by Alyssa Day
"No, just never mind," she continued briskly. "Here's the deal: I need you to dress up as the swamp cabbage for the festival parade."
"Do margarita hangovers include auditory hallucinations? Because I could have sworn you just said you want me to dress up as the swamp cabbage," I said slowly.
"Exactly." She didn't even look guilty.
"Your very own niece, whom you claim to love."
"Now, Tess. Somebody has to do it. Marvin—"
"Yes, I know about Marvin. Vampire. Blood bank bus driver. We don't want him to burst into flames during the parade, since it will be at sunset. No, no, no. There is no way I'm dressing up in that horrible, hot, ratty, moth-eaten old costume. I bought a cute little sundress, and I thought Shelley and Jack and I—"
"Yes, you and Jack and Shelley can spend all day and evening at the fair. I just need you to be the swamp cabbage for an hour, tops."
"No."
"Nobody else will do it! Do you know how embarrassing it will be for me, in my first Swamp Cabbage Festival as mayor, if nobody dresses up as the swamp cabbage? I'll be laughed out of office!"
I narrowed my eyes. "I'd think amputated fingers and missing women would be more of a concern than the swamp cabbage."
She blew out a breath. "Well, they are, but I don't have anything to do with that. And since I'm not a police officer, I can only help Dead End by making this festival the best it can be. And the parade needs a swamp cabbage!"
"Absolutely not. Why don't you ask—"
"She said no."
"What about—"
"He claims he has gout."
I scowled, knowing full well that she'd keep guessing who I was proposing before I even got the names out. Then a perfectly evil idea came to mind.
"Ask Jack." I grinned. "Tell him that it's his turn, as the newest business owner in Dead End."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"Why is it ridiculous to ask him but not me?" I caught a hint of a whine in my voice and cleared my throat. "Why? Tell me that!"
She threw her hands up in the air. "Because he's too tall to fit in the costume!"
"I don't—"
Crap.
She was right. Marvin was maybe an inch or two taller than me, or at least he had been before he became a vampire—I didn’t know if the transformation process changed a person's height—and the thing had been stretched to its limits on him.
"Ask Eleanor," I said. "She's short, and she needs the distraction. Mr. Oliver has a hussy."
Aunt Ruby made a tsk tsk tsk sound. "I heard. That man is lucky I don't have Susan throw his butt in jail."
I needed more coffee for this.
She followed me in back and declined coffee and donuts but accepted a bottle of water.
"Aunt Ruby, you do realize that the sheriff's office is not the mayor's personal police force, right?"
"She reports to me," she said smugly.
"Aunt Ruby!"
"All right, all right, don't get your panties in a bunch. Yes, I realize that. But that man deserves some kind of punishment for breaking Eleanor's heart."
I agreed but I wasn't about to tell her that, so I changed the subject. "Have you ever thought there was something fishy about Pastor Nash?"
"What?" She frowned. "Tess Callahan, you are not going to get out of going to church by making up stories about Caleb Nash."
"I wasn't—"
"I'll have someone bring you the swamp cabbage costume as soon as we get it dry-cleaned. It smelled rather like mildew and flatulence. I think Marvin had a digestive problem when he was human."
"What? I—"
"I wonder if vampires still fart? If they do, would it smell like blood?" She shuddered. "That would be disgusting."
"Aunt Ruby!"
She leaned over and kissed my cheek and then all but ran out the door. "Ask that nice Carlos, will you?"
"I am not asking Carlos if vampires fart!"
"Love you, bye!"
And she was gone.
Suddenly, I was starting to feel nostalgic for Mayor Ratbottom.
13
The rest of my day was oddly quiet. Not many customers, no texts or calls asking for help spying, and no unexpected gifts showing up.
The thought of gifts made me realize that Jack had said he had a gift for me, but he'd never gotten around to giving it to me with all that had happened. Now I was kind of curious to know what it was.
Singing lessons, maybe?
I grinned at the thought. No, not even Jack would do that.
