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

by Juliann Whicker

  After that, we walked quickly to the train and rode until the exit near school. I kept feeding him, trying to keep him from going into shock. I’d been thinking that he would be the Butcher after me, but if he couldn’t handle zombie guts, how would he cope with wraiths?

  “I’m going to burn my jacket,” he muttered, inhaling shakily.

  I shook my head. “Hang it by the back door. It will be clean by morning, even of zombie guts.” I clapped him again on the shoulder and felt a slight flicker of something, connection. It wasn’t the same as the energy exchange with…

  I shook my head, dropped my hand and focused on the reflection of the window across from me, flickers of light as the metro sped through the city.

  We arrived at school entering through the secret side entrance you had to push through bushes then through the locked gate I happened to have a key for. We both showered. I took his cloak and mask to be cleaned while he went to bed, exhausted and still terrified. By morning we’d see if he had come to grips with the less savory creatures.

  I heard a thump, thump, thump from somewhere in school. I drew my knife as I walked towards the sound. To my keyed up, exhausted senses, it sounded like zombies beating against the back door, but as I got closer, the sound seemed like something else entirely. I stood outside the kitchen, listening while I hefted the knife in my hand until I shoved open the door, took in the sight of Tancetta sitting on the counter after I’d already tasted his betrayal, and threw my knife at his head.

  Chapter 12

  The Baker

  When I got back on Friday, my blazer on over my button-down shirt, wig in place, I slouched across the grounds towards the little room in the corner of the dormitory where I could collapse and try to do some of my homework. I wanted to make cupcakes, scones, or cookies. I threw myself on the unmade mattress trying not to think of pastry. Bas never made up his bed. He reveled in the chaos. Somehow, I managed to fall asleep.

  I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream that left me with the kind of craving for chocolate and pastry that wouldn’t go away. For an hour I tossed and turned, trying to stop thinking about Olivia kissing Orion, only it had been me kissing Orion only I’d been in her clothes and a wig until he’d opened his eyes and realized that it was me, not her, and then I’d woken up, heart pounding and my body aching, lips tingling, the whole bit. Finally, I threw on Bas’s oversized sweats and wig then snuck down to the kitchen. The halls were dark with emergency lighting every thirty feet. My heart was pounding by the time I made it. I’d never been inside the kitchen before. I’d only gone a week without baking, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

  When I flipped on the switch, I stood for a moment faced with blue tile floor, and steel counters, steel everything in the industrial space. I went to the pantry, cupboards, freezer and soon enough had the ingredients out on the steel table that I needed to make a very small batch of perfect cream puffs.

  After briskly mixing, spooning out dough, and putting it in the oven, I sat on the counter, kicking my tennis shoes against the cupboard, a thump thump to keep myself from thinking about Orion and the phantom dream kiss. The door opened and a knife flew through the air, stabbing into the wall beside my head.

  I yelped pulling my knees up, like that would help while Orion entered looking mussed and delicious, like rippled German chocolate cake in his dark soft pajama bottoms, the white rim of his underwear visible above the waistband like coconut while the expanse of his delicious chest made my mouth water. Not good.

  It took me a second to scowl at him while my heart pounded treacherously. “What the crap, man?” I demanded. “Can’t a guy make a cream puff in peace?”

  He blinked at me, sniffed the air suspiciously then went to open the oven beneath me. I jumped down, guarding the door so we were face to face, nose to nose, his hair like strips of grated dark chocolate in his delicious melted chocolate eyes.

  “You open it before they’re ready and the spoon will fall out. Haven’t you made a cream puff before?”

  He looked at me, eyes narrowing as he glanced to my left where his knife still protruded from the wall.

  “Can’t say I have,” he said gruffly, passing me to retrieve the blade, pulling up the leg of his pants to tuck it into a holster he kept strapped on his calf.

  “You have a knife on your leg,” I said, stupidly. “You could have killed me. Are you sleepwalking, or what? Who goes around throwing knives at people?”

