Chapter 8
Proof required a change in location. Sheriff McMartin was hardly eager to acquiesce.
He grumbled incessantly as he released Salvatore from his cell and handcuffed him, trailing Arthur by only a few paces.
He was clearly a man used to giving orders rather than following them.
Arthur tried not to take petty delight in causing the sheriff trouble, but he didn’t try too hard.
“The town sure has changed,” Salvatore said as they walked down the street, Theodore following quietly behind.
Arthur had given up reminding Sal his stay in jail had only lasted a few hours, but McMartin did it for him.
“It’s exactly the same,” the sheriff grunted.
But that wasn’t true. Trident Falls was an ever-shifting beast. This late in the afternoon, teenagers who’d not skipped school began to flood the streets.
Across the way, outside the coffee shop, Arthur spotted Dr. Young scolding his son with animated gestures.
Perhaps he knew about the aforementioned skipping.
Evening traffic was picking up as well, stalling McMartin’s insistence that they drive to their destination, though it was only a few blocks away.
Arthur suspected McMartin only wanted to both impress and intimidate them with his unnecessary muscle car.
When they got to GrubStop, Salvatore hurried forward.
“Grubs!”
“What is he going on about?” Sheriff McMartin snatched the back of Salvatore’s shirt to stop him from rushing into the store.
Arthur pointed meaningfully at the signage above them, which boasted only five lit-up letters so it read GrubS.
Really, if Sheriff McMartin was this unobservant, maybe Arthur had a chance of out-sleuthing him after all.
“What are we doing here?” The sheriff glared with all the ferocity of a bottle-blond toad.
“If you’ll simply follow me, I’ll show you.” Arthur didn’t bother to match his tone to the politeness of his words. “Or if you’d prefer, I can waste more of your time by explaining what would otherwise be apparent momentarily.”
“You better not be trying to pull anything.”
Arthur hadn’t thought he’d spend the day escorting another vampire, a werewolf, and a sheriff down the baking aisle toward the very limited dairy section of GrubStop, but there he was, passing carefully stacked pyramids of frosting containers.
Trident Falls was too small for any of the larger chains, something Salvatore had taken as a personal slight when they’d first moved to town.
The GrubStop didn’t carry blood—ethically sourced or otherwise—so aside from purchasing ingredients for the Iris Inn’s rather sparse guest list, Arthur didn’t often have occasion to peruse the grocer’s offerings.
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 out in 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 he actually checked the price. Were organic free-range eggs really that expensive?
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’re impressed, 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.
Arthur, for his part, kept quiet, watching McMartin for signs of gastrointestinal trouble. He hoped the man wasn’t lactose intolerant on top of everything else.
“Yeah, yeah.” McMartin finished his third pint, but he handed off the bottle with rather less flair. He opened his mouth, his words preceded by a loud belch. “You’re not the only bloodsuckers out there, though, are you?”
Arthur flinched at the derogatory term but chose not to correct him. It wasn’t worth the effort, after all; the sheriff’s mind was as narrow as his shoulders were broad. Instead, Arthur cleared his throat and said, “I believe we’re the only vampires in the Trident Falls area.”
“Yeah, but it could’ve been another paranormal type. Maybe one with a stronger stomach.” He grinned before lifting the fourth bottle to his lips.
“There are species of fae who drink blood, and there’s speculation that ghosts require a single drop of blood, but in both instances the amount would be considerably less than a vampire needs.
” Salvatore softened his voice to speak the last word in a whisper—not out of any concern for eavesdroppers, it seemed, but more for dramatic effect.
“How do you know that?” McMartin asked, lowering the bottle of milk only half-drunk.
“I googled it.” Salvatore held up his phone.
“How did you get—” McMartin touched his back pocket, where he’d presumably been keeping Salvatore’s personal effects.
“Don’t get any ideas, stud. I’m married.” Salvatore winked.
“Real police work isn’t done by googling things.” McMartin took a step forward and let the half-full bottle dangle by his side, as if hoping they’d all forget about it if he changed the subject. “It takes hitting the pavement and collecting evidence.”
Arthur suspected McMartin knew as much about police work as Arthur himself knew about automobile repair, but he kept that thought to himself and instead stepped back a bit, estimating his current standing position to be within the splatter-distance danger zone.