Let Them Eat Stake: A Vampire Chef Novel (39 page)

“I’ll
be round at ten to pick you up,” said Brendan as my people settled back to work. I opened my mouth. He tucked his hand under my chin and shut it for me. “Ten,” he repeated, holding my bandaged hand up in front of my face to emphasize exactly how little I was going to be able to do in terms of cooking tonight. “Or I will drag you out of here straight back to the hospital.”

“I’d like to see you try,” I muttered through clenched teeth.

He just grinned and kissed me, and left me there without trying to say good-bye. I let him go, because I knew he’d be back at ten. And he’d take me back to my apartment, and we’d talk, and whatever happened after that…it would happen and it would be okay.

I dropped my purse on my desk and my butt in the chair. There was a stack of mail, mostly bills, of course. I gritted my teeth as I sorted through them. But in the middle of the stack was a yellow envelope with a handwritten address in tidy, printed letters.

Anatole?
I tore the envelope open and pulled out a card decorated by an artsy watercolor of a rustic cabin surrounded by a field of daisies. Inside someone had scrawled a brief note.

We’re coming back. Save us a table.

Love ya,

Melody

The card toppled slowly out of my bandaged fingers. I knew only one person in the whole world named Melody. A little fidget of a sixteen-year-old girl, she was the one responsible for my brother’s extreme reactions to things such as sunlight and garlic.

Oh.

Shit.

Sarah Zettel is the award-winning author of over twenty novels spanning a whole range of genres: science fiction, fantasy, romance, and now mystery. When not writing, she’s practicing yoga, playing the fiddle, cooking, and reading, although generally not all at once. She lives in Michigan with her rapidly growing son and her husband, Tim, who is a lecturer and aerospace engineer at a certain large public university.