  “Who makes cream puffs in the middle of the night?” he asked with a fierce glare that made my stomach clench in an uncomfortable although not entirely unpleasant way. He was like flambé.

  “We can’t all be brutal hulking jerks,” I muttered, peering through the glass of the oven door. “Also, thumps can ruin them.”

  “Thumps?”

  “Sudden movements, bangs, bumps, you know, things like that,” I said, leaning my forehead against the glass. If I focused on the cream puffs, he would eventually get bored and go away. Or slit my throat.

  “Then you shouldn’t have been kicking the cupboard,” he said. “I thought it was something else, a robbery maybe.”

  I frowned up at him. “A robbery? In the kitchen?”

  He shrugged and crouched beside me, peering through the glass like it wasn’t at all weird to be so close to someone without a shirt. Not me. I had three shirts on.

  “Do you do this a lot?”

  “Get knives thrown at my head?”

  He gave me a sideways glance and shook his head slightly. “I’m trying to understand you, Tancetta. How often do you find yourself cooking in the middle of the night? It sounds a little bit odd for someone with no intentions of becoming a Baker.”

  I shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad before my parents died and I had to bake a lot for my… sister. It kept both of us busy and now when I get stressed out, I have to bake. I can’t sleep until I’ve made something just right. I realize that it makes no sense. I hope I’m not breaking rules or anything. I’ll clean up everything when I’m done, but I’m tired. I won’t be able to sleep until these things come out of the oven.”

  “You baked for your sister? How long since your parents died?” he asked in an oddly neutral voice.

  I shrugged but couldn’t help bite my lower lip. “Five months?”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I swallowed and glanced over at him. It hurt to breathe for some reason. “My sister was going to college early but when my parents died, we had to choose between my school and hers. She wanted me to go to Calder for my last year, said it was important that I not throw everything away. I disagreed, but she was right. I couldn’t waste all those years of misery, all that struggle just because I was tired of it, just because I wanted to hide.” I shook my head aware that my voice wasn’t steady anymore and I had to wipe my eyes on the sleeve of my shirt. “I’m sorry, I’m just angry sometimes at him for putting me in this situation, for my parents for dying and not being prepared financially for everything. My dad was an accountant, you know? He should have been ready for this, he shouldn’t have left us with nothing but…”

  Orion wrapped an arm around my shoulders and dragged me against his thundering heart. I trembled, but I wasn’t crying, not when I was supposed to be Sebastian, not when I had cream puffs behind me that would make everything okay. Not when my face was pressed against his bare, naked chest. I closed my eyes and sort of fell into him, the rush of energy into me from him, his touch, his goodness.

  I felt his hand press the back of my neck, skin to skin contact while he growled. “What is your sister like?”

  I tried to pull away, but his arms were like steel around me, soft, silky, warm steel that felt like golden honey flowing into my cup of happiness.

  “She’s like me. dark, green eyes, black hair.”

  “What is she like,” he repeated, like I was one of those kids he was training.

  I inhaled, but the scent of him was dizzying and confusing as his deep, rich voice. I star
ted rambling. “She’s weird. She competes in gymnastics but feels let down if she wins. She likes walking around in the dark until she falls into the pool. She used to get up with me in the middle of the night and play violin duets when I was really sick and couldn’t sleep. The nights were the worst, particularly there at the end. It’s so funny because I was so sick, and my parents so great, and then I got better, and they…” I shook my head as I felt a lump develop in my throat. Losing my parents, losing my brother, it seemed too much to pay for.

  He let me go, his dark eyes concerned as he gazed at me. “I’m glad that you had someone, that she took care of you. I was sick when I was younger.” His voice was soft, his eyes dark with painful memories.

  I touched his face, wanting to smooth away some of the pain but then the buzzer sounded and I jumped away from him, heart pounding and feeling like an idiot. I stood then grabbed the functional gray hot pads.

