Page 53 of Road Trip with a Vampire

Twenty-Six

Recipe for Cookies That Cassie Told Me She Loves—by Frederick J. Fitzwilliam

A lot of flour

Some sugar

At least a cup of other powders

Whatever liquid foodstuff you might have on hand (except for blood; do NOT use blood)

Mix together in large bowl. Arrange dough on tray. Bake until done.

I slept fitfully that night, tossing and turning for hours before finally drifting off shortly before dawn.

When my alarm went off at six, it felt like I’d been awake all night.

Morning classes started in an hour, though, and it was my turn to open the studio. Somehow I managed to dress and drag myself downstairs. I’d need to sneak in a nap at some point just to survive the day.

Once in the studio, I busied myself with all the administrative tasks that needed doing before students arrived.

I opened the door to the Walnut Room, pulled up the blinds on the street-facing windows to let in the sun, and replaced the empty water cooler jug.

It was heavier than I expected, but I eased its transfer onto the cooler with the barest hint of a magical breeze to nudge it along.

All that was left was a quick sweep of the area by the front door. It got dirty very quickly, and Robert often forgot to take care of it before leaving at the end the night.

Inside the broom closet, I saw a stray sheet of lined paper on the shelf with the cleaning solution. I picked it up, intending to throw it away—but when I looked at it more closely…

After all that time studying his marked-up road map, I’d have recognized Peter’s neat, crisp writing anywhere.

CLEANING: NIGHTLY SCHEDULE

Sweep trash day is Wednesday)

Wax floors in Walnut I’d never been good at cleaning without magic—I thought of how scrupulously clean Peter had kept our studio when he’d worked for us. How eager he’d been to have something to do, even if it had been janitorial work we hadn’t paid him for.

Where was he? What was he doing now?

I didn’t want to think about it. Thinking about it would lead me to make bad decisions, like initiating another text conversation with him. Or even worse—calling him.

It would also force me to admit how much I missed him.

When I walked out of my ten a.m. Yoga for Beginners class the following morning, Lindsay and Becky were putting up goat-shaped window clings of varying sizes on the studio’s street-facing windows.

The big event was now only two weeks away.

To my continued bewilderment, people seemed legitimately excited for it.

Local media kept calling to get sound bites for the community newspaper and social media.

While this attention was likely due to a complete lack of actual newsworthy events going on in our community, handling press calls was still taking up a weirdly large amount of our time.

I usually loved the slow, easy pace of life in Redwoodsville, but there were times I missed urban living. This was one of those times. New York City, for example, would not be losing its collective mind over a yoga studio having a goat day.

“Why are you putting those up?” I asked, bemused. “Aren’t tickets already sold out?”

“Yep!” Lindsay said, eyes on her work. She was applying a robust-looking female goat to our largest front window with surgical precision.

“I know I’m not great at marketing—” I began.

“You’re not,” Lindsay agreed, giving the freshly applied goat a firm tap on the rump. Probably to make certain it was adequately attached to the window, though her motivations weren’t completely clear.

I tried not to bristle at how quickly Lindsay had agreed with me. “As I was saying,” I tried again, “I admit I’m not great at marketing, but I don’t understand why we’re advertising a sold-out event. If we keep hyping an event with no tickets, won’t people get annoyed?”

“Oh, my sweet summer child.” Lindsay walked over and patted me—patronizingly, I thought—on the arm. “We don’t just want to be sold out. We want people who can’t come to feel like they’ve missed an experience .”

“It’s about scarcity,” Becky explained. “The marketing class I took last summer had a whole section on it. The scarcer something is, the more people will want it if you tell them to want it. Just look at Taylor Swift.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What does Taylor Swift have to do with goat yoga?”

“ Not being able to get tickets to her Eras Tour was the best publicity she could have asked for,” Becky explained. “There were never enough tickets to meet demand. It kept the fans wanting more.”

“Just like advertising our goat yoga event, even if tickets are gone, will keep people wanting to take classes at our studio,” Becky concluded.

