“Too much noise?”
Shauna nodded. That was the truth, as well. That constant keening rising and falling in volume was upsetting her. She knew Fiona meant the noise in the shop, but who was she to split hairs?
“I know we’re busy,” Shauna said, “and I feel like a heel for asking, but would you mind if I went out for a while?”
“Not at all.” Fiona gave Shauna’s shoulders a little rub.
“You don’t think Caitlin will care?”
“Why would she?”
“Because she’d be stuck doing work I should be doing.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine. I planned on closing early anyway.”
“Early? Why, when we’re so busy?”
“Keeno’s, you know, the place in Lake Charles where we get our herbs, essential oils, specialty soaps, stuff like that? They can’t get a delivery here until next week, and we can’t wait that long. I was thinking maybe we’d take a ride out there and pick up the order ourselves. The way I see it, we either lose a partial day’s business today or lose a lot of it the rest of the week because we’re out of stock. Besides, we can use the breather before all hell breaks loose this weekend anyway.”
Really feeling guilty now, Shauna said, “I can just go out for a short walk, then come back and watch the shop, if you and Caitlin want to drive out there.”
Fiona smiled. “I said we could use the breather. All of us. That doesn’t mean you have to come with us to Lake Charles, though.”
Shauna held back a sigh of relief. “Won’t you need help when you get out there? You know, loading—”
“Will you stop worrying? Go, take a walk. Better yet, go for a run. I know how much you love running. It might help burn off—”
“My word! What is that?”
Shauna and Fiona turned in unison.
High Tea was pointing at the large display window at the front of the shop, her expression sour, as if she’d just bitten into a persimmon. Shauna didn’t see what was so appalling until she looked through the window with the eyes of a tourist. Then it became obvious.
An extremely thin woman, wearing faded red Daisy Dukes, a dirty, pink T-shirt and black stilettos, was pacing the sidewalk in front of the shop. Her stringy brown hair had been corralled into a crooked ponytail, and she held two lit cigarettes, one in each hand. She puffed on one then the other in rapid succession, all the while talking to herself.
“You allow homeless people to stand in front of your store that way?” High Tea asked. “Don’t the police do anything to keep them off the street?”
Now Shauna wanted to teach the woman a few manners herself. “And where do you suggest the police take them? Their high-rise on the back forty?”
Fiona tugged on the back of Shauna’s T-shirt, her signal to back off.
Shauna caught the message but couldn’t help adding, “For all we know, that woman might not even be homeless. Maybe she’s—”
“Nah, that ain’t homeless,” Lurnell said, making her way to the window. “That’s trash.”
“Don’t say that,” Shauna said. “Maybe she’s just down on her luck. That doesn’t make her trash.”
Lurnell batted a hand at her. “Girl, they trash if they out runnin’ a line of blow while they babies at home alone with no food and in stinky diapers. Oh, yeah, that’s trash. That be a whole damn trash truck if you ask me.”
“You know her?” Shauna asked.
“She ain’t like my friend or nothin’, but, yeah, I know her. She works in one of them bars over at the ca sino. They call her Mattress Mattie, ’cause she always spread in’ them skinny legs so she can make that green. She got two babies—two, you hearin’ me? And what you think she be doin’ with that little extra somethin’ she makin’ on the side?”
“Buying drugs,” High Tea said, her tone definitive.
“See that?” Lurnell said. “Even Miss Thing got the set up, and she ain’t even from around here.”
High Tea beamed as if she’d just won a prize.
Lurnell tapped on the window, apparently to get Mattie’s attention. The woman kept pacing, smoking, talking to herself.
“Yeah, she hurtin’ right now. Needin’ some blow. Bet she out there waitin’ for her dealer.”
High Tea gasped. “You allow them to deal drugs out there?”
“Of course not,” Fiona said sharply. “We can’t control what people do on the street, though. Did you see a drug deal take place in front of this shop? If you did, please tell me because I obviously missed it.”
With a haughty lift of her chin, High Tea tsked. “Well, if I owned this establishment, I would—”
“Now what you think that piece of shrimp bait’s doin’ out there?” Lurnell said, planting a fist on a hip. “That boy is trouble all by his ownself.”
Mattie had company now. She was talking to Banjo Marks, a young vampire who came from an old bayou family. Shauna knew he was homeless and a junkie. The guy eagerly swallowed, snorted, or injected, anything and everything he got his hands on. His weekly regimen consisted of LSD, pot, crystal-meth and cocaine. Whatever he scored in between those primers, Banjo considered lagniappe. He was tall and lanky, and had thin, scraggly blond hair that hung in greasy strands down to the middle of his back. Most of the time he smelled like wet, soured towels.
As if life hadn’t piled enough on Banjo’s plate, he didn’t fit the standard vampire profile, even for this area. He ate and drank like a human. Shauna didn’t know if the years of drug use had caused him to mutate, which in turn allowed him to digest food, or if he was the byproduct of an accidental cross-breeding. Either way, it was strange to see. He came to the shop often, always looking for a handout. And Fiona, being the Keeper of the vampires and the kind-hearted mother hen that she was, never failed to give him food and something warm or cool to drink, whichever the weather dictated.
As for Shauna, she never liked being around Banjo, and it had nothing to do with his drug use or smell. He had a high-pitched voice and an odd, twittering laugh that sounded like a hyena mating with a screeching macaw. It sawed on her last nerve.
Mattie and Banjo were yelling now, standing almost nose to nose. Although Shauna could easily hear their conversation, both were so hyped up that most of it came across as gibberish.
“—today, asshole, you said today!” Mattie jabbed Banjo’s shoulder with a finger. “You said—I been waitin’ … Where’s at? Where?”
As Mattie poked at Banjo, he shuffled left a few steps, then turned about and moved up one step in the other direction, as if he were square-dancing alone. Then came that horrid, twittering laugh.
“Swear, swear to Gawd, gonna be here,” he gibbered. “Little problem, gonna be here, though. Yeah, you gonna see—fresh, fresh, fresh. Gonna come, swear to Gawd.”
Mattie shoved him, and Banjo stumbled backwards, his arms pin-wheeling for balance. She trapped him against a nearby light pole, jabbing a finger at his chest this time. “You—shit … sonofawhore! You promised, you motherf—”
The twittering laugh—that God-awful twittering laugh …
Their fight grew so intense people crossed the street to avoid them.
“Enough’s enough,” Shauna said, and headed for the door. She really didn’t care if they pulled each other’s hair out. What she’d had enough of was