Deaths Excellent Vacation

including pointed cauliflower ears—not that boxers have pointed ears, you know. I’ve got a mushroom nose that looks like it’s been broken one too many times, and the scarred, pitted skin of any gargoyle past puberty. My eyes are too small, and they’re yellow. And my hair is okay—thick and dark—but I must be the only curly-headed stoneskin on the continent.
    I’m even ugly to my own Heartkin.
    “You must like CornNuts.” A quick flutter of a glance from under her long blond-brown lashes. Her hands kept working, bagging everything. “I see you getting them all the time.”
    She was talking to me .
    My brain went absolutely fucking blank. “Um,” I managed. “Yeah. Like ’em a lot.”
    Her smile widened a bit. The tips of her two front teeth showed, very white. “I could never eat them. They make my teeth hurt.”
    It’s real fun when you spit ’em at pigeons. Knock ’em right on their little heads; you can feed yourself that way for a while if you’re awful poor. You can even spit a CornNut right through them if you get it going fast enough. “You can just suck on ’em until they’re soft,” I mumbled, and blushed when her eyebrows went up a little. Her smile hovered between genuine and embarrassed for a half second, and a round of cursing went off inside my head.
    “Maybe I’ll give that a try,” she finally said. Uncomfortable silence bloomed between us.
    She took the cash, her skin brushing mine. “Is it still raining out there?”
    So soft and warm. They don’t feel hard and cold like us. No, they’re soft and pink and perfect. Especially her. “Pouring.” It was raining as if it wanted to drown the city, in fact.
    “Well, you’ve got towels.” She grinned, but I only caught the very beginning of her smile because I had to look down in a hurry or I might’ve grinned back, and a crooked yellow picket fence of teeth is not something she’d want to see. “All right, there you go. You always have exact change. It’s nice.”
    Because I have to. Any gargoyle does; it’s a compulsion. Once a gargoyle gets a hoard, we like counting exact change. Each penny is taken from muggers or other Bad People. But that’s no reason to waste it, and the count makes us irrationally happy.
    Plus, you have to pay in cash when you don’t have a real name or a social security number.
    My pulse was pounding so hard. Was I going to have an attack right here? Heart, I hoped not. I muttered something and took my bag, almost tripped in my hurry to get out. I left her standing there in the glare, and it wasn’t until I got outside that I realized I wasn’t having a cardiac arrest or a reaction. I was just stupid.
    I loitered outside under the awning for a little while, breathing deep lungfuls of wet, smog- laden air. The cars all hunched their shoulders and turned their backs to the storm, wet metal and rubber moving only under protest. I hung around near the end of the covered section, waiting to see if the rain would slacken. It probably wouldn’t until I was halfway home no matter how long I waited, that’s just my luck.
    Besides, about ten minutes after, Kate came out through the sighing automatic doors. She walked straight out into the rain, her thin denim jacket completely inadequate for the weather, and I saw that one of her sneaker soles was flapping a little at the heel.
    The sight of the heel rubber sticking to the wet ground, then flopping as she lifted her foot, made something inside my chest hurt. I guess they didn’t pay her enough to buy a new pair, even at EvilMart prices. She hunched her shoulders and hurried.
    Who was I kidding? I followed her, drifting behind and staying on a parallel course as if I were looking for my own car. I’d done it every night I’d come in for the past month. She had a rusted-down blue Chevy Caprice, and I usually made sure she got in and it started before I faded into the shadows.
    Hey, it’s a dangerous world. If there’s not the Big Bad out stalking, there’s other bad waiting right around the corner. Sometimes it’s Evil with a capital E. Other times it’s grim luck, predators, accident, or just plain human foulness.
    I swung my bag a little as I walked, kept her in my peripheral vision. She parked way the hell out in the farthest regions of the lot—I guess EvilMart doesn’t want the employees snuggling up to the store.
    Kate walked with her head down, her steps slowing as she got out near her car. She looked nervous, and I wasn’t