my head; I suppose I was partly jonesing for more of what I’d had for breakfast and partly channeling my wish to escape: “A Monte Cristo.”
Plateface sighed. “Still very, very vague. Do you want the whole sandwich dipped in batter and fried, or just the bread? And what kind of cheese?”
“Just the bread … and Swiss. No, wait, Gruyère.”
“Since you seem indecisive, I’ll give you both. And the usual assortment of condiments.”
Plateface vanished, leaving me staring at the shiny blank ivory.
The table cracked again as a woody sprout erupted beside the plate. In the space of a few seconds, it grew into a small bush that produced one large red bud and three smaller purplish buds. The buds flowered into pretty blossoms that quickly shriveled, overtaken by swelling fruits covered in thick, veined skins. The big red fruit expanded like a balloon, steam rising from its green veins, until it ruptured with a pop! and a hot, sugar-dusted Monte Cristo sandwich toppled out onto my plate. The other, smaller fruits dropped off the bush beside the sandwich and split open, revealing what looked like strawberry jam, honey mustard, and clotted cream. A small branch I hadn’t noticed fell off the bush and dropped beside the plate; it had a single long, serrated, bladelike leaf at its tip, and I realized it was meant to serve as a dinner knife. A large, velvety leaf sprouted on the plant and fell beside the twig knife: a napkin.
I’d been so focused on Plateface and my lunch plants that I hadn’t been paying any attention to how the others were faring. Beside me, Cooper was pulling the purple skin off a huge berry of shrimp carbonara; he had red wine in his drinking flower. The Warlock had a T-bone and a baked potato, and Mother Karen’s plant was dropping perfect little cucumber and smoked salmon tea sandwiches onto her plate. Pal was already gnawing on a large joint of some roast beast. Across the table, Riviera Jordan’s plant was growing and shedding a variety of leaves and vegetables to fill her plate with salad; her bodyguards had gotten burgers and other sandwiches.
I nudged Cooper and pointed at the crispy bits of bacon scattered among the shrimp on his fettuccine noodles. “Aren’t you worried about getting a death vision off those?”
“No more than you are, I guess.”
“What?”
He nodded at my sandwich. “That’s a Monte Cristo?”
“Yes?”
“Ham. Turkey.”
I stared at it. “Oh, crap, I forgot. I only remembered it had cheese on it.”
He laughed. “It’s faery food … I wouldn’t worry about it.”
I cut my sandwich in half with the twig knife and blew on it to cool it a little. The bread was fluffy and moist under the crispy egg batter, and the inside was stuffed with cheese and turkey and shaved ham. I bit off a corner, expecting a kick of pain, but felt absolutely nothing. It certainly looked and tasted like meat, but I might as well have been eating a napkin for all the spiritual residue it contained.
We finished our meals in relative silence. When most of us were finished, a handsome young man in a kilt of ivy leaves shuffled into the room. Each of his eyes was covered with a bright red poppy blossom, and his face was frozen in a smile. He began to uproot the spent dinner plants onto the dirty plates and clear the table. His hands moved fluidly one moment, jerkily the next.
Mother Karen stifled a gasp when the young man took her plate; I gave her a quizzical look.
“It’s Rick Wisecroft,” she mouthed at me.
Her prodigal foster son? No wonder he’d left her house so abruptly. Clearly he’d crossed the wrong people. I watched him more closely as he gathered up my plate; he moved like a marionette, and I saw thin silver chains on his wrists.
Mother Karen was staring at Rick, her face flushed, tears welling in her eyes; clearly she wanted to do something to rescue him from his slavery, but she couldn’t do anything without risking her own freedom and probably ours as well. I felt myself getting angry again. Given our warm reception in the woods, I doubted that getting Rick as our busboy was any accident. The seelies really seemed intent on provoking us. Part of me wondered how they’d cope with a little incendiary ectoplasm, but the rest of me considered Rick’s predicament and realized that was a bad, bad idea.
Riviera Jordan stood up and rapped on the table for