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The vamps were apparently not used to seeing a Bundt cake be wolfed down like a doughnut—hence the big eyes. Which got even bigger when one of them glanced up and saw me. And then they were all looking, heads coming up like puppets on a string as the news flashed silently between them.
And then one of them smiled.
Which was when things got a little surreal.
Not that they were difficult. Oh, no. I womaned up and went in to explain the situation, and they quickly agreed to “take their leave” as soon as they finished stuffing the twins. But they said it with smiles all around. Big, genuine smiles that made dark eyes light up and dimples pop.
It made my teeth hurt.
Broadly smiling vamps weren’t exactly common in my experience, unless they had a knife ready to slide between my ribs. So I thought I could be forgiven for flinching slightly every time one of them moved. Which, to give them credit, they caught on to pretty fast. But while most vamps would have had a little fun at my expense, like moving to different parts of the room so that I’d have trouble keeping them all in sight, these just seemed perplexed. And chagrined. Like they thought maybe they were doing something wrong.
So they tried to fix it by slowing down—way down. And by making very deliberate motions and only when they had to, which creeped me out even more, because vamps don’t move like that. And so it went until they almost weren’t moving at all, until it was like talking to a group of determinedly smiling statues.
“I, uh.” I licked my lips. “I have to go,” I told them, a little desperately. And then fled to find some lunch before I passed out.
I didn’t know why I was so hungry, considering I’d eaten enough last night for a dozen longshoremen, or one fey. But I was. Unfortunately, the kitchen wasn’t looking too promising.
In fact, it was just as well that the vamps had been keeping Claire out, because she was going to go ballistic when she saw this. Empty cabinets hung open everywhere, the sink was piled with dirty dishes, and more of the same were stacked high on every available surface. Except for the end of the table. It was covered by a dwindling pile of food, mostly desserts, ready for sacrifice to the two bottomless pits out there.
My metabolism doesn’t run so well on sugar, so I passed them up in favor of a trip to the fridge. Which was usually stuffed full, considering the number of mouths we had to feed. But today it looked more like the bad old days, when Claire had been gone and I’d been living the life of the carefree—and hungry—bachelorette.
I’d once considered myself lucky if I had a can of tuna fish and a couple of those little mayo packets in the house, but Claire had spoiled me. My stomach rumbled in di
smay at the almost empty shelves. But a look in the freezer yielded a bit more bounty, and old scavenger instincts took over.
In fact, I was so busy assembling lunch or supper or lupper or whatever it was called at four p.m. that I barely noticed the chef guy coming into the kitchen. Until I turned around from the toaster to grab something from the depleted fridge and almost ran into him. He was a little shorter than the maître d’ and a little pudgier, with a double chin and a happy belly under all that painfully starched linen. Which must have been just for show, because despite the state of the kitchen, there wasn’t a speck on him. But something had upset him; the guy appeared to be on the verge of tears.
“Zere is no more bread,” he confessed tragically, like someone admitting witchcraft to the Inquisition.
“That’s okay.” My waffles dinged. I took them out, threw on some cold cuts and a couple pickle slices I’d fished out of a mostly empty jar and smushed it into a sandwich. And looked up to find the vamp struck dumb in horror.
“You…you cannot eat zat,” he whispered, obviously appalled.
I looked at it. “You’re right.” But there wasn’t any butter, so I grabbed the mayo and slathered up one of the still-hot waffles. It melted nicely into all the cracks, but my creation still needed something. I got an inspiration and stuck my head back in the fridge, opened a drawer and—
Success. I turned back to my sandwich, only to find that it wasn’t there anymore. Maybe because it had been hijacked.
“Give me that!” I told the vamp, who was holding it firmly against his chest, a determined look on his face.
“What ees zat?” he demanded, eyeing my prize.
“Cheese.” I held it up.
“Zat ees not cheese.”
“How do you know?”
“Eet is orange.”
“A lot of cheese is orange.”
“Non! No cheese ees that color. Cheese comes from zee milk. Zee milk, eet ees white. When ’ave you seen milk that looks like zat?”
I held up the square of little slices and pointed at the bold-faced label. “Processed American Cheese.”
He snatched the package, without letting go of his hostage. And eyed it warily. “Eet says ‘cheese food.’” He looked up, obviously perplexed. “What ees thees? Zee cheese, it does not eat.”
“I think the idea is that you eat it.”
