While Siobhan was scribbling the exact ratio of fruit to filling in her blueberry pie, Jimmy Hickens assured her that Siobhan never shared recipes.

“She says she doesn’t trust anybody else with her kitchen magic. My Alma has been trying to weedle the lemon meringue recipe out of her since the 1970s,” Jimmy told Dani solemnly. “Siobhan’s never given her a single ingredient.”

“Because your Alma could burn water!” Earl cackled.

Dani had expected Jimmy to object in his wife’s defense, but he jerked his shoulder. “It’s true. I love the woman something awful, but I’ve suffered through more holidays with food poisoning than any man alive.”

“And that’s why I won’t give her my recipe,” Siobhan told him. “It’s for the greater good. Besides, this girl’s got the touch. You don’t bake like that without knowing how to put the right sort of strength into people.”

Dani’s brow crinkled with confusion. “What do you mean?”

“The work you’re doing out there in Afarpiece Swamp. You’re moving energy around, right? Taking one form of it, making it into another. That’s all cooking is, taking one thing, making it into another.” Siobhan paused to write her name at the bottom of the recipe. “But in my kitchen, it happens to be something that will give another person strength, make them healthy, ease their heartache, get them fired up. And you? Well, missy, you do it without even thinking about it, which is a great gift. Which is why you’re getting my recipe and Alma never ever will.”

“I’d never thought of it that way,” Dani said. “Thank you.”

Dani was still somewhat skeptical of her ability to produce Siobhan-level results, but she supposed with Siobhan’s blessing, she might be able to pull it off. She wasn’t going to make it for Zed any time soon, because if she combined her already amazing sexual prowess with making his favorite dessert, he might never let her leave his cave.

It was nice to hike out to the rift site alone, with her own thoughts. As much as she liked staying nights with Zed, she also appreciated having some space for her own thoughts. Of course, the things she normally devoted that time to, were giving her relatively little trouble. Work was . . . complicated. Her progress with the rift was starting to feel like one step forward, two steps back. She suspected that having two dynakinetics working on the rift at once was, for a lack of a better word, “confusing” it. If she continued to feel this sort of resistance, she was going to have to have a difficult “I can’t work like this, It’s her or me” conversation.