Page 32 of Missing Moon
As soon as we’re alone in the Momvan and driving toward Klamath, he glances over at me. “Did that really happen last night?”
“That depends. What do you think?”
“That it really happened.” He wipes his eyes. “It feels like a bad acid trip. Get taken by a vampire, only to end up having a woman come out of nowhere and kick his ass with some sort of magical sword.”
“You saw that, eh?”
“Kind of hard to miss.”
“So, umm.” I give him side eye. “Please tell me that I’m not going to end up on your YouTube channel.”
“None of this is.” He keeps rubbing his eyes. “I don’t want to get put in a mental institution. Or worse.”
“Dead?”
“No, losing subscribers.”
I laugh.
“I’m serious.” He lets his hand fall into his lap. “People watch my channel because they’re interested in ghosts. If I start going on and on about vampires being real, they’re going to think I’ve gone fake.”
“Oh. Well, yeah, I suppose. Vampires are good at keeping a low profile.” I fidget at the steering wheel. “Usually.”
Emerson turns his head toward me. “What do you mean by that? Are they going to come after me?”
“Nah. I mean, it’s kinda unusual for them to… how do I put it?” I tilt my head side to side, thinking. “You know the old adage ‘don’t shit where you eat?’”
“Can’t say I do, but it makes sense. Not sure how it applies here.”
I exhale. “On the way into Klamath yesterday, I got warned by a random man at a gas station that it’s a dangerous area. Unsolved murders and such. This place wasn’t like that when I grew up here. Got a feeling there’s more than one vampire in the area and they’re not being terribly subtle.”
Emerson cringes. “I should get the hell out of here.”
“Good idea.”
He looks straight ahead, wobbling a bit from the bumpy dirt road. “Are you going to hunt them?”
“Probably,” I say nonchalantly. “Whether I want to or not, I got a feeling it’ll come to that.”
“You could leave, too.”
I shrug. “Nah. I’d feel responsible for anyone they kill.”
“You don’t look too worried.” Emerson lets out a manic sort of laugh. “Guess it’s kinda sexist of me to think you should be terrified.”
I smile at him. “I’m not exactly ordinary.”
“You have a magic sword.”
“I do.” I slow down for a turn onto the actual paved road that’ll take us to Klamath. There’s no traffic. Never is.
“How do you have a magic swo—you know what, never mind.” He yawns, then wipes both hands down his face. “I don’t want to know. Maybe all this is a hallucination or something and you’re not even real.”
“Whatever helps you cope, bub.”
“So, vampires are real.”
“They are,” I say. Yeah, he’s definitely getting his memory wiped.