  I took a deep breath and smiled at him. “Get ready for delicious.” I opened the oven and caught the wooden spoon I’d used to let out excess steam and inhaled the steamy moist crispiness of perfect cream puff shells. I put them on the counter and grabbed the filling I’d already had cooling. I poured it in a bag then cut a corner and filled the shells, one by one until I got out the chocolate and melted it in the pan, swirling it around above the heat until it reached the perfect consistency. During this entire process, I was painfully aware of Orion watching me, just staring at me like he’d never seen anyone bake something before.

  I drizzled the chocolate over the plate of cream puffs in complicated swirls and whorls until they were ready.

  I glanced up at Orion, feeling weird and shy without something to do. Should we talk about the whole thing that had happened on the floor? Something had happened, hadn’t it?

  “Go ahead.” I held out the plate to Orion.

  He licked his lips, but held back, his mouths tilting into a smile. “Are you sure that you want to feed me? I might follow you home.”

  “That might be a danger, but I don’t have a home.” I smiled at him before I took a delicious, flaky creampuff and focused on that instead of him. I’d been fantasizing about feeding him all week. I nibbled off a corner and then a bigger bite until the cream spilled into my mouth and over my tongue, sweet, but not too sweet. Perfect. For some reason, I had a moment’s perfect recall of my dream, the kiss and opened my eyes wide, wiping cream off of my chin. I took another bite of crusty, crunchy, gooey filled heaven. I chewed slowly, feeling my body relax and bed beckon as exhaustion crashed over me.

  I started to leave the kitchen with the plate of cream puffs but stopped short when Orion stepped in front of me, arms crossed in front of his beautiful bare chest.

  “You don’t need all of these,” he said, smiling in an odd way, the corner of his mouth lifted while the rest was a firm line that reminded me of a cinnamon stick. Next time I’d do hot chocolate with a stick of cinnamon. It would be faster. But not as satisfying.

  I frowned at the platter then sighed as I grabbed four of them and left the rest in his hands. “I guess not.” I yawned as I felt exhaustion sweep through me bone deep. “Night, Orion.”

  “Sebastian,” he said in a weirdly formal way as I slouched out of the kitchen and up the stairs to my room and my bed. Sleep, blissful sleep, claimed me before my head touched my pillow.

  Chapter 13

  The Butcher

  I ate the cream puffs, all of them, in a matter of seconds. The way she’d acted, she, Violetta Tancetta, Sebastian’s sister who I’d bet was his twin, made me sincerely doubt if she had any idea what her brother was up to, or if he knew what she was doing. It was peculiar to trust that she wasn’t sitting in school waiting for an opportunity to betray me for her brother whose entire purpose was to bring me down, upset my efforts, prove to me that he didn’t need my guidance, but I did. I trusted her.

  She’d never had anyone throw a knife at her before. She probably had no idea that her father was a Butcher. She should have gone to Baker’s school, learned the art of baking at the young age so that she could become what her blood knew she was meant to be. At Baker’s school, they were separated from their families so they’d be able to learn how to bake, how to bond, how to feed off the energy of others to imbue it into their own cooking.

  She’d been separated, but in the worst possible way. When I’d walked in the kitchen, I’d known that she was not the Butcher I’d been fighting, but it had taken a few seconds to realize that she wasn’t a boy at all. The longer I looked at her, the stranger it was to think that I’d ever thought those soft features, luscious lips, large eyes, smooth throat missing the requisite Adam’s apple, ever belonging to a boy.

  I wanted to lean forward and touch her skin. I’d always wanted to touch her skin, but now it seemed imperative. I’d resisted for a few minutes, crouched beside her, staring into an oven like it was the most fascinating thing in the world, but when she’d started crying, I couldn’t resist. She needed to be held, needed to be fed my energy, energy she’d given her brother through months of Baking while he’d taken, taken it out of her without giving her anything back.

  I wanted to tell her that I knew, wanted to kiss her and explore the skin she kept hidden away, but I didn’t know if that would terrify her, send her out into the darkness. Where else did she have that was safe? Her parents were dead, their house sold, her brother wandering the streets with unsavory company, at least here she was under my protection. I would see that she was safe.

