“That’s precisely what I’ve come to talk to you about.” The woman steps over a pile of folded napkins beside the entrance. “I’m Winnie. I’m a friend of Celeste’s from her book club, and she said Ishould see if you might need ceramic mugs and tankards made by a local artisan and fellow member of the supernatural community.”
“Er, well, I’ve already ordered glassware from a catering supply place. I’m on a bit of a budget.”
“This is Alaric.” Winnie pushes the man towards me. “He’s a vampire. He has spent the last five hundred years living in that lonely castle overlooking the valley, perfecting every kind of artistic hobby you could imagine. Which sounds delightful except that now his castle is full of stuff.” She saysstufflike it’s a dirty word.
Behind her, Alaric stares stoically ahead, as if this is a speech he’s heard several times now. Winnie takes the box from him and drops it on the counter in front of me.
“I’m his professional-organiser-turned-fake-fiance—it’s a whole story, don’t ask. All you need to know is that I’m tasked with the job of taming his clutter. We have a room filled with ceramics that we need to offload before a particularly important ball. If you can cancel your order, these would be totally free. Take a look.”
Winnie unfolds the flaps of the box, revealing a stack of the most beautiful handcrafted ceramic mugs and tankards I’ve ever seen.
I pull out a tankard and hold it up to the light. A blue and purple glaze has been swirled around so it looks like a galaxy. “These are beautiful.”
“Yes, they are,” Winnie says proudly. “Alaric is talented at many things.Somany things. How many can I put you down for? Four hundred?”
“Not that many!” We barely have the space to serve forty people at the meadery, let alone four hundred. “I’ll take a hundred. A mixture of the tumblers and the larger tankards, please. And a few of the small bread plates.”
“Two thousand is my final offer.”
“A hundred really is all I need?—”
“Five thousand cups it is!”
“If I take five thousand, I won’t be able to fit any customers in the shop!”
Winnie sighs. She pushes the box towards me. “Fine. A hundred isbetter than nothing. But if you need matching coasters or some large, ungainly medieval tapestries for the walls, let me know. Oh, or some teddy bears. Alaric had a teddy bear phase, too. Take what you like from that box, and we’ll bring the rest over tomorrow.”
We spend the rest of the week cleaning and arranging the shop. Rafe moves the chairs and tables five times before he’s satisfied with their arrangement. I stack our new crockery in the back room, yell at the new POS system until Rafe sets it up for me, and wipe down the barrels until they shine.
Now there’s only one job left to do, and I’ve been dreading it. The counter is covered with stacks of wine bottle labels with my new design. To save money, I had one label printed with a blank line where we write in the batch and date. But now we need to write on the labels and affix them to the bottles we’re arranging on the shelves, so customers can buy mead to take home.
When I label my bottles at home, it’s never mattered that my handwriting drifts in strange directions or that I sometimes write the wrong letter and mix up capitals and little letters, since I’m the only one who reads them. But I need customers to be able to read these, which means I need to concentrate. I’ve been sitting here for ten minutes and I’ve only finished two labels, and one I threw out. My fingers already hurt from gripping the pen so hard. It’s going to be a long?—
“How about I write, and you stack the shelves.” Rafe holds out his hand for the pen. “That way you can arrange the bottles how you like.”
“Okay. Sure.”That was easy.
Rafe shoots me an amused look as he starts writing. My stomach churns with nervous energy. I feel like my veins are made of bees about to swarm, like I’m so close to having this thingI never dreamed I’d be allowed to want, and at any moment I’m certain it’s all going to be taken away.
“Did you know that African tribes have been drinking fermented honey for 20,000 years?” I blurt out. All that nervous excitement apparently wants to leave my body in the form of mead facts. “They tell stories of how their ancestors saw bees acting strangely after drinking from a puddle in the twisted roots of a tree where a beehive had fallen. Archaeologists have found traces of a fermented drink made of honey, rice, and fruit in Chinese pottery dating back to 7000BCE. They’ve also found traces in jugs in Tutankhamun’s tomb. Before viticulture was widespread, Dionysos was the Greek god of bees, honey, and mead, so we know the Ancient Greeks drank it, too. The Vikings had mead-making down to an art, with two different types – one reserved only for royalty, and another for everyone else. Mead only declined in popularity because beer and wine were cheaper to make and able to be made at a larger scale—” I clamp my hand over my mouth.
Rafe stares at me, mouth open.
“Sorry.” I duck my head back to the labels. “I get excited about mead.”
“I can tell. That’s the most you’ve ever said to me aboutanything,” Rafe says. “I wish you could see your face. You light up when you talk about this nerdy stuff. Why aren’t you still at university, nerding out over the history of paper and having a torrid affair with your hot older professor?”
I shake my head. I’m not talking to him about it.
“Does it have anything to do with that bastard of a husband?” Rafe growls. “He’d better hope he stays missing, because if he comes back, I’m going to kill him.”
“Warrick didn’t make me quit.” I slam two bottles on the shelf with more force than I intend. I return to the counter to affix another label. “And I don’t want to?—”
“Okay, then it’s got to do with why I’m the one writing on the labels even though my handwriting looks like I wrote graffiti on the walls of Tutankhamun’stomb.”
I freeze, my hand trembling, a label stuck to my finger.
Rafe’s tail reaches up between us and circles my wrist. The orange fur is so soft and warm. He plucks the label from my fingers. He brushes his tail under my chin, tilting my head up, forcing me to look at him.
