Nightshifted es-1 Read online

  “Security can’t stop them. Security probably didn’t even see them,” Meaty said.

  “And the Shadows?” Gina asked. I was embarrassed now that I’d hoped they might save me, when it’d been so obvious in Pediatrics that they only held me in contempt.

  Meaty opened up thick hands, facing their palms to the ceiling. “Not their business, really.”

  I stood there. I could breathe now, but my heart would not stop racing and my whole throat burned. “What do I do? What will they do to me? What the hell was that thing?”

  Gina looked away. Charles’s face was grim.

  “You stay till Paul gets in this morning,” Meaty said. “He’s the social worker. He can give you some contacts—”

  The rest of my brief life flashed before my eyes. “Am I running away?”

  Meaty snorted. “Running from a Hound? No. You’re going to court.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I tried to be helpful for the rest of the night. I really did. But the vampire parade had robbed me of some of my enthusiasm. It was hard not to be worried about the future when it seemed I had so little of it left.

  I stayed strong until shift change. I couldn’t leave the floor just yet—I needed to wait for the social worker, who didn’t get in till eight. Plus the locker room would be full of incoming day shifters. I’d be safest if I just hid in an empty room until seven-thirty. I ducked into room five.

  The blinds were drawn, and the room was black, except for the dim light of a monitor in standby mode. I walked across the room, reaching for the shelf I knew would be there, and managed to brace myself against it before I sobbed. I inhaled and exhaled deeply, breathing in the pungent mix of floor wax and something else, trying to keep from completely breaking down.

  “I think I hear a ghost.”

  I whirled around. There was a patient in the bed. I could only see his outline now that my eyes had adjusted. “I’m sorry, I—I thought this room was empty.”

  “Only in a manner of speaking. I take it you’re not my nurse today?”

  I shook my head, wondering if he could see me. “No. I’m not—I should be going—”

  “You can stay if you’d like.”

  If he was a daytimer, he’d have had an isolation cart outside. I wasn’t in any immediate danger. “Thanks.” I ran the back of my hand over my face, mopping up my tears.

  “The hospital’s a stressful place,” he continued.

  “No kidding,” I muttered. But—foisting my problems on a patient wasn’t appropriate. It wasn’t good for them, and it definitely wasn’t good for me. I took a deep breath to compose myself. “Sorry to wake you up,” I said, and I made for the door.

  “It’s quite all right,” he said, as the door closed behind me.

  * * *

  I changed back into my civilian clothes, brewing with anger and fear. There was a series of small rooms at the end of our floor: our break room, a broom closet, our manager’s office, and the social worker’s office. I paced outside his door.

  Paul was my height, and cute despite nerd-thick glasses. They managed to give him a hopeful look, a useful trait in a social worker. Today he was overburdened with charts and flustered-looking. He had winter gloves on—he’d always had gloves on, all the times I’d ever seen him before. “Hello,” he said, looking at me at my station in front of his door.

  “Do you have a minute?”

  “Only one. It’s a rounds day—” He set his bags down to find the key to his door.

  “I was summoned,” I explained.

  “Jury duty?”

  “By the vampires. For a tribunal. On the darkest night.”

  One of his eyebrows peeked up above his glasses frame. “Oh, no.” He unlocked his door, and opened it for me. “Please, come in.”

  I sat down in the only extra chair in the narrow room. Colored papers were stacked on every surface, making it look like a third-grade classroom, until you started reading what was printed on them—petitions for nonemergency care, DNRs, lists of were-safe house addresses. Maybe anything I ever wanted to know about Y4 was in here, if I could find it. It was a short office but at the back it took a right-hand turn and I couldn’t see what lay beyond.

  He sat behind his desk and hit a few desktop keys. As his computer came to life, he took his winter gloves off and replaced them with latex hospital gloves from a box beside his keyboard. He noticed me watching him. “Germs,” he explained. Indeed. I nodded. “So how can I help you?” he went on.

