Night Shift(90)

“She seems like a nice woman,” Fiji said. “But there’s nothing wrong with me that time and rest won’t cure. I was just overstressed and really scared and I blacked out.”

“That’s between you and the doctor,” Arthur said. “You feel like having some company?”

“I guess,” she said, cautiously. Depended on who the company was.

To her mild surprise, Chuy Villegas came in. Chuy was wearing his usual casual clothes: khakis, a polo shirt, loafers. He looked as unlike an angel with wings as she could imagine.

He put his hands on hers. After glancing over his shoulder to make sure Arthur was out of hearing, Chuy said, “Thanks to you we are all alive.”

“I don’t understand,” Fiji said.

“If you hadn’t cut off the head of the snake, I think they would have gone through Midnight killing everyone they encountered to cover up the fact that Olivia was the target.”

“Surely . . . you can’t be killed?” She felt almost embarrassed, pointing that out.

“But they didn’t know that,” he said. “And getting shot always hurts.”

Fiji didn’t want to take any credit that wasn’t her due. “I killed a man, Chuy. On purpose. I only thought of saving Olivia from getting shot again.”

“You did what was necessary. Don’t fear judgment from Joe and me. We live under the old code,” Chuy reminded her. His voice was cool and stern.

“I wonder if I can go home soon,” she said. She couldn’t think of right and wrong any longer.

“I think the correct thing to do is to call a nurse,” Chuy said gravely. “She is supposed to remove the needle. What is going into you?”

“Just fluid, I think, so if they had to give me medicine they could administer it through the tube.” She had to dredge hard to come up with the word “administer.”

“You weren’t hurt?” Chuy said, as if he were pretty sure that was the case but had to check.

“I used all my magic,” she explained wearily.

“I understand. You need bed rest and soup and to keep warm.” Again, he sounded like he was reading from a manual on the care and feeding of witches. But Fiji didn’t mind.

“That sounds so good,” she said.

Chuy said, “I’ll do what I can to make that happen.” He turned to leave her room.

“Chuy,” she said. “When I killed the man, the demon laughed.”

His shoulders slumped. “I was afraid of that,” he said, and went to secure her release.

Evidently, Chuy was very good at greasing the hospital skids. Faster than she would have believed, she got her release papers and was in a wheelchair, riding out the door to the curb. With some hesitation and faltering, she maneuvered herself into Chuy’s car. She would have liked to see Olivia before she left the hospital, but apparently Olivia was still in surgery.

“Less than two days until Saturday,” Chuy said on the drive back to Midnight, and suddenly Fiji understood why he was so anxious to have her back in town. She had to be in Midnight to make her own personal sacrifice.

“I’m sorry you brought that up,” Fiji said. She’d been feeling fairly warm and cozy with Chuy, but not any longer. She rested her head against the cold glass of the window. She was far beyond caring if her hair got lopsided.

“I am sorry,” Chuy said, sounding awkward. “I know you are thinking about what you have to do. But I am thinking about the next century, and longer.”

“I think it’s more like I’m thinking me and you’re thinking you,” she murmured. He didn’t respond; either he thought she was saying something stupid or he completely agreed. “Have you felt him moving?” she asked.

Chuy sighed. “I have,” he said.

Soon I will rise, the demon told her.

She had not heard his voice in a day or two. She’d felt him, looming in the back of her mind, always present, but he’d been silent.

She hadn’t missed his voice a bit.

Her homecoming was oddly anticlimactic. Fiji had left in the middle of a tumult. She came back in the middle of nothing. There was no one on the street. The limo was gone, the body was gone, all the people who’d been in the street were gone. She didn’t even see Olivia’s blood in the pawnshop parking lot. Chuy pulled behind her house and ran around to open her door, helping her out of the car as solicitously as if she’d been an aged abuela. Her back door was unlocked, as she’d left it. Chuy offered his arm to help her manage the step up to the porch and the back-door sill. She was so weak; she hadn’t felt this way since she’d had mono as a teenager.