Rage needs control. And Euphrasia’s control sucks.
Euphrasia Vasquez channels her anger into retribution, targeting only the worst of the worst. But even she knows that anger boils just out of her control. So when her father and the vampire Master call for a meeting, alarm bells go off.
Going in hot and ready to destroy could cost Euphy her life. But controlling her ever-present anger proves impossible. She hopes the café, with its soothing atmosphere, calming music, and delicious chocolate cake takes the edge off.
Because if Euphy allows her anger to take over, no one survives.
EUPHRASIA AT THE CAFE is available to read for free until the 15th of February, when another story will be posted. For readers who would prefer to read on a device of preference, or who would like their own personal eBook of this story, you can find it here.
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Euphrasia at the Café
A Café Story
Euphrasia Vasquez stormed through the front doors of the café, ready for a fight. She had no one to fight with. That didn’t matter. She was angry. And she would have happily punched a vampire if one stepped into her face at that moment. Or a demon. Or a Nazi. Or any other awful thing that decided this was the time to try her.
When she got this angry, it was hard to think, hard to come back to herself and her surroundings. She couldn’t afford to have the anger overwhelm her. Not today. Today she had to be reasonable. And calm. And maybe even try for personable.
Ha. Yeah. That was going to happen today. If she could manage not to take any heads off, she’d call that a win. Managing any emotion above tolerance and restraint was going to be impossible.
Still, she was going to try. And that meant coming into a calming place with lots of people and civility going on. A place she would have to restrain herself because she was dealing with everyday humans, and so long as they weren’t one of the above easy to punch types, they hadn’t earned her anger. Therefore, she should…well, not punch anyone.
So far, the mental effort did not seem to be working well.
A few of the people sitting around tables scattered throughout the café’s open floor turned to look at her when she slammed into the place. They quickly looked away, so she imagined her face clearly said, “I’m in a mood, don’t fuck with me.” Good instincts, café patrons. Good instincts.
Around the edges of the café, couches and cushioned chairs surrounded low wooden tables and made cozy nooks and comfortable places to drink and maybe read a book from the bookstore next door. The tables scattered around the open center of the café were mostly wood and circled by wooden or plastic seats, a bit hodge-podge. Which made her wonder if that was on purpose or if some of the wooden chairs had been broken and replaced with plastic. That happened in her wake sometimes because she had a tendency to break things when she got into fights.
Which she wasn’t going to do here. And now. Because that was the point.
The bookstore was accessible from the café through a large open archway in the wall between the two businesses. People moved through that archway easily and often. The café itself smelled of coffee and rich buttery pastries that made her stomach growl. She could do with some food. That usually calmed enough of the anger to make her reasonable. And if that food involved butter and/or chocolate all the better.
The coffee smelled perfect. She could almost feel her brain easing off the anger pedal with every breath of rich, roasting beans. Probably she should get some sort of calming tea like chamomile or something. But for some strange reason, coffee calmed her better.
Her metabolism was really weird.
She stomped up to the counter. A huge gray cat curled up on a stool next to the register, a stool that was clearly too small for the beast but the cat didn’t seem to notice. Its fluffy hair and gentle purr poked a tiny hole in Euphy’s anger, but not enough to prevent her snarl. A pleasant-looking woman with a fixed smile and cautious brown eyes moved from wiping down the espresso machine to stand behind the register.
Euphy immediately clocked her as a witch. Which meant the cat was probably her familiar. For some reason, Euphy found that better than if they’d been humans. The mood she was in, having someone with some grasp of magic and the otherworldly felt…reassuring.
“What can I get you today?” the cautiously pleasant witch asked.
“Coffee,” Euphy muttered. “Do you have chocolate something?”
“We have a chocolate lava cake that will make your heart weep.”
Euphy felt her mouth twitch. Almost a smile. Good. The vibe here was working. Or maybe it was the familiar’s purr. It was a very soothing purr. “Chocolate cake. Coffee. With lots of sugar and milk.”
