Read Online Sunshine by Robin McKinley - Free Book Online

longer be myself.” His eyes flicked fully open, his face tipped back to stare at me. I averted my eyes, looked at the weal on his forearm. “I may … kill you then. I may kill myself. I don’t know. The history of vampires is a long one, but I do not know of anyone who has had … quite this experience.”
    I sat down. I heard myself saying, “Can I do anything?”
    â€œYou are doing it. You are talking to me.”
    â€œI …” I said. “I’m not much of a talker. Our wait staff are the ones who know how to talk, and listen. I’m out back, most of the time, getting on with the baking.” Although several of our regulars hung around out back, if they felt like it. There was also a tiny patio area behind the coffeehouse that Charlie always meant to get done up so we could use it for more seating, but he never did, maybe partly because it had become a kind of private clubhouse for some of the regulars. When the fan wasn’t going but the bakery doors were open I listened to the conversations, and people came and leaned on the threshold so I could listen more easily. Pat and Jesse’s more interesting stories got told out back.
    â€œThe worst time is the hours around noon,” he said. “My mind is full of …” He paused. “My mind feels as if it is disintegrating, as if the rays of your sun are prizing me apart.”
    Silence fell again, and the sun rose higher.
    â€œI don’t suppose you’d be interested in recipes,” I said, a little wildly. “My bran and corn and oatmeal muffins are second only to cinnamon rolls in the numbers we sell. And then there’s all the other stuff, lots more muffins—I can make spartan muffins out of anything —and tea bread and yeast bread and cookies and brownies and cakes and stuff. On Friday and Saturday I make pies. Even Charlie doesn’t know the secret of my apple pie. I suppose the secret would be safe with you.” Charlie didn’t know the secret of my Bitter Chocolate Death, either, but I didn’t feel like mentioning death in the present circumstances, even chocolate ones.
    The vampire’s eyes were half open, watching me.
    â€œI haven’t got much more life to tell you about. I’m not a deep thinker. I only just made it through high school. I was a rotten student. I hated learning stuff for tests only because someone told me I had to. The only thing I was ever any good at was literature and writing with Miss Yanovsky.” June Yanovsky had tangled with the school board because she chose to teach a section of classic vampire literature to her junior elective. She said that denying kids the opportunity to discuss Dracula and Carmilla and Immortal Death was in the same category of muddleheaded misguided protectiveness that left them to believe that they couldn’t get pregnant if they did it standing up with their shoes on. She won her case. “I’d’ve dropped out if it wasn’t for her, and also Charlie really laid into me about how much my mom would hate it if I did. He was right, he usually is, especially about my mom. I’d been working at the coffeehouse since I was twelve, and I went straight from part time to full time after I graduated. I’ve never done anything. The farthest I’ve been from New Arcadia is the ocean a few times on vacation when the boys were little and the coffeehouse smaller and Charlie could still be dragged away occasionally. I like to read. My best girlfriend is a librarian. But I don’t have time to do much except work and sleep. Sometimes I feel like there ought to be something.…” An image of my gran formed in my memory: an image from the last time I had seen her. I had never decided whether or not it was only hindsight that made me feel she had known I would not see her again, that she was going away. Superficially she had seemed as she always had. She had said good-bye as she