True Blood Book Three Chapters 6-8

Chapter Six
We were silent in the elevator. As Alcide unlocked his apartment, I leaned against the wall. I was a mess: tired, conflicted, and agitated by the fracas with the biker and Debbie's vandalism.
I felt like apologizing, but I didn't know what for.
"Good night," I said, at the door to my room. "Oh, here. Thanks." I shrugged out of his coat and held it out to him. He hung it over the back of one of the bar stools at the eat-in counter.
"Need help with your zipper?" he asked.
"It would be great if you could get it started." I turned my back to him. He'd zipped it up the last couple of inches when I was getting dressed, and I appreciated his thinking of this before he vanished into his room.
I felt his big fingers against my back, and the little hiss of the zipper. Then something unexpected happened; I felt him touch me again.
I shivered all over as his fingers trailed down my skin.
I didn't know what to do.
I didn't know what I wanted to do.
I made myself turn to face him. His face was as uncertain as mine.
"Worst possible time," I said. "You're on the rebound. I'm looking for my boyfriend; granted, he's my unfaithful boyfriend, but still …"
"Bad timing," he agreed, and his hands settled on my shoulders. Then he bent down and kissed me. It took about a half a second for my arms to go around his waist and his tongue to slide into my mouth. He kissed soft. I wanted to run my fingers through his hair and find out how broad his chest was and if his butt was really as high and round as it looked in his pants … oh, hell. I gently pushed back.
"Bad timing," I said. I flushed, realizing that with my dress half unzipped, Alcide could see my bra and the tops of my bosom easily. Well, it was good I had a pretty bra on.
"Oh, God," he said, having gotten an eyeful. He made a supreme effort and squeezed those green eyes shut. "Bad timing," he agreed again. "Though I can hope that, real soon, it might seem like better timing."
I smiled. "Who knows?" I said, and stepped back into my room while I could still make myself move in that direction. After shutting the door gently, I hung up the red dress, pleased it still looked good and unstained. The sleeves were a disaster, with greasy fingerprints and a little blood on them. I sighed regretfully.
I'd have to flit from door to door to use the bathroom. I didn't want to be a tease, and my robe was definitely short, nylon, and pink. So I scooted, because I could hear Alcide rummaging around in the kitchen. What with one thing and another, I was in the little bathroom for a while. When I came out, all the lights in the apartment were off except the one in my bedroom. I closed the shades, feeling a little silly doing so since no other building on the block was five stories high. I put on my pink nightgown, and crawled in the bed to read a chapter of my romance by way of calming down. It was the one where the heroine finally beds the hero, so it didn't work too well, but I did stop thinking about the biker's skin burning from contact with the goblin, and about Debbie's malicious narrow face. And about the idea of Bill being tortured.
The love scene (actually, the sex scene) steered my mind more toward Alcide's warm mouth.
I switched off the bedside lamp after I'd put my bookmark in my book. I snuggled down in the bed and piled the covers high on top of me, and felt—finally—warm and safe.
Someone knocked at my window.
I let out a little shriek. Then, figuring who it must be, I yanked on my robe, belted it, and opened the shades.
Sure enough, Eric was floating just outside. I switched on the lamp again, and struggled with the unfamiliar window.
"What the hell do you want?" I was saying, as Alcide dashed into the room.
I barely spared him a glance over my shoulder. "You better leave me alone and let me get some sleep," I told Eric, not caring if I sounded like an old scold, "and you better stop showing up outside places in the middle of the night and expecting me to let you in!"
"Sookie, let me in," Eric said.
"No! Well, actually, this is Alcide's place. Alcide, what you want to do?"
I turned to look at him for the first time, and tried not to let my mouth fall open. Alcide slept in those long drawstring pants, period. Whoa. If he'd been shirtless thirty minutes before, the timing might have seemed just perfect.
"What do you want, Eric?" Alcide asked, much more calmly than I had done.
"We need to talk," Eric said, sounding impatient.
"If I let him in now, can I rescind it?" Alcide asked me.
"Sure." I grinned at Eric. "Any moment, you can rescind it."
"Okay. You can come in, Eric." Alcide took the screen off the window, and Eric slid in feetfirst. I eased the window shut behind him. Now I was cold again. There was gooseflesh all over Alcide's chest, too, and his nipples … I forced myself to keep an eye on Eric.
Eric gave both of us a sharp look, his blue eyes as brilliant as sapphires in the lamplight. "What have you found out, Sookie?"
"The vampires here do have him."
Eric's eyes may have widened a little, but that was his only reaction. He appeared to be thinking intently.
"Isn't it a little dangerous for you to be on Edgington's turf, unannounced?" Alcide asked. He was doing his leaning-against-the-wall thing again. He and Eric were both big men and the room really seemed crowded all of a sudden. Maybe their egos were using up all the oxygen.
"Oh, yes," Eric said. "Very dangerous." He smiled radiantly.
I wondered if they'd notice if I went back to bed. I yawned. Two pairs of eyes swung to focus on me. "Anything else you need, Eric?" I asked.
"Do you have anything else to report?"
"Yes, they've tortured him."
"Then they won't let him go."
Of course not. You wouldn't let loose a vampire you'd tortured. You'd be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. I hadn't thought that through, but I could see its truth.
"You're going to attack?" I wanted to be nowhere around Jackson when that happened.
"Let me think on it," Eric said. "You are going back to the bar tomorrow night?"
"Yes, Russell invited us specifically."
"Sookie attracted his attention tonight," Alcide said.
"But that's perfect!" Eric said. "Tomorrow night, sit with the Edgington crew and pick their brains, Sookie."
"Well, that would never have occurred to me, Eric," I said, wonderingly. "Gosh, I'm glad you woke me up tonight to explain that to me."
"No problem," Eric said. "Anytime you want me to wake you up, Sookie, you have only to say."
I sighed. "Go away, Eric. Good night again, Alcide."
Alcide straightened, waiting for Eric to go back out the window. Eric waited for Alcide to leave.
"I rescind your invitation into my apartment," Alcide said, and abruptly Eric walked to the window, reopened it, and launched himself out. He was scowling. Once outside, he regained his composure and smiled at us, waving as he vanished downward.
