“Didn’t you know? His baby mama’s from here. Lana? Lana Kent? Remember? Andhermom is fighting going into the memory unit at Shady Acres.Oh my god, that’s Simon Luckwood.”
Pinky grabs me by the elbow and tugs.
I nod to the ladies. “Right, then. Thank you for your time. Apologies once again.”
I smile at the crowd behind us while my man pulls harder. “Good afternoon. Lovely to see you all. Enjoy your fish—fish on astick?”
This entire burger bus keeps getting more and more fascinating.
I turn back to the window. “How do you keep it on a stick?”
“Duct tape,” Bea replies from deeper within the bus at the same time Daphne says “Superglue.”
“Is it not so flaky that it falls off the stick?”
They share yet one more look while my man tugs even harder on my arm and I continue to ignore him, which I’ll likely pay for later, but dammit, I want to see how this works.
Bea breaks eye contact with Daphne on a sigh.
“He did pay for it,” Bea grumbles.
“Fuck him—he sent you to jail,” Daphne replies. “He paid for your inconvenience. Not for fish.”
“Peter—Peter—Simon. Sorry. Peter was just such an amazing character, I—can I get a selfie? Wait. Wait, in Britain, you callthem anussie, don’t you? I saw that on another TV show. Can I get one of those?”
“Back up and let the man get his fish on a stick,” Daphne says to the man crowding Pinky and trying to get to me for a photograph.
“PETER JONES!”
The scream comes from entirely too close, and if everyone in the entire town of Athena’s Rest didn’t hear it, I’ll buy this burger bus myself.
But what I see when I turn?—
Bloody hell.
That’s the man Bea was arguing with.
Jake, was it?
And he’s charging me, and he’s close.
Too close.
I yelp and leap backward as Pinky growls and leaps forward, but Bea has beaten all of us.
One minute, a normal-looking-though-overzealous blond-haired, averagely built, American man is dashing at me, and the next, the woman I apparently sent to jail this morning is using a red ketchup bottle as a weapon.
Not by flinging the bottle at him.
Oh, no.
She’s squirting ketchup directly at him.
And it lands.
The thick red liquid hits him squarely in the middle of his face, splattering everywhere and making me think for a moment that his nose has exploded.
Someone behind us shouts in terror.
