by Altas Opal
She hadn't known anything about tanning or vamps and only had $50 dollars in her bank account. Yet, she had managed to sell the last family heirloom to stock the freezer and had enough to take an online course and found used equipment for a steal. She felt like she was supposed to jump off this precipice, and she prayed to whatever God was listening that she would make it out alive. She had a slipped a copy of her will onto the Jason's work table just in case. She was frozen in thought when she head the knock on the door.
"Jesus." She glanced at the clock behind her desk and was shocked to see it was midnight. She said a quick prayer and walked to the door. She pasted a smile on the face and opened the door.
"Welcome, Mr. Sunrose. Please come in." Vamps truly needed to be invited into a home.
"Thank you," he lisped. He pinched his nose and walked into the room. She couldn't read his face, but he didn't seem happy. Mr. Sunrose was nothing like she expected. He was short and pudgy, and that was being kind. His eyes were pitch black, and his hair was explosion of frizzy curls.
He turned to her and eyed her unkindly. She felt like a cut of meat which she was sure he thought of her as.
"You're fat but that's okay. Please remove your clothing."
"What?" It was hard not to be shocked, but she was hoping that she was hearing things.
His eyes narrowed. "Take off your clothing."
"Mr. Sunrose, I don't know how you got the wrong impression but if you would like to be sprayed in the nude, I can accommodate that, but I will be keeping my clothes on."
He looked puzzled and walked towards her. She gripped her knives behind her back. "Who is your Master? I can see that my suggestions are not working on you."
She sent a mental thanks to Jason. "He prefers not to be named."
"Let me see your mark girl."
"Absolutely not." Before she could blink, he had an arm on her shirt, Shay immediately reacted and stabbed him in the hand.
He didn't make a sound as he bled on the floor, but the air had chilled and his eyes had managed to get darker.
"You will pay for that. Give me the name of your Master, and I will insure that you are properly punished."
She was up shit creek and two seconds from dying. She blurted out the first name to come to mind. "Ethan."
"There are a lot of Ethans girl, his formal name."
"Ethan Combs."
If it was possible the air got even colder and she watch her breath make a dramatic escape. She tried to stay perfectly still as she watched his hand knit close around the knife. He pulled the knife out and dropped it to the floor.
"He will be hearing from me." Mr. Sunrose turned to walk out the door, and she saw her life walking with him. If she didn't make tonight work, she would have to leave the only home she had ever known and Jason. Maisie and she would have to spend the rest of their life running from an enemy that really could not protect themselves from. She cursed herself for following through with this foolish idea and tried to think of a way to make him stay.
"Wait, Mr. Sunrose. You must have been curious to make an appointment tonight. Perhaps we can still proceed with your tan?"
He stopped and gave her a chilling smile. "Yes, I was curious. I wanted to find out what type of fool would invite death into her home. I had also planned to rape you, drain you and bury you under the large Alder tree on the ridge, but now I'm not only disappointed to have my evening plans ruined but you have assaulted me. I will make sure that Lord Combs hears of this."
It was a lot to take in, but she was quick on her feet. She pushed his words around her head trying to find an angle that left her alive with $500 in her pocket for the night.
"I'm so sorry to hear that, Mr. Sunrose. Truly. I had hoped that a man as notable as you was beyond a trendsetter and simply wanted to set your community on it's feet. I don't know much about your people, but I know that your preternatural beauty can only be enhanced by what has been unavailable to you until now, and that is a kiss of the sun."
She felt it. A ping of interest. So tiny but enough to keep things moving in the direction she wanted.
"Girl, no one has been able to do what you are promising and I don't see someone as lackwit as you pulling this off."
"I've done it, and you are about to walk out the door and completely miss the boat. Such a shame."
He didn't like Shay looking down on him, but he moved towards the curtain so fast all she saw was a blur.
"Come and spray me, girl. If you are wrong, then I will find a way to kill you tonight."
"And if I'm right?"
"Then, perhaps, you will live."
Shay was trying not to shake as walked towards her station. She glanced at her machine and realized she need to fill her gun with solution and do a test spray. Mr. Sunrose has stripped and in all his naked glory before she even got there. So, she averted her eyes as much as possible and got everything dialed in.
She grabbed her buffing mitt and approached him. She wasn't looking forward to it, but she was damned if she was going to chicken out now when she was five minutes from him being happy. She quickly buffed his skin and then grabbed her gun and started directing him through the dance of a spray tan. Spread your legs, put your arms like this, turn your head, close your eyes. He did it all silently and was motionless which was unnerving. The second the solution landed on his skin she started noticing a difference. When the tan was over he looked, well, he looked human. He went from a pasty walrus to someone's uncle. His hair and eye color seemed to change and wasn't as frightening as he was when he walked in the door.
He was staring at her like he was relishing her death. When she told him for best results, he needed to wait 20 minutes before throwing on his clothes, he smiled. He hadn't seen himself yet, and she was unsure if the tale that vampires couldn't see their reflection was true. However, she had installed a full body length mirror behind two large blue painted closet doors.