Alcide slammed the window shut and let the blinds back down.
"No, there are lots of men who don't like me at all," I told him. He'd been easy to read that time, all right.
He gave me an odd look. "Is that so?"
"Yes, it is."
"If you say so."
"Most people, regular people, that is … they think I'm nuts."
"Is that right?"
"Yes, that's right! And it makes them very nervous to have me serve them."
He began laughing, a reaction that was so far from what I had intended that I had no idea what to say next.
He left the room, still more or less chuckling to himself.
Well, that had been weird. I turned out the lamp and took off the robe, tossing it across the foot of the bed. I snuggled between the sheets again, the blanket and spread pulled up to my chin. It was cold and bleak outside, but here I was, finally, warm and safe and alone. Really, really alone.
***
The next morning, Alcide was already gone when I got up. Construction and surveying people get going early, naturally, and I was used to sleeping late because of my job at the bar and because I hung around with a vampire. If I wanted to spend time with Bill, it had to be at night, obviously.
There was a note propped up on the coffeepot. I had a slight headache since I am not used to alcohol and I'd had two drinks the night before—the headache was not quite a hangover, but I wasn't my normal cheerful self, either. I squinted at the tiny printing.
"Running errands. Make yourself at home. I'll be back in the afternoon."
For a minute I felt disappointed and deflated. Then I got a hold of myself. It wasn't like he'd called me up and scheduled this as a romantic weekend, or like we really knew each other. Alcide had had my company foisted on him. I shrugged, and poured myself a cup of coffee. I made some toast and turned on the news. After I'd watched one cycle of CNN headlines, I decided to shower. I took my time. What else was there to do?
I was in danger of experiencing an almost unknown state—boredom.
At home, there was always something to do, though it might not be something I particularly enjoyed. If you have a house, there's always some little job waiting for your attention. And when I was in Bon Temps, there was the library to go to, or the dollar store, or the grocery. Since I'd taken up with Bill, I'd also been running errands for him that could only be done in the daytime when offices were open.
As Bill crossed my mind, I was plucking a stray hair from my eyebrow line, leaning over the sink to peer in the bathroom mirror. I had to lay down the tweezers and sit on the edge of the tub. My feelings for Bill were so confused and conflicting, I had no hope of sorting them out anytime soon. But knowing he was in pain, in trouble, and I didn't know how to find him—that was a lot to bear. I had never supposed that our romance would go smoothly. It was an interspecies relationship, after all. And Bill was a lot older than me. But this aching chasm I felt now that he was gone—that, I hadn't ever imagined.
I pulled on some jeans and a sweater and made my bed. I lined up all my makeup in the bathroom I was using, and hung the towel just so. I would have straightened up Alcide's room if I hadn't felt it would be sort of impertinent to handle his things. So I read a few chapters of my book, and then decided I simply could not sit in the apartment any longer.
I left a note for Alcide telling him I was taking a walk, and then I rode down in the elevator with a man in casual clothes, lugging a golf bag. I refrained from saying, "Going to play golf?" and confined myself to mentioning that it was a good day to be outside. It was bright and sunny, clear as a bell, and probably in the fifties. It was a happy day, with all the Christmas decorations looking bright in the sun, and lots of shopping traffic.
I wondered if Bill would be home for Christmas. I wondered if Bill could go to church with me on Christmas Eve, or if he would. I thought of the new Skil saw I'd gotten Jason; I'd had it on layaway at Sears in Monroe for months, and just picked it up a week ago. I had gotten a toy for each of Arlene's kids, and a sweater for Arlene. I really didn't have anyone else to buy a gift for, and that was pathetic. I decided I'd get Sam a CD this year. The idea cheered me. I love to give presents. This would have been my first Christmas with a boyfriend …
Oh, hell, I'd come full cycle, just like Headline News.
"Sookie!" called a voice.
Startled out of my dreary round of thoughts, I looked around to see that Janice was waving at me out of the door of her shop, on the other side of the street. I'd unconsciously walked the direction I knew. I waved back at her.
"Come on over!" she said.
I went down to the corner and crossed with the light. The shop was busy, and Jarvis and Corinne had their hands full with customers.
"Christmas parties tonight," Janice explained, while her hands were busy rolling up a young matron's black shoulder-length hair. "We're not usually open after noon on Saturdays." The young woman, whose hands were decorated with an impressive set of diamond rings, kept riffling through a copy of Southern Living while Janice worked on her head.
"Does this sound good?" she asked Janice. "Ginger meatballs?" One glowing fingernail pointed to the recipe.
"Kind of oriental?" Janice asked.
"Um, sort of." She read the recipe intently. "No one else would be serving them," she muttered. "You could stick toothpicks in 'em."
"Sookie, what are you doing today?" Janice asked, when she was sure her customer was thinking about ground beef.
"Just hanging out," I said. I shrugged. "Your brother's out running errands, his note said."
"He left you a note to tell you what he was doing? Girl, you should be proud. That man hasn't set pen to paper since high school." She gave me a sideways look and grinned. "You all have a good time last night?"
I thought it over. "Ah, it was okay," I said hesitantly. The dancing had been fun, anyway.
Janice burst out laughing. "If you have to think about it that hard, it must not have been a perfect evening."
"Well, no," I admitted. "There was like a little fight in the bar, and a man had to be evicted. And then, Debbie was there."
"How did her engagement party go?"
"There was quite a crowd at her table," I said. "But she came over after a while and asked a lot of questions." I smiled reminiscently. "She sure didn't like seeing Alcide with someone else!"
Janice laughed again.
"Who got engaged?" asked her customer, having decided against the recipe.
"Oh, Debbie Pelt? Used to go with my brother?" Janice said.
"I know her," said the black-haired woman, pleasure in her voice. "She used to date your brother, Alcide? And now she's marrying someone else?"
"Marrying Charles Clausen," Janice said, nodding gravely. "You know him?"
"Sure I do! We went to high school together. He's marrying Debbie Pelt? Well, better him than your brother," Black Hair said confidentially.
"I'd already figured that out," Janice said. "You know something I don't know, though?"
