Chapter 97

3:45 PM September 16th 2026

Museum of Unnatural Science and History Employee Housing

The fridge was empty. Of course, it was. Couldn’t expect a single guy to keep a fridge full. Sam closed the door in disappointment, waited a few seconds, then opened the door again to see if it would magically refill itself. No luck. The shelves were still baren save for the inevitable bits of organic matter that fell off produce.

On the bottom shelf, there was a small, dried milk stain, and on the top shelf a little gooey puddle of jelly. The jar it belonged to was nowhere to be found. Frustrated and hungry – she hadn’t eaten since the day before, if that – she wandered over to the cupboards and began opening and closing them in a systematic search for something tasty. There was nothing.

No. Not nothing. There were dozens of dried spices and herbs in bottles, jars, and bags. Not just the regular everyday stuff either.

“Poppyseeds? Who the heck keeps poppy seeds and cardamoms in their cabinets?” she muttered under her breath.

“What’s that?” Anna called from the living room where she was playing Satchel Beasts with Gleipnir.

“Nothing.” She was going to leave it at that, then had a thought. What had Anna been eating this whole time? “Hey, where’s Kyle’s food?” Sam’s call interrupted a dispute between Anna and Gleip about whether or not their cards would be more powerful in the higher ambient magic outdoors or not. Gleip was against, Anna was for. Sam tried again. “Anna! Food!”

“Huh?” The squabbling stopped. Just in time to prevent Gleipnir and Anna from opening the living room windows to prove their positions. “Oh. In the cabinet.” That wasn’t helpful.

“Which cabinet?” Her frustration was evident in question and she threw up her hands in disgust.

“All? Of them? Ha! Take that, Gleip!” A slapping sound of a card hitting the coffee table was followed by a small roar sounding as one of the magical Satchel Beast cards summoned their creature to attack Gleipir’s beasts.

“What? No fair. What even is that? It must have been eight stories tall.” Stomping followed suit as all of Gleipnir’s summoned beasts were squashed or eaten. “Oh, it’s on, little girl. Gleipnir is going to lay the smackdown on you.” Listening from the kitchen, Sam laughed at the two having fun together. Anna was young enough that she had grown up with Gleipnir and they were more sibling-like in their interactions than either of her brothers were with Gleipnir.

“Again. There is no food to be found in the kitchen. In neither the cabinets nor the fridge.” Anna groaned in irritation, slapped her cards on the table, then stomped into the kitchen. Giving Sam a flat look, the elementalist stomped over to a cabinet, opened it up then pointed at it with both hands before exclaiming with sarcasm.

“Ta-da! Food.” She stood there looking at Sam as if she expected her to be all like ‘Oh! Wow! Thanks!’ But Sam just blinked at the nearly empty cupboard with a couple of unrelated items on each shelf.

“Anna. That’s Beans, collogen powder supplement, and a rack of random seasonings and spices. Literally no food.” At least, no food that anyone would genuinely enjoy eating. Anna’s eyes narrowed and she pursed her lips in irritation at her sister before marching over to the cabinets on the other side of the room and opened the door.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Flour.” Then she marched to the fridge, opened it up and pointed at a small jar in one of the door shelves. “Yeast.” In the background more roars and devastation could be heard over Gleipnir’s wild cackling as he played his next card.

“So,” Sam pondered her next words carefully as she continued trying not to rudely blink in surprise. “What you are telling me is that there’s no food and someone needs to go raid Mom and Dad’s fridge?” Anna’s shoulders drooped and she shot daggers at her sister with her eyes.

“You are so spoiled. Kyle was supposed to go shopping a couple of days ago, but it got postponed this week. There’s nothing at home either because Mom was out of town, and you know how Dad is. You’ll have to go shopping if you can’t eat what’s here.” Crossing her arms, Anna flounced off back to her game and shrieked in dismay, but Gleipnir floated into the kitchen himself.

“I doubt that there are any grocery stores open,” he advised unnecessarily. Power hasn’t come back on yet, the AMD is still high, and there are still lesser monsters about.”

“I think there will be a few open, they’ll be trying to offload product before it goes bad,” Sam headed out to the living room to grab her purse and keys. “I’ve got some cash in my wallet so we can at the very least buy something with protein in it. At the very worst we’ll get takeout from Fries ‘N Shakes. They never close. ”

“They might have closed for this,” Gleip offered his counterpoint and Sam shook her head at him as she headed out the door and down the stairs to her car. A few minutes later they were parked in front of the local grocery store.

Closed. The grocery store was closed. Yep. Of course, it was closed.

“Fine.” Almost vibrating with how upset she was that the store was closed, Sam immediately began making alternative plans, trying to remember where the nearest Fries ‘N Shakes was. “This is fine. It’s fine.” She got back in her car, gripped the steering wheel too tightly, and did not smash her head against the headrest. Her stomach grumbled its protest. “We’ll just have to hunt for food.”

“Oh!” Gleipnir, who had been sulking about having to leave in the middle of his game with Anna, perked right up. “I haven’t been hunting for centuries. This will be so fun. I am an excellent snare. We’ll have dinner in no time.”

“Uh. That’s not quite what I meant.” But her protests were met with deaf ears… or whatever it was Gleipnir used to hear with.

“Can we try one of those ones where if someone steps in the loop they are suspended by their foot? I’ve been dying to try one of those since the first time I saw it on TV. So exciting.” He turned his googly eyes out the window to the changing shadows of the cityscape. “We could get a moose or caribou. Because frankly, I don’t think rabbit is going to cut it. I. Am. Famished. I could probably eat a moose by myself right now. Oh, what about that?”

Turning her head, Sam was surprised to see an actual deer bounding down the surprisingly undeserted street. While the traffic wasn’t bumper-to-bumper it was still flowing enough that there were other vehicles on the street. Not just the abandoned ones either. And the design of the roads with the emergency vehicle lane down the center allowed for weaving in and out of the proper lane to go around those vehicles that were abandoned in the street.

“Gleip. No. I’m not going to hunt that. It’s way more food than we need. And there’s no refrigeration.” More focused on trying to remember where the nearest Fries ‘N Shakes was, Sam didn’t really take her pact item seriously. He, however, continued.

“I supposed I could just catch a rabbit.” He mused, rubbing a spot about a hand’s width below his googly eyes as if it were a chin and he was deep in speculative thought. “Squirrels or chipmunks are an option. Hey,” he exclaimed excitedly, and he turned back to Sam. “What about a pet store? Hamsters, rabbits, guinea pigs! Guinea pigs in particular were originally bread for food. I’ll teach you how to skin –”

“Stop.” Somewhere in the last few seconds, Sam had figured out that Gleipnir was being serious. “No.”

“But you said we had to hunt for food,” he responded petulantly. “You don’t like any of my suggestions? I mean, if we had to, I could probably catch some fish in a pinch.”

“What? Eww. No.” Flustered, Sam slowed and craned her head to check the storefronts more carefully. “Gleip. When I said ‘hunt’ I meant look for someplace with processed food. Chips, cookies, burgers, canned goods and stuff that doesn’t need to be refrigerated or cooked to be safe. Do you really think you would want to hunt, kill, and skin a squirrel? That would devastate you. They are too cute.”

“Oh. Thank the Gods. Squirrels are way too cute to eat.” This made Sam smile and she patted Gleipnir’s ribbon affectionately.

“Glad we cleared that up.”