"Hey, can I help you with the waiting on tables?" a voice asked behind Tom, as Tom prepared a stack of burgers on the grill.
It was a well known voice—that of his friend Keith Vorpal, the only one of the non-shifters who knew shifters existed. Keith was a film student with an unshakeable joi de vivre and an absolute certainty that being a shifter was the coolest thing since being a superhero. He'd gotten embroiled in their affairs and taken part in some life-and-death struggles. Though he'd acquitted himself well enough, he was sure shifters got to have more fun than he did. Sometimes he claimed to be a human shifter. He shifted between a human form and a stunningly similar human form.
However that was, Tom felt strangely grateful that Keith, not a shifter, didn't feel either horrified by them, or forced to turn them in as abominations. And the fact that Keith knew the routines of The George, where he worked part-time, seemed like a godsend right now, when Tom had been doing his job and continuously prodding the hapless Conan to do his.
"Keith," he said, turning around. "Keith."
Keith smiled at him. His tumbled blond hair was in disarray, and his glasses fogged, from having come from cold to warmth. He unwound a bright red scarf from around his neck, as he spoke. "So, you need my help?"
"Yeah, all we have is Conan, and it's his first day." Tom said, and hoped against hope that Keith would have no memory of Red Dragon.
"Conan?" Keith said, as he ducked behind the counter, removed scarf and jacket. Tom heard the sound of Keith sliding the time sheet from under the counter and smiled.
"The new employee. Over there."
"Over . . ." Keith took in breath sharply. "But Tom, he's . . . that is . . ."
Tom was afraid Keith would blurt out loud that Red Dragon was just that, and the enemy besides. And since Kyrie had left, a sudden inrush of customers had come in, ten or twenty in all, all sitting at nearby tables, ordering hot chocolate and burgers and whatnot. He reached over and put a hand on the young man's shoulder, to arrest the flow of words. "It's all right, Keith, truly. I'm keeping an eye on him."
"If you're sure . . ." Keith said, looking confused.
"Yeah, sure about everything but his ability to wait tables. Why don't you go and—" But before he could suggest that Keith should relieve Conan of some tables and give him breathing room, Tom looked up at the booth where he'd left Old Joe. The clothes he'd loaned the old vagrant were still there, but Old Joe was gone. "Shit," Tom said, which made Keith look at him sharply, because Tom rarely swore out loud. "Man the grill, Keith. Just a couple of minutes."
With a suspicion that he knew very well where Old Joe had gone, Tom ducked out from behind the counter and ran down the hallway, just in time to hear the back door creak open, and to see, as he turned the corner, an alligator tail disappearing through the door.
He knew he should have locked it.