Page 19 of The Neighborhood Vampire

“More than you know,” Alice responded.

Sylvia smiled and set the bottle down. She tilted her head as if she knew a secret. “Are you The Neighborhood Witch?”

Alice blushed and shied away from Sylvia’s question. Hugo glanced at Alice.

“You look very similar to the woman on the bottle at the store. I thought maybe the wine was yours,” Sylvia added as she took her seat.

“No. Well . . . yes, but it’s not—” Alice stumbled over her words, trying to find an answer.

“We work in distribution,” Hugo said. “A partner asked Alice to pose for their label considering her witchy appearance.”

“We’re in distribution too,” Sebastian said. “We own Red Heart Distribution. It’s the top distributor in the state. Who do you work for?”

“Umm . . .” Hugo was at a loss for words.

“We work for an independent distributor. A small one. Very small. Brand new, even,” Alice said.

“A micro-brewery? How wonderful. What’s the name?” Sylvia asked with a smile.

“Moonlight Brewers,” Hugo said with a wink to Alice.

“Moonlight Brewers . . . I’ve never heard of them,” Sylvia said.

“They’re very small,” Alice said. “The Neighborhood Witch is their first offering.”

“Getting in on the ground floor. I admire your entrepreneurial spirit,” Sebastian said. “We started offering our own brand as well.”

“Red-Hearted Queen,” Sylvia said.

“Sebastian mentioned it at the restaurant,” Alice said.

“Have you tried it?” Sylvia asked.

Hugo and Alice glanced at each other as if they were telepathically negotiating what to say next. They negotiated with facial expressions, which Alice interrupted to take the polite path. Alice wanted to tell them there was something in their wine, but didn’t want to disrespect them, especially as guests in their home. Alice turned her attention back to Sylvia.

“Oh, we’ve had it three times,” Alice replied. “Twice when it first came out and again recently at your restaurant.”

“How was it?” Sylvia asked.

“Well . . . “Alice answered, breaking eye contact as she struggled to find the right words. “There was something in the wine the first two times. Something about it didn’t quite taste right. Hugo had a bad reaction to it.”

“Two reactions,” Hugo added.

Inquisitively, Alice leaned to Hugo and whispered, “When was the second one?”

“Halloween night when we had too much to drink, and you helped me home. I’ll tell you about it later,” he replied under his breath.

“See.” Sylvia tapped Sebastian’s arm. “There was something wrong withthe first batch.”

“We had a . . . production error with the first batch. We weren’t aware of it until it was too late. We think we have it perfected now. We had to cycle a year of the vintage first,” Sebastian said.

“The most recent batch at your restaurant was much better,” Hugo said.

“We can give you a few bottles to take home if you’d like,” Sylvia offered.

“That’s very generous, but—” Hugo started.

“We insist,” Sebastian said. “It’s a new batch. Much better. Very dream-like, if I do say so myself.”

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