  “I was hoping you’d know. I guess I’m looking for representation.” I crossed my hands in my lap and tried to look innocent and worth helping, instead of angry and exhausted. “They want to see me for a tribunal on the darkest night. I don’t even know when that is.”

  He pointed to a calendar on the wall behind his computer. In addition to the dates, it had all the phases of the moon. “It’s the first night with no moon in the sky. Vampire powers wax and wane against the cycle of the moon, the exact opposite of weres, so it’s when vampires are at their strongest. Conversely, weres are fully mortal then, and easily injured, so that night they tend to hide.”

  That sounded familiar from the training class. At the time, everything had seemed so unreal—the flyers on being safe around vampires that I’d gotten to read, take a test on, and then hand in with the test—in retrospect it’d been a lot like going to the DMV, and not much like nursing on Y4 at all. Who could believe any of it until you’d seen it for real, anyhow?

  Paul pointed at the calendar. “Technically, it’s seven nights from now.” He leaned forward, and touched my knee. I started at the contact. “Edie, right?”

  I nodded.

  “How in trouble are you?” He didn’t take his hand away. I was tempted to reach out and squeeze it even if he was a germaphobe.

  “Very.”

  “Mind if I ask what you did to annoy them?”

  “Mind if I ask if you’re off the record?” I asked, because I thought I had to.

  Paul took his hand back and I found that I missed the simple human contact. He crossed his arms and nodded. “Tell me things hypothetically.”

  “I might have killed a vampire to save a little girl. Technically there’s a chance I might have been under a compulsion at the time … but I don’t think they care about that so much.” I didn’t either. What was it I’d told Meaty? That I’d have done it again? Knowing this, would I have? Now?

  “Well, that’s clear-cut—you’re allowed to kill vampires in self-defense. He shouldn’t have been fighting you, you’re a clear noncombatant.”

  “It wasn’t exactly self-defense. I sort of—hypothetically—went to his home—lair? Lair.” I reached and thumbed through a pile of pamphlets that turned out to be “Surviving Congestive Heart Failure” in three languages, one of which I’d never seen before. “She was there. I killed him,” I said, without looking in his eyes.

  “Hypothetically,” he corrected.

  “Hypothetically,” I agreed.

  “She was in danger, yes?”

  “Being held against her will, and worse.”

  Paul shook his head. “You’re still safe, then. The safety of the human outweighs the concerns of the vampires, according to the terms of the Consortium policy, at least inside County lines. You were still inside the County, weren’t you?”

  It beat the hell out of me. “Maybe. But she, uh … wasn’t human.”

  Paul exhaled through pursed lips. “I see. Do you know where she is? Can she testify for you?”

  “I have no idea. She ran off. She was in danger, I’m sure of it.” I could go back to Mr. November’s house as soon as I finished here. But I was sure if I knew where he lived, so did they—I couldn’t expect to find any evidence supporting my side of things, and so what if I did? Dren said himself that I’d probably killed her—it was awfully hard to prove that I hadn’t, without her in the flesh, undead as it may be.

  “It could have been entrapment. Someone else wanted him dead, compelled you, an
d then things went from there,” Paul suggested.

  “I don’t think so.” I sank my head into my hands. “I think I just made another big mistake. It’s got that feeling about it, you know?” Bitterness surged across my tongue and my heart was crawling up my throat. I knew what it felt like to make mistakes. I’d made tons of them before.

  “Well, you still need representation, whatever the actual events.”

  “Can you do it?”

  Paul snorted and shook his head. “I’m not qualified. But here—” He stood and walked to the back of his office and took the turn. I heard rummaging and the hum of a Xerox before he returned to me and handed me a slip of warm paper. “Call these names. Explain the situation but be circumspect till one of them swears to take the case. Make them swear explicitly—vampires love a loophole.”

  The paper had three names and phone numbers. All the vampire lawyers lived in better area codes than I did.

