The Night Shifters (9 page)

The lights
flickered off at the front of the store, and I heard footsteps
approaching the storeroom. I glanced at the clock. It said 8:55
p.m. Well, that was something. At least I had arrived at closing
time.

But I was
wearing that
dress
!

I grabbed a work
apron and tied it on. The bib covered my chest nicely. But I had no
shoes on, so I stood behind the work table and started to unpack
the boxes.

Mr. Quail strolled
into the storeroom. He was thirty-something – he wore his usual
department-store shirt, cotton dockers, and loafers. When he saw me
he did a nice double-take.

“Well.” He gave me
a theatrical little laugh. “If it isn’t the Employee of the Month!
When did you decide to wander in?”

“What do you mean?”
I asked innocently. “I’ve been here for hours. Where have you
been?”

This wasn’t just a
desperate ploy. Sometimes Mr. Quail took five-hour lunches. But
today evidently wasn’t one of those days.

“You must want to
be my personal representative to the unemployment line,” he
said.

I stopped
unpacking. I actually felt kind of relieved. “All right. Do your
worst.” “Oh, you’d like that.” Mr. Quail brushed his hand over his
hair. I think his hairline was receding because of the way he did
that. A hundred times a day, I swear. “You’d like to collect
unemployment for a few months, take a little holiday. But I’m not
about to fire you. I’m going to cut your hours. From now on, you’re
working here three days a week. Your new schedule is on my desk.
Look at it before you leave tonight.”

And he turned
his back on me. Mr. Quail had once read
The Two Minute Problem
Solver
, and he swore by
it.

“I won’t be able to
pay my bills on that,” I said to his back.

He shrugged. “You
can use the extra time to look for a new job.”

Sure. Another job
just like the one I already had, with another Mr. Quail. Just like
all the other jobs I ever had. No wonder I had amnesia. I wanted
more of it.

“You bastard,” I
said.

“That’s me,” he
said, cheerfully.

I looked at
the books I had been unpacking. The big one on the top was
titled
The
Nameless God.
It had a white
cover with a horned mask on it. I hefted it, and eyed the back of
Mr. Quail’s head.

The book made a
great projectile. It hit him dead center and sent him sprawling
across his desk. I had one moment of sheer delight, and then Mr.
Quail turned to look at me, his face white and calm.

“You shouldn’t have
done that.” He reached behind his desk and picked up an ax.

•

So much for female
empowerment. I dashed out of that room and made a bee-line for the
front door. I ran smack into a pile of books, and stumbled over
into another pile. The small store I used to work in was a giant
warehouse now, with rows and rows of books that towered so high you
couldn’t see over the tops of them. Everywhere I looked I found
another blind alley. So I ducked under a sale table and waited for
Mr. Quail to come a’ hunting.

Minutes went by in
horrible silence.

Then his feet
walked past my table. They kept right on going, until they
disappeared around a corner. I heard the distant sound of a key
turning in a lock, and a door opening.

“You can just stay
here until you get those books unpacked, AAA!” Mr. Quail called
from wherever he lurked. Then the door slammed shut.

I couldn’t
believe it. It had to be a trick. A man doesn’t go from an
ax-wielding frenzy to
You can just stay in your room until you’ve thought things
over, Young Lady
that
quickly. No way was I going to come out from under that
table.

Hours passed. I
know they did, because I could hear the clock ticking in the
storeroom, and I counted every tick. My butt fell asleep after a
couple of thousand.

It occurred to me
that in my current position I looked like a pretty good metaphor
for my previous existence – or what I could remember of it, anyway.
Hiding under a table, waiting for doom to pass me by. Life had
passed me by, too.

Yet that metaphor
seemed too tidy, I was missing the point again.

A memory teased me
with the scent of rain – the last thing I expected to smell among
those dusty stacks. I remembered a circle of gray daylight,
raindrops slanting down and tapping on something hard – not metal –
maybe concrete...

Something
fell off the sale table and landed with a resounding
whack.
It lay just beyond my hiding place
– something small and flat.

Yeah, it was
another pink envelope. And boy, did it tempt me. I didn’t even
think Mr. Quail would ax me any more, he was going to bore me to
death. What harm would it do to poke one hand out and grab the
letter?

I snatched it
up. Of course, it said
Hazel
across the
front. The handwriting looked almost illegible now. I opened it and
started to read.

“He’s gone, you
idiot!” she had scribbled. “Come out of there!”

I did, feeling very
sheepish.

“
Now listen
and listen good. I know you don’t trust me anymore, but something
big is going to be coming up the basement stairs very soon.
Something looking for
you
! It won’t be
helpful to
anyone
if it finds
you.”

Underneath my feet,
the floor groaned.

“You have to find
the door,” said the note. “Now walk down this aisle and turn
right.”

I did, reading as I
walked. Something told me this was the truth, even if only for this
one time.

“Good. Now walk
down four rows and turn left. Walk to the end and turn right. Okay,
now climb over that pile of books. Good, now crawl under that table
– not that one, you idiot! Hurry!”

The groan
downstairs became a boom. There really was something big down
there. Books began to fall off the shelves – first only a few, and
then in a regular avalanche.

“All right, up this
next aisle. Run! Turn right! Left, left, right, right, over, under,
through! There’s the door!”

I made it to the
front door just as the boom started up the back stairs. The door
was locked.

“Look in the damned
pocket of your work apron!” commanded the letter. I did, and found
the key. I placed it in the lock and turned it. The door opened
easily – too easily, not like in the movies at all. As I stopped to
look over my shoulder, the letter gave me a paper cut, and I
dropped it.

