by Ani Gonzalez
She was ready for tourists.
The tall, dark guy next to her only nodded. Marcus, Patricia knew, was taciturn to a fault. He was also big and intimidating, in black jeans and t-shirt. According to the Banshee Creek rumor mill he used to be a Special Forces guy, which didn't bode well for his ability to handle lattes and cupcakes. He was married now, though, and he and Daniela had twin girls. Maybe he'd learned some frosting skills.
But inadequate frosting techniques weren't her big worry right now.
"My dad is in the back," she whispered to Cassie. "He insisted on helping out..."
Her voice trailed off as she tried to find the words to explain the situation to Cassie. My dad's not well, but he wants to help out and we're trying to keep him as active as possible. Let him chat with the customers and clean the tables, but keep a close eye on him.
The words didn't come out.
But Cassie's smile was kind. "I understand. Don't worry, we'll take care of him. Marcus can keep him busy with some chess talk."
Patricia nodded. Of course Marcus played chess. Heck, he probably played live-action, blow-stuff-up chess. "The Francos will be coming at noon to take him to lunch. They'll keep him entertained until bedtime." She glanced at the kitchen. "Make sure you keep him away from the espresso machine...and the quesitos. He hates them."
"Oh." Cassie arched a brow, making her silver piercing gleam in the morning sunlight. "I think Marcus is taking care of that."
Patricia turned to see Mr. Special Forces down a six-inch quesito in a single bite. Highly efficient.
The door opened and a customer walked in, a tall girl with long black hair and enough makeup to spackle the Sistine Chapel. Her eyes lit up when she spied the espresso machine.
"Hallelujah," she cried. "I need three americanos, one caramel latte, and a..." She stared at the specials list. "Spiced coffee? That sounds good, I'll take a large. Oh, and a decaf for our tailor." She rolled her eyes. "I know, I know...it's heresy, but caffeine makes his hands shake, and we'll have to kill him if he ruins the dress, and I don't want to go to prison. I don't look good in orange."
Cassie's eyes lit up. "You're here for the ball?" she asked.
Marcus lined up the paper cups and reached for the fresh-ground coffee. Patricia watched intently as he filled the containers and set the machine to brew and found his coffeemaking was flawless. Maybe he'd been a barista before joining the Army? Or maybe Special Forces ran on high-quality caffeine.
"We sure are," Makeup Girl replied. "Two hundred and fifty thousand smackaroos is nothing to sniff at."
"And nothing," a blond guy with a fluffy goatee entered the bakery, "is precisely what you're going to get."
"Hello, Xander," Makeup Girl sneered. "So nice to see you. I was afraid some real competition would show up."
"Brave words," Goatee Guy replied, "from someone wearing drugstore eyeshadow."
Makeup Girl's eyes flashed with anger, but she contained herself. "Someone broke into our hotel room and sabotaged our supplies." Her eyes narrowed. "And when I find that someone, there will be hell to pay."
She grabbed her coffees and left, leaving Mr. Goatee to put in an order for two dozen donuts and a gallon of black coffee.
"Our group is quite large," he explained. "We brought in an animatronics team."
"Wow," Cassie mouthed, putting the donuts in a box. "That's like robotic puppets, right?"
Goatee Guy nodded. "It's a lot of money. We need something special to win."
"Are people sabotaging your stuff, too?" Patricia asked.
Goatee Guy laughed. "Let them try. I used to do the beauty pageant circuit. My security protocols rival those of Fort Knox."
He grabbed his donuts and coffee and left.
"I thought this was a costume competition," Marcus noted while cleaning the espresso machine with a surprisingly sure hand. "Not World War Three."
"Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars," Patricia replied, "will turn anything into World War Three."
"I hear the teams brought hundreds of people to the town," Cassie said. "Makeup artists, and costume designers, and assistants and photographers and whatnot. These guys have entourages."
"Looks like you'll have a busy day," Patricia noted, rearranging the pastry case to disguise the empty spaces. "I hope you don't run out of food."