  “And if none of them swear to?” I asked, folding the paper in half and putting it carefully into my pocket.

  Paul smiled and shook his head again. “I’ve learned in my line of work that it’s best to cross bridges once you come to them.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I drove home as fast as I could. I got in the door, and forced myself to clean the cat box, change my clothes, and wash my face, before sitting down with my phone.

  The first number was a wrong one—the people on the other end of the line didn’t seem to understand what I was asking, and when I tried to “hypothetically” explain they threatened to actually call the police.

  The second had a pleasant-sounding secretary answer. “I’m sorry, Mr. Henrich’s docket is full,” she said, before hanging up.

  I looked at the last one. “Please work.” Minnie came up and rammed her head against my thigh. I dialed the last number and prayed.

  It rang and rang. My stomach sank.

  And then someone answered. The line went live, but with no sounds.

  “Hello?” I asked.

  “Do you know what time it is?” came the response.

  I knew that voice. I was that voice. I was an idiot. Of course vampires slept during the day. “I’m sorry. I’ll call back—”

  “I’m already up. What do you want?” the voice said, in an unhappy tone.

  “I need a lawyer. A vampire lawyer. I’ve been summoned to the next tribunal.”

  There was a pregnant pause. “The case against you is?”

  “Murder.”

  “And you are?”

  “Edie Spence.”

  “And the reason you’ve been summoned?”

  “Swear to take my case, please,” I said, all in one rush.

  The vampire at the other end chuckled to himself. “I swear to offer you no-obligation legal advice and that everything you say to me during the course of this phone call falls under client-attorney privilege, seeing as I have not so far declined your case.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Let us say that for now you are my client and thus protected. I cannot promise that you will remain my client after this phone call, but the protection will remain.”

  “First off—if I’m up for murder, what happens if I’m convicted?”

  “Your death. Perhaps worse.”

  I swallowed. He didn’t sound like he even knew how to joke.

  “Tell me everything,” he continued.

  I told him my story as quickly as I could—and also Paul’s theory about entrapment.

  “Doubtful. Still—the solution is easy. Find the girl, and have her speak on your behalf.”

  “I have no idea where she went.” The last time I’d really seen her, she was leaping away over a dead vampire’s flaming corpse. “How do you find a vampire who doesn’t want to be found?”

  “With difficulty.”

  There was a long pause, during which I was unsure what to say. “So you’ll take my case?” I prompted.

  “You don’t have a case, unless you find the girl.”

  “But if I find her?”

  “Then I’ll represent you, yes.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then it will all be rather one-sided, won’t it?” He cleared his throat. “This is my personal line. Don’t call it again until you know where she is.”

  And the phone went dead.

  I turned off my cell phone, crawled into bed, and stared at the ceiling. Minnie tugged at the sheets with a paw until I let her underneath the comforter. What would become of her if I was convicted? The image of Mr. November’s refrigerator was still fresh in my mind, as was the knowledge that Jake could not be trusted with her care. He’d sell her on Craigslist for weed. I sighed and she purred. What had I gotten myself into?

  I tossed and turned, until Minnie gave up on sleeping next to me. This was exactly the sort of situation it would be nice to have someone around for. Not that I wanted anyone else to share my problems—and who could I tell about things, really?—but someone would be nice. I thought about Asher’s phone number stuck to my fridge, got out of bed, and brought it into the bedroom with me. I toyed with the idea of calling it, before reminding myself that it was daytime. People like Asher had a normal life and a daytime job. I set it down on my nightstand and gave myself permission to call him in a day or two, maybe once I had a plan. I didn’t want to need him—I didn’t want to need anyone, ever—but I didn’t really want to keep always being alone. Not when being alone was always so goddamned lonely.

  I gave up and took an Ambien, God’s gift to night shift workers. A thousand different things I woulda-coulda-shoulda occupied my mind for the three minutes it took to kick in, but after that, quality pharmaceuticals saved the day.

