted to rush this in the pursuit of fast food, but these require time, and if you give it appropriately, you will have better results. Use medium-low heat.” If I hadn’t been able to see the numbers on the dials, I would’ve had no idea what the hell ‘medium-low’ heat was, but the practical demonstration helped.
What followed was mind boggling. I didn’t know much about cooking, but I was under the impression cooking things in skillets required oil to prevent sticking or something along those lines. To my surprise, Gregor began to lay strips of bacon directly into one of the dry pans, and once he had lined it with meat without overcrowding any of it, he cut some thick slabs off of a stick of butter and placed them in the other, unoccupied pan.
“No oi-uhl?”
“No. The bacon will provide its own over time. For the eggs, I find butter is better for flavor.” He grabbed a bowl out of the cabinet, cracked an egg by rapping it on the edge, and pried it apart, letting the innards pour into the bowl. Grabbing another egg from the eleven remaining, he held it out to me. “You try. You want to strike the edge firmly but not hardly. Do not worry overmuch about egg shells getting into the bowl. If it occurs, you can use one of the halves to scoop it out.”
“O-Okay,” I stuttered as I carefully took the egg. I clutched it in between my fingers and puzzled over his words. Firmly but not hardly? That seemed like an oxymoron to me, but he had said not to worry if I got shell in the bowl…
Perhaps he should have worried though. I struck the bowl far too hard, and while I wouldn’t have described it as the egg exploded… well, it didn’t not explode either. Maybe it was because of the earlier discussion about Mom, but I flinched, expecting a reprimand about wasted food. “S-Sorry…”
Gregor gently laid his hand around one of mine and guided me through scooping out the pieces of egg shell in the bowl. “Not as hard. It is less messy to work your way up to the appropriate level than it is to go too hard too fast.”
“Okay…”
A sizzling sound was slowly beginning to emanate from the pan with the bacon, but Gregor didn’t seem overly concerned as he retrieved another egg and placed it in my hand. “Once more.”
I over compensated and barely tapped the egg against the bowl that time, but I recognized it wasn’t enough based on what I had seen Gregor do before. Before he could say anything, I rapped the egg harder against the bowl. It took me two more tries to get up to the right level, but soon I had a good crack running along the bottom half, and when I pried it apart, I only got a small hunk of shell in the bowl that I promptly fished out.
“Very good. Please crack two more while I flip the bacon. For the moment, there is nothing special to the process you need watch. You only need to know that you should flip fairly often to prevent overcooking the meat.”
Once I had cracked the third egg without issue, I felt bold enough to watch him flip the bacon out of the corner of my eye while I cracked the fourth. It really was straightforward. He was just using a fork to flip each piece over.
“Okay, we will keep the eggs simple and scramble them today. To do this, you must whisk the yokes—that is the orangish-yellow orb—into the remainder of the egg using a fork. He took hold of the bowl with his off hand to hold the dish in place then began swirling the fork he used to flip the bacon in the egg. Once some of the yellow began to bleed out and mix in with the white, he held the cutlery over to me. “Now you try.”
The slabs of butter in the second pan were beginning to melt and cover the bottom, but I forced myself to focus on the task at hand and trust Gregor had the timing right. I mimicked the swirling motion he had been doing before, and before long the mixture of white and yellow was entirely yellow.
“You should try flipping the bacon now. What I am doing over here is sprinkling in some salt and pepper to season the eggs.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling more confident as we went on. It was simple enough to flip the bacon like Gregor had before, so I could keep half an eye on the healthy but still small amount of salt and black pepper he sprinkled into the bowl of eggs.
By that point the butter had coated most of the pan for the eggs, and Gregor took the fork back once the bacon was all flipped and used it to smear the remainder of butter around a bit before whisking the egg bowl just a few moments longer then gently pouring the egg bowl’s contents into the pan.
“Again, what matters here is patience,” he instructed as he chopped another hunk off the end of the stick of butter that he chopped into smaller pieces. He retrieved a tool with a soft, rubbery end that was wider than the wood it was mounted on and set it nearby before moving over to the loaf of bread and beginning to load it into the toaster. “We will leave the eggs alone until they have begun to set. We can let the toast begin and focus on the bacon for a moment.”
Once the toaster was started, he turned his attention back to the bacon and began to flip it again, but this time he began to swap the strips around, moving the ones that had been in the middle towards the edge and vice-versa. “The meat cooks faster in the middle of the pan, so we will rotate the bacon to cook it evenly.”
“Muh-akes sen-suh,” I agreed. I hadn’t known that would happen, but I did know having unevenly cooked food didn’t sound very appetizing.
“Now, look here,” he said, pointing to the outer edge of the flat mass of eggs. “Do you see how the edge has form? It is no longer quite liquid.”
I squinted, not quite seeing it at first, but after a gentle prod at one spot with the rubber tool from Gregor, it became more obvious. “Yes, I see.”
