Night Shift

by Charlaine Harris

  Madonna said, “You better take that from Grady.”

  Teacher swooped down on his son and took the pepper shaker away. “You’ll sneeze and wheeze if you eat that stuff, Grady,” he chided.

  “Neeze,” Grady said, and Teacher laughed.

  For the first time since the break-in, Fiji came to eat in the café that evening. She gave Teacher a very direct look, and he looked back, and after that she behaved as though the incident had never happened, or at least as far as Teacher could tell.

  Fiji seemed wobbly to Teacher, and he noticed that the other Midnighters all took a moment to hug her or pat her or just say a quiet word. And when she’d eaten, the Rev himself walked her home, though Bobo wanted to, Teacher could tell.

  Madonna and Teacher cleaned up the kitchen and were out the door by eight thirty. The night was dark and cool, with a promise of rain. Teacher stood looking up for a moment at the heavy clouds skidding across the sky, driven by the wind.

  It was less than seven yards to the door of the trailer, but in that short space Teacher went from thinking of playing a game on his laptop to fearing for his life. Lemuel stood between Teacher’s family and home.

  In the only light available, a weak security light over the rear door of the diner, Lemuel’s white skin seemed to glow like mother-of-pearl. Teacher bit back a scream, Madonna made a gulping noise, and Grady stirred sleepily on her shoulder.

  “If Olivia had died, you would have died at this moment,” Lemuel said. “You were coming to her aid, they tell me. So you are saved.” And then he was gone.

  “Oh my God,” Madonna said, after a moment of shuddering silence. “Oh my God.” Teacher felt even more unsettled by the whole incident when he realized that Madonna had tears running down her cheeks.

  He had never seen his wife cry before.

  33

  Later that same night, in the hospital in Davy, Olivia woke when a cold hand took hers. “Lemuel,” she said weakly.

  “I was here last night, but you slept the whole time,” Lemuel said. “I understand you will recover. I talked to the doctor myself.”

  Her room was dim but not dark, and she could see his outline against the light coming in the partially open door. “Lem,” she said. “I almost left you for good. If he’d gotten an inch to the left or an inch to the right . . .”

  “And me sound asleep,” Lem said bitterly. “No use to you at all.”

  “He shot me,” she said. “Fucking asshole.”

  “He’s a dead asshole now,” Lemuel said.

  “I thought I heard one of the EMTs say that,” Olivia murmured. “I expected to see Fiji or Bobo today, but they said I couldn’t have any visitors. Was that your doing?”

  “Yes, that was my doing. I’m sorry if you wanted company, but I was scared someone bad would come in, and I would not be here to protect you. Now that we are married, I had the right to prevent it.”

  She nodded. “Okay with me. I didn’t feel like talking. Did I see Teacher with a shotgun? Guess we know for sure why he’s in Midnight.”

  “I’ve had a talk with him and Madonna,” Lemuel said. “Now that I know your father hired them to protect you, not to kill you, we’ve come to an understanding.”

  “Did you scare ’em to death?” Olivia said. She smiled at him.

  “Pretty near. I’m going to stay here until I have to go, close to dawn,” he said, smiling back.

  “They’re gonna come in here to check my blood pressure,” she said, protesting, already half asleep.

  “Yes, I know. But they won’t turn me out,” he said. “I’m your husband.”

  “You know what’s silly?” she breathed. “For a little while yesterday, I forgot!”

  “You’ve been shot and you’re weak,” Lemuel said practically. “I’ll do the remembering until you’re better.”

  “That’s good,” she said, and a little smile crossed her lips before she was out again.

  Vampires like Lemuel did not have the gift of glamour, so he couldn’t hide himself from the nurse who came in an hour later, even if he’d wanted to.

  “How’d you get in here?” she demanded. “No one’s supposed to be here!”

  She wouldn’t have been so abrupt if he hadn’t scared her, he figured. That was why he kept his voice calm when he replied.

