Page 30 of Dead & Breakfast
By the time they reached the glass refrigerator doors at the back of the store, Salvatore had wrestled free of McMartin, who wore a tight expression of annoyance but hadn’t yet reached for his weapon. Perhaps he’d decided Salvatore couldn’t cause too much chaos outin the open in a brightly lit store. He was wrong, of course, but Arthur wasn’t about to tell McMartin about the great Walmart incident of 1998.
“Allow me!” Salvatore did a hop, a skip, and a jump rope–like maneuver to move his cuffed hands from behind his back to his front. He flung open the door to the milk case and began shuffling pint after pint of strawberry milk into the sheriff’s arms.
“What are you doing? Stop giving me milk,” McMartin spluttered as he struggled to hold on to the bottles.
“Milk has a similar consistency and nutritional density to…” Arthur trailed off, glancing around the store for other shoppers. A couple of employees lurked a few aisles over, determinedly not looking at the strange group ransacking the dairy section. “You know. The substance you accused Sal of drinking.”
“Okay, but what does this have to do with anything?”
“Aside from the fact that Arthur thinks you need more calcium in your diet,” Salvatore said, letting the door slam shut as he handed McMartin one final bottle.
“I don’t think that.” Arthur took a few bottles from the sheriff, who clearly had never learned the art of carrying his own groceries.
“Besides,” said Theodore, “milk isn’t actually that good for you. It’s just a myth started by the dairy lobby in the nineties to get people to buy more. When you think about it, drinking another mammal’s milk isn’t natural—”
“Not natural?!” McMartin’s face had turned an alarming shade of pink to match the strawberry milk in his arms.
Arthur cleared his throat. “Anyway, the point is that the human body has about ten pints of…a certain substance in it.”
“I love that you know that!” Theodore clapped Arthur on the shoulder, a genuine smile on his face. Arthur didn’t trust it for a second. “You’re a cool guy, Arthur Miller.”
McMartin didn’t seem to agree, the flush in his face only deepening as he looked from the milk in his arms to Salvatore and back. “Get to the point,” he said unconvincingly, as if the last thing he wanted was for the three paranormals in his company to get to the point.
Salvatore straightened to his full height, a maneuver that had rather less impact than intended, as the sheriff was tall, if nothing else. “If you think I drank that much at once, then I challenge you to do the same. If you can consume all this in one sitting, I’ll go right back to jail, no arguments.”
“No way! You’ve got powers—supernatural stomachs or something!” McMartin blustered.
“Vampires and humans aren’t all that different,” Arthur said, the calm to McMartin’s storm. “We may be undead, but we’re still beholden to many of the physical limitations we had when we were alive, including this one.”
McMartin eyed the milk in his arms and puffed out his chest. “Fine. You’re on.” He fumbled with the pints as he attempted to open one.
“Allow me.” Salvatore, still cuffed, plucked the remaining bottles from his would-be jailer and balanced them with ease.
McMartin glared at Salvatore, then the bottle in his hands in turn. “Strawberry? Why on God’s green earth would you get flavored milk?”
“It’s pink,” Salvatore said.
“So?”
“It’s the closest to blood.”
Arthur always loved his husband, but moments like these really drove the point home. He pretended to check the price of a dozen eggs to keep from letting the laughter show on his face. Then heactuallychecked the price. Were organic free-range eggs really thatexpensive? Maybe he and Sal should look into getting a coop and a few chickens—though Rumble might chase them, and he didn’t need another corpse on his hands, avian or otherwise.
“Whatever.” McMartin twisted the cap and pulled a face. “Let’s get this over with.”
The first pint went down without a hitch. McMartin wiped the pink milk mustache from his face and smirked. “It’s okay to be impressed. Most people are.”
“Oh…we’reimpressed, all right.” Salvatore handed him a second bottle and glanced meaningfully at Arthur.
Wincing, Arthur scanned the aisles for the store employees, regretting that they’d have to clean up the mess McMartin was sure to regurgitate. Salvatore had forced Arthur to watch enough video compilations of people attempting the gallon milk challenge to know how this would end.
“No sweat.” McMartin let the second empty bottle drop to the floor before reaching for a third.
“That’s concerning.” Salvatore pursed his lips. “As a gentleman of an esteemed age, I can assure you, more than a pint at a time is considered rather gauche. Besides, this body isn’t by accident.” He gestured to his admittedly trim figure. “Any more, and one begins to feel more like an overstuffed tick than anything else.”
“Maybe you’re just a weak-willed vamp,” McMartin said, glibly opening the next pint. “Or maybe you’re lying through those pointy teeth.”
“I absolutely never lie,” Salvatore lied.
