his footgear. Who cared about what kind of shoes you wore to a neighborhood skulking?
He’d dressed up a little because, if he was stopped today, he’d play Lost Business Guy. Summit was only a few blocks away from all sorts of offices, plus there was a Catholic school and a junior high on the street itself.
Besides, he felt more comfortable in dark clothing, even in late afternoon (he had been sleeping in each morning and staking out the Summit Avenue Crypt in the late afternoon and early . . . very early . . . evening). He was sure no one had put his aimless wandering together with a supposed Target employee who had been called to recommend what kind of lawn chairs went with a gigantic mansion built in the eighteen hundreds. But that didn’t mean no one would ever spot him, or have questions for him. Thus, the black clothing. It was almost impossible to work up a really good lurk in pastels. It went against nature.
Today he had seen a few more people come and go; it was busier than last night. The big fat black girl, and a dark-haired guy wearing scrubs. Oh—whoops. Not fat; pregnant. Maybe her obstetrician? Anyone who lived in a big old gorgeous mansion like that could afford her own fleet of doctors, so it only made sense to—
Oh my God.
Was the vampire queen growing her own army of evil babies? The undead couldn’t have children, could never know the thrill of suckling life from within, that noble calling, that utter demand from our species that we replenish and replace our population. Could the nefarious woman decide in her own ghastly way that, cheated of ever suckling life, she in turn would cheat other women? Perhaps . . . a score of women? Perhaps . . . perhaps he normally couldn’t use suckling twice in thirty seconds, and was that a good thing or a bad thing? Probably an irrelevant thing.
He peeked through the branches of a lilac tree and watched the pretty, dark-skinned expectant mother and her (imprisoned? blackmailed?) obstetrician-to-the-damned and gasped with the horror of it. Even in his worst imaginings, he never thought there would be an army of enslaved evil babies to contend with.
Maybe it’ll only be one enslaved evil baby. Maybe that baby’s special . . . or the mom-to-be is.
That was when it had stopped being more fun than worry. In fact, that was exactly when it became more worry than fun . . . he was scared.
And stupid. Until he saw her, he hadn’t truly appreciated the cost to the innocents. It had been more game than mission: try to find out if the newsletter is real or just a big tease; try to get an idea how many numbers the mansion had; try to find out what these Minnesotan vampires were up to.
Now, though. Now he just wanted to tattle on the vampire queen to Boo and then step aside while his best friend got her feet wet.
Eight
Which brought him to the Woodbury Barnes and Noble. Of all the days to meet somebody potentially cool and thoroughly hot. Yeah, this day. Of all the days to think maybe picking up and moving to a patch of the corn belt wasn’t insane. Yeah, this day.
Now here she was, all kinds of cute . . . and from the Cape, too!
It might be no coincidence. Perhaps fate has pushed us together, into this modern-day watering hole. Perhaps fate is working through a retail coffee chain to get the kind of scone that doesn’t make this girl throw up.
“Do you believe in fate?” he asked her.
The hotness that was Rachael Velvela sipped her Green Tea Frappuccino. “Next you’ll be asking me my sign.”
He could feel his face get warm as he flushed. “Yeah, not too lame and dated, right?”
“It could be worse,” she teased. “You could have asked me if I needed sexual healing.”
Ohhhhh, I wish she hadn’t said that. Just what I need: a five thirty P.M. boner.
He was surprised it hadn’t happened earlier. Rachael had the most beautiful freckles he had ever seen. Her hair was a rich dark brown. A color to make a sable tear out its own fur in jealousy! Okay, so dark brown. Her skin was lightly tanned, enough so it looked like she went out and about in the summertime but didn’t obsessively lay out on beaches and frequent tanning salons. She had over a dozen freckles sprayed across her