Chapter 7: The Silver Dollar
Fangtasia could wait.
The thought crystallized as I drove past the Shreveport exit, heading toward Monroe instead of Eric Northman's vampire tourist trap. The registration appointment was scheduled for tomorrow night—Pam had been specific about the timing. Tonight belonged to reconnaissance.
The Silver Dollar emerged from the highway darkness looking worse than I remembered. The neon sign flickered arrhythmically, the "L" buzzing like a dying insect. Three cars sat in a parking lot built for fifty. A Friday night, and the place was bleeding customers I couldn't afford to lose.
My place now. Almost.
I parked away from the entrance, taking time to study the building with fresh eyes. Brick construction, solid foundation. The roof needed work—I could see missing shingles even in the dark—but the bones were good. The lot offered highway visibility and room for expansion. With proper management, this could become something.
Inside, the damage was more obvious.
The jukebox sat silent in the corner, its glass panel cracked. Wallpaper peeled near the ceiling, revealing water stains beneath. The bar itself was beautiful—fifty feet of oak that had survived sixty years of spilled drinks and careless elbows—but everything around it screamed neglect.
George Patterson stood behind the bar, the same gray-faced exhaustion I'd seen two nights ago. He was serving a Budweiser to a construction worker, his movements careful and deliberate.
The movements of someone managing pain.
I took a stool at the far end, away from the sparse crowd. George glanced over, recognition flickering in his tired eyes.
"You came back."
"I said I would."
He finished with the construction worker and made his way toward me. His hands trembled slightly as he set down a coaster.
"What's your poison?"
"Bourbon. Neat."
He poured without comment—cheap stuff, the kind of bottle that lived on the bottom shelf. I wouldn't drink it, but the ritual mattered. In the corner, two old men hunched over a domino game, arguing about LSU's defensive line with the passion of men who had nothing else to fight about.
Regulars. They'll still come when this is mine.
"You talk to Wilson?" I asked.
George's eyes narrowed. "First thing this morning. He said you called him."
"I wanted to start the paperwork. Save time."
"You're in a hurry."
"I'm efficient. There's a difference."
George studied me the way he'd probably studied a thousand strangers across this bar. His gaze caught on details—my untouched bourbon, my unblinking eyes, the stillness that vampires couldn't quite hide.
"You ain't normal," he said finally. Not accusation. Observation.
"No."
"Vampire?"
He knows. Of course he knows. Sixty years behind a bar teaches you to read people.
"Does it matter?"
George was quiet for a long moment. The jukebox chose that moment to spark back to life—Patsy Cline, singing about falling to pieces. Someone must have kicked it.
"Mary would have said it matters," George said. "She was religious. Church every Sunday, grace before meals. She'd have had opinions about selling to your kind."
"But Mary's gone."
"Three years now." He picked up a glass, started polishing. The motion was automatic, something his hands did when his mind was elsewhere. "Cancer took her slow. Six months from diagnosis to the end. I watched her disappear a little more every day."
I didn't offer sympathy. He wasn't looking for it.
"The doctors say I've got something similar. Different organ, same outcome. They give me maybe a year if I'm lucky." He set the glass down. "I'm not feeling particularly lucky."
"And the bar?"
"Goes to creditors if I die owing. I've been covering losses from savings, but the savings are almost gone." He looked around his domain—the peeling walls, the empty tables, the dying jukebox. "Forty-seven years, and it ends with a bank auction."
"Unless you sell first."
"Unless I sell first." His eyes met mine. "To a vampire with cold hands and too much cash."
"I'm offering you an exit, Mr. Patterson. A clean one. You name a fair price, I pay it, and The Silver Dollar survives you."
"Wilson says the building's worth maybe $120,000 in this market. The business is worthless—worse than worthless, it's a liability."
"And you want $180,000."
"That's what I told you."
"That's what I'll pay."
George's hands stopped moving. The glass slipped slightly; he caught it before it fell.
"You're serious."
"I don't make offers I don't intend to keep."
"That's sixty thousand over value. Why?"
Because I remember clawing out of a grave three nights ago. Because every dollar I have came from a dead man's paranoia. Because this is the first thing I've built since I died, and I want it to be worth something.
"Call it an investment in goodwill. You've run this place for almost fifty years. You know things I don't—the suppliers, the regulars, the rhythms of this town. I'd like you to stay on as a consultant. Paid position, no responsibilities beyond what you want. Help me understand what The Silver Dollar was supposed to be."
George's throat worked. For a moment, I thought he might cry.
"Wilson has the paperwork?"
"Ready for signatures. We can close this week if you're willing."
"And I can stay?"
"As long as you want. The apartment upstairs is yours—I assume you've been living there?"
He nodded, not trusting his voice.
"Then it stays yours. Rent-free. Part of the deal."
The domino players in the corner erupted in argument—something about a miscounted score. George didn't notice. He was staring at me like I'd offered him resurrection rather than a real estate transaction.
"Why?" he asked again. "I don't understand why."
Because kindness is cheap and loyalty is expensive. Because I need people who owe me. Because the original Sam never had anyone, and look how that ended.
"Because some things should survive the people who built them," I said. "Your wife put her life into this place. You did too. Let me carry it forward."
George reached across the bar. His hand was warm when it clasped mine—warm and trembling and very much alive.
"Tomorrow night," he said. "Wilson's office. Eight o'clock."
"I'll be there."
I left my untouched bourbon on the bar with a hundred underneath. George watched me go, the same way he'd watched a thousand customers leave. But something had changed in his eyes.
Hope. Dangerous thing to give a dying man.
Outside, the night air carried the smell of pine and distant rain. The Silver Dollar's broken sign buzzed behind me, casting red-orange light across the empty parking lot.
My phone vibrated. A text from a number I didn't recognize.
Three days. Then we talk. —E
Elena. She'd decided to consider my offer. Three days to close the Patterson deal and prepare something worth showing her.
The Viking could wait one more night. I had a kingdom to build.
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