Butcher, Baker, Vampire Slayer: A Retelling of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

by Juliann Whicker

I pulled some crumbs out of my top and held them out for him. He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “Those are not up to your usual standard.”

  “They cured werewolves. Tell me, that doesn’t impress you? Orion went on and on about how awesome it was.”

  He blinked and nodded, glancing to the side, his jaw clenching. “You shouldn’t have been in danger.”

  “Someone poisoned Orion, and someone let a werewolf into Calder to infect the boys.” I put a hand on his shoulder and held on when he jerked as if he would shrug me off. “You’re going to have to cooperate with Orion. I know that cooperation has never been your strong point, but this is serious. I want vengeance.”

  He turned to look at me, shock in his eyes. “You mean justice?”

  I studied him, thinking. I wanted whoever had ripped apart my parents, ripping apart my life in the process to suffer. I wanted to hurt them. Of course, I knew that wasn’t productive or particularly healthy. “Honestly, I really want to hurt whoever did that to them, poisoned Orion, turned you against him. I…” I inhaled sharply and wrapped my arms around my waist. I needed Orion. I needed his strength, his sanity, his control.

  “I’ll try, Vie,” he said, his voice quiet. “I’ll do my best.”

  I nodded and grabbed shower things and the black skirt Baker outfit I would change in then left.

  I was in the courtyard by three fifteen, and Orion was already there, leaning against the wall, a shadow on the gray stones. When I saw him I broke into a run, jumping into his arms and wrapping my arms around him, breathing in his sweet, spicy scent while I soaked in his warmth.

  His voice was low against my ear. “Did you eat?”

  I shook my head and pulled away reluctantly as he relaxed his arms and let me slide to the ground. He held out a cream puff which I took with a shy smile. “This isn’t my cream puff.”

  “No, Landry’s.”

  I picked at the crust and bit in. It was absolutely perfect. Much better than mine, actually. I chewed it slowly, but had a hard time when I realized that he was staring at me. I finished the cream puff and he handed me a bottle of root beer. I popped off the cap and drank, feeling weird because he was staring at me like he’d never seen anyone drink soda before. I didn’t even like soda. I fiddled with the bottle in my hands until he took it away and gave me an apple instead.

  “This is lunch?”

  He shrugged. “No. This is first course of the banquet, which is where the majority of the food has gone. I’m sorry.”

  I beamed at him before I crunched into the apple. I really, really liked knowing that he’d rummaged around looking for something to feed me.

  “You’re wearing the Baker clothes.”

  I nodded. “I’m going to be your Baker, right?”

  He nodded, inhaled shakily then smiled at me, wrapping his arms around me and pressing his cheek against my hair. “Yes. I hope so.”

  Soon, he had me tucked into the passenger seat of his car, his roof closed leaving us somehow more private, shut away from the world. He held my hand, a constant source of energy and life that I soaked in feeling like I needed to make something delicious.

  “Pancakes.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t think there will be pancakes at the banquet.”

  “I want to make you some. I don’t know what you like. Do you like pancakes or waffles better, or are you more of a crepe person? What do you like to put on them? Are you more of a scoop of sugar or cut up fruit drizzled in maple syrup? I don’t know anything about you.”

  He glanced at me, his hands on the steering wheel, a slight smile on his mouth. “You are a Baker. It doesn’t matter what I like, what I want, it’s what you want to make that matters. I will eat it, unless it’s for those under my care. Even then, your biscuits tempt me. Or maybe it was the camisole.”

  I smoothed down the black skirt and tried not to feel like it was a little bit too short for a serious Butcher meeting. “I don’t usually sleep in people’s beds.”

  “No, you just make-out with strangers.”

  I glanced at him, and the smile on his mouth made my stomach tighten. “I don’t know how much time I’m going to have for that with all these pancakes, waffles and crepes I’m going to make you eat. Honestly, you can’t tell me what you like?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what I like. You decide that.”

  I wrapped my hand around his arm, aware of the muscles and sinew in my grasp. “So you eat what I tell you to eat, like I’m your mother?”

  He snorted. “My mother? No. She lives in England. She will come to visit for Christmas as she does every year. She will give me a knife, as she does every year, and perhaps we will spend some time throwing knives together.”

  I stared at him. “You don’t like her?”

  He looked surprised. “Of course I like her. She gave me life and is an exquisite Butcher. Most Butchers of her ability wouldn’t choose to have a child much less two. She is devoted to the cause beyond anyone else I know, barring my father, of course.”

  “Your father who lives at Candlestick with Landry, the Butcher whose coat drags the ground, is that a sign of your devotion, how long your coat is?”

  He smiled widely. “That’s right.”

  “So, you must be quite high in the ranks with how long your coat is.”

