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meant the fellow did exactly, but he tried to look knowledgeable as he gave the young, blond male mortal a nod of acknowledgment.
    “Rebecca over there,” Alex pointed to a woman coming out of a small room at the back of the kitchen. She was short and a bit round, with rosy cheeks and dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. “She’s the pantry chef and pastry chef, the garde manger and pâtissier. She’s a dream at sweets,” Alex assured him with a smile.
    “Ah, sweets,” Cale said with another nod of feigned understanding.
    “Right.” Alex smiled at him brightly and gestured to the wall, where several sheets of paper with typing on them had been taped up. “The recipes we use here are all mine. When I raised Peter to head chef … or chef de cuisine, I had to put the recipes up here for him to be able to use … which saves me having to do that now.”
    Alex smiled at him again, and Cale thought that she really had a very nice smile. While he could see the resemblance to Sam, Alex had a full figure, her large eyes complementing her pretty face rather than dominating it, and her hair was shorter, a shiny brown bob that fell below her ears and swung around her face as her head moved. He found himself wondering if the dark tendrils were as soft as they looked and had to stick his hands in his pockets to resist the urge to find out.
    “So if you want to just take one of the orders waiting"—she gestured to several smaller slips of paper caught in clips on the metal shelf beside his station—"and get started, I’ll stay just long enough to be sure you’ve got a handle on things, and then get out of your way.”
    Cale stared at her blankly, sure he’d missed something while he’d been staring at her. Was she suggesting he actually cook? Of course she was. It was what he was supposed to be here for, he reminded himself, and glanced over the foreign objects surrounding him. He didn’t even know where to start.
    “Perhaps he should take off his suit jacket. You have an apron he can use, right?” Bricker asked, stepping into the void.
    “Oh, yes of course.” Alex shook her head. “I’m sorry. Everything’s so topsy-turvy right now I wasn’t thinking. Here give me your suit jacket. I’ll hang it in my office and get you an apron and hat.”
    Cale muttered a thank-you, helping when she began to tug his jacket off, then watched silently as she hurried across the kitchen to her office. The moment she disappeared inside, he turned sharply on Bricker and grabbed him by the front of his T-shirt. “What have you done? I can’t do this. I don’t know the first thing about cooking.”
    “Hey, whoa, buddy, I didn’t do this. Sam is the one who told her you were a cook,” he reminded him.
    “Well, I’m not,” he said sharply, turning back to his station. “Look at this. What is all this? These knobs"—he twisted one of them, bringing on a quiet hiss, then grabbed up a shiny silver rod with one flat end—"and this … thing.”
    “Christ, what are you trying to do, blow us up?”
    Bricker muttered, reaching past him to return the knob he’d twisted to its resting place. Cale noted that the hissing immediately stopped. Bricker then snatched the silver thing from his hand. “This is a spatula. You use it to … well, sauté I suppose,” he muttered, then glanced at Cale’s expression and sighed. “Look, these are the controls for the grills. These knobs turn the gas on, but you have to turn them all the way to ignite them.” He twisted the knob, and the hissing Cale had noted earlier started again. It was followed by a click click click, and then a whoosh as a ring of flames suddenly exploded to life.
    Bricker turned the knob back a bit and the flames lessened, then he grabbed up one of several pans on a shelf beside the grill and set it on the stove. “See, you sauté things in the pan over the fire and spread them around or turn them with the spatula.”
    Bricker moved the spatula to emulate what he