“Coming right up,” the woman said with a softer smile. “To stay or to go?”
“Stay.”
“Find yourself a seat and I’ll bring your order over.”
Euphy scowled at the café, hunting for a seat. She didn’t want to risk sitting too close to someone in case they sipped too loudly, or ate too noisily, or started talking on their phone, or just made weird noises because her mood would ensure she snapped at that person and that was not what she was in here to do. She decided on a seat near the back but at a comfortable distance from the man rapidly typing on a laptop, figuring since the coffee and croissant next to him were being ignored, he wasn’t likely to make eating noises before she left.
Having overly sensitive hearing was fine when she was out hunting. But it sucked big time when she was around people who couldn’t shut their mouths when they chewed. This included her fucking father. Though he didn’t chew. He slurped.
And because she couldn’t refuse him when he summoned her to a meeting, she was going to have to face the bastard in just two hours. What she really wanted to do was put her fist through his face. He wasn’t her “real” father anyway. Just the one who’d overindulged on Euphy’s mother just before Euphy was born, turning her mother to a vampire. Her mother hadn’t survived the transformation, though. Leaving Euphy an orphan. She wasn’t even sure who her “real” biological father had been. No one had come looking for her. Her vampire “father” was the one who’d arranged to adopt her, and then put her into private care as far away from him and his hive as was possible to get.
Which, in hindsight, had been a blessing. A kindness. Maybe if she remembered he’d been kind to her once she could avoid punching him in the face.
Probably not.
But going into a hive and punching one of the vampires highest in the hierarchy, the second hand to the vampire Master, was a good way to get the entire hive hunting her. Not something she needed.
Unfortunately, Euphy had always had a temper, anger issues that burned her up inside. She normally took those anger issues out on bad people. Usually very bad people in the middle of doing bad things. But she had no one like that to hand, no way to reasonably burn up some of the anger she felt at being suddenly “summoned” against her will to the hive. And that was inconvenient because she had to present herself as amenable and pleasant before the Master or she risked going to war with the hive.
She didn’t have time for that shit.
She hated, to the depths of her very soul, having to deal with her vampire father and her father’s hive. If they’d just leave her alone to do her quite vigilante thing, she’d leave them alone and everything would be fine. But vampires were afraid of her. She was a dhampir, almost as fast, nearly as strong, certainly as deadly as any vampire. Even as young as she was. But she could move about during the day without it leaving her weakened. She didn’t lose her strength, speed, heightened senses the minute the sun rose.
She understood why that scared the vampires, and why they hated her for their fear. She just didn’t give a fuck. She had no interest in hunting them, so long as they didn’t do really bad things. And if they did do really bad things, then like any other person doing really bad things, she’d kick their asses and release the excess anger churning through her blood.
But she didn’t hunt vampires. She avoided the hive. She would have gone her own way and never interacted with them at all if her father hadn’t kept pulling her back into their machinations.
Now, she had to face a Master vampire who hated her. And try to be nice about it.
She was not a nice person.
The pleasant witch working the counter brought over Euphy’s milky sweet coffee and a white plate with a giant, round piece of chocolate cake. It looked a little like an oversized cupcake but with a thinner layer of chocolate ganache frosting. The scent hit Euphy and immediately made her stomach rumble. One of the things that made her position as a dhampir better than that of a vampire was that she could still eat and enjoy ordinary food. Including chocolate cake.
“Thanks,” she said to the witch, attempting to live the more peaceful mood she was trying to cultivate here.
The witch smiled. “Enjoy. And if you need anything else, just wave.” The witch narrowed her eyes slightly. Then said, “And if you need to talk about anything, I’m a good listener.”
Euphy grunted, her only answer. She suspected the witch, and in particular her familiar, probably were good listeners, and probably they wouldn’t blink if she started talking about vampires. But she wasn’t in the habit of talking about her life, her emotions, or her situation with anyone and wasn’t going to start with a stranger.
