She didn’t answer but he felt the gun withdraw from his back and her forearm drop away, leaving him able to breathe properly again.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re not a cop?”

“I told you, I’m the librarian.”

She gave him a shove toward the kitchenette. “Sit down.”

Owen took a seat and held his hands up as if to calm her. “I know how strange this is,” he said.

She sat across from him next to the high chair but kept the gun trained on him. With her free hand she lifted a small bowl of dry Cheerios off the table and dumped a little pile of them onto William’s tray. The toddler saw them, smiled, and blew a few bubbles. He pressed his index finger into the hole on one of the bits of cereal and it stuck. Then he lifted it to his mouth.

“Start talking,” said Kiara.

“First, a question,” said Owen.

She cocked the pistol, and he automatically brought his hands up in front of his face. “No, I need to know this so I can tell you the right thing.”

“Go ahead,” she said, carefully released the hammer, and laid the gun on the table in front of her.

“Was Feit at the old man’s house to rob him or to assassinate him?”

“To kill him before he could kill anyone else.”

“You know he’s a vampire or something like that?”

Kiara nodded. “He killed my husband.”

“Wait, the man who held up the Busy Bee?”

“Crenshaw bit him and put him under some kind of mind control. He was directed to hold up the store. He knew Duane was part of our organization and that we were closing in on him. It was a warning to put us off and to put the police on our trail. He’s powerful.”

“You all have the solar cross tattoo,” he said. “I looked it up.”

“Right.”

“Why that?”

“These creatures, we call them Ambrogio, from an ancient tale, don’t operate well in the sun. They don’t burn up like in the movies, but sunlight stuns them and makes them much more vulnerable. Daylight short-circuits their nervous systems. Now . . . Aaron.”

“My friend and I saw Aaron get attacked by Crenshaw. It was horrible. His throat was torn out. Your partner got a shot off but that was it. The old man moved too quickly.”

She closed her eyes and fell back into her chair with a heavy sigh. Tears leaked from beneath her eyelids. “I told him not to go alone.” Owen kept his mouth shut, allowing her to grieve. A couple of minutes passed in silence before she wiped her eyes and cheeks with the backs of her hands and sat forward again.