Chapter 4 #2
Her voice pitched lower and fell into something softer. “You’re a person, you know. Not just a business owner.”
“I can’t afford to be an imperfect version of either.
” Arthur wished he could make her understand.
“If I give people a reason to hate me, they will.” It had happened before, in his mortal life and beyond.
Snide jokes about his Jewish heritage from his coworkers who disliked his job performance, outright hostility from homophobes who didn’t like who he simply was.
But if he didn’t slip up, things went a lot more smoothly.
“Salvatore doesn’t seem to worry about that, and I like him just fine—assuming he’s not, you know, a murderer.”
Arthur stared down at her, trying to fight off the wave of discomfort that statement brought. “All right. I suppose I can step away for an hour or two.”
“Good, let’s go.” Nora started toward her car.
“No,” Arthur said, not moving to follow. “Absolutely not.”
“You just said you’d go—” Nora began.
“I’ve never trusted cars. If you’re in one of those things doing more than thirty-five miles per hour and crash, you’re dead.”
Nora blinked at him. “That’s not true. Maybe it was a long time ago, but cars these days have seat belts and airbags and crumple zones—”
With a shudder, Arthur took an involuntary step back. Modern people might be used to the danger of automobiles, but he’d grown up seeing the damage they could do. “That sounds dreadful. A death trap on wheels, if ever I’ve seen one. No, thank you.”
“You’re immortal.”
“But I’m not immune to pain.”
Nora eyed him warily. “Then how do you plan to get downtown?”
Arthur straightened his shoulders in a most dignified way and said, “We’ll take the bike.”
If someone had told Arthur that morning that he would later be flying down the streets of Trident Falls on a tandem bicycle with the city manager, wearing a windblown cat as a painful, fuzzy backpack, he would have laughed them out of the room. Now, laughter was far from his mind.
Sal. He had to get to Sal.
There was no time to waste. So, when Arthur and Nora had set off from the Iris Inn, and Rumble had leaped up just as the bike’s wheels began moving, he hadn’t bothered to turn around.
Instead, he’d let the cat attach herself to his shoulders as she was now, her claws stuck through his suit jacket and button-down shirt to cling to his skin as they sped away from the Iris Inn.
Maybe Rumble would cheer Salvatore up, anyway.
“How are you steering this thing while holding that umbrella?” Nora shouted to be heard over the wind in their ears as they rode toward town.
Now that Arthur had let the momentum of the morning’s events overtake him, he couldn’t imagine slowing down for anything as simple as holding both bike handles.
“If you drop the umbrella, will you, uh, burst into flame?” she continued.
“Of course not,” Arthur replied, tilting the umbrella forward a little to keep the wind from getting beneath it as they picked up speed.
“So the whole sunlight thing…”
“Hogwash.” Had Arthur known he would spend his eternity explaining how every newfangled myth about vampirism was just that, a myth, he might’ve thought twice about accepting the offer of immortality.
“Then why the umbrella?”
“Sunlight may not be fatal, but it isn’t exactly pleasant.” He paused, uncertain how much was prudent to share. “Besides, just because I’m immortal doesn’t mean I’m not responsible about my skin health.”
“Ah. And you don’t sparkle either.” Arthur couldn’t see Nora, but he could hear the smile in her voice.
“Well, I don’t sparkle. Sal, on the other hand…
” Arthur’s chest constricted at the thought of Sal’s love for that particular myth.
Despite obvious evidence to the contrary, popular culture remained as ignorant as ever of the truth about vampires.
From Bram Stoker to Anne Rice to Stephenie Meyer, Arthur considered the scribes of paranormal romance to be terribly irresponsible, but Sal loved them.
In fact, he’d bought every glittery moisturizer he could find during the height of Twilight’s popularity, which at the time Arthur had estimated would take him about a hundred years to use up.
In reality, they’d run out before the release of Breaking Dawn—Part 2, to Sal’s chagrin.
Perhaps when this was all over, Arthur would buy him more as a treat, if he was feeling magnanimous.
It didn’t take long to reach town. The Iris Inn was tucked away on the low slopes of a mountain, surrounded by thick woods that gave the illusion of being far from the beating heart of any nearby civilization.
Soon, Arthur and Nora were pedaling as cars passed on one side, the occasional pedestrian on the other.
Trident Falls wasn’t a large town, boasting only a few thousand people, but this time of day it bustled with morning traffic.
