Dead & Breakfast

Chapter 1

The lobby of the Iris Inn was dead, but, then, so were its owners. Arthur sat rigid at the front desk, eyes trained on the entrance, waiting. He didn't strictly mind the quiet of an empty house-all the better to hear his own thoughts-but it had been quiet for so very long. Though time's significance was beginning to slip through Arthur's immortal fingers, it had not yet lost all meaning. So, when the front door of the old refurbished grange hall creaked open, he was glad for the interruption. A guest. At last.

The cheerful brunette had only one suitcase. A carry-on. Gray. The woman wouldn't be staying in Trident Falls more than a night or two, by Arthur's estimation. He wrote as much on the fluorescent pink Post-it note pressed against the oak paneling of the front desk.

"Welcome to the Iris Inn. Do you have a reservation?" She didn't, but Arthur liked to ask all the same. It granted their little establishment an air of importance it hadn't otherwise earned.

The woman smoothed her pressed blue blazer as she approached the counter. She wore sensible flats and an ivory satin blouse that played nicely against her medium-brown skin, and her hair was cropped and worn natural to frame her round face in tiny curls. Not exactly the rumpled and travel-worn type of guest he imagined would be the Iris Inn's usual customer-if their bed-and-breakfast ever became successful enough to have customers, plural.

"Oh no. I'm sorry. I didn't think to call ahead." The wheels of her suitcase clicked along the hardwood floor as she approached the desk. "Mr. Roth seemed sure you'd have room for me."

Arthur raised an eyebrow at the mention of Trident Falls' inept excuse for a mayor and bent his head to check his nonexistent calendar for nonexistent bookings.

The suitcase squeaked to a halt as the woman compressed the handle.

Arthur turned his attention to the sticky note where, under the word suitcase, he wrote old.

"We should be able to find room for you." Arthur eyed her bag warily. No one stayed in Trident Falls for long if they could help it, but that wasn't going to stop him from trying. He gestured to the stack of tourism brochures on the desk, boldly displaying a fuzzy photo obviously taken in the previous millennium of a smiling family carrying backpacks in front of a fluorescent orange tent. "Perhaps you'd enjoy a day hike to the falls."

"Oh, I'm not much of an outdoorswoman."

Arthur couldn't blame her. There was nothing he found particularly great about the great outdoors himself. Straightening his tie, he took another tack. "Well, there's plenty of other activities to do," which was technically true if she was the sort to be impressed by small quantities. "The park is lovely, and you might enjoy taking in a film at the cinema, or perhaps a tour of the local eateries!" He waved a hand at a pile of takeout menus. "Downtown Trident Falls has much to offer!" Calling it downtown was a bit misleading, as there was no uptown, sidetown, or insideouttown to be heard of. Trident Falls had once been a charming locale, something Arthur knew from personal experience, but these days there were too many potholes and too few of what his husband, Sal, called Instagrammable spots to draw much of a crowd. Or customers.

When they opened three months ago, the Iris Inn had benefited from the usual surge of travel writers-or rather, travel vloggers-but their reviews were lackluster at best. Some were disappointed an establishment run by two vampires was so traditional, and some were downright offended at the sight of paranormals at the welcome desk. "Sadly, not haunted," wrote one reviewer. "Dangerous propaganda that attempts to normalize the paranormal lifestyle," complained another. "One-ply toilet paper gets one star from this account." There was no pleasing everyone, though Arthur had remedied the toilet paper situation posthaste. But the damage was done, and business had petered off from there. There had been some curiosity among the Twilight obsessed, but after people realized there were no sparkly vampires in Trident Falls-with the notable exception of the time Arthur had been the unwitting victim of a glitter bomb-the only visitors to the Iris Inn came for funerals or entirely by accident.

"Will you be staying just the one night?" Arthur asked, pen hovering over the sticky note.

"As long as you'll have me, actually." The woman's lips split into an oddly genuine smile.

Strangers didn't smile at one another in Trident Falls. In fact, Arthur could count on his fingers the number of times he'd smiled at a fellow resident and had gotten one in return.

The woman held out a hand, presumably mistaking Arthur's skepticism for confusion, and said, "Nora Anderson. I'm the new city manager. And since the apartment I was supposed to be renting turned out to be a Best Pots on an empty lot, I need a place to stay that isn't made of plastic and preferably has a separate room for the toilet."

