Undead Sublet (13 page)

I groaned. I knew I should have made blood pudding!

“This is what we want,” Sam reminded me. “We’ve still got a shot. And if you throw up on me, I will get seriously pissed at you.”

I kept my face buried in my hands as Ophelia built up to the announcement of first place, describing the fabulous photo spread each prize winner would receive in the cookbook, the cash prize, and,
of course, “the knowledge that the winner had helped new vampires adjust to their new diet.” Finally, Ophelia felt that she’d tortured us enough and exclaimed, “Every judge was pleased with the first-prize winner. For our recently turned panelists, it was everything good about summer cookouts, without the regrets of solid food on the vampire digestive system. Ladies and gentlemen, the winner of the Faux Type O Bloody Bake-Off and the twenty-five-thousand-dollar grand prize—Blood Creek Barbecue Sauce by Tess Maitland and Sam Clemson!”

If there was applause, I couldn’t hear it. I was frozen, unable to move or see anything beyond Sam’s face and its elated expression. His bright, unearthly smile lit up the town square. We’d done it. We had the money to buy the house out from under Lindy. I could stay in the Hollow and live in the place I loved. For the first time, everything I really wanted was in my grasp.

Jolene hugged me, and I shrieked, hopping up and down like a maniac. Sam laughed, watching with amusement as I seemed to lose my mind. I threw my arms around him and squeezed until he made a wheezing
uhf
sound. I beamed up at him.

Well, maybe not
everything
I wanted. But it was a good start.

“You put my name on the entry slip?” Sam asked as we made our way to the stage. “I didn’t see you do that.”

As an overenthusiastic well-wisher slapped me on the back, nearly bowling me over, Sam caught my elbow and shot the guy a dark look. I laughed, waving off the back-slapper’s apologies. “Of course I did. You were just as much a part of the creative process as I was. Without you, the vampire judges might have ended up in the hospital with food poisoning.”

He gave my arm an affectionate squeeze. “Thanks, Tess. I mean it.”

“I meant it, too,” I countered. Sam leaned in closer to me, his eyes intent on my upturned mouth. I smiled up at him, my hand slipping over the fingers gripping my arm.

From the stage, we heard a none-too-subtle throat clearing. Ophelia stood there, holding an oversized novelty check, her eyebrows arched. I blushed, and Sam gave her an apologetic shrug. We crossed the stage and claimed the giant check and the blue ribbon. We shook the judges’ hands. And while Jane was clearly trying to maintain the appearance of objectivity, the excited squeeze she gave my hand nearly brought me to my knees.

“I didn’t know it was yours, I swear,” she whispered. “After all, your first efforts were so . . . uh, raw. I thought you’d made the Valentine’s Day Massacre Marinara Sauce.”

“That’s so wrong,” I whispered back.

Jane shuddered. “Yes, it was.”

Ophelia motioned for me to join her and Sam at
the mic. I blinked at the sheer number of people gathered in front of me.
Oh, hell.
This was why I hid out in the kitchen at work. I was not great in front of crowds. Ophelia gave me another nudge toward the mic, where I spluttered, “Um, th-thanks. Thanks so much for this. I’m thrilled.”

Ophelia looked less than impressed with my oratory skills, and when I tried to back away from the mic, she looped her arm through mine and kept me in place. “Tess is a recent addition to Half-Moon Hollow. One of our judges has informed me that our winner will be opening a restaurant here in town soon. And I’m sure she will have a wide selection of vampire menu items.”

Ophelia gave me a pointed smile, which I supposed deserved a response. “Uh, sure.”

“What are you going to call your establishment, Tess?” Ophelia asked.

I floundered, my cheeks hot. I couldn’t believe I still hadn’t come up with a name for the place yet. Stricken, I looked up to Sam, who leaned into the microphone and announced, “Miss Maitland’s new restaurant will be called Southern Comforts.”

“Yes,” I squeaked. “Southern Comforts.”

“Well, I’m sure we’re all looking forward to the opening,” Ophelia said, smirking. The crowd applauded, and I waved halfheartedly. Ophelia leaned closer and whispered, “You should go now.”

Still a bit rattled, I nodded, and Sam led me offstage.
Ophelia’s assistant gave us paperwork to sign and details about collecting our winnings. We also received a large cast-iron pot full of Faux Type O products to “continue our experimentation.”