"Can you teach me how to work the donut machine?" Cassie grinned. "I've always wanted to do that."
"My dad," Patricia replied, with some relief, "can help you with that."
She set up the machine and left Cassie and her dad discussing the merits of chocolate cake donuts versus red velvet donuts. Her dad, a staunch conservative where donuts were concerned, was skeptical about the red velvet proposition, but Cassie was being surprisingly persuasive.
A new group of brightly clad college students, interns by the sound of their conservations, arrived, but she let Marcus handle them. She had to head to the Rosemoor and finish getting ready for the big night.
She ran through her mental to-do list as she got into her van and drove to the house. Pastries? Check. Linens? Check. Tea caddies? Check. Gourmet Teas? Check. Chef outfit? Check. Hair? Yolanda was coming to the house to do Elizabeth's hair and makeup, she'd agreed to also do Patricia's. Patricia wasn't a blow-out hair kind of girl, but even she wasn't dumb enough to go on camera au natural.
She reached the Rosemoor in record time. The parking lot was full and the house was full of people, busy carrying coolers and supplies and stuff. Bright morning sunshine lit the stained glass windows, making them sparkle. Was it her imagination, or did the house look prettier and more well-maintained than yesterday? The white trim looked glossy and clean and the shingles looked more purple than gray. Did Elizabeth have it spray washed?
She parked behind a familiar, beat-up blue truck. Zach got out of the vehicle, wearing jeans and a shirt that looked casual in a studied, perfectly tailored way that indicated that it was hideously expensive.
Zach Franco, she had to admit, looked damn fine au natural. In fact, he looked...she didn't know how to describe. Zach always looked hot, but today he was absolutely smoking.
She got out of her van and joined him, frowning at his outfit.
"Is that what you're wearing tonight?"
He laughed and it made a thrill run through her body. Zach's laugh was like a drug.
"Yes," he said, running his hand through his gelled hair. Patricia was a little bit relieved to find that the good looks weren't entirely natural.
"Isn't it a bit, I don't know, casual? For a formal ball, I mean."
They were basically the help and didn't have to dress up, but surely that didn't mean jeans. She had her freshly pressed black pants and chef's coat in the van, ready for tonight. Surely, Zach had a change of clothes somewhere.
"I'm the entertainment tonight. I can't look like a waiter onstage." He shrugged. "I'll just borrow one of those white jackets after the show."
"You'll just borrow..." Patricia stared at him, struck by the injustice of it all. There would be cameras on them all night filming every second of the competition. Zach was going to look like a movie star and she was going to be tricked out in head-to-toe dorky chef clothing.
Unfair.
"Are you going to wear the toque?" Zach asked.
Patricia nodded, mortified. The little white hat was her least favorite part of the outfit.
"Good." His smile turned wicked. "I like how you look in that."
Patricia smiled back. She couldn't help it. Zach's charm was irresistible.
"So," he stretched out his arm. "May the best chef win."
Patricia grinned and shook his hand. He pulled her forward, grabbed her by the waist and kissed her. She laughed and kissed him back.
Everything was going to be okay.
"Oh, bloody hell. Can't you two get a room?" Sarah's snarky comment brought Patricia out of her reverie. She turned to see Zach's restaurant manager carrying a potted tree that towered over her head.
"I co
uld use some assistance over here," Sarah said, teetering under the weight of the massive plant.
"I'll get it." Zach stepped forward and grabbed the plastic pot.
"Wait," Patricia interrupted. "Is that our tree?"
It certainly looked like the weird-shaped tree she'd seen in the conservatory yesterday, just bigger...and greener.
"Holy..." He walked toward the house, carrying the thing. "This weighs a ton, Sarah. Where did you get it?"
Sarah wiped her hands on her pants and walked beside him. Patricia followed them.
"The conservatory," she confessed, breathing hard from the exertion.
Patricia glared at her, but Sarah just shrugged.
"Elizabeth said I could take it because they have an excess of foliage. The leaves were getting into the frosting."
