Charlaine Harris - Day Shift

“I miss you, too. Be careful and vigilant.”

“Good-bye.”

And he’d hung up without saying good-bye in return. That was Lemuel’s conversational style. She was satisfied with the conversation, though she had to repress a twinge of unease, bordering on jealousy, that Lemuel’s source for information about the long-lost and mysterious books was a female, and a vampire. Lemuel was more susceptible to women than men as bedmates, though he would take energy or blood from anyone except small children. Having two sources of sustenance was like being a hybrid car.

He preferred the energy, because it was easier and cleaner to acquire, and he could sip it from many people. Taking blood left an obvious mark, and sometimes a body, because it was certainly possible to get carried away on the odd occasion. In the same way, though he preferred sex with women, he’d had connections with men, he’d told her quite casually. “Weren’t too many women around,” he’d said, during her favorite together time — postsex. “And vampires like me don’t have the gift of the glamour.”

There had been a lot of questions Olivia had wanted to ask, but in the interest of appearing tolerant and sophisticated, she had not. And she had realized the next day, while Lemuel was in his day sleep, that no matter how curious she might be about Lemuel’s past and how he’d managed to live his life under his strange circumstances, the most important thing to her was that she had him now. Lemuel was not “hers,” like her car or her bed was hers. And she knew he would outlive her, barring extraordinary circumstances. But he was hers in a way no one else had ever been; that certainty gave her a fixed point.

Her cell phone rang, the secret one. The caller would be her agent or someone preapproved.

A man said, “Is this Rebecca?”

“I can get a message to her.”

“I have a job for her.”

“Who and where?”

“My bitch of an ex-wife has a family heirloom. She’s holding it for ransom. If I want it back, I have to make concessions in having my kids on the weekends. If I have it, I can tell her to go to hell and I’d see my kids more often.”

“I don’t need to know why. I need her name and address and a description of the item. Details about her routine.”

There was a pause. “Sure. Where can I send all that?”

Olivia gave him an address in Oklahoma.

“Okay. How do I pay you?”

“You already know that.” What was he trying to pull? The money went to her agent first, and he took his cut. Then he sent the bulk of it to her account, which wasn’t in America. Lemuel had asked her once how she could be sure her agent was honest. “I know where he lives,” she’d told him.

“When…?”

“Soon. I’ll call you at this number when I’ve gotten it.”

And she hung up, as abruptly as Lemuel had. That thought made her smile. But the smile faded immediately as she thought over the man’s story. She didn’t believe him, at least not entirely. He had tailored it to make her feel good about the theft. He might be a terrible father, and his soon-to-be-ex-wife a paragon of virtue. But it didn’t make any difference to Olivia. She was not a social worker. She took the side she was paid to take.

She would not go to check the mailbox for another two or three days. It was a long drive. Maybe, in the interim, she could take care of Manfred’s problem. Then the Rev would be off her back, the news media would never again come to Midnight, and the mysterious fast-growing boy — whoever he was — would be safe. And when Lemuel returned, he would not be spotted by anyone who shouldn’t come to Midnight.

She went out that day, stopping by Manfred’s to see if he’d gotten any more news. He told her about his visit with the Bonnet Park police the day before and about his new esteem for his lawyer. “There aren’t any reporters here today at all,” he said, casting a look out the front windows. “I guess I’m not news since the more exciting developments at Rachel’s house. Yee-haw.”

“Don’t relax. All it’ll take is another accusation by Lewis Goldthorpe, and you’re back on the hot plate,” she said. She came to the window to look out herself.

A car pulled up in front of Manfred’s little house.

“Who…? Oh, shit,” he said, with heartfelt disgust.

“I shouldn’t have said anything.” Olivia’s lips curled back as she watched a man and a woman get out of the aged car. The man was Lewis Goldthorpe. The woman was a news blogger, and her site had gathered a certain amount of attention from people who liked their news on a screen and on the sensational side. Olivia had seen her on a minor national show. “That’s PNGirl. You know, Paranormal Girl.”

“She’s asked me for interviews before. Should I answer the door?” Manfred said.

“Only if you want her to take your picture and put it on the Internet,” Olivia said. “And you know Lewis is going to scream and holler.” She glanced sideways (and a little down) at Manfred. “This is going to make the Rev furious.”

“Maybe he won’t find out,” her companion said feebly.

Olivia snorted. “Right,” she said, loading the word down with contempt. “See?”

The door to the chapel opened. The gaunt, small figure of the Rev was clearly visible for a moment, another person right behind him. Then the chapel door shut.

“Was that the boy?” Manfred said.

“Yep.” Olivia thought of sneaking out the back of the house to give Lewis a flat tire, but that would only mean he’d stay in Midnight longer. “If he’d come by himself,” she said, “I could have taken care of this whole situation.”

She expected Manfred to say something angry and decisive, but when she glanced over at him, he just looked exasperated. “Because finding his car here, and Lewis missing, would sure let me off the hook,” he said, in the manner of one speaking to an idiot.

“Of course I would take care of the car,” she snapped. She was offended at the suggestion she could not make someone disappear in a professional manner.

“But he didn’t come by himself, because he doesn’t really want to talk to me person-to-person,” Manfred pointed out. “He wants to rant at me in front of a witness, to emphasize how terribly I exploited his poor sainted mother. He wants to ruin me, because his mother turned to me when she’d reached the end of her tether with him.”

“Okay, Mr. Insightful, so what’s our next step? By the way, knowing why he’s doing it doesn’t really help a lot.”

Manfred looked down. He appeared to be counting to ten. Olivia smiled.

“We still have to get the jewelry back,” Manfred said. “And I think we have to show that it was there all the time. Then he’ll have no more excuse to harass me. Or if he drums something up, no one will credit it.”

“I can’t gain entry again by a ruse,” Olivia said. The knocking at the door had begun, and they both stepped away from the window, retreating farther into the house to the former dining room. “I’ve tried to break in at night, and that didn’t work. I could try it again. This time, maybe, there won’t be anyone there waiting on me.”

Though since Falco had died, Olivia’s father had to be sure she’d been in the area. Maybe other men were just hanging around waiting for her. Maybe they would come to Manfred’s place of residence to look for her now. To try to find what connection he had with her. At least her name hadn’t been in the paper; she’d finally tracked down the article online.

“Or we could ask Fiji if she could help,” Manfred was saying when she pulled herself out of the abyss.

Olivia felt her mouth fall open. “Fiji? You’ve got to be kidding me. She can’t break and enter.”