After we thanked Jane again, she warned us to beware the unexpected gift basket and the potential trouble it could bring into our lives. Explaining that Jane had “issues” with gift baskets, Jolene and Zeb helped us lug the check and the cast-iron albatross to the truck. Then they insisted on taking us for drinks over at the Fraternal Order of Police beer garden. I noticed that Sam snagged one of the “special occasion” bottles of Faux Type O High Life before walking back with us.

“Thanks for naming my restaurant for me,” I told him as we took our seats at a picnic table near an improvised stage, where the night-shift sergeants picked out old country-western standards on acoustic guitars.

Sam grimaced. “Yeah, sorry. You just had this frozen deer expression, and I didn’t know how long it would take you to snap out of it.”

“Or Ophelia could have snapped on you,” Zeb observed.

“It’s OK, I like it,” I said. “Southern Comforts has quite the ring to it. And it fits with the theme I’d planned.” Sam sipped his drink, looking pleased, so I added, “Of course, you’re going to have to be my guinea pig.”

He chuckled, then straightened his expression into a frown. “I never agreed to that.”

“I think you’ll be willing to renegotiate,” I said, arching my eyebrows into a supervillain expression. “Or I will lace every bottle of blood in that gift basket with ghost chili oil.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “You are the most twisted, evil little thing.”

“Why does that sound all sexy when he says it?” Zeb asked his wife.

Shaking her head, Jolene raised her cup of beer in a toast. “Here’s to your first Burley Days.”

“So far, it hasn’t sucked,” I added, clinking my cup against hers. I caught Sam’s eye before repeating the gesture against his blood bottle. “To ceasefires.”

Sam’s lips quirked into a grin. “To ceasefires.”

—

A few beers
later, Sam decided it was time to leave. I kept lingering, discussing plans for the restaurant with Jolene, until Sam and Zeb shared a determined “manly men together” look and dragged us away from the table.

“You know, if you make too much of a show of this, some very ugly rumors about vampire brutality on tourists will start spreading around town,” I told Sam, snickering as he slung me under his arm like a football and carried me down the darkened sidewalk to his truck.

“Yeah, because I have such a great reputation.” He
grunted as he hauled me toward the truck. “My God, woman, how much funnel cake did you eat?”

“Nice.” I barked out a laugh while he opened the truck door for me. He grinned down at me, giving me a boost as I climbed into the passenger seat. His hands were resting on my hips, and I had the strangest urge to map that little constellation of freckles on his cheekbone with my tongue. His lips parted, and I leaned forward just in time to hear—

“Sammy?”

Breaking a Few Eggs

9

T
he spell broke as we turned to find Sam’s ex-wife standing on the sidewalk, gaping at us.

“Sammy, what are you doing here?” Lindy demanded, shrugging off the insistent arm of a blond, tan man in jeans and pink polo shirt. The guy was in his midthirties and had intentionally popped his collar.

An unfiltered expression of pain flashed across Sam’s face, particularly when he saw Mr. Popped Collar’s arm around Lindy’s shoulders.

“You know it’s not a good idea for you to be out in public.” Lindy sighed, as if she were scolding a small child. “You know how you are. What if you hurt someone?”

“I’m fine.” Sam growled, ever so subtly stepping away from me. I looked to Popped Collar, to gauge how he felt about interloping in the Clemsons’ bizarre marital drama. He appeared to be playing Angry Birds on his phone.

“Still, maybe I should take you home,” Lindy fussed. “You know how you get around humans. This has to be pushing your control to the limit. Let’s just get you home before you hurt someone.”

“Don’t you worry about me!” Sam barked. “You owe Tess here an apology for dragging her into our mess. How could you rent the house without even talkin’ to me? That’s out-there, even for you, Lindy.”

“Sammy, I didn’t want to rent out the house, but I needed the money,” she said, her voice rising to a wheedling, babyish tone that grated on my nerves. “You know how expensive it is to start up with a new apartment. I just need a little extra to put down the security deposit.”

I huffed. “Oh, come on!”

Sam turned to me with a weird, glazed expression, as if he’d almost forgotten I was there, despite the fact that he’d just spoken about me. “Could you just give me a minute?” he asked.

