Avalon had already stood up and was heading to the diner’s exit.

I was trying to count out the money and stand at the same time, which made me slower at doing both. “Wait up, I still need to pay the bill.”

“Pay it tomorrow, get me to my apartment,” she said with the urgency of someone fearing for their life.

I stood up as well. “What, are you like Cinderella or something?”

Her hand pulled the door open and without turning around, she said, “Only if it were a horror movie” as she walked out. There wasn’t enough time to share that the original folk tales of Cinderella had enough blood to be considered horror by today’s standards.

I stopped counting the cash and threw down on the table however much what was in my hand. I overpaid. But didn’t care. Mrs. Camelot would have to cover it.

Avalon was already sitting in the car and the engine was running even though she sat in the passenger seat and the only keys were in my pocket. I hadn’t gotten around to telling her that I was driving her around in a haunted automobile. But given her hysteria about the moth, I didn’t think she cared about it at the moment.

Maybe she had noticed earlier and now had pleaded with him to let her in. Or maybe Bernie was a softy to everyone but me. I mean, we have our moments.

Whatever amount of Bernie’s sympathy Avalon had earned it had not been extended to me as I still had to use the key on the door handle. A very reliable sign that Bernie was unhappy with me.

“Come on, come on” she said as I slid into the car, then commanded “You need to take me to 215 Piatta Street. Do you know where that is?”

“Sure do.”

The insistence of an impending calamity had me operating on instinct, which is good for somethings but not when you need to break a habit. Say, like putting keys into an ignition. I fumbled with the keys before remembering the car was already running and the entire exercise was unnecessary and wasting valuable time.

On realizing that I had wasted a few seconds with the keys, I was going to apologize when I noticed the moth had followed her into the car. Fluttering up by the windshield. No, there were two moths now. I stopped to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.

“Let’s go,” she said before I could draw her attention to the bugs. Getting her to her apartment was more important. I looked out the rear window and backed the car out of the spot. When I faced forward, she was waving her hand to shoo away five moths.

Despite my knowledge of paranormal events, I do not like to be present when they occur. The moths were something more than an out-of-season fluke. I still didn’t know what was going on. Maybe they were dangerous in a way that seemed harmless?

My driving was not as patient or cautious as Bernie would have preferred. The tires slipped on the wet road in the first turn. I knew he’d find ways to teach me a lesson about the proper way of handling his car.

I was so focused on the road and on guard for Bernie’s objections, I didn’t see her pull out her phone. She was speaking with someone, her voice still urgent but also apologetic. “Yes… I’m sorry… I see your missed calls… I lost track of time… I’m ok… I’ll be home soon enough… Thanks…”

One more turn and two more blocks to go. Or so I thought. We took that turn only to see our route had been blocked by an orange-and-white striped Road Closed sign barricading a flooded street. The sign had barely enough strength to hold up the orange flashing lights. I could get through it.

I held the steering wheel into the turn, but the car went the other direction. Bernie was driving now. I took my eyes off the road with a fragment of an explanation for the detour ready to fumble.

She swatted a moth that was on her neck. “Ow.”

“Did that bite you?”

She said, “Can’t believe I left my phone in my purse,” which didn’t answer my question. A small drop of blood streaked down her neck, and the bug landed on the seat.

I still wasn’t paying attention to the road and almost ran a red light. I slammed on the brake, but instead of stopping Bernie decided to be more aggressive. The stick shift on the steering column downshifted and the car accelerated through the light ignoring the objection of two car horns. Maybe Bernie would pass on giving me a driving lesson.

My hands were completely off the wheel, prepared to swat away the creatures that were attacking us. But I never needed to. They only attacked her.

We fishtailed through another turn.

She said, “I’m right up here. Thank you for getting me home in time.”

I didn’t want to take credit for Bernie’s expert driving, but she was in a hurry so I said, “You’re welcome.”

A spring in the seat poked me as the Mercedes slid to a stop, double-parking outside of her apartment building. Like all buildings in New Carissimi, the exterior was primarily brick shaded in a red wine. There were a few concrete steps before the front door.

She didn’t bother closing the car door when the moths chased her out and was up the stairs to her building before I could say anything. She was waving both hands over her head, swatting at a growing danger. Only one moth had not followed her out of the car, the one she had swatted earlier.

Bernie shut the passenger door.

I picked up the dead moth that had bitten Avalon and studied it a little closer. The face of it was covered in Avalon’s blood. And it had a set of what looked like shark teeth.

I looked around the car, but there weren’t any other monster moths to be found. A car behind us honked for us to move. Avalon was probably in her apartment by now.

There was nothing more I could do tonight. I’d circle back in the morning after doing a little research back at my office.

Most of my cases, I can use the notes from my former case files and my private library which outgrew the shelf space I had long ago. It had been a desire of mine to catalog all of my books, but like most things people desire, I lacked the ambition to see it through.

I was pretty sure I didn’t have any books on the type of creature that attacked Avalon. So, I turned on the old PC that came into my possession as a payment for my services and started diving into the scattered forums on paranormal activities. There was nothing on the damn moths.

I held back from opening a new thread on the topic. Replies are often unreliable, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted this information public.

Maybe this wasn’t paranormal. I wasn’t an expert on bugs or moths. So, I looked at the more traditional online sources and was surprised as any normal person would be to find that there are a seventeen species of moths belonging to the Calyptra genus, more commonly referred to as vampire moths.

Society uses the word vampire far too frequently for me to give them any credit for using it correctly. It’s often assumed that vampires don’t exist, but they do. As a rule, I don’t involve myself with them. They are reclusive and prefer to be left alone. No sense in upsetting that applecart. But even with my limited knowledge of them, there was nothing vampiric about this moth.

But it was clear that the creature had not been categorized by science either. None of the species of vampire moths had shark teeth. Instead, they drew blood similar to mosquitoes. In fact, my evening of research concluded that there were not any species of moths known to science that had teeth of any kind.

So what the hell attacked Avalon?