"Can you describe this stranger?"
"No need to bother with that," said Mr. Rooney; he'd come out of his store and stood on the porch in his white lab coat. He had on his grandfatherly face again, and a warm smile. "The girl just got confused, is all. There's nobody but me behind that counter." His smile thinned, just a little. "In fact, she got so confused she forgot to pay me for those pills she has."
Claire blinked. "I didn't - "
The cop turned toward her. "Is that true?" Before she could answer, he plucked the sack from her hand and looked into it. "No receipt. You didn't pay for these?"
"I did! In cash!"
Mr. Rooney was shaking his head sadly. "No, I'm sorry, but that's just not true. She didn't pay. She ran out of here and straight for her friend's car. I think she might have been planning to take off while you were talking to me."
It made it sound like Claire had called in a false alarm, just to steal the pills. "No, that's not true! I paid him for it! Twenty-seven fifty! And there was someone in the store, behind the counter. I saw him!"
"Can you describe him?"
She struggled to remember. Average, average, average. No matter how much she tried to find something detailed, it all faded into . . . gray. He just wasn't memorable. "He was average height," she said. "And . . . had blond hair. Fair skin, I think. Maybe blue eyes."
"Average, blond, fair skinned, blue eyes," the cop summed up. "Miss, that describes a lot of men in Morganville, including me - you realize that?"
"I know."
"What was he wearing?"
And that, Claire realized, was a complete blank. Clothes, obviously, but she couldn't remember a color of shirt, or pants, or patterns. Nothing.
The cop read her face and shook his head. "Pay the man for the pills, miss."
"But - "
"Pay him or we settle this downtown." He was polite, but hard underneath, and Claire gritted her teeth and dug out her wallet again. Twenty-seven fifty. She had thirty dollars left, and Mr. Rooney folded it up and put it in his pocket. "I'll get your change for you next time," he said. "I'm sure it's just a plain misunderstanding, Officer. No problem."
"All right." The cop touched the brim of his hat. "You-all have a nicer day." He gave Claire a lingering look, as if she were the villain of the day, and walked back to his cruiser.
Claire glared at Mr. Rooney. He was smirking, and he turned and went into his store before the policeman pulled away. She didn't dare follow.
"Rooney got you, huh?" Eve was smiling, but her eyes were hard. "Don't sweat it, CB. He tries to shake down girls all the time if they're getting birth control. Some kind of personal thing with him. You're lucky you got off just getting charged twice. He's put girls in jail for it before, claiming they stole from him." She sounded like she spoke from personal experience. "He is a prime grade-A jackhole, believe me. And if there was anywhere else . . ."
But as usual, in Morganville, there wasn't.
Claire no longer cared about her average-looking stranger, but as she started to get back in the car, she saw him again. The policeman had pulled out and was halfway down the block, Rooney was in his store happily counting his ill-gotten gains, and that man, that stranger, was standing at the corner of the building, watching her.
Claire paused and stared back.
He stepped out of sight.
Not again.
Claire bailed and took off running, pulling her cell phone as she ran. She didn't mean to follow him; she just wanted to get close enough to snap his picture. Then she could prove what she was talking about. Photo evidence.
"Claire, wait!" Eve called from behind her. She cursed, and Claire heard her getting out of the car, but she didn't slow down. She couldn't. She'd seen how fast this - this thing could move. She no longer thought of it as a man, she realized; there was something fundamentally wrong about it. It wasn't a vampire, or she didn't think it was, but it was . . . something else.
Maybe something worse.
She skidded to a stop as she rounded the corner, eyes wide, because behind the building sat a wide, empty field. A block away, at least, were some dilapidated houses turned a dull gray by the relentless sun.
But no sign of her mysterious stranger. None at all.
"Claire! Do not go running off like that!" Eve shouted from behind her. She skidded to a stop, running into Claire, then grabbed her and shook her. "What the hell? I am not going to be telling Shane that you're - "
"He's gone," Claire said. She pulled free of Eve's hold and looked around, really looked. There were some puddles on the ground from the recent rain, and a drainage grate. Maybe he'd gone down that? But it was heavily rusted, and would have made a hell of a lot of noise if he'd moved it.
She hadn't heard a thing.
"He? What he? He who?"
"The - " It didn't matter. Claire shook her head. "Never mind."
"Yeah, good. Let's go, dummy - hanging out in deserted vacant lots around here is a prime way to get yourself dead. Haven't I taught you anything?" Eve hustled her around the building again, and back to the hearse. "I promised the boys we'd be back in thirty. We've got to move it."
Claire got in the passenger seat and strapped in. As Eve made the ponderous giant circle that was required to turn the hearse around, Claire stared at the edge of the building where she'd last seen her mysterious visitor.
And there he was, stepping out of nowhere, staring at her. Mr. Average.
"Stop!" Claire yelled. She threw the door open, but instead of chasing him this time, she grabbed her cell and took a picture. Eve slammed on the brakes, yelling inarticulately, but before she could manage to protest, Claire had already slammed the door shut again. "Go!"
"Make up your mind, traffic light!" Eve said, and accelerated again. "I'm afraid to ask, but what was that?"
Claire opened up her photo album on the phone. There, captured in a rush of digitized light, was the rough brick wall of Goode's Drugs, and a dark figure. Except it looked almost . . . translucent. And there were no details to it, just shadows. It's a bad camera, she thought, but that wasn't it, not completely.
Her visitor was there, and not there. Schr?dinger's cat, come to life - neither dead nor alive, existing nor missing.
"Eve," Claire said, and showed her the phone. "What do you see?"
Eve took a fast glance at the picture, then went back to piloting the hearse. "Side of the building," she said. "What?"
"Nothing else?"
"Look, this isn't the time to play a hidden-object game." Eve looked again, and shook her head. "Nothing."
"Not even a shadow?"
"No!"
Claire clicked the phone off and settled back in her seat, thinking furiously. Why can I see him when Eve can't? It wasn't just Eve. Mr. Rooney might have been lying, but he could have just been unable to spot the stranger, too.
Very, very odd.
The other grocery store on the far side of town was like the Food King, only with less variety. They were, at least, still stocked up. Claire and Eve retrieved their necessary items, and then Eve vanished toward the candy aisle while Claire gathered up chili ingredients. Shane hadn't asked for them, but he would, probably just as soon as they got back home.
She was getting garlic when she saw her mysterious stranger again through the windows outside the store. This time, he wasn't watching her.
He was talking to someone else, but she couldn't see who it was. Well, at least someone else in this town can actually see him, Claire thought, and put the garlic in her basket as she slowly walked at an angle toward the front, trying to see who Mr. Shadow's friend might be.
It was Oliver.
Claire instinctively took a step back, then quickly turned her back and began looking over a selection of pies.
When she risked another glance over her shoulder, the two of them weren't talking anymore. Oliver was standing there, staring off into space, and as she watched, the stranger leaned forward, touched his fingertips to Oliver's broad pale forehead . . .
And Oliver didn't move. Didn't blink.
Something was wrong.
Claire found a display of hand mirrors and grabbed one, which she angled up to see what was happening outside the store. For a second she thought she'd taken too long, but then she focused her mirror on the right place, and saw that the stranger was walking away, toward the corner of the building.