Errol smiled faintly at Beauty's words, a muted response to the bright simple happiness that being appreciated brought him. It wasn't precisely a new thing, though it often felt that way after the bleakness of his previous life, even without Prozium. Especially without Prozium.
He stepped back, placing his book on the counter but not stepping behind it, precisely, and watched the one that Beauty had introduced as a vampire with interested, if clinical, eyes. "Really," he said quietly. He'd read a vampire novel before. He was quite interested in seeing how the fiction matched the reality.
And of course, yet another person walked in. Beauty was popular, which wasn't surprising. She was friendly. She drew people out of themselves. One corner of his mouth twitched.
"Thank you for the thought," he told Fred, looking out over the small crowd of people. "How are you?"