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kitchen open and roll the meat and cheese in the lettuce, then stick it with a toothpick. Call it, hell, I don’t know, ‘No-Carbwiches’ or something.”
    “Boss, you’re occasionally brilliant.” Stacy took her tray and disappeared into the back to pass the news on to Seth. The old man liked her; he wouldn’t growl at her too much for bringing bad news.
    Grabbing a piece of chalk from the speed rail, Teddy turned to change the chalkboard with the night’s offerings. If the orders actually went up, they’d put it on the regular rotation, no matter how much Seth moaned about trendy food and idiot hipsters. The old man had been on a steady tear about hipsters for a month now, ever since they’d gotten a write-up in one of the little community newspapers.
    “You didn’t want hipsters, you shoulda moved to Cleveland, not Seattle,” Teddy said, as though the old man could hear him through the wall and over the noise of the bar, and could hear the disgusted snort he was likely to get in return, if the old man had heard him. Personally, Teddy shared that opinion about hipsters, but while he might not be as gung ho as Patrick, the bar’s owner, to expand their clientele, he liked seeing the place busy, and hipster money was as good as anyone else’s. And they caused less trouble overall than both college students and middle-aged happy-hour habitués.
    At that moment, the red-painted front door swung open, and a large group of twenty-somethings came in, making the noise level rise noticeably for a moment. Teddy watched them head for the tables that had been pushed together, making a mental note to keep an eye on them, and leaned forward to better hear what the couple at the bar were ordering. Thankfully, they stuck to basics; it was too early for someone to order a Fuzzy Pink Marsupial, or otherwise try to play stump-the-bartender.
    “Where’s Ginny?” The question was directed at him, and he shrugged. “Do I look like her keeper?”
    “Yes?” the other man said, and his companion laughed.
    “You want me to spit in your beer, Mac? Keep it up. . . .” Teddy shook his head and passed the beers across the bar. “She’s out of town on a job,” he said. “That’s all I know.”
    And that reminded him that he hadn’t heard from her how the client meeting went. It was good that this place kept him busy, both hands and brains, because it kept him from checking his phone for a text message or voice mail, just then, and for a while after. Not that there was any reason for her to check in—like he’d said to Stacy, she was working her own gig, not one of theirs. No reason for her to check in, nope. Just because they’d gotten into the habit of talking over the day like an old married couple, her coming in for a drink most afternoons he worked before the crush hit, didn’t mean it was a thing they always had to do. And he’d talked to her just a couple of hours before, so he knew she was all right. . . .
    Just because he had a niggling sense of empty where she usually sat didn’t mean he had to indulge it.
    “Too many sisters already; I don’t need another one,” he muttered to himself. “She’s a big girl, more than capable of driving out of town on her own and doing her job without falling into trouble. Get a grip.”
    *    *    *
    Above him, Mistress Penny-Drops woke from her doze, stretching her body along the cabinet and flexing her claws slightly, just to feel them stretch and retract. It was almost too warm atop the bar shelves, and the noise made her ears flatten against her head in annoyance, but the view of the room was too good to abandon. She liked being able to keep track of everyone with a swift glance. Plus, Theodore was just below her, behind the counter, close enough that a single well-timed leap could land her on his shoulders.
    If she were to do that, she knew from experience, she would be dumped onto the floor. Penny didn’t resent that: her claws were sharp, and human