Charlaine Harris - Day Shift

“Thanks,” he said bitterly. “Jump in and save my life, okay?”

“They’re not going to kill you. At least, probably not. But if they get aggressive, I’ll take action.”

Manfred thought it was ominous she didn’t say what that action might be. Maybe Olivia would run out the back door.

He was almost relieved when he saw her put a gun ready on the table. He didn’t know anything about guns, and he didn’t like them. It was worse than having a snake on the table. But at least now he knew she was not planning to leave him defenseless.

She sat, hands folded, waiting.

She was better at it than Manfred.

He took a cold drink to his workstation and began to answer personal e-mails. He never had very many. But today, he heard from Rain, and it was a significant message. She and Gary had gotten married. “Since we couldn’t see the situation with his kids changing and we weren’t getting any younger, we just eloped!” she wrote. Manfred sighed heavily. Rain Redding. He’d have to get used to it. And he’d have to have a conversation with Fiji about an appropriate wedding gift. He tried composing a reply, but after two abortive attempts, he decided he would call later. An unspecified “later.” When all this is over, he thought.

Finally, he started real work. He turned on the psychic hotline phone, as he thought of it, and started taking calls. In between calls, he answered the paying e-mails. And if he caught up with those, there was the Amazing Bernardo website, and messages to answer there. The routine took over. He almost forgot about the woman with the gun behind him, and the strange people going around searching Midnight, and he worked. After all, the bill from Magdalena would be high, and his car wasn’t any younger.

At least he wouldn’t have to fly home for his mother’s wedding.

A knock at the door broke his concentration. He sent the e-mail he was working on ( Your boyfriend gives off a very violent vibration, and you should take care of your own safety first ) before he went to the door.

And then looked down.

The man was less than five feet tall and looked to Manfred’s uneducated eyes like an Indian. Manfred could not have specified what kind of Indian or his country of origin, but he was built broadly and he was very dark skinned. The whites of his eyes weren’t actually white, but faintly yellow.

“Hello,” Manfred said, hoping Olivia was primed to take action. “Can I help you?”

“Your name, sir?”

The Indian’s voice was not the deep rumble Manfred had expected. It was a light tenor. Manfred felt ridiculously self-conscious and couldn’t decide what a totally innocent response would be to what was actually a kind of strange question.

“You’re the one who knocked,” he said. “I’m working here, and I need to get back to it.” He began closing the door, but there was a small boot in the way.

“Excuse me,” said the Indian. “Perhaps I wasn’t polite or clear. I am looking for someone, and I need to ask you a few questions.”

“Maybe I wasn’t clear,” Manfred retorted. “I am working, and I am not obliged to answer your questions.” He tried to close the door again. The boot didn’t move.

“Is there anyone else in your house?” the Indian asked.

“No, there is no one else in my house.”

“May I look and see?”

“No.” Manfred was definite about that.

“Has there been a strange man in town lately? Tall, in his late twenties, perhaps using the last name Bell or Bellboy?”

“If there is, I haven’t met him, but mostly I’m stuck here working, which I need to do now.” Manfred deftly kicked the boot out of the way with his own and slammed the door, locking it as quickly as he could.

Then he walked back to his desk and threw himself into the chair to make it creak and roll noisily over the hardwood floor. And he waited. After an extremely long thirty seconds, the Indian moved away. Manfred exhaled slowly and deliberately.

“You heard?” he said.

“Yeah. I think he’s a daytime guy, working for a vampire.”

Manfred turned around. Olivia looked a lot more like the woman he knew than she had when he’d returned home that day. Some terrible emotion had leaked out of her to be replaced by practicality. “Why do you think that?” he asked.

“Was he wearing something around his neck?”

“Yeah,” Manfred said. “A bandanna. Like he was part of an Old West pageant.”

“Okay, then. He’s a fangbanger.”

“I don’t know much about the vampire thing,” Manfred said. “I’ve only been to Louisiana once, and that was in the daytime.”

“They do keep a low profile almost everywhere else,” Olivia said. “Especially since the were-animal disaster. I know there’s an enclave in Dallas, though. I think these people searching Midnight were sent by that enclave. They all arrived about the same time, they’re all strangers, they’re all asking questions, I assume. They’re going in and out of all the businesses in town. They’re looking for Barry, so they’ve got a grudge against him for some reason, and he knows about it. Since they’re after him, not me, I’m outta here. I have something to do in Dallas.” And she was gone.

Manfred hardly noticed. Before he could think the better of it, he called Barry’s cell.

“Hello.” Barry’s voice was low and cautious.

“Someone was here.”

Barry said, still very quietly, “I saw them out the window. If they find me, I’m dead.”

“Are you… well hidden? A short guy with a bandanna around his neck was here. He was very persistent.”

“His name is Alejandro,” Barry said. “Even for my grandfather, I shouldn’t have set foot in Texas again.”

Manfred was powerfully curious to learn the whole story, but this was not the time to ask to hear it. “We won’t give you up,” he said, aware that his own voice had hushed to match Barry’s.

“You won’t have a choice,” Barry whispered. “They’ll find me and take me to Dallas. I won’t get away with it this time. Better keep back.” And he hung up.

Manfred had an idea. There was a huge downside, but it might work, and he owed it to Barry, or Rick, or whatever the hell the man’s name was, to try something. Barry had done him a good turn. True, he’d gotten paid. But he’d done it willingly.

Manfred spent some time on the phone with Magdalena Powell. Then he warned the other residents of Midnight. When a news van rolled up, they were as ready as they were ever going to be. As he’d hoped, Magdalena was eager to take the opportunity to be on television. This would be a tiny press conference, maybe the smallest in Texas history: with a reporter from the Davy paper, a reporter from the closest television affiliate, and the regional stringer for a Dallas paper. Manfred elected to hold it in front of the Inquiring Mind, with Fiji’s permission. He reasoned that Fiji could use the publicity a lot more than he could. Besides, her lovingly created garden, with flowers blooming everywhere, was a much nicer backdrop than his barren little cottage.

Mr. Snuggly obliged by sitting on the porch and looking picturesque. One of the reporters almost stepped on him and then leaped to one side, looking wildly around to find the source of the tiny voice that said something very pointed to him.

Manfred, nervous and regretting his impulse already, let his gaze pan over the streets of Midnight. The strangers were popping out of the Midnight buildings, and they started to drift down to Fiji’s. That was exactly what he’d wanted.

Magdalena looked at her watch, looked at the reporters, and said, “Time to get started.”

Manfred would rather have waited another two or three minutes, but he didn’t want to rouse any suspicion in Alejandro, who was standing like a very unfortunate statue by one of Fiji’s rosebushes.