Odd Stuff Read Free Page B

was wrong. I was trying not to become annoyed with Mia, but it was increasingly hard not to become frustrated with the void of information she left by disappearing. 
    She mentioned I should try to steer clear of Vance because I was his type. As if it mattered to me if I were some jerk’s type! Newly divorced after a year of divorce court—a man was the last thing on my mind. Kind of like giving birth makes you okay with not having sex for six weeks…divorce made me okay with avoiding males for at least six years. 
    One couple came in while I read, looking for books on astral projection. I pointed to the shelves, having no idea what astral projection was or why anyone needed a book on it. After browsing for a few minutes, they held the book and a white candle out to me. “Is this a good candle for projection?” the woman wanted to know. 
    I sniffed the candle, which smelled like vanilla and spice. Nice . I flipped it over and looked at the tag on the bottom. Ten bucks for a freaking votive candle! Besides that, the tag read, Astral Projection Candle.  
    I handed it back. “Yup.”
    “Harv, go grab another one.”
    Harv did, and I rang up the candles and the book, which came to a whopping forty-six dollars. Good grief. No wonder Mia’s apartment was so nice. 
    By nine, I had fed Vickie and had her in bed. I was waiting on Sven, but surprisingly the coma I had been considering—to make the time go by faster—was forestalled by a rush of customers. 
    First, three teenage girls came in and dumped fifty-eight seventy-five on some rocks and incense. Then, two very creepy men bought a crystal ball and four wands for four-eighty-eight. Like four-hundred-eighty-eight dollars . Finally, Sven showed up, just as a woman asked me about our jade selection. 
    Sven waved me away from the counter. “Go make sure Vickie is asleep, and I will take care of the shop for the last hour.”
    “Thanks. It’s insane, the stuff these people buy.” 
    He snorted in laughter and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Honey. These are the real ones. The ones during the day are the tourists. At night, the real boogie men come in to shop.” 
    Ah-ha , I thought, and ran away from the crazy people with neverending wallets. 
    Peeking in on Vickie, I smiled at the sound of her soft snoring. My heart warmed a little and I breathed a little easier. So long as I heard that familiar sound, all was right with my world. I crept in and attempted to take her iPod. She rolled over and grumbled in her sleep. Oh, well.  
    I crept back down the hall then stopped mid-creep. The refrigerator door stood open. Funny, I hadn’t noticed it when I came through the first time. Vickie must have had a late night yen for yogurt. 
    Pushing the door closed, I hit something.
    Or some one , as it turned out.
    The man looked like he had died last week. Sunken eyes glittered, surrounded by shadows so deep they looked like bruises. They glowed. Shit you not, his eyes glowed, like he wore glowsticks for contact lenses. The eerie blue shone out from the bruised waxy, white skin. His face seemed dried out somehow, pulling his skin tight across his prominent cheek bones. The pale white raisin skin left his lips pulled back in a grimace which showed teeth that had horribly distended canines. A knotted black mass of hair hung to the waist of it, dust and God knows what tangled in the gnarly mess. Either mud or dried blood clumped on its clothes, and either seemed equally likely. 
    He stunk. Like death. Like dog shit. Like dead dog shit. 
    All of this took less than a second to imprint on my mind as I shrieked and fell gracelessly to my ass. I scrambled in a crab walk as far as I could away, until my ass hit the far wall. 
    Two seconds into my encounter with whatever rummaged in the refrigerator, It hissed at me. It seemed wrong, somehow, to think of this creature as a him . It wasn’t a him. It was a nightmare. 
    I shrieked again in terror. Not that screaming did much