Vision in Silver(96)
“I’ll give Stavros a call and see what he or Tolya has heard,” Vlad said.
“I’d like to stay in the efficiency apartment with Lizzy one more night, if that’s all right with you,” Montgomery said.
“We set one apartment aside for the police, so you can stay,” Simon said. When the humans didn’t speak, he added, “Shall we find out what Tess wants to show us?”
He walked into A Little Bite. Vlad and the two policemen followed him.
Tess stood behind the glass display case, her hair now solid red coils. Angry again. But why?
He glanced at the food in the display case—the pastries, cookies, sandwiches, and other items that were delivered that morning. When he leaned down for a closer look, he understood, and shared, Tess’s anger.
Spoiled. All of it. Mold on the bread. Dried-out or moldy cheese in the sandwiches. Even with the lesser human sense of smell and the glass between him and the food, he could scent meat going bad.
“Is something wrong with your refrigeration system?” Burke asked.
“No,” Tess replied in a rough voice. “Something is wrong with the humans in this city.”
The bakery they had been dealing with had stopped making deliveries a few weeks ago. Trying to give the humans another chance before informing the mayor that the agreements between humans and terra indigene had been broken, Tess had contacted another bakery in Lakeside that provided the kinds of foods she sold in A Little Bite.
“This is what I was given this morning,” Tess said. “It was packaged in a way that I couldn’t see the rot, so I paid the invoice in cash, as required.” She came around to the front of the display case and jabbed a finger toward the food. “Would you eat that? Would you feed that to your child?”
“No,” Montgomery said.
“We’re not open to humans who aren’t connected to the Courtyard anymore,” Simon said.
“That’s not the point,” Tess snapped. “That was never the point. The agreements with the city are clear enough: we are entitled to anything available to humans. If they can buy it, so can we.”
“And if we can’t, neither can they,” Simon said.
“Are a few pastries and sandwiches that important?” Montgomery asked, sounding alarmed.
Simon looked around. “This coffee shop was modeled on the ones humans use. It provides the same beverages and foods. Most of those shops don’t bake their own products; they buy them from bakeries. So we did the same in order to understand why such a place would have any value. When the bakeries all close tomorrow because the agreements with the terra indigene were violated twice with regard to supplying food for the coffee shop, how important will the lack of those pastries and sandwiches be to the humans who go into those coffee shops?”
“I’m not sure the government will tell the bakeries to close or require the police to enforce those closings,” Burke said, sounding as wary as a coyote who’d just caught the scent of a grizzly.
“You won’t have to enforce anything,” Tess said. “The Elementals can take care of closing the bakeries. I’m sure Fire would oblige once I show her what the monkeys sent us as food for Meg and the other girls.”
Simon blinked. Ask one of the Elementals to burn all the bakeries in the city? That seemed . . . harsh. Better to burn down the troublesome ones, especially the one that sold Tess rotten food to give to Meg.
Burke and Montgomery looked shocked—and sufficiently afraid.
Vlad smiled. “Or, rather than burning down all the bakeries, we can redirect the food grown in terra indigene settlements and offer it only to human businesses that will honor the agreements they make with us. That would cut the food supply coming into this city.” He looked at Simon. “Perhaps we can build our own little bakery and hire someone to make what we need.”