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.”“Drinks to start?” she asked.“Coffee,” I replied without bothering to check the list.I’d smel ed it faintly under the scents of fried foods.“Wheat grass juice,” Phin said.“Thanks, Bel e.”“Coming up,” Bel e said, and walked off.“What the hel is wheat grass juice?” I asked.“It’s good for you,” he said.“So’s apple juice.” I’d be damned if the table didn’t have a mini-jukebox right next to the wal , nestled perfectly between a chrome napkindispenser and the salt ’n’ pepper shakers.“What’re we doing here? Shaking apples? Meeting someone for information?”“Lunch, Evy.”I blinked.“What do you mean?”“I mean, we’re eating lunch,” he said, like a patient schoolteacher.“Neither one of us has eaten since breakfast, and you’l be much moreeffective if you’re not working off toaster-pastry fumes.”“Okay, fair enough.” I was hungrier than I’d realized.“But why here, other than the obvious apple tree joke?”“I like the food.”“Bul shit.”He tilted his head.“Are you judging the food before you’ve tried it? I assure you, it’s excel ent.”“No, I’m sure the food is great, but I cal bul shit on that being your reason for bringing me to a diner that, one, obviously has a glamour on it forprotection, and two, has a clientele that’s pretty exclusively Dr—nonhuman.”“I admit, the glamour is to keep humans out,” Phin said.“We like having a few places to be among our own kind, without the threat of Triadinterrogations or human interference.”“Two things of which I’m both, Phin.”“Cal it another exercise in trust.”I flopped against the back of the booth and surveyed the landscape.Two males and a female at the table next to ours.Male and female at thebooth across from me.A woman and four children, al about the same age, diagonal y from our booth—a litter joke raced through my head, but Ikept it to myself.No one seemed to pay us much mind.If they knew I wasn’t one of them, they didn’t show it.“Are you angry?” Phin asked.I should have been angry.He knew I’d been a Hunter.I liked to control my environment, and I hated surprises.He’d taken me to an exclusivelyDreg diner that humans couldn’t even see without first walking through the glamour, and then declared we were taking precious minutes out of ourday to sit down and eat, when fast food was a smarter option.Stil … “No, I’m not.”Bel e returned with a round tray laden with a clay mug, a plate of creamers, a carafe of steaming coffee, and a juice glass of something thick andgreen.The green goo went to Phin.Bel e put down the plate, the mug, then fil ed it to the brim.“Ready to order yet?” she asked.Phin shook his head.“Can we have a few minutes?”Bel e nodded and wandered off.I blew across the top of the coffee and sipped.Scorching goodness tore down my throat, strong andinvigorating.I opened the menu.Glanced at the offerings.Cheeseburgers, steak sandwiches, bacon and eggs, club sandwiches, French fries—nota shocking thing listed.“What is it?”My head snapped up.“Huh?”“For a moment, I thought your eyebrows were going to join your hairline.What surprised you?”I closed the menu and pushed it away.“The food.”“What about the food?”“Looks like something I could get at Denny’s.”There it was, that damned look.Furrowed brow, straight mouth, lips pressed so hard they disappeared.“You don’t real y know much about us, doyou?”“Who? Weres?”“Yes, Evy.Weres, Owlkins, and anything else you might want to cal us.”I placed my hands on the table, palms down, and sat up straight.“Look, I know I keep offending you with my word choices, but put your ass in mypants for a minute.The last four years of my life have been spent policing goblins and Halfies, and general y keeping the rest of the city off yourcol ective scent.If it kil s a human, I hunt it.If it’s a Dreg and it breaks a law, I kil it.Political correctness isn’t something I have a lot of time for.”“Education is the greatest weapon we have against ignorance.”For a non sequitur, that was pretty good, and it was a thought I’d had myself not long ago.He just should have saved it for a more relevantconversation.“This isn’t an interaction session, Phin.We aren’t battling ignorance.”“Aren’t we? Humans have a long history of fearing what they don’t understand, and one of the biggest products of fear is hatred.”There, laid out for me in a neat, gift-wrapped package, was the entire reason for this little exercise.Bring me to a were-owned and were-operated diner, let me see them in their natural habitat, and prove they were just like me so I wouldn’t fear them.So I wouldn’t hate them.As a civicslesson, it was somewhat effective.Only I wasn’t in school anymore.“So you’re trying to do what?” I asked, tapping my fingertips on the plastic tabletop.“Educate me in the error of my Hunter ways? Show me howevil I’ve been for the last four years and what a fucked-up organization the Triads are?”“More the latter than the former.”“You had to bring me to lunch at a were-spot to do that?”He traced his finger along the rim of his half-empty glass, three complete circles, and then stopped.“You’re doing it again.”“Doing what?” My voice rose a notch.I struggled to return it to a normal, less noticeable level.“For Christ’s sake, Phin, quit with the cryptic-speakand say what you brought me here to say.I don’t communicate wel in code.”“Maybe I didn’t want to eat in a Sape-owned diner.Did that occur to you?”My hands curled into fists, which I kept pressed to the table on either side of the cooling mug of coffee.“In a what?”“Exactly.”“Ready to order?” Bel e asked, her voice sneaking up on us.Neither of us looked away, neither backing down.“Cheeseburger, medium-wel , no onions, fries,” I said.Phin’s left eye twitched.“I’l have the same.”“Okay.” Bel e turned the two-syl able word into at least four, spun on her heel, and clicked back into the crowd.Forgotten instantly
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