Page 22 of Little Fangs

8. HARLAN

Those three vampires who’d been by the cabin weren’t popular in town, and they couldn’t be out in the day. We were confident in having an uneventful trip. A couple of rules. Keep it brief, and don’t go too far from the truck.

I kept that thought in my head as we went thrift shopping and finally bought clothes that fit. He didn’t have many clothes at the manor, so it was nice that he was able to get something new—or second-hand. We had the store to ourselves, it was a slow day in town, and so Micah went around with a cart, filling it up.

Doreen and Mark, the owners of the thrift shop were behind the counter. Doreen had just come back from the kitchen with a cup of coffee in hand for me.

“Your friend is filling up quite the cart,” she chuckled.

They were older, the age where they should’ve taken retirement, especially Mark, who was busy with his face in a newspaper, slowly nodding off to sleep.

“He came to me without much,” I said.

“Right, an apprentice,” she said. “Didn’t the government tell him he was coming here in the middle of fall?”

“I don’t know what they told him,” I said. “But he’s—” I spotted his head in the baseball cap appear and dip between the rails and racks of clothes. “I don’t think he’s staying long. He’s just here for some of my wisdom, I think.”

“Aw,” she cooed. “Well, I hope you can impart it to him.”

“Thanks, Doreen,” I said, taking a sip of the bitter, sharp black coffee, almost scalding the tip of my tongue. “This is strong.”

“Just the way Mark likes it,” she said, saying his name as if she was calling it.

Mark jerked upright in his chair, startled. He looked around, standing slightly before sitting again and noticing me and Doreen standing at the counter. “You’re gonna give me a heart attack,” he said. “Ooh. Is that coffee?”

She laughed. “Fresh for you,” she said, gesturing to his mug behind the counter. “And I’ve told you, if you’re tired, go upstairs and sleep.”

“I’m not tired,” he grumbled. “But if I am, it’s because of your snoring.”

I left as they got into an argument over snoring. Carrying the mug of coffee around, I searched for Micah. He was swiping through a rack of T-shirts, looking for something in his small to medium size. His basket was already filled with items.

“I don’t know if it’s cheap,” he said in a whisper. “I haven’t touched money in a while.”

“What?”

“Yeah. I just—I haven’t been allowed,” he said.

“That’s awful, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. But I—I really don’t know how much these things are, and you don’t have to pay for them all, just like the options.” He flashed a smile at me, and those adorable tiny fangs appeared at the corners. I wanted to kiss him, but maybe not here.

“Well, everything is pretty affordable,” I told him. “It’s only a couple of dollars an item, so really, you should go hard and stock up.”

His face lit up. “Really?”

“I know you’ll eventually have to go, and I’d rather you went with a suitcase than a knapsack or something,” I said, my chest deflating as the words came out. “I mean, I’m not telling you that you’ll be leaving soon, but you know . . . eventually.”

He continued to smile; I think he knew exactly what I was saying. “I’ve lived a long life, most of it indoors, but I know that everyone has to leave at some point.”

As I stared into the basket and at the rail he’d been sifting through, something hard lodged itself in my throat with just the sheer overwhelming thought that his body wasn’t going to change, he was going to exist like that forever, and anything he bought now might continue to exist on his body for a hundred years to come. This moment was a blip for him.

“If we can force those people out of town, then I could stay as long as I want,” he said. “But I don’t know even how that would happen. It’s not like they can be forced out of that house.”

“They can’t, but they also can’t force you out of town,” I told him.

“And I don’t want to leave now,” he said, smiling up at me.

I pushed the baseball cap forward on his head, trying to stop him from seeing how big he’d made me smile back at him. “I’ll grab you some underwear,” I told him. “Don’t worry, it’s all new stuff, they don’t get that second-hand.”