"I think we can accommodate that request." The rooms at the Iris Inn were several steps up from a porta-potty in Arthur's view, though he was certainly biased. He took her outstretched hand and shook it, then let go quickly. He didn't need her focusing on his lack of circulation. "Arthur. Arthur Miller-and before you ask, no relation."

"No one ever asks, my dear, which I imagine is your own personal crucible." A voice the consistency of grape jelly-smooth and saccharine with a flair of artificial flavor-floated through the entryway, followed by a white man with shoulder-length dark hair, hazel eyes, and a chiseled jaw the likes of which wouldn't have been out of place upon the cover of a romance novel-the historical variety, if his outfit was anything to go by. Today he wore a plum waistcoat and voluminous cravat over a white shirt with an absolutely uncalled-for amount of lace.

In truth, all that set Arthur's husband apart from the Fabios of the world was stature-a shocking five feet six inches-and a small scar across his eyebrow, sustained in an altercation with a brigand outside a tavern sometime during the eighteenth century, or so he claimed. In reality, the scar was the result of an unfortunate incident with a razor a few years back when eyebrow slits were all the rage, proving that one should never attempt avant-garde hair removal when one doesn't have a reflection in a mirror. Arthur had tended the wound and covered it with a My Little Pony bandage.

"Salvatore Conte, and might I say, what a pleasure it is to meet me." Salvatore bent to brush his lips across Nora's knuckles. "Bienvenue chez nous, mademoiselle." Salvatore grasped the suitcase and waved her forward. "Please, come in. There is no need for you to wait for an invitation." He laughed at his little joke, his voice carrying as he disappeared up the stairs, their guest in tow. "You have impeccable timing. We're hosting a soirée this evening-a night of the finest fromage Trident Falls has to offer! You simply must attend. Everyone who's anyone will be there, and of course my husband has procured a shocking amount of wine for the occasion."

"Oh, that's fun! I'll invite the mayor to join us," Nora managed to say before Sal's booming bravado eclipsed her voice once more.

"Such a treat for you to visit our neck of the woods . . . This is our nicest room, mind you, with a lovely window overlooking the forest. No, no, you'd best go in on your own. I wouldn't want to impede your view of the sunset. Do let us know if you require anything at all."

There was a click of the door and the light tapping of Salvatore's feet on the stairs before he reappeared in the entryway, showing his fangs in a grin.

"I thought you were Italian," Arthur said blandly. "Bienvenue? Isn't that French?"

Salvatore huffed, a fleeting look of a rat caught in a trap in his eyes. "After so many centuries, who can really say? I've been all sorts of things-a butcher, a jockey, an entomologist, a chocolatier . . . all of which are far more interesting than either French or Italian."

"You have never been an entomologist." Arthur would certainly have remembered that.

"I might have been!"

"Having the stage name Miss Keto Bite doesn't count."

"I just think mosquitoes are a misunderstood and fascinating species that-"

"It's strange, isn't it?" Arthur cut Sal off. He could forgive his husband almost anything, but not his continual defense of mosquitoes.

"Strange? Not really-when you think about it, mosquitoes have a great deal in common with vamp-"

"Her. Coming here. On the mayor's suggestion." Arthur glanced down at the sticky note on the desk. "And she only had one bag. That doesn't exactly say long-term stay, does it?"

"I'd say it's a testament to our marketing efforts. They're clearly working if the mayor is recommending us."

"I'd be inclined to agree if we'd done much in the way of marketing recently. Speaking of which, am I right to assume your foray into town was a success? I don't see any leftover flyers."

Salvatore gave a little bow and a cheeky smile. "Indeed, there's not a telephone pole in town without one plastered to it. If no one comes to our wine and cheese night, it won't be because we didn't get the word out."

Arthur looked up in alarm. "I thought you said everyone who's anyone would be there."

"And I stand by it." Salvatore lifted his chin. "After all, I'll be there, and really, darling, who else do we need?"

"The mayor," Arthur grumbled.

"What's that?"

"The mayor," Arthur said more clearly. "Our guest-Nora Anderson. She said she was going to invite the mayor. If he's recommending our establishment now, maybe he'll actually come! All we need is one good showing and things could really turn around for us!"

