Page 15 of Why Cheese?
Three men step to the side, revealing Bree. He’s pushed aside his fallen hair to peer at me. “We’re only cheese by day.”
They’re what, men by night and cheese by day? “That sounds—”
“Inconvenient,” Roq interrupts.
“I was going to say like an excuse. You expect me to believe all of this sight unseen? Where were you in the basement? Why didn’t I see any cheese down there the night before?”
“Oh”—Cheddy smiles wide—“that’s because of the—”
“The fact we were hiding,” Cam speaks over him, slapping Cheddy on the arm. “We’re quite good at hiding in our cheese form.”
“Or else we get eaten,” Bree whispers. All four men touch their foreheads and lips again.
They’re having a laugh at me. This is a prank. There’s gotta be cameras hidden in the overhead pipes and microphones in the toppled shelves. Ones that the cop completely missed. Or he’s in on it. They all are. It makes way more sense for everyone from the lawyers to a random cop to be pranking me because cheese men aren’t real. “Why would anyone want to turn into cheese? How can you turn into cheese? Why cheese?”
“That’s a long tale.” Roq sighs with centuries of exhaustion.
I grimace, realizing too late that I spoke aloud again.
“For now we have our future to tend to. If you will not honor the deal we struck with your uncle…”
“What deal?” I fidget in place, my buttocks warning me that asses were not made for barrels.
“In exchange for room, board, and protection by day, we provided him with his stock.” Roq extends his hands out toward the cubby holes and upended shelves.
“You…you make cheese? But you are cheese.”
“Do people not make people?” Roq asks rhetorically.
Cam leers forward, his lips nearly pressing to my cheek. “Would you like me to show you how?”
A low snarl from Roq and a lift of his massive hand sends Cam flitting away. “I meant the cheese, of course.”
“Right.”
“So you kept the store full and my uncle hid you away?” I ask.
Before answering, they shoot a worrying glance at each other. “That was the original agreement, yes,” Roq explains. “If you would consider keeping the store open, and us in your employ, then there’s no reason we can’t carry it on. For Mateo.”
My mouth tumbles into a frown at the mention of my uncle. If he really kept four strange men in his basement then why did I never see them? Why didn’t I know about the cellar? I thought I was his special cheese fairy.
They’re looking at me again. I wince at the reminder and stare at the store not as a property but as a shop. It’s filthy and torn to hell. Reopen it? I don’t know the first thing about running a business, or cheese. I don’t know the first thing about anything. If my mom heard this…
Oh god. I peer over at where my phone landed. Pieces of plastic are scattered across the floor, my only connection to the outside world severed. She’s gonna kill me.
No, she’s gonna chain me to my bed for a decade. That will be what kills me.
“I don’t know…” Five million dollars versus the claims of four strange, delusional men who are probably lying to me. It shouldn’t be a contest. With that money, I could do anything I want. But…my teeth ache at the idea of letting anyone down, especially these men who seem desperate if not completely insane. “All of the food is rotten. There’s no cheese to sell.”
Roq grins with immense pride and the others begin to chuckle.
“What?” I ask.
It’s Roq of all people who extends his hand to me. I ease my fingertips across his palm, then watch as it swallows my hand whole. With a gleam in his eye, Roq declares, “Let me show you.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Piece of Paneer
