–Evelyn Baker

The manager’s office of Dave’s Fish and Strips, a club for discerning gentlemen

DARKNESS FILLED THE OFFICE from side to side, solid enough to defy the standard laws of nature and trickle several inches out into the hall. I stopped in the doorway. “Dave? You know I won’t come in when you’ve got your darks on. Put on some damn sunglasses and turn on a light already.”

The manager’s dust-dry voice drifted out of the dark: “What, a Price afraid of a little darkness? What would your father say?” Every word dripped with sepulchral menace.

“My father would say that a Price who won’t walk into a bogeyman’s lair when he’s got his darks on is a Price who plans to live long enough to continue the family line.” I rolled my eyes. “You know the rules. I don’t kill your customers, you don’t try to bait me into your clutches, everybody walks away happy.”

“What do you call what just happened, hmm?”

“Sexual harassment.” I glared at the darkness. “Turn off the darks or let me go back to work. I’m not coming in there.”

A long-suffering sigh answered me, followed by Dave muttering, “You never let me have any fun.” The solid shadows clicked off as he flipped the switch controlling his darks, allowing light to filter into the office. I stayed in the hallway, waiting patiently. Dave grumbled and flipped another switch, turning on the lights.

“That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?” I asked, and stepped inside.

The office was small and cluttered, and the low-watt bulbs that were all Dave was willing to use did little to disperse the natural shadows cast by packing too much stuff into not enough space. It was still substantially better than it had been with the darks turned on.

(Darks were invented by an enterprising witch who looked at all the bogeymen, ghouls, and bug-a-boos trying to live below the radar of the human population and saw a niche begging to be filled. The bulbs fit most standard sockets and run off electrical current like almost everything else that plugs into a wall. They’re also crushingly expensive. But they come in wattages from “twilight” to “deepest pit of eternal damnation,” and they work. That’s enough to make most self-proclaimed creatures of the night grit their teeth and deal with the price tag.)

“Spoken like a true day-dweller,” grumbled Dave. Leaning his elbows on the desk, he asked, “Why am I not firing you?”

“Because I’m the best cocktail waitress you’ve got, Kitty’s not available to take her shift back until that tragedy they call a band finishes crashing and burning, and all I did was drop him. He’d grabbed hold of just about anybody else like that and he’d have ended up dead or worse.”

“I’d be more inclined to be lenient if you’d agree to dance for me.”

“I’d be less inclined to stick a high heel up your ass if you’d stop asking,” I answered cheerfully. “Answer’s ‘no,’ Dave. What would my grandmother say?”

Dave paused. “She out of Hell this week?” he asked warily.

“Not until Solstice, but still. She wouldn’t understand.”

He relaxed. “She’d understand that you needed to save your job.”

“I think it’s a little more likely she’d understand that you can kill a bogeyman in a lot of different ways, and come riding in to avenge my honor.”

Dave glowered. I suppressed the urge to laugh, and glowered back.

A person running into Dave in a dark alley—or worse, finding him under their bed—would probably need years of therapy before they could convince themselves he’d never been there. He was close to seven feet tall and skeletally thin, with arms long enough to give him a faintly simian look. His hands were too big for his body, and all his fingers had at least one extra joint. (The longer fingers each had two.) Added to his gray “I’ve been dead for a week” complexion and the subtle wrongness of his face, it combined to form a picture that would give strong men nightmares.

Fortunately for me, I’m not a strong man, and one of my first babysitters was a bogeyman. Also, Dave’s garishly-patterned blue, purple, yellow, and magenta Hawaiian shirt did nothing to add to his overall air of menace. Maybe there’s a world where improbably colored parrots are considered frightening. This is not that world.

Dave was the first to look away. “You know I’d pay you more if you’d start dancing.”

“I’d also get myself disowned.”

“For dancing?” He managed to make the word sound innocent. No small feat coming from a man who looked like a basketball-playing corpse, especially not one who ran a strip club. “You know I’d let you do it under the name you used on television.”

“For dancing in a clothing-optional establishment where I’d be expected to finish the dance in my birthday suit, yeah.” I shrugged. “Conservative parents. What can you do?”

Dave snorted. “If your family’s conservative, I’m the Easter Bunny.”

All desire to make light of the situation fled. “Don’t even joke about that,” I said, in a voice that had gone completely flat. “The Easter Bunny’s no laughing matter.”

“Sorry, sorry!” said Dave defensively. “I didn’t know you were that touchy.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know. Are we done?”

“Ah.” Dave pursed his lips. “Here’s the thing. That boy you decided to chop-and-drop—”

“I didn’t do any chopping!”

“—he and his friends are still here, and I’d rather avoid any more of a floor show than we’ve already had tonight. So I’m going to give their table to Marcy.”

“That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said all night.”

“And you’re going to go home.”

I paused, uncertain that I was hearing him correctly. “Excuse me?”

“I’ll pay you for the night, minus tips, of course. You can come back tomorrow.”

“You’re already understaffed, and I need the money,” I protested. “Candy’s out and Kitty’s on tour.”

“Won’t be the first time I’ve pulled Angel from behind the bar. Ryan can mix a Slaughtered Lamb as well as anybody else.”