Night Shift by Charlaine Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

for Bobo; it was ironic that it had taken him all these years to find the really interesting piece of history that had become his obsession. But the builder of Midnight Pawn, which had originally been a general store, had bought and sold a good many things, both ancient and modern, new and used.
    “A consignment of ancient books,” the original owner had written. “Which I now believe to be of the Devil, so I have hidden them. If the owner returns to redeem them, I will kill him.” Lemuel had been intrigued, of course. He’d had trouble discovering what had happened to the original owner, but he’d run across one mention of a terrible accident in an old county newspaper, which had made him even more curious.
    Lemuel had not been able to claim ownership of the pawnshop continuously for all those years, because someone would have noticed his odd longevity and his aversion to daylight. Though he was very strong and fast, humans in a group could defeat him. By various subterfuges, he’d remained in the area. But he’d never been able to find the trove of books.
    Bobo had discovered them by accident, which was galling. And funny, too.
    The cover of the book Lemuel was studying, which had been created from the skin of a werewolf, was still in excellent shape, and the pages, though spotted and yellowed, were quite legible . . . if you could speak the language they’d been written in.
    That was what had taken so long—finding someone who could still speak the ancient tongue.
    “You taking a break?” Olivia asked. She’d set up a card table behind the counter and was working a jigsaw puzzle. “A thousand pieces,” she’d told him, looking determined.
    “Just for a few minutes,” Lemuel said, getting off the stool and stretching.
    “I have to go to New Orleans in a couple of weeks. You want me to look up that Quigley, thump him good?”
    “I felt lucky to find him at the time,” Lemuel said. “A descendant of the vampire who wrote this book? Hadn’t expected that.”
    “It would have been a better discovery if he’d been smart,” Olivia said.
    “Yes, indeed. Maybe I should have taken some wooden slivers with me, asked a few more questions. I know Quigley has a child, and he wasn’t the first vampire Arria Auclina created. There’s an older child somewhere, a female.”
    “What about Arria Auclina herself?” Olivia was all for going directly to the source.
    “She would squash me like a bug,” Lemuel said gently. “Ones that old, they don’t care a thing about a comparatively new one like me, especially since I’m the rare breed.”
    “I think being able to take blood from humans or sap their energy makes you a lot more diverse,” she said. “I bet they all wish they were like you.”
    “Not the purists,” he said, with a slight smile. “Though it was much easier for me when I was only a hundred or so, to go amongst people. It was hard for them to tell what I was. Now, there’s no question.”
    “Shall I ask Quigley nicely to give us another source?” She perked up at the prospect of action.
    Lemuel looked at Olivia steadily. She was brave and strong and lethal, but she’d never understand that a vampire could snap her spine in a second. Any vampire. “Olivia, please don’t approach him unless I ask you to,” he said, making sure she saw how serious he was.
    Lemuel squatted by the card table to pick up little puzzle pieces that had landed on the floor. As he began returning them to the table, he glanced up at Olivia. Her brow was furrowed as she tried to match piece after piece. Though he had never told her—and she had never asked—Lemuel planned to make Olivia a vampire someday. She was bright and wounded and lethal and loyal. Only her mortality kept her from being nearly perfect in his eyes. She was about to speak again; she turned away from the puzzle.
    “Listen, I guess there’s no shortcut you could take, or you would have taken it already, right?”
    “What shortcut did you have