  “I came to sit with my wife as soon as it was dark and I could rise,” he said in a very reasonable voice.

  Olivia opened her eyes at the sound of voices.

  “Ma’am, do you want this man here?” the nurse asked Olivia directly.

  Olivia said, “Yes, very much.” And that was that.

  The nurse took a half step back because she couldn’t help herself, and she said, “Don’t upset the patient, sir.” Then she wheeled around and marched down the hall, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking as she hurried.

  “It feels weird to have someone looking out for me,” Olivia said, a bit to Lemuel’s surprise.

  “I feel the same,” he admitted. “It’s strange. But strange-good, as Fiji says.”

  “Fiji!” As if the word triggered a flood of memories, Olivia gasped and tried to sit up. In an instant, Lemuel was on his feet and pushing her down with a hand that was like a weight of iron on her chest. Olivia lay back. Her eyes were wide and she was panting with remembered panic. “Lem, he was going to shoot me again and she saved me! What happened to her?”

  “She’s fine,” he said. “Now, hush, Olivia. Hush. Calm.”

  “Tell me!”

  “It was Fiji who killed McGuire.”

  Tears began oozing from Olivia’s eyes. They trickled down to her hair. Lemuel took a corner of the sheet and patted her face.

  “Poor Fiji,” Olivia said. “She had to kill someone because of me.”

  “She was willing,” Lemuel said cautiously.

  “I always hoped that Fiji could stay . . . herself.”

  This didn’t make a lot of sense to Lemuel. Fiji was still herself; she’d just added another experience to her repertoire. But he could tell it was an important thought to his Olivia, so he simply waited for her to elaborate.

  “She won’t be the same,” Olivia said.

  When it seemed clear that she wasn’t going to say anything else, Lemuel said, “She’s always been stronger than anyone seemed to think.”

  “I know, you’re thinking, ‘Olivia never liked Fiji that much, anyway, so why is she so upset?’” Olivia said.

  Lemuel hadn’t been thinking any such thing, but he felt it was wiser to nod.

  “The thing is . . .” Olivia stopped, and turned her head a little. Lemuel realized that was his cue to wipe her face again, and he did so with tenderness. “The thing is, I do like her. I was just envious. Everyone likes Fiji. She’s sunny and cheerful. She bakes bread. I wanted her to stay that way . . . while I kind of hated her for having all that.”

  “So now that she’s killed someone, and she has to complete a ritual in front of an audience, you are distressed.” Lemuel understood. “Sooner or later she was bound to do something that would serve to keep herself safe, and sooner or later she was bound to have sex, Olivia.”

  “That is not the point,” Olivia said. “And you know it.”

  Lemuel felt completely at sea. “I’m sorry,” he said, because that seemed a safe thing to say.

  “Me, too,” Olivia said, in a voice so low he had to bend forward to understand her, even with his sharp hearing.

  “I have to be there for her,” Olivia said, in a stronger voice. “I have to get out of the hospital in time to be there.”

  “If they won’t let you go, I’ll give you some blood,” Lemuel promised. “Would you like some now?”

  Olivia said, “We’ve only done that during sex before.”

  “It’s wonderful to exchange blood when we are being man and woman. But you would heal f
aster now if you had some of my blood.”

  “I would love to heal faster. Bring it.”

  Lemuel had wondered, at first, if Olivia was seeking a relationship with him because his blood would heal wounds much faster. In her line of business, quick healing was an undeniable plus and might mean the difference between life and death. Lemuel hadn’t volunteered blood-giving or -taking when their connection had become sexual; he had been waiting for Olivia’s cue. If she had brought up blood first, he would have been even more cautious in letting their relationship develop. But Lemuel had become assured that whatever Olivia wanted from him, quick healing was not on her agenda.

  Without hesitation, Lemuel opened his own wrist and offered it to her. He was amused to see that she made a little face. A little bite in the heat of passion was very different from this exchange.

