Day Shift

by Charlaine Harris

  “I ain’t dying today,” Tommy said. The force of his personality was too much for Lenore. She literally threw up her hands.

  “All right, go on,” she said. “Please don’t try to do too much, and please take all your medication before you go.”

  “We’ll have them back this evening,” Manfred said, trying to placate the woman. He had an uneasy feeling that if Lenore called Eva Culhane, they’d never leave the building, because from the little he’d seen of Culhane, she was formidable. Since his first conversation with Tommy, he’d been aware there was something wrong with the setup at the Midnight Hotel.

  Instead of pleading with the old people, why didn’t Lenore call the families of the residents? Because they didn’t have families, and they’d been selected to live in Midnight because of that. They’d been picked because they’d be grateful. Shorty wouldn’t be there if he’d been coherent enough to remember he had a grandson.

  Manfred had been so overwhelmed with his own problems that he hadn’t even tried to figure out why the hotel had reopened. As he ushered Tommy and Suzie out to the waiting cars, he realized he needed to spare some of his worry time for the situation at the Midnight Hotel. Barry could have told him that he and Olivia were thinking parallel thoughts.

  Manfred wasn’t ready to be met with a firm refusal by Olivia when he suggested Barry ride with her.

  “No,” she said. “He goes with you. He stays with you. I don’t like him in my head. I’ll take the first lap with Tommy and Suzie.”

  Manfred couldn’t take any more upset that morning. “All right,” he said. “Fine. Call me when they need to stop. Hey, there’s a Cracker Barrel in a reasonable location for lunch. I checked the Internet last night.”

  “And all old people love Cracker Barrel? That’s what you’re saying, sonny?” Tommy protested from Olivia’s front passenger seat.

  “I do,” Suzie said as she buckled her seat belt in the back. “Let’s stop there!”

  “They do have good breakfast, and you can get it all day,” Tommy said thoughtfully.

  “Apparently these two old people do love Cracker Barrel,” Olivia said. Manfred could tell she was holding some irritation in with an effort, and that was another worry.

  “So why’s she so mad at you?” Manfred asked Barry, once they were actually on their way.

  “She didn’t want me to be able to read her mind. But I can’t block out specific people. No one wants me to be able to dip in their head,” Barry said reasonably. “But they want to know what everyone else is thinking.”

  “Were you born able to read minds?”

  “Yeah. It’s not an easy thing to grow up that way. To put it mildly. Especially when you’re little and you repeat what you hear without understanding there are going to be consequences.”

  Manfred tried to imagine that, but he found himself so dismayed by the prospect that he could only say, “That’s awful.”

  “Tell me about it.” Barry laughed, but not like it was really funny.

  “Like I told you,” Manfred said, concentrating on the road ahead, where a pickup had just pulled slowly into his lane. “I’ve met another telepath. But I never thought about what being a mind-reading kid would be like. Damn.”

  “You know Sookie, you said.”

  Manfred glanced at Barry before turning his attention back to the pickup. Its right blinker kept going, monotonously and without conviction. Of course, this driver did not want to turn. He’d just left the blinker on. “Asshole,” muttered Manfred, and then returned to the conversation. “Yeah, I met her in Bon Temps,” he said. “You from there, too? You related to her? I mean, is this hereditary or genetic or whatever?”

  “Whatever,” Barry said. “I thought I was the only one in the world until I met Sookie in Dallas.”

  “I can’t picture her anywhere but Bon Temps.”

  “I’d as soon live in a shack in the slums of Mexico City,” Barry said vehemently. “I had one of the worst times of my life in Bon Temps, and that’s saying something. Got abducted and tortured.”

  “That’s seriously bad,” Manfred agreed. “So, if I called Sookie and asked her about Barry Horowitz, what would she say?”

  “She’ll probably remember me under a different name,” Barry said. “But I’m not speaking it out loud in Texas.”

  “Because of your vampire problem.”

  “My very serious problem.”

