Night Shift

by Charlaine Harris

  “It seems a little bitter,” Diederik said. “Like grapefruit, burned.”

  “Not a bad description,” Quinn said, feeling relieved. “I’m wondering if you should be taken somewhere away from this. This is not a healthy place.”

  “Father,” Diederik said sharply. “I’m not Rasta. I’m a man now, and I have to take my place in the world.”

  Bobo, who had just entered, paused in the act of pulling out a chair. He looked at Diederik askance.

  “If we knew what that place was.” Quinn didn’t think of himself as a worrier, but this evening he was troubled. The only son he was ever likely to have was in a dangerous location, where the supernatural world and the natural world felt like they were coming closer to each other every night.

  “My place is here, with the people who raised me,” his son told him, with a definite overtone of “Duhhh.”

  “Diederik,” said a rusty voice from the table by the window, finally breaking the silence. The boy flinched, glancing over at the Rev and then back to Quinn. What he saw in Quinn’s face made him feel even worse.

  “Excuse me, Father,” Diederik said, his words tumbling over each other. “I know you’ve done your best to protect me, even if it meant your absence. I know I need to learn your business, so I can carry it on. But I love it here.”

  “Then you’ll be glad to know we’ve bought a house in Midnight,” Quinn said, trying to salvage the moment he’d thought would be so happy.

  There was a moment of blank silence. Then Diederik started laughing, and Chuy and Joe smiled, and even the Rev looked a little less grim.

  “You all are moving to town to stay?” Madonna had come to the table to take their orders. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

  Everyone at the table was disconcerted, not by the purchase of a house by John Quinn, but because none of them had thought of the Reeds as permanent residents. Before Madonna could take offense at that moment of silence, Diederik picked up little Grady, who had staggered over to the table on unsteady legs, and swung him high. Grady threw up his hands and laughed, and they all laughed with him. Diederik leaned over to kiss Quinn’s cheek.

  It was a very happy moment for Quinn.

  Lenore Whitefield, who managed the hotel, came in then, and though the Midnighters continued to talk, they were all surprised. Lenore and her husband, Harvey (a jerk no one liked, except presumably Lenore), had kept aloof from the little Midnight community. It was natural they would not interact that often. The hotel bought its groceries in Davy. It only employed a handful of people: a cook from Davy at breakfast time, another one who came in for lunch and dinner, a maid, evening clerk Marina, and Diederik. Lenore did a large share of the maid work while Harvey sat at the desk.

  Now, however, Lenore needed something. That was evident in her stance. “Mrs. Reed, do you have a moment?” she asked, perching on one of the seldom-used stools at the counter.

  “I will in ten, fifteen minutes,” Madonna said, glancing at the clock by the door to the kitchen. “If you can wait that long?”

  “I can,” said Lenore. She swiveled on the stool to look at the table where the others were sitting. “Hi, Diederik! Who’s your buddy?”

  “This is Grady, Mrs. Whitefield,” Diederik said. He waved baby Grady’s hand at the woman. “How are you?”

  “I’m just fine.” She seemed a bit bemused at Diederik’s careful manners. “Hi, Mr. Quinn. I hope you’re enjoying your stay at the hotel. We sure like to have repeat guests like you.”

  “Yes, it’s very comfortable,” Quinn said. “And thanks for employing my son.”

  “Not many people want to mop and clean anymore,” Lenore said, shaking her head. Her short brown hair, heavily shot with gray, was thick and wiry, giving it somewhat the appearance of a dog’s coat. The accepted opinion in Midnight was that Lenore was a nice enough person, not extremely bright, clinging to her job with desperate tenacity since it had rescued her and Harvey from dire straits. She seemed to be direct and honest.

  It was a good food night at Home Cookin, but then every night was at least pretty good, ranging up to sublime. Madonna Reed might not have won any personality contests, but she could (dammit) cook. Even Chuy, who was quite the chef himself, took his hat off to Madonna, at least metaphorically.

  “What are you eating tonight, Bobo?” Lenore asked.

