Barry shrugged his small shoulders. “If you say so. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
He nodded curtly to me and went off on his nonmerry way. Seriously, I wondered where he’d found a stick small enough to shove up his ass. Not my favorite guy in the city, but what can you do? Maybe he had one of those Napoleonic complexes. Short men with major attitude problems. I felt a sharp tap on my shoulder and turned around.
A burly guy wearing olive green overalls and a black T-shirt shoved a clipboard in my face. “Can you sign for the keg of O negative?”
“The keg of what?”
“O neg. Just sign right there on the dotted line.” He tapped the clipboard.
Behind him was a silver keg, which I would have suspected was filled with beer. Normally, that is. I figured O neg wasn’t a code name for alcohol. But who delivers kegs of blood to vampire bars? I squinted down at the delivery form. The Blood Delivery Guys was the name of the company. Well, that made sense.
I signed on the dotted line like a good employee; then the guy snatched the clipboard out of my hands and headed for the back door. He sure was in a big hurry. I wondered how many deliveries he had that night. How many other vamp hangouts were there in Toronto, anyhow? The customers began to filter in at the turn of the hour, none of them looking as amazed and out of sorts as I had last night. They all looked as if they’d been there many times before and were used to entering the club through a tanning salon. The band took the stage at nine-thirty and filled the smoky air with dark sexy music.
If I tried to push the thought out of my mind that all of these people were vampires, then it would have felt like any other club. Nothing out of the ordinary. None of these people wanted trouble. They’d come here to escape the troubles they had outside and be safe and secure for a couple of hours. Just like me. It was a soothing thought. For a moment. Then I remembered Dan and his buddy and what they did to Quinn. What had Thierry said? Vamps can be good or bad… just like humans.
“And what can I get for you tonight?” I sidled up to the newest couple to enter the club.
After a couple of hours I was getting used to the job. Nobody was giving me a hard time. I got a few looks, of course. People either didn’t recognize me at all, or they thought I was Thierry’s new girlfriend. I didn’t waste my breath trying to argue with them. Thierry hadn’t shown up yet, and that was the only thing that was causing me any stress. Other than that, I felt very much at ease at Midnight Eclipse. The man at the table smiled at me. It was difficult to call him a man, though. He looked more like a college student out after a long night of studying. He was clean-cut, with blond hair and a smooth, hairless face. He wore a short-sleeved blue-and-white-striped polo shirt and dark blue pants. “I’ll have an AB positive and orange juice, please.”
Big spender , I thought. AB positive was a rare blood type, and I’d learned the rarer the blood, the more expensive the shot was. It made sense in a strange Stephen King sort of way.
“Cool.” I jotted the order down on a pad of paper I’d found in Thierry’s office. I had a pretty lousy memory. “And for you?”
I turned to his girlfriend. Definitely not of the clean-cut variety. Of anyone tonight, she looked the most like she belonged in a vampire club. On top of black jeans she wore a deep-cut black shirt that left very little of her pale cleavage to the imagination. Her face was so white that it looked unhealthy. She wore dark red lipstick, black eyeliner, and had dark hair so long that it had to be extensions. Her nose and eyebrow were both pierced with small silver hoops.
She looked up at me with a fashionably morose expression on her pale face. “Vodka. Straight up.”
“No blood?” If she said no, she’d be the first one tonight.
“Nope.”
“Anything else?”
“Nope.”
I turned away and headed over to the bar to give Zelda my order.
“Vodka straight up?” she asked with a frown.
“Yeah. No blood.”
“Who’s this for?”
I glanced over my shoulder. “Table twelve.”
Zelda peered through the darkness and then shook her head. “Oh no, not them again.”
I turned to follow her gaze. “What?”
“It’s Timothy Langdon and his human girlfriend.”
My eyebrows shot up. “She’s human?”
“Wannabe vamp.”
“So, what’s the big deal?”
Zelda kept shaking her head. “If Thierry finds out they’re here, he’s going to flip out.”
“Why? What’s the problem?”
Just then, I saw a whir of motion to my left. The door to the club from the tanning salon opened wide and a good-looking guy came inside. He walked directly toward us. Well, toward Zelda. He barely glanced at me. His hair was the color of golden sand and fell just past his shoulders in a fine curtain. He was built like a Chippendale dancer and looked like he regularly made use of the tanning beds out front. His muscular pecs peeked out from beneath the thin white shirt he wore on top of tight black leather pants.
“Zelda, honey,” he said. And with those two words uttered from his full, perfect lips, I realized that this grade-A prime rib of hotness was as gay as the day is long. What a waste.
“What’s the big emergency? From the message Barry left me, it sounded like the world is ending.”
“It is, George. Brace yourself.” Her expression was grim. “Maybe you should sit down.”
His face stiffened. He swung his firm tush onto a stool and looked at her apprehensively.
“Spill.”
“Ralph’s dead.”
“What?” The word was a wail. “How?”
Zelda reached out her hand and touched George’s arm in a comforting gesture. “Hunters, of course.”
“Damn it.” George’s voice quavered. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.” He took a deep, shuddery breath. “Does this mean I have to work a double shift?”
Zelda paused. “No.”
“Thank Christ. Well, you know what? It serves Ralph right to get his ass staked. He never looked both ways before he crossed the street.” George finally looked at me. “Hello there, beautiful, and who are you?”
I extended my hand a bit. “Sarah.”
He took my hand, but instead of shaking it, he kissed it. “Nice to have something in here that’s new and gorgeous to look at.”
“Gee.” I smiled at him. “That’s sweet. And I assumed you were gay.”
“I am, honey. I’m just not blind.”
I wasn’t sure if I hated this guy or if I immediately wanted to go shopping with him. Time would tell.
Zelda measured out the shot of AB positive from a nearby keg. I eyed her with curiosity.