He'd been busy on his new case all day, according to the quick text he'd sent me around lunchtime, and I realized I missed having him around, but there was still no sign of him at closing time, so I locked up and headed home to get a quart of homemade chicken noodle soup out of my freezer to take to Mellie's. I was worried about her, and she hadn't answered my 'get better soon' text. According to some of my customers, this cold that was going around was miserable for a good week, but then they'd bounced back completely a day or so after the worst of it.
I'd been raised to believe nothing beat homemade chicken soup when it came to getting over a minor illness like a cold, and I doubted Vern got home from a hard day's work in the bakery and cooked soup. Maybe I was doing him an injustice. He might be a world-class chef, for all I knew.
When I got to Mellie's place, Vern answered the door looking surprised. "Tess? What are you doing here?"
I handed him the canvas tote that held the plastic quart container of soup. "I brought Mellie some soup. Well, for both of you. It's frozen; I didn't know when she'd feel like eating. But the reheating instructions are on a card in the front pocket of the tote."
His narrow face broke into a big smile. "Tess. That's really great of you. Do you want to come in? I mean, Mellie has mostly stayed upstairs, so the germs are probably up there…"
"No. I appreciate it, but I can't afford to get sick right now," I said apologetically. The poor guy probably needed some company who wasn't yelling donut orders at him. "I have my family coming over for pizza."
"Oh. Sure." Vern struggled to hide his disappointment, but he was like me: everything he felt showed up on his face.
"Look," I said impulsively. "Come over and have pizza and pie with us."
His eyes widened, and I was sure he was going to accept, but then we heard a series of hoarse coughs coming from upstairs.
Vern sighed. "Thanks so much, but I'd better heat this soup up for Mellie and get her some medicine. The sooner she gets better, the sooner I can give her bakery back to her."
"I understand. Mellie has my number. Call or text if you need anything, okay?"
He gave me a shy smile, and then we said our goodbyes and I headed for Dead End Pizza, which I kept hoping would turn itself into a restaurant but the owners stubbornly kept to carryout. Even a town as small as ours needed more than one sit-down restaurant.
I did a mental headcount. With Aunt Ruby, Uncle Mike, Shelley, and Jack coming over, I was probably going to need five large pizzas.
Maybe six.
But when I got to the pizza shop, the cute teen boy at the counter had the pizzas ready for me. "Six large assorted for Shepherd," he said when I walked up. "Mr. Shepherd ordered and paid for them and told us to watch for a cute redhead in a Dead End Pawn shirt."
Of course he paid for them. Jack was always careful not to make his tiger metabolism cost anybody else money in terms of groceries or dinners out. He had a hoard of gold the Atlantean royal family had forced him to accept for services to the crown, he'd told me once, saying that he hadn't wanted to cause some kind of international diplomatic incident by continuing to refuse them.
But money hadn't turned him into a tiger-shifter version of the Brigham Hammermills of the world. He still drove an old truck, lived in an old house, and wore faded jeans like most of the rest of us in Dead End.
I admired him for it.
I also sometimes secretly wondered just how much money a 'hoard' was, but I kept that to myself.
I also didn't mind the "cute redhead" bit.
The pizza guy helped me carry the boxes out to the car, and I gave him a ten-dollar tip, holding the bill by the very edge of one side so as not to accidentally touch his fingers.
"Thanks!"
"We working people have to stick together," I told him, and he flashed a confident smile and leaned against the side of my car, striking a casual pose. Tall, blond, tanned, and with serious muscle, you could tell this kid thought he was something special.
"Hey, if you'd be interested in going out sometime, you could come to one of my games," he said, in what I'm sure he thought was a smoothly charming way.
I blinked. "Your games?"
"Football. Dead End Manatees. I'm the best quarterback the team has ever seen, or so everybody says. I'm too modest to say it myself." He tried a self-deprecating chuckle that I was too startled to appreciate.
"Oh. You're in high school," I said, trying not to laugh. The male ego was very fragile at this age. "Ah, it's very nice of you, but I'm way too old for you… Um…"
"Vince," he said, holding out a hand. "And I like older women. Especially when they're as pretty as you."
