A guy at a nearby table had just started to unwrap his cheeseburger; Ronan completed the task for him as the guy blinked off into space. Down the hatch. Then the large fries next to it. Then his date’s chicken burger, even though it was disgusting. The pickle she’d abandoned beside it.

Still starving.

Hennessy’s voice rose from the kitchen area. “If you’d told me before all this that the best food in the world was stolen French fries, I would have laughed in your face. Which only goes to show you, one doesn’t know what one doesn’t know.”

At the next booth, Ronan ate a melting soft serve. Another burger. A salad with an orange, slimy dressing, and raw onions. A paper plate of hash browns.

Still starving.

He hurled the paper plate to the ground. Next table.

Bryde watched him, expressionless.

Hennessy’s monologue was getting closer. “I’m rededicating my life to these French fries. Before this time, I was a sinner, finding pleasure in wine, women, song, and, sometimes, cocaine and grand theft auto, living moment to moment, not thinking about the consequences of my actions on my own body or others, but now I have seen the light and I will instead worship at the altar of stolen fries. I will paint murals in their honor. I will rename myself Tuber.”

Ronan ate chicken nuggets, a hot dog, another milkshake, a barbecue sandwich, a corn dog, and some fried okra.

“Can we stop pretending it is food you’re wanting now?” Bryde asked mildly.

Ronan sank into a booth. The food sat inside him, heavy and pointless.

Starving.

Bryde stood at the end of the booth. “What do you feel?”

“Come on.”

“You might not be able to feel the ley line, but you can feel what happens to you when you don’t have it, Greywaren. Still, you pretend what you really need right now is a cheeseburger. Look around you. Look at yourself. We’re fleeing because of your wheels, and this is where you come. There aren’t two of you. Greywaren, do you even know what it means?”

Ronan realized this was the teachable moment. This was the reason Bryde had used one of his precious orbs to hit up a fast-food joint. Ronan didn’t know what Greywaren meant, but he knew it was important. His first dreamt forest, Cabeswater, had called him that. His current forest, Lindenmere, called him that. His dead father had somehow known to call him that. And Bryde knew this name for him.

He didn’t know what he was supposed to be learning, so he gazed off at nothing, sullen.