Only At Night update

Even the best job is a gilded cage. You can enjoy the work, recognize it’s gold, but they still form bars. You have to go there, do this, be that. I would’ve much rather been with Carina, explored everything—I felt like a ravenous beast that’d had a bite of the meal and now wanted to pick the bones clean. Not just her body, but all her thoughts, everything she’d ever felt… yesterday, I hadn’t even known she was a werewolf. I barely knew her—I didn’t understand her. But I wanted to. I knew enough to know it was a worthwhile pursuit, figuring her out.

But still, a gilded cage is better than a chicken coop. The server room I worked in was quiet, cozy. I could decorate it a little. Make myself at home. But I wasn’t there now. I was in the Michael Scott part of the office. I’d never seen it during the day, which was too bad. From the look of the open floor space and the floor-to-ceiling windows, it was designed to have sunlight spreading out through the cubicles. With only the convenience-store lighting, it looked stark, sun-bleached, like a cow’s skull in a Western. The cops seemed to fit in, their uniforms beetle-black, leather accoutrements shiny, tasers and guns and batons all matte-black. 

There were two of them. One was following up on Carina’s report that her car was stolen. I could see through the glass partitions that served as walls in 9-to-5land. He was a uniform officer. The other was a detective. Detective Wachowski. He had a moustache. Work a porkpie hat to go with an otherwise unremarkable suit. I was put off by him, and I didn’t know why. He looked like he rode the subway. He looked like someone’s dad.

After we’d exchanged pleasantries and he’d explained what I’d already figured out—that the vampires who’d last fed on me had now gone missing and they wanted to know if I knew anything—it dawned on me. He was normal. Over the past few days, I’d been around so many vampires and werewolves that I’d gotten used to that slightly off quality that separates the humans from everything else. It was like the difference between dogs and wolves. And without that, Wachowski was actually pinging weirdly to me.

I tried to put away that odd rustling of my instincts. It would come off as nervousness and while anyone who wasn’t a hardened criminal would be nervous around a poking, prodding cop, too much nervousness and they’d start pulling threads, seeing what unraveled. But finally, I cut through the back and forth.

“So some vampires went missing,” I summarized, breaking down all the intricate constructions Wachowski had built of the simple facts—a house of cards he wanted me to disturb by supplying an errant detail or sticking my head in the silence. Standard police stuff. My family had been used to it back in the Old Country. “I hope you find them, but I don’t see how I can help you.”

“You were the last blood donor on record for all four of them. That’s a pretty big coincidence.”

“Not really,” I replied. “If I give a dollar to a homeless guy and later he gets hit by a car, it doesn’t mean I was driving.”

The breakroom he was interviewing me in was designed for people the same way the office was designed for sun. With just me and him in there, enjoying our privacy, there was a feeling not unlike having a movie theater all to yourself. I felt like spreading out, relaxing—letting something slip. I wondered if it was an interrogation tactics or just a guilty conscience on my part.

“So walk me through it,” Wachowski said, sitting down on the table I sat at like he was about to offer me a beer. “What happened the night you donated to them?”

“I was coming home from work. I passed them, they asked me if I was free. I had nothing better to do, so I stopped to talk a bit.”

“With four perfect strangers? In the middle of the night?”

I shrugged. “Working at night, you stop being afraid of the dark. People are people no matter what time of day it is.”

“Is that how you would describe four walking corpses? ‘People’?”

I felt a need to elaborate, garnish my cover story. Something about how I’d always wondered what it was like to get bitten by a vampire or that I wanted to do my civic duty. I stopped myself. Guilty people volunteer information. Innocent people just want to go home. 

“I don’t really think about it that much. It’s the same as going to a blood drive, isn’t it? What’s the big deal?”

Wachowski leaned closer to me, resting a palm on the table. Right where I’d lay down the paper if I was taking a test. “So they didn’t coerce you in any way?”

