Night Shift

by Charlaine Harris

  A woman got out, a woman who smelled familiar, too.

  “It’s Fiji’s sister!” Diederik said, but Quinn was already moving to intercept Kiki, who was staggering toward the intersection. Luckily, no vehicles were coming, but Kiki lay down to wait for her death. She screamed when Quinn yanked her up by her arm. Fiji’s door opened and she ran out, afraid the demon was breaking free early. She dashed toward the struggling group.

  The demon screamed, too, in outrage and desire. And he moved so powerfully that the ground began to tremble.

  As doors flew open and the people of Midnight poured out of their houses, Kiki struggled with the weretigers. She was intent on dying. The Rev sent Fiji to fetch a rope from the toolshed to bind her, and the three men managed to get her into the chapel.

  Fiji said, “I need to be with her!”

  Quinn said, “No, we can deal with her. He called her to hurt you. You have to be mentally ready for tonight. He’s trying to distract you.”

  Fiji began to protest, but then she thought, He was drawing people who didn’t like me. He was able to draw my sister. And she trudged back into her house. The chapel was cold and damp, but at least Kiki couldn’t commit suicide if she was secured inside.

  Kiki was tied up hand and foot, as a matter of fact.

  As the three weretigers left the chapel, the Rev (for the first time ever) locking the door behind him, Bobo held open the front door of the pawnshop while Lemuel carried Olivia out. Bobo reached in to grab a stadium seat with an awning, and after he’d expanded it, Lemuel lowered Olivia into it with great care. Olivia looked pale under the pawnshop light; she was dressed in flannel pajamas with a padded vest over them and socks with moccasins on her feet. Lemuel covered her with a blanket. He was taking no chances.

  Joe and Chuy, hand in hand, walked down from their store to stand at the corner opposite the pawnshop. Manfred emerged from his house to stand with Bobo.

  And to everyone’s surprise, the Reeds walked over from their trailer to take a post on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. Grady was bundled up in a pram-type stroller. Madonna looked resentful but resigned, and she glared around as if daring anyone to make something of her presence. Teacher looked almost pleased. They were both carrying guns.

  They nodded at Sylvester, who was wearing jeans and nothing else. He was ready at the Gas N Go corner.

  Midnight seemed to fall silent.

  37

  Inside her front door, Fiji was praying, and praying hard. She thought of all the lives that had been lost at the crossroad in the past few weeks, both human and animal, and she knew she had to stop this from going any further. But this was a bitter pill to swallow, and she almost choked.

  She shook her head angrily, exasperated with the weak side of herself, and told herself to be more like her aunt. She flung open the door and stepped onto the porch, Mr. Snuggly at her side.

  Fiji’s hour had come. She felt weirdly like the bride arriving at the entrance to the church, except instead of wedding regalia, Fiji wore a green silk robe. She’d saved it for a big night that had never happened.

  Tonight she got to appear naked in front of everyone she knew, have sex, and save the world. If that didn’t constitute a big night, she didn’t understand the meaning of the phrase. She’d also dropped five pounds since she had learned she’d have to “drop her drawers,” as Aunt Mildred had put it. But that had been from sheer anxiety.

  Standing alone under her front porch light, knowing everyone was waiting for her, Fiji struggled to suppress her squeamishness and her bit of vanity and her performance anxiety. For a split second, she was tempted to scream and run back inside. Though it was night, the clouds seemed to be skittering away and the moon was out. Fiji remembered her sister, so anxious to meet her own death.

  And Fiji could feel the demon below, moving and murmuring, yearning for her. She felt Mr. Snuggly’s soft fur rub against her leg.

  Her lesser concerns about her body, about the feelings of the men around her, fell away. These were small issues. She had big work to do.

  The relief of this realization was sublime.

  Fiji began to cast the spell she’d found in Aunt Mildred’s spell book. Its purpose was to close the town to outside notice. She didn’t know how often Mildred had had reason to use the spell, but she also had no reason to doubt its efficacy. Sylvester, whom she saw standing under the awning at Gas N Go, was using a similar spell.