Shelves fell
like sloppy dominoes, sending books crashing in waves, and over it
all sounded the
Boom Boom Boom
like
some vast drum. At the other end of the warehouse I could see the
little door that led to the storeroom bulging and straining as if
it were made of flesh instead of wood.

I had the
oddest desire to stay and see what it was. But as the door began to
buckle, a book suddenly flew at me,
The Nameless God
. I recognized the golden mask on its cover just
before I pushed the door shut, and heard it crash into the other
side as I turned and fled down the sidewalk as fast as I
could.

•

I ran without
looking where I was going, aiming at every open, unobstructed
street I saw, turning as many corners as I could to lose the big
booming thing that had wrecked the bookstore and must now be out
and looking for me. My imagination painted a dreadful picture of
it, something between Godzilla and the Balrog from
The Lord Of The
Rings
. I ran until my bare
feet hurt and my breath came in gasps and tatters.

Calm down
, I warned
myself.
Stop
picturing horrible stuff! Picturing it might make it
real!

That notion
only spurred me into more flight, and it was finally weariness
rather than common sense that forced me to slow down and take stock
of my surroundings. Of course, I was completely lost. Not that I
would have recognized any of the streets of this city, even if I
had a map. They had names like
Morpheus
and
Nepenthe,
words I had
never looked up in the dictionary. But when I wandered past a
street sign that said
Styx
, I knew enough to
avoid it at all costs.

The silence calmed
me. But unlike the silence of the fields of Nowhere, this suggested
things that were waiting, watching, wondering. The City of Night
had shifted again – now it seemed to favor retail. I passed shops
with darkened windows, quirky places whose exact business was not
apparent. I wondered if I would have to apply for work at one of
them, now that I was out of another job. I didn’t feel confident I
could ever find my house again, and sooner or later I would have to
eat, take a shower, put on some shoes.

But it was hard to
imagine that anyone worked at these stores. The windows were
covered with ornate bars; the doors were heavy, carved things that
seemed better off closed. I wandered from window to window, staring
at the baffling artifacts on display, waiting for my heartbeat to
slow back to normal.

A red light
throbbed behind one of the windows, casting bizarre shadows at my
feet. Ceramic and wooden figurines gazed at me from the other side
of the glass, some of them with more than one pair of eyes, all of
them wearing evil grins. I retreated several paces.

A green light
pulsed in another window, half a block up. Needing very little
incentive to walk away from the first window, I ventured over to
the second one and peered cautiously inside. This one contained an
array of seashells and starfish spun out of glass. Lovely things,
they glistened in the starlight. I moved closer.

Red light throbbed
in the window next door. An assortment of bladed weapons crowded
the glass on the near side, as if peering out at me. A green light
beckoned from farther down, and I began to get the idea.

Red
light,
bad
, green
light,
good
. It was like a
child’s game. I walked down the block and looked into the
green-light window. It rewarded me with a display of leather-bound
books, all first editions of my favorite titles:
Rebecca
, by Daphne du
Maurier,
The
Haunting of Hill House
, by
Shirley Jackson,
Dragonwyck
, by Anya
Seton,
The
Hobbit
,
Tom Sawyer
,
Watership Down
...

Red light shuddered
like lightning, revealing Nazi paraphernalia.

Green light
glistened among ferns.

Red light bloodied
chain saws and leather masks.

Green light
shimmered around the corner. I walked to see what it was, my eyes
on the windows instead of the streets.

I’m such a
sucker.

With my silly head
turned in the wrong direction, I walked right into the convertible
parked on the corner. A pair of strong hands seized my wrists and
pulled me against the side of the car, and I came face to face with
the owner. His red eyes gazed deeply into mine.

“Hello, Hazel.” He
wrapped his arms around me, pulling me so close I had to turn my
head aside. That’s when I saw his two friends. They waved
cheerfully from the back seat.

“You boys don’t
have cars of your own?” I tried desperately to sound calm.

Owner breathed the
answer into my ear. “Some of us are loners. Others hunt in
packs.”

I couldn’t look
into his eyes without crossing my own, so I looked at his mouth,
instead. That wasn’t the greatest alternative. He smiled, letting
me see the pointed tips of his teeth. “You have a certain amount of
native talent, Hazel, but you can’t just go wandering around as if
the rules don’t apply to you. New people who don’t know the rules
get into a lot of trouble.”

Owner had issues.
Maybe I should have named him Issues.

“Too late.” his
grin widened, but the expression did not suggest good humor. “You
named me properly the first time.” He pulled me over the side of
the car and tossed me into the laps of his buddies, who held me
fast. I felt grateful I still wore the apron, because without it, I
definitely would have popped out of that dress. Owner perched on
top of the front seat, glaring down at me like a panther.

My crystal heart
gave me little pangs in time with my heartbeat. But it didn’t jab
me as much as I thought it should.

“Don’t finish her
here and now, Owner,” said the fellow who held my legs. He was
every bit as handsome as any of his kinsmen, but his expression had
a sharp quality, as if he really wanted to bite me, but refrained
because he liked to savor the suspense.

“I agree,” said the
one who held my shoulders. He had the direct, challenging glare of
a wolf. “This one is special. This one should last a long
time.”

I realized they
were bouncing me between them like that pinball Voice had compared
me to. So I focused my gaze on Owner, since he was the alpha male.
Power radiated from him. But I had seen its like before. In fact, I
had been with the King, and compared with him, these hunters were
not as frightening or compelling as they might think they were.

“As I recall,” I
said, keeping my eyes on his, “your boss had different plans for
me.”

He didn’t blink.
“Yes – he and all the other Night Shifters. You’re a Wild Card, you
could help any of them gain more power.”