Night Shift
Page 11

“If your sister stays for any length of time, I’ll take you two out to dinner one night,” Manfred offered as Fiji dropped him at his house. “And not at Home Cookin. All the way to Davy, or even Marthasville. I spare no expense!”
“Thanks, Manfred,” she said, sounding surprised. Fiji threw the surprise back over to his side of the fence by giving him a hug.
Manfred knew his return of the hug was a bit awkward, but it was sincere. He was pleased. Unfortunately, as soon as he touched her, he knew what Fiji’s secret was. She had had a falling-out with Bobo—or rather, with her dream of the possibility of a relationship with Bobo. That made him sad, but he was not about to comment on it.
Fiji let go and leaned back in her seat. “Oh, I just remembered!” she said.
“Remembered what?”
“Where I’d seen Francine Owens before.”
“Where was it?”
“The last time I went to the grocery store in Davy. She was ahead of me in line.”
“How can you possibly remember who was ahead of you in line at the grocery store?” Manfred shook his head disbelievingly.
“You’d remember her, too,” Fiji said, though she wasn’t completely sure about that. In her limited experience, men remembered different things than women did, at least sometimes. “She was one of those shoppers who had a coupon for every item. And she asked the cashier about a dozen questions. Like if the second package of napkins had to be the same style as the first one for the coupon to be good.” She’d also waited until the items had been tallied to begin writing a check, which was one of Fiji’s pet peeves. If you’re gonna use a debit card, fine. If you’re gonna write a check, by golly, start filling it out.
If Fiji hadn’t been in a hurry (she couldn’t remember why) she would never have recalled the little incident, which had irritated her quite a bit.
She explained all this to Manfred, who said, “So you disliked her, based on that incident.”
“Well, yeah. Of course, today I just felt sorry for her. But she was definitely on my shit list for about five whole minutes.” Fiji smiled to make sure Manfred understood that being on her “shit list” was not a permanent thing.
“That’s interesting.”
“I don’t see why! At least now I can lose that nagging feeling you get when you can’t quite remember something.”
“Fiji,” Manfred said, and stopped dead. He’d been about to explain his tentative theory, but he thought better of it. “Nah, don’t worry about it.” He smiled at her. “I’m glad you remembered, and I’m glad the lady’s okay, and I hope your sister leaves soon.”
“Those all sound like good wishes to me.”
“And whatever else is wrong, I think it’s gonna be okay, too,” Manfred said, and turned to go in his house before she could ask him any questions.
 
 
4
 
 
That night, Lemuel was back at his task of puzzling out the translation of the book—the most important one, the one about the origin of magical sites in the United States. The only one in Texas he’d seen mention of so far was the Devil’s Sinkhole, south of Midnight. It would have been more accurate to call it “a Devil’s Sinkhole,” according to the author of The New World and Its Places of Interest.
Lemuel had seen older books than the one to which he was paying so much attention, but he was sure this was the right book. He’d come across the first pawnshop owner’s notes in his second year of working for Bobo; it was ironic that it had taken him all these years to find the really interesting piece of history that had become his obsession. But the builder of Midnight Pawn, which had originally been a general store, had bought and sold a good many things, both ancient and modern, new and used.
“A consignment of ancient books,” the original owner had written. “Which I now believe to be of the Devil, so I have hidden them. If the owner returns to redeem them, I will kill him.” Lemuel had been intrigued, of course. He’d had trouble discovering what had happened to the original owner, but he’d run across one mention of a terrible accident in an old county newspaper, which had made him even more curious.
Lemuel had not been able to claim ownership of the pawnshop continuously for all those years, because someone would have noticed his odd longevity and his aversion to daylight. Though he was very strong and fast, humans in a group could defeat him. By various subterfuges, he’d remained in the area. But he’d never been able to find the trove of books.
Bobo had discovered them by accident, which was galling. And funny, too.
The cover of the book Lemuel was studying, which had been created from the skin of a werewolf, was still in excellent shape, and the pages, though spotted and yellowed, were quite legible . . . if you could speak the language they’d been written in.
That was what had taken so long—finding someone who could still speak the ancient tongue.
“You taking a break?” Olivia asked. She’d set up a card table behind the counter and was working a jigsaw puzzle. “A thousand pieces,” she’d told him, looking determined.
“Just for a few minutes,” Lemuel said, getting off the stool and stretching.
“I have to go to New Orleans in a couple of weeks. You want me to look up that Quigley, thump him good?”
“I felt lucky to find him at the time,” Lemuel said. “A descendant of the vampire who wrote this book? Hadn’t expected that.”
“It would have been a better discovery if he’d been smart,” Olivia said.
“Yes, indeed. Maybe I should have taken some wooden slivers with me, asked a few more questions. I know Quigley has a child, and he wasn’t the first vampire Arria Auclina created. There’s an older child somewhere, a female.”
“What about Arria Auclina herself?” Olivia was all for going directly to the source.
“She would squash me like a bug,” Lemuel said gently. “Ones that old, they don’t care a thing about a comparatively new one like me, especially since I’m the rare breed.”
“I think being able to take blood from humans or sap their energy makes you a lot more diverse,” she said. “I bet they all wish they were like you.”
“Not the purists,” he said, with a slight smile. “Though it was much easier for me when I was only a hundred or so, to go amongst people. It was hard for them to tell what I was. Now, there’s no question.”