CHAPTER 17: SHOPPING WITH SATAN

Shannon’s mouth formed a little O. She thought about having to explain to a doctor why she had just grown bony protrusions from her wrists and jabbed them into an unsuspecting, blood-covered ER admit dying of acute lead poisoning. Then she considered just how badly she really wanted to be wiping butts and giving IVs for the rest of her life, then thought of the roomful of cash in her parent’s house.

“I can see where that might get to be a problem,” Shannon said reluctantly. Clearing her throat uncomfortably, she opened the door and got out of the car. She grabbed the sandals from the backseat and handed them to him. “Put those on. This place has a no-shoes policy.”

“You don’t want me to stay and guard the books?” Masaaki asked, sounding utterly serious.

Shannon frowned and lowered her head to peer through the open door. Where an intelligent person would have said, yes, please, stay here and guard those very important half-priced used books while I procure us some food, Shannon blurted, “Why would I want you to do that?”

“Someone might try to steal them,” Masaaki said. “You keep telling me to keep a hold on my swords because someone might steal them.”

Which was, unfortunately, an unhappy truth when dealing with the public. Yet Shannon still didn’t understand. “They’re used books. Who cares? They take them, we’ll get you more.” She was actually more worried about his Action Jeans, because she really didn’t want to have to go back to that Wal-Mart for the next decade.

Masaaki frowned down at the books, then up at her. “They’re not valuable?”

Shannon shrugged. “Knowledge is power, I guess. You can stay here and watch them, if you want, but as much as I hate to say it, I’d kinda like to have you along to help pick out food. I’m running on fumes, here. I think I’d go apeshit on you if I brought back a couple hundred in groceries and you told me the grapefruit was too restrictive.”

He grinned slowly. “Apeshit, eh?”

“Yes. Totally. Apeshit.” She had to share his grin. “You coming?”

Masaaki unbuckled himself and got out of the car. As he shut the door, Shannon said, “Stay with me, and remember the Golden Rule. Don’t talk, and don’t pull your sword. Ever. Get me?”

Masaaki made a face. “As you wish.”

“I do wish.” She locked the car and headed toward the front entrance of the supermarket.

He grunted and fell into stride beside her.

Right off the bat, Masaaki started getting double-takes from grocery-laden shoppers as they passed, headed to the parking-lot. Several adults outright stared, and at least a dozen kids pointed.

“You are so wearing jeans next time we go out,” Shannon gritted.

Masaaki grunted, and again, she wasn’t sure if it was an agreement or a dismissal. She frowned at him, then stepped through the automatic rolling doors and grabbed a cart. She had to wait impatiently as Masaaki played with the motion-detector, drawing even more stares, before he caught up with her inside the store.

“Who is manning the door?” Masaaki said, jogging up beside her.

“Elves,” Shannon said. “Stay close.” The grocery store was packed, and in all black, sporting swords, Masaaki was standing out like a sore thumb.

“Elves?!” Masaaki cried, twisting to peer back at the double-doors. Before he could turn to go back, Shannon grabbed him by the belt and started tugging him after her. “First up, fruit,” she said, stopping at the displays of oranges and apples. “You eat fruit.” She gestured at the collected foodstuffs. “Pick your poison.”

She realized afterwards that that probably hadn’t been the best thing to say, given the situation, because she spent the next ten minutes trying to persuade Masaaki that none of the ‘grotesquely massive’ fruits were, in fact, poisonous.

“They are much larger than I remember,” Masaaki muttered, lifting an apple from the stand and peering at it.

“Modern cultivars and fertilizer,” Shannon said. “Probably taste a lot different, too.”

Before she could stop him, Masaaki bit into the apple and tasted it.

“You can’t do that!” Shannon cried, snatching it away from him—or trying to. He quickly hefted it out of her reach before she could get to it.

“Why not?” Masaaki asked, chewing. “It’s the first real food I’ve tasted in centuries, aside from the meal they served on the train in Texas.”

Realizing they were attracting the attention of the produce grocery employees—and that Masaaki was holding a half-chewed apple up for the entire store’s inspection—Shannon gritted, “Masaaki. Give me the apple.”

There must have been something illuminative in her tone, because he slowly lowered the apple to her outstretched hand, looking at her like she’d just grown fangs.

