Chapter 18 – Out of the Baking Oven

The walk back to the bakery was the longest five blocks she had ever experienced. Jonathon spent the first two examining the cobblestones with intense silence.

"Jonathon-"

"I don't want to discuss it right now."

"But I do not wish you to be angry with me. I wish to apologize."

"Apology accepted."

"You are saying the words, but you still will not look at me. You are… you are lying with your words or with your face."

Jonathon finally did look at her, and it was an unpleasant expression. "Let it go Myria."

"I can not. I have to understand!"

He stopped in the middle of the cross street and flung his hands in the air. "What do you want me to say? You practically threw yourself at a complete stranger. Is this how you are going to react to other… people?"

"I do not know. I do not understand what happened."

"That doesn't make me feel better Myria. It just means you don't know why it happened or if it will happen again."

"I am sorry! It has never happened before, Jonathon. I do not understand why he would have caused that reaction. There was something different about him…" She trailed off at his expression.

Jonathon shook his head, two sharp movements. "We need to stop this right now. Stop discussing this. I'm still angry, and what you are telling me isn't making me less angry. Can we drop it? Please? I need to come to grips with this and then we can talk later."

"I do not now how!" Myria was near tears, but it only seemed to harden the lines of Jonathon's face.

He leaned in and delivered his response through gritted teeth. "Then learn. It's part of being- " he lowered his voice into a harsh whisper "being human, damn it," then turned and with lengthened strides resumed the silent walk to the bakery.

Myria gathered her arms around herself and followed, looking as miserable as she felt. She kept replaying the scenes from the house in her head, and each time it seemed to become uglier and uglier. The watchman's expression was no longer pleasant or radiant, but mocking. The Sergeant was sneering and feral. And Jonathon. She looked at his stiff and slightly hunched back. Jonathon was just anger personified. That left her with nothing but a sick empty feeling.

The pair slowed when they reached the bakery. It looked oddly quiet, and they realized with some confusion that it was closed, far too early. Surely they hadn't been forced to close because of being short handed.

And Jonathon's uncle Pars was sitting at one of the rough wooden tables just to the right of the entrance. Smoking a cigarette. Myria had not seen him do that before. He did not look well, and was staring at a piece of paper. As they neared, he looked up with red-rimmed eyes.

"They took her." His voice broke. He gripped the edge of the paper, crumpling it, and thrust it at Jonathon with a shaking hand. "They took my Safflower."

Myria watched the color drain out of Jonathon's face as he read it. She took the paper from his nerveless fingers as he knelt at his uncle's side. "We'll fix this. We'll go to the Watch. They say they have a werewolf who can track down anyone."

Myria stared at the paper, trying to process the words.

We have the girl. Bring the gold. Come alone.

It listed an address in The Shades.

"We should bring them the gold."

"Are you mad? That's the Shades Myria. We'd never make it there alive! Uncle tell her."

"I don't know Jonny. I just don't know. My little girl. My baby." He looked at Myria, then away. "I haven't even had the heart to tell her mother. She is," he swallowed, "she is inside, putting things away in the pantries... what do we do?"

"Surely they would honor the agreement," supplied Myria hopefully.

Jonathon grimaced and pulled her aside. "Myria, you are not helping. You don't understand. This is… this is a family thing, a human thing. I have to… I have to go to the Watch. Do you understand? I have to convince my uncle that this is the right thing to do for Jessica's sake."

"But-"

"Go upstairs Myria. I need to do this. Just go."

As Myria worked her way up to the room, to his room, she felt pain worse than the physical she had suffered earlier. His words had hurt. She was not family. But worse than that was the pain of realization.

This is my fault. I brought these things into their lives and now they are suffering. They are suffering because of me.

Myria wept, and there was no one there to see the tears.

It was some time later when a quiet knock sounded at the door. She both tensed and hoped, and then slumped when she realized it was not Jonathon, but his uncle. She looked down, ashamed he might have seen the selfish hope on her face. She looked up when he knelt in the rough floor in front of her and took her chin in his large oven-burned hand. He had a strange intense look in his eyes.

He thrust something at her and she flinched. Then saw it was a velvety bag with a familiar shape inside.

"Save her Myria. Save my little girl."

"But Jonathon-"

He shook his head, his eyes never leaving her face. "He went to the Watch. He puts too much faith in rules and laws." Tears ran down his cheeks. "I'm an old man, Myria, and I've seen how life doesn't play by the rules. And now they have my lovely Safflower. And I don't know whether she is alive or…" He swallowed a sob. "If you care for this family at all, do this for us, for my little girl. I can't put my faith in rules now."

Myria found herself holding the gold in its velvet bag, the hated thing that she had brought into this family. This was correct, that she should remove it and bring them back to how they were before. She looked up at the broken man before her, and nodded.

He fell back against the wall with his face in his hands, and she was glad he could not see how unsteady she was as she walked out of Jonathon's room, past a closed doorway where she could hear Jessica's mother weeping, and down the stairs. She was glad that he could not see her own fear in the darkness, taste the acid in her throat. Terror pushed memories to the front of her mind. Memories of Auditors corporating in the streets, of frantic searching for something to defend herself with.

When she left the bakery, one of the larger knives went with her.