Page 66 of Dead & Breakfast
Arthur clambered off the bike and turned to face his husband. “It’s not as though clues grow on trees.”
“Come on!” Sal palmed Arthur’s sides and squeezed. “Surely there’s someone else we can question.”
“I suppose we could try to find Brody’s less agreeable friends. They’re the only ones we haven’t spoken to, and if Theo was rightabout Brody being the one to paint over their graffiti, they might have had it in for him.”
“That’s the spirit!”
“I doubt we’ll be able to find them at this hour. They could be anywhere, defacing some wall or another.” Arthur shook his head and cast his gaze down. “Let’s just go home. Perhaps some sleep will do me good.”
“Giving up already? That isn’t the Arthur Miller—no relation—I know and love.” Sal narrowed his eyes. “Come on.” He marched out in front of the bike and waved for Arthur to follow.
“Sal? Salvatore?” Arthur called after him. “Where are you going?”
Sal turned, not stopping his momentum as he flashed Arthur a winning smile. “To ask the locals!”
“What locals?” This late the streets were deserted, and all the stoplights had become flashing yellow or red. Arthur doubted very much that anyone else was awake, let alone willing to offer their assistance to two wayward vampires.
“Oh, darling, sometimes I forget how young you are, but when your powers kick in, you’ll understand,” Sal said with the air of someone with a great amount of maturity, which he assuredly was not. “When I saythe locals, I don’t mean our human neighbors. I mean the most informed residents of Trident Falls, the town’s natural spies.”
“Ah,” Arthur said, understanding washing over him. “The raccoons. On Fourth Street, I think you said?”
They ambled that way and soon arrived near the infamous dumpsters, positioned at the apex of four different alleys. Raccoons were indeed ransacking them—that was, until Arthur and Sal approached. The critters paused their plundering to peer at them over the rim of the dumpster with glittering eyes. Arthur was struck byhow utterly adorable he found their little furry ears, even in the midst of so much chaos. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise; he’d married Salvatore, after all, and he was the most chaotic thing around for miles.
“Good evening, gentlemammals,” Sal said with as much decorum as he would use to address royalty—or perhaps more, given how many beheadings of nobles he’d attended while on holiday in France. “I was hoping you might aid us in a very important matter.”
Most of the raccoons just blinked at them.
“Are you sure about this, Sal?” Arthur asked, stopping a few yards from the dumpsters. “Perhaps the raccoons don’t care for vampires.”
“What?” Sal clutched at his nonexistent pearls. “All animals love vampires!”
“That’s not even a little bit true.”
“All animals loveme.”
Arthur arched an eyebrow, recalling with perfect clarity the time Sal had taken him to visit a beekeeper. It had been their fiftieth Valentine’s Day. A terribly romantic gesture, if Arthur was being honest. Unfortunately, the bees hadn’t loved Arthur as much as he loved them, and he’d walked away puffy and in pain. Sal had sustained only two stings, but Arthur still spent the evening tending to Sal’s wounded pride.
“There’s only room for one queen in a hive, I suppose,” Sal had eventually conceded.
And Arthur had put his closely held dream of one day being a beekeeper himself to rest.
Bees weren’t the only creatures with a distaste for vampires. As they’d discovered upon moving to Oregon, nutria, though an invasive species themselves, were particularly inhospitable to newcomers. Additionally, when Arthur had first become a vampire, he’dbeen gobsmacked to learn that most bats held vampires in low esteem—they couldn’t take the competition, as Sal put it.
“Some animals fear us, you know,” Arthur said, unwilling to bring up the bee incident again. “Deer and the like.”
“Deer are afraid of everything, Arthur.” Sal tossed his hair back, the light from the moon catching in its shiny waves. “Face it, darling. You may be the expert in all things flora, but you really ought to leave dealing with fauna to the expert.” He turned back toward the dumpster and cleared his throat.
One of the raccoons perked up and approached the edge of the dumpster, a bruised banana peel adorning its head like a jester’s hat.
“We’re looking for some kids who like to spray-paint the buildings around here. It’s absolutely vital to the fate of the galaxy that we find them. Help us, raccoons; you’re our only hope.”
Arthur cleared his throat. “He means we need to find them to investigate an attempted murder. Brody Young was attacked earlier tonight.” He didn’t know why he bothered. Sal was the one with the powers, limited though they were. Sal promised him his own powers would awaken eventually, but it had been decades and Arthur wasn’t holding out hope. He had the only power he needed anyway: the one that kept him undead and by Sal’s side.
The raccoon placed its paws on the rim of the dumpster and lowered its snoot to rest between them. Perhaps he was only projecting, but Arthur felt sure the raccoon was expressing some form of sympathy.
“Yes, it’s very sad,” Arthur said. “But we’re trying to help him. Do you know where his friends might have gone?”
To Arthur’s surprise, the raccoon lifted its paw and pointed down the road, in the direction of the edge of town.