I sighed. “Fine.”

I climbed into the truck and slammed the door. Unfortunately, Sam’s windows were pretty solid, and I couldn’t hear what was being said on the other side of the glass. That was a shame, because Lindy appeared
to be wailing like a banshee, and Sam was waving his arms to an invisible orchestra.

Sam’s fangs kept popping down, which was a problem for new vampires not quite in control of their emotions. Of course, every time it happened, Lindy flinched dramatically, which only made Sam more upset. Popped Collar remained blissfully uninvolved.

When Lindy started screaming, her face flushing red while she jabbed her finger toward Sam’s face, I’d had enough. I didn’t want to get pulled into the middle of this, but damn it, she didn’t get to talk to Sam that way. Not after what she’d pulled, not after leaving him without money or friends or the house he loved. I threw the truck door open, hauling the heavy cast-iron pot with me, just in time to hear Sam exclaim, “You’re going to have to deal with it!”

The next five seconds were a balletic comedy of errors. Sam slammed the truck door just as I started to climb out, shutting it on my foot. I yowled in protest, and when he realized that he’d hurt me, he turned toward me, which irritated Lindy. She swung her purse at his head. Sam ducked just as I pushed my way out of the truck and stepped right into Lindy’s swing. Her (fortunately, very soft) quilted Vera Bradley handbag landed broadside across my cheek, leaving me with a resounding thud bouncing around my skull.

“Here,” I said, and handed the pot to Sam’s ex. She blinked at me, confused, as I drew my hand back as
if I was going to slap her. She shrieked, dropping the handles to cover her face with her hands. The heavy iron pot crashed down on Lindy’s foot with a clang. She howled, hopping up and down on her good foot.

“That’s for screwing me over on the lease!” I shouted.

Lindy lunged for me, claws out. Sam threw me over his shoulder, turning to plop me back into the truck, only to smack my forehead across the edge of the door. I yelped, he spun around too quickly to see what had happened, and my sneaker whacked Lindy across the mouth. Lindy wailed, but I was too busy nursing my aching temple to laugh.

“Your vampire reflexes suck.” I groaned as Sam threw me unceremoniously into the passenger seat while Lindy continued to berate us both.

Sam rounded the truck, jumped into the driver’s seat, and gave me a long, incredulous look. “Did you just drop a pot on my ex-wife’s foot?”

As he turned the key in the ignition, I shook my head, wincing at the pain in my temple. “Technically,
she
dropped the pot on her foot.”

“You’re a scary woman.”

And through it all, Popped Collar continued to kill those little green pigs.

—

I stood at
the back door, sipping jasmine tea and watching the late-afternoon sky shift into an angry, bruised green. The trees danced so violently in the wind that I
was afraid the limbs would snap off and come crashing into the house.

With that in mind, I stepped back from the windows a few paces.

It had been a very productive couple of days. The beverage company had wired the prize money into Sam’s account, allowing Sam to file papers with the bank. Sam and I had finalized blueprints for the changes to the restaurant. I had started making arrangements to move out of the house.

Somehow the sky went even darker, casting the house in purpling shadows as roiling clouds gathered overhead. I was wondering whether I should go look for a flashlight when the electricity winked off with a snap of ozone.

I groaned. Perfect timing.

There were no flashlights, of course. Lindy had probably run off with them when she left. I lit a “Relaxing Seascape” pillar candle on the mantel.

“Yep, I’m more relaxed already,” I muttered.

The house was getting darker and darker as sheets of rain lashed against the windows. Even though we were reaching “house sucked away by a cyclone” levels of interior shade, Sam wasn’t due to wake up for a few more hours.

I was trying to figure out what my dinner options would be without power or a manual can opener when I heard a strange thumping noise from the side of the house. I rushed to the window and saw that one
side of the in-ground double door to the cellar had come loose and was flapping in the wind like a particularly heavy flag. Had the latch slipped out of place?

Oh, shoot.
The cellar, where Sam was sleeping. Rain was pouring into the open door.

The second I stepped outside, my brain shouted,
Error! Error! Get your ass back inside!

The rain felt like being slapped around by quick, icy hands, soaking through my T-shirt and stinging my skin. A wind gust knocked me back against the porch railing. I tried to take a step toward the banging noise, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open against the force of the wind and the water.