  But his Olivia was nothing if not determined. She managed several good gulps before she fell back on the pillow. “Thanks,” she said, in a somewhat stronger voice. “Not fun, but functional, huh?”

  “When you come home, dearest dear, we will spend good times together,” Lemuel promised.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Olivia said. “Sounds great.” She smiled at him and fell asleep.

  Lemuel stayed by her bedside until nearly dawn. Olivia slept while the nurses came in and out, checking her vital signs. They mostly pretended he wasn’t there, or gave a little nod in his direction without meeting his eyes. He was used to this, and it didn’t bother him. The price he paid for being able to take energy rather than blood from people was that he stood out sharply from the herd, was unmistakably not human. Even when he did take blood, he did not look lifelike.

  Now Lemuel wondered if he, along with the other citizens of Midnight, would live to see many more days.

  It all hinged on Fiji.

  To Lemuel, who had never been modest about his body, Fiji’s sacrifice seemed—maybe not trivial, since to Lemuel sex was a very private thing—but a low priority in the grand scheme of things. A woman Fiji’s age should not balk at such a sacrifice. Lemuel himself would not.

  If she had been a dewy teenager, he might have held another opinion. And Lemuel understood the procedure would not be pleasant, but then, having a demon loose on the town would not be pleasant, either, and that would affect many more people.

  Though Lemuel had told Fiji that he must be off her list of potential partners as a married man, during the long hours of night he wondered if some chance occurrence would force him to take the role. In that remote case, Lemuel hoped that Olivia would forgive him. Olivia’s forgiveness was not an easy process. Lemuel sighed, the air stirring in his dead lungs. He watched her sleeping profile. He would do anything for her. You’re caught, good and proper, he admitted to himself.

  When the vampire could feel the very first tinge of dawn approaching, he slipped out of the hospital and got in his car. He siphoned energy along the way: from a sleeping orderly slumped on a chair, a visitor in the waiting room who was dead to the world, a middle-aged woman recovering from minor surgery. A sip of life force here, a sip there.

  Lemuel was in his room below the pawnshop thirty minutes before the sun rose. He slept the sleep of the dead.

  34

  Fiji had trouble focusing the next day, though there was plenty to keep her busy. The past few years, children from Davy came to see her decorated Halloween house and take a cookie from her heaped tray. Her yard was deliciously scary, and most of the Midnighters helped her out in one way or another. She had celebrated Samhain by herself, and that was a pleasure, too.

  But this year Halloween and Samhain were on the same Saturday night as the waning moon. Midnight was going to be scary for real. Fiji had to get the word out, so trick-or-treaters wouldn’t flock to the Witch’s House, as her Halloween extravaganza was called. She set about spreading the news in as many ways as she could.

  Manfred made a list of local online sites, like the area Swap N Shop page; Fiji wrote a notice for Manfred to post on every single site. Fiji called the Davy and Marthasville papers to ask if they were doing a Halloween activities story. Both were. “In view of the recent deaths in Midnight, I thought it would be in bad taste to have a big celebration here,” she explained. “I’m sure everyone will understand. To cut down on the disappointment, it would be so helpful if you could include that in your story.”

  “I didn’t want to add, ‘And you may get eaten by a demon,’” Fiji told Manfred, who’d dropped by because he thought he really ought to. In truth, he was feeling more than a little self-conscious around her, Fiji could tell.

  Fiji was horribly aware that her virginity and its impending loss was on everyone’s mind. It would be harder to be in a more humiliating situation. She considered several plans to extricate herself from this predicament, but every step she pondered seemed to end in making things worse, not better. In her most hidden heart, Fiji wondered what would happen if nobody volunteered to . . . partner her. “Oh, my God! How scarifying would that be?” she muttered.

  Fiji was not often stupid or silly. She realized that a public ritual was not a love tryst. But she harbored a hope that the man who completed his part of the deed at least showed some—well, some enthusiasm. If one of the angels had to sacrifice himself to do that, she would not be able to show her face for the rest of her life. The idea of poor Joe or poor Chuy on top of her, pumping away without lust or love . . . well, it just made her wince with mortification.

