Stranger at the Diner

“Harry! What did you do with my apron?” cried out the short blond woman, with a frantic look in her eyes. She turned the corner from the employee lockers into the main room of the small diner, but couldn't see Harry anywhere. Could someone else have taken her apron? No, only that old scamp Harry would have. In fact there was no one else in sight in the diner, not even dear Mabel, the owner. Were Mabel here, she would only have clucked at Cara for leaving her apron out where Old Harry could get at it. They all knew if something was missing, Harry more often than not had taken it. They also knew that if he had taken something, he would give them a sheepish grin from beneath the blond wisps that stuck out of his black skullcap and deny it to heaven and hell. Then they would find whatever it was he had denied “borrowing” sitting on the counter as soon as they turned their backs on him.

Harry was a good-natured sort, always pulling pranks on the ladies. More than one of the ladies had gotten lost in his blue eyes, or at least the others constantly told Cara how their heart felt all a flutter, hands over their breast. All the ladies who met him seemed to be like that, no matter how young or old they were. Cara never felt that way about Harry, and supposed she must be the only one.

The bell over the door rang, announcing the entrance of the man before his foot had cleared the threshold. Cara looked and seeing the stranger in a black suit and red dress shirt called out “Welcome to Mabel's on 6th sir. I'll bring you a menu in just a moment!”

Cara hurried into the back to find a spare apron and a menu for the man. Tuesdays were slow before lunch, so it was usually just Cara and Harry at the diner until Mabel came in to start lunch. Of all the days for Harry to take her apron, he did it on one where she actually had customers. She was about to open the door to Mabel's office when she stopped, turned around and saw hanging from her locker her green apron, complete with hole just above the large pocket.

Cara frowned and furrowed her eyebrows together, thinking Harry couldn't have put it there, she hadn't even seen him since she discovered it was missing just moments before. Maybe she had just missed it somehow. Giving a shrug to no one in particular, she put it from her mind. Lifting the straps over her head, Cara settled her apron over her white shirt with its thin vertical blue stripes, and reached behind her back to tie it while heading back to the front. So intent on tying the knot, she nearly bumped into the stranger standing in the doorway from the employee area of Mabels'.

With a gasp at the suddenness that the man had appeared before her, Cara said “I'm so sorry sir, I didn't see you there. Would you like to have a seat and I'll bring you a menu? Can I get you anything to drink?”

“I'll have a glass of water. No ice.” he said. Cara couldn't help but notice the precision he said the words with, almost like he was cutting the words from the very air, and his tongue was the blade. He turned and stalked to the corner booth, the one with the broken light.

Cara sprang to action and started filling a glass with water, holding off on the ice as the man had requested. She couldn't help but feel an urgency in the way he said the word ice, like her life depended on it. She snagged a menu in her left hand, the glass of water, sans ice, in her right, and brought them to the man in the corner.

“Here you go sir, and here's a menu. Let me know when you're ready to order and I'll fire it right up for you.” Cara tried to give the stranger her most charming smile but she looked into his eyes and nearly choked on it. There was something about his eyes that disturbed her, a darkness that scared her. She didn't know what it was but something about this man sent goosebumps up her arms. She looked away from his eyes and tried to concentrate on his black tie, but with the background of his silky red dress shirt, she didn't feel any more comfortable.

He glanced down, then pushed the menu back to Cara. His words, sharp as before but made all the more menacing by the gleam in his eye came out. “I don't need a menu. I'll have a steak, extra crispy.”

Cara felt her hand clasp onto the menu. “An-anything else sir?” she squeaked out.

“I will tell you when I do.” he said. He then flashed Cara a smile that did nothing to calm her, and set the hairs on the back of her neck on end. Cara was finally able to break his horrifying gaze and hurried to the kitchen.

Once into the kitchen she stood with her back to the swinging door and tried to get her breathing under control.

“What did he order Cara?” asked a voice next to her. The fact the voice was calm did nothing to induce the same feeling in Cara, and she thought she nearly jumped out of her skin before she realized who said it. Looking to her left she gave the fiercest glare she could muster to Harry, standing there as if he belonged where he was.

“Oh my god Harry, you scared the shit outta me!” she said, slapping his shoulder in emphasis. “And what are you doing back here?”

“What did he order Cara?” Harry repeated, still as calm as the first time he had asked her.

Cara frowned at Harry. He looked serious right now. She had never seen him look serious before, except for the time he consoled Julie after her mother passed. And this was a different type of serious from that. Every other time she had ever seen him he had been some shade of playful, or sheepish, or just downright mischievous.

“He ordered a steak. And a glass of water.”

“No ice?” he asked. Cara nodded. “Extra crispy?” Cara nodded again, dumbfounded how Harry knew this. As sharp as the man talked, he hadn't been speaking in a tone much louder than a whisper. How anyone standing much farther from him than Cara had been could have overheard, she hadn't the foggiest.

Harry sighed, and looked at the door. “So he's arrived huh? Much sooner than I would have liked, but no worries.”

“Do you know this guy Harry?”

Harry turned back to Cara, his eyes seeming to stare into her soul. “No, not this one. But I know his kind.”