"That Debbie, she's into some weird stuff," Black Hair said, raising her eyebrows to mark deep significance.
"Like what?" I asked, hardly breathing as I waited to hear what would come out. Could it be that this woman actually knew about shape-shifting, about werewolves? My eyes met Janice's and I saw the same apprehension in them.
Janice knew about her brother. She knew about his world.
And she knew I did, too.
"Devil worship, they say," Black Hair said. "Witchcraft."
We both gaped at her reflection in the mirror. She had gotten the reaction she'd been looking for. She gave a satisfied nod. Devil worship and witchcraft weren't synonymous, but I wasn't going to argue with this woman; this was the wrong time and place.
"Yes, ma'am, that's what I hear. At every full moon, she and some friends of hers go out in the woods and do stuff. No one seems to know exactly what," she admitted.
Janice and I exhaled simultaneously.
"Oh, my goodness," I said weakly.
"Then my brother's well out of a relationship with her. We don't hold with such doings," Janice said righteously.
"Of course not," I agreed.
We didn't meet each other's eyes.
After that little passage, I made motions about leaving, but Janice asked me what I was wearing that night.
"Oh, it's kind of a champagne color," I said. "Kind of a shiny beige."
"Then the red nails won't do," Janice said. "Corinne!"
Despite all my protests, I left the shop with bronze finger- and toenails, and Jarvis worked on my hair again. I tried to pay Janice, but the most she would let me do was tip her employees.
"I've never been pampered so much in my life," I told her.
"What do you do, Sookie?" Somehow that hadn't come up the day before.
"I'm a barmaid," I said.
"That is a change from Debbie," Janice said. She looked thoughtful.
"Oh, yeah? What does Debbie do?"
"She's a legal assistant."
Debbie definitely had an educational edge. I'd never been able to manage college; financially, it would have been rough, though I could've found a way, I guess. But my disability had made it hard enough to get out of high school. A telepathic teenager has an extremely hard time of it, let me tell you. And I had so little control then. Every day had been full of dramas—the dramas of other kids. Trying to concentrate on listening in class, taking tests in a roomful of buzzing brains … the only thing I'd ever excelled in was homework.
Janice didn't seem to be too concerned that I was a barmaid, which was an occupation not guaranteed to impress the families of those you dated.
I had to remind myself all over again that this setup with Alcide was a temporary arrangement he'd never asked for, and that after I'd discovered Bill's whereabouts—right, Sookie, remember Bill, your boyfriend?—I'd never see Alcide again. Oh, he might drop into Merlotte's, if he felt like getting off the interstate on his way from Shreveport to Jackson, but that would be all.
Janice was genuinely hoping I would be a permanent member of her family. That was so nice of her. I liked her a lot. I almost found myself wishing that Alcide really liked me, that there was a real chance of Janice being my sister-in-law.
They say there's no harm in daydreaming, but there is.
Chapter Seven
Alcide was waiting for me when I got back. A pile of wrapped presents on the kitchen counter showed me how he'd spent at least part of his morning. Alcide had been completing his Christmas shopping.
Judging from his self-conscious look (Mr. Subtle, he wasn't), he'd done something he wasn't sure I'd like. Whatever it was, he wasn't ready to reveal it to me, so I tried to be polite and stay out of his head. As I was passing through the short hall formed by the bedroom wall and the kitchen counter, I sniffed something less than pleasant. Maybe the garbage needed to be tossed? What garbage could we have generated in our short stay that would produce that faint, unpleasant odor? But the past pleasure of my chat with Janice and the present pleasure of seeing Alcide made it easy to forget.
"You look nice," he said.
"I stopped in to see Janice." I was worried for fear he would think I was imposing on his sister's generosity. "She has a way of getting you to accept things you had no intention of accepting."
"She's good," he said simply. "She's known about me since we were in high school, and she's never told a soul."
"I could tell."
"How—? Oh, yeah." He shook his head. "You seem like the most regular person I ever met, and it's hard to remember you've got all this extra stuff."
No one had ever put it quite like that.
"When you were coming in, did you smell something strange by—" he began, but then the doorbell rang.
Alcide went to answer it while I took off my coat.
He sounded pleased, and I turned to face the door with a smile. The young man coming in didn't seem surprised to see me, and Alcide introduced him as Janice's husband, Dell Phillips. I shook his hand, expecting to be as pleased with him as I was with Janice.
He touched me as briefly as possible, and then he ignored me. "I wondered if you could come by this afternoon and help me set up our outside Christmas lights," Dell said—to Alcide, and Alcide only.
"Where's Tommy?" Alcide asked. He looked disappointed. "You didn't bring him by to see me?" Tommy was Janice's baby.
Dell looked at me, and shook his head. "You've got a woman here, it didn't seem right. He's with my mom."
The comment was so unexpected, all I could do was stand in silence. Dell's attitude had caught Alcide flat-footed, too. "Dell," he said, "don't be rude to my friend."
"She's staying in your apartment, that says more than friend," Dell said matter-of-factly. "Sorry, miss, this just isn't right."
"Judge not, that ye be not judged," I told him, hoping I didn't sound as furious as my clenched stomach told me I was. It felt wrong to quote the Bible when you were in a towering rage. I went into the guest bedroom and shut the door.
After I heard Dell Phillips leave, Alcide knocked on the door.
"You want to play Scrabble?" he asked.
I blinked. "Sure."
"When I was shopping for Tommy, I picked up a game."
He'd already put it on the coffee table in front of the couch, but he hadn't been confident enough to unwrap it and set it up.
"I'll pour us a Coke," I said. Not for the first time, I noticed that the apartment was quite cool, though of course it was much warmer than outside. I wished I had brought a light sweater to put on, and I wondered if it would offend Alcide if I asked him to turn the heat up. Then I remembered how warm his skin was, and I figured he was one of those people who runs kind of hot. Or maybe all Weres were like that? I pulled on the sweatshirt I'd worn yesterday, being very careful when I eased it over my hair.
Alcide had folded himself onto the floor on one side of the table, and I settled on the other. It had been a long time since either of us played Scrabble, so we studied the rules for a while before we began the game.