This sounded like nonsense to me, but I was too tired from being up late the night before to push the issue. Also, if I kept objecting to what my friends were doing, they’d be justified in asking me to come up with promo ideas of my own. Which I did not want.

I nodded at the windows. “Those baby goats are cute,” I capitulated.

“They’re called kids,” Becky corrected.

“Fine.” I yawned and stretched my arms overhead. “Can you handle goatifying our windows without me? I’m exhausted and need a nap.”

“We’ve got this,” Lindsay assured me. “Go home.”

“But before you go,” Becky said. “A package came for you earlier. It’s waiting for you upstairs.”

“A package?” I frowned. “Package delivery isn’t usually until the afternoon, is it?”

“That’s what I said to the delivery kid,” Lindsay said.

“He said this was a very special delivery and that the sender had paid extra to have it sent this morning.” She shook her head.

“He pronounced very special delivery just like that, too. With extra emphasis on each word. Kind of strange, honestly.”

“Yeah, he was definitely a strange one,” Becky said. “He covered his mouth with his hand the entire time he spoke and wore mismatched pajamas.”

He covered his hand with his mouth? And he was wearing strange clothes?

Perhaps the delivery person was just an eccentric coastal Californian. But my suspicions were officially aroused. Getting an unexpected delivery at an unusual time from someone wearing odd, vampirecore clothes so soon after what had happened in Indiana…

“Let us know what it is,” Lindsay said. But I was already heading for the studio’s back exit, bracing myself for whatever I might find when I got home.

My mind raced with dark possibilities as I took the stairs to my apartment two at a time.

Could the surviving members of The Collective have shipped me an incendiary device?

I wouldn’t put it past them. I was one hundred percent letting my imagination run away with me, but after what had happened in that warehouse, I couldn’t help myself.

When I got to my front door, though, all that was there was a white baker’s box and a handwritten note on plain white stationery.

The high alert I’d just been on melted away, replaced by feelings I understood far less.

I didn’t have to read the note to know who this was from.

After all, I’d just seen Peter’s handwriting the previous morning.

The note was full of cross-outs and rewritten words. My heart crashed against my rib cage at the image of him sitting at a table somewhere, pen in hand as he agonized over what to say.

Dear Hello Zelda,

I hope these cookies find you well.

I baked these cookies just for you

Here are some cookies that are left over from a large batch I baked last night for an unrelated purpose having nothing to do with you.

I miss you

I am so sorry for what I did

I hope you enjoy them.

I miss you

—Peter

The note was brief, but I had so many questions.

Where was Peter now? When on earth had he learned how to bake cookies of all things? And above all: What did his sending me homemade cookies mean ?

If I suspended every ounce of disbelief I’d ever had, I still wouldn’t have been able to picture Peter doing anything in a kitchen that was ultimately intended for human consumption.

Yet apparently he’d done exactly that. He must have been branching out and trying new things.

I couldn’t begrudge him that, even if baking wouldn’t have been at the top of the list of things I’d have encouraged him to try.

I brought the box inside, then opened it on my kitchen table. Sure enough, inside was a plate stacked high with two dozen chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. When had someone last done something this sweet, thoughtful, and domestic for me? My mind drew a complete blank.

Touched, I took the topmost cookie from the pile. Examined it. It looked delicious.

I took a bite.

And immediately regretted every decision I’d made in my life that had led me to doing so.

“Oh gods !” It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever intentionally put into my mouth. I spat out the cursed mouthful in the kitchen sink, then ran, half laughing and half gagging, into the bathroom. I had to rinse out the taste or I was going to lose it. It being my breakfast.

What was in those things? Baking soda, definitely—its sharp flavor and pasty consistency overpowered everything else.

But beneath that I was pretty sure I’d detected hints of rice flour, banana, and…

oregano, probably. I grabbed my mouthwash and took an enormous swig, swishing it around until the bad cookie flavor had been replaced with Listerine.

Then I sat down on the floor of my bathroom…and laughed .