Dead Certain (Eve Benson: Vampire Book 3) (21 page)

“Are you sure you want to do
that?
I
have no problem with a magical tether that means you have no
reason not to hear my orders all the time, but I was thinking
you
might.”

She hadn’t thought of it that
way, but it wasn’t like she did anything but work anyway, was it?

“I’ll risk it? Say, what are the
plans for the night? Are Ginger or I needed for anything? I was thinking that
we might jog over to the Iowa Node, and spend the day there tomorrow. Do we
have coverage if we’re not here? I don’t want to leave anyone in a lurch.”

There was a rustling of paper
from the back, and Edom cleared his throat.

“I can hold the fort here. Make
sure to check with Ambassador Cormack first though, before just showing up to
visit.”

Eve froze, having not thought
about that at all. She nodded, and went wide eyed, which got Barb to cover her
smile with one hand.

It was probably funny, if you
weren’t the heavy handed a-hole in the situation, that had nearly invaded
without even a call first.

She hopped up, dashed to the
front counter phone, and did it then, reaching him at the Node. Cormack
actually seemed pleased, when she reached him. Happy, it sounded like.

“Visitors? So soon?
Wonderful
.
I’ll get with my assistant on that. Sandra. Great lady, you’ll love her. We
could use a bit of help, setting things right here, shop wise. The paperwork is
perfect
, but, well, you’ll see. It’s better than it was, but not up to
standards yet.” He sounded a bit embarrassed about that, which could mean
anything.

On the good side, everyone was
fine with them leaving right away.

Except Ginger.

For some reason she didn’t really
want
to run halfway across the country like that.

That was just plain silliness, of
course.

The run, which would have taken
Eve a bit less than an hour, she thought, took fifteen with Ginger along.
They’d started before six in the evening, so walked through the doors of the Plentiview
Mall, where Iowa kept their best Node complex, at nearly nine sharp. In the
morning.

It was strange, traveling like
that with Ginger. Then Eve only had two other Vampires to compare being on a
trip with. Bey, who made her feel slow and clumsy the whole time she did
anything with him, even as he beamed at her as if she really
were
a
special snowflake, like Barb kept claiming she was, and Nikki. Ginger fell
somewhere right between the two really, as far as traveling companions went.

The girl was slow, even though it
was clear she was
trying
. Her best speed though, pushing as hard as she
could go, was maybe a hundred miles per hour. She had picked up the idea of
walking instead of trying to run however, on the physical level. It was more
stable and easier to make sure you didn’t miss a chance to push or pull off of
anything. Not that it helped much at those low speeds.

On the other hand, little Ginger,
the Vampire child that should have never been, young in every way imaginable,
and from a white bread and pampered background, never once asked to stop. She
didn’t whine or cry that it seemed to take a month of walking either. If she
got bored, the dear thing kept it to herself, too. So while she wasn’t exactly
going to win speedster of the month, Eve was pleased with her over all. Not
everyone had to be super powered at that level, and being willing to stick with
hard things was important, too. Maybe more so than having a particular skill
was, in the end.

When they got there, the place
looking a bit more commercial than Westfield really did, plus a little bit busier,
given the time of day, Ginger didn’t even scream, having remembered to empty
her lungs first.

Eve went in, watching carefully,
walking slowly through the length of the single story complex. It was smaller
than what she was used to, but every store front had a shop in it, meaning it
was a lot more lively than Westfield, at least in how it felt. There was no
food court, but the place did have a few food locations, all of them tucked in
the center, with one on each corner of where the two main halls met, with a
large water fountain in the middle. The thing made the air moist, but it wasn’t
warm enough to really feel humid.

There was a Mrs. Fields cookie
place across from the Yoghurt World, and to the right was a Burger stand. It
was actually called that, even though it had a real store attached to it.
The
Burger Stand
. There was a man working away there, who looked over and
smiled at them, but then went directly back to work. He looked incredibly normal,
which could mean any of a thousand things. There was also a place that sold
what seemed to be whole roasted chickens and turkeys, if the sign out front was
any indication. At least Eve could tell who was running that place, since the
three women there were all clearly Trollienkeine.

Shaved to an inch of their lives,
too. Other than their heavy features and large size, they could pass pretty
well for Human though. Basically because they all looked like they must be
starving to death, for their people. Eve could see that one, she thought.