  * * *

  When I woke up it was dark. I panicked and grabbed my phone. Eight forty-two P.M. I wasn’t late to work—yet. Or on trial. Stupid winter. Stupid vampires. Stupid depression making me sleep too long. I sat on my bed and stared out my window while I woke up. There was a light covering of fresh snow dusting the tops of all the cars outside, making them look like a row of worn-down teeth. I found the shape of my Chevy underneath the snow. I could put everything I owned in my car, even Minnie, and drive away now. But then there was Jake. What would happen to him if I broke my contract with County and Y4 and there was nothing keeping him a junkie-superman anymore?

  I pulled up my blinds and pressed my forehead against the window, so that the chill outside could cool my fevered thoughts. I saw small footprints chasing down the side of the complex from the street, up to the front of my place and away again. I could see an instep in the prints, and a clear separation of toes. My breath fogged the glass, and I swiped it clean to stare again, as a wind struck up outside.

  Could they—what was it Jake had said, about my neighbor’s creepy kid? Only my neighbors didn’t have a kid. Unit nine had a baby boy—but unless they were feeding him mutant growth hormones, there was no way he’d made that trail, without shoes, no less.

  My phone’s loudest and longest alarm went off, the absolute last “you need to get your ass out the door, now, to clock in on time” alarm. I turned it off, and ran for the bathroom to brush my teeth.

  * * *

  I trotted outside, coat and bag in tow, to stare at the footprints outside my door. There was a small patch of earth outside my window where dandelions grew in the summer. The wind had drifted snow into the shallow footprints, enough to make me pause and question myself. I felt sure I’d seen them clearly. I was almost sure I had, I thought, as they completely disappeared.

  “Edie?” someone said, and I whirled. I took a step backward, wishing I hadn’t already locked my door. Asher was there, getting out of a warm car. He had flowers. Bright expensive tropical ones. I stood there for a moment, stunned.

  “Hey there,” I said, when I remembered how. He couldn’t see, but I was smiling from ear to ear.

  “I thought we could maybe go on a date.” He held the arrangement out to me.

  “I’d like t
hat.” I stepped forward into the parking lot’s lights. “But I have to work tonight.”

  He got one good look at me, in green scrubs, my hair in a ponytail, and his flower-holding hand faltered. “I should have known,” he said. The birds of paradise sank down to the level of his perfect thigh.

  “Known what?” I asked. My guard, which sometime between last night and today I’d let drop, due to either sentimentality or exhaustion, rushed back to me. My smile evaporated and serious nurse Edie took over.

  “What are you?” he asked.

  “I’m a nurse,” I said. And then I put it all together. The accent, the money, the car—the attitude. “Oh, God. You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” There was no one I wanted to date less in the world than a doctor. They could fake seeming human at first—medicine doctors more so than surgeons—but it never lasted. Whatever pleasant shyness they’d begun their careers with when they were your resident and needed your help was gone by the time they returned as an attending, knowing everything. I’d met a ton of older male doctors. The years of being right on most things, compounded by an interest in hearing their own voice be loudest, were like layers of nacre over a center of shit. They might look like pearls on the outside to people who’d never have to call them at three A.M. begging for an important test—but when you were a nurse you began to feel like most of them were swine.

  I’d never known a doctor-nurse relationship to survive—unless one of them was a shrink, or a dentist.

  “Where do you work?” he asked, as I got my keys out and edged around him.

  “Look, it’s okay. You don’t date nurses, I don’t date doctors. I get it. We’re even.” I opened up my Chevy’s door, and threw my bags inside. “I’m going to be late, I’ve got to go—”

  “Where do you work?” he repeated as I sat down. He caught the door before I could close it, flowers shaking in his opposite hand.

  “What, County nurses not good enough for you?” I gave my door a solid yank. He fought me for a second, and then let go. I turned over my engine and I sat there for ten seconds as my car warmed up. He glared at me, then walked over to his own car, but not before I watched him throw his very expensive flowers in the snow.