Undead Sublet (4 page)

“Yes, you didn’t make it clear in the rental ad that the house came with a fully furnished vampire lair in the basement,” I snapped.

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that. Your vampire ex-husband is sleeping in the basement. That would be pertinent information to
give a prospective tenant, I think, before renting out the house.”

“Look, this really isn’t my problem, Tess.”

“You rented me a house that someone was already living in!”

She yawned. “Technically, no one is
living
there.”

“Don’t you argue semantics with me. You either get your vampire ex out of here, or you refund my money.”

“You’ll find I don’t have to do either. You signed the paperwork. The house is livable. Besides, I don’t have your money anymore.”

It was all downhill from there. Lindy said the house was my problem now and told me I had to deal with it. I told her to do a lot of things, most of which were not anatomically possible. She called the cops and reported me for harassment.

It turned out that there was very little that local law enforcement could do to help me resolve my dispute with Lindy. Until the divorce was final, Lindy was technically entitled to rent out the space as she chose, according to Half-Moon Hollow Police Sergeant Russell Lane, although he said it in a tone that gave me the distinct impression that he was guessing. The good news was that as far as the police were concerned, I hadn’t violated my rental agreement. I hadn’t actually threatened Lindy, just annoyed her. So she couldn’t force me to leave just because she was upset with me.

“Don’t I have the right to a house without undead occupants?” I’d asked Sergeant Lane.

He shrugged. “You are free to take her to small-claims court.”

Considering that the case would likely be called months after I returned to Chicago, I decided against that. I also passed on Lane’s suggestion that I could move into a motel in town if I was so uncomfortable with Sam’s presence in the house. I saw a few of those establishments on my first drive through town. Unless I was an out-of-state fisherman or an adulterer, I didn’t think I would be comfortable at the Lucky Clover Motel.

Given the choice between sticky sheets and bedbugs versus a vampire, I would take my chances with the vampire.

My day did not get better. Despite my extreme fatigue, I couldn’t get any rest. I tossed and turned, but I was too keyed up from my visit from the fuzz. There was this weird gnawing sensation under my breastbone that kept me from relaxing.

How had I become so uncomfortable in my own skin? I used to be such a physical person. When I was in school, everything seemed easy. When I was hungry, I ate. If my body felt too soft, I exercised. And the sex. Everything you’ve heard about the stove being a hotbed for sexual tension is completely true.

But when you reach a certain level of success in the kitchen, everything becomes so competitive—
who gets the best reviews, who gets their photos taken with celebrity diners, who gets guest spots on the Food Network. Because of my schedule, I rarely spent time with nonculinary “civilians.” I couldn’t date other chefs, because they became insecure if they felt they were the “beta” in the relationship. Even Phillip, whose image and income
depended
on my success, seemed uncomfortable with the idea of a girlfriend who was “high-profile.” He wanted to conduct the front of house like a maestro with his orchestra, not answer diners’ questions about his girlfriend. No wonder he’d gone back to the dental hygienist. No one wanted to discuss flossing in detail.

So for months, there had been no sleep
and
no sex. Clearly, I was lucky I hadn’t taken out bystanders in my vegetable-based breakdown.

I stretched. I popped a few antacids. I opened my laptop, checked my e-mail, and was shocked to find a dozen or so messages from restaurant owners around Chicago. Most of them were the standard “get well soon” messages one would expect from a colleague, even a competitor. But others seemed to be fishing for information. Was I leaving Coda? Was I really having health problems, or had the gossip mill blown that out of proportion? What were my immediate plans when I got back into town? There were a few subtle hints—that if my sudden decline was simply an excuse to get away from newly engaged Phillip,
that several establishments would be more than willing to hire me.

The fact that I didn’t immediately delete the e-mail was a bit shocking. For years, I’d devoted every waking hour to Coda. Could I really leave the restaurant? I would have to move. It would be too awkward, living so close to the restaurant. If I was going to do this, I wanted a fresh start. I would need a new apartment—maybe I’d even indulge in something with a view of the Chicago skyline that didn’t involve the guy across the street practicing nude yoga in front of an open window.

