“The residence rooms will be for people who are in the area for a long-term job, like working for three months at Magic Portal. Or people who are waiting to get into an eldercare situation. As an aside, Eva Culhane told me that there’s a waiting list for all the eldercare places in a sixty-mile radius. The remaining rooms will be conventional hotel rooms. In the family quarters, there’ll be two people living there as staff. A cook will provide breakfast for residents and whoever stays at the hotel. Lunch and dinner will be cooked for permanent residents only, is what I got out of it.”

Madonna’s shoulders relax visibly. She gets a few diners from Magic Portal, which is an Internet company, every month. (Thanks to Magic Portal, Midnight has great Internet.) And ranchers come into Midnight every now and then for a meal. But she’s in the room with her regulars, right now. More customers would be welcome. Elderly people like traditional food, which is what Madonna cooks.

“What kind of staff?” Fiji asks.

“There’ll be two people in residence,” Joe repeats.

“Will one of them be a nurse or some kind of medical person?” Bobo asks. “Sounds like they might need that. And they’ll have to hire a maid, I would think. That’s a lot of rooms to clean for one person, plus dishes, plus food prep.”

“Good questions. We’ll have to find out.” Joe looks a little chagrined he didn’t think of all this.

“Did Ms. Culhane give you a timetable?” Fiji asks.

“She said they hope to be open within six months.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“They must have a shitload of money,” Teacher Reed says, and Bobo nods. “That’s a quick turnaround.”

Olivia, who’d driven in an hour earlier, speaks for the first time. She is sitting with Lemuel the vampire, her lover, and she looks exhausted. They are all ignoring the fact that Olivia’s shoulder is obviously bandaged under her shirt. “We have to find out who owns the company doing the restoration,” she says.

“Manfred, can you dig that up?” Joe asks.

Manfred is the most computer savvy of all the Midnight residents, but he’s no hacker. He just knows his way around the Internet. “I can try,” he says. Joe hands him a brochure, one that Eva Culhane had given him. It has a corporation name on it, MultiTier Living. Olivia extends her hand silently, and Manfred hands it to her. She looks at the brochure intently before she hands it back.