"No," Teige said, "The song by ABBA? That song."

He sat next to Vlad at the table, cutting up some kind of green vegetable into slices while Vlad scraped something else that had been diced smaller off the cutting board and onto a small tray.

"Look, I can explain," Vlad said. "Every Sunday night, the drag queens would do a cover of it. It was the last thing they did before the bar closed for good. So yes," he agreed, as Teige laughed, "the song 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA does make me cry."

Parker leaned over towards Yoshi, holding the frying pan while Yoshi scattered the leaves of some herb over its steaming contents. "Who the hell is ABBA?" she muttered.

"What is a drag queen?" Yoshi whispered back.

Teige scooped the sliced vegetables onto Vlad's tray. "It's goofy, though, you know yerself," he said. Vlad shrugged unabashedly as he got up to carry the tray over to Parker and Yoshi.

"Hey, you asked, I answered!"

"Liya didn't wanna come?" Parker asked Yoshi presently.

"Mm, she said she had something else to do."

A sudden trill of music caught Teige's attention then, as he was wiping his taloned hands clean on a small green towel. The source was Vlad's cell phone, which he'd left on the kitchen table next to one of the cutting boards. Teige picked it up.

"Vlad, you're getting a call. From--" he paused, because there were no letters or numbers on the small caller ID screen on the front of the phone. Instead, the space under the green incoming call symbol was filled with a line of empty boxes. "Well, I donno," he said.