Before I’d left, the owners at Coda had made it clear that if I wanted to sell out, they would be happy to reclaim stakes in their business from a potentially crazy woman. They’d only offered the small share I held to appease me. If I sold out, I might have enough to put the down payment on a modest townhouse in a semisafe neighborhood.

I would check the apartments across the street for nude yoga enthusiasts before I moved in.

—

That night, I
sat at the kitchen counter with some jasmine tea and waited, feeling like a teenager on her first job interview.

I tried to focus on the positive steps I’d taken that day—unpacking, finding a store that sold Amish breads and sweets, buying a very large lock for my bedroom door at the hardware store. Lindy would just have to deal with the fact that her master bedroom
now had a brand-new mental-hospital-quality deadbolt.

But I was about to have a potentially unpleasant conversation with my new vampire roommate, and I just couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that it was going to end badly—or bloodily—for me.

The sun dropped behind the horizon, leaving the kitchen purpled and shadowed. Just as I flipped the light switch, I could hear footsteps lumbering up the basement stairs. I took a deep breath, willing myself to be calm, cool, civil.

At the very least, I would not threaten him with Asian cookware.

Sam stepped through the basement door, just as tall and broody as I remembered. Pulling a faded blue T-shirt over some pale but nicely defined abs, he started at the sight of a human sitting at his counter. He frowned, shifting the donor bag of blood between his hands. “Oh, you’re still here.”

“All of the awkwardness of a one-night stand without any of the fun,” I said, trying desperately to look anywhere but at the half-buttoned jeans. It didn’t work. It was as if there were some sort of vision magnet embedded in the little metal rivets.
Don’t look, Tess. Don’t loo—

Damn it.
I looked. And he caught me.

Sam smirked, a devilish little dimple winking out at me as he crossed to the microwave and heated a mugful of synthetic blood. With his jeans still undone.
At this point, I was pretty sure he was refusing to button them, just to mess with me. So I stared at the wall and forged ahead.

“Remember that impasse we discussed? Well, I had a conversation with your ex this morning . . . and the police. And it would appear that Lindy doesn’t have to repay my money, but she can’t force me out, either. So I’m here to stay.”

“Why don’t you just go back home? There’s nothing for you here.”

“Because I’m supposed to be ‘recuperating.’ If I go back to Chicago, I will end up somewhere I don’t need to be.”

He turned his head sharply, glaring at me. “Hold on, are you a drug addict?”

The flinty tone of Sam’s voice, the command, set my nerves on edge. Chef Gamling was the only one allowed to use that tone with me. I took a deep breath, forcing myself to exhale slowly.

“I am not a drug addict,” I said through clenched teeth. “I’m a workaholic. You probably figured out from all of the kitchen equipment that I’m a chef. I had a bit of a setback at my restaurant, and my boss put me on leave. If I go back before I’m supposed to, my manager-slash-ex will probably fire me. I’ll be humiliated, again, and probably won’t be able to find work. My point is, I’m not leaving. Can’t you just go stay with one of your vampire friends for a while?”

Sam scowled. “I haven’t been a vampire long
enough to have a ‘crash pad’ in the undead community. And my wife got all my living friends in the divorce.”

“Well, I’m sorry that your being antisocial has worked against you. But I am not going to share a house with you. And that’s not because you’re a vampire. It’s because you’re a strange
male
vampire, who could be a tutu-wearing serial killer for all I know.”

His dark brows drew together as he shook off that visual. “I guess one of us is just going to have to leave.”

“Yeah, I guess
one of us
is,” I shot back. “In case you missed it, ‘one of us’ translates to the one not freeloading.’”

“Freeloading?”

“I’m paying my way here. You have no job that I’m aware of. You have no decent aboveground furniture. You’re riding out the time left on a divorce settlement before Lindy puts this place on the market.”

I should not have said that. Even before the words came out of my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have called him out on his broken marriage. Why didn’t I just go drop-kick a baby polar bear and then poke its mama with a stick?

He muttered something along the lines of “She’s that sure I won’t get the money, is she?”

Given the sharp expression in Sam’s dark eyes, I had no choice but to backtrack. “Look, I’m really sorry about your marital issues, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m staying. I’ve paid to stay the month, so I’m not going anywhere.”