Alcide had graduated from Louisiana Tech. I'd never been to college, but I read a lot, so we were about even on the extent of our vocabulary. Alcide was the better strategist. I seemed to think a little faster.
I scored big with "quirt," and he stuck his tongue out at me. I laughed, and he said, "Don't read my mind, that would be cheating."
"Of course I wouldn't do any such thing," I said demurely, and he scowled at me.
I lost—but only by twelve points. After a pleasantly quarrelsome rehash of the game, Alcide got up and took our glasses over to the kitchen. He put them down and began to search through the cabinets, while I stored the game pieces and replaced the lid.
"Where you want me to put this?" I asked.
"Oh, in the closet by the door. There are a couple of shelves in there."
I tucked the box under one arm and went to the closet. The smell I'd noticed earlier seemed to be stronger.
"You know, Alcide," I said, hoping I wasn't being tacky, "there's something that smells almost rotten, right around here."
"I'd noticed it, too. That's why I'm over here looking through the cabinets. Maybe there's a dead mouse?"
As I spoke, I was turning the doorknob.
I discovered the source of the smell.
"Oh, no," I said. "Oh, nononono."
"Don't tell me a rat got in there and died," Alcide said.
"Not a rat," I said. "A werewolf."
The closet had a shelf above a hanging bar, and it was a small closet, intended only for visitors' coats. Now it was filled by the swarthy man from Club Dead, the man who'd grabbed me by the shoulder. He was really dead. He'd been dead for several hours.
I didn't seem to be able to look away.
Alcide's presence at my back was an unexpected comfort. He stared over my head, his hands gripping my shoulders.
"No blood," I said in a jittery voice.
"His neck." Alcide was at least as shaken as I was.
His head really was resting on his shoulder, while still attached to his body. Ick, ick, ick. I gulped hard. "We should call the police," I said, not sounding very positive about the process. I noted the way the body had been stuffed into the closet. The dead man was almost standing up. I figured he'd been shoved in, and then whoever had done the shoving had forced the door closed. He'd sort of hardened in position.
"But if we call the police …" Alcide's voice trailed off. He took a deep breath. "They'll never believe we didn't do it. They'll interview his friends, and his friends will tell them he was at Club Dead last night, and they'll check it out. They'll find out he got into trouble for bothering you. No one will believe we didn't have a hand in killing him."
"On the other hand," I said slowly, thinking out loud, "do you think they'd mention a word about Club Dead?"
Alcide pondered that. He ran his thumb over his mouth while he thought. "You may be right. And if they couldn't bring up Club Dead, how could they describe the, uh, confrontation? You know what they'd do? They'd want to take care of the problem themselves."
That was an excellent point. I was sold: no police. "Then we need to dispose of him," I said, getting down to brass tacks. "How are we gonna do that?"
Alcide was a practical man. He was used to solving problems, starting with the biggest.
"We need to take him out to the country somewhere. To do that, we have to get him down to the garage," he said after a few moments' thought. "To do that, we have to wrap him up."
"The shower curtain," I suggested, nodding my head in the direction of the bathroom I'd used. "Um, can we close the closet and go somewhere else while we work this out?"
"Sure," Alcide said, suddenly as anxious as I was to stop looking at the gruesome sight before us.
So we stood in the middle of the living room and had a planning session. The first thing I did was turn off the heat in the apartment altogether, and open all the windows. The body had not made
its presence known earlier only because Alcide liked the temperature kept cool, and because the closet door fit well. Now we had to disperse the faint but pervasive smell.
"It's five flights down, and I don't think I can carry him that far," Alcide said. "He needs to go at least some of the distance in the elevator. That's the most dangerous part."
We kept discussing and refining, until we felt we had a workable procedure. Alcide asked me twice if I was okay, and I reassured him both times; it finally dawned on me that he was thinking I might break into hysterics, or faint.
"I've never been able to afford to be too finicky," I said. "That's not my nature." If Alcide expected or wanted me to ask for smelling salts, or to beg him to save little me from the big bad wolf, he had the wrong woman.
I might be determined to keep my head, but that's not to say I felt exactly calm. I was so jittery when I went to get the shower curtain that I had to restrain myself from ripping it from the clear plastic rings. Slow and steady, I told myself fiercely. Breathe in, breathe out, get the shower curtain, spread it on the hall floor.
It was blue and green with yellow fish swimming serenely in even rows.
Alcide had gone downstairs to the parking garage to move his truck as close to the stair door as possible. He'd thoughtfully brought a pair of work gloves back up with him. While he pulled them on, he took a deep breath—maybe a mistake, considering the body's proximity. His face a frozen mask of determination, Alcide gripped the corpse's shoulders and gave a yank.
The results were dramatic beyond our imagining. In one stiff piece, the biker toppled out of the closet. Alcide had to leap to his right to avoid the falling body, which banged against the kitchen counter and then fell sideways onto the shower curtain.
"Wow," I said in a shaky voice, looking down at the result. "That turned out well."
The body was lying almost exactly as we wanted it. Alcide and I gave each other a sharp nod and knelt at each end. Acting in concert, we took one side of the plastic curtain and flipped it over the body, then the other. We both relaxed when the man's face was covered. Alcide had also brought up a roll of duct tape—real men always have duct tape in their trucks—and we used it to seal the wrapped body in the curtain. Then we folded the ends over, and taped them. Luckily, though a hefty guy, the Were hadn't been very tall.
We stood up and let ourselves have a little moment of recovery. Alcide spoke first. "It looks like a big green burrito," he observed.
I slapped a hand over my mouth to stifle a fit of the giggles.
Alcide's eyes were startled as he stared at me over the wrapped corpse. Suddenly, he laughed, too.
After we'd settled down, I asked, "You ready for phase two?"
He nodded, and I pulled on my coat and scooted past the body and Alcide. I went out to the elevator, closing the apartment door behind me very quickly, just in case someone passed by.
The minute I punched the button, a man appeared around the corner and came to stand by the elevator door. Perhaps he was a relative of old Mrs. Osburgh, or maybe one of the senators was making a flying trip back to Jackson. Whoever he was, he was well dressed and in his sixties, and he was polite enough to feel the obligation of making conversation.
"It's really cold today, isn't it?"