“We now push this into the middle with a rubber spatula. Like the bacon, we want the eggs to cook equally.” He gently pushed the semi-liquid contents around a bit before seemingly being satisfied. “We will repeat soon. Patience is required.”
This really did seem quite a bit slower than expected. The few times I had been to places where the food was cooked in front of me, it had always seemed so quick and flashy. Was I not remembering correctly, or were bacon and scrambled eggs that much slower? For that matter, perhaps it was just Gregor’s method that was unique?
Before long, the bacon was looking crispy, and Gregor set me to using the fork to get the strips out and lay them on a piece of paper towel. “Here you see the eggs are all nearly solid. We will add these pieces of butter to add some extra flavor as they finish cooking.”
I glanced over as I got the last of the bacon out and watched as he used the spatula to mix in the butter. A question suddenly occurred, and I asked, “Why ruh-buh-er?”
“The spatula? There is a great deal of pushing and swirling with eggs, and we do not want to scrape the pan. These are treated to help the food not stick to them, but the treatment does not work as well when scratched.”
I almost asked why we used it so much with the bacon, but then I remembered there hadn’t nearly been as much movement there, and all of it had been with the fork poking into the bacon itself, not the pan.
Before long, Gregor pulled out two plates and used the spatula to dole the eggs out evenly onto each. I took that as my cue and used the fork to convey the bacon over as well—though I made a point, unlike him, to give him more because he was obviously a much larger person and would need it. No sooner had I finished, the bread popped up in the toaster with a ding, and I was left marveling at how perfectly Gregor had timed everything, even as he worked around teaching me.
“I hope I was not too much,” he said as we each grabbed a piece of toast and started towards the living room to eat, since we had no table.
“What?” I asked, confused. “Too muh-cha?”
He took a seat and set his plate in his lap, looking vaguely uncomfortable. “I am… unused to teaching. I hope I was helpful and instructive.”
“Yes!” I emphatically assured him, my lips tugging up into a smile before I realized it. “You were uh-mah-azz-ing!”
He smiled back, seemingly mollified. “I am glad to hear it. Shall we eat?”
The time it took to cook everything had left me with a ready appetite, so he heard no arguments from me. It wasn’t the first time I’d had bacon and eggs made by Gregor before, so the deliciousness of the meal wasn’t surprising, but knowing I had contributed, albeit with his careful instruction, somehow made it taste all the better.
Midway through the meal, Elle slipped into the living room from the hallway with everyone’s rooms, and her eyes alighted on the remnants of food on our plates.
She yawned, covering her mouth with her hand, then said, “Good morning. More?”
There wasn’t, but I found myself announcing “I’ll muh-ake more!” before I had even processed it.
Elle blinked with wide-eyes. “You made?”
“W-Well, um…” I said, hastily back-peddling. “Gregor—”
“I will watch you and help if needed,” Gregor interjected, an odd tone in his voice I hadn’t heard before, “but I am sure you will do well.”
I gulped, feeling less sure, but Elle gave me an encouraging smile and an earnest, “Please?” so I scooped up my last bite from my own plate to fortify me, then I made my way back into the kitchen.
As it turned out, I did need Gregor to remind me of a few of the steps—and I might have obliterated another egg before remembering to start softer—but the actual act of cooking was done only by me. My nerves were eating me alive by the time I was done, since the smell of the cooking had drawn Melanie and Emily to the kitchen as well, leaving only Newter—who had undoubtedly gotten in very late—absent. But in the end it was all worth it when Elle used her fork to cut a piece off the end of a strip of bacon and scooped it along with some of the eggs into her mouth.
“So good!” she declared, a bright smile splitting her face in two. “Thank you!”
“It looks very good,” Melanie agreed, eying the plate of food I had made. “I hadn’t realized you could cook so well, June.”
“I did-unt. Gregor tuh-ah-tuh me,” I explained, looking to him.
“I am no teacher,” he demurred, still speaking with that odd tone of voice. “Fortunately, you were a very good student.”
“I see,” Melanie said. “Might I be rude and ask you to make more, June?”
“Uh, same here, please,” Emily added, not meeting my eyes.
I wasn’t sure what was eating at Emily, but buoyed by Elle’s enthusiasm, I stuttered out, “S-Sure!” I looked to Gregor and asked, “Um, do you want seh-cuh-und-ss?”
“That would be lovely,” he answered, and maybe I was wrong, but I thought I might have figured out what the weird tone in his voice was—pride.
I quickly turned to go back to the stove so no one would see my flushed cheeks, and I happily started another round of food. The heat in my face had just started to die down when halfway through my task, Elle sidled up behind me, pressing against my back and wrapping her arms around my waist.
“Thank you,” she said, her hot breath on my ear sending pleasant shivers up my spine. “Very yummy.”
I licked my suddenly dry lips. “G-Glad you liked it…”
“Not liked… Loved.”
Good god damn. It took everything in me to not beg her on the spot to drag me back to our bedroom. “E-Elle…”
“Want go out later,” she whispered. “Show me your hometown?”
How the hell was I supposed to say no to that?
“Yes ma’am!”