  He cleared his throat. “Yes. I am.”

  “Because of your coat.”

  “Because I’ve killed more monsters than anyone else I know. I’m very good at it.” He didn’t look at me when he said it, didn’t make it sound like he was bragging or anything other than stating a certain fact that he was neither proud or ashamed of, it simply was. He killed things.

  I swallowed and dropped my hand to my lap. It felt suddenly stupid to talk about pancakes when he belonged to this world that I really didn’t understand. I watched the passing houses, the cars around us while Orion kept up a pleasant flow of conversation about Francis, Andy, Toby and Olivia. They had so many adventures together. I felt a surge of jealousy when I thought of Olivia. I was nothing like her.

  I was in fact, her inverse, her polar opposite. We drove up to the front gates this time, the way I’d taken the cab, and the long drive was lined with parked cars as he drove to the garage where he parked in front of the doors.

  “Is that a parking space?”

  He smiled at me. “Not really, but I have this irrational need to annoy my father. It’s possibly my greatest flaw.”

  I laughed, but it was a nervous sound. “Right. Is it your car, or just a loan from the Butcher’s incorporated? Is that a thing? Do you get a salary for what you do? How much sleep do you need? Do you heal faster than ordinary people? Didn’t you say that your DNA split? How is that possible? It’s not. Of course, neither are magic muffins. If I interned with Landry, where would I stay? Would I get paid? Landry already gave me all that money and I need to pay him back. Maybe I should just get a normal job when I’m not baking for you. I need dental and tuna fish.”

  He cleared his throat as he turned off the engine and stared at me. “You like tuna fish?”

  “The good kind, white albacore. I would kill for a tuna melt right now. Maybe we can skip this banquet thing, except it’s your thing, so you should go. I can hang out in the kitchen, maybe whip you up a glazed pear or something weird and random while you…”

  He leaned over and kissed me, a long, slow, soft kiss that shocked me at the same time it soothed. He pulled away, leaned his forehead against mine, and whispered. “Don’t be nervous. You belong here.”

  He kissed me again and then he got out. I sat there for a minute, bracing myself, but before I was quite ready, he had the door open for me and hand outstretched. Could I do this? Could I take that hand and face a world I didn’t understand?

  I looked up at his face, his eyes. Chocolate. I got out of the car, unable to look away from those eyes. I would happily follow him anywhere as long as he held my hand, and looked only at me.

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  The next book in Butcher, Baker, Vampire series should come out November 2017.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to the wonderful Shakespeare company in St. Louis, and of course the fantastic city that inspired this story, particularly getting lost on the North side.

  I couldn’t have done this without the help of my dear, devoted husband who manages to read everything I write with a smile. Thanks to my beta readers who had way too much fun reading this.

  Thanks to my kitchen for being gutted so we had to live on microwave food and thus I had plenty of time to write instead of cook. Which I desperately wanted to do. Cream puffs. Sigh.

  Biography

  Juliann was born and raised in South Central Utah-the desert-and currently lives in the beautiful city of St. Louis. She studied, among more than a few other things, Creative Writing and Fine Art at the University of Utah. She also enjoys gardening, sewing, painting, fabric sculpture, and whatever else shiny crafty you can think of.

  If you liked Butcher, Baker, Vampire Slayer, you might like my Watergirl Book. Read on for a Sample.

  It started like so many of my dreams, underwater. Everyone moved slowly through the halls of school, shadows of blue and green shading faces of people I knew so they looked different, special. I didn’t notice the water we all moved through, didn’t think anything about it until someone dropped a notebook and the papers fell up, spreading around me like a whirlpool had caught them. That’s when I realized that I couldn’t breathe. I batted the papers away from me when they clung to my face and arms, covering my nose and mouth as though the water wasn’t enough.

  When I gasped myself awake in my bed, still tangled in my daisy printed sheet and my night-shirt while I struggled to breathe, I counted to ten then started over when my heart wouldn’t stop pounding, lungs straining to catch any oxygen they could. I didn’t have asthma, nothing except a not entirely irrational fear of water and drowning.

  It sucked that the nightmare woke me up so early on one of the last few mornings that I could sleep in before school started. Summer was winding down, but it didn’t act like it with record highs hitting our small town in rural Ohio, damp heat competing with the rattling air conditioner that tried so hard to pump the cold upstairs where we slept.

  That afternoon, the sun beat down and the humidity sucked away my will as I shoved our eco conscious push mower with my last reserves of strength. If I’d followed my dad’s advice, his, “It’s going to get hot today. You should mow before ten,” then I wouldn’t have nearly died of heat stroke and been a perspiring mess, but I wouldn’t have compiled my new favorite playlist to listen to while mowing, either. My dad didn’t exactly understand my priorities, then again, sometimes I didn’t either.

