CHAPTER ELEVEN
MASIE
“Mamma! Maybell!” I sprinted into the Rooster, all sweaty and tired, never so relieved to see bales of hay and sticky hardwood floors in my life.
I’d been lucky enough to catch a direct flight from Tacoma to Nashville after the helicopter landed and I ditched Teri. Cost me everything I had in my checking account, too. Six hundred buckaroos. The taxi here from Nashville cost me another two, which I had to put on a credit card.
Damned vampires! Bleeding me dry all over the place.Or, at least, they planned to.
Mamma looked up from behind the counter, holding a dish towel. Maybell was setting out saltshakers, and a few random customers looked like they’d just sat down to eat. The other servers were probably in back, getting ready to start the dinner shift.
“Masie?” Mamma said. “What are you doin’ here? It’s still daylight out.”
I ran behind the counter and took Mamma’shand. “I’m not a vampire. Stark lied. He and all the other vampires lied, too. They eat people. They kill them, Mamma.”
Maybell walked up to the counter with her dark hair in a high ponytail. She wore Daisy Dukes and our standard T-shirt with the Flaming Rooster logo. “Masie, what are you talking about? We watched you die, so you’re a vampire now. Stark saved you with his blood.”
I gave her a look. “What part of me walking in from the sunlight didn’t you get? And me being a vampire or not isn’t the headline here.”
“Sugar baby, I’m not followin’,” Mamma said.
I drew a deep breath. “Stark drugged me and kidnapped me to that island I told you about on our call yesterday. He said it was to keep me from killing people during my transition, but really? He only made methinkI was a vampire—some kind of preparation for when he actually turned me. Which he was gonna do before he married me. Or maybe after. I’m not sure. But he’s got everyone still believing—”
“He proposed?” Mamma’s eyes lit up with joy.
Leave it to her to only hear that one fact.
“Yes. Sort of.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter now. The important part is that the vampire world still thinks I’m that Anna woman. Stark only wanted to marry me so I—she—can help him take over and carry out his master plan.” I took another deep breath. “They want tomake the world into a vampire Buc-ee’s! Aisle two, live people. And aisles three, four, five—the whole dang place! Even Daddy’s in on it.”
I reached up and turned on the TV mounted to the wall behind the bar. Hopefully, I wasn’t too late.
I changed channels to the news.Please be covering the weather. Please?Anything boring was a good sign. “Weather! Yes! We still have time to stop them.”
Mamma rolled her eyes. “Your father might be a vampire, but he would never hurt anyone.”
“Oh yeah? Ask him about the waking chambers, Mamma. Ask him what they do to the poor people inside.”
“Is it sex stuff?” Maybell asked excitedly.
I frowned. “They suck on ’em like turkey wings. Until they’re dead.”
“I hate turkey.” Maybell winced.
“Masie, that’s just crazy talk.” Mamma began wiping down the counter. From the look on her face, she didn’t believe me. Neither did Maybell.
“No. It’s not. And we need to tell everyone what they’re planning,” I said frantically. “I’m human, and Montgomery Stark tricked me into believin’ otherwise. You think a man like that isn’t up to something?”
“Well, maybe hethoughtyou’d turned,” Mamma said sympathetically, “and when you didn’t, he wasn’t sure how to break the bad news. The man really does love you.”
How in the world had Mamma reached such a stupid conclusion? “Has Daddy been giving you a special drink?”
Mamma’s cheeks flushed from her usual light tan to a guilty pink.
Gasp.“That stuff is a drug,” I barked. “Vampires use it to brainwash people.”
“I like moonshine,” said Maybell. “Tastes like chocolate ice cream.”
Her too?“You both need to listen,” I fumed. “Do not take any more. It’s poison.”
