The dumbwaiter dings a moment later and inside along with another card there is a mug with a curl of steam rising from it and a plate covered with a silver dome.
Zachary reads the note.
Of course it is real, Mr. Rawlins. We hope you feel better soon.
The mug is filled with warm coconut milk with turmeric and black pepper and honey.
Beneath the silver dome there are six small, perfectly frosted cupcakes.
Thank you, Kitchen.
Zachary writes.
He takes his mug and his cupcakes and sits in front of the fire again.
The cat stretches and comes to sit with him, sniffing at the cupcakes and licking frosting from his fingertips.
Zachary doesn’t remember falling asleep. He wakes curled up in front of the dying fire on a pile of pillows, the Persian cat nestled into his arm. He doesn’t know what time it is. What is time, anyway?
“What is time, anyway?” Zachary asks the cat.
The cat yawns.
The dumbwaiter dings, the light on the wall glowing, and Zachary can’t remember it dinging on its own before.
Good morning, Mr. Rawlins.
The note inside reads.
We hope you slept well.
There is a pot of coffee and a rolled omelet and two toasted slices of sourdough bread and a ceramic jar of butter drizzled with honey and dusted with salt and a basket filled with mandarin oranges.
Zachary starts to write a thank-you but inscribes a different sentiment instead.
I love you, Kitchen.
He doesn’t expect a reply but there is another chime.
Thank you, Mr. Rawlins. We are quite fond of you as well.
Zachary eats his breakfast (he shares the omelet with the cat, forgetting the rule about feeding the cats and having already broken it with buttercream frosting the night before) and thinks, his head clearer than it had been.
“If you were a man lost in time where would you be?” Zachary asks the cat.
The cat stares at him.
All you need to know has been given to you.
“Oh, right,” Zachary says as the realization dawns. He sorts through the books near the fireplace to find the one that Rhyme gave him and flips to the page where he left off. He takes the book to the desk and moves a lamp so he can see better and the cat sits in his lap, purring. Zachary peels and eats a mandarin orange in small segments of sunshine as he reads.
He reads and frowns and reads more and then he turns a page and there is nothing else. The rest of the pages are blank. The story, history, whatever it is, stops mid-book.
Zachary remembers the man lost in time wandering cities of honey and bone in Sweet Sorrows and the mention of the Starless Sea in Fortunes and Fables and wonders if all of these stories are somehow the same story. Wonders where Simon could be now and how to go about finding him. Wonders about the burned place and the broom in the Keeper’s office. Wonders what, precisely, happens to the son of the fortune-teller.
On the corner of the desk is an origami star that he had pocketed. He picks it up and looks closer. There is writing on it.
Zachary unfolds the star. It stretches out into a long strip of paper.
It contains words so tiny they seem whispered:
Nightmare number 83: I am walking in a dark dark place and something big and slithery is slithering in the dark so close I could reach and touch it but if I touch the slithery thing it will know I am here and it will eat me very slowly.
Zachary lets the nightmare flutter onto the desk and picks up the book again. He turns to the last written page and rereads it, pausing at the final word in the unfinished book.
Zachary gently removes the cat from his lap. He puts the cat on the floor and the book in his bag along with a cigarette lighter so he doesn’t end up stuck in the dark again and he slips on his shoes. He pulls a maroon sweater on over his pajamas and goes to look for Mirabel.
Once in a long while an acolyte chooses to give up something other than their tongue as they take their vows.
Such acolytes are rare. One will not remember the last exception that came before. They will not serve long enough to meet the one who follows.
The painter has lost her way.
She thinks (she is wrong) that choosing this path (a path, any path) will bring her closer to this place she once loved, this