“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Aahz glowered, peering at me suspiciously.
“Well, there are a couple of other options,” I admitted.
“That’s more like it!” he grinned, reaching for his wig.
“You could stay behind . . .”
His hand stopped just short of its mission.
“. . . or we could forget the whole thing and pay the fine ourselves.”
The hand retreated as my partner’s shoulders sagged in defeat. I felt no joy at the victory. If anything, I had been half hoping he would be embarrassed enough to take me up on my suggestion of abandoning the project. I should have known better. When there’s money involved, it takes more than embarrassment to throw Aahz off the scent . . . whether the embarrassment is his own or someone else’s.
“All right, everybody,”- I called, hiding my disappointment. “Are we ready to go?”
“Remember your sunglasses!” Tananda added.
That was the final touch to our disguises. To hide our non-red eyes, each of us donned a pair of sunglasses. Surveying the final result, I had to admit that aside from Tananda and Chumley, we didn’t look like us. Exactly what we did look like I wouldn’t venture to say, but we sure didn’t look like us!
“Okay,” Aahz chimed in, his discomfort apparently behind him. “Does everyone have their marching orders? Vilhelm? Are you sure you can track us on that thing?”
“No problem,” the little vampire nodded. “When things get slow around here I use this rig to do a little window peeking right here in town. Covering the streets is even easier.”
“Remember,” I told him, “watch for our signal. When we catch up with this Vic character, we’re going to want you to get some responsible local witnesses there chop-chop.”