Lemuel was in his room below the pawnshop thirty minutes before the sun rose. He slept the sleep of the dead.

34

Fiji had trouble focusing the next day, though there was plenty to keep her busy. The past few years, children from Davy came to see her decorated Halloween house and take a cookie from her heaped tray. Her yard was deliciously scary, and most of the Midnighters helped her out in one way or another. She had celebrated Samhain by herself, and that was a pleasure, too.

But this year Halloween and Samhain were on the same Saturday night as the waning moon. Midnight was going to be scary for real. Fiji had to get the word out, so trick-or-treaters wouldn’t flock to The Witch’s House, as her Halloween extravaganza was called. She set about spreading the news in as many ways as she could.

Manfred made a list of local online sites, like the area Swap N Shop page; Fiji wrote a notice for Manfred to post on every single site. Fiji called the Davy and Marthasville papers to ask they were doing a Halloween activities story. Both were. “In view of the recent deaths in Midnight, I thought it would be in bad taste to have a big celebration here,” she explained. “I’m sure everyone will understand. To cut down on the disappointment, it would be so helpful if you could include that in your story.”

“I didn’t want to add, ‘And you may get eaten by a demon,’” Fiji told Manfred, who’d dropped by because he thought he really ought to. In truth, he was feeling more than a little self-conscious around her, Fiji could tell.

Fiji was horribly aware that her virginity and its impending loss was on everyone’s mind. It would be harder to be in a more humiliating situation. She considered several plans to extricate herself from this predicament, but every step she pondered seemed to end in making things worse, not better. In her most hidden heart, Fiji wondered what would happen if nobody volunteered to . . . partner her. “Oh, my God! How scarifying would that be?” she muttered.

Fiji was not often stupid or silly. She realized that a public ritual was not a love tryst. But she harbored a hope that the man who completed his part of the deed at least showed some—well, some enthusiasm. If one of the angels had to sacrifice himself to do that, she would not be able to show her face for the rest of her life. The idea of poor Joe or poor Chuy on top of her, pumping away without lust or love . . . well, it just made her wince with mortification.

“You have company coming,” Manfred said, and she pulled herself out of her black thoughts. Fiji’s back was to the door, and she turned to face it. She was regretting opening the shop. Her customer was probably the odious Willeen, or some other dabbler.

Fiji was surprised to see Lenore Whitefield from the hotel. She seldom saw Lenore, and had only spoken to her once or twice. Lenore was bursting with things to say, there was no mistaking the look, but she stopped in her tracks when she saw Manfred.

“Hi,” Fiji said. “Was there something I could help you with, Lenore?”

“Uh, yeah,” Lenore said hesitantly. “Your name is Fiji, right?”

“Right. And this is Manfred Bernardo from across the street.”

“Sure. Hi, Mr. Bernardo. I hope Tommy and Suzie and Mamie are well? I miss having them at the hotel.”

“They like Safe Harbor, but they do miss Midnight,” Manfred said, trying to be tactful. “Please, call me Manfred.”

Still, Lenore hesitated.

“Something’s on your mind, Lenore?” Fiji tried to be gentle, but she was conscious of the clock ticking.

Lenore took a big step into the store, committing herself to a conversation. “When the hotel opened, the project manager kept telling me that market research had proven that the hotel was in a good spot for its purpose. A place for old people to stay while they waited for an opening in assisted living. And if we had the divided use, with part of it being for regular hotel customers and part of it being for more extended stays, the hotel would be able to make a profit.” She paused, and to give her some kind of confirmation that they were on track, Fiji said, “Right.”

Lenore said, “Me and Harvey, we needed jobs, bad, and we were really glad to be picked out of the other couples who applied for the job. That Eva Culhane, she ran the interviews.”

It took Fiji a few seconds to remember that Eva Culhane had been the project manager who’d been on site while the hotel was being renovated. She had not, by Joe’s account, been warm or fuzzy or anything but brisk and efficient.

“I noticed that the couples who got asked to come back for a second round, they were like us,” Lenore was saying. “They didn’t have any other family with them. Well, even that made sense. Not too many people with little kids would want to settle in Midnight.”

Manfred and Fiji nodded in unison, like bobblehead dolls, Fiji thought.

“Naturally, I talked to the other women while we were waiting,”

Lenore said. “As you do.”

“Sure,” Fiji said. Manfred looked blank.

“And it seemed to me that we were the saddest of the lot.” Fiji opened her mouth to say something to refute that, automatically, and then she realized she had better wait and see what the bottom line on this conversation was going to be.

“What do you mean?” Manfred asked, practically.

“I mean that we didn’t have any kids at all, not even grown kids who would come to visit, or anything. Or living parents. Or brothers or sisters. Well, Harvey’s got a brother in Alaska, but they haven’t talked in five years, I guess.”

“No close connections,” Manfred summarized briskly. Lenore nodded. “This didn’t make any difference to my husband, but it worried me a little. Some of the other couples, the man was a good plumber, or carpenter, or had some executive experience, like running a couple of Holiday Inns or the like.”

“But not Harvey,” Fiji said.

“Not Harvey. He worked on the line at a factory that made salsa.

For twenty years. When he got laid off, he couldn’t find another job to save his soul. He tries to help, but he just hasn’t got the skills.

So we hire Teacher to come do repairs. I kind of lied to Ms. Culhane about that.”

“I understand,” Fiji said. “I suppose I would have, too.” Eventually, Lenore would get to the point.

“Culhane didn’t check up on us that much,” Lenore went on. “And that seemed pretty strange to me, considering how finicky she was about everything else. It was like she was looking for the least qualified, rather than the best qualified. See what I mean?”