Their people weren’t poor, as a
group, but valued other things, like hard work and what you could make of the
world with your own two hands. So they sent out people from their lands to fend
for themselves. The trouble there was that in this case, they’d made a huge
miscalculation, as far as what Humans would want from a mall location. They
probably didn’t sell much at all, and what they did wouldn’t be enough to keep
them all fed and housed, even if they lived together.

Being proud and strong people,
they wouldn’t ask for help either. Oh, they’d take it, if it was offered
correctly, but asking would be seen as weak. That was pretty much the Vampire
and Human way too, so who the heck was she to judge? Eve wouldn’t have asked
for help either, even if it meant she was going to die. These three didn’t seem
that close, but they weren’t big and muscular, which was kind of the default
for their kind, even if they were women.

Honestly, they needed a better
store. She didn’t have one of those around though, so she just moved along, to
the rather run down yogurt place. There was a chalk board on the outside that
said they had a sale on milkshakes. Not that it was a horrible thing to sell,
but the thing was half wiped off, and looked like whoever had written it was on
drugs. That, or had failed to get their GED. While on drugs.

It was messy inside, too. Worse,
it
smelled
. Like rotting dairy products, stale… Everything that could be
imagined, and dirty machinery. Eve stopped herself from gagging, by not
breathing, and then forced herself to inhale. It wasn’t really
that
bad,
even with senses that were about sixteen times better than a dog’s, as far as
being able to smell things went.

There was a young man behind the
counter, who was a plain old Human, smelled like pot, and was wearing a shirt
that he’d probably had on for half a week. No apron either. He did have a green
and white Yoghurt World ball cap on though, which was cool. Everything inside
the place was dirty though. The walls were covered in grime and grease,
probably from either the skin of the people that worked days, or the other
stores across the way. Since it smelled like roasted chicken, it was probably
that one. It wasn’t unpleasant at least, when she focused just on that part of
things. The rest of it was just a bit off. Not like it did smell of unwashed
socks and body odor, but like it
should
.

She stopped in front of the
counter, which wasn’t made of professional looking stone, but Formica, like the
table tops at the booths. Those were all dirty, but the ugly orange color
matched for all of them. She let her expression go, and went blank for a
minute, then looked at the guy behind the counter, and smiled at him. There was
no reason for her to blame him in particular. He wasn’t the one in charge.

Now that was Cormack, but it had
been Sandra, whoever she was. She wasn’t up to day walking yet though, it
seemed, so had been trying to run everything through other people. Honestly,
given that it seemed like she’d been the only Vampire working there at all, and
that it had all been done in secret from the Human employees, she’d probably
done pretty well.

The place was still a mess. It
kind of exuded a sense of grunge and grime that would have stopped most of the
world from eating there. Worse, it should have stopped them, since it was
probably an actual health hazard.

“Hi! I’m Eve, and this is Ginger.
We’re from the corporate office?” She didn’t know how to bring things up,
exactly, but the guy, who stoner or not seemed like a dork, used his index
fingers to make fangs by his mouth.

“From the Vampires? Mwa-ha-ha.”
It was at least done with a good attempt at a Dracula accent. The guy’s shaggy
brown hair and sleepy eyes made it seem a bit off though. Then he laughed.
“Sorry, I get some variation of that one three times a day. People coming in to
try and become one of them. I heard the thing on television too, but if there
are Vampires around here, no one has told me about it. Honest.”

She nodded, then listened, to
find that Cormack was in the back already, working on something. Possibly
hiring all knew employees for his place? Running an embassy with two people was
close to impossible, and for one person to try it on their own…

“What’s your name?”

“Jay. Why?”

“Let me short hand this for you,
Jay.  First, promise not to scream like a little wimp?” She waited, until the
man gave a nod, then pointed at her mouth and popped her teeth down with an
audible click, her eyes turning blood red in a flash at the same time. “Shee,
fangsh.”

The guy did jump back, but
laughed after a few seconds.

“Holy crap, that got me. So, this
is for real? I’d kind of thought it was bullshit, to tell the truth.”

“Yep, we’re actually here to make
you work and fix this dump up. We’ll start with cleaning.”

