Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(62)

He winced at the idea of him in a suit. Especially a suit from this place. “You’ve got a sign in the window,” he said. “A car? You’re selling a car?”

“Oh, that thing? Yes. I didn’t think anybody would ever ask about it.” She pursed her lips, blue eyes vague and yet somehow calculating. “You want to see it?”

“Sure.” He tried not to seem too eager about it.

Miss Bernard led him out the back door, to a shed that leaned precariously in the back. At one time it had probably held supplies, or maybe even horses. Now it was full of junk, and crammed into the middle of the junk . . .

A hell of a car.

Shane blinked at it. Under the layers of dust and cobwebs, it looked like a sweet vintage Charger—big, black, and intimidating. “Uh . . . that’s it?”

“Yes. It was my son’s. He’s gone.” Whether Miss Bernard meant dead or just departed from Morganville, Shane couldn’t tell, but he thought she meant dead gone. She looked very sad, and those big, vague eyes filled with tears for a moment. “He just loved this car. But I’m not as well-off as I used to be, and I could sure use the money.”

He felt very uncomfortable, seeing her like this, so he focused on the car. “Does it run?”

“I expect so. Here.” She retrieved a set of keys from a hook on the wall and handed them over. “Start it up.”

It took some reconfiguring of the junk pile to even open the driver’s side door, but once he was in it, Shane felt something kind of like instant love. The car was old, a little shabby, but it felt right.

The starter ground a little, sluggish from its long sleep, and finally the engine caught fire with a cough and a belch of exhaust, and settled into a low, bass rumble.

Sweet.

Shane stuck his head out and said, “Can I take it around the block?”

Miss Bernard nodded. He didn’t ask twice, just backed it out, down the alley, and cruised around, getting the feel of it. It was a hell of a nice car. Little bit of a shimmy on the turns, probably needed some work on the suspension, and a tune-up. But overall . . .

Yeah, it was going to be way out of his range. He could just feel it.

As Shane turned it back to the store, he ended up sitting at a stoplight. A battered old wrecker pulled in next to him, and a voice called, “Hey, that your car?”

“Just test-driving it,” Shane called back. The driver was Radovic, the dude from the motorcycle shop; he worked part-time at Doug’s Garage. Everybody called him Rad. He looked like central casting’s idea of a tough biker dude, all right.

Rad nodded back at him. “Sweet. Hey, you buy it, you bring it by the shop. I can make you a deal on murdering it out.”

Shane raised his eyebrows, but before he could figure out what the hell to say to that, the light changed, and Rad charged off with the wrecker, and Shane turned back to the store, where he pulled the car back into the shed, turned it off, patted the steering wheel, and got out to hand the keys to Miss Bernard.

“It’s great,” he said. “Out of my league, though. Thanks.”

“What do you mean, young man, out of your league?”

“Too expensive.”

She blinked. “I didn’t even tell you how much it would be yet!”

“I know what it’s worth.”

She waved that aside with an impatient old-lady gesture. “I just want it gone. It reminds me so much of Steve, and I . . . just don’t want to see it anymore. And the money would be ever so much help. I need to buy medicine, you know. How much can you pay?”

His turn to blink. “Um . . . I don’t know.” He had five hundred dollars. He chewed his lip a second, then said, “Three fifty?” Because she’d bargain, right?

“Sold,” she said. And he instantly felt like a worm. Before he could try to tell her he was going to pay more, she gave him back the keys. Shane cleared his throat, gave it up, and reached into his pocket. He’d been carrying around the cash for days, just in case, and now he peeled off the three fifty and handed it over. Miss Bernard dug the title card out of the glove compartment and signed it, then thrust it at him. “Don’t forget to get insurance. They’re really hard on you if you don’t have insurance.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“And remember to change the oil. Steve was very particular about his oil changes.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She patted his cheek with her hard, dry hand. “You always were a sweet boy,” she said. “I’m sorry about the troubles your family had.”

He nodded, suddenly not able to say anything at all, and slid into the driver’s seat. This time, the car started up without a hitch.

He drove it straight to the car wash, a creaking old thing with barely working sprayers and tired old vacuum cleaners. He found spiders in the vents, and an old nest on the engine that was already turning brown from the heat and probably would have burst into flame anytime. He scrubbed off the dust and shined the paint and cleaned the windows, and when he drove it away, glistening in the sun, he felt like he’d made the deal of the century.

And like he’d ripped off a little old lady, too. Which wasn’t so great.

He went straight to the garage.

? ? ?

Radovic was there; the wrecker was parked in the front, big hook still swinging from its earlier motion on the road. Shane parked the Charger and went inside, where he found Rad chugging down what looked like a beer and reading a bike magazine.