"So you're a necromancer?" Gideon tilted her head at him. They didn't have "doctors" in the Houses, they had adepts of various specialties: bone, flesh, spirit. He wore enough black to be Ninth, but she would have known him. Smart like Sixth, but the only gray on him was his hair. She took another guess, a stab in the dark, as she tried to fill one of the strange, brittle, flimsy-colored dishes with the cold goop.

"I don't know what pines or apples are, but I do like sugar. 'M Gideon. You from a House, too, or is this stuff ... not eye-bleedingly new to you?"

Since she had no idea that soft serve needed to be twisted and swirled, it spilled over the cone and onto her thumb.

"Shit!" She let go of the lever, but didn't realize she'd needed to push it back up. "How did you stop it?"