Midnight Crossroad

19

Since he’d played his part in the “help Bobo” movement, Manfred felt free to think about himself and his own concerns the next day. He worked late, not turning off his computer until after dark. When he finally got up, he realized he’d been sitting in the same position for far too long. Walking off the stiffness, he strolled over to the window. The light over the storefront of Midnight Pawn was humming with bugs, and the two cars parked there looked forlorn in the bleak glare. Manfred had known that Lemuel kept the shop open at night, but he’d never particularly noticed any customer traffic. Now he saw a strange, hunched shape come down the six steps to the street level. It paused to stuff something in its left coat pocket (it was just cool enough this night to make a sweater feasible but not a coat). Then, left foot dragging, the creature made its way to the driver’s side of a Ford Fusion. Manfred found it impossible to tell if he was looking at a male or female; whatever this individual was, he was fairly sure it wasn’t human.

He wondered what it had pawned. But he thought it would be indiscreet to actually go in the shop to ask Lemuel.

Plus, Lemuel might want to hold his hand again.

Manfred had tried not to brood about that little incident in the diner, but it had shaken him . . . Lemuel’s intensely cold hand, the hard grip, the creeping weariness that had gradually sapped Manfred’s strength. There had been something eerily pleasant about it, but the incident had also been really, really terrifying. And why had Lemuel picked him, Manfred, to feed from? Manfred had never doubted his own sexual identity was hetero, but the connection had not been completely without intimacy.

Okay, he asked himself, trying to face and conquer this inconvenient uneasiness, how do you feel about the idea of kissing Lemuel?

He felt an instantaneous Yuck. Somewhat relieved by this response, he was not as tentative about exploring the question further. Do I seriously believe Lemuel thinks of me as a potential sex partner? was the next question. Probably not, he thought. After all, though he didn’t have any direct evidence, he’d gotten the definite impression that Olivia and Lemuel were a couple, or at least were having sex. Since this internal conversation was relieving an anxiety he hadn’t realized he harbored, he thought he’d carry it one step further. He’d face Lemuel; he’d erase this lingering uneasiness.

Manfred slipped out his front door and went up the steps into the pawnshop. The chilly night was silent, except for the tiny noises of the bugs overhead and the hum of the light. If there were this many insects in October, he hated to think of what it would be like in July. As the car outside had indicated, there was still a customer in the pawnshop, a woman. She was talking to Lemuel, who was sitting on the stool behind the counter. Manfred began browsing the shelves; there were so many to browse. The inside of the pawnshop was far larger than the outside might indicate.

The shelves and display cases were full of interesting things, dusty things, ancient things, deadly things—and many things that were out-and-out weird. There were freestanding shelving units and built-in cabinets, and there were antique pieces of cabinetry that were stuffed with other pawned items. There were wooden shelves and metal ones, and the wooden ones ranged from weathered and silvery to smelling of pine.

There was a section for old electric appliances; there was a section for weapons; there was a section for jewelry, for old clothes, for pots and pans, for “collectibles”; and there was one section for items so strange Manfred could not imagine how they’d be used. Manfred was instantly intrigued by that area. There was a very old book bound in wooden plates; there was a sort of sculpture—structure?—made of twigs bound together at odd angles with purple ribbon; there was a cloudy crystal ball; there was a Ouija board with an endlessly gliding planchette. Manfred felt the hair stand up on his arms. These objects were magic and eerie and subtly dangerous, and yet he felt he could examine them forever. The cases of guns were much less interesting in Manfred’s view, though Bobo had told him what a draw they were to other shoppers.

He was vaguely aware that the customer was concluding her transaction with Lemuel. Then, suddenly, she was by Manfred’s side. It was no woman, but it was a female creature. She was thin and angular, with eyes black as pitch. Her short hair was just as ebon, and it looked as though it had been cut in the dark with a dull knife. She leaned over to smell Manfred, her tongue flicking out in a most disconcerting manner, and she hissed at him.

Manfred held as still as a mouse hoping a cat will not sense its presence. But she seized his arm.

“Tassssty,” she said.

“Glinda,” said Lemuel quietly. “No. He’s a friend.”

The black eyes blinked more than once. Did she have two eyelids? Manfred did not twitch, much less speak.

“Ssssssshit,” she said, and released his arm. The next instant, she was gone.

“Buddy of yours?” Manfred asked, when he was sure his voice would be even.

“I don’t think snake shifters have buddies,” Lemuel said. “They just know people they haven’t tried to eat yet.”

“She doesn’t try to eat you?”

“They only eat living things,” Lemuel said, turning to walk back to the counter. “Did you want to pawn something, buy something, or were you just stretching your legs?”

“A little of taking a work break, a little of wondering about your energy drainage thing,” Manfred said, thinking if he didn’t say it out loud now he might chicken out.

To his relief, Lemuel smiled. “I should have explained,” the cold man said. “As I’m sure you’ve puzzled out, I’m a sort of vampire. I’m not what has become known in popular literature as a traditional vampire. I can feed on energy or blood or both simultaneously. That’s the best meal, but I don’t get it often.”

“Because the feed-ee dies if you do that?”

“Yes, the one I’m feeding on dies.” Lemuel smiled.

“And that night at the diner?”

“The strangers caused me concern. I estimated I might need to be as strong as possible in the near future. I tapped you.”

“Why me?” To Manfred, this was the most important question. Not that he wouldn’t have to think hard, later, about Lemuel’s diet and the fact that Lemuel hadn’t given him a choice, but this was the question that had worried him.

“I could tell you were an open-minded person,” Lemuel said, pale eyes on some small repair he was making to a piece of jewelry under a magnifying lamp. “Not likely to jump up and scream, ‘Oh sweet Jesus, another man is holding my hand!’”

Manfred laughed weakly.

“And I also believed that you would stay here, that you were not passing through, and that it was, therefore, the quickest way to let you know what I was.”

Manfred wanted to ask Lemuel if Olivia was his girlfriend, but in Lemuel’s presence he could see how silly that would sound. How intrusive.

“You are interested in Creek,” Lemuel said unexpectedly.

“She’s very attractive,” Manfred said cautiously. “I realize she’s younger than me, and I’m not going to, ah, initiate anything improper. But I would like to get to know her better.”

Lemuel’s eyes were almost white, now, when he glanced up. “She is a lovely child,” Lemuel said. “But I realize she is on the cusp of becoming a woman. If she decides to become a woman with you, you had better be damned sure she is fully aware and agreeable to every step of the process.”

Manfred replied with complete honesty, “I would never do otherwise.”

“Then we are not enemies,” Lemuel said. “And we may become friends, as I told the snake woman we were.”

“When were you born, Lemuel, if I can ask?”

“I was born in 1837,” Lemuel said. “My name was not Lemuel then.”

“A big adjustment, from then to now,” Manfred said, since it was all he could think of to say that wasn’t fatuous. But that was fatuous enough.

Lemuel discarded one tool and selected another. “That is true,” he agreed. “Good night, psychic.”

“Good night, vampire,” Manfred said. Since he’d clearly been dismissed, he went home.