"Mr. Sunrose, would you like to see the results so far? Your tan will be complete within 8 hours. During that time, I recommend that you follow the tips that I sent you in the email l. I have a printout also for you take."
"Where's the mirror, girl?"
He was still unpleasant, regardless of how much better he looked. She walked toward the opposite wall and opened up the mirrors. She turned and walking right into Mr. Sunrose, who had been nipping at her heels. He nudged her to the side and then stopped. He wasn't breathing, which was normal, but he became so still that she had to walk about to her desk. She couldn't look at him. It made her stomach ache from his stillness. Seconds passed and his voice cracked.
"How long will this last?"
She turned to look at him to make sure that she was talking to the same person. Somehow his voice had changed. It was sweeter. Kinder. A bit less deadly. Like the voice of a tiger cub that grows up to be a lion and will still eat you when he has the chance.
"It should start to fade within two weeks."
"I want to make next my appointment now. No, I want to book now for the year. Do you understand, girl?"
She understood that she was looking at one thousand dollars a month and that she was going to live to spend it, for a year anyway.
"Of course."
She picked up her tablet to get him scheduled in and started to process his paperwork for payment. They spent the last 15 minutes ignoring each other. He quickly dressed, paid in cash, and walked out the door.
She locked the door behind him. Shay returned to her desk and slumped in the chair. Even with Mr. Sunrose gone and happy, she wanted to wait a good hour before she sprinted across the path to the warmth of her own bed. She pulled up the site with her ad and deleted it. One thousand dollars was more than enough for her and Maisie to live on and, honestly, the stark reality of working with vampires had hit her straight in the face. Mr. Sunrose's candid explanation that he planned to rape her and then bury her body on the ridge was enough of a clue that she should never had gotten into this business. If she wasn't so damn har
d-headed, she would be broke, but not worrying about her and Maisie's safety.
Rolling her neck, she laid her head on the desk. The memory of her blurting out some random vamps name popped into her head, and she groaned. She hoped Sunrose was happy and wouldn't go tattle-telling to her "Master."
Missing
Shay woke up with start and realized she'd spent the night in the shed. Her neck was sore, and she was hungry. She locked up and ran to the house. Maisie was already up and blasting the crap she called music. She realized they had money, and it would be fun to go into town and eat breakfast and then stock up their pantry. It was also Saturday and she didn't have a single item on her to do list.
She called upstairs, "Maisie, do you want to go to Peterson's for breakfast?"
Her sister was quick and down the stairs in less than 30 seconds.
"Is Jason coming?"
"Nope, just us girls."
"How are we going to pay?"
"I got paid from my client in cash so we can splurge and get breakfast in town and then stock up our pantry."
Maisie didn't blink and began a happy stream of chatter about the huge fresh baked biscuits and her latest teen celebrity obsession Darcy Winthrop. He was some floppy haired boy who could whine like a cat in heat. His latest album was called "Hollow Sidewalks," and it was mystery what he was saying as he couldn't enunciate. Honestly, she didn't know what her sister saw in him so she just blamed hormones.
She locked up the house and she headed to 1998 Toyota Camry wagon. The car had seen better years. The red paint was chipped and parts of it were rusted through. The interior was clean though, but that was about all. It ran best on cold days, which made no sense, and the amount of smoke coming out of the muffler would have made it illegal to drive in any other city. The fact that Maisie jumped in the car with no fuss was a testament to the power of a promise of a hot meal.
They made it into downtown Benton in 15 minutes and pulled into Peterson's. She had dated Mark Peterson for a brief summer her freshman year. His family owned the restaurant and some of her favorite memories were here while she and Mark sat in a booth and ate hot fudge sundaes and held hands. He was her first. She was too young and too in love to think it would end, but it ended and not pretty.
She was 14 and a time bomb of emotions. So when she caught him kissing Heather Butte underneath the bleachers, she quickly made waste to Heather's long curly red hair with a flick of her wrist with the knife she carried at the time. A stainless silver piece she had found in Vivian’s room. She later learned it was a knife her grandfather had found when he was in the war. She had wanted to stab Mark but, instead, she slashed the tires on his new Ford. She was suspended for two months, which only pissed her mother off because she was home and in her way.
It wasn't until her mother had left them and she was searching for any kind of work that she had swallowed her pride and visited Peterson's. Mark was off to college and his mother had been surprisingly kind when she had asked if there were any openings. There weren’t any, but she had called a friend of a friend and found her a part-time cleaning job that had keep the heat on for the winter. She had also walked her into the back of the restaurant and filled up a box full of food claiming that it was expiring and was going to get trashed anyway. Shay was not above help, and because pride was not going to fill up her sister's stomach. She was an adult now, whether she liked it or not. Mark had come back two years ago with a degree and a pregnant wife and took over management of the restaurant, and it had thrived. She'd run into him a couple times. He was always polite while she fought off the embarrassment of the past.
