Annika Northman: Part One

Chapter Three: Long Night

Coming through the EMPLOYEES ONLY door that evening, I hear, "Oh, good. Sleeping Beauty woke up," before I'm two steps in. And then a rag hits me in the chest. "Make yourself useful." Pam is standing at the bar, shuffling through receipts in front of a calculator. "Wipe down the tables."

I almost point out that I haven't even had breakfast yet, but Pam's expression makes me think better of it. I walk out to the tables, still sticky with spilled drinks and human grease. "Where's Ginger?" I ask as casually as I can manage. She usually does the clean-up.

"Oh, I had to send Ginger home." Pam says this like she's talking honey, and her smile is just as sweet, which is how I know she's ready to bite. "I don't know if you heard –" Yes, here's the shift – "but she was involved in a shooting today." She gives me a pointed look. Well, glare. Everyone in my life has an excellent glare.

"Why didn't you glamour her?"

"Because her mind is one glamour away from being cracked like an egg. And scrambled." She enters some numbers into the calculator, her fingers a blur. "I'm saving that time for something good."

I move from table to table, paying very little attention to what I'm doing. Sometimes talking to Pam, or Eric for that matter, is like a game of chess – which Eric forced me to learn, and which I hate. Conversations take more strategy than they maybe should. "Is Lafayette dead?"

"No. Ginger put him in Eric's office last night. He's still there. No point in moving the little jailbird until Eric decides what he wants to do with him."

That explains why I woke up with that coldness in my belly again. I thought it was leftover from the day, but I was feeling Lafayette right in the next room. I need to pay more attention to these things. "Where's Eric?"

"Left at sunset. He was gone before I got up."

"Where?"

"Business."

"Is he going to kill Lafayette?"

A misstep. Pam rolls her eyes, drops the receipts, and presses her palms flat against the bar. "You gotta stop this," she says flatly.

"Stop what?"

"Caring. About humans. About strangers. This is exactly why Eric's tried to keep you away from them. They're bad influences."

"I don't care about Lafayette. He was bleeding on the floor last night with a bullet in his leg and I walked away!"

"Because you didn't care?" Pam picks up the receipts again. "Or because you cared too much?"

I don't even know what that means, but it makes me angry. I wipe down two more tables and then say, "Can I go now? My tutors are coming tonight and I haven't eaten anything."

Her eyes flicker up. "Fine."

But as I move around her, tossing the rag on the bar as I go, she calls after me. "Save yourself some trouble, and don't even think about going into that office. Eric's been under a lot of stress lately, and he's not going to have the time or patience to be sensitive about it if you step out of line."

I back into the EMPLOYEES ONLY door and send a glare of my own back at Pam. "I don't give a damn about Lafayette."

Pam's lips curl. "Watch your mouth. But good job." She turns back to the calculator. "That was almost believable."

. . . . .

My tutors come shortly after Fangtasia opens. The music is muffled but easy to hear, and the walls sometimes pulse in time with the beat of a song. I've only seen it in person a few times, the party that occurs nightly in my home. Eric doesn't like me to be out there.