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“Don’t think I won’t call Chief Alec to check your story.”

“You can call him now—he’ll tell you it’s all true. I told him about the monster—the werewolf—but he wouldn’t believe me. But it happened. I met the monster in the road out near Garrison’s Field and it practically devoured me with hide and hair!”

Alice hauled off with the rolling pin and got a good one in before Victor managed to take the pin from her.“Ouch! What did you have to do that for?”

“What do you think? You’re still drunk, Victor Ball! Telling stories about werewolves.”

“But it’s true—it really happened!”

Alice, a voluminous woman with a fleshy face and a firm perm, raised her eyes heavenward.“Oh, why didn’t I listen to my mother when she told me not to marry you? I should have known she knew best. And now look at me. Married to a raging drunkard!”

And as Victor took a glance through the window for a sign of the werewolf, he suddenly remembered one crucial detail about werewolves: they only turned into a werewolf when there was a full moon. Which meant he should be safe now. He quickly checked his calendar to see if tonight there was a full moon, and of course there was.

“Alice, don’t go out tonight,” he said. “That werewolf will still be roaming around.”

“Oh, just go and boil your head,” said his wife. “Me and the girls are going out tonight. And don’t you try and stop me.”

“But… It’s dangerous out there! That werewolf—”

“Enough about this werewolf already! Go to your room!”

Meekly, Victor did as he was told. He didn’t feel like working anyway. His field needed to be prepared, and his animals checked, but suddenly he wasn’t feeling so well. And as he dropped down on the bed, he wondered if werewolves ever ventured indoors, and if garlic would stop them. But then he sank into a deep sleep, and soon he knew no more.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

Johnny Carew had never sat at the desk of a library before. He hadn’t even set foot inside a library before. And he wasn’t sure if he liked it or not. Marge Poole had called in a little after eleven, to tell them she wasn’t coming back any time soon, since something had come up, and could they please take care of the library customers for the time being.

Johnny had immediately turned to Jerry, who had the bigger brain of the twosome, but Jerry had argued that his big brain was needed to tackle the wall issue, and that Johnny should handle the library by himself for the time being. How hard could it be?

So now Johnny was sitting behind the library counter, staring at the old ladies who traipsed around, collecting books from the shelves as if they were so many Easter eggs, and then carrying them over to the counter to check them out.

Marge had given him instructions over the phone, and had told him that it was an easy job. Anyone could do it. Anyone but Johnny, he figured, as he stared dumbly at the old lady who now presented him with five books of one Nora Roberts, a writer he’d never heard of. Then again, since he’d never read a book in his life, there were very few writers he’d heard of, and all of them were apparently part of this library’s collection.

He checked the note he’d scribbled, when jotting down Marge’s careful instructions.

First he needed to ask for the customer’s library card, then drag it past the scanner, then check if the client had other books at home, then scan the new books, then press the big green button on the screen, then hand them a piece of paper listing their little haul.

So he took a deep breath and dragged the lady’s card past the scanner.

“You new here?” croaked the old dame. “What happened to Marge? Will she be back? Is she sick or something? Has she decided to quit? Is she retired? She can’t have retired. She’s too young. I’ve been coming here fifty years, did you know that, young man?”

And as the lady babbled on, apparently not expecting him to respond, he watched with beads of sweat on his brow as the PC refused to respond to his scanning efforts.

He checked his chicken scratch, but there were no instructions on how to handle this particular type of contingency.

“Um… it doesn’t seem to work,” he said dumbly. When she simply stared at him, her eyes large behind her glasses, he turned the computer screen to her. “See? I’m supposed to scan your card and then your name should appear on this here screen, but nothing is appearing on this here screen.”

“Probably a computer glitch,” said the woman. “Here. Let me try.”

“Okay,” said Johnny, sweating profusely now. He’d never imagined working at a library could be more stressful than robbing liquor stores or breaking into people’s homes, which was his regular line of work. Behind this old lady, three more old ladies had formed a line, and sweat was now trickling down Johnny’s spine as he watched the queue growing longer and longer by the minute. This was a frickin nightmare!