Midnight Crossroad (Midnight, Texas #1) by Charlaine Harris

effect, though the weed that bore them was about a foot tall. The wind tossed the blooms about cheerfully, and the leaves on the trees shivered, some of them loose enough to fly off and flutter through the air.
    Fiji thought,
Coming here was a good idea. This is really pretty, and healing.
Then she went over to the truck to help Madonna, who’d arrived first and started unloading the truck in an area that wasn’t too rocky. After getting the baby and his infant seat ensconced on the lowered tailgate, Madonna was pulling the coolers down to the ground. Teacher jumped up to push the coolers and the food forward, and Fiji began putting it on the white plastic folding table that Bobo and Manfred had already arranged. Joe set up the wildly assorted stadium chairs after handing Rasta over to Chuy, who took the little dog on a frantic exploration of the cliff’s edge. Rasta found an exciting assortment of new smells, so much to sniff and pee on. After an exhausting five minutes, Rasta drank a bowl of water, ate three treats, and curled up for a nap on his special blanket, laid down under the tailgate so the Peke would be in the shade.
    Fiji thought the curling-up-and-napping part looked like a good idea, but she hadn’t brought a special blanket. With an inner sigh and an outward smile, she helped to unpack the food and set it out on the table. She weighted down the napkins and paper plates with rocks, because the wind was making everything dance.
    They were perched above the section of the Río Roca Fría that ran east–west, more or less, before it turned north to Davy. Looking to her left, Fiji could see the lazy bend where it recovered its northern goal. Not even a hint of Davy was visible because of a slight rise and fall in the terrain.
    In fact, the Midnighters had set up their picnic at the steepest point of the slope; twenty yards in either direction, the ground descended. Scrambling down to the water was much easier there, but the best view was up here, right by the Cold Rock itself. The Roca Fría was a huge white boulder, about the size of a La-Z-Boy recliner. Sadly, there were scrawled messages all over it, some dating from the nineteen sixties.
    “I can see for miles,” Olivia said to Fiji. “That is, if it weren’t for my hair!” Olivia gathered up a smooth auburn handful with her right hand and pulled out an elastic band to secure it with her left. (Fiji hoped there was a similar band in the pocket of her jacket, but she hadn’t even thought about it that morning.) Having slicked her hair back into a neat ponytail, Olivia said, “I can’t believe I’ve never hiked out here before. Great idea!”
    “Not mine,” Bobo said. “Fiji’s.”
    Fiji took a bow as a ragged round of applause went up.
    “Who wants a beer?” Teacher called, and there was a general movement over to the ice chest. “We got cold water, too, for the wusses.”
    Fiji liked her wine, but she was not a beer drinker. “I’m a wuss,” she said with a smile, pulling a bottle of water out of the chest. Suppressing her yearning to sink into her dark green stadium chair, she took a big swallow of water before she strolled eastward, away from the Roca Fría. Fiji picked up a stick as she went, and she began thwacking at weeds in an idle way. A large cricket leaped up, startling her.
    Some adventurer I am. I might as well have stayed at home if I’m going to walk around sulking and hitting things with a stick,
Fiji reflected, half smiling at her own foolishness. Fiji had looked forward to the picnic, but now she wasn’t enjoying it as much as she’d hoped. She had the uneasy feeling that things were happening in Midnight that were outside her understanding: the abrupt desertion of Bobo by Aubrey, Bobo’s out-of-character behavior two nights ago, Shoshanna Whitlock’s questions. But those events should not bother her. They didn’t have to be different facets of the same incident.
    Trying to think positive thoughts, Fiji stopped at a