At 5:07 am, Jo opened the café freezer and screamed.
This was not unusual. The freezer door had a tendency to slam back like a guillotine and the café’s ancient compressor often let out wheezing gasps like it had unfinished business in the afterlife.
What was unusual was the pale and well-dressed man curled up between two bags of frozen croissants like he’d decided death was too dramatic and a nap beside frozen baked goods would do him just fine.
“Oh, hell no,” Jo muttered, slamming the freezer shut. She backed away slowly and clutched her travel mug like a crucifix.
Matteo walked in just in time to see Jo reach for the broom. “The freezer haunted again?”
“No,” she said, eyes wide. “It’s worse. There’s a guy in there.”
Matteo, still wearing his demon-proof apron from Series OneTM, peeked into the freezer, nodded, and said, “He looks chill.”
“Matteo.”
“Literally chill.”
She stared at him.
“Okay, fine. Let’s poke him with a biscotti.”
Once he defrosted enough to sit upright and stop blinking at the espresso machine like it had insulted his family, the vampire introduced himself as Séverin Lazare, and told them they could call him Sev for short.
He was polite, eloquent, and mostly annoyed that no one had noticed his coffin delivery to the Cedar Grove Cemetery had been misrouted to Harmony Café. He was trying his damndest to hibernate through the chaos of modern life, but now he was awake.
“Look, a coffin delivery doesn’t raise an eyebrow here,” Jo confessed. “It’s Cedar Grove and par for the course. To be honest, I thought it was the pumpkin scones.”
Ever the gracious hostess, Mira asked, “Would you prefer blood or a latte?” She offered both options with the same customer service smile she used for difficult tea requests.
“Just hot water and existential clarity,” Sev said. “Maybe oat milk.”
Across Cedar Grove, odd things began to stir.
A cemetery groundkeeper found claw marks on the inside of a mausoleum and the church choir began harmonizing in minor keys. Clorvex, Cedar Grove’s favorite retired coffee demon, announced he was getting some strange vibes from the shadows and also the biscotti.
By the end of the week, Sev had rented the basement of Harmony Café, turned the mop closet into a reading nook, and was legally registered under ‘undead but employed’.
Jo stared into her coffee, muttering, “Why is it always my shift when the undead rise?”
Mira sipped her calming lavender blend. “Because you never request PTO.”