  They rode for some miles in silence.

  “You must be pretty devoted to your grandfather,” Manfred said.

  “If I’d been really devoted, it wouldn’t have taken me so long to track him down. Due to my own troubles, I kind of lost track of him. Now that I’ve found him, I don’t know what to do. He’s not in good shape mentally. He’s not a nice old guy. But he’s all I’ve got left.”

  “I have a mother. Never knew my dad.”

  “My folks were pretty ordinary, but my dad’s mother was something else, according to what I remember and what people have told me.”

  “Lawbreaker?”

  “Not like Shorty,” Barry said, and laughed. “Shorty was always in and out of jail. He was a thief. Not a violent guy, but he never thought the laws of personal property applied to him. My grandmother Horowitz was wild, and one minister told me he thought she was the spawn of Hell.”

  “Wow, pretty drastic.” Manfred thought he would have liked to meet such a woman.

  “Yeah, I only spent time with her once or twice. She disappeared after that, when I was in elementary school.”

  They’d both had unusual childhoods, Manfred thought. And when he looked over at Barry, Barry nodded.

  “You scared Olivia pretty bad,” Manfred said.

  “She’s got a lot of secrets.”

  And they rode in silence until Olivia called them to say Suzie needed to go to the bathroom.

  23

  Joe stepped out of the front of the Antique Gallery and Nail Salon and looked up and down the street. Chuy, who was reading a book since there were no customers, didn’t even look up. Joe had been restless all morning, and now his antsiness was reaching a high level. He held open the door a little and said, “The town is empty.”

  With a sigh, Chuy closed his book and put it down. He came to the door. “Emptier than usual?”

  “Yes. Olivia’s gone. Manfred’s gone. Two of the old people from the hotel. That young guy, the one who’s been visiting his grandfather.”

  “You saw them leave?”

  “Yeah. But I think I would have known anyway.”

  Chuy looked up at Joe, and Joe could tell he was worried. He didn’t try to reassure his partner. He only got this feeling when things were about to go south.

  Chuy said uneasily, “Our killers are gone.”

  That was true. Lemuel and Olivia were the most ruthless among them, and the quickest to action.

  “I’m going to the store, just for a minute,” Joe said. Leaving Chuy standing in the doorway, he went east and passed an empty storefront and then came to the corner gas station/convenience store. The bells over the door chimed as he went inside, and Teacher Reed, who’d been playing solitaire on the old computer, looked up gratefully.

  “Hey, man,” he said, getting off his stool. “I thought no one was going to come in today. Except maybe the holdup guy. You know three convenience stores have been held up in this area?”

  “I read that in the county paper. I’d be surprised if the holdup man came in here. Not enough business.”

  “That’s for damn sure. Some days I’m fairly busy, but today I haven’t seen anyone since Olivia gassed up early this morning. If I have to do this job much longer, I’m going to go crazy.”

  “Any end in sight?”

  “Yes, praise God and hallelujah.”

  Though Joe could tell Teacher didn’t really mean those words, it felt good to hear
them. “So you heard from headquarters?”

  “Yeah, man, finally! There’s a guy who’s interested in taking it over. They’re reviewing his background. If his financials and everything else check out, he could be moving in next month.”

  “He would live in the same house that the Lovells had?”

  Teacher shrugged. “I guess. I don’t care where he lives, as long as he takes this place over soon.”

  “You didn’t have to take it on,” Joe said mildly.

  “But the money was so good.” Teacher looked rueful. “Pays well enough to where I didn’t feel like I could turn it down, with Madonna and Grady to feed.”

  “I think Madonna takes care of the feeding,” Joe said.

  Teacher laughed. “I don’t hear you tell a lot of jokes, Joe,” he said.

  “Not a funny world,” Joe said, after he’d thought about Teacher’s statement. “Have you felt a little strange today?”

