When Sam took my hand to lead me through the crowd gathered in front of the dunking booth, I gave his a little squeeze. He dropped it as if I’d burned him, but I tried not to take it personally. Earlier head patting aside, it must have been strange to have me touching him after I’d done everything in my power to injure him.
We spotted the garish black and red Faux Type O booth near the center of the square. Two tall black columns flanked a long red-swathed table. A black banner proclaimed Half-Moon Hollow’s historic participation in the first-ever Bloody Bake-Off. A handful of people, human and vampire alike, were lined up at the registration point, holding various containers. One woman, with heavy circles under her eyes and a cigarette dangling from her lips, seemed to be holding a pitcher of bloodred margaritas. She actually had me worried. But we registered our entry, which we were calling “Blood Creek Barbecue Sauce,” with little incident. A registration number kept our entry anonymous and prevented bias from the judges. That made me feel a bit guilty, considering that Jane had helped me taste-test. But she’d never tasted the final sauce. Heck, the fact that she’d tasted my lesser efforts would probably keep her from guessing which one was mine.
We were given a goodie bag courtesy of the local Council office, just for participating. The contents included a sample of Solar Shield SPF 500 Sunblock, iron supplements, a six-pack of Faux Type O, and a to-go-sized container of Razor Wire Fang Floss.
“I’m just going to let you hold on to that,” I said, handing the tote to Sam.
“Probably for the best,” he said, peering into the bag. “They make mouthwash just for vampires?”
“You have so much to learn about your own culture,” I said.
“A bag full of blood and dental supplies is culture?”
“It’s some culture. Speaking of which, what do we do now?” I asked. “We’ve got an hour before the results are announced.”
“Now we explore the magic and mystery of Burley Days.”
Sam led me through the rows of food vendors and rigged games and a particularly bewildering antiques mall. We stopped in front of a table where a dozen grown men were participating in a Frito-Pie-eating contest. I watched in horror as they dove face-first into a combination of corn chips, chili, and cheese, lapping it up like ravenous dogs.
He chuckled, dragging me away from the carnage. “This must be hell for you.”
“No, but it will be when the first ‘loser’ sicks up his efforts,” I said, shuddering. “Haven’t you people ever heard of fruit pies?”
“No,” he said, laughing harder. “I meant there are no fancy food emporiums, no Apple Stores, only one Starbucks within a fifty-mile radius. Growin’ up around that sort of thing, you probably take it for granted until you end up in a place like this.”
“I didn’t grow up around it.” I scoffed. “I grew up in Hader’s Knob, Missouri. Population five thousand thirty-four.”
He frowned as he seemed to mentally review all of the conversations we’d had over the last few nights. “I just assumed.”
“You never asked,” I said, smirking. “It wasn’t the greatest place to call home. The liquor stores and the pawn shops were the only businesses that did well.”
“Do you ever go home to visit?”
I shrugged. “No reason to. My parents were killed in a car accident when I was in college. Chef Gamling was the one who drove me home from school to help me arrange my parents’ funeral. He was the one who helped me figure out how to handle their mess of an estate. And he’s right here in the Hollow, so where else would I go?”
“So you’re a small-town girl,” he said, eyeing me speculatively. “Bein’ a small-town boy myself—Mount Pleasant, Tennessee, thank you very much—I can appreciate that. How’d you end up in Chicago?”
“Culinary school,” I said. “My dad thought it was nuts, but Mom said I should follow my dream, even when that dream led me about four hundred miles away from them… which was half of its charm.”
He made a waving motion with his hand, as if to say, And? When I didn’t respond, he nudged my ribs with his elbow. “Woman, I’ve seen you weepin’ over maimed kitchen gadgets. You know about my torpedoed marriage. And I’ve made out with you under the influence of evil peppers. We have no secrets.”
“My parents didn’t fight, exactly. They bickered a lot, but I can’t remember them ever really raising their voices. They were locked in this bizarre constant battle for who was winning at the relationship. One of them was always leaving the other one, demanding apologies, demanding that I take sides one way or the other. They separated, they got back together, they separated, they got back together, over and over.” The words seemed to rush out of my mouth like water. And when they’d finished, I was a bit out of breath but felt lighter. I frowned, mulling over what it meant that I could say those things to Sam in the middle of a crowded street but not to my mentor or licensed psychiatric professionals.
