Chapter 6: Chapter Six

I set both of my grocery baskets—one for me, one for the Andrews—down on the counter and pulled out my wallet, snatching a twenty from the billfold. “Full Moon Madness?”

The cashier, Anthony, flashed me a smile and slipped his hand into his apron pocket, producing his cash. “Definitely.” He flipped on his “manager requested” yellow light. “Yo. Krisztina! FMM time!”

Full Moon Madness was the only form of gambling I allowed myself (outside of bets with Jake), the goal being to guess how rowdy the grocery store crowd got during a full moon. Werewolves could be scary, but the one summer I worked here on assignment proved humans were way more terrifying during the end of a lunar cycle. Anthony, who had started the same summer as me—as a bagger, not an agent—was now the assistant manager and my most formidable opponent.

Applechester Grocer’s manager, Krisztina, walked over and flipped off Anthony’s light. “I have better things to do than be forced into your stupid game every month.” Despite her complaining, she pulled out a small notebook from her apron and flipped to the back. “There were six manager complaints. Two from Doris Manalin, three about Doris Manalin, and one about the new packaging on a cereal box, as if that’s something the store has control over. One fist fight over the last box of Mrs. T’s Pierogies, two cars who hit carts, and one cart that hit a car.”

Anthony cheered and I let out an expletive. With a grimace, I slapped the bill into his hand. Krisztina rolled her eyes and walked away. “If you’re gonna drag me into this, the least you can do is win!” she called back over her shoulder. “His ego’ll be impossible now.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled. “I didn’t see the cereal box coming.”

Anthony picked up my grocery basket and started scanning the items. “Pays to have a psychic in the family.” His uncle and sister both worked for SHAP, his uncle as a ghost and his sister as a psychic, which not only led to unparalleled insight, but really fun bets.

“I really need to get a better house ghost. Store’s only a mile away, well within his tether. He could’ve done some recon for me.”

“Cheat much?”

“Uh, psychic. Tomato, to-mah-to.”

He laughed. “Touché.” He took his time bagging my produce, which is why I put up with his shit. Not having bruised bananas and peaches was totally worth it. “Hey, you know anything about an unregistered vamp?” His voice was casual, but he was frowning.

“Yep. Following a lead. You know anything?”

He scanned the surroundings before lowering his voice. “Clay Thompson, the dairy farmer?” I nodded, knowing the name. “Wife was in this morning, talking about how Clay had scared off a suit who was hanging out in the barn. They found an open wound on two of the cattle. They died the next day.”

I glanced quickly at my total, not even really seeing it, and shoved my credit card into the card reader. Despite my loathing for vampires, even I had to admit the ones who lived in cities were extremely careful. One bad vampire could bring down hell, or worse, Doris Manalin, on the whole community.

“When?”

“Last week.”

The blood. When I killed that vampire, it had covered me in goo and blood, which made sense if it had just fed. “Thanks. That particular one will likely no longer be an issue.”

With a nod, he handed me my bags. “Good. Also, Amber called to ask if we could order her seven pounds of sage. Won’t be in until Wednesday. Promised her I’d drop it off on my way home.”

I scrunched my nose. “Ho boy, never a good sign.” I grabbed my bags. “Headed there now. Let me know if I need to swing by Wednesday, yeah?” He waved and I headed back out to the parking lot.

A summer storm was brewing; the sky was thick with clouds, the air heavy. A shiver of unease raced down my spine. I tossed the bags into the back of my truck—likely undoing all the precise fruit packing Anthony had done—and scanned my surroundings.

“Get in.” Sebastian’s voice, although I couldn’t see him.

I didn’t question. I slammed my hatch, dove into the driver’s seat, and started the engine. “Sebastian?”

He materialized in the passenger seat, staring straight out the windshield.

I followed the line of his gaze. “What is it?”

“Something wicked this way comes.” Ghosts didn’t often get feelings, so when Sebastian did, I listened. Even when he was being uber pretentious and quoting Shakespeare.

“Tree line. Northeast corner,” Sebastian warned before disappearing.

I opened my glove box and grabbed binoculars. I swore as I focused on a woman staggering through the trees. (5’1”, mid-forties, disoriented. Risk assessment: injured, no risk.) She was clutching her neck, blood spotting her blouse. She was limping, one shoe missing, and she had an Applechester Grocery bag around her arm.

I threw my truck into drive and dialed SHAP headquarters.