  And as she repeated the words over and over, her hands moving in a disseminating circle, she began to feel the cone tightening over the crossroad, enclosing all of them inside. She had a fleeting impulse to giggle, thinking of the “cone of silence,” but it vanished as she could discern more clearly exactly what it was she was sealing them in with.

  The rest of the world drifted away, leaving only the people of Midnight and the demon. Lemuel stood up and walked forward as Fiji stepped down from her porch and walked to the intersection to stand under the stoplight. Abruptly, the stoplight froze on yellow. They were caught in its eerie glow.

  Lemuel read from a page. “Fiji Cavanaugh, witch of this town, do you agree to protect this place with your body and soul?”

  Fiji nodded. She had hoped it would be a graceful gesture, but she felt her head jerk. She took a deep breath, trying to relax. Then she gave that up as impossible. “I will,” she said. Her voice was level.

  Lemuel said, “Do you agree to sacrifice your virgin blood to appease what lies below?”

  “To seal the demon below us for another two hundred fifty years, I agree,” Fiji said. She turned east. “I call on the air for wisdom.” She turned south. “I call on the fire for courage.” Her voice faltered. After a moment’s recovery, she rotated another quarter turn to face west. “I call on water for cleansing.” Another quarter turn. “And I call on the earth for strength, most of all.” She paused. “Help me defend this town and these people against the demon who threatens them. Bind him into the earth so he can’t harm the earth’s children.”

  “Men?” Lemuel said, without raising his voice. But they all heard him.

  All the males in the town except Teacher came to stand beside Lemuel, who was glancing down at the pages of script. Fiji could not meet anyone’s eyes. Mr. Snuggly glided smoothly past her and sat looking up at the men.

  And then she realized that one of them had moved.

  Bobo had fallen to his knees. Silently, he held out his hand to Fiji. And there was no way even an insecure woman like Fiji could misinterpret the invitation.

  “Really?” she said, embarrassed that her voice was shaking.

  “It would be an honor,” he said, and even Fiji could not doubt his sincerity. There was love in his voice. “I failed you before. I won’t fail you now.”

  She tried hard not to cry, but a tear ran down her cheek. The other men stood silent, waiting, all of them with emotions she could just detect. To her astonishment, some of them were disappointed when she took Bobo’s hand to lead him to the center of the circle. And she held her head a little higher.

  Chuy and Joe revealed their true selves as they moved apart to opposite sides of the circle. Their swords glowed. Their wings spread. Manfred took a place a few feet away from Chuy, and Lemuel an equal distance from Joe. Sylvester stepped into place, and he was chanting in a language none of them could understand. Teacher moved into a vacant spot with his shotgun, and Madonna, too, joined the circle. The three weretigers joined in, and finally, as if she could not help herself, Olivia rose and made her way, painfully, slowly, to join them.

  Fiji raised Bobo up, and he bent to kiss her. It was everything she had ever hoped for. Even under the public circumstances, she began to feel heat moving through her, and there was no mistaking the fact that Bobo was feeling the same way.

  This was not a time to speak. Wordlessly, she loosened the tie of her robe and let it slip down, and stood back. Her eyes strai
ght ahead, she held herself rigid as Bobo looked at her, until he said, “Look at me.” She did and read only delight there. Bobo stripped off his sweatshirt, and she stepped in to unbuckle his belt and unzip his pants. He dropped them in a heap, and Mr. Snuggly sat on the discarded clothes, his golden eyes glowing.

  Though it was nipping cold, Fiji, full of magic, willed them to be warm, and they were. She had power she had never imagined, and it dazed her.

  Fiji knew the moment when Colconnar realized the ritual was taking place above him. He began to move with increasing violence and purpose, clawing his way to the surface, slowly and sluggishly.

  She should have been terrified. Instead, Fiji was possessed by a sure confidence: in her power, in her womanhood. She and Bobo kissed again, longer, and this time they lay down on the road. Bobo tried to interpose himself between Fiji and the cold, muddy asphalt, but she said, “I have to touch the ground.” He nodded, and she lay on her back. She looked up at him, knowing he could see that she loved him. She was not afraid, now, of his knowing that. She forgot other people were there.