“Thank you,” Shannon said. She pulled out a plastic produce-bag, flipped it open, and stuffed the half-eaten apple inside. “Go find more. Touch all you want, but don’t taste.” She dropped the apple in the cart.

He was still glaring at her. “How are you supposed to tell if it’s any good if you can’t taste it? We can just pay for what I eat.” He reached for another apple.

“They go by weight, you inbred kangaroo,” she growled. “They can’t weigh it properly it half of it is missing.”

Masaaki cocked his head at the fresh apple in his hand. “Oh.”

“Is there something I can help you with?” an all-too-helpful female grocery store attendant asked, approaching with a cheery smile.

“Cultural differences. I’m taking care of it,” Shannon gritted, forcing a smile at the pretty blonde woman. “Thanks.”

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“Okay, well, let me know if you need anything.” The woman took a really long look at Masaaki, then walked off to start arranging onions.

Under Shannon’s watchful eye, Masaaki very carefully picked a fruit or two from each stand, or, with the smaller items like cherries, a single handful. It took almost an hour for him to move on to vegetables, closely examining each item, asking its name in turn. By the time they moved on to bread, Shannon was so tired she was barely able to stay upright. What was worse, despite his tiny quantities, pretty soon, Shannon had a basket full of produce and other edibles.

“Okay,” Shannon said, once they had exhausted the raw and baked foods, “you said you like tea?”

“I love tea,” Masaaki said, with such emphasis that Shannon had to turn and see if he was being sarcastic. He wasn’t.

“Huh. Um, okay.” She led him over to the tea aisle. “Now, before you go nuts, most of this isn’t the same stuff you think of as tea. We call ‘tea’ anything that you pour hot water over. I’m pretty sure you’re talking about that putrescent green stuff, right?”

He turned and squinted at her. “‘Putrescent?’”

“Yeah, I’m a coffee girl, myself.” She sighed and glanced at the rack. “Okay. Let’s get you some of this, and this, and this…” She randomly pulled eight different boxes and four canisters of loose-leaf tea off of the shelf, a little of everything, and dumped it on top of the cart. “I am so ready for bed. Let’s go.”

“Don’t I get to choose?” Masaaki asked, eying the tea dubiously.

“Not this time,” Shannon said. “Too tired. Need sleep. I’m probably gonna need help to keep from falling asleep on the drive back. You’ll have to talk to me or something, keep me awake.” She spun the cart around and started them towards check-out.

Masaaki hung back, eying the racks upon racks of tea with longing, then reluctantly followed her from the tea-aisle.

They got checked out, this time with Masaaki only making a minor stir as he got up much too close to watch the cashier scan the goods over the laser, then overcharged her several times when he picked up a loaf of bread that had already passed through and swiped it over the laser six or seven times just to hear the beep.

“I don’t care,” Shannon said, when the clerk lifted the phone to call the manager. “Just let me pay.” She was so running on fumes, and she still had to get gas. She pulled out her billfold, slapped down enough cash to cover it, and didn’t even count the change when she stuffed it back into her purse.

“We already paid, Masaaki,” she said, when he picked up a pack of gum.

Freezing, giving her a wary look, the samurai slowly put the gum back on the rack.

Somehow, Shannon got to the car, got the groceries packed into the back seat, and returned the cart to the convenient little cart-return that was about half a mile away. By the time she finally settled into the driver’s seat, she was so tired she had to think about where she had left her keys.

In her pocket. Duh. She grabbed them, jammed them into the ignition, and got the car backing out of the parking-lot.

Masaaki was already once again studying the martial arts books. “Your land is ugly, Shannon Meeks,” he said, as he looked over the proper way to do a roundhouse kick.

Shannon squinted at him as she drove them to the gas station. “What?”

“Too many roads and unattended courtyards,” Masaaki said, flipping the page. “Just flat stone. No gardens or looking-pools.”

Shannon grimaced. “Well, our town had the dubious honor of being named one of the ugliest places to live in America.”

He grunted.

“They tried to spruce it up a bit after that. Tried to hide all the concrete. Added some brass heads of moose and bears and stuff. Oh, and like a couple hundred concrete pillars with river-rocks stuck into them. Still trying to figure out whose stupid idea that was.”

“It’s ugly,” Masaaki said.

Shannon gave him a long look. “Okay. Tell ya what. Tomorrow, when I’m not dead tired, I’ll take you up to Eklutna, show you what Alaska can really be like, then we can head back here and get you signed up for some classes. Okay?”

