Night Shift
Page 3

“All the time,” Chuy said.
“She’s okay?” Fiji looked anxious.
“Right as rain,” Joe reassured her. “But lately, along with all the other ghosts, she’s been breaking routine.”
Manfred so wanted to ask what “routine” was for a spirit, but that would be veering off the subject. “Maybe I can ask some questions later,” he said. Chuy nodded and looked resigned.
“So they are feeling the pull of the crossroad, too,” Lemuel said, though not as if he were completely sure. “Or maybe something is coming to Midnight, something bad, something we should be afeared of.”
Fiji cleared her throat. “I think it must be already here. Otherwise, why two deaths on the same spot?”
Diederik said, “Can we kill it?” The boy was definitely excited.
“Not until we know what it is and what the consequences would be.” Joe turned to Lemuel. “Is this what you’ve been looking for in the books? Facts about something magical here in town?”
“I’m working on a translation,” Lemuel said rather coldly. “The books are all books written by vampires. For a few of them, the volume I have is the only volume remaining in the world. As I examined them, I found one that I thought would lead me to information about Midnight. It seems to be a history of magical sites in this country, from the map included. I had to find someone who could tell me what language the book was written in.”
“When was it written?” the Rev said.
“It was written a couple of hundred years ago, so it is the most recent of the books. But it was written in a language that has not been spoken for two thousand years, or longer.”
The Rev nodded. Fiji could not tell if the ancient minister was glad, surprised, or irritated at this information.
“Who would be the intended reader of such a book? And how come you have to translate it?” Fiji was curious. “If it’s about America, shouldn’t it be in English?”
Lemuel said, “It was written by a vampire who was touring the U.S. before I was born.”
“But the book’s only a couple hundred years old?” Fiji didn’t get it.
“Yes. I believe from the binding and the printing that this book has only been around for two centuries, give or take. And it may have been written long before it was printed.”
“But . . .” She stopped, deciding to think rather than talk, which was always a good idea around Lemuel.
“The vampire was from a long-dead culture,” Joe said.
Lemuel nodded. “Before the Romans. I believe the vampire was Etruscan. I found a rough dictionary, written by a child of the only Etruscan vampire I’ve ever heard of. That’s a help, but it’s still very slow going.”
Rasta whined at Joe’s feet, and he picked up the little dog and settled it on his lap. Chuy reached over to scratch Rasta’s head.
“Is there any way you can skip around a little in the book to find out if our crossroad is in there?” Manfred said tentatively. Offering Lemuel advice was a risky proposition.
“I dare not skip around because I may miss the very thing I am reading the book to discover,” Lemuel said. “This place wasn’t named Midnight until the late eighteen hundreds, so it’s simply described in this book, if it’s in there at all. In the meantime, I’m real sure we need to be on the watch for more suicides.”
“More?” Bobo said. He gave Fiji a dismayed look.
Lemuel said, “Why stop at two?”
“At least they’re dying at night,” Fiji said, trying to find something to be glad about. “And at least no one else knows about the first one.”
“And that’s better because?” Manfred looked at her with his eyebrows raised.
“Because we have a chance of covering it up,” Diederik said promptly. “As Lemuel did the first one.”
“Can you imagine the news coverage?” Bobo spoke quietly, but everyone listened. “The headlines? ‘What Draws Suicides to This Remote Texas Town?’”
“Honey, I think they’re urging you to read quick as lightning,” Olivia said to Lemuel.
The vampire smiled. “I can get a lot done on night duty here,” he said. Lemuel worked the night shift at the pawnshop, which was closed from late afternoon until dark, and from dawn until nine o’clock, or whenever Bobo got down to open it up. The doors were shut only between dawn and eight (or nine) a.m. and five or six p.m. to dark.
“Should we set some kind of watch?” Fiji asked. “To stop people?”
Manfred’s mouth turned down with distaste. Joe and Chuy looked grim. Olivia hunched her shoulders. Even for the Midnighters, who were used to weird and even bloody events, this seemed like an unpleasant prospect.
“I’m not sure how we could stop them,” Bobo said. They all looked at him. “If someone’s determined, he just walks out there and shoots himself, like the guy last night.” He shrugged. “No way to stop that guy, right?”
“But we had no warning, and now we know,” Fiji said.
“I don’t think we can stay awake all night for the remote chance that someone else will stop to off himself,” Manfred said. “We’d have had to have been right by Joshua Allen last night. He got out of his truck, took a step or two, pulled out the gun, and blam! What if one of us had tried to stop him? Would he have shot us, too?”
There was a scattering of nods.
“So we won’t keep a night watch,” Lemuel concluded. “But I’ll do my best to spot any others who appear at the crossroad.”
“Did you see that there’s a new guy at Gas N Go?” Olivia said.
Chuy and Joe, who lived one vacant building away from the corner convenience store, smiled simultaneously. “You should see him,” Chuy said. “He’s . . . remarkable.”
Fiji, who was removing the spell that had kept interlopers out of the store during their meeting, finished her task and rejoined the conversation. “Not going to give us any hint?” Fiji said.
“Nope. Go see.” Chuy laughed. “Teacher was in to fix our showerhead and faucet yesterday, and he was delighted to be free of the Gas N Go.”
“He didn’t have to take charge,” Joe said.
“He said the money was good and steady.” Olivia shrugged. “Hard to turn down when you have a baby. Madonna said she enjoyed knowing where he was all the time. But even she’d gotten pretty aggravated at him always being busy.”