Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

“Oh,” Hugo said. “Well. Until you do that, you should come and see my
scones. I’m proud of them.”
“Your scones?” Mei shouted from the kitchen. “How very dare you!”
Hugo laughed. “You see what I have to deal with? Get up, Wallace. You
don’t want to be there when we open. People will walk all over you, and no
one wants that. You least of all.”
He turned on his heel and walked around the counter before pushing
through the double doors, Apollo trailing after him.
Wallace gave very serious thought to staying right where he was.
In the end, he got up.
But only because he chose to.
The kitchen was far bigger than he thought it’d be. It was a galley kitchen: on
one side were two industrial-size ovens and a stove with eight different
metal burners, almost all in use. On the other was a sink and the largest
refrigerator Wallace had ever seen. At the back of the kitchen was a small
breakfast nook with a table near bay windows that looked out onto the tea
garden.
Mei had flour on her forehead as she moved from one side of the kitchen
to the other, frowning at the bubbling pots on the stove before muttering, “Is it
supposed to do that?” She shrugged and bent over to stare into each oven.
A radio sat on top of a cabinet, and Wallace was shocked at the heavy
metal music pouring from the speakers, thunderous and awful and in …
German? Mei made it worse by singing along in an off-putting guttural voice.
It sounded like she was trying to summon Satan. Wallace wouldn’t put it past
her to be doing just that. And oh, did that start a line of thought he didn’t
want to even consider.
He startled when he saw Nelson sitting in one of the chairs at the table,
hands resting on his cane. He’d … changed his clothes? Gone were the
pajamas and bunny slippers. He now wore a thick blue sweater over tan
slacks and shoes with Velcro straps. And he too was grunting along with the
music as if he knew each and every word.
“How did you do that?” Wallace demanded.
Everyone stopped to stare at him, Hugo in the process of tying his apron.