  Later, before work, I almost skipped the shower. I hated showers anyway, but haunted from remnants of my dreams, the idea of voluntary immersion was almost too much. I saw in my mind the contemptuous curl of Sheila’s mouth if I didn’t take a shower. My coworker’s disgust would last my entire shift, far longer than the clawing fear of a two minute dunk.

  I survived the trauma then rode my rusty trusty bike to work letting the sun and wind dry my boring brown hair on the way through the winding culdesacs to downtown, passing the smoothie place to pull up at the red brick two story stuck between a Chinese restaurant and a pet store.

  The sign, ‘Jupiter’s Moon’ as far as I could tell, had nothing to do with the music shop that sold a little bit of sheet music, mostly CD’s and videos downstairs, while upstairs housed the massive record collection.

  After I clocked in, I stood sorting the new music, the stuff that would sell from the ones I’d stick in a pile for people who’d be willing to dig for it, when the bell on the front door jangled.

  I looked over at Sheila where she swayed with her iPod completely oblivious to the front door, blond hair swirling around her shoulders in a way that reminded me of my dream. Sheila was the pretty girl, hired to lure customers. I was the tough girl, hired to keep the customers from taking off with stock, at least that’s what Tuba said. That’s not his real name, obviously, it’s just what he’s called, a morph of his name from middle school when he was called Tubby. He still was Tuba Tubby when he jostled one of the players, you know, football.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, hopefully loud enough that Sheila would hear and notice that I had more going on than she did, but as usual she was completely oblivious. I could only see the top of the customer’s blue hat with some sport insignia on it until he looked up.

  Cole. My gut dropped into the basement. Cole was in my store. My brain stuttered, stopped then went into overdrive. I hadn’t seen him all summer since I’d been avoiding anywhere he might be like a plague, unlike the last five summers I’d spent semi-stalking him, and now all my work, my struggle to maintain sanity and distance was crushed when he came to my store, my turf and flashed his smile at me. Cole smiled at me. My brain shut off again.

  “Hi. Do you have the new…” He named a generic almost death metal band while I nodded, blinked then lurched between the shelves of musicals towards the back wall. He followed close behind me. Not close enough that when I stopped he ran into me, but close enough that I could drop kick him if I wanted to. I wanted to. If I kicked him down, he’d sweep me right on top of him.

  The warning tightness in my chest forced my eyes off his stomach, where I could practically see the muscles beneath the t-shirt. No thoughts of being on top of Cole. No martial arts or memories of any kind allowed to mess up my mind. I couldn’t think of the time before he played football when we were sparring partners and best friends. I couldn’t think of that first kiss by the lake and the way I’d never thought about another guy since.

  “So, do you know when the next album comes out?”

  How many times had he asked that? His face had that blank look he got when he realized that it was me in front of him, the one girl in the world who he couldn’t see, like I became a ghost that day in seventh grade.

  “They spew that crap out every eighteen months. They don’t want to be replaced by another nameless, soulless moneymaker by actually taking the time to make something worth hearing.” Had I said that out loud? It was an almost intelligent thing to say. Maybe my summer avoiding him wasn’t wasted after all.

  I veered around him, nearly running to the cashier desk where I could duck under the counter and take a deep breath before standing, not meeting Cole’s gaze when he handed me the death metal album. I rang him up and was giving him his receipt when the bell jangled again. I didn’t have to look up to know who the giggling wave of euphoric stupidity was. Apparently Cole needed some cheering from his cheerleader girlfriend to help him with his bad music purchase.

  “Watergirl, have you got anything good for when we go to Ceramic Lake today?” Sharky’s tone was two octaves higher than mine, sweet enough it was almost forgivable when she giggled for no apparent reason. Seventh grade I’d fallen into the manatee pool on the school field trip and come out with a new name. Only in middle school would they use a near death experience against you.

  I ignored her as I handed Cole his bag then grabbed an invoice sheet to stare at like I’d found a new religion. Her name was Sharly, but everyone I knew called her Sharky, just not to her face. It’s called self-preservation. I’d been composing something memorable for the last day of high school, but I still had two long years to work on it.

  I tried as hard as I could not to notice the way she draped herself over Cole named after Cole Porter who he actually used to listen to, but now he was lost to whiny metallic, kill, die, torture, music. It probably soothed Sharky. I smiled, looking up at the two of them with a smirk on my face.

  “Have a nice day,” I said with as much fake cheer
as possible while Cole frowned, narrowing his eyes at me like he saw me, like he wondered what my smile hid, but of course that was giving him credit for more intellectual curiosity than he deserved. I ducked under the counter and marched myself into the New Age section to lose myself imposing order on chaos.

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