Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(50)

Jordan crossed the floor and took the cigarette from Hennessy. She took a drag before flicking it into the sink. That, Hennessy thought, was the biggest difference between the two of them. Like Hennessy, Jordan would try almost anything, but in the end, Jordan could always toss away the stuff that was bad for her before it killed her.

Except for Hennessy. Hennessy was the deadliest habit any of them had, and none of them could quit her.

Jordan said, “I think I know how to do that.”





31

No, thank you.”

It was one thing to be victimized by Parsifal Bauer’s uncompromising, tactless nature. It was yet another thing to watch someone else be victimized by it. Several someones. An entire room of someones. The entire staff of Pfeiffer’s German Pastry Shoppe in Alexandria, Virginia, had come from the back room and behind the counter to watch Parsifal Bauer take his first bite of Bienenstich in years. Lock, who’d found the bakery, had apparently laid it on thick when he called to secure the cake. They only made Bienenstich as a seasonal special, but he’d explained that Parsifal Bauer was a very sick young man in the country seeking medical treatment far from his family, who were too unwell to travel themselves, a family who used to make him the treat to encourage him to think of the sweeter things in life.

Pfeiffer’s had risen artfully to the challenge. Give us a few hours, they had said gallantly, as we make sure we have the almonds, the pastry cream, the yeast dough, the mettle!

“You don’t want a box for the rest of it?” one of the staff members asked.

Parsifal Bauer sat on the edge of a cheap café chair as he always sat, long hair tucked behind his ears, body bolt upright, as if his bones had all been assembled only with much effort and were likely to fall apart if he unbalanced the structure too much. The square of Bienenstich cake sat on a plate in front of him. He was the only customer in the shop. Bakers had come from the back room to watch his first bite. Cashiers had come from behind the pastry case. Cameras were ready for filming. Candles were involved. Something peppy and German played overhead.

Farooq-Lane felt bad for them the moment she stepped in. She already knew how this was going to go.

“We won’t take this piece from you,” the cashier said, misunderstanding his no, thank you. “We mean the rest of the cake! We made a whole cake! For you!”

Parsifal looked at that single square of Bienenstich on the plate again. It looked back at him. He did not move toward the cake or away. He looked as if his head were a glass of water and he was trying very hard not to spill it.

“No, it is not entertaining for me,” Parsifal said again, politely.

“Not entertaining?” echoed the second baker.

He reddened a little. “Perhaps that is not the way to say it in English.”

One of the other staff members laughed in a jolly way and said, “Oh, son, we have German here! All the German! You’ve come to the right place!” And he began to speak to Parsifal in a flow of it. All of them pitched in, newly excited, as if this, they knew, would be the true gift for him, hearing his native tongue after so long away from home. They pattered on around him while Parsifal listened motionless.

It had not been a good day. Farooq-Lane and Parsifal had arrived at the lone cul-de-sac in time to see what indeed looked like a charcoal-gray BMW parked in the exact middle of it, but before they could get close enough to get a plate number or see the driver, a little white sedan had backed out of a driveway into the side of their rental car. The apologetic driver had waved frantically, working hard to dislodge his car from theirs, but by the time he’d managed to disentangle himself, the BMW was long gone. He’d babbled on in some foreign language that neither Parsifal nor Farooq-Lane got, but they figured out the gist: He didn’t have insurance, he was sorry, he was going now.

Farooq-Lane had just let him go. There was already a bullet hole in the rental. What was one more dent?

She became aware that the bakery staff had fallen silent, waiting for Parsifal to reply. He said a few words in German. Farooq-Lane could tell from their faces that they did not like him any better in German than they liked him in English. Camera phones were being lowered. Bilingual muttering was happening. They were drawing close to Farooq-Lane as if she were his caretaker and might explain him.

“Perhaps he’s overtired and will change his mind later,” one of the staff members said to her in a low voice, as another staff member began to lower the lights and yet another held up her keys to remotely start her car.

“I think you’re probably right,” Farooq-Lane lied. “He’s so overwhelmed. Tomorrow he’ll feel differently. We appreciate all that you did.”

A week before she probably would’ve been mortified, but now she knew him too well. Of course he didn’t like it, Farooq-Lane thought. He didn’t like most things. She collected the white box of Bee Sting Cake—that was the translation of Bienenstich. Someone had drawn a little cheery bee on it with a thought bubble that read PARSIFAL! GET WELL! She thanked them again and took both box and boy to the beleaguered rental.

In the car, he said, “I won’t feel differently tomorrow.”

She dropped her hand from the ignition and gave him a withering look. “I know you won’t, Parsifal. That’s a thing that you say to someone to make them feel better about spending a lot of time making something for someone and then having that someone just stare at their food like it’s going to give them a disease.”