As it was, the women threw back what was left of their drinks and got ready to go out shopping. Dara brought a purple gel pen and a notepad to the table and started a list.
“The knives are a good start, like I said,” she noted, “but we probably need more weapons.”
“Wooden stakes,” Lucy said. “That’s something that comes up again and again in every story and article about vampires. There must be something to it.”
“We can sharpen pieces of wood with the knives,” Jessica said.
“Won’t that dull the knives?” Lucy asked her.
“I brought a whetstone and a strop with me,” she replied. “We can sharpen them again if we need to. I’ll show you guys how to do it, just like my dad taught me when I was a kid.”
“How many stakes should we make?” Dara questioned.
“Well, we should each have at least two, right?” Jessica estimated. “In case we drop one or something?”
“When would we drop one?” Lucy asked.
“I don’t know, during the struggle? While we’re fighting with the vampire?” Jessica flailed her fists around, performing vague combat gestures against an invisible opponent that seemed to have about twenty arms.
Fighting with the vampire, Lucy thought. We have to FIGHT A VAMPIRE!
She gulped, not wanting to think too hard about that part. “Okay. Well, um, we should make them in different sizes, too,” she suggested, “since we aren’t sure how thick they need to be in order to get the job done. So, maybe…four each?”
Dara wrote down ‘stakes’ and etched a number twelve beside it. “What else?” she asked.
Jessica fished an ice cube from her glass and popped it into her mouth. “I know I said fire was a good idea,” she said around the ice, “but if we do corner this thing outside a bar, I don’t know how realistic it will be for us to just torch her there, out in the open. There might be other people around, or we could accidentally set a building on fire. Maybe we should just stick to the knives and stakes.”
“What if we can move the remains elsewhere, though?” Dara asked. “We could take them out someplace remote and burn them there, just to be safe.”
“That’s assuming there’s even a body left to burn,” Lucy pointed out. “A lot of the stories say vampires just turn to ashes whenever they’re killed.”
“Yeah,” Jessica looked at her, “but what if this one doesn’t? Dara’s right. If there’s anything left, we’ll need to get rid of it. Completely destroy it, just in case.”
“So, we’ll need, what, lighter fluid? Matches?”
“I’ve got some long lighters I use with my scented candles,” Dara said, writing down ‘charcoal lighter fluid.’ “We can use those.”
“We should get something to wrap the dead vampire in,” Jessica added. “’Cause I know I don’t want that just rattling around in the trunk of my car.”
“We can use my car,” Dara volunteered. “It’s an SUV; plenty of room. But you’re right, Jessica, we should buy a drop cloth or something.”
“And maybe some duct tape,” Lucy suggested. Jessica gave her a questioning look. “Duct tape always comes in handy,” Lucy explained with a shrug.
“Duct…tape.” Dara added it to the list in her looping, feminine script, and then dropped the pen beside it and pushed back her chair. She said, “Okay, you guys. Let me go check on Jason for a second, and then, if you’re down, we can go pick up all this stuff at the hardware store right away.”
“Oh, we’re down,” Jessica assured her, flicking a quick glance at Lucy. “We’re down for anything.” She and Lucy watched her head toward her bedroom.
When she returned a few minutes later, Dara said, “Alright, Jason’s okay.” She stopped short, pulling a face. “Well…as okay as can be expected, anyway.” Grabbing her wallet and keys, she led the others downstairs to her garage, where she let them into her shiny black 4Runner. It was so fresh off the lot, the interior still smelled brand new. They drove down a few blocks, to the nearest big-box hardware store, and used Dara’s platinum card to charge everything they’d decided they needed.
◆◆◆
Back at the Donovans’, Dara spread paper towels over her kitchen table, and the women sat down together, to whittle a dozen dowel rods into a stack of deadly-looking stakes.
“Wow, Donovan,” Jessica marveled at how quickly Dara was outpacing both her and Lucy, “you’re better at this whole would-be badass vampire assassin thing than I ever would’ve guessed.”
Dara shook her head, but Lucy saw a smile curl the corner of her mouth. “Maybe you just don’t know me as well as you think,” she murmured.
Jessica grimaced. “Listen, I’m sorry for being rude to you when you came into the store the other night. I don’t even care about Paul anymore, and I feel really bad that all these years, I’ve—”
“Oh, cut it out, Ramos,” Dara threw back, cutting her off. “Now’s not the time to be getting sappy on me.” Her soft smile took the sting out of her quoted words. “How did you end up with the bookstore, anyway?” she asked. “Why did Mr. Morris leave it to you?”
Jessica’s face lit up, and Lucy was glad Dara had asked her about Book of Love. She knew her best friend liked nothing better than to talk about the bookstore. It was her pride and joy.
“Rand was really good friends with my parents,” Jessica explained, “kind of like an uncle to me, and he didn’t have any kids of his own to leave it to. He had a niece, but she didn’t want anything to do with a bookstore. He was worried if he willed it to her, she’d just sell it to some developer and it’d either get turned into another fro-yo bar,
