There was a loop of his intestines lying on the ground, so I couldn't blame her.
"It's fine," I said."Just meet me at the food court later.This is going to take a fine touch."
"You really think you're going to get him motivated?"
"I have to try," I said.
"This is Daytona Beach all over again," Tamara said."Good effing luck."She bit into her pretzel with a huge chomp and shook her head as she walked out of the shop.
I picked at my pretzel, slurping my soda.Nagisa was quiet, staring at the ceiling, eyes glazed over.If not for the steady rise and fall of his chest, I would have assumed he was dead.Or.Permanently dead.Whatever it meant when a vampire couldn't regenerate.I had never really asked for the word before…
I got to the end of my soda and continued slurping as the ice melted.The noise echoed in the empty room.
"Can you not," Nagisa asked.
I slurped again.
"Rhonda, please kill her," Nagisa said.
Rhonda sucked on her vape, shaking her head at me.
"She left," I said.
"Can you come tilt my head to the door so I can see if you're telling the truth?"
"No," I said."Which one's your favorite?"
There was a pause.
"What?"
"Which comic book is your favorite?"I asked."You came here to die for a reason.Which story's your favorite?"
"I am a fan of the Man-Spider," Nagisa said."He's quite quippy."
"He's my favorite, too," I said."Tell me about when you first got into Man-Spider."
"It was the sixties," Nagisa said."I was a teenager.He first came out and Li Stanley had created this amazing creature—a person hiding a secret, who tried to fit in."
"What was your favorite arc?"
"Too many to count."
"Your favorite villain?"
"Orpheus the Undead Professor," Nagisa said.His shrunken face looked rapturous."His experiments had taught him to rewrite genetic structures.He harvested the genetics from a fruit bat, and thereafter he found himself a creature of the night, with a terrible compulsion for strawberries and other such sweets."
"I liked the gritty eighties version better," I said.
"I admit, the strawberry craving was a tad odd.Yet I could not help but see the resemblance.Orpheus was a strong role model for when I was turned."
"When did that happen?"
"I was sixteen, hence my youthful look."He waved a taloned, elongated hand over a face that looked like old leather wizened in the sun.
"That was a rough sixteen."
"It was the sixties.We did not have the same preservatives as you do now-a-days."
