"I eat ketchup!"
Simon blinked. He'd heard many excuses, but that one was new. "You don't eat ketchup."
"Yeah, I do."
Simon's jaw tightened. This was stupid. "How could you possibly survive on ketchup?"
Charlie stared up at him with big eyes. "In a very sad way?"
Simon looked down at the miserable creature. What was wrong with this vampire?
"Do you think I'm an idiot?" Simon raised the stake higher. "Every vampire claims they're different. You're all the same."
Charlie's eyes went even wider with panic. Something shifted in his posture—a tensing of muscles, a subtle change in stance.
His survival instincts kicked in.
The vampire's form blurred.
One second Charlie was pressed against the washing machine, the next he was a streak of motion.
Super-speed.
Simon's gaze flicked to the door of the laundromat, expecting to see the vampire try to escape that way.
But no.
Instead of zooming out the door, Charlie missed it by a mile, bouncing off the side wall like a ricocheting bullet. He slammed into the soap dispenser, sending detergent cascading across the floor, then rebounded into the elderly woman's folding table, causing clean laundry to erupt into the air like confetti.
The college kid dove behind a bench.
Charlie careened toward the front windows, but still, his trajectory was all wrong. He hit the opposite wall with a meaty thud, spun sideways, and crashed through a row of plastic chairs.
Simon stared. There was nothing else he could do. Nothing he could do but wonder.
What the hell was he watching?
Vampires were supposed to be gruesome monsters, not bouncy balls.
While Simon tried to make sense of what he was seeing, Charlie's speed carried him in a wild arc past the front door, straight into the back wall. He bounced off as if he was made of rubber, arms windmilling, and toppled backward into an overflowing laundry cart.
The cart lurched into motion.
Charlie's eyes met Simon's for one brief, terrified moment as he rolled past, half-buried in someone else's clean clothes.
The cart hit the door's push-bar perfectly and burst out onto the sidewalk.
Simon stood in the ruins of the laundromat, surrounded by spilled detergent and scattered socks, watching the most feared vampire in the city disappear down the street in a laundry cart.
The elderly woman picked up a fallen towel.
"Young people these days," she muttered.
Chapter
Three
Charlie stumbled off the laundry cart three blocks from the laundromat, his legs shaking from adrenaline. The cart rolled to a stop against a fire hydrant.
