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"What about it?" Claire asked.
"Fired," he said. "Well, laid off - they called this morning. They're closing for renovations, or so they said. Pretty soon, we're not going to have anyplace open around here. What is up with this crap?"
"What about Common Grounds?" Eve asked anxiously. "I mean, Oliver let me take the week off, but . . ."
"Still open," Michael confirmed. "So far, anyway. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. This isn't just some financial problem. There's more to it." He hesitated, then said, "And more vampires have gone missing."
"More? How many more?"
"According to the gossip this morning, at least ten. Naomi hasn't been seen again. Neither have the others."
"Well," Eve was saying, "we still have to go to the store. And we're going, not either of you."
"Why?" Michael asked. He'd folded his arms, and was frowning at her, but not in an angry way. He looked concerned.
Eve sighed. She ticked things off on her fingers. "I need fingernail polish, and neither of you can tell decent lacquer from rubbing alcohol. Next, Claire has a prescription she needs to pick up from the pharmacy, which neither of you really ought to be doing on her behalf, since it's personal. Last, speaking of personal, there are intimate feminine products that I promise you neither one of you want to be taking up to a register, manly men."
Shane actually flinched. Michael looked uncomfortable.
Eve grinned. "In case that wasn't clear, I'm talking about tampons ."
"Yeah, pretty clear," Shane said. "And okay, yeah, maybe you should go. Considering."
"Damn right," Eve said. She was in Action Eve mode today, dressed in black jeans, heavy combat boots, and tight-fitting tee with a massive silk-screened Gothic skull wrapped around it. Big spiked bracelets. A leather collar. All her Goth makeup was firmly in place, right down to jet-black lipstick and eye makeup the color of bruises. "Trust me. We've got this. Plus, I'm going armed." She opened a leather pouch hanging from her spiked belt, and pulled out a bottle of silver nitrate, as well as a silver-coated stake. "We'll be fine. In and out in thirty minutes."
"Maybe I should go and just wait in the car," Shane said.
"Maybe you should stop treating us like fragile china dolls," Eve shot back, and spun the stake expertly in her fingers. "What do you say, CB?"
Claire was smiling, she realized. Unlike Eve, she wasn't dressed to aggress; she was wearing plain jeans and a simple blue blouse, but she had her backpack, and inside it (instead of books) were a small, compact crossbow, bolts, silver nitrate, and stakes.
Plus her wallet, of course. She wasn't planning on holding the place up.
"We'll be fine," Claire said, and held Shane's eyes. "Trust me."
He nodded, still frowning. "I don't like it."
"Yeah, I know," she said. "But we can't hide for the rest of our lives. This is our town, too."
The drive to the other store was a little bit longer, but Eve livened it up by blaring death metal and driving with the windows down, which made people not only turn and look, but glare. Oh, Eve was in a mood. It was fun.
Eve pulled the hearse up in front of the pharmacy and put it in park. "Don't get out," Claire shouted over the music. "I'll be right back, okay?"
"Five minutes!" Eve shouted back. "Five minutes and I come to kick ass. That is not a metaphor!"
Claire made an OK sign with her fingers, because it was impossible to yell loud enough to be heard as Eve cranked it up another notch; she escaped from the vibrating hearse, dashed across the empty space, and into the relative silence of Goode's Drugs (known locally, she had learned from Shane, as Good Drugs, because the pharmacist was known to sell some not-quite-legal stuff under the counter from time to time). The thumping bass from the hearse rattled the glass, but other than that, it seemed deserted.
Claire walked past racks of cold medicines, pain relievers, mouthwash, and foot powders to reach the actual pharmacy counter at the back. No one was in sight at the window, so she rang the bell. It made a clear, silvery note in the air.
Silence.
"Hello?" Claire said, and then louder, leaning over the counter, "Hello? Anybody?"
She caught sight of someone right at the corner of her vision, and turned to look. There, standing behind the counter at the end of a long set of shelves, was a man. Not Mr. Rooney, who ran the pharmacy; not the vampire Claire had seen in there a few times, who probably owned the place. No, this was -
This was the man she'd seen outside Common Grounds. The quiet, nondescript one.
"Hello?" she asked, looking right at him. "Do you work here?" She leaned farther over the counter, trying to get a clearer angle, but when she blinked . . .
. . . He was gone.
"Mr. Rooney?" She yelled it this time. "Mr. Rooney, there's somebody behind the counter! I don't think he's supposed to be there! Mr. Rooney, are you all right?" Nothing. Claire felt her mouth dry up and her palms get sweaty. She took her phone out of her pocket and dialed 911. "Hello, I'm at Goode's Drugs, and I think there's something wrong - the pharmacist isn't here, and I saw somebody in the back. Yes. I'll wait."
The emergency operator told her a car was on the way; in Morganville, that wouldn't be a long wait at all. Claire considered going back outside to wait in the hearse with Eve, and in fact was retreating back from the service window when Mr. Rooney suddenly popped up out of nowhere behind her and said, "Can I help you?"
Claire yelped, jumped, and almost overbalanced as she banged into a shelf. She steadied herself and said, "Where were you?"
"Me?" Rooney frowned, his kindly old-man face turning surly. "Taking out the trash. Why do you care what I was doing, missy? What do you want?"
"My prescription," Claire said. She got her breathing under control as Mr. Rooney entered some numbers on a door keypad and buzzed through to the back. He appeared at the service window a second later.
"ID," he said, and combed through a plastic bin while she got it out. "Danvers, Claire. Yes, right here. Twenty-seven fifty." He eyed her license, frowning. "You're a little young to be taking these birth control pills, aren't you?"
"I don't think that's any of your business," Claire said, blushing. "You don't lecture the seventeen-year-old guys who buy condoms, do you?"
"That's different," he said.
"No, it's really not." Claire put the money on the counter - exact change - and grabbed the bag. She almost walked away, but then turned to say, "I called the police. There was somebody behind your counter back there."
"Nobody's back here," Rooney said.
"Look around. There is!"
"I'm telling you there's nobody," he said sharply. "You go tell your friend out there to turn that noise down or I'll get the police on you!"
He watched her go. Claire glanced back once, just as the door swung shut, and saw the face of that man again.
This time, he was in the store itself. She had no idea how he could have gotten out there; he was standing next to the old-fashioned water fountain, and the electronic door definitely hadn't opened and closed.
She had a split-second impression of something that couldn't be right, something she couldn't even process, before the face came into focus.
And then the door shut.
She yanked it open again, but he was gone.
"What?" Rooney snapped. "In or out, missy. In or out!"
She let it close.
Claire walked back to the hearse, thinking hard; a siren Dop-plered closer, and a Morganville cruiser swung into the parking lot and slid to a stop behind Eve's car, blocking it in.
Eve turned down the music. "Oh crap," she said, and looked at Claire as she walked over. "I guess Grandpa Grumpy got his Depends in a twist."
"It's not for you," Claire said. "I called."
"What - "
She didn't have time to tell her, because a Morganville cop had exited the vehicle and was walking closer. He wasn't someone she recognized, but then, she was glad not to be on a first-name basis with the entire MPD. "You called 911?" the cop asked.
"Yes, sir. It might be a mistake. Mr. Rooney's there now, but I swear, there was someone behind the counter before he got there. A stranger. I thought it might be a robbery."
