Sunshine

Jesse came in right after Mary left. It was like he’d been listening at the door. He stood there looking at me. I went on hurling large spoonfuls of batter into millions of muffin cups. Muffin cups in my bakery were real sorcerer’s apprentice material, like the dough for the cinnamon rolls every morning could have stood in for The Blob. “There isn’t room to hang around back here,” I said. There wasn’t, although people often did. It was illegal to have customers back here, but the local food inspectors were all Charlie’s friends, just like our local fire inspector was. We’d had the head inspector’s daughter’s fifteenth birthday party here about six months ago: the story was that the coffeehouse was the compromise reached between the party her parents wanted her to have and the party she wanted to have. I made six chocolate chip layer cakes for the event (and chocolate butter alphabet cookies to spell out HAPPY BIRTHDAY CATHY over the frosting, because I don’t do fancy decorating, life is too short), and they were all gone that evening. Some of her friends were still coming back. I was going to need a second apprentice if Charlie’s became a haunt of teenage boys.

“Mary was in here for fifteen minutes.”

“You tell time real well,” I said. “Is that an important skill in SOF? Mary will fit on the stool. You won’t.” I kept a stool wedged in the one semifree corner that wasn’t next to the ovens, for staff on break, or anyone else I felt like letting into my territory. No SOF was on that list tonight, and I wasn’t in a good mood.

Jesse went and sat on the stool. He did fit. SOF made you keep in shape to keep your job. No lard butts there. The SOFs weren’t that much easier to keep topped up than teenage boys. All that fitness makes you eat. Pat in particular could put it away. When he sat on that stool I had to keep a sharp eye on him. He could make whole loaves of bread disappear in moments.

I opened the oven doors and dragon breath roared into the room. I shoved in muffin tins. I closed the doors and set the timer. I dumped the bowls in the sink and turned on the water. The coffeehouse doesn’t have the most efficient layout in the world, and the dishwasher is in the main kitchen. When I had time, I washed up my own stuff.

I made as much noise as possible.

“Rae,” said Jesse at last.

“Yeah,” I said.

“We’re on the same side.”

I didn’t say anything. Are we? Am I sure I’m on the right side any more? It was a very pretty conundrum. People don’t escape from vampires. Since I’m alive…It wasn’t really consorting with the enemy. It was just something that happened. Yeah, and it just happened that I could keep the sun off a vampire.

It wasn’t him I needed to forget. It was me. It was what I had done.

Why would a vampire stick around to feed a human milk and muffins—and make sure she didn’t choke on them? Honor among thieves? I’d said that. To him. Why the hell had I wanted to save him? He’d almost had me for dinner. He’d thought about it.

Why had my tree said yessssss? What the hell was I?

Maybe the fact that the vampire slash on my breast hurt all the time and wouldn’t heal was a good sign. Maybe it meant I was still human.

Eventually Jesse got down from the stool and went away.

The nightmares that night were particularly bad, and apparently I’d been clawing myself in my sleep, because when the alarm went off at three-forty-five and I groaned and rolled over and turned the light on, not only had the scab split open again but my pillow had big ugly streaks and blotches of blood all over it.

The alarm was still going off a quarter hour earlier than it used to because it took me a quarter hour longer to get moving in the morning than it used to. I was still tired all the time. Okay, it was just the nightmares stopping me sleeping properly. Plus worrying about stuff like my face in the globenet archive and what all my friends thought. I wasn’t losing enough blood from the vampire slash to make me tired that way. And it didn’t hurt all that much. It was just a nagging nuisance.

I drove to the coffeehouse and made cinnamon rolls and rye bread—it was rye bread day—and then I made banana honey nut bread and fig bars and Hell’s Angelfood and Killer Zebras and a lot of muffins, and by late morning I was done. I had the rest of the day off till six.