“Coerce me? What do you mean?”

“Threats. Blackmail.” Wachowski’s eyes glinted. “Anything you wouldn’t want to have happen to your mom.”

“They just said I had to try it. That it was like bungee-jumping or something.”

“Have you ever been bungee-jumping?”

“No.” I smiled. “Is that all? Because if you just want to make conversation, we really should do it when I’m not on the clock.”

He came up from the table. “I think they can get by without you. Hey, have you ever heard that some vampires attack people under the guise of donating? They grab ‘em, feed on ‘em, really mess ‘em up, and then intimidate them into not speaking up about it.”

“That’s not what happened.”

He paced. “Wouldn’t really matter if it did, right? Since they’re missing now? But I do wonder… if a guy got attacked, and he was real pissed off about it… you might consider him and them sorta enemies. As in, ‘did the victim have any enemies?’”

A knock rattled the door before I could answer. Not hard, but there was a kind of corded force to it that made it clear the door could come off the hinges if they wanted it too. Wachowski stopped in his tracks, considered the shuddering door, then opened it. Thana stood there, wearing a powder-blue minidress that showed off enough of her legs and chest to make it clear there was not an ounce of tan to be found on her body. She carried a Styrofoam cup of coffee, little plastic lid affixed on top of it.

“Detective. Hello. I hope you’re comfortable here. You have everything you need?”

“Yes, I just need to ask a few more—“

“I brought you some coffee.” She slipped it into his hand like a sneak thief pocketing a wallet. “Now, will you be keeping our Ivan much longer?” Thana continued, as though Wachowski hadn’t already answered her question. “I don’t mean to interfere, but I am running a business here.”

Wachowski regarded her. She was a head shorter than him, but the way she commanded attention—like a woman flaunting her new wardrobe in front of an ex—made his schlubbiness stand out in sharp contrast. “We’re trying to find four missing vampires, you know? You don’t seem very concerned.”

“Oh, I’m highly concerned,” Thana said, sounding like she was reading the newspaper at that exact moment. I thought I caught her looking at her nails. “The fraternity of man and all that. But even though I’m a vampire, I don’t know any of them. We don’t all know each other, after all. And anyway, who really knows anyone… when you come right down to it?”

Her eyes jabbed at Wachowski, meeting his and scrupulously examining them. I thought of two boxers circling each other, looking for an opening. Thana’s force of will shone out of her like she might glow in the dark if the lights went out. “Anyway, I’m sure Ivan wouldn’t know anything about it. He’d always struck me as a big supporter of vampire rights.”

“Big enough to donate blood?” Wachowski asked, a little rabbit punch of a question.

Thana quirked her head. Her eyes slid to me. As intimidating as it was, it felt good to be the center of her attention. Like slipping into a warm bath. “You’ve been holding out on me, Ivan. You know you can always give at the office.” She slunk her gaze back to Wachowski. “No. It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“But he hasn’t given here?” Wachowski insisted. “To you?”

Thana’s lips pressed together. “I like to consider this workplace a second home for our employees. And for some people, charity doesn’t begin at home.” Her voice rose perkily—I’d never heard her speak so sunnily. “But if it helps the workplace stay professional, then that’s the important thing. Now, is there anything else Ivan can help you with? I really do need his help.”

Wachowski glanced at me. I couldn’t immediately tell whether he was writing off this place as a dead end or thinking he needed to regroup and come at me from another angle. The way I figured it, it depended on one thing. If he’d been serious with that walking corpse crack, then he’d write off the four vampires as literal NHI—No Humans Involved, the same code police used to use for hobos and whores. But if he was beholden to vampires like half the city was, then he’d press it further. 

But not tonight. He straightened his hat on his head and gave Thana a nod, dealing with her instead of me—not sure if it was because he was disgusted with me or just because Thana was the kind of human who bore as much looking at as possible. 

“Don’t work too hard,” he said, and left me alone with Thana.