“That must have been… confusin’?” he suggested, with a wary expression on his handsome face, as if he wasn’t sure if I was joking, but he knew he wasn’t supposed to laugh.
I shrugged. “They always said they were staying together for my sake. Because clearly, it would traumatize me if my parents got a divorce, but telling me every other month that ‘this time it’s over for good’ was OK. Frankly, I would have been relieved if they’d just made a clean break of it. Lived separate lives. Maybe they would have been happy apart. Maybe it was selfish of me to want to get away from that. And believe me, the fact that they died with so much between us unsettled—there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t regret that. But I had to have my own life. I just couldn’t spend another minute mixed up in their drama. Either you love somebody enough to spend the rest of your life with them, or you don’t. In my mind, there’s not much room in between.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, closing his hand around my shoulder and pulling me into a sort of side hug.
I nodded, once again marveling at the loose, relaxed feeling in my chest. “And now the only real family I have is a cranky old German professor and his life partner, both of them trying to fatten me up with dumplings and monkey bread.”
After a long, contemplative pause, he nodded and sagely observed, “I thought I noticed a little more junk in your trunk.”
I took a swat at his shoulder. “Jerk.”
“Ouch!” He dodged and cackled at me, drawing the eyes of several curious bystanders. “It’s not right that someone so small can hit so hard. I’m going to miss your gentle, delicate mannerisms after you move out.”
“Oh, come on.” I snickered. “You know you’ll miss me.”
His smile faltered. His lips parted as if to say something, but before he could, I heard Jolene cry, “Tess!” from across the square. I turned to see her dragging a bemused Zeb in her wake. Jolene threw her arms around me in an enthusiastic, if slightly painful, hug. “Are you excited about the contest?”
“Nearly wetting myself,” I assured her, patting her back. “Sam, I think you know Zeb and Jolene Lavelle. Zeb and Jolene, my, uh, roommate, Sam Clemson.”
“Nice to see you again, Sam,” Zeb said, holding out his hand.
Sam smiled, almost shyly, and shook it. “Good to see you two. How are the kids?”
As Zeb whipped out a cell phone full of photos, Jolene launched into a story about little Joe the pickle flinger and his attempts to chew his way out of his crib. Sam listened with interested amusement, oohing and aahing appropriately at the cuteness of my friends’ offspring. This kept us all sufficiently distracted until we heard, “Ladies and gents, if you’ll proceed to the center stage, we’ll announce the results for the Hollow’s First-Ever Bloody Bake-Off,” from a human man in his forties shouting into the microphone near the Faux Type O booth. A teenage girl dressed in a red gingham picnic dress—whom Jolene identified as the scary teen-vampire bureaucrat Ophelia—shrank away from him, as if his loud “yee-haw” was going to make her ears bleed.
As the crowd milled over to the main (and only) stage, Ophelia snatched the mic out of his hands and eyed the poor, unsuspecting man in a way I’d only seen diabetics case the dessert cart. She sighed and turned to the vampires wearing “official judge” sashes. All of them, including my hapless friend, Jane, had their arms crossed over their middles and looked slightly ill.
“We were very pleased to receive such a wide array of entries, everything from a Chum Cherry Slushie to a Bloody Pot Pie,” Ophelia said, smirking at Jane, who sent her a hard look in return.
Even in this crowd, I could hear Sherry Jameson saying, “Well, she used to love them when she was human!”
Poor Jane.
I found it a little disturbing that Ophelia hadn’t mentioned the barbecue sauce. Did that mean something? Did that mean that my entry hadn’t been memorable enough to mention? I’d felt pretty comfortable with my submission when I got here, but now, seeing those nauseated expressions on the judges’ faces—Oh, my God, what if I lost a cook-off in small-town Kentucky to a bunch of homemakers? What if I failed, leaving Sam without a house and myself without a construction budget? The sudden rush of cold, hard fear up my spine had me bending slightly, bracing my hands against my knees.
I felt cool, insistent pressure at the base of my neck. It rubbed in soft circles over my nape, and I realized it was Sam’s hand. I peered up at him through the haze of hair that hung over my face.
“It will be OK,” he promised. “Now, suck it up, people are starting to stare.”
“Got it,” I said, clearing my throat and straightening to my full (though not impressive) height. “Thanks.”
I rolled my shoulders and took a deep breath. I noticed that Sam’s hand remained on the back of my neck, his thumb occasionally sweeping over my vertebrae. I shivered a bit, but Sam kept his hand there.