Patricia gasped -- she couldn't afford a frosting disaster right now -- and ran into the house, heading for the conservatory.
She reached the back of the house and stared. Laurie greeted her with a tentative wave, but she didn't respond.
The serving tables were in place, the caddies were set up, the china and table linens were laid out exactly as she had envisioned. The trays of food were still wrapped in cellophane paper and the utensils had not been set out yet, but other than that, the room looked exactly like it was supposed to.
Except for the plants.
The plants now covered a good third of the room, and the vines...vines snaked over the walls and crawled upon the floor and some of shrubs had bloomed, and large pink flowers now dotted their branches.
"Again?" she screeched. They'd entered the room last night to find that the plants had grown to encompass half the room. The PRoVE guys had filmed the whole thing and catalogued it as unidentified bioelectric phenomena or something like that.
Elizabeth, however, had called the local nursery and chewed them out for delivering extra shrubs.
"Apparently," Laurie said. "The plant guys made another delivery in the middle of the night. In addition to the one they did while we were all distracted with the electrical malfunctions yesterday."
"Really?" Patricia eyed the plants suspiciously. It looked like the same number of plants, except for the one Sarah had hauled away, just...bigger, a lot bigger.
Laurie shrugged. "It sounds better than 'the resident ghost made all the plants grow overnight.''"
Patricia nodded as she walked around the room, stepping over the vines.
"Yes," she gulped. "It does sound better."
Laurie frowned.
"You know," she said, stroking a leaf thoughtfully. "I've lived here a long time, and I've seen a lot of strange things..."
Patricia nodded. Strange things happened in Banshee Creek.
"But this is the creepiest one I've seen so far."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
"I DON'T like to admit it," Sarah said, sounding as if she really, really hated it. "But we really lucked out when we got the library."
"We sure did," Zach agreed, putting the triffid from hell on the floor where Sarah wanted it.
He stepped back, rubbing his scar. His arm hurt like a son-of-a-blank thanks to that stupid plant. But it was worth it. The library looked impressive.
The room was large -- Mrs. Danvers had been an avid book collector -- with dark wood paneling, sage green oriental rugs and stained glass lamps. The sofa and chairs were all upholstered in a funky-looking purple and green plaid and the shelves were full of antique hardcover books. Mrs. Danvers' book collection focused on herbariums, South Asian philosophy, and anatomy, but Sarah had covered them with artwork, old and new, depicting the local legends. A bunch of nineteenth century landscapes of the creek and the falls sat on the shelves next to Lily Holroyd's drawings of the Banshee and the Lady of the Falls. They were accompanied by framed newspaper articles, some yellow from age, describing various strange happenings in town, including the time the bakery's brownie went berserk and caused a major blackout, the dreaded "Devil Monkey Winter of 1978" when several cars in town were vandalized and the place was swarming with cryptozoologists, and the alien abductions at the Dudley estate. The Banshee Creek Library had kept track of it all and had loaned them their collection, as well as several books about the town's ghost stories and legends. A first edition copy of the book that started it all, Ambrose Bierce's eighteenth century masterpiece, Peculiar Incidents at Banshee Creek, held pride of place on a stand by the entrance.
And that wasn't all. Satan's own ficus tree sat behind a gray plaid winged back chair, next to a life-size replica of the Mothman, a relatively recent addition to the local weird critter pantheon.
"Is that Caine's statue?" he asked, surprised to see one of PRoVE's most prized possessions as one of their props.
"Yes," Sarah replied, sounding positively excited. "He offered us some of their specimens. They're trying to stay neutral in the competition, you know, like Switzerland, but some of their members are helping out at the bakery today so he decided to even things out by lending us some stuff." She pointed to a plesiosaur statue sitting on a shelf, surrounded by a bunch of grainy photographs in silver frames. "They also gave us Bessie, you know, the most famous log in town. And look, you totally missed this one." She walked to a mounted deer head on the wall and pointed at its mouth. "We have vampire deer."