"Yes, but not as cold as yesterday." I stared at the closed doors, willing them to open so he would be gone.
"Did you just move in?"
I had never been so irritated with a courteous person before. "I'm visiting," I said, in the kind of flat voice that should indicate the conversation is closed.
"Oh," he said cheerfully. "Who?"
Luckily the elevator chose that moment to arrive and its doors snicked open just in time to save this too-genial man from getting his head snapped off. He gestured with a sweep of his hand, wanting me to precede him, but I took a step back, said, "Oh my gosh, I forgot my keys!" and walked briskly off without a backward glance. I went to the door of the apartment next to Alcide's, the one he'd told me was empty, and I knocked on the door. I heard the elevator doors close behind me, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
When I figured Mr. Chatty had had time to get to his car and drive out of the garage—unless he was talking the ears off the security guard—I recalled the elevator. It was Saturday, and there was no telling what people's schedules would be like. According to Alcide, many of the condos had been bought as an investment and were subleased to legislators, most of who would be gone for the pre-holidays. The year-round tenants, however, would be moving around in atypical ways, since it was not only the weekend, but also only two weekends before Christmas. When the creaky contraption came back to the fifth floor, it was empty.
I dashed back to 504, knocked twice on the door, and dashed back to the elevator to hold the doors open. Preceded by the legs of the corpse, Alcide emerged from the apartment. He moved as quickly as a man can while he's carrying a stiff body over his shoulder.
This was our most vulnerable moment. Alcide's bundle looked like nothing on this earth but a corpse wrapped in a shower curtain. The plastic kept the smell down, but it was still noticeable in the small enclosure. We made it down one floor safely, then the next. At the third floor, our nerve ran out. We stopped the elevator, and to our great relief it opened onto an empty corridor. I darted out and over to the stair door, holding it open for Alcide. Then I scampered down the stairs ahead of him, and looked through the pane of glass in the door to the garage.
"Whoa," I said, holding my hand up. A middle-aged woman and a teenage girl were unloading packages from the trunk of their Toyota, simultaneously having a vigorous disagreement. The girl had been invited to an all-night party. No, her mother said.
She had to go, all her friends would be there. No, her mother said.
But Mom, everyone else's mom was letting them go. No, her mother said.
"Please don't decide to take the stairs," I whispered.
But the argument raged on as they got in the elevator. I clearly heard the girl break her train of complaint long enough to say, "Ew, something smells in here!" before the doors closed.
"What's happening?" Alcide whispered.
"Nothing. Let's see if that lasts a minute longer."
It did, and I stepped out of the door and over to Alcide's truck, darting glances from side to side to make sure I was really alone. We weren't quite in sight of the security guard, who was in his little glass hut up the slope of the ramp.
I unlocked the back of Alcide's pickup; fortunately, his pickup bed had a cover. With one more comprehensive look around the garage, I hurried back to the stair door and rapped on it. After a second, I pulled it open.
Alcide shot out and over to his truck faster than I would have believed he could move, burdened as he was. We pushed as hard as we could, and the body slowly retreated into the truck bed. With tremendous relief, we slammed the tailgate shut and locked it.
"Phase two complete," Alcide said with an air that I would have called giddy if he hadn't been such a big man.
Driving through the streets of a city with a body in your vehicle is a terrifying exercise in paranoia.
"Obey every single traffic rule," I reminded Alcide, unhappy with how tense my voice sounded.
"Okay, okay," he growled, his voice equally tense.
"Do you think those people in that Jimmy are looking at us?"
"No."
It would obviously be a good thing for me to keep quiet, so I did. We got back on I-20, the same way we'd entered Jackson, and drove until there was no city, only farmland.
When we got to the Bolton exit, Alcide said, "This looks good."
"Sure," I said. I didn't think I could stand driving around with the body any longer. The land between Jackson and Vicksburg is pretty low and flat, mostly open fields broken up by a few bayous, and this area was typical. We exited the interstate and headed north toward the woods. After a few miles Alcide took a right onto a road that had needed repaving for years. The trees grew up on either side of the much-patched strip of gray. The bleak winter sky didn't stand a chance of giving much light with this kind of competition, and I shivered in the cab of the truck.
"Not too much longer," Alcide said. I nodded jerkily.
A tiny thread of a road led off to the left, and I pointed. Alcide braked, and we examined the prospect. We gave each other a sharp nod of approval. Alcide backed in, which surprised me; but I decided that it was a good idea. The farther we went into the woods, the more I liked our choice of venue. The road had been graveled not too long ago, so we wouldn't leave tire tracks, for one thing. And I thought the chances were good that this rudimentary road led to a hunting camp, which wouldn't be in much use now that deer season was over.
Sure enough, after we'd crunched a few yards down the track, I spotted a sign nailed to a tree. It proclaimed, "Kiley-Odum Hunt Club private property—KEEP OUT."
We proceeded down the track, Alcide backing slowly and carefully.
"Here," he said, when we'd gone far enough into the woods that it was almost certain we couldn't be seen from the road. He put the truck into Park. "Listen, Sookie, you don't have to get out."
"It'll be quicker if we work together."
He tried to give me a menacing glare, but I gave him a stone face right back, and finally, he sighed. "Okay, let's get this over with," he said.
The air was cold and wet, and if you stood still for a moment the chilling damp would creep into your bones. I could tell the temperature was taking a dive, and the bright sky of the morning was a fond memory. It was an appropriate day to dump a body. Alcide opened the back of the truck, we both pulled on gloves, and we grasped the bright blue-and-green bundle. The cheerful yellow fish looked almost obscene out here in the freezing woods.
"Give it everything you got," Alcide advised me, and on a count of three, we yanked with all our might. That got the bundle half out, and the end of it protruded over the tailgate in a nasty way. "Ready? Let's go again. One, two, three!" Again I yanked, and the body's own gravity shot it out of the truck and onto the road.
If we could have driven off then and there, I would have been much happier; but we had decided we had to take the shower curtain with us. Who was to say what fingerprints might be found somewhere on the duct tape or the curtain itself? There was sure to be other, microscopic evidence that I couldn't even imagine.
I don't watch the Discovery Channel for nothing.