Now, Shay and Maisie were seated in a booth and hands deep in buttermilk biscuits, scrambled eggs and their country sage sausage. It had been weeks since they had a good meal, and it was silence on both ends of the table. It wasn't until Shay finished her meal that she noticed how quiet the restaurant was. The waitresses had pinched faces and Annette, Mark's mother, was behind the cash register. She took another sip of coffee and walked over to look at the pie case to pick a pie to-go and try to start some small talk with Susan.
"Which pie would you recommend today, Annette?"
She had to repeat herself louder to get her attention.
"I'm sorry dear. I. I'm just not myself." She started weeping and Shay walked around the case to touch her shoulder.
"What's wrong?"
"Emma is missing, and she's not answering her cell phone. She went out this morning early at 3 a.m. to pick up some goods from Summerstown, and we haven't heard word."
Annette had leaned into Shay and was sobbing at this point, her words making a staccato. Jesus, what if Sunrose was involved with this. Her stomach turned to lead at the thought that he was involved, and she again filled with regret for her stupid move to start her a business with vamps.
"Have you called the places she was supposed to pick up from?"
"Yes. She never showed."
Shay need to get back to the house and talk to Jason to let him know about Emma's disappearance and Sunrose. The phone rang, and Annette sprinted away to answer it while Shay returned to the booth to grab her sister.
Annette was still on the phone so Beth rang them up then were quickly out the door. Annette’s face was still pinched so she didn't think whomever was on the other line was giving her any good news.
She wanted to go home, but she knew they had to stock up on food since the fridge was a bare. She sleepwalked through the store imagining all the sick things that Sunrose had done with Emma. Gods, their breakfast and the very food they were buying were from his blood money. It wasn't until she had gotten up to the cash register to pay that she noticed half of the food was an assortment of expensive foods they rarely ate like capers, brie, and prosciutto. Maisie was smiling and Shay felt like a murdered.
She paid and drove fast as hell on the way home and praised the Gods when she saw Jason on the front porch. She was half out the car door when he opened it the rest of the way for her.
"So you're alive and well I see."
"We need to talk. Let's go to the shed. Maisie can you put away the groceries please?"
She turned and started walking towards the shed with Jason on her heels.
"What's going on?"
"Wait til we're inside."
She pushed open the door and the story of Sunrose spilled out of her.
"I was wrong. I made a huge mistake starting this business and someone is dead because of me."
"What are you talking about?" Jason asked as he pushed the door closed.
"This morning, when Maisie and I were eating at Peterson's, Annette told me that Emma is missing. It can't be a coincidence. Sunrose is a psychopath, and I brought him to town."
"Hold on. You don't know that. There could be another explanation."
"Are you kidding me? Nothing more exciting than a kid getting a skinned knee ever happens in this town. The night I start my tanning business, Emma Peterson disappears. I should have listened to you. I should never have started this, and now I have to see Sunrose again in two weeks."
"Calm down. We'll work this together. We'll figure out what happened to Emma."
"How are we going to do that? Hire a vampire investigator?"
She was getting louder and louder and unconsciously rubbing her knives. Could she kill Sunrose? Not a chance. He was predator, and she was the prey. How could she ever fix this? She thought of Mark and their two daughters and felt like tearing the room apart.
"Shay, there's something I have to tell you." From the sound of Jason's voice, whatever he was going to say was not going to be pretty.
"I know you're gay, okay? It doesn't matter, and I still love you."
Silence and then a bellow of laughter.
"Honey, while that may be true, that's not what I wanted to tell you. You should sit down."
Shay sat, and he plopped on top of her desk.
"Honey, I'm a witch. I know you don't believe it from the look on you face, but I am. It's how
the tanning solution works on the Nosferatu and how your skinny little neck didn't end up in a ditch last night. I bewitched the earrings to protect both you and Maisie. I bewitched your home and the shed so the bastard crow didn't get in here last night and start prepping you for Sunrose."
She couldn't breathe. She should have known something more was afoot, but there were so few things in her life that she could count on, and Jason had always been one of them. She'd had a small inkling that something was unique about him. He always knew what to do and could fix any problem that had popped up over the years. With the vamps coming out last year, nothing should surprise her since her personal visit with one last night but this did.
"Are there werewolves too?”
"Yes. Is that all you have to say?" His face was marred with worried lines.
"I don't know what to say. It makes sense. I just. I just put my foot into all this and now I can't ever pull it back. The world is not as I thought it would be, but I still love you, if that is what you're worried about."
"Thanks, honey." He pulled her up into an embrace.
"I have a couple of friends who can help us figure out what happened to Emma so let me call them and see what I can find out. I want you to stay put until I get back and no more clients."
"Do you think I'm crazy? Having to work with Sunrose is enough of nightmare. I'm not trying to increase my clientele."
"Have you checked your email?"
"No, but I pulled my ad last night."
"You should check your email."
Shay picked up her tablet and logged on to her emails and was surprised to see she had 10 new messages. Her stomach tightened as read each one. Sunrose's glorious transformation had been praised and each email was seeking an appointment.