“Dispatch,” Val, our most veteran dispatcher, answered. Thank God. I didn’t have time for any small talk from a newbie.

“Val, it’s Agent Summers. Got a woman bleeding from the neck.” I ran off the pertinent details. “Ghost Agent Kenworthy is assisting.”

“10-4. Support incoming.”

I pulled up to the curb, tucked Sydney into my waistband, grabbed a sweatshirt I had in the back seat, then leapt out of the truck. The woman darted back with a cry, and I put my hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help. My name is Mina. What’s yours?”

Sebastian emerged from the woods behind her and gave me the all-clear signal. I refocused on the disoriented woman. I didn’t recognize her from town, but that didn’t mean much. There were upward of 60,000 people in Applechester and I mostly only knew the ones who caused trouble.

“Kendra?” Her voice shook and she answered like she wasn’t even sure who she was. “I was—” she looked down at her grocery bag “—getting dinner?” She swayed on her feet and I rushed to steady her.

“Let’s sit.” I gestured to the curb. “Kendra, why are you bleeding?”

“Am I bleeding?” She stumbled and all but collapsed into a sitting position. She pulled her hand away from her neck where a pool of blood was smeared on her hand. “Oh.”

I clicked my watch, then pressed the sweatshirt against the side of her neck. “Do you know what happened?”

She shook her head slowly, still staring at her hand.

“She’s about to swoon,” Sebastian warned in my ear.

I got my arm around her shoulders before she landed face first on the cement. “Good call.” My watch buzzed and I glanced down. Human. For now.

I laid her down on the grass while trying to keep pressure on her wound and felt her pulse. It was slower than I would’ve liked, especially after an attack. Where was her adrenaline?

A silver car and an ambulance turned into the parking lot and headed straight for us. The moment they parked, we were surrounded by a flurry of activity. Kendra was loaded onto a stretcher and placed in the ambulance. Agent Bonn, who had arrived with the ambulance, used gauze to clean the wound on the victim’s neck, exposing two puncture wounds.

“I can’t tell for certain without running blood analysis, but I’d say the bite radius is pretty consistent with a vampire’s,” they said.

“Dammit.” I pressed my fist against my forehead. “Three in less than a month.”

They pursed their lips. “We haven’t had back-to-back vampire attacks in this city in two decades.”

“I know.” I wondered what Gerard, the retired RD, would’ve done in this situation. I didn’t trust vampires as far as I could throw them—which wasn’t far, they were heavy—but they had kept their end of the bargain for nearly twenty years. Any vampire using live feeding could only do so from a registered feeder.

If Kendra had been a registered feeder, she would’ve been chipped as part of protocol and the watch would’ve alerted me. Feeders were high-risk, as consuming a single drop of human blood while the vampire venom ran through their system would turn them. We once had to put down a feeder who had innocently kissed her boyfriend’s busted lip after a fight and turned into a vamp and attacked him. There was no amount of money in the world that could make me turn into a feeder. To be fair, I was privileged enough to not be desperate for money, either.

Once the on-duty agents were debriefed, I climbed into my truck. “You here?”

“Yes,” Sebastian answered. “In the boot.”

I glanced in my rear view and saw him hovering over the groceries. “Why?”

“Keeping your goods cold.”

I pressed my lips together. I was so used to the chilliness that surrounded Sebastian, I didn’t even notice it anymore. “You know, sometimes you’re not a huge prick.”

“Love you, too.”

My car phone rang, and I clicked my steering wheel button to answer it. “Jake, what’s up?”

“Another vamp attack?”

“Yeah.” I filled him in on my shopping trip as I started driving home. “And I lost FMM.”

“Not your night. What did you in?”

“Cereal box rebranding.”

He laughed. “Listen, I haven’t heard the entire tape yet, but my contact in tech says the meeting was about Natalie Moranis. They want to settle with her out of court, even though they claim no wrongdoing. She signed the contract of her own free will.”

“Sure, sure. It’s cheaper to settle then to fight it.” I pulled into my assigned parking spot and caught a shadow gliding across the roof of my apartment building before disappearing. I was so not in the mood for this. I leaned my head back on the headrest, exhausted. “Listen, Jake, gotta drop off groceries. Catch you later?”

“Yeah, sounds good. Will keep you posted.”

“Thanks.” I pushed open my door. “Sebastian, let’s go. We have company.”