I wiped my hands on a dishtowel and did a small curtsy behind the bar. “OK, this is a red-wine reduction with shallots—well, shallot juice—and a few other goodies, and, of course, Faux Type O. It’s basically the go-to sauce for any chef auditioning for a job.”

The vampires sniffed the glasses and then, giving one another subtly wary looks, knocked back the shots.

“So, what do you think?” I said, bouncing up and down on my heels. “Should I stick with this one as the contest entry, or do you want to taste more? Because I’m pretty sure this is the best selection.”

They stared at me, eyes unnaturally wide. That’s when I noticed that they weren’t smiling. Most people smiled when they were eating my food.

Dick swallowed heavily, grimacing. “Taste more?”

“This is the best one?” Jane said, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin.

My eyes flicked to each vampire’s face and their expressions of strained, polite discomfort. They hated it.

A cold flush of shock and panic skittered down my spine. My brain kept screaming, Impossible! I didn’t make bad food. Even when I made blue-box macaroni and cheese, I did it with flair. And this was my red-wine reduction. Everybody loved my red-wine reduction, even Chef Gamling.

I’d tasted this batch myself just before adding the blood. It was the perfect mix of sophistication and Southern comfort. Except it wasn’t, because Dick seemed to be trying to scrape his tongue with a napkin without being obvious about it.

“Does synthetic blood curdle?” I reached for the shot glass and sniffed. It smelled fine to me, a little coppery under the peppery tang of the sauce, but fine.

Gabriel cleared his throat. “No, no, it’s fine. It just a little…”

Dick murmured, “How can we put this delicately?”

Jane took my hands in hers, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “It tastes like old sandals and feta cheese.”

“That was delicately?” I deadpanned.

“For Jane, yes, it was,” Andrea informed me.

“OK, what could I change?” I asked, my voice hitching slightly. I took a deep breath to stave off the worst of my panic. “Should I season it differently? Change the consistency?”

“I don’t know,” Jane said. “It’s not even an issue of spices or texture. It just tastes… wrong.”

“OK.” I whisked another set of shot glasses off the counter, the one containing my second choice, an attempt at masking the taste of the blood in an Asian-inspired plum sauce. “Try this one.”

Dick couldn’t hold the glass to his lips for more than two seconds before shuddering, giving me an apologetic look, and placing the glass back on my tray. When Andrea lifted the glass to her mouth, Dick’s hand shot toward her and pulled the glass out of her grasp. Jane sipped, gagged, and spat the sauce back into her shot glass. Gabriel, who seemed to feel sorry for me, downed the sauce in one gulp. He paled, which was saying something, mumbled “Excuse me,” and ran for the bathroom.

“What am I doing wrong?” I exclaimed.

“I don’t know,” Jane said sympathetically. “But you’ll get it. Don’t worry.”

But I was worried. I refused to subject my guests to further gastronomical torture. I went home to my kitchen and went over my recipes one by one. These were my tried-and-true recipes. I used versions of them at Coda every day. No one hated these. I’d done my research. I’d broken down the flavor profiles on a molecular level to match the right sauce to the right blood type.

If I didn’t win this contest, I would barely have enough to make Howlin’ Hank’s habitable. I’d been so stupidly confident in my skills, in my ability to blow the locals out of the water, that creating something inedible hadn’t even crossed my mind.

I felt like such an idiot. Did vampire taste buds really change so much after death? Gabriel described the taste issue as the vampire body’s method of digestive self-defense. The vampire’s brain instinctually knew that solid food would make them sick, so it sent messages to the body that human food was rancid and disgusting. Maybe if I could trick the vampire’s brain into thinking it was just enjoying another cup of blood, I wouldn’t serve them something that tasted like the inside of Mike Tyson’s gym bag.

“I can fix this,” I assured them. I grabbed the spices and herbal oils I’d brought with me to garnish the shots and went to work doctoring the remaining entries. Dick grimaced but gamely stepped up to the bar. Gabriel rolled his eyes but clearly didn’t want to be outdone in the chivalry department. He stepped forward, too.

“I haven’t thrown up in more than a year,” Andrea told me, taking her own shot glass in hand. “You break my streak, and I’m going to be pissed at you.”

—

I’d broken Andrea’s streak and then some. My poor ladies’ room would never be the same.

Hours later, I sat at the Lassiter house’s kitchen counter, my face buried in my hands. I’d never cooked anything bad before. When I was a culinary student, I’d gotten cocky with the seasonings and turned a simple roast chicken into a garlic-soaked mess. Even then, I’d managed to turn the carcass into a palatable soup and gotten partial credit.

