Page 39 of Dead & Breakfast
“It’s the color of the benches, according to Lore’s information. At least someone here has a sense of humor.” Sal scrolled, eyes flicking over the list. “Remember how I tried to convince you to let me paint the bathrooms with Sulking Room Pink? But you’re allergic to wordplay.”
Arthur frowned. “I painted the kitchen with Simmer Down.”
“I stand corrected. That is terribly droll, my dear.”
“The locations?” Arthur prompted.
“City hall, the waterfront, the park, and downtown by the fountain.” Sal looked up. “What do you think? Are any of those good places for a spot of murder?”
“Keep it down,” Arthur hissed, glancing around for any eavesdroppers, but no one was paying them much attention.
“All right.” Salvatore spoke in his deepest voice, then tried again. “Any clandestine spots where one might not be seen by passersby or surveillance cameras?”
“Not sure that’s any better,” Arthur grumbled.
“What? Maybe I’m just looking for a good place to make out.”
“The park.”
“Yes, very romantic. Good thinking.” Salvatore took Arthur’s hand in his and headed up the street.
“I meant for…the other thing.” But Arthur followed him anyway. The parkwasrather romantic, and he supposed Salvatore would want to take advantage of the weather, and the freedom, to stroll through it. After all, it might be their last chance to do such a thing for a while. The park wasn’t far—though nothing in Trident Falls was really far from anything else. On the south side of town, near the Iris Inn, it was as busy as the riverfront. The playground was crawling with toddlers, and a crowd had formed around the baseball diamond, where a Little League game appeared to be ongoing.
Lore’s intel turned out to be very correct—there were indeed a lot of benches here, and, surrounded by large pine trees and unruly hedges, the park was full of dark corners in which someone might kiss or kill, depending on their mood. Salvatore paused by the entrance and rummaged around in his backpack, then withdrew both Rumble and what appeared to be a cat harness and leash.
“Where did you get that?” Arthur asked.
“Went out this morning while you were sleeping and got her some necessities.”
“I don’t know if you should be wandering off on your own.” Arthur tried not to sound like a worrywart, but, well, hewas. “If the sheriff decides to arrest you for real this time—”
“Then we’ll deal with it. I’m not going to stop living my life simply because some haircut with a badge threatens me.” Salvatore gave him a soft smile as he wrestled Rumble into the harness. She wasn’t pleased with the development, but Sal was a vampire, after all, and easily fifteen times her mass, so he prevailed in the end.
When he put her on the ground, she collapsed onto her side.
“Come on, now, no one likes a drama queen,” Salvatore said, with apparently no sense of self-awareness.
After a moment, Rumble stood, though she stared up at Salvatore as if he’d murdered her entire family.
“That’s the spirit, darling. A nice walk will do us all good.”
In the end, Salvatore was right about the walk. The bright sunshine lifted Arthur’s cloudy mood, and because of his trusty umbrella, he wasn’t worried about the UV radiation exposure. It had been a long time since Arthur and Salvatore had strolled out in the open like this, during the day, no less. A cool breeze tempered the warmth, the air smelled of freshly cut grass and spring flowers, and fuzzy bumblebees droned pleasantly among the blooms. Arthur had a special fondness for bees. Sometimes insects got a bad reputation, but many ofthem promoted pollination and a healthy ecosystem. Seeing so many flitting from flower to flower made Arthur smile. Even Rumble stopped moping around after a while. Before long, she was the one walking Salvatore rather than the other way around, tugging her lead with a strength Arthur would never have guessed she possessed.
“No, we’re going this way,” Salvatore grunted, pulling the lead in the direction of a cluster of benches. “Your other daddy needs to make believe he’s Scooby Don’t.”
Rumble meowed indignantly—Arthur liked to think it was at the use of the worddaddy—and doubled her efforts to lead them in the opposite direction.
In a battle of wills, Salvatore and Rumble might have been an even match, but Rumble was still a cat.
“Just put her back in the bag,” Arthur said.
Salvatore turned wide eyes on Arthur. “She is a wild beast, Arthur! She needs to roam free—she was not made for captivity. You wouldn’t understand what it’s like to be put in a cage.”
Arthur sighed heavily, biting back a remark about compulsory heteronormativity, and instead turned his attention to the reason they’d come to the park in the first place. The benches were entirely ordinary, though some needed a paint job and others suffered from issues of structural integrity. None of them had a chip that matched the fragment Lore had found.
They’d inspected a dozen benches when the wind shifted and Arthur froze. Salvatore did the same beside him. The unmistakable scent of old blood was on the air. A lot of it. Humans—and most paranormals, with the possible exception of werewolves—wouldn’t have been able to smell it, but vampires had a vested interest in blood, so their noses were attuned to the rich smell of iron.
Arthur glanced at Salvatore, his good humor gone. Without discussion, they followed the scent to the edge of the park, whichwasn’t nearly as populated as the rest. There was a group of four benches there, and one of them sported a dark red stain. The earth had soaked up more, but Arthur was certain now: someone had lost a lot of blood here.