  “Catfish and hush puppies and slaw,” Bobo said. “There aren’t any bad choices, though.”

  When Madonna brought in the food, Lenore looked at their plates with keen interest. As soon as all the customers had been served, Madonna came to lean on the counter to talk to her.

  “What’s on your mind, Lenore?” Madonna had never wasted time on casual conversation.

  “You probably know I have a cook coming from Davy to help with breakfasts for everyone, and then someone else comes to cook lunch and dinner for the residents. The nonresidents have to fend for themselves.”

  Madonna nodded, and everyone at the table scrambled to say something to each other so it would appear they weren’t listening.

  “Well, my morning cook is still fine. But my lunch and dinner cook is about to quit. Since we only have four residents at the moment, I think I can do lunch. Soup and sandwiches, that kind of thing. I was hoping you’d agree to do the dinners.”

  “For the residents, only.”

  “If that works out, maybe we could talk about supplying something for the transient guests? A few stay for weeks since they’re doing contract work at Magic Portal.” Magic Portal, the large company east of Midnight that manufactured games, was a major employer in the area and also responsible for the great Internet connections available in Midnight. Plus most of the hotel’s clientele.

  “But I’m just starting off with the residents. How would we convey the food? Four extra meals won’t make much difference to my workload, I figure.”

  “I have a cart that Harvey can wheel over. Do you have plate covers? Cloches?”

  “I have some in back, yes. Previous owner left ’em. They’re very old, but usable.”

  “So I propose that Harvey would come to get the dinners for the residents at five thirty. We would have given them their choices earlier in the day.”

  “Harvey will also return the dishes?”

  “Yes, he’ll return them the next day by lunchtime.”

  “I’ll give you an answer tomorrow. I’ll have to figure out what to charge for this.”

  “Let me know. I’m really, really hoping you’ll say yes.”

  Madonna nodded. When Lenore had gone back to the hotel, Chuy said, “You gonna do it, Madonna?”

  “Hell, yeah,” she said. “That’s gonna add up. I might have to work an hour longer, but the money should be worth it. I’ll have to do some figuring.”

  Nothing else exciting happened during the meal, though Madonna did ask all of them where Fiji was. “She hasn’t come in here in days, and that’s not like her,” Madonna said, with a smile that struck Quinn as off. He also noticed that Olivia looked down, guarding her expression.

  When they’d all eaten, Quinn told his son he’d see him later, and the boy left for his job, a smile on his face at the prospect of seeing Marina, Quinn figured. Quinn paid at the same time as Olivia, and when she left, he followed her to the pawnshop. As she was about to go inside, he hailed her.

  “You following me, tiger?”

  She didn’t seem alarmed, but mildly irritated.

  “It’s not hard to walk in the same direction as someone in Midnight,” Quinn said. “But I have to say that I’m really curious. What is the big secret between you and Fiji, the one about Madonna?”

  He hadn’t hit the mark exactly, Quinn told himself, judging Olivia’s reaction.

  “Big secret?” She smiled. “I don’t know any big secret. I’ve always been curious about the Reeds. Haven’t you?”

  �
��You mean how they manage to keep the restaurant open? Of course, but there’s something else about them. Something that seems significant to you.”

  “I don’t know what that would be,” she said. She went inside.

  Quinn watched her go and then spun to face the shop across the road. Before he could convince himself it was none of his business, he ran across. His feet made almost no sound when they touched the pavement.

  Fiji had just finished her supper and was washing up when Quinn knocked at her back door. “Quinn,” she said. “Hi. Come on in.” She took the chain off the door. Mr. Snuggly, who adored Quinn, appeared instantly and began basting himself against Quinn’s ankles.

  “Snug, stop it,” Fiji said.

  “I don’t mind. Hi, little brother.” Mr. Snuggly did not reply, but he did purr.