  That night I slept for a few hours and woke up feeling better than I had for months, craving cream puffs. There was no need for me to change my plans for Tancetta. She would still be a Baker, and I would give her my energy while she made me cream puffs. In the meantime, I would figure out what to do with someone with Baker’s talents at her age. She should be interning with a C.M. at her age, not beginning her schooling. Hopefully, I’d have a few months before someone found out she wasn’t Sebastian.

  I ignored the niggling voice that whispered that I was playing a dangerous game, getting involved with a Baker female who could feed my emotional needs on the deepest level.

  I woke Francis up first thing.

  He opened the door of his room, staring at me blearily, traces of nightmares in his eyes.

  “Tell me you don’t need me for something interesting,” he muttered, scratching his face, dark stubble clearly visible.

  I ran a hand over my own chin. I had looked pretty scruffy last night. The knowledge that Viola was in school made impeccable hygiene suddenly essential.

  “I don’t want you to talk about what happened last night. I don’t want you to think about it.”

  “The zombies? Seriously, I will try,” he said fervently.

  I laughed. “Right. The zombies. Also everything else.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, leaning closer. “What are you going to do about the rebels?” he whispered the last word under his breath.

  I sighed. “Normally, I’d run them down and turn them in to the C.M. but I have a different idea that might work even better. That’s not what I’m here for.”

  He nodded. “And about Tancetta, I mean the boy who isn’t a boy and isn’t Tancetta?”

  I smiled at him with my sharpest most dangerous smile. He backed off with slightly large eyes. “Still Tancetta.”

  “Sister?” He whistled softly. “You do know that female Bakers are strictly off-limits, right? And do I smell cream puffs?”

  I exhaled and closed my eyes, rubbing a hand over my forehead. “She doesn’t have anyone. Her energy was so low and with everything she has to cope with, with enemies we can’t see and don’t understand, she needs me.”

  He cleared his throat. “Right. Nothing else going on there, just professional Butcher energy work without any emotional attachment whatsoever.”

  “Absolutely.” I stared at him, meeting his own dark eyes, searching for judgment, for an accusation, but his eyes gleamed with his ordinary humor. H
e thought this was funny. Maybe it was.

  “If the poor Baker needs more energy, I’m happy to help a struggling comrade…”

  I picked him up and shoved him against the wall, barely aware that I was moving. I blinked at his face before I backed away, letting him slide down the wall to his feet.

  “I don’t think I’d like that.”

  He swallowed before his grinned widened. “Oh, man, you are screwed. You’re completely coming apart about this girl with rebel Butchers, mysterious murders and Olivia, your birth betrothed hitting on your Baker. This is going to be awesome.”

  “Awesome?”

  He patted my shoulder. “You know, my dad is one bad Butcher, seriously one of the best. I thought I’d move up the ranks, maybe be The Butcher in college and then go out on my own like him, but with you, the perfect, absolutely undefeated Orion Daughtry, I couldn’t make the slightest impression. Just as well considering how fond I am of zombies. But this weakness of yours, it moves you over the border from untouchable monarch to relatable superhero. I mean, you are so screwed.”

  I stared at him then shook my head. “I’m glad you’re happy about it. I am not as upset as I thought I would be, flaunting rules and ignoring all rational dictates. It’s actually kind of a relief.”

  He grinned at me while he rubbed his chin. “I thought there was more to it than that with the way you were always touching him, the way he looked at you. I guess the way she looked at you. She’s clearly fairly blown over by the awesomeness that is you, particularly without a shirt on. What about Olivia?”

  I sighed and shifted. “What about Olivia?”

  His smile faded and he looked almost serious for once. “The two of you have been promised to each other since you were in bassinets.”

  “That has nothing to do with this. She’s a Butcher. She’s someone I know so well, I know that if I don’t find Lance unharmed, the odds are very slim that she’ll ever feel anything for me besides anger, resentment, loathing, malevolence…”