Poison Fruit

“It’s just coffee,” I said to Jen. “And at least I had the decency to make you sound like an adult.”

“Yeah, and I’ll sound like a jerk if I try to explain it was just a joke,” she grumbled. “Speaking of coffee—seriously, is there any?”

“I’ll make some.”

“Thanks.” Jen began extricating herself from the tangle of sheets and blankets. “Hey, Daise? Did Stefan reply? You didn’t say.”

In my mortification, I’d forgotten to look. Now I did, and what I saw made me frown. “Yeah, he did.”

“Well?”

“He says he needs to talk to me,” I said. “And I should stop by the Wheelhouse today.” Jen and I exchanged a look. “Do you think he changed his mind? Do you think he got sick of waiting for me to make up mine?”

Jen shook her head. “I don’t think someone who’s been alive for six hundred years loses patience easily.”

I wasn’t so sure. That text might have been enough to remind Stefan of the vast gap in age and experience that lay between us and convince him to change his mind.

Maybe.

On the other hand, thanks to the fact that I’d let him feed on my emotions last summer, Stefan had a direct pipeline into what I was feeling—a fact that I conveniently managed to ignore most of the time. At least that meant he’d know I was a little messed up last night. And today, for that matter. With the weight of my hangover crushing down on me, coffee seemed like a very good idea.

I shrugged. “We’ll see.”

In the kitchen, Jen shuffled up behind me, wrapped in a blanket. “I’m really sorry about the text, Daise.” She rested her chin on my shoulder as I poured water into the coffeemaker. “Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I blame the playlist,” I said. “We wouldn’t have been acting like teenagers if you’d left Billie Holiday on.”

Jen grimaced. “I blame the tequila.”

“That, too.” I turned to face her. “But you laid some righteous truths on me, too.”

She gave me a wry smile. “Well, I hope I didn’t undo whatever good it did.”

“Eh.” I waved a dismissive hand. “You’re right about that, too. Screw him if he can’t take a joke.”

Half an hour later, fortified by coffee, we drove in separate cars to the Sit’n Sip; separate cars because I planned to stop by the Wheelhouse later and, no matter how hot she thought Stefan was, Jen had no intention of walking into a biker bar filled with ghouls; and the Sit’n Sip because when you have a towering hangover in Pemkowet, that’s where you go for a gloriously greasy breakfast. I’m talking the equivalent of a Denny’s Grand Slam, scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns, plus a side of biscuits and sausage gravy. It sounds disgustingly excessive—okay, it is disgustingly excessive, but there’s nothing better for putting ballast in your belly to offset that queasy, acidic, roiling sensation.

By the time I scraped my plate clean, I felt marginally human—no pun intended. When it came to hangovers, apparently I was all human.

Of course, now I had to face Stefan, and despite what I’d said to Jen, I wasn’t feeling all that easy, breezy, and carefree about it. For one thing, there was the lingering mortification. For another, there was the dawning realization that it really wasn’t a good idea to respond to someone’s interest in you immediately after someone else has . . . well, not broken your heart, but definitely dinged it.

Especially when that initial someone can read your emotions like a book and will know that’s exactly what you’re doing, which is why I entered the Wheelhouse with my mental shield blazing.

At this hour—it was around eleven thirty a.m. on a Sunday—it wasn’t busy. Actually, the Wheelhouse was never really what I’d call busy for a bar in a thriving resort town. There just aren’t that many Outcast in existence, and according to Stefan, far fewer of them are created in the postmodern era. But since their numbers barely dwindle, the small patronage that existed was stable.

And, of course, there were their . . . hangers-on, I guess. Victims is the word that comes to mind, but that’s probably rude. The unhappy souls on whom the Outcast fed, and who relied upon the Outcast to take away their pain and misery.

Before Stefan came to town, that included a lot of drug addicts—meth-heads in particular. The Outcast did a lively trade in meth, perpetuating a vicious cycle of misery that gave them a constant source of sustenance. Stefan considered that particular flavor of wretchedness a kind of chemically induced poison and after establishing himself as the head ghoul in charge, he banned the drug trade.

But there are plenty of reasons why people can be miserable in this world, and some of the patrons, mostly women, came to the Wheelhouse for the respite they found there. For the record, the overwhelming majority of the Outcast I’d encountered had been men. The only female member of the Outcast I’d met was dead.

I know, because I killed her.

Anyway.

There was a little silence as I entered the bar, the Outcast assessing my psychic shield, the hangers-on evaluating me as a rival. Cooper, Stefan’s chief lieutenant, peeled himself away from the pool table, where he’d been engaged in conversation with a woman who looked old enough to be his mother, and sauntered over.

“Hey there, Miss Daisy,” he greeted me, looking a bit wary. “You’re keeping well, I hope?”