Not that most of the people she encountered weren’t strangers. She didn’t go out of her way to make friends.
She’d tried once or twice when she was a kid. But she was so much stronger, and weirder, than the other kids she’d met at the private school her father sent her to that she tended to scare everyone away. She hadn’t meant to. Just happened. In the end, probably for the best. With her temper, being alone was safer.
The first bite of the chocolate lava cake did make her want to weep it was so delicious. Perfect oozy chocolate, not too sweet, not to bitter, surrounded by moist cake and a rich frosting. So much chocolate but perfectly balanced. Whoever baked this stuff, they were a genius.
She was halfway through her cake, sipping her perfectly milky sweet coffee in between bites, finally starting to feel the anger recede, when a stranger pulled out the seat across from her, scrapping the wooden legs across the polished wooden floor, and sat down without invitation.
Euphy glared at the newcomer. A tall, thin white woman with very pale skin, curly red hair piled up onto her head, wearing a leather jacket that had seen better days. Her features were sharp, her expression serious, the freckles across her nose and cheeks surprisingly pale brown. And when Euphy met her gaze, the woman’s eyes flared briefly yellow.
A vampire. Though…
Euphy’s nostrils flared as she pulled in a deeper breath. No. Not a vampire. They had very distinct smells, a combination of rot and dust and metallic spices. The woman across from her was something different. Something almost…familiar.
But…
“Dhampir,” the woman said, her voice low and quiet, too quiet for the humans in the café to hear, but plenty loud enough for Euphy.
“Impossible,” Euphy said. “My father said I was the only one.”
The woman’s mouth twitched into a half-smile. “Your vampire father?”
Euphy’s nod was curt.
“He lied. As they do.”
That earned the stranger a snort-laugh. “Who are you?”
“My name is Quinn. And I’ve been around a while longer than you. You smell young.”
Euphy grunted.
“And angry.”
She shrugged. She was less angry than she’d been when she walked in because the coffee and lava cake and calming café vibe—with nice quiet jazz music playing in the background she realized; that hadn’t been on earlier when she’d walked in—had all gone a long way toward soothing her temper. She still wasn’t ready to face her father and his Master, but she wasn’t likely to punch the first person who drank too loudly next to her now.
Which was good because the man nearby who’d been typing so frantically at his computer had stopped to stare at the screen, and he was absently drinking his room temperature coffee, and while he wasn’t slurping, Euphy could still hear him too well.
She adjusted her hearing so she was more focused on the quiet music, and that worked so well she wondered if the witch had somehow known she’d need that different focus to avoid hearing people all around her eating and drinking. Silly thought, of course. How would the witch know that? But the music was still helpful. Loud enough she could avoid hearing people eat but not so loud that the other woman sitting across from her had to speak loudly.
Also good since that woman, Quinn, seemed to know enough about vampires to know what a dhampir was. And she did smell different.
“Why are you here?” Euphy asked, leery. Strangers dropping into seats across from her usually spelled trouble. And a fight. But she wasn’t supposed to be fighting right now.
“I’ve been tracking some unusual deaths in the area,” Quinn said, holding Euphy’s gaze.
Euphy held hers back. They didn’t have the lure that a vampire’s gaze might have. Even Euphy had to be careful not to look a vampire directly in the eyes at night because their skill will mesmerism far outweighed her resistance to vampiric powers. During the day, eye contact was fine. They could still attempt to pull her in, but they weren’t strong enough in daylight.
If Quinn was a vampire, albeit one with a weird smell, instead of a dhampir, though, she wasn’t attempting to mesmerize Euphy.
“I thought it was a vampire at first,” Quinn continued. “Blood drained. Bodies mangled. None of them rose afterward, though that’s not entirely surprising.”
It was harder to make a vampire than people thought. Not just a matter of a vampire draining someone and then they became infected and rose from the dead. There was a process. Which Euphy paid no attention to because it made her think about what had happened to her mother.
