Victor stood in the kitchen, staring at the toaster.
Technically, the power was back on. The overhead lights were buzzing with a reassuring, if slightly manic, orange glow. The refrigerator was humming, keeping Carmilla’s liquid assets at a rigid negative eighteen degrees Celsius. The crisis of the melting vintage blood had been averted thanks to Carmilla’s innovative, albeit gruesome, use of imp corpses as biological batteries.
"A simple galvanic loop," she had called it.
Victor called it a health code violation, but he knew better than to argue with a vampire who had just saved her wine cellar.
The problem, however, was the quality of the current.
Victor dropped a slice of bread into the toaster. He pushed the lever down.
Usually, this action resulted in the heating coils glowing a