He grunted again.

Shannon sighed and pulled up to the pump at the service station. Parking the car and turning off the ignition, she cracked her door. “Look, see that pump right there?” she pointed. “I’m going to be standing right there the whole time, so you don’t need to get out, okay?”

Masaaki looked, and she saw the consideration on his face anyway, then he grunted and went back to his karate manual.

Sighing, Shannon stepped out of the car and thumped the door shut. She saw Masaaki glance up to look at her, then return his attention to the book.

As Shannon started going through the motions of filling up the Mercedes, a guy pulled up beside her in a big, steel-gray pickup truck. He got out of the cab on the other side of the pump, dressed in jeans and a Carhartt jacket, and grinned at her. “Heya, miss.” He started fumbling with his gas-cap. In the bed of the truck beside him was a mottled brown beast of a dog, probably a two-hundred-pounder, at least.

“Hey,” Shannon said. “That a mastiff?”

“Yep,” he said. “English. Brindle. Ain’tcha, Angus?” Grinning, he reached up and rubbed the big dog between the huge floppy black ears with obvious affection, to which the dog licked his face with a gigantic pink tongue. Shannon felt a pang of longing, wishing she could have a dog.

Then, Well, why the fuck can’t you?

Because, she told herself politely, Dogs try to eat me. Vampire steak. Mmmm.

The guy must’ve seen it, because he stepped back and gestured, “Go ahead and pet him. He’s harmless.”

Shannon winced, thinking about just how much of her arm the dog could stuff into those massive jaws. “Uh…I dunno…” Dogs hated her. With a flesh-ripping, hand-mauling passion, hated her.

The guy laughed. “Go on. He’s a big lover-boy.”

It didn’t look like it wanted to eat her. It was just grinning that doggy smile, drooling, begging her with its big brown eyes to step forward…

…so it could eat her?

“Oh go on,” the man laughed. His pale green eyes were dancing. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Oh yeah, buddy? How about a vampire? But, timidly, Shannon took a step forward and reached up to give the dog a tentative between the ears. Its eyes rolled back and it started panting, obviously enjoying himself. Shannon giggled in surprise as it started licking her hand, then realized she was petting a stranger’s dog, at night, at a gas station. She quickly retreated to her side of the concrete divide. “Nice dog,” she managed.

“Yeah. Angus is one of the good guys.” The man finished scratching the lucky pup behind the ears and went back to the pump. The guy’s skin was an off-color, almost silver. God, she was tired. She yawned and checked her watch. Fucking twelve-oh-clock. She hadn’t been up this long at one time since Freshman year.

“Nice night,” the guy said, as they fueled up beside each other.

“Yeah,” Shannon said. She hated it when creepy guys tried to talk to her at night at the pump. Granted, with a really cute dog, the guy wasn’t so creepy, but she was never good at small-talk and she still found it highly uncomfortable. Besides, she’d heard that was how some serial-killers got girls to come home with them. Get them lovin’ on their dog, show ‘em hey, see, I pet dogs, I’m not so bad…

“You look wasted,” the guy said, yanking the green diesel nozzle of the pump from his side and slipping it into his tank. “Night shift?”

“No, I gotta fucking babysit a yatagarasu.”

His hands hesitated on the nozzle. Slowly, he turned back to her.

Shannon yawned again and glanced at the numbers as they clicked continuously upward on the register. “God, mom’s car holds a lot of gas.” She was using her own personal debit card, which only had a couple hundred bucks on it. She’d still been waiting reimbursement for house-sitting. The nozzle finally clicked at forty bucks, even. Yawning again, Shannon put the nozzle away and took her receipt. Then she started twisting the gas-cap back into place.

“Seeya,” Shannon said, waving at the guy.

“Later.” The guy stepped around the pump and watched her get into her car, which Shannon thought was creepy, but it was late and pumping gas was boring, and the guy was probably wondering why his dog-petting routine hadn’t worked. Putting the Mercedes into drive, she spun out of the parking lot and headed down the road. Halfway home, she had to roll down the window, switch on the music, and get Masaaki to talk to her, just to keep from falling asleep.

When she finally parked them back at her parents’ house and started helping Masaaki unpack the groceries, she heard the big diesel truck of the dog-musher rumble past her driveway, heading home. Probably drunk again.