Alcide had a utility knife, and I did let him have the honor of this particular task. I held open a garbage bag while he cut the plastic away and stuffed it into the opening. I tried not to look, but of course I did.
The body's appearance had not improved.
That job, too, was finished sooner than I expected. I half turned to get back in the truck, but Alcide stood, his face raised to the sky. He looked as if he was smelling the forest.
"Tonight's the full moon," he said. His whole body seemed to quiver. When he looked at me, his eyes looked alien. I couldn't say that they had changed in color or contour, but it was as if a different person was looking out of them.
I was very alone in the woods with a comrade who had suddenly taken on a whole new dimension. I fought conflicting impulses to scream, burst into tears, or run. I smiled brightly at him and waited. After a long, fraught pause, Alcide said, "Let's get back in the truck."
I was only too glad to scramble up into the seat.
"What do you think killed him?" I asked, when it seemed to me Alcide had had time to return to normal.
"I think someone gave his neck a big twist," Alcide said. "I can't figure out how he got into the apartment. I know I locked the door last night. I'm sure of it. And this morning it was locked again."
I tried to figure that out for a while, but I couldn't. Then I wondered what actually killed you if your neck was broken. But I decided that wasn't really a great thing to think about.
En route to the apartment, we made a stop at Wal-Mart. On a weekend this close to Christmas, it was swarming with shoppers. Once again, I thought, I haven't gotten anything for Bill.
And I felt a sharp pain in my heart as I realized that I might never buy Bill a Christmas present, not now, not ever.
We needed air fresheners, Resolve (to clean the carpet), and a new shower curtain. I packed my misery away and walked a little more briskly. Alcide let me pick out the shower curtain, which I actually enjoyed. He paid cash, so there wouldn't be any record of our visit.
I checked out my nails after we had climbed back in the truck. They were fine. Then I thought of how callous I must be, worrying about my fingernails. I'd just finished disposing of a dead man. For several minutes, I sat there feeling mighty unhappy about myself.
I relayed this to Alcide, who seemed more approachable now that we were back in civilization minus our silent passenger.
"Well, you didn't kill him," he pointed out. "Ah—did you?"
I met his green eyes, feeling only a little surprise. "No, I certainly did not. Did you?"
"No," he said, and from his expression I could tell he'd been waiting for me to ask him. It had never occurred to me to do so.
While I'd never suspected Alcide, of course someone had made the Were into a body. For the first time I tried to figure who could have stuffed the body in the closet. Up until this point, I'd just been busy trying to make the body go away.
"Who has keys?" I asked.
"Just Dad and me, and the cleaning woman who does most of the apartments in the building. She doesn't keep a key of her own. The building manager gives her one." We pulled around behind the row of stores, and Alcide tossed in the garbage bag containing the old shower curtain.
"That's a pretty short list."
"Yes," Alcide said slowly. "Yes, it is. But I know my dad's in Jackson. I talked to him on the phone this morning, right after I got up. The cleaning woman only comes in when we leave a message with the building manager. He keeps a copy of our key, hands it to her when she needs it, and she returns it to him."
"What about the security guard in the garage? Is he on duty all night?"
"Yes, because he's the only line of defense between people sneaking into the garage and taking the elevator. You've always come in that way, but there are actually front doors to the building that face onto the major street. Those front doors are locked all the time. There's no guard there, but you do have to have a key to get in."
"So if someone could sneak past the guard, they could ride up in the elevator to your floor, without being stopped."
"Oh, sure."
"And that someone would have to pick the lock to the door."
"Yes, and carry in a body, and stuff it in the closet. That sounds pretty unlikely," said Alcide.
"But that's apparently what happened. Oh, um … did you ever give Debbie a key? Maybe someone borrowed hers?" I tried hard to sound totally neutral. That probably didn't work too well.
Long pause.
"Yes, she had a key," Alcide said stiffly.
I bit down on my lips so I wouldn't ask the next question.
"No, I didn't get it back from her."
I hadn't even needed to ask.
Breaking a somewhat charged silence, Alcide suggested we eat a late lunch. Oddly enough, I found I was really hungry.
We ate at Hal and Mal's, a restaurant close to downtown. It was in an old warehouse, and the tables were just far enough apart to make our conversation possible without anyone calling the police.
"I don't think," I murmured, "that anyone could walk around your building with a body over his shoulder, no matter what the hour."
"We just did," he said, unanswerably. "I figure it had to have happened between, say, two a.m. and seven. We were asleep by two, right?"
"More like three, considering Eric's little visit."
Our eyes met. Eric. Eureka!
"But why would he have done that? Is he nuts about you?" Alcide asked bluntly.
"Not so much nuts," I muttered, embarrassed.
"Oh, wants to get in your pants."
I nodded, not meeting his eyes.
"Lot of that going around," Alcide said, under his breath.
"Huh," I said dismissively. "You're still hung up on that Debbie, and you know it."
We looked right at each other. Better to haul this out of the shadows now, and put it to rest.
"You can read my mind better than I thought," Alcide said. His broad face looked unhappy. "But she's not … Why do I care about her? I'm not sure I even like her. I like the hell out of you."
"Thanks," I said, smiling from my heart. "I like the hell out of you, too."
"We're obviously better for each other than either of the people we're dating are for us," he said.
Undeniably true. "Yes, and I would be happy with you."
"And I'd enjoy sharing my day with you."
"But it looks like we're not going to get there."
"No." He sighed heavily. "I guess not."
The young waitress beamed at us as we left, making sure Alcide noticed how well packed into her jeans she was.
"What I think I'll do," Alcide said, "is I'll do my best to yank Debbie out of me by the roots. And then I'll turn up on your doorstep, one day when you least expect it, and I'll hope by then you will have given up on your vampire."
"And then we'll be happy ever after?" I smiled.
He nodded.
"Well, that'll be something to look forward to," I told him.
Chapter Eight
I was so tired by the time we entered Alcide's apartment that I was sure all I was good for was a nap. It had been one of the longest days of my life, and it was only the middle of the afternoon.