It wasn’t that easy, since Eve
actually had to physically run to a big box store, about five miles away, and
buy cleaning supplies for it. Then she started scrubbing, with Ginger doing the
same thing without being told, and Jay standing there, like he had something better
to do.

Eve cleared her throat.

“Cleaning? You were
just
about to jump in and start? I know, it’s dazzling, having such incredible women
here with you, but you’ll live. Honest. From now on, if you aren’t doing
something else, business related, I expect you to be wiping something down. For
now, explain the milkshake thing? You don’t have a machine for it. Are you hand
mixing them? That’s not a horrible idea.”

He grinned, which on him looked
vapid and annoying.

“The frozen machine things
stopped working a few weeks ago, not like they did, so we improvised. Pretty
clever, right?”

Eve nearly growled, but then
stopped.

“Actually,
yeah
. If you
don’t know how to get anything fixed, or how to do it yourself, that isn’t too
bad. Let me see here though… It probably just needs to be defrosted and reset.”
That turned out to be the case, since they didn’t clean their machines between
uses, normally just dumping in premade ice cream base each day. Then they sold
it as frozen yogurt, like there was no difference.

Eve sighed, and started making a
list of what they needed. It was pretty much more of everything, though they
had a decent start on the basic machinery, so at least there was that. There
was also, when they moved the larger of the two frozen base mixing machines
out, a dead rat underneath it. Not a little mouse, but a stinking, desiccated,
dead thing the size of her hand. She just cleaned it up, since it was kind of
clear that beating Jay wouldn’t fix anything. If he was more than a place
holder there, meant to keep the doors open, no one had ever told him about it.

At two he got to leave, having
taken several breaks, which were mandated by law. That he came back baked from
each one was illegal, but it wasn’t
her
job to fix that. Cormack was
there after all. Talking to people on the phone, nearly constantly. There was
an hour long gap until the next worker got there, which showed either that she
was late, Jay couldn’t read, or that there was a major weakness in their
scheduling. The short, chubby, white girl seemed to think it was everyone else.

Definitely
not her though. No matter what.

“My schedule said to be here at
three when I left yesterday! I can’t be expected to come in if I don’t know I’m
supposed to.” She sounded angry about it, but Eve just smiled and shrugged.

“No big thing, this time. You’d
be Deena, then?” She’d read it off the schedule. It was pretty clear that the
thing
had
been changed, but it was done in pencil, which kind of invited
that. Her guess was that Jay had wanted to get off early, for some reason. One
that would involve smoking things, she didn’t doubt.

“Wait… Who are you, and what
happened here?” She looked confused, and didn’t seem smart enough for it to be
fake. She stared at Ginger for a long time, then shook her head. “Am I
not
working today?”

Eve was about to answer, when
Cormack came out of the back, finally. He looked normal for him, which this
time of day meant there was a fixed grin.

“Ah, there you all are! I’m the
new ambassador, and store manager, since we have two staffs working here on
different projects. Deena? I’m Cormack. These are Ginger and Eve, who both came
from the corporate office to help us get up to speed here. We have a lot of
work, and remodeling, that will be taking place over the next month or two, so
be ready for that. Also, we’re getting uniforms. The store provides them, for
free, so it won’t cost you anything. We’re going to be tightening things up and
improving, from here on out.” He let his smile get bigger though, showing a
nice row of very white teeth. They weren’t perfectly straight, but no one would
think twice about it if they noticed the fact.

Deena, for all she seemed a bit
slow, let her chin come up, and then looked at each of them, closely.

“Is this because of the Vampires?
My mom was telling me about that. She babysits Gina for me, when I have work.
That’s my baby girl.” Then she went silent, as if that news was over sharing.
It might have been, but Eve smiled, and so did Cormack. Friendly was better,
after all.

Ginger just kept cleaning, moving
faster than was strictly Human.

Cormack regarded the short girl,
who might have been twenty-five, though it was hard to tell, and then tilted
his head to the right, just a bit. Enough to get her to notice him.

“That’s right. This is actually
an embassy, so we need it to be up and running, but also looking nice, all the
time. It will be a change, and not everyone that works here right now will make
the cut. If you do, however, you’ll be earning nearly twice what you did
before. So it’s worth trying for. It won’t be easy though, I’ll warn you right
now. Still, I hear tell that you already have the job, and that
has
to
make it easier for you to keep it than for someone else to come in and get.”