  “Are you ready?” Bobo asked, his blue eyes intent on her face. They could both hear the demon now, and they knew they could not spend any more time on preliminaries.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, surprised to find it was true. She lusted for him with a pure brightness. He pushed into her. It stung. She knew she had bled a few drops and was thankful. She thought, Not a virgin anymore. They could stop right now, and the ritual would be satisfied.

  But she would not be. Her body had a mind of its own, and that mind said, Hell no. She realized in a far part of her brain that she need not have had performance anxiety. She certainly knew how to do this. She and Bobo moved together as if they had done it a dozen times. Despite everything that should have prevented her pleasure—the spectators, the weather, the discomfort of lying on cold pavement—Fiji found herself getting close to a climax, which she had never expected.

  The magic was gathering around her and Bobo like a thick cloud. But Colconnar was very close to the surface. He was still moving upward. So it wasn’t just the virginity or the virgin blood that counted, she realized dimly.

  A taloned hand burst through the asphalt. The demon was dark red, or at least it looked that way in the glimpse Fiji had before her body demanded all her attention. The other hand appeared, and Colconnar began to heave himself out of the ground, but still Fiji and Bobo kept up their movement.

  Colconnar’s talons were almost at Bobo’s leg.

  Fiji saw the shadow of a lion, small but unmistakable. She knew it was there to protect her. She forgot it, let the magic build and build, her body moving with Bobo’s, her hands on his back stroking, digging in, urging him on even when a dark talon pierced his leg and his blood spurted, blending with hers. He screamed, but with her hands on him he did not stop moving in and out of her. With his second scream, he exploded inside her, and at that moment her power flared outward.

  Colconnar bellowed.

  The sound was so loud Fiji’s ears rang. The demon’s emerging arm, as big around as a man’s thigh, flailed to try to reach Fiji. But Bobo stayed on top of her to protect her, though his injury was terrible.

  The shadow lion stood over them, and it had grown to giant size. Its shadowy form snarled and bit the demon’s arm. Bright purple blood spattered the ground, already stained with Fiji’s and Bobo’s blood. Fiji’s brilliant power lit up the scene like a floodlight, and that light made the demon’s skin bubble and hiss.

  With the terrible sounds of a building collapsing, Colconnar slid back underneath the Texas soil.

  In the sudden silence, Fiji heard someone begin clapping. Then everyone joined in, many hands.

  As she and Bobo looked into each other’s eyes and he kissed her yet again, she figured the clapping was the only way the residents of Midnight could think of to express their profound relief that they were not going to be eaten, and to thank her for her protection and sacrifice.

  “Not so much,” she said. “Not such a sacrifice.”

  “Maybe we can get in a warm bed and sacrifice again, real soon?” Bobo seemed reluctant to get off her and get up, and she could understand that. She would like to revel in the moment, too. But the world intruded, and she knew her magic would not be able to hold the scene for long, even with Sylvester’s chant.

  “That sounds very good to me.”

  She could tell the moment Bobo felt the full impact of the injury. He hissed and rolled off to her side. “Plus, we need to look at that leg of yours,” she said prosaically.

  “It hurts a hell of lot. Damn. This is literally anticlimactic,” Bobo said, and she began to giggle. He sat up, and she scrambled to her feet. She looked around for her silk robe and found it lying in a dirt-streaked heap a few feet away. Bobo’s own clothes were not in much better shape, and his jeans were decorated lavishly with cat hair, though Mr. Snuggly was nowhere in sight. Perhaps he was enjoying being a lion.

  Lemuel and Quinn helped Bobo to his feet and half carried him to Fiji’s house, after a moment of hesitation.

  “You have some cleaning up to do,” the Rev said, in his creaky voice. “You’re still . . . beaming.”

  After a moment, Fiji realized he meant magical cleaning up. She was the source of the light around the crossroad. Okay, she would figure this out.

