Page 46 of Her Midnight Stalker

“I’m sorry,” a middle-aged woman at one of the tables shouts loud enough over the commotion for me to hear. “Are we going to get our meals anytime soon? We’ve been waiting a really long time, and I don’t want to have to leave, but we have other things to do.”

“Your meals are next up,” I reply, trying to acknowledge her without seeming rude. “Our manager is in the back preparing your tenders platter for you as we speak.”

“And you can’t go back and help him?” The woman asks. “Why are you standing around up here while he’s working back there?”

The woman’s son is full of embarrassment, and his face is bright red.

“We aren’t trained cooks,” I say simply. “We’ll have your food right out.”

I walk away from her. I hear her make a snide comment about ‘the excuses this generation will make to avoid working’ and decide to ignore her, moving to the back room.

The three plates for table four are ready now. I pick them up and carry them out, only to find the table I just helped walking out.

“I’m real sorry about this,” the son says, but his mom talks over him.

“You don’t have to apologize to her,” her mom says. “She’s the reason we’re leaving.”

I sigh, wondering whether any parts of this order can be reused for another table.

I’m sure she’s a lovely woman. Maybe she’s just having a hard day.

“Table four just left,” I tell my manager, as Rory moves the next table’s plates back to them. “Is there any way we can rework this for another table?”

“What did you say to them?” He asks.

“They were upset about the wait,” I reply. “I told them we were doing the best we could, and that we’d have the food right out.”

“Take a lunch,” my manager says. “Rory and I have got this. You can take the tender platter to the break room. No use in throwing it away.”

I move to the break room and eat. The tenders are a little cold, but it’s nothing a little microwaving can’t fix.

As I watch the chicken and fry plate spin in the microwave, my mind drifts to the inventory room.

Something feels wrong.

Pushing open the freezer door, I count up the boxes of frozen chicken meat. What seems odd to me is that there seem to be several boxes missing, and among the boxes here, it looks like something has been scavenging through them, draining the blood. The breast tenderloins are all dry, or barely covered in fluid.

What’s more unusual is that all of our garlic and onion stock has been depleted, in both raw and powder form.

I walk back up to the kitchen, where my boss is working very diligently.

“I thought I told you to sit down and take a lunch,” he insists. His temper is short, and I hate bothering him, but something pokes at the back of my mind.

“Is there a reason our garlic and chicken stock is so low?” I ask.

He shakes his head, as Rory grabs two seafood plates from him and carries them out.

“Ah, Quinn,” he says. “Ever the overachiever.”

I stand there waiting expectantly, wondering whether I should just go back to the breakroom. I’ve probably nuked my fries into mooshy, flavorless blobs.

“We had to let one of our drivers go, because we weren’t getting the stuff he claimed he delivered,” my manager tells me. “There’s been a lot of product missing lately, and the stuff we do get is in meager condition.”

I shake my head. I don’t know why this bothers me so much.

Caspian must be messing with my head somehow. I understand that he’s only testing me, but sometimes, I wish the lingering paranoia wasn’t part of this vampire-human deal.

At the end of my shift, I’ll go to the backroom and check the delivery to make sure nothing’s off. That’ll put my mind at ease.

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