“But definitely the signs of a very angry vampire,” Quinn continued. “Or a relatively young dhampir.”
“You’d know about that kind of thing how?” Euphy sipped her coffee, trying to look serious and unworried.
But it had just occurred to her that if this dhampir had been able to track the bodies back to Euphy, then the vampire hive might have too. And if anyone who knew vampires existed looked at the bodies and saw vampire, that endangered the hive.
The one thing her father had warned her not to do was draw attention to the hive. That the Master wouldn’t let her live if she endangered the hive with her activities.
And she’d been about to walk into a meeting with the Master completely unaware that her activities had drawn the attention of people who understood what vampires are.
“Why are you here?” Euphy asked again, but without the bored, angry edge. Worry had started to creep into her gut.
“I was a young dhampir once,” Quinn said with a faint smile. “A very angry one. One with so much anger, if I didn’t have support, I would have gotten myself killed.”
“What support?”
“My mother. My vampire father who was the hive Master. I learned later the only reason I had his support was because he used me as a threat against his hive. But that’s a different story. I had a few mentors along the way, too. Mentors who taught me how to control my anger better, use it without being used by it.” She shrugged. “And my anger still takes over sometimes. But with age comes restraint.” She chuckled.
Euphy didn’t join her. Realizing that she’d nearly walked into a trap, had only been aware of her own anger at being summoned and not of the potentially deadly situation she’d have been walking into, had left her more shaken than she cared to admit to a stranger. So she focused on something else Quinn had said.
“Your mother?”
“She survived and turned right after I was born,” Quinn said.
“My mother didn’t survive.”
Quinn just nodded. No platitudes or sympathies. That was actually quite refreshing. Most people gave her condolences or tried to be kind when they learned her mother was dead.
“I’m here,” Quinn said, “because the bodies piling up is dangerous. For you. And knowing vampire politics, I’m thinking your father’s hive won’t want people noticing those bodies either.”
Euphy sipped her coffee and didn’t answer.
“And dhampirs are rare,” Quinn continued. “Seems like we should have each other’s backs.”
“Why?”
Quinn raised her brows in question.
“I mean… You don’t know me. I’ve got bodies piling up behind me. Maybe I deserve to be put down like a dog. Maybe I’m a rabid murderer who shouldn’t be allowed to live.”
“Somebody tell you that before?”
No. But the thought had crossed her own mind more than once. Usually, she ignored the voice in her head that said things like that. But that hadn’t made the voice go away.
“We’re all killers,” Quinn said. “The vampires. Dhampir. But so far as I can tell, the only people you’ve killed have been pretty horrible. Murderers and rapists. Predators that harmed helpless people. A few dangerous conmen and grifters.” She shrugged. “Don’t care that they’re dead. They deserved it.”
“And if I start attacking people who don’t deserve it?”
“How long have you been around? Thirty years max, right? And yet, with no training, no mentoring, no support, you’ve only ever killed horrible people. I think there’s enough there I can work with you.”
Euphy frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”
Quinn smiled then lifted a finger for silence as the pleasant witch stepped up to the table.
“Can I get you anything?” the witch asked Quinn.
“Coffee and one of those lava cakes would be great,” Quinn said.
“Be right back.”
Quinn watched the witch walk away, her gaze narrowed. Probably also realizing the woman was a witch and not just human.
“Nice place you picked here,” Quinn said as her gaze moved back to Euphy. “Peaceful.”
Euphy snorted. “Needed it.”
“The summons to your father’s hive?”
“How did you…?” Euphy scowled. She didn’t like that this woman seemed to know so much. Bad enough she’d spotted a pattern in the bodies Euphy had been leaving behind—a mistake she wouldn’t make again, if she survived the hive meeting—but now Quinn knew Euphy had been summoned to her father’s hive?
“Not hard to guess,” Quinn said. “And it was just a guess. I promise I haven’t been stalking you.”
Euphy raised a brow at that.