  She ratcheted down her magic, unfocusing her will to dissolve the bubble that had kept the world out. As she did so, she saw that all the ghosts of the town were clustered around the ash-and-salt circle, interspersed with live people. Aunt Mildred was standing next to Chuy, and a Mexican cowboy in clothes of a hundred years before was looking at Olivia, who’d resumed her seat on the steps of the pawnshop.

  Though she was fascinated and would have liked to spend moments looking at every face, the next instant a car’s headlights were coming from the west, from Marthasville, and the cold pinched her skin, and she realized she had to get inside or risk getting arrested. She felt her weariness in her bones . . . plus a very pleasant sense of relaxation and a slight achiness.

  Fiji caught a glimpse of the body of Harvey Whitefield, but someone else would have to take care of that particular problem.

  Fiji gathered up their clothes hurriedly and started for her house. She sensed someone in front of her and looked up to discover her sister, who had somehow wriggled out of her bonds.

  “What did I just see?” Kiki said. “Were you humping in the middle of the road? Did I just see something coming out of the asphalt?”

  “What do you think you saw?” Fiji said, and took a step around Kiki. “Go home, Kiki, and don’t come back.”

  She walked over to her house, finally locating Mr. Snuggly. He was sitting on the little wall around the porch next to a planter, and he looked proud—which meant he looked like all cats. But he nodded to her in a congratulatory way, and then set about cleaning his paws.

  For a moment, Fiji hesitated at the door, looking back. She could see a shadow surrounding the cat, a shadow that didn’t match the domestic shorthair feline outline at all.

  But Fiji had opened the door an inch, and she could hear the water of the shower running. She could imagine the warmth of the water and the clean smell of her soap, and she knew Bobo was waiting for her to join him. She hoped Lemuel had healed his leg. If not, there was bandaging to do. She even looked forward to that. Fiji stepped inside and shut the door behind her.

  38

  The next morning, Fiji woke feeling like a new woman. The crisis was over. The demon was imprisoned. Bobo was asleep beside her. She had saved the world! She had had sex! Bobo loved her!

  She tried to track down the essential difference she felt in herself. She was still Fiji, still the least important person in a contentious family, still a witch in a society that did not like witches, still round as a honeydew in a nation that revered stiltlike women.

  But now, she
thought, I am powerful. It was a fact. Her feeling that she was transforming had begun before last night—in fact, when she had frozen the gunmen the day of the assault on Olivia. The day she had killed McGuire. Arthur Smith would never stop asking questions about that day, and she would never be held responsible for any of it. She knew that. And despite the fact that everyone was always talking about how nice she was, she didn’t feel guilty for having killed Ellery McGuire. It had been the only way to prevent the deaths of people she knew—people who were in her care.

  She wondered if Sylvester Ravenwing would stay, and she rather hoped he would. She wondered if Olivia would decide to become a vampire. She wondered if Joe and Chuy would ever be able to re-attain heaven. And what would Teacher and Madonna do, now that Olivia’s father might come talk to Olivia directly? There was no need to protect her from Ellery McGuire any longer, Fiji figured.

  It felt good to have a future in which to contemplate all these things.

  She felt a little movement beside her and knew Bobo was awake.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he said. Another thing she knew was that he meant it.

  * * *

  Joe and Chuy had gotten up at their usual time, but instead of Joe going for his run and Chuy preparing breakfast, they’d jumped in their car and driven to the kennel where Rasta had been boarded. The Peke was bathed and groomed and ecstatic to see his people. Everyone who worked at the kennel agreed that if all gay people were as nice and modest and normal as Chuy Villegas and Joe Strong, they wouldn’t mind having them around.

  Joe and Chuy drove back to Midnight. “If we can’t ever go back home,” Joe said, “at least we have a dog.”

  “‘God’ spelled backward,” Chuy said. It was an old joke, but they always enjoyed it.

  Joe gave a silent sigh. Sensing the near-emergence of the demon had activated a hunger in him, a deep need he had suppressed for decades. He had wanted to fly, to defend heaven.