  “Please have a seat.” Fiji sat down in her accustomed place at the kitchen table and gestured at the chair opposite. Quinn worked himself into the small space and looked at her with frank appreciation. “Looking lovely,” he said, and she made a little derisive sound. He ignored it. “I’m going to ask you some questions,” he said, “and I hope you answer them. If you don’t . . . okay.”

  “Let’s have the questions.”

  “Is there a reason you haven’t been to Home Cookin in a few days?”

  “Yes,” she said, without hesitation.

  “Is Madonna angry with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Goddamn it, Fiji, this is like playing hot or cold with a kid.”

  “Yes,” she said, and laughed out loud at his indignant face. “Okay, I’ll tell you about it, like I told Bobo. But I’m not telling you the whole story, because the whole thing is not mine to tell.”

  “Fair enough,” Quinn said.

  Fiji told him about catching Teacher coming out of her house, about what Mr. Snuggly had told her, and about her subsequent reprisal. She also told him about Teacher’s connection in Killeen, without going into any specifics.

  “I get that you’re leaving out parts of the story, and I feel like those parts have to do with Olivia,” Quinn said. “What I don’t get is why Teacher would search your house if he’s here to watch Olivia. And that changes my ideas about Olivia and her background, because setting up a whole business and a whole family to watch one person requires deep pockets.”

  “Yes, it does,” she agreed. “If you ask me, that’s why the hotel got renovated.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Because—oh, shit, I’m getting into Olivia’s business again!” Fiji was angry with herself. “I believe Teacher’s been searching all our homes all along, whenever he had a moment, just to see if the rest of us were who we said we were.”

  “What’s so important about Olivia?”

  And Fiji stared at him, her lips pressed together. Quinn felt like shaking her to knock loose the secrets. Instead, he leaned across the table and kissed her.

  It was a really satisfying kiss. She was warm and soft, and she smelled great, and she had that magic running internally that made every kiss zing through his blood. For the tenth time, Quinn wondered if witches were born or made. He was pretty sure that either you had magic in your blood, or you didn’t. Fiji definitely did.

  He was bent across the table in a strange position, so before he was really ready to stop, he had to break off. He sat back in his chair.

  For a minute, Fiji looked dazed. After she recovered herself (and he couldn’t help but be pleased that it took a moment), she said, “Okay, that was sensational. But I’m still not going to tell you.” She smiled as she said it, just a little, so Quinn would know she didn’t really believe he’d been trying to bribe her to spill all with a kiss.

  “I like you,” Quinn said directly. “And I have a suspicion that in private, you work magic that we can’t even imagine.”

  Fiji smiled. “You’re right. I do. No double entendre.”

  “You’re not going to give me a hint about Olivia? About your problems?”

  “Nope. Not mine to tell.”

  “So I’ll have to approach Olivia herself.” He shook his head.

  “Yeah, good luck with that,” she said. She stood, which was a pretty clear signal for him to leave.

  He loped back to the hotel, not quite suppressing a smile. The kiss had been rewarding. It’s been too long since I had a good companion, Quinn thought.

  Diederik was on the brink of going out on his own.

  In view of that realization, his kiss with Fiji took on a much more interesting cast.

  25

  Olivia said, “Telling him I’m married is sure to flush them out.”

  “And that’s what you want?” Lemuel was reading the translation Christine had worked so hard on. He knew what Olivia was telling him was important to her (and therefore to him) personally, but he was pretty sure the text was even more important. At least in the Midnight universe, and just at this moment.

  “I’m tired of this underhand game. I want to know who the players are and who’s backing them.” Olivia was exercising as she talked, and the flexing of her limber body was doing nothing to aid Lemuel’s concentration. Since she’d slept extra during the day, she had cleared a space for stretching in the herd of chairs occupying the pawnshop’s center. Lemuel watched from the high stool behind the counter, the handwritten translation before him.

  He tore his gaze from the papers to look at Olivia. “If your father has tracked you down to watch you, he’s done nothing to make you think he will harm you. The Reeds are acting on his behalf? They haven’t raised a finger against you. In the past three years, there’s been many a time they could have acted against you.”

