Page 61 of Starved Until Sunset

“That’s how we think it’s been working,” Demetrius said. “Which means a lot of small towns may already have a vampire population.”

“Sounds like Daddy Warfangs has changed his mind about them turning people,” Oliver said.

“There have been a lot of deaths lately out at Parson’s Pines,” Demetrius said, then bumped the side of a fist against his forehead. “My Aunt Amelia had a car accident recently because she swerved to miss a woman standing in the road. Someone she said had died the week before.”

“It’s all starting to make sense,” Oliver said, then looked at Tracey. “Where do we start?”

“At the beginning,” Tracey said. “Who was the first victim?”

They all looked at Demetrius.

“How should I know?”

“You always know,” Oliver said.

Demetrius was surprised to realize a number of things at the same time. First, that Oliver was right, he and Cody were usually involved in these kinds of things from the start. Right on the heels of that thought, he felt guilty for not knowing that kind of detail this time around.

“You’ve been keeping away from strange things for a while,” Clarabell said. “How about we finish up here, get an early dinner at Margie’s, then go back to my apartment? I’ve got my video equipment set up so we can watch the video I made of Aldrik’s arrival and my conversation with Dr. Graham afterward.”

“Sounds good to me,” Oliver said, then looked at Tracey. “Do you want to join us?”

Tracey looked slightly surprised. “I’m working until close. But I could come to Margie’s with you, if that’s okay.”

“Of course,” Clarabell said. “It’s settled then.”

She and Oliver began looking through the books they had selected. Tracey was smiling when she got up and moved to the small card catalog. Demetrius looked down at the book before him, trying to figure out why the whole situation felt strange and awkward. It was like every other research session they’d done in the past, nothing unusual about that.

Until he realized no one had asked him if he wanted to invite Cody to dinner. They’d already asked him why he’d been acting so strange. And now all Demetrius wanted to do was be able to connect with Cody and have him meet them at Margie’s and have there be no awkwardness between them.

But then he remembered the tone of Cody’s voice and the anger in his expression as he’d said Demetrius had a savior complex, and the hurt bubbled up inside him once again. He wasn’t quite ready to see Cody and have things feel normal again. They needed some time on their own first so they could talk outside of the group. And Demetrius had no idea how that conversation was going to go. No, for now, they each needed some space.

He managed to resist another sigh before putting on his gloves and opening his book once again. For the sake of Zenona, he was going to put all other thoughts out of his head and try to learn as much as he could about vampires.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Another one?” Cody stood by the front desk of Parson’s Pines convalescent home and watched the attendants wheel a body bag past.

“It comes with the territory, unfortunately.”

The woman behind the desk was older, brown hair streaked with silver and a veil of exhaustion over her expression.

“Just seems to be a lot more of them lately,” Cody said.

“Tends to happen that way.”

“The bodies go to the medical examiner?”

She shook her head. “Not unless there’s signs of trauma. They go right to whichever funeral home they’ve arranged for. Or if they haven’t made arrangements, they go to Lawson and Brannon.”

“Really? That’s interesting.”

She frowned. “Not sure I’d go so far as to call it interesting, but okay.”

“So, you don’t usually find out cause of death, do you?”

Her eyebrows went up slightly. “Have you seen the average age of the people in the halls?”

“Yeah, all right.” He looked out the doors to where the attendants were loading the stretcher into a van that had been converted to accept it. There was no way he was going to watch his grandmother’s body be loaded into one of those vans. Not yet.