“What did I do?” I groaned, thunking my head on the counter. I let it rest there as hot tears tracked down my cheeks. If I didn’t come up with a prize-winning entry, I had no shot at the money I needed for renovations. Who would want to eat in a restaurant with a semiprivate bathroom?

A cool hand awkwardly patted my head, followed by an arm slipping around my shoulder. I glanced up through my hair to see Sam sitting next to me, stretching his body as far away from me as possible, as if he was cuddling up to an incendiary device.

“There, there,” he said, his voice resigned and sheepish as he patted my head. “I’m sorry I hurt your pans.”

“What?” I exclaimed, snorting far too loudly as my head popped up.

Sam looked stricken, his cheeks pale(r) and his brown eyes clouded with concern. His lean frame was curved around mine almost protectively, and I found I didn’t want to move away. Hell, I wanted to move closer. I sniffed, offering him a watery smile.

“Don’t flatter yourself. This is not about you.” I waved a hand at my tear-stained cheeks. “This is just… everything. I’ve been on this roller coaster, feeling like a failure, feeling almost normal, feeling I’ve got it all figured out, and then right back at failure again. Only this time, I don’t know if I can bounce back. I have hubris-ed myself right into a corner, and I don’t even think that’s a verb.”

“Psfff.” He snorted, pulling a bar stool close to mine and sitting. “Failure. Trust me, I know failure. Whatever this is, it’s just a bump in the road. I moved here to try to save my marriage. And livin’ here is what destroyed it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I heard that Lindy didn’t handle your, er, transition, very well.”

He scoffed. “You know, her brother was one of my best friends. He warned me against her, and not just in that ‘friends don’t mess around with their friends’ sisters’ way. He told me Lindy was a ‘wanter.’ She planned and prayed, but then once she had whatever ‘it’ was, she didn’t want it anymore. She got a degree in marketing but decided she wanted to be a medical coder. I rented us an apartment, but she wanted out of the lease by the third month. She went through three wedding dresses before I even proposed.

“I thought she would settle down, be happy, once we were married. We were living in Nashville. I was workin’ as a project manager for this big construction firm. Lots of hours, lots of travelin’. I hardly ever saw Lindy. She’s the one who pushed for us to move. This house, in this town, was supposed to save our marriage. A quieter life, less stress, more time together.”

“And it didn’t work?”

He grimaced, that cute little constellation of freckles disappearing into the creases under his eyes. “It turned out that not spending time together was what held our marriage together for so long in the first place.”

“Ouch.”

“I fit right into the Hollow. There are nice people here. It was a good place if we wanted to raise a family. My business picked up faster than I expected. Lindy just sort of drifted, which was unusual for her. She couldn’t find friends. It was too quiet for her. She didn’t like livin’ in a work in progress. When she saw how happy I was, I think it pissed her off. I think she decided that I was the latest thing she just didn’t want anymore.

“I wasn’t perfect,” he admitted when I made a derisive snorting noise. “The more Lindy tried to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do, the more I dug in and did what I thought I needed. I thought that once the place was finished, it would get better. Livin’ our life in this house, livin’ up to its potential, was supposed to fix things. But then I took that job for Hans and got turned. I know it was scary for her, not knowing if I was dead or not, not knowing what it would be like, married to me. But hell, it was scary for me, too. I woke up, and she was gone. Our life together was gone. And when I tried to talk to her about it, well, she freaked out. Called me a monster, told me to stay away from her. And I… may have gotten Hulk-angry and thrown a couch through a window.”

“Wow.”

“Not my finest moment,” he admitted, running his fingers through his unruly hair. His mouth formed a slanted, rueful grin. “Lindy, of course, insisted I was too dangerous to be around normal people. Called her family, our friends, my friends here in town, to ‘warn’ them about my new nature and how fast I could turn on humans. Damn near ruined the life I’d built here, but she was scared and confused, and I guess I can’t blame her.”

I muttered, “I can.” He frowned at me, making me shrug. “I’m a grudge holder.”

“She’s puttin’ the house on the market on October 28,” he said, his voice toneless and resigned. “All the property went to her when I died. But thanks to the Council’s intervention, I got to stay here, and she had to return the holdings for my construction business—the business account, the tools, equipment, and such—and I have until October 28 to buy her out of the house. I’ve been working a little, doing nighttime projects for one of our neighbors, Mr. Calix. He’s added a fence, an outbuilding, and a finished basement to his house in the last few months. I think he’s just doin’ it because he’s tryin’ to help me out, but he’s too nice to say anythin’ about it. It hasn’t been enough to save what I need.”