  “Strange? How? Naw, I feel bored, and I feel restless, but I don’t feel strange.” Teacher looked from side to side, as if he might spot something odd creeping between the bags of potato chips and the dishwashing liquid. The fluorescent light in the store bounced off Teacher’s dark skin, giving him shadows where there should have been none. “You feel strange? Like, weird?”

  “Yes,” said Joe. “I do.”

  “Does that mean something? I never would have asked that before we moved here.”

  “Why did you move here?” This was not a question you should ask in Midnight, but Joe had a great suspicion that the Reeds were not truly Midnighters.

  “Well . . .” Teacher floundered. “The café was open to rent, Madonna thought she could run a place so small, and the man who sold it to us threw in the trailer. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the house on the other side of the Rev’s, that’s the house we could’ve taken, but it’s in terrible shape. Madonna said it was bad enough me going out to work every day to fix other people’s houses, she didn’t want me coming home to work there, too. The trailer is in great shape.”

  This was too much explanation, and Joe felt sad. Madonna was truly a gifted cook, Grady was a charmer, and Teacher was literally a handy man to have around. He could fix almost anything. But Joe felt sure that the Reeds would not stay.

  “I understand,” Joe said. “Stay well, Teacher. I hope you get your replacement soon.”

  “See you, Joe,” Teacher said. There was a definite guarded tone to his voice.

  The last family who’d worked at Gas N Go hadn’t worked out, either. Joe hadn’t wondered at all (at the time) why the Reeds hadn’t been summoned to the little meeting that presaged the Lovells’ departure. He’d simply accepted it. But now he knew. As he returned to his shop, he wondered if there was some kind of curse on Gas N Go. He turned back to look at it in the magical spectrum. There was a smudge of sadness around the building but nothing permanent. He could hope that the next manager would be someone who fit into the town perfectly.

  There was no point going over to talk with Lenore and Harvey Whitefield. There was nothing extranormal about them, and Joe had found he didn’t even particularly like them. He knew that Mamie and Shorty were in the hotel, and he knew that they were both napping, and he knew that Mamie was very close to passing through the veil. He could also tell that two other people staying at the hotel (both doing contract work at Magic Portal) were both away for the day.

  As uneasy as he felt, he hoped they’d stay away until late in the night. Or maybe they’d find someone to spend the night with, someone fun, and by the time they returned to the Midnight Hotel, whatever was going to happen—tonight, tomorrow night, soon—would all be done.

  He could hope.

  24

  Olivia made it through lunch at the Cracker Barrel by the skin of her teeth. She hated the merchandise room, she hated the false harking back to a re-created past reflected in the wall decor, and she hated Barry and Manfred because they were oblivious to the fluffy sweatshirts and silly souvenirs and the faux farm implements. They simply enjoyed the food, as Suzie and Tommy did. Their waitress looked exhausted but kept smiling, and Barry told Olivia that the woman was a single mother and had two jobs to keep afloat.

  “I don’t want to be obliged to pity my server,” Olivia snapped.

  Barry turned his attention back to his menu pointedly. “Then don’t. I just didn’t want you to jump down her throat because she was slow bringing your coffee.”

  “So you go around being Mr. Compassionate?” Her voice was low but sharp.

  He flinched. “No,” he confessed. “Not always.”

  “Yeah, I thought so.”

  “Listen, I can tell you’re mad at me for something I really can’t help. But see if you can rein it in for today, all right? I’m not telling anyone any of your awful little secrets.”

  Olivia wanted nothing so much as to punch him in the face. “Be quiet now,” she said, her voice so low and intense that people near them actually turned to look. “Really, really, be quiet.”

  Suzie said, “Everything okay here? You young people! Mind your manners!”

  “Says the ex-hooker,” Barry whispered, and suddenly Olivia wanted to laugh.

  “Hey, Tommy, you need some more tea?” Manfred was down at the other end of the table, and he’d been very solicitous to Tommy and Suzie the whole meal. Maybe because he wanted to pretend she, Olivia, wasn’t in a total rage? Olivia took a deep breath and reconciled herself to the fact that she could do nothing about what Barry had learned from her thoughts. But, she reassured herself, I can kill him if he ever tells anyone. What about when he leaves? He might find my father and tell . . .