“You may be paying your way, but that doesn’t make this your home,” he hissed, gripping the counter with those strong white hands. “You can pack up and leave anytime. And trust me, I’m going to do everything I can to try to make that time come sooner than you expect.”

“Are you threatening me?” I asked, a sly grin spreading across my face as I looked up at him. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t think of the last time a man challenged me like this. For the first time in a long time, I felt a frisson of . . . something there were no clean words for. “I bet you I can make you run screaming from this house like something out of
The Amityville Horror
.”

“You sound awfully confident for a mortal without superpowers.” He growled, leaning ever so slightly closer. His nostrils flared as if he was taking in my scent. “You won’t make me move an inch.”

I showed off my own teeth in a sharp, wicked smile. “You will run screaming into broad daylight like a little, tiny girl.”

“First one to fold leaves for good?” he asked, licking his lips.

“Agreed.”

Sam offered his hand to shake on the deal. “Bring it on, cupcake.”

I smirked, grasping his cool hand tightly. The slight wince he gave showed he didn’t expect me to have much of a grip. “Sweetie, you’re already standing in the middle of it, and you’re too dumb to see it.”

One Epiphany, Hold the Pimento Cheese

4

T
he next twenty-four hours were tense, the long, silent wait for the first shot in a battle.

Sam’s first efforts at “pranking” me were the stuff of summer camps and middle school sleepovers. While I was asleep, he sneaked into the bathroom and Saran Wrapped the toilet. He also switched all of the staples in the kitchen. There was salt in the sugar canister, baking soda in the can of baking powder, that sort of thing. It might have confused someone who hadn’t taken professional baking courses.

After visiting an establishment called Bubba’s Beer and Bait, I responded by drilling a little hole in the basement door and gently coaxing two containers of
live crickets through a funnel and onto the basement steps. I corked the hole and wedged a towel into the crack under the door so they couldn’t escape. The best part was that Sam would never find all of them. They would crawl under his bed and into corners, and he would drive himself nuts trying to find the source of their annoying little cheeps.

I was careful to lock myself in my room by sundown that night, just so I could listen to his irritated yelps as he woke up to hundreds of chirping bunkmates. The combination was downright musical.

I was having fun. For the first time in a long time, I felt challenged by a man, and not just in a “You can’t tell me what to do!” rebelling-against-Daddy sort of way. Sam was playing with me, sometimes in a mean-spirited, irritating fashion, but he was devoting a lot of time and effort to keeping me entertained. And that made me like him just the tiniest bit.

But then the sawing started. Nights at the house went from blissfully quiet to my own personal construction zone. Sawing, hammering, drilling, and some sound I could only identify as a cat getting stuck in a dishwasher. I never knew when it was going to start. And some nights, I would sit up until the wee hours of the morning, waiting for it, only to be treated to a quick fifteen minutes of audio torture before dawn.

I would wake up every morning, unlock my bedroom, and find some project half-completed that
made my life more difficult. The tub was left stripped and half-caulked, meaning that I couldn’t bathe without doing permanent damage to the surrounding drywall. The hardwood floors in the hallway were refinished, meaning that if I wanted to leave my room, I had to choose between climbing out the windows or walking across the fresh sealant and ruining his work. He knew I liked the house too much to want to hurt it. Damn him.

One morning, I found that he’d removed all of the knobs from the house. All of the knobs. The faucets, the doorknobs, the drawer pulls for the bathroom vanity, the stove and oven knobs, and the volume knob for the TV. Yes, I was shocked that Sam’s TV had a volume knob. Let’s just say that Lindy didn’t leave him HDTV-ready.

I launched a reciprocal offensive. I roasted a turkey and placed an oscillating fan so that it blew the delicious Thanksgiving fragrance toward the basement door. I baked fragrant cinnamon rolls and lasagnas redolent with garlic and herbs. This gastronomical warfare worked on two fronts, physical and emotional. One, human food smelled spoiled and rancid to vampires. They lacked the enzymes to process solids, so exposure to most “regular” food resulted in projectile vomiting. And two, Sam would be reminded of all of the things he missed about eating as a human and—in my mind—would wind up weeping in a little pile of soggy vampire on the kitchen floor.