CHAPTER 27
Two weeks of hiding, one reluctantly-conferred Deaconship, and two dozen pounds of raw ground beef later, they left the motel as free men and women. Reginald found himself still hungry, and growing increasingly intolerant of dead blood.
Maurice went out and hunted during their hotel stay, but due to Reginald’s terrible hunting record, Nikki offered Reginald her neck for feeding. The idea was simultaneously intoxicating and improper. They’d shared room and bread and board for two weeks, and they’d played endless games of euchre after teaching Claire the game, but there seemed to be something simmering between the two of them that had begun on the night Nikki had watched Reginald play the piano. Reginald didn’t want to jinx it. And besides, it felt like pity. If the possibility of a free, mutually satisfying exchange of blood was possible down the road, he wanted to wait for it, impossible though it might seem.
So he waited. He kept eating raw meat, his throat increasingly burning for the real thing.
Maurice, Reginald, and Nikki returned to work on the following Monday. Berger gave them all an earful, accusing them of conspiracy and abandonment and disloyalty. The company had been forced to scramble, to improvise, and to hire expensive, premium tech freelancers. Berger’s admonitions meant nothing to Reginald. He didn’t care if he ended up fired. He told Berger, with zero emotion in his voice, that he’d had a death in the family. After a lot of moaning and blame-laying, Berger relented. After a lot of feather-rustling and chest-beating, he did the same for Maurice and Nikki, and over that first week back, night shift life returned to more or less normal.
The first night, Reginald went to get his 11:00 cup of coffee and when he returned to his cubicle and sat down, he was greeted with the predictable low, purring sound of a Whoopee Cushion. But this time, instead of putting his face in his hands and quietly throwing the thing away, he stood up.
Walker’s perfect chin and tombstone teeth popped up over the cubicle wall. He jumped a little when he saw that Reginald was already standing, and that they were face-to-face.
“Welcome back to the nightshift, Reggie!” he said brightly.
Reginald looked deep into Walker’s eyes, then grabbed his brainstem with a low, seductive voice.
“Hey, Todd,” he said. “Want to come with me to the kitchen for a bite?”