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women. I smiled. I hadn’t considered a cover anyway. 
    I walked through a door covered with stickers from bands and a few lewd stickers like, “If God hadn’t meant for it to be eaten, he wouldn’t have shaped it like a taco.” I was pretty sure God killed whoever came up with that one.
    Through the door, a bar ran the length of the wall to my right. The bartender wore lingerie. That seemed, somehow, less than hygienic to me.
    Tables scattered around the room in no particular pattern and a big T shaped stage took up the center of the room. Toward the back wall, a hall led off behind the stage and a woman in a Jessica Rabbit getup led a man who looked like an insurance salesman down it. Ah, lap dance hallway…got it . To my left stood a bank of pool tables. Yeah, like men who came here wanted to shoot pool.  
    I scanned the room for Vance and didn’t see him. At the bar, I ordered a Corona. They even had lime. The bartender smiled at me and offered to let me put the money in her bra. Ah, she probably assumed that since I was a woman alone in a place where women disrobed that I wanted to see women disrobe. Like I liked girls. Whoops. “No thanks.” I took a good hard swig of my beer. Ah, beer, good .  
    Another scantily clad woman sat down near me. She sniffed at me. Like she smelled me with her nose. Like a dog would.
    I looked at her as if she was nuts. Okay, so I shouldn’t be one to call the kettle black and all. I was staying with a witch, and I gave a vampire a ride to a titty bar. But she didn’t know any of that, so I could give all the dirty looks I wanted. 
    She grinned. She had long, bright red hair and eyes smudged gray and black in a way reminiscent of Cleopatra. She wore a red thong with black lace trim, and what there was of the top did a surprisingly good job of hiding her nipples, but not the rest of her huge creamy white mounds. Actually, I rather expected the top to snap free and hit me in the face at any given moment. As I didn’t want to be blinded by a flying bra strap, I cleared my throat. “Hi.” 
    “You smell of Odd Stuff.” Her whispery voice floated around me.
    I nodded. I had been bled on by a dirty vampire. I probably smelled pretty funky.
    “The store.” She waved her hand in impatience when it became apparent I wasn’t making further conversation. “You smell like incense and sage.”
    “Oh! Yeah. I am running it while my friend Mia is out of town.”
    “Mia is my friend, too. And yet…I don’t know you . Who are you?” One delicate red brow arched at me, and I felt almost compelled to answer her further. 
    “Oh, I am her friend from school. Janie Smith—” 
    “Oh! Janie! She spoke of you a lot. You are the one who married the lawyer.”
    “Yeah.” I took another pull of my Corona. She had a funny accent. 
    “You just got divorced and moved here to stay with Mia. She mentioned that.”
    “Uh, huh.” And I was so glad she brought it up. I took another gulp of beer. “How do you know Mia?” The question wasn’t meant to be rude, but I really couldn’t see Mia, in her floaty skirts, hanging out much at a strip club. 
    “My name is Julia. I am Wiccan. We met through the store.” So, Julia was a Wiccan stripper. I nodded. This made as much sense as keeping blood in your fridge for your vampire friend. I was getting the impression that Ohio witches were a weird bunch. I thought about that thought. It was too convoluted, so I let it go. 
    Wicca was a way of life having something to do with witchcraft, this I knew because of Mia. I wondered if Julia cast spells on her clients to make them leave more dollar bills in her underroos. I considered asking, but further conversation was inturrupted when all hell broke loose. 
    I learned another vampire lesson really quick.
    Turns out rinsing the majority of blood off your hair is still not enough to hang with vampires. I mean, Vance could have mentioned that in the car, but he hadn’t. So while Julia and I were