Sunshine

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award 2004.

“Sunshine” is what everyone calls her. She works long hours in her family’s coffeehouse, making her famous “Cinnamon Rolls as Big as Your Head,” Bitter Chocolate Death, Caramel Cataclysm, and other sugar-shock specials that keep the customers coming. She’s happy in her bakery – which her stepfather built specially for her – but sometimes she feels that she should have life outside the coffeehouse.

One evening she drives out to the lake to get away from her family, to be alone. There hasn’t been any trouble at the lake for years.

But there is trouble that night for Sunshine. She is abducted by a gang of vampires who shackle her to the wall of an abandoned mansion, within easy reach of a figure stirring in the moonlight. Sunshine knows that he is a vampire and that she is to be his dinner. Yet when dawn breaks he has not attempted to harm her.

And now he needs her help to survive the day...