"Whatever you say." Salvatore bounced up to his tiptoes and planted a kiss on Arthur's cheek, angling his gaze down and landing on the Post-it. "Aha! What's this?" He snatched it from the desk, the sticky side finding purchase on his palm. "Cheerful brunette? Suitcase-gray, old? Who do you think you are? Sherlock Houses?"

"Holmes," Arthur corrected as he scrambled to recover the sticky note. "And I was just making some observations."

"Observe this, my love." Salvatore folded the sticky note into a very small rose, then tucked it into the lapel of Arthur's black suit jacket. "That's better. A little pop of color."

Arthur fought the urge to remove the paper rose. He'd thought he'd looked rather spiffing when he got dressed that morning, but next to Salvatore's ensemble, his was terribly plain, even with the embellishment.

"We have a guest for the first time in weeks." Sal brushed the lapels of Arthur's suit jacket in a soothing motion. "It's time to stop worrying about strange happenstances and start preparing for this evening's festivities! What do you think, should I change? This cravat doesn't really say party animal."

Arthur wasn't sure what exactly his husband's cravat was supposed to say, so he just nodded.

"At least we won't run out of refreshments. You ordered enough wine to get the whole town toasted," Sal said. "Looks like we won't go hungry either."

Arthur followed Salvatore's gaze to the unassuming cardboard box by the door with fresh bites printed in bold across the top. it's the quality that counts, boasted the thin black lettering.

"Absolutely not," Arthur said. "We will not drink blood in front of the guests."

"Guest," Salvatore corrected.

It was optimistic thinking to assume anyone but Nora would attend the evening's festivities. In fact, Arthur was beginning to worry it was too much to hope that the inn's singular occupant would bother to grace them with her presence at all. With only Salvatore and the copious amount of cheese they'd procured, it would be a lonely-and gassy-night, indeed.

Salvatore pierced the tape on the package with his nails and withdrew a square card from inside. "Look! We got Geraldine Wilkes from Eugene. She's a vegan and enjoys cycling. And it's B positive! Your favorite!"

Arthur's tongue found the tip of his canine, as it often did when he was hungry-but no. "We can't scare this one off, all right? She's our first guest in weeks. We can't mess this up. If this business fails . . ." Arthur trailed off, the rest too unthinkable to express aloud.

"Then we move on," Salvatore said. "We do it all the time."

They'd moved to the sleepy Oregon town only six months ago, after Salvatore had inadvertently set their Chicago apartment on fire with some pyrotechnics he'd planned to use in his drag show. Between the two of them, they'd a combined sixty-nine years of life and another six hundred or so of undeath. In all their time together, they'd never really stopped moving around, so with the insurance settlement from the fire, they agreed on a quiet retirement from traveling in a small town close to the woods.

Salvatore didn't care what town or what woods, but Arthur had visited Trident Falls many times as a boy, and it had seemed a slice of idyllic peace, tucked away near the mountains. His father had always insisted on taking Arthur to do all manner of unthinkable things like hiking and fishing and kayaking, none of which were Arthur's particular idea of fun, but at the end of the day they'd come back to the bed-and-breakfast, where a cozy fire and soft blankets awaited them. Though it was only for one week each summer, Arthur's fondness for the Iris Inn had never waned. The original proprietor, Iris herself, made the most heavenly scones Arthur had ever tasted, and he hoped to one day catch the feeling of home she'd so effortlessly cultivated. When Arthur had seen the listing for the Iris Inn, it felt like fate, so they'd packed up their limited remaining possessions and headed for Trident Falls.

It was supposed to be their perfect little getaway. Instead, it was a town full of furtive glances under judgmental eyebrows. Salvatore said they could change their minds anytime, but Arthur wasn't ready to give up so easily. It had once been a cozy and welcoming place; it could be again.

"This was supposed to be the last time, Sal. We're retired now. Can't you at least try?"

Salvatore sighed and placed the card back inside the box of their weekly delivery of ethically sourced blood and faced the kitchen. "I'll make a charcuterie board."

"Thank you." Arthur squeezed his husband's arm as Salvatore turned to go, then shouted after him, "And don't slice the cheese into any fun shapes this time, all right? Something classy."