“Truly,” Quinn said. “I don’t lie as well as the vampires.” Her mouth twitched into a self-deprecating smirk. “I prefer the straightforward approach of just using my fists.”
“Yeah.” Euphy nodded. She was the same. And her ability to lie sucked as well. “My father isn’t the hive Master. But he’s informed me the Master wishes a meeting. It’s in a few hours.”
“They’re aware of all the bodies?”
“I hadn’t thought about. Until you walked in here, it didn’t occur to me I was leaving a pattern in my wake. One that someone might associate with vampires.”
Quinn nodded. “Was afraid of that. They’ll try to kill you.”
“They’ll try,” she said darkly. Her first reaction to realizing it was a trap had been fear. But fear triggered her anger. And she was growing angry again. Not just being summoned. Her father was going to let the Master vampire try to kill her. That turned her anger up to a whole new level.
She set her coffee mug to one side and clenched her fists together on the table so she wouldn’t break anything in the pleasant witch’s coffeeshop.
Quinn’s gaze dropped to her fists. Rather than looking wary, though, Quinn grinned. A full-blown, pleased grin.
“Well done,” she said. “I would have smashed something at your age.”
“I don’t want to damage the witch’s place. She’s nice.”
“Thought she was a witch,” Quinn murmured. “And that is very nice of you. See, not a rabid dog that should be put down. Just an angry dhampir who needs a bit of training.”
“I don’t want to get rid of my anger.”
She had once. The anger was dangerous and she hated that she had so much trouble controlling her temper. But her anger had kept her alive in a dangerous world and enabled her to…well, to right some wrongs that humans wouldn’t or couldn’t. Quinn had described her victims perfectly. They were all horrible people. It was unfortunately easy to find plenty of horrible people in the world. And even then, she’d still restricted herself to the worst of the worst.
She liked having the power and strength and anger to exact the deserved punishments that evil people deserved.
But she’d like more control. She’d like not having to worry about breaking apart a nice witch’s café, just because she was in a mood. She’d like to be able to think around her anger so she didn’t walk herself into a suicide meeting with a Master vampire. She’d like to ensure her anger came out when she wanted and needed it to, not just randomly because someone chewed too loudly in her vicinity.
Control over all that anger sounded…
“I’d probably live longer, huh?”
Quinn chuckled. “It will probably help.” The woman leaned forward and rested her forearms on the table. “You will not be able to get rid of your anger. It’s part of you. You will always have to control it. But it’s…helpful in our world. The vampires are scared of us, but that makes them more dangerous to us. The anger gives us a kind of secret weapon against their rage. But it’s important to train it, hone it, so you use it when you want to. Not when someone else wants you to.”
Euphy frowned. “Meaning?”
“If they don’t kill you today, they may try to use you like my father did me. May use you as a threat against other hives. May try to control who and when you kill. They’ll make it sound reasonable at first. Or maybe not even tell you about the behind-the-scenes machinations and threats they’re making in your name.” Her jaw tightened and her own fists clenched briefly on the table. “You’re more useful to a hive Master alive than dead, but only if the Master can control you. And a Master would be able to do that easier if you aren’t in control of yourself.”
Quinn leaned back then and a moment later, the pleasant witch arrived with her chocolate lava cake and coffee. The witch glanced at Euphy. “Still good? Or would you like a fresh coffee?”
“Still good,” Euphy grunted. Then looked up at the witch and said, “Thanks.”
The witch nodded and left them alone again.
Quinn dug into her cake. With her first bite, she pointed the fork at Euphy and said, “Very good choice of establishments.”
Euphy let Quinn finish her cake—which she ate very quietly and Euphy appreciated that—as she considered Quinn’s offer. It could all be a trick, of course. A lure to get her to another hive and kill her. A lure to just get her out of the café to kill her. A trick set up by her own hive so she never made it to the meeting with the Master.