“His kind? What's that 'sposed to mean Harry? Is this guy after you? Part of a gang of some sort?” The thought crossed Cara's mind that no one could want to hurt Harry, but the stranger sitting in the corner booth had a dangerous look in his eye, and could be of a mind to. Cara shivered.

Harry gave her a sad smile, and placed one of his hands on her shoulder. Cara felt relieved, if only a little, by his gentle touch. “No darlin', he's not after me. If he was, there'd be nearly a dozen of them in there. They couldn't risk that many of them together. Now you just stay in here until I get back and get some pie ready. I'll have a taste for banana cream when I'm done out there.”

As he said the last he touched his index finger touched to her temple, and Cara felt a sereneness rush through her body, lifting her soul. She closed her eyes and felt as if she was sitting in the sun. She let the warmth roll over her and through her, and didn't notice when Harry left the kitchen.

* * *

Harry wondered how the Morlocks had come to know of Cara already, but steeled himself to do what he must, rubbing the perpetual day old stubble over his chin. Standing in the doorway with a hand on his hip and the other on his chin he stared at the Morlock sitting beneath the burnt-out light in the corner booth.

For his part the man turned his head so fast to look at Harry it might have snapped off were it not attached. His eyes narrowed into a slit-eyed glare and his mouth parted just enough for a hiss to escape, like the rattle of a snake.

“I'd be very careful there, and make no sudden movements Morlock.” Harry said, rubbing his thumb once more over his chin.

“How do you know what I am, hue mun?” the Morlock hissed, his eyes widening slightly.

The thumb slowly moved from the stubble of Harry's chin, over his mouth and nose, between his eyes and up to the lip of his hat. He pinched the hat and pulled it off his scraggly blond hair and off his head. As he did so his hair seemed to lose it's color and took on a silver gray sheen. His hair straightened and sagged to his shoulders, and as Harry dropped the hat, the Morlock sprang to action, leaping out of the booth at Harry, eyes even wider at Harry's transformation before him.

In mid leap his fingernails extended, growing into claws. His mouth started to open wider than any normal humans could, with teeth extending as long as a child's finger, claws poised for Harry's throat. Harry sidestepped the Morlock's leap, grabbed and pulled one of its hands behind its back while the claws of the other hand scraped through the white paint of the doorway to expose the wood beneath. Harry yanked the Morlock back from the door and down to the floor, kneeling on the arm he had pulled behind, and reached his left hand up to the Morlock's neck. The knife he'd concealed there sliced through the Morlock's neck, severing the head from the body. A light flashed for a tenth of a second in the Morlock's eyes. The demon's body and clothes withered to dust, and then nothing at all beneath Harry. The only evidence that a Morlock had ever been there were the gouges in the wall and the black necktie, the source of a Morlock's power.

Harry's black skullcap hit the floor.

Harry sat for little while wondering how the Morlocks had found Cara. He would have to take more steps to protect her in the future. Harry stood up, stretched his old bones to the ceiling, and then reached for his hat. He affixed it to its usual home atop his head, and the glamour replaced itself over him, making his straight gray hair scraggly blond wisps again, and removing the wrinkles and scars he had earned in his early wizarding days. He snagged the Morlock's tie and deposited it in one of his numerous pockets to destroy later, lest the beast revive itself.

Harry placed his hand on the gouges in the doorway, and muttered a few words to an incantation. The wood bubbled and expanded to fill the scrapes, and the paint stretched across the grooves. Harry proceeded to remove all other traces of a Morlock having been killed in the diner. Both magical and the presence of the empty water glass on the table. He stared at the burnt out light above the corner booth and within a few moments it lit itself up, prompting a smile to appear on Harry's face.

Looking around the room once more and satisfied with his work, he walked into the kitchen. Opening the door he saw Cara bent over the stove cooking something in a cast iron skillet. “What are you doing darlin'? That's no way to warm a pie.”

Cara turned to him from the stove and gave him a look that was supposed to convey disdain, but failed. Seeing it wasn't working on him she gave up and smiled. “You hold your horses there Harry, I'll have your pie ready in just a second. I have more people than just you to worry about. This steak is almost done and then I'll be right out. Now out of my kitchen before I tell Mabel you been sneaking back here again!”

Harry looked at her dumbfounded.

“Well don't give me that stupid look, go on and get out of the kitchen. I'll be right out.”

Harry hurried out the door and stopped. How could she remember to cook a steak for that Morlock when he had cast a memory charm on her? Had he done it wrong? No, there wasn't a trace of worry on her face like there was before. He took out the spectacles from his pocket that he so rarely used, and peeked his head through the door to look at Cara. He immediately saw the reason why. He had cast it right, but her powers were almost ready to manifest themselves. A spatula came flying at the door and clanged at the spot Harry's head had just been.

As he walked back to the dining room Harry shook his head. He had been neglecting his duties of protecting Cara, if he hadn't noticed she was so close to manifesting her abilities There was little time left before he must start her on her journey. But there was a little time, at least a day or two. Harry smiled.

Enough time for a slice of pie.