Nora Roberts - Blood Brothers

That got a laugh out of Meg as she poured Quinn’s coffee. “Being quick on your feet’s a strong advantage. I’ll get that cereal for you.”

“Why,” Cal wondered aloud as he forked up another dripping bite of pancake, “would anyone willingly choose to eat trail mix for breakfast?”

“It’s an acquired taste. I’m still acquiring it. But knowing myself, and I do, if I keep coming in here for breakfast, I’ll eventually succumb to the allure of the pancake. Does the town have a gym, a health club, a burly guy who rents out his Bowflex?”

“There’s a little gym down in the basement of the community center. You need a membership, but I can get you a pass on that.”

“Really? You’re a handy guy to know, Cal.”

“I am. You want to change your order? Go for the gold, then the treadmill?”

“Not today, but thanks. So.” After she’d doctored her coffee, she picked up the cup with both hands, sipping as she studied him through the faint rise of steam. “Now that we’re having our second date-”

“How’d I miss the first one?”

“You bought me pizza and a beer and took me bowling. In my dictionary, that falls under the definition of date. Now you’re buying me breakfast.”

“Cereal and bananas. I do appreciate a cheap date.”

“Who doesn’t? But since we’re dating and all…” She took another sip as he laughed. “I’d like to share an experience with you.”

She glanced over as Meg brought her a white stoneware bowl heaped with cereal and sliced bananas. “Figured you’d be going for the two percent milk with this.”

“Perceptive and correct, thanks.”

“Get you anything else?”

“We’re good for now, Meg,” Cal told her. “Thanks.”

“Just give a holler.”

“An experience,” Cal prompted, as Meg moved down the counter.

“I had a dream.”

His insides tensed even before she began to tell him, in a quiet voice and in careful detail of the dream she’d had during the night.

“I knew it was a dream,” she concluded. “I always do, even during them. Usually I get a kick out of them, even the spooky ones. Because, you know, not really happening. I haven’t actually grown a second head so I can argue with myself, nor am I jumping out of a plane with a handful of red balloons. But this…I can’t say I got a charge out of it. I didn’t just think I felt cold, for instance. I was cold. I didn’t just think I felt myself hit and roll on the ground. I found bruises this morning that weren’t there when I went to bed. Fresh bruises on my hip. How do you get hurt in a dream, if it’s just a dream?”

You could, he thought, in Hawkins Hollow. “Did you fall out of bed, Quinn?”

“No, I didn’t fall out of bed.” For the first time, there was a whiff of irritation in her voice. “I woke up with my arms locked around the bedpost like it was my long-lost lover. And all this was before I saw that red-eyed little bastard again.”

“Where?”

She paused long enough to spoon up some cereal. He wasn’t sure if the expression of displeasure that crossed her face was due to the taste, or her thoughts. “Did you ever read King’s Salem’s Lot?”

“Sure. Small town, vampires. Great stuff.”

“Remember that scene? The little boys, brothers. One’s been changed after they snatched him off the path in the woods. He comes to visit his brother one night.”

“Nothing scarier than kiddie vampires.”

“Not much, anyway. And the vampire kid’s just hanging outside the window. Just floating out there, scratching on the glass. It was like that. He was pressed to the glass, and I’ll point out I’m on the second floor. Then he did a stylish back flip in the air, and poofed.”

He laid a hand over hers, found it cold, rubbed some warmth into it. “You have my home and cell numbers, Quinn. Why didn’t you call me?”

She ate a little more, then, smiling at Meg, held up her cup for a top-off. “I realize we’re dating, Cal, but I don’t call all the guys I go bowling with at three thirty in the morning to go: eek! I slogged through swamps in Louisiana on the trail of the ghost of a voodoo queen-and don’t think I don’t know how that sounds. I spent the night, alone, in a reputedly haunted house on the coast of Maine, and interviewed a guy who was reported to be possessed by no less than thirteen demons. Then there was the family of werewolves in Tallahassee. But this kid…”

“You don’t believe in werewolves and vampires, Quinn.”

She turned on the stool to face him directly. “My mind’s as open as a twenty-four-hour deli, and considering the circumstances, yours should be, too. But no, I don’t think this thing is a vampire. I saw him in broad daylight, after all. But he’s not human, and just because he’s not human doesn’t make him less than real. He’s part of the Pagan Stone. He’s part of what happens here every seven years. And he’s early, isn’t he?”

Yeah, he thought, her mind was always working and it was sharp as a switchblade. “This isn’t the best place to go into this any deeper.”

“Say where.”

“I said I’d take you to the stone tomorrow, and I will. We’ll get into more detail then. Can’t do it today,” he said, anticipating her. “I’ve got a full plate, and tomorrow’s better anyway. They’re calling for sun and forties today and tomorrow.” He hitched up a hip to take out his wallet. “Most of this last snow’ll be melted.” He glanced down at her boots as he laid bills on the counter to cover both their tabs. “If you don’t have anything more suitable to hike in than those, you’d better buy something. You won’t last a half mile otherwise.”

“You’d be surprised how long I can last.”

“Don’t know as I would. I’ll see you tomorrow if not before.”

Quinn frowned at him as he walked out, then turned back as Meg slid her rag down the counter. “Sneaky. You were right about that.”

“Known the boy since before he was born, haven’t I?”

Amused, Quinn propped an elbow back on the bar as she toyed with the rest of her cereal. Apparently a serious scare in the night and mild irritation with a man in the morning was a more effective diet aid than any bathroom scale. Meg struck her as a comfortable woman, wide-hipped in her brown cords and flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up at the elbows. Her hair curled tight as a poodle’s fur in a brown ball around a soft and lined face. And there was a quick spark in her hazel eyes that told Quinn she’d be inclined to talk.

“So, Meg, what else do you know? Say about the Pagan Stone.”

“Buncha nonsense, you ask me.”

“Really?”

“People just get a little”-she circled her finger at her ear-“now and again. Tip too much at the bottle, get all het up. One thing leads to another. Good for business though, the speculation, if you follow me. Get plenty of flatlanders in here wondering about it, asking about it, taking pictures, buying souvenirs.”

“You never had any experiences?”

“Saw some people usually have good sense acting like fools, and some who got a mean streak in them acting meaner for a spell of time.” She shrugged. “People are what people are, and sometimes they’re more so.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“If you want more about it, you should go on out to the library. There’s some books there written about the town, the history and whatnot. And Sally Keefafer-”

“Bowling Sally?”

Meg snorted a laugh. “She does like to bowl. Library director. She’ll bend your ear plenty if you ask her questions. She loves to talk, and never found a subject she couldn’t expound on till you wanted to slap some duct tape over her mouth.”

“I’ll do that. You sell duct tape here?”