Page 7 of The Signature Dish of the Underworld

She couldn’t do this.

About to turn on her heel and go, a voice to her right stopped her in her tracks. “Hello, my Rae of sunshine.”

“Garth.”

There he was, leaning against the doorway to the right, which was clearly the staff entrance. The other door, the one Rae had been facing when she was looking up at the sign, was the customer entrance. With its big, black foreboding double doors, decorated with metal studs, the place screamed ‘best place in town’.

Black and purple were the chosen colours of their lord and lady, Hades and Persephone, and thiswasthe place that had won the festival every century since its inception. It was intimidating. Rae had half expected she would have been turned away by the maitre d if she had entered through that door, even though she had an invitation here tonight – albeit to work. It’s why she’d turned away to leave.

But there was Garth, looking at her,leaningin that lazy way of his against the door frame, that cocky smile on his face as he watched her.

“You came.”

“Well – what were you going to do without a sous chef?” Rae grumbled.

Garth’s grin widened further. “I do so like when you’re grouchy. Come on, Sunshine, come and meet the team.”

CHAPTER FOUR: Kitchen … nightmares?

Garth’s kitchen was the stuff of dreams.

Rae watched as pots and pans flew overhead into chefs hands when they reached up for them. Knives did the dicing of vegetables themselves, even the dishes in the sink washed themselves – though there was a big, burly nymph of some kind overseeing the latter.

“When the humans adopted AI, we figured out a way for it to translate down here,” Garth told her. “AI and god-given powers are a heady combination.”

Rae was so busy staring at all the moving pieces as they whizzed around, pieces she would love to have in her kitchen, that when Garth stopped she almost bumped into him.

“Careful there, Sunshine. Can’t have you being clumsy in my kitchen.”

Rae flinched at her first mistake.

Garth pretended not to notice and put one hand on her shoulder, gesturing to the chef in front of them. “This is Lexie. She’s on the grill tonight.”

“I’m on the grill every night,” the voluptuous creature sent Garth a sharp look, her long canines glistening as she did so.

“You’re a Lamia – a vampiric demon,” Rae blurted out. The minute the words left her mouth, Rae had to physically stop herself from flinching again at her faux pas. Of course, Lexie knew what she was. If it wasn’t for Garth’s hand still resting heavily on her shoulder, Rae might have tried to recoil into herself.

“Don’t worry,Sunshine,” Lexie threw a smirk at Garth, “You aren’t my type. I prefer them … young. And male. Preferably warm-blooded.”

“And bleeding,” Garth muttered under his breath.

“I heard that,” Lexie quipped.

“I meant you to. Come on,Rae, let’s introduce you to the rest of our crew.”

The chef on fish duty was a tall and lanky male water nymph, named Yani. The other water nymphs – Nereids – in the team were also males. Rae could tell because their hair was always permanently wet. There was the big burly one she had seen supervising the dishes – Ross – and apparently the other one was out front as a bartender, called Savvas.

The pastry chef was a dainty ash-tree nymph named Melamene. Like Rae, her name was indicative of her kind. Rae watched as Melamene loaded some sort of cream that shimmered into a piping bag. It wriggled in her hand until it was full, and only then did Melamene move on to placing berries into a dark sauce.

“I’ve never seen a compote that dark before,” Rae noted.

Melamene looked up from her hunched over position and smiled at Rae. “You wouldn’t have. This one is a special blend. Right, Garth?”

“Right.”

Before Rae could ask more, Garth ushered her through the kitchen and out into the front of the pub.

“And this is where they all come to feast.”

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