  Olivia paused in her squats. “Okay, I concede that.”

  “The more serious threat, if I’m understanding you correctly, is that your father’s right-hand man is watching you separately and unknown to your father.”

  She nodded vigorously as she began doing lunges. “He was responsible for the man who tried to grab me when I was breaking into the Goldthorpe house.”

  “Yes, you heard him say the name over his . . . walkie-talkie?”

  “Cell phone. Yes, I did.”

  “So he seems bent on capturing you. However, we haven’t seen his agents here.”

  “One of them is responsible for the hotel.”

  “But which one?”

  “My dad owns the company that renovated the hotel. Manfred traced it back, and back, until he got to the source. Of course, he didn’t know that the president of the company was my dad, whose name is Nicholas Wicklow.”

  This was the first time that Lemuel had heard her father’s name. “Thanks for trusting me with it,” he said. “I wondered if you would.”

  “My real name,” she said, with air of someone doing a very necessary but distasteful task, “is Melanie Horton Wicklow.”

  “No, that’s your birth name,” Lemuel said. “Your real name is Olivia Charity.”

  She smiled at him, and his heart felt at ease. “Though she always made me call her Mother, my stepmother’s name was Tiffany, and I hope she never rests in peace.”

  “What about your real mother—your biological mother, as they say now?”

  “I didn’t know her very well. Her name was Cara,” Olivia said. “From the pictures, I look like her. Maybe another reason for Mo— Tiffany to do what she did.”

  “But you’re uncertain about your father’s knowledge of her abuse.”

  “I waver back and forth,” Olivia said, almost reluctantly. “Now I feel he didn’t know. But I also think you don’t know something like that if you aren’t paying attention.”

  “Yes,” Lemuel agreed.

  Olivia sat on the floor cross-legged, bent forward, and stood on her hands, her legs still crossed. Lemuel eyed her with admiration and a touch of exasperation.
“Woman,” he said, “we have to talk.”

  “I thought we were.”

  “We have to talk about another topic, as interesting as I find this rare conversation about your family.”

  Olivia rolled back into a sitting stance and looked up at him, her eyebrows raised in query. “What is it, Lemuel?”

  “We must call the town together,” he said. “I think we are about to be killed.”

  Her phone rang.

  “Olivia,” said Manfred. “We have to have a town meeting. Sylvester’s forty-eight hours are up.”

  26

  The ground floor of Midnight Pawn was far larger than it appeared from the outside. The bare boards of the old floor creaked as the people of Midnight assembled and chose seats. Part of the fun of gathering in the pawnshop was trying out the eccentric assembly of chairs that had accumulated over the years.

  But those coming into the pawnshop were somber, in no mood for fun. Bobo descended from his apartment as rumpled as if he’d already gone to bed, though it was only nine o’clock. When Fiji arrived, she looked exasperated. She’d been in the middle of practicing something, Lemuel deduced, from the stained bib apron still covering her T-shirt and jeans. Also, she smelled like sage.

  Manfred entered and took a seat, but he didn’t greet anyone. He sat staring down at his hands as if he had something very much on his mind. Diederik left work to run over to the meeting. He smelled of Marina Desoto. Quinn came with him. No one objected to his presence. It seemed right.

  Chuy and Joe sat side by side, holding hands, Lemuel noticed. It was unusual for them to display affection in public.

  Olivia had told Lemuel more than once that she didn’t understand how he could be so tolerant of other people’s sex lives and reticent about his own with her. Lemuel thought, I have always liked privacy for myself. And his strongest emotions were personal emotions, saved to be savored between himself and one other person.

  With no fanfare or tentativeness, Sylvester Ravenwing slid silently through the door and took his seat among them. He sat by Manfred. Ravenwing nodded to Lemuel. They had met once, both out on a stormy night. Lemuel didn’t challenge the newcomer’s right to be at the meeting. He was definitely a Midnighter. Chuy and Joe, however, stared at Sylvester Ravenwing with some suspicion.