  She glanced sideways at the man next to her. She didn’t want to have to kill Barry, but she might have to. It would be a pity. She could see so many times a gift like his would come in handy. If only somehow she could immunize herself against it!

  “Is there anyone you can’t hear? At all?” she asked, picking up a roll and taking a small bite.

  “Vampires.” He cut up his ham with precision. “And it’s hard to hear people who can turn into an animal. Texas is better than Louisiana. Not so many of either one.”

  “And yet you have enemies here in Texas.”

  He chewed and swallowed. “Enemies with long memories.”

  He was reminding Olivia that she had a hold over him, too.

  It was still true that if you didn’t go looking for vampires, you’d have a good chance of never seeing one. But every large city had at least one vampire-oriented nightclub and a house or two where vampires were known to nest. For those reasons alone (the company of their own kind, the profitability of simply being undead, and the safety of numbers), it was hard to find a vampire who preferred to live on his or her own in a rural area; Lemuel was an exception. But he was an exception in more than one way. He didn’t have to have blood. He could take energy instead, a sip here and a sip there, just enough to keep him going.

  He could take from other vampires, too. And he defended his area vigorously.

  That was why most undead would not come within miles of Midnight, unless they had to come to the pawnshop for something rare. Lemuel would not leech from a customer of the store.

  “You won’t be bothered by your enemies while you’re in Midnight,” Olivia said. “At least, when Lemuel is there.”

  “But he’s not. Any idea of when he’ll return? I’d like to stay to see Granddaddy settled in a real nursing home. With more supervision. But I’m not going to die to make that happen.”

  “Of course not,” Olivia said. “He’s had his turn.”

  Barry said, “When you put it like that, doesn’t make me sound too good.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “But it’s the truth.”

  He lifted his shoulders, let them drop. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “You better take Tommy to the men’s room
. You never know what kind of conversation he’s going to have with another customer.”

  Barry went with Tommy while Olivia took Suzie to the ladies’ room and Manfred paid their bill. Olivia, glancing back at the wreck of the table, thought, I didn’t know old people could eat that much. She remembered her own grandmother picking at the food on her plate. But her grandmother had been ill . . . her last illness.

  Manfred and Barry loaded Suzie and Tommy into Manfred’s car this time, and Olivia drove alone. The solitude was a huge relief. She listened to Yo-Yo Ma the whole way into Dallas. It cleared her mind and calmed her. She felt much better when they stopped for the final briefing, which took place at a filling station in Bonnet Park. But by then, she’d come to a decision.

  “I have to go in,” she said.

  Everyone stared at her, but that didn’t bother Olivia. She was used to it.

  “But the maid might recognize you, you said yourself,” Manfred said. “And I know Lewis would recognize me.”

  “Give me ten minutes at a Goodwill and she won’t know me,” Olivia promised.

  “Where are you going to find a Goodwill around here?” Barry waved a hand. “I don’t care if you come in or not. But I have to be out of Dallas by dark, and I’m not kidding. So if you’ve changed your mind, fine with me, but get your ass in gear.”

  “Okay, give me thirty, and I’ll be back.” She’d spotted a wig shop five blocks south, and she went in there first, emerging with short black hair. There was a consignment shop a block away, and she came out of it in a pair of very tight jeans and a tank top and sandals. She put on a lot of eye makeup with the help of the rearview mirror.

  When she got back to the filling station, she found Tommy and Suzie sipping icy drinks while Manfred filled his gas tank and Barry stared at the sky and his watch alternately. There were hours of daylight left, but it was easy to see he was genuinely anxious.

  Whatever he’d done to engender this terror, it must have been something pretty awful. Barry grew more and more interesting. It’s a real pity I hate to be in the same room with him.