Rush twenty minutes, Arthur liked to call it.
The police station was in the little downtown area, nestled incongruously between charming mom-and-pop stores.
As they rode past, Arthur tried not to pay too much attention to the empty storefronts with real estate signs in the windows.
At least one business was busy—the coffee shop, the Big Bad Brew.
Arthur didn’t make a habit of going in there.
The owner was a werewolf, and though Arthur eschewed most stereotypes about vampires, he chose to embrace the one that posited vampires and werewolves were natural enemies, if only because Trident Falls’ resident coffee-slinging werewolf annoyed him.
When they rolled to a stop in front of the police station, an ugly, squat building that seemed to dim the spring sunshine with its mere existence, Arthur hoped the horrible sense of urgency thrumming in place of his long-gone heartbeat would abate.
It didn’t. He hadn’t felt so precarious in a long time.
As Nora strode ahead, opening the door, Arthur almost expected a smug Salvatore to exit, no worse for wear.
It would be just like Sal to extract himself from this situation before Arthur even arrived.
I’m not a princess in need of rescuing, he would say.
I’m a princess in need of a catnap and a new tiara.
But no one emerged.
Nora swept her gaze over Arthur, laughter in her eyes as though he were wearing a particularly funny outfit. “Are you going to do something about Rumble?”
“Right.” The pain had faded to background noise compared to the worry barricaded inside his chest. Arthur reached behind him with his free hand and pried Rumble from his back, wincing as her claws snagged. The cat’s eyes were wide, fur tousled in all directions. “I don’t know where to put her.”
“Oh,” Nora said, taking the massive three-ring binder from her purse and holding the bag open. “In here.”
Arthur silently bemoaned the fact that they could have stowed the cat and her murder mittens in Nora’s bag before his back became Rumble’s personal scratching post, but he accepted the offer nonetheless.
Rumble went quietly enough, curling her black tail around her and keeping her head low. She didn’t meow, thankfully. Arthur didn’t need anything else adding to the awkwardness of the conversation they were about to have.
As they walked into the lobby, Arthur closed his umbrella and did his best to straighten his windswept hair and horrifyingly rumpled suit jacket.
Two deputies flanked the front desk. One stood and waved them forward while the other jumped and poured coffee down their uniform.
Arthur didn’t have eyes for anyone but Salvatore, who lurked in one of the cells at the back of the room.
Somehow he’d gotten his hands on a harmonica and was playing a mournful tune reminiscent of another era.
Arthur was only surprised it wasn’t a tiny violin.
Sheriff McMartin emerged from the back office, eliciting another ripple of attention from his deputies, a pile of manila envelopes the unwitting victim of the other’s coffee spillage this time. “Hey,” he barked at the cell. “I told you to shut up.”
“Sheriff,” Nora said in a bright voice. “Good morning. Have you charged Salvatore with a crime?”
A long moment passed as the sheriff stood straighter and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. “Not yet, but we’re holding him for twenty-four hours. He’s a person of interest.”
“Of course I’m interesting,” Salvatore said, finally giving up his song. “Can you imagine surviving hundreds of years with a personality as dull as, say, yours, Sheriff? I may be cursed with eternity, but at least I’m blessed with charm and wit.”
Arthur was halfway across the room by the end of Salvatore’s sentence. “Are you all right?” He bent his head low, peering at Salvatore through the bars to check for any bumps or bruises. Salvatore looked unbothered, not a single ruffle askew.
“It’s awful in here. They’ve tried to poison me with decaf coffee, but I was too wily to fall for it.
” Salvatore stood and wrapped his fingers around the bars, a pitiful expression playing a merciless game of croquet across his face.
“Will you wait for me, darling? I know it will be hard, but we do have an eternity…”
“It’s twenty-four hours,” Arthur deadpanned. “I think I can manage to honor our wedding vows for that long.”
“I knew I could count on you.” Sal grinned at him, fangs dipping into view.
The problem with Salvatore was he’d been through too many spots of trouble like this before. Each time he escaped, it reinforced his pervasive idea that life was more or less a joke, and he’d never be the punch line.
Arthur had been the punch line enough to know better.
“Hey now,” the sheriff said, stepping between Arthur and Salvatore, forcing Arthur back. “No more talking with the suspect.”
“You called him a person of interest before,” Nora said. “Which is he?”