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By the napkin dispenser, a smiley face has been scratched into the surface with a ballpoint pen. Paimon traces it with his fingers.
When the waitress comes to take their order, she brightly smiles. Her head is half-shaven, her wave of hair flame-red. Her eyes are brown, her skin pale and acne-scarred with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
Her uniform is a checkered red short-sleeve shirt and slacks; the sleeves allow a full display of the vivid tattoo sleeves down both her arms.
With a notepad and pen out, she asks, “Hey, babes, what’re ya havin’? Oh, you poor dolls, you’re soaking wet!”
“Bad rain,” Paimon supplies. Lauren?iu looks as if he’s trying to keep from applying his palm to his face.
The waitress looks at Paimon’s resting hand. “Ooh, bro, what’s up with your hand? That’s so dope.” She looks between them. “Wow, you both have that golden thing!” She beams. “You have matching tattoos? Aww. Nice. I think it’s romantic, like something you do with your soulmate, but my wife tells me that matching tats are bad luck.”
“Oh,” Lauren?iu says, his eyes not quite meeting the woman’s. “I don’t think we need any help with that.”
They give her—Diane, nice woman—their orders, and as she leaves, Paimon observes the diner. The arrangement of booths on this side of the restaurant are in an L shape, and he can see some of the people along the front wall. The walls are checkered red and white, too, with pictures of a local high school sports team on one, along with a grainy photo of the first Waffle Duke opening in 1953.
One of the patrons, sitting alone, catches his eye, but before he can think more on it, their orders are plopped before them—wow, fast. His coffee hasn’t even gotten a chance to get tepid.
Lauren?iu order is reserved, a small hashbrown bowl with cubes of ham and slices of onions, peppers, and melted, cheap cheese.
Meanwhile, Paimon ordered the Duke’s Royal Special with a mountain of hashbrowns, grits holding a lake of butter, three over-easy eggs, bacon, white toast, and a Belgian waffle loaded with strawberries and whipped cream.
It might take him a while to eat it all, at least five minutes.
With his fork and knife, he digs in after pouring ketchup on his hashbrowns.
Lauren?iu very properly takes bites of his own food after putting a little salt on it. Paimon practically inhales the fried food and grease, the butter and syrup in a mix of salty, mild, and sweet.
When Diane returns to refill their coffee mugs, Paimon has finished, while Lauren?iu still picks at his meal. “Oh wow, you really were hungry!”
She sweeps away after picking up the empty plates.
Casually, Lauren?iu asks, “So, how was it? I’d hope it wasn’t bad.”
“That was one of the best things I’ve ever tasted.”
Lauren?iu scrutinizes him. “You like ketchup?”
Amusedly, Paimon asks with his mouth half full, “Is that judgment, darling?”
“Of course not. It’s just not quite as...fancy as caviar.”
Lauren?iu offers a small smile. Truly a priceless offer that Paimon savors. His vampire rarely looks happy without a hint of sardonicism. As if no emotion can be shown without irony.
He finds his attention drifting around the room, soaking everything in. The clink of plates and glasses of orange juice. The odor of a blunt being smoked in the restroom. The patrons are an array of demographics.
Then, in a nearby booth, there’s a person—a young woman? He can’t quite tell. Her skin is sickly white with dark circles under her brown eyes.
Her black hair, curly and cut haphazardly above her shoulders, is disheveled and dull, and she’s thin in the way that suggests she’s lost muscle mass.
Her eyes, so pale brown that they look gold in the bright lights, are sharp and dart around the room.
That narrow face, made of sharp angles and with a long, straight, upturned nose, is framed in what feels like a permanent scowl against the world. Even as she focuses on no one in particular for a moment, there’s a knife-like precision.
She reminds him quite a lot of the first time he found Lauren?iu in the tumult of Hell, stalking around one of the rivers of blood for a feeding, but only after he’d attacked a number of other souls.
On alert. That’s it. Like a cat put into a corner.
She wears an oversized, thick, dimly blue wool coat over a flannel forest-green shirt. Her trousers are charcoal gray, as are her sneakers. Her hands are draped in her lap, and her slump seems more from fatigue than any slack. On the contrary.
