“Sure he does. Bach works for him, doesn’t he? And he’s always lurking around town. Forester lives in the upper floors, where they don’t take the tours.” Hal clapped a hand against the countertop. “Maybe he hadBachdo it.”
“The most obvious,”I repeated as I picked up spoons. “Me and the weird hermit from the woods are the most obvious options. Cool, thanks Hal. Also, Bach might look like a vampire, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t kill people.”Anymorewas the very important missing word. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure what Bach did with most of his free time, but if he’d killed anyone in the past thirty years, I couldn’t find any record of it.
Mads snorted. “A vampire with a greaser fetish.”
“You should be honored to be among such company as Hermit Forester and his Lost Boy,” Hal said to me. “Keep it up and you’ll be a town legend.”
“Yes, because that’s an accomplishment.” Everything became a legend here if it had once been alive and something bad had happened to it. Sometimes thealivepart wasn’t even necessary.
“Speak of the devil.” Hal laughed and motioned out the windows. “Your vampire’s here, Zora. And he brought some friends.”
I shot up as a pitch-black Mustang turned off the street. It was long and sleek and made barely any noise, impressive fora muscle car of its age. There wasn’t a speck of dirt on it. Like a beautiful, evil version of the Chevelle. Bach’s pale hands on the steering wheel were visible as he passed under the parking lot lights. Three other cars followed him in.
The first: Artemis’s powder-blue Prius.
The second: a gray SUV with dark rims and silver detailing.
And the third: a white panel van with a huge text logo painted on the side in black and red, the words as obnoxious and as visible as possible.
DEADMENWALKING
6
Dead Men Walkinghad become an Addamsville favorite in the two months since it was announced that the show would be filming here. I’d seen only one episode, in which they went near Chernobyl, and I was less concerned with learning the cast’s names and more with the fact that they were wandering around aliterally radioactive arealooking for ghosts.
How stupid did you have to be to put yourself at physical risk to search for a truth that would never be accepted? Even money didn’t seem like a good enough reason for it.
The cast climbed out of the SUV. The leader, the sidekick, the tech guy, and the girl. The only one whose name I remembered was the leader, Tad Thompson. The intro to the show was him explaining how he’d had some kind of revelatoryincident as a child that put him on the search for signs of life after death. He looked like your run-of-the-mill white guy in a T-shirt and cargo pants. As soon as he appeared, a smattering of applause broke out among our customers, starting with a table where a man wore aDead Men Walkingbaseball hat. Tad Thompson gave a big smile and waved.
The five dead town council members stood twenty feet away, unimpressed.
The cast members milled around their SUV and their van while a couple of cameramen and production assistants got equipment ready. Everyone on the patio had turned to watch them.
“Did you know they were coming here?” I asked Hal. “Don’t they need permission to shoot on your property?”
“It’s my dad’s property, not mine,” Hal said. He leaned out the window to get a better look. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Even if I said no, the town council would overrule it.”
“Can they do that?”
“Wouldyouget in a fight with Greta Wake?”
“Already did once today, will pass.”
Artemis had left her Prius and now stood off to the side of the camera crew, looking made up and ready to be interviewed. There was a man wearing khakis, a blue button-down, and a lanyard with an ID tag, directing the crew with their equipment; Artemis was trying to speak with him and hedidn’t seem to hear her. His eyes scanned the patio, the front of Happy Hal’s, then settled on Bach’s Mustang as Bach climbed out of the driver’s seat. The man’s face lit up.
“Vampire with a greaser fetish” was, I hated to say it, not an entirely incorrect description of Bach. He was too trim and put together to be a punk rocker, too casual to be an aristocrat. It was like Hermit Forester had hired a bouncer who used to guard a castle and drink the guests’ blood. Dark T-shirt, dark jeans, dark boots. Black hair. Pale skin. A jawline that could cut diamonds. Firestarters tended to pick who to possess for a reason, and Bach clearly had not been trying to lie low when he’d taken that one.
The man with the ID tag went up to him. As he spoke, Bach looked him up and down, expression flat. The man stopped talking. Bach smiled a bit and said something. The man’s face fell. Bach turned away and started toward Hal’s again.
“Get your jaw off the floor,” Hal said. “It’s unsanitary.”
I already held the tray for the double-size Happy Summer Sundae. Frozen banana, frozen cherries, no hot fudge. One spoon. Bach ordered the same thing every time he came around, so I’d gotten good at having it already made when he got to the window.
Hal and Mads thought this was hilarious. Everyone did, when you’re known for your lack of interest in any other human person. Lorelei had already faded into the backgroundin extreme secondhand embarrassment. I slowed down so Hal wouldn’t lay it on any thicker. I wasn’t interested in anyone because I had a very specific set of aesthetics that appealed to me, and two of them were “old-world vampire” and “Outsiders-style greaser.” It wasn’t my fault Bach managed to land in the center of that Venn diagram.
Besides, this wasn’t aI want to look at your facesundae. It was aI need to question you about your employer’s homicidal tendencies and connections to Addamsville’s paranormal happeningssundae.
But Bach didn’t make it to my window. Tad Thompson slid in front of him first.