But she didn’t think so. Quinn had said she wasn’t a good liar and Euphy thought she might believe her. Euphy was a crap liar too. Quinn was definitely a dhampir and not a vampire. Euphy’s sense of smell wasn’t like a vampire’s but it was still superior to a human’s and she could usually smell when someone who wasn’t a vampire was lying.
She really did like the idea of training her anger so it was in her control.
“When would we start?” Euphy asked. “Would you train me or one of your mentors? Where? For how long?”
Quinn slowly swallowed the last of her lava cake as she considered Euphy. “That’s your decision, then? You want to learn to control your anger.”
“I’d love it.”
Quinn nodded. “I’ll work with you, until you feel safe enough to be introduced to one of my non-vampire mentors. You may not ever, but that’ll be okay too. I can teach you enough to go find some non-vampire mentors of your own. We’d start immediately. And how long is however long it takes. Honestly, I still have to work on it. So it’s probably a life-long learning process. A practice more than an exercise with an end goal.”
Euphy wondered about that. If Quinn was selling a solution, trying to say, “Give me two weeks and you’ll be golden,” Euphy would know she was full of shit. And she would have known Quinn was a better liar than she let on.
Euphy nodded slowly. This was something she wanted to do. Wanted to risk. She could always kill Quinn if she proved to be a liar or was trying to trick her. She could always just leave and disappear so Quinn or any of the vampires couldn’t find her again. Probably.
But in the meantime, she might just learn how to live with all this anger. In a way that didn’t get her killed.
Quinn raised her coffee to Euphy in a little solute. “I don’t think you’ll regret the work.”
“What do I do about the summons to my father’s hive?”
Quinn shrugged. “Ignore it? Or go. With some backup.”
“Backup?”
“I have something of a reputation among the vampires. They will be much less likely to kill you—or try to—if I’m there.”
Euphy considered that, considered if she wanted to risk that. She wasn’t sure she could trust Quinn yet. Quinn having her back in that situation wasn’t a given.
No. The next time she faced the Master and her father’s hive, Euphy wanted to know what she was getting into and who, if anyone, had her back. That was going to take time.
“Ignore it,” Euphy said. “I’ll ignore it for now.” She’d never ignored a summons to the hive before. But maybe that rebellious act would give them all pause. At least a long enough pause to allow her time to strategize a response.
Not just run in angry and draw blood until she got killed. An actual plan. Survival. And maybe, in the end, if she survived, if she learned control, maybe she could even…
Have a life.
She glanced around the café, nodding to herself. “This really is a nice place,” Euphy said. “Think I’d like to come here again sometime.” She met Quinn’s gaze. “After a little training of course.”
Quinn smiled and lifted her coffee again, another solute. “After a little training.” She glanced down at her now empty plate. “Lava cake makes a great reward.”
Euphy felt something hard and knotted in her chest loosen. Already her anger held less of a grip. Because now, she had a way forward. Hope. A plan. An excuse to avoid her father and his hive for a little longer.
And a new favorite café. With a pleasant witch patron, a calming vibe, and really excellent cake.
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Thanks for reading EUPHRAISA AT THE CAFE! I hope you enjoyed it. If you’d like your own personal eBook copy of this story, you can find it for sale here. You can also peruse the previous Café stories that are individually available for sale here.
And if you were intrigued by Quinn's character, there's a story for that! ANGER MANAGEMENT features one of my favorite angry heroine's with an opening scene I actually had a dream about. That made it even more fun to write.
As might be obvious, I haven't launched into Romance month with a romance story. And... yeah, the next story up isn't a romance either. I'm not mad about Valentine's Day as a holiday so sometimes I indulge in Romance fiction this month, and sometimes I prefer angry stuff because that's fun too.
No matter where you fall on that spectrum of love-hate Valentine's Day, you might still enjoy CARY'S GALENTINE'S DAY, currently on sale especially for this month!
Happy Romance Month! LOL Don’t forget to check back on February 15th for the next Free story from The Café!
EUPHRASIA AT THE CAFE Copyright © 2026 Kat Simons
All Rights Reserved. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This story is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.