But we had some housekeeping chores to do first. While Alcide hung the new shower curtain, I cleaned the carpet in the closet with Resolve, and opened one of the air fresheners and placed it on the shelf. We closed all the windows, turned on the heat, and breathed experimentally, our eyes locked on each other's.
The apartment smelled okay. We simultaneously breathed out a sigh of relief.
"We just did something really illegal," I said, still uneasy about my own immorality. "But all I really feel is happy we got away with it."
"Don't worry about not feeling guilty," Alcide said. "Something'll come along pretty soon that you'll feel guilty about. Save it up."
This was such good advice that I decided to try it. "I'm going to take a nap," I said, "so I'll be at least a little alert tonight." You didn't want to be slow on the uptake around vampires.
"Good idea," Alcide said. He cocked an eyebrow at me, and I laughed, shaking my head. I went in the smaller bedroom and shut the door, taking off my shoes and falling onto the bed with a feeling of quiet delight. I reached over the side of the bed after a moment, grabbed the fringe of the chenille bedspread, and wrapped it around me. In the quiet apartment, with the heating system blowing a steady stream of warm air into the bedroom, it took only a few minutes to fall asleep.
I woke all of a sudden, and I was completely awake. I knew there was someone else in the apartment. Maybe on some level I'd heard a knock on the front door; or maybe I'd registered the rumble of voices in the living room. I swung silently off the bed and padded to the door, my socks making no noise at all on the beige carpet. I had pushed my door to, but not latched it, and now I turned my head to position my ear at the crack.
A deep, gravelly voice said, "Jerry Falcon came to my apartment last night."
"I don't know him," Alcide replied. He sounded calm, but wary.
"He says you got him into trouble at Josephine's last night."
"I got him into trouble? If he's the guy who grabbed my date, he got himself into trouble!"
"Tell me what happened."
"He made a pass at my date while I was in the men's room. When she protested, he started manhandling her, and she drew attention to the situation."
"He hurt her?"
"Shook her up. And he drew some blood on her shoulder."
"A blood offense." The voice had become deadly serious.
"Yes."
So the fingernail gouges on my shoulder constituted a blood offense, whatever that was.
"And then?"
"I came out of the men's room, hauled him off of her. Then Mr. Hob stepped in."
"That explains the burns."
"Yes. Hob threw him out the back door. And that was the last I saw of him. You say his name is Jerry Falcon?"
"Yeah. He came right to my house then, after the rest of the boys left the bar."
"Edgington intervened. They were about to jump us."
"Edgington was there?" The deep voice sounded very unhappy.
"Oh, yes, with his boyfriend."
"How did Edgington get involved?"
"He told them to leave. Since he's the king, and they work for him from time to time, he expected obedience. But a pup gave him some trouble, so Edgington broke his knee, made the others carry the guy out. I'm sorry there was trouble in your city, Terence. But it was none of our doing."
"You've got guest privileges with our pack, Alcide. We respect you. And those of us who work for the vampires, well, what can I say? Not the best element. But Jerry is their leader, and he was shamed in front of his people last night. How much longer you going to be in our city?"
"Just one more night."
"And it's a full moon."
"Yeah, I know, I'll try to keep a low profile."
"What are you going to do tonight? Try to avoid the change, or come out to my hunting land with me?"
"I'll try to stay out of the moon, try to avoid stress."
"Then you'll keep out of Josephine's."
"Unfortunately, Russell pretty much demanded that we come back tonight. He felt apologetic that my date went through so much aggravation. He made a point of insisting she come back."
"Club Dead on a full-moon night, Alcide. This isn't wise."
"What am I gonna do? Russell calls the shots in Mississippi."
"I can understand. But watch out, and if you see Jerry Falcon there, you turn the other way. This is my city." The deep voice was heavy with authority.
"I understand, Packmaster."
"Good. Now that you and Debbie Pelt have broken up, I hope it's a while before we see you back here, Alcide. Give things a chance to settle down. Jerry's a vindictive son of a bitch. He'll do you an injury if he can, without starting a feud."
"He was the one who caused a blood offense."
"I know, but because of his long association with the vampires, Jerry has too good an opinion of himself. He doesn't always follow the pack traditions. He only came to me, as he should, because Edgington backed the other side."
Jerry wasn't going to be following any tradition anymore. Jerry was lying in the woods to the west.
While I'd napped, it had gotten dark outside. I heard a tap on the glass of the window. I jumped, of course, but then I padded across as quietly as I could. I opened the curtain and held a finger across my lips. It was Eric. I hoped no one on the street outside looked up. He smiled at me and motioned me to open the window. I shook my head vehemently and held my finger across my lips again. If I let Eric in now, Terence would hear, and my presence would be discovered. Terence, I knew instinctively, would not like to find he had been overheard. I tiptoed back to the door and listened. Goodbyes were being said. I glanced back at the window, to see that Eric was watching me with great interest. I held up one finger to indicate it would just be a minute.
I heard the apartment door close. Moments later, there was a knock at my door. As I let Alcide in, I hoped I didn't have those funny creases on my face.
"Alcide, I heard most of that," I said. "I'm sorry I eavesdropped, but it did seem like it concerned me. Um, Eric is here."
"So I see," Alcide said unenthusiastically. "I guess I'd better let him in. Enter, Eric," he said, as he slid open the window.
Eric entered as smoothly as a tall man can enter a small window. He was wearing a suit, complete with vest and tie. His hair was slicked back into a ponytail. He was also wearing glasses.
"Are you in disguise?" I asked. I could hardly believe it.
"Yes, I am." He looked down at himself proudly. "Don't I look different?"
"Yes," I admitted. "You look just like Eric, dressed up for once."
"Do you like the suit?"
"Sure," I said. I have limited knowledge of men's clothes, but I was willing to bet this sort of olive-brown three-piece ensemble had cost more than I made in two weeks. Or four. I might not have picked this out for a guy with blue eyes, but I had to admit he looked spectacular. If they put out a vampire issue of GQ, he'd definitely be in the running for a photo shoot. "Who did your hair?" I asked, noticing for the first time that it had been braided in an intricate pattern.
"Oooh, jealous?"
"No, I thought maybe they could teach me how to do that to mine."
Alcide had had enough of fashion commentary. He said belligerently, "What do you mean by leaving the dead man in my closet?"