Older women. Oh, brother.
It was getting harder and harder to hold in the laughter.
"I'm sorry, Vince, but I don't shake hands," I said gently. "Are you new in town?"
"Yes." He raised an eyebrow. "How did you know?"
"Most people know me on sight. It's the hair," I said, almost apologetically, pointing to my fiery red ponytail. "I'm Tess Callahan, and you really, really don't want to shake my hand."
I could see the realization dawn in his eyes. Somebody must have told him about me.
"Oh," he said hastily, taking a step back. "I, um, I'm sorry. I didn't, I mean, I hope I didn't offend you."
"Not at all. Thanks, Vince." I smiled at him, but he was already rushing back inside.
I sighed and started the car to head home. I hadn't been much older than Vince when my gift first manifested. A customer named Annabelle Hannah Yorgenson had come into the shop on my first day running the store on my own. I'd shaken her hand and blurted out how she was going to die—horribly, at the end of her husband's shovel—and then I'd had a seizure and almost died. She'd screamed and run away and, much later, we'd found out that she'd died exactly as I'd seen.
The problem was, it wasn't like I was having a hazy vision when it happened; it was more like I was standing there in real time, watching someone die. This is almost never a fun thing—it's usually hideous. Often, it knocks me down, although I'd become better about not losing consciousness over the years.
In a rare exception to all the horribleness, I’d seen how my ex-boyfriend Owen would die, and it had been… nice. He would be a very old man, surrounded by loved ones, when he passed on. On the other hand, I'd seen how Jack had died the first time, and it had scared me to death. There was a long story.
Some people could touch me and I never saw a thing. And I only saw the vision the very first time I touched someone, if it was going to happen.
Fuzzy rules, or maybe guidelines, for how and when it would happen just meant that I did my best to keep people from touching me and spent a lot of time considering wearing gloves full time. And the truth was that I wasn't sure if all my visions would come true or not. I mean, only once had someone died within minutes of my seeing a vision of his death, and the memory of that still gave me bad dreams. But with most people, their deaths would be a long time coming, and questions of free will and fate meant that I just wasn't sure.
Sometime, maybe, if he turned out not to be a dangerous stalker, I might talk to Pastor Nash about it and get his take.
I blew out a breath and cranked up the radio, so by the time I reached my road, I'd cast off my melancholy. I honked for Carlos and continued up the drive, happy to see that Uncle Mike's truck was already there. I couldn't wait to see Shelley.
Jack, on his motorcycle, roared up behind me when I was getting out of the car.
"Just in time," I told him after he dismounted the bike and took his helmet off. "You can help me carry all this pizza inside. And thanks, by the way, but you don't have to pay for the food every single time we eat together."
He shrugged, and I got distracted by the muscles in his broad shoulders.
"Um, what?"
"I said, you paid for lunch yesterday." He grinned at me. "I missed you today."
"I missed you too." I stepped closer with a vague idea of kissing him hello, but then my front door slammed open and Shelley came running out.
"Jack!" She leapt off the porch, bypassing the steps altogether, and raced over to us, hurling her little body through the air into Jack's arms. He caught her and gave her a big hug.
"Now this is a welcome," he told me. "You could always try saying hello like this."
"Maybe later, if you're lucky," I said, enjoying the way his eyes widened. "Come on, you two. We have pizza to carry inside."
Shelley wore jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of the St. Augustine lighthouse on it. She'd been a thin, nervous child when we'd gotten her away from her dangerous cousins, and the transformation since then had been almost miraculous. Her light brown hair was thick and glossy, pulled back in two braids, and she'd gained some weight from Aunt Ruby's home cooking, so she was a healthy, sturdy, little girl now, with the same bright blue eyes she'd always had.
When Jack put her down, she ran over to me and hugged me like it had been weeks since she'd seen me instead of just a few days.
"Tess! I might get to live in Europe! For a year! With my uncle!" She was jumping up and down so fast that I could barely understand her. "In London! Do you know how much history they have in London? I'll be surrounded by history! Isn't it great?"