  “You have company coming,” Manfred said, and she pulled herself out of her black thoughts. Fiji’s back was to the door, and she turned to face it. She was regretting opening the shop. Her customer was probably the odious Willeen or some other dabbler.

  Fiji was surprised to see Lenore Whitefield from the hotel. She seldom saw Lenore and had only spoken to her once or twice. Lenore was bursting with things to say, there was no mistaking the look, but she stopped in her tracks when she saw Manfred.

  “Hi,” Fiji said. “Was there something I could help you with, Lenore?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Lenore said hesitantly. “Your name is Fiji, right?”

  “Right. And this is Manfred Bernardo from across the street.”

  “Sure. Hi, Mr. Bernardo. I hope Tommy and Suzie and Mamie are well? I miss having them at the hotel.”

  “They like Safe Harbor, but they do miss Midnight,” Manfred said, trying to be tactful. “Please, call me Manfred.”

  Still, Lenore hesitated.

  “Something’s on your mind, Lenore?” Fiji tried to be gentle, but she was conscious of the clock ticking.

  Lenore took a big step into the store, committing herself to a conversation. “When the hotel opened, the project manager kept telling me that market research had proven that the hotel was in a good spot for its purpose. A place for old people to stay while they waited for an opening in assisted living. And if we had the divided use, with part of it being for regular hotel customers and part of it being for more extended stays, the hotel would be able to make a profit.”

  She paused, and to give her some kind of confirmation that they were on track, Fiji said, “Right.”

  Lenore said, “Me and Harvey, we needed jobs, bad, and we were really glad to be picked out of the other couples who applied for the job. That Eva Culhane, she ran the interviews.”

  It took Fiji a few seconds to remember that Eva Culhane had been the project manager who’d been on site while the hotel was being renovated. She had not, by Joe’s account, been warm or fuzzy or anything but brisk and efficient.

  “I noticed that the couples who got asked to come back for a second round, they were like us,” Lenore was saying. “They didn’t have any other family with them. Well, even that made sense. Not too many people with little kids would want to settle in Midnight.”

  Manfred and Fiji nodded in unison, like bobblehead dolls, Fiji thought.

  “Naturally, I talked to the othe
r women while we were waiting,” Lenore said. “As you do.”

  “Sure,” Fiji said. Manfred looked blank.

  “And it seemed to me that we were the saddest of the lot.”

  Fiji opened her mouth to say something to refute that, automatically, and then she realized she had better wait and see what the bottom line on this conversation was going to be.

  “What do you mean?” Manfred asked, practically.

  “I mean that we didn’t have any kids at all, not even grown kids who would come to visit, or anything. Or living parents. Or brothers or sisters. Well, Harvey’s got a brother in Alaska, but they haven’t talked in five years, I guess.”

  “No close connections,” Manfred summarized briskly.

  Lenore nodded. “This didn’t make any difference to my husband, but it worried me a little. Some of the other couples, the man was a good plumber, or carpenter, or had some executive experience, like running a couple of Holiday Inns or the like.”

  “But not Harvey,” Fiji said.

  “Not Harvey. He worked on the line at a factory that made salsa. For twenty years. When he got laid off, he couldn’t find another job to save his soul. He tries to help, but he just hasn’t got the skills. So we hire Teacher to come do repairs. I kind of lied to Ms. Culhane about that.”

  “I understand,” Fiji said. “I suppose I would have, too.” Eventually, Lenore would get to the point.

  “Culhane didn’t check up on us that much,” Lenore went on. “And that seemed pretty strange to me, considering how finicky she was about everything else. It was like she was looking for the least qualified, rather than the best qualified. See what I mean?”

  Fiji, nodding again, said, “I do see.”

  “But I was so glad to get the job, which included a place to live,” Lenore said doggedly, “that I ignored all the signals.”