Zach laughed, he wasn't a fan of taxidermy, but the deer looked good, as did the stuffed barn owl on the other side of the room. "This is fabulous, guys. You did a great job."
His original idea had been a bit of British club cachet and a whole lot of steampunk to make it stand out. And old fashioned Explorer's Club with an edge, kind of a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen type of thing.
But this was even better.
This was a love letter to his crazy, quirky, one-of-a-kind hometown, and it looked fantastic.
Sarah smiled, pleased. "It is rather brilliant, isn't it?"
"You did a great job, Sarah," he said. "Elizabeth has some professional photographers walking around. We should ask them to take some pictures. You should put this in your résumé."
Sarah nodded. "We need to put the sign up first. I'm going to need some help, and a ladder."
Zach considered volunteering for that, but his arm was starting to throb.
"I'll ask Elizabeth to send someone," he said instead. He'd also ask her for some painkillers. The Fire & Rescue guys must have given her a first aid kit. They always gave those out whenever there was a big event. You didn't have to be paranoid to work for Banshee Creek Fire & Rescue, but it helped.
"Oh my lord," Abby's voice rang out as she entered the room, her high-heeled boots clicking on the wood floors. "This looks amazing."
Sarah practically blushed.
"Is that the Hagen House?" she asked, pointing to a large watercolor painting on the wall. "It looks beautiful."
"Indeed," Sarah said. "It doesn't look cursed at all, which is actually a bit of a disappointment."
"Well," Abby peered at a smaller frame next to the watercolor. "Someone collected all the newspaper cuttings and put them in one place, that should help."
She turned and sat on the winged back chair, looking around. "You have lots of chairs and the leather sofas look comfy. Where are you going to put the food?"
"We'll have waiters going back and forth," Sarah said. "So everything is in the kitchen right now. Speaking of, I should go and check up on that." She walked out of the room as she said, "Let me know when they come to put up the sign."
"Will do," Zach replied, sitting on one of the leather sofas.
Abby looked at the ceiling. "Are those Caine's UFO models?"
Zach looked up. "I think so. They look very, um, realistic."
"Are you going to light them up tonight?" she asked. "I hear they're pretty amazing."
"Probably. It wouldn't be Banshee Creek without the UFOs."
"It all does look like the town," Abby looked around happily. "This is wonderful, Zach. The books, the pictures..." Her eyes widened as she caught sight
of the deer's fangs.
She squealed and pointed at the animal head. "I finally got to see one. I should take a selfie." She stood up, took out her phone and struck a pose.
"There." She pressed a button and grinned. "Hashtag 'vampiredeerselfie' is now an official part of the Internet."
Zach smiled. "That should please the record company execs. They were pretty upset about the absence of fanged ungulates in your video."
Abby's grin faded. "Oh, they're not going to need the pic. They'll be able to see it in person."
Zach froze. "What?"
The video had gone well, but that was a taped performance, with multiple takes, and he'd been lip-synching for most of it. This would be his first live performance in years and he was rusty and out of practice. He really didn't want record executives watching it.
Abby walked over and put her hands on his shoulders.
"Don't worry," she said. "It's just a major record company. They're only going to watch you play and record you and then decide whether to develop you as a solo act." Her smile was pure evil. "It's no big deal."
Zach made a face. That's what he needed -- a competition, a live performance, and an audition all taking place at the same time. He rubbed the scar on his arm. This was going to suck.
"Has anyone ever told you that your pep talks leave a lot to be desired?"
Abby laughed. "It'll be fine. They already love you." She looked around the room. "How long is this going to stay up? I'm thinking of asking them if we can stage our next video here. It looks pretty wild."
"We'll have to ask Holly and Caine, most of the stuff belongs to them, but I'm sure they'll try to accommodate you."
A mischievous smile lit up her face, and she started taking pictures with her phone. "I'll talk to Caine. I'm sure he'll see it my way." She aimed the phone camera at the UFOs on the ceiling. "I'm going to send these to the Arcane Films folks and ask them to come over and tell me what they think."