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I didn’t know how Gigi did it, but somehow she managed to get Cal to (a) put a shirt on and (b) join us in the kitchen while I cooked a completely unhealthy late-night snack. He tried to leave several times. His feet were pointed out the door and in motion, but she was just so damn sweet, asking detailed questions about how to heat a packet of donor blood and offering to put it in a fancy wine glass for him, that he couldn’t find a way to back out of the room without feeling like he was kicking an adorable adolescent puppy. If he wasn’t careful, he’d wake up in the morning to find that she’d painted his toenails sparkly pink.
Scooting closer to me so that he could put distance between himself and my sister, Cal asked, “So, what separates Elvis pancakes from all other inferior pancakes?”
“Peanut butter and bananas,” I told him as I mixed Bisquick with milk.
He grimaced as I mashed two bananas and creamed them with the batter. “That doesn’t sound terribly healthy.”
“Hey, I used to prep the griddle with bacon grease until Gigi started counting calories.” I chuckled, stirring peanut butter ice-cream topping into the batter just before pouring three small pancakes onto the griddle. She frowned at me, reminding me that we’d agreed not to discuss her frantic “I can’t button my jeans!” episode.
I snickered and blew her a raspberry kiss as I flipped the pancakes. “She also makes me use light syrup.”
Cal took a sip of the blood. I plated the pancakes and slid them across the counter. He blanched at the sight of the dripping flapjacks. “How does one stumble onto this treasured family recipe?”
I watched as my sister dolloped knobs of butter onto each flapjack, then drizzled lacy loops of syrup over her handiwork. Sliced bananas and more ice-cream topping followed as a final touch. “Gigi’s school had a dessert fundraiser a few years ago. And Gigi insisted that we try to make banana pudding for two hundred people. It was hell—sticky, messy, banana-flavored hell. We ended up with half a mashed banana stuck to the ceiling and about ten bunches of leftover bananas. We made banana bread, banana pancakes, banana milkshakes. Anything to get rid of the bananas. I thought that adding peanut butter to the pancake batter would make it even better, because, well, I was flipping sick of banana. And thus, Elvis pancakes were born.”
“Hey, you were just starting off. You hadn’t grasped the concept of bake-sale-scale cooking yet.” Gigi chuckled, spearing a bite of pancake.
Cal’s brow furrowed. “Starting off?”
“As my parent and/or guardian.”
I beamed as Gigi pushed her plate toward our guest. “You wanna try some?”
Cal shrank back from the plate. “I’m pretty sure those would look disgusting even if I was human.”
“They’re delicious,” Gigi said, her cheeks puffed slightly with syrup-soaked pancake.
“They will make me vomit.”
Gigi swallowed loudly and gave him the stink-eye. “Well, that’s rude.”
And for the first time, Cal actually seemed concerned that he had offended a lowly human. He shook his head and explained. “No, no. Vampires lack the enzymes to digest solid foods, which is part of the reason we instinctually shy away from it. It smells rotten to us and tastes worse. If I were to take a bite, I would be overwhelmed with the scent and taste of something like roadkill, and I would throw it right back up.”
“Thank you for describing that. Vomit talk always gives me a big appetite,” Gigi said, rubbing her stomach. I burst out laughing, which made Gigi giggle. And as Cal looked on, perplexed and irritated, the pair of us sat at the table and cackled like a couple of hyenas.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him as Gigi snickered on.
Cal frowned. “You’re laughing at me.”
“But not in a serious way. We’re just teasing you. You have no problem teasing me when it’s just the two of us,” I reminded him.
“I guess I’m not used to being mocked by more than one person at a time.”
Gigi reached over to pat his arm while stabbing more pancake with her other hand. “You’ll get used to it. That’s what families do. Families are the people who will always call you on your crap and will laugh at you no matter how serious the situation. Because you know they don’t mean it.”
The little lines etched in Cal’s face deepened. I could tell that he was trying to find some graceful way to remind Gigi that he wasn’t family. He wasn’t even a friend, really. He was just the guy sleeping in a tent in our basement. And honestly, I was grateful to him for not just blurting it out, so I said, “I’ve been telling her she should stitch that on a sampler, but she doesn’t like handicrafts.”
“Needles intimidate me,” Gigi admitted.
Cal snickered, and the little lines smoothed back out. Gigi proved to be quite the conversational buffer, peppering Cal with questions and observations about his vampire status. She’d never met a real “live” vampire before. I’d made sure of that. And now that she was face-to-face with one, she wanted to know whether he fed on live donors, what his sleeping arrangements were like at home, where he’d traveled. It was the best possible way to avoid the postmauling awkwardness. Except that Gigi’s questions seemed to be giving Cal a headache. His eyes were glazing over, and the corner of his mouth was starting to twitch. But instead of giving in to his tendency to be grumpy and taciturn, he turned the tables on my sister. He asked about her classes at school, her friends, her previous run-ins with Sammi Jo’s grandmother. He basically talked her into the ground, until she was practically dropping off over her plate.
“That was impressive,” I told him as Gigi bid us good night and trod up the stairs. “I’ve never seen Gigi outtalked by anyone.”
“She seems to be a level-headed, good-natured girl. I think you’re past the worst of it.”
I dunked a tea ball full of my own rosehip-and-raspberry tea into an “I Heart My Big Sister” mug. “Worst of what?”
“Adolescence,” he said, shuddering. I chuckled. “She’s a lucky girl, to have you taking care of her.”