"I—what? How?" I didn't know what was happening, and I definitely didn't think the idea of Shelley leaving town was great.
Uncle Mike walked out on my front porch. "Shelley, why don't we bring the pizza inside and let Tess sit down before we tell her the story, okay?"
"Sure!" She took two of the pizza boxes out of the car and raced up the steps. "Come on, Tess and Jack!"
"I wish I had her energy," I said, shaking my head. "I'd have a pawnshop empire."
"Yeah, but you'd have to bounce a lot. That seems like it would get to be exhausting," Jack said, grinning. He took the rest of the pizza boxes and closed my car door, and we followed Shelley into my house.
Uncle Mike gave me a quick hug. "I fixed your outdoor faucet."
"Oh, the leak? Thanks. But I could have done that." I put my bag down on the couch and gave Lou a hello head scratch.
"I just had to replace the washer assembly, no big deal. And I have more time on my hands these days than you do, what with your pawnshop empire and your new role as the official Swamp Cabbage Festival mascot and all." He tried and failed to keep from laughing. "You can bet I'm going to get video of this, after my video camera malfunctioned during the—"
"Don't say it," I warned him.
Jack, who'd taken the pizzas into the kitchen, walked back into the living room. "During the what?"
"Never mind," I told him. "We will never speak of this. Ever."
Uncle Mike's eyes twinkled but to my great relief he said nothing.
"So, what's this about Shelley going to London? For a year?" I followed the sound of humming into the kitchen and gave Aunt Ruby a hug. Then I washed my hands and got out paper plates for the pizza, because I might have good manners, but I was not about to wash real plates just for pizza.
"Wash your hands, Shelley," Aunt Ruby said.
"I did! I did, I did!" Shelley held up her hands for inspection. "Just before Tess got home. I had to go to the loo."
She beamed at all of us, clearly proud of her first attempt to speak British.
"Okay. Everybody get some pizza, and then let's sit down and explain this to Tess," Aunt Ruby said. She was smiling, but I'd known her all my life. I could see the worry beneath the façade.
; After Uncle Mike gave up and just handed Jack an entire box of pizza, we all sat down and each took a slice or two. Aunt Ruby had already poured out water, lemonade, and tea, and Shelley gave everyone napkins.
I shoved a big bite of pizza—pepperoni, artichoke, red onion, and black olive—in my mouth to avoid having to say anything until I had a chance to find out what was going on.
"First, Tess, why don't you tell us about your date?" Uncle Mike gave me a stern look. "Ruby says you refused to tell her where you two went."
I chewed and swallowed before I choked on indignation and mozzarella. "I told her! We went to Atlantis. We really did. Tell her, Jack."
"Atlantis!" Shelley leapt up out of her chair, staring at me. "You went to Atlantis without me?"
"Well—"
"Oh, she did not," Aunt Ruby said briskly. "Tess, enough already."
Uncle Mike looked back and forth between me and Jack but said nothing.
"Jack. Tell her," I demanded.
He gave me a blank look. "Tess, what are you talking about? How in the world would we get to Atlantis and back for a date?"
I froze. "What?"
There was no way I'd imagined an entire evening. I had the green dress with a blushberry stain on it to prove it.
His lips quirked, and I glared at him. "Not funny, Shepherd. Tell them the truth."
"Okay, okay." He patted Aunt Ruby's arm. "Yes, we went to Atlantis for dinner. After it took me months to finally put this first date in motion, I needed to do it up right."
We told them all about the portal, and the palace, and the gardens, and Aunt Ruby and Shelley exploded with questions. Uncle Mike was quiet but he listened intently.
When we'd finally answered all their questions, Shelley threw me an anguished look. "I still can't believe you went to Atlantis without me."
"I'm sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t even know we were going before it happened."
Jack took a sixth or seventh slice of pizza out of a box. "You can go with us the next time," he said mildly, and Shelley lost her mind.
"YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!" She jumped up out of her chair, unable to contain her excitement, and started racing around the table, only stopping for long enough to give Jack another hug.