I have seldom seen Eric at a loss for words, but he was definitely speechless—for all of thirty seconds.
"It wasn't Bubba in the closet, was it?" he asked.
It was our turn to stand with mouths open, Alcide because he didn't know who the hell Bubba was, and me because I couldn't imagine what could have happened to the dazed vampire.
I hastily filled Alcide in on Bubba.
"So that explains all the sightings," he said, shaking his head from side to side. "Damn—they were all for real!"
"The Memphis group wanted to keep him, but it was just impossible," Eric explained. "He kept wanting to go home, and then there'd be incidents. So we started passing him around."
"And now you've lost him," Alcide observed, not too chagrined by Eric's problem.
"It's possible that the people who were trying to get to Sookie in Bon Temps got Bubba instead," Eric said. He tugged on his vest and looked down with some satisfaction. "So, who was in the closet?"
"The biker who marked Sookie last night," Alcide said. "He made a pretty rough pass at her while I was in the men's room."
"Marked her?"
"Yes, blood offense," Alcide said significantly.
"You didn't say anything about this last night." Eric raised an eyebrow at me.
"I didn't want to talk about it," I said. I didn't like the way that came out, kind of forlorn. "Besides, it wasn't much blood."
"Let me see."
I rolled my eyes, but I knew darn good and well that Eric wouldn't give up. I pulled my sweatshirt off my shoulder, along with my bra strap. Luckily, the sweat-shut was so old, the neck had lost its elasticity, and it afforded enough room. The fingernail gouges on my shoulder were crusted half-moons, puffy and red, though I'd scrubbed the area carefully the night before. I know how many germs are under fingernails. "See," I said. "No big deal. I was more mad than scared or hurt."
Eric kept his eyes on the little nasty wounds until I shrugged my clothes back into order. Then he switched his eyes to Alcide. "And he was dead in the closet?"
"Yes," Alcide said. "Had been dead for hours."
"What killed him?"
"He hadn't been bitten," I said. "He looked as though his neck might have been broken. We didn't feel like looking that closely. You're saying you aren't the guilty party?"
"No, though it would have been a pleasure to have done it."
I shrugged, not willing to explore that dark thought. "So, who put him there?" I asked, to get the discussion going again.
"And why?" Alcide asked.
"Would it be too much to ask where he is now?" Eric managed to look as if he were indulging two rowdy children.
Alcide and I shot each other glances. "Um, well, he's …" My voice trailed away.
Eric inhaled, sampling the apartment's atmosphere. "The body's not here. You called the police?"
"Well, no," I muttered. "Actually, we, ah …"
"We dumped him out in the country," Alcide said. There just wasn't a nice way to say it.
We had surprised Eric a second time. "Well," he said blankly. "Aren't you two enterprising?"
"We worked it all out," I said, maybe sounding a tad defensive.
Eric smiled. It was not a happy sight. "Yes, I'll bet you did."
"The packmaster came to see me today," Alcide said. "Just now, in fact. And he didn't know that Jerry was missing. In fact, Jerry went complaining to Terence after he left the bar last night, telling Terence he had a grievance against me. So he was seen and heard after the incident at Josephine's."
"So you may have gotten away with it."
"I think we did."
"You should have burned him," Eric said. "It would have killed any trace of your smell on him."
"I don't think anyone could pick out our smell," I told him. "Really and truly. I don't think we ever touched him with our bare skin."
Eric looked at Alcide, and Alcide nodded. "I agree," he said. "And I'm one of the two-natured."
Eric shrugged. "I have no idea who would have killed him and put him in the apartment. Obviously, someone wanted his death blamed on you."
"Then why not call the police from a pay phone and tell them there's a dead body in 504?"
"A good question, Sookie, and one I can't answer right now." Eric seemed to lose interest all of a sudden. "I will be at the club tonight. If I need to talk to you, Alcide, tell Russell that I am your friend from out of town, and I've been invited to meet Sookie, your new girlfriend."
"Okay," said Alcide. "But I don't understand why you want to be there. It's asking for trouble. What if one of the vamps recognizes you?"
"I don't know any of them."
"Why are you taking this chance?" I asked. "Why go there at all?"
"There may be something I can pick up on that you won't hear of, or that Alcide won't know because he is not a vampire," Eric said reasonably. "Excuse us for a minute, Alcide. Sookie and I have some business to discuss."
Alcide looked at me to make sure I was okay with this, before he nodded grudgingly and went out to the living room.
Eric said abruptly, "Do you want me to heal the marks on your shoulder?"
I thought of the ugly, crusty crescents, and I thought about the thin shoulder straps on the dress I'd brought to wear. I almost said yes, but then I had a second thought. "How would I explain that, Eric? The whole bar saw him grab me."
"You're right." Eric shook his head, his eyes closed, as if he were angry with himself. "Of course. You're not Were, you're not undead. How would you have healed so quickly?"
Then he did something else unexpected. Eric took my right hand with both of his and gripped it. He looked directly into my face. "I have searched Jackson. I have looked in warehouses,
cemeteries, farmhouses, and anyplace that had a trace of vampire scent about it: every property Edgington owns, and some his followers own. I haven't found a trace of Bill. I am very afraid, Sookie, that it is becoming most likely that Bill is dead. Finally dead."
I felt like he'd smacked me in the middle of the forehead with a sledgehammer. My knees just folded, and if he hadn't moved quick as lightning, I'd have been on the floor. Eric sat on a chair that was in the corner of the room, and he gathered me up into a bundle in his lap. He said, "I've upset you too much. I was trying to be practical, and instead I was …"
"Brutal." I felt a tear trickle out of each eye.
Eric's tongue darted out, and I felt a tiny trace of moisture as he licked up my tears. Vampires just seem to like any body fluid, if they can't get blood, and that didn't particularly bother me. I felt glad someone was holding me in a comforting way, even if it was Eric. I sunk deeper into misery while Eric spent a few moments thinking.
"The only place I haven't checked is Russell Edgington's compound—his mansion, with its outbuildings. It would be amazing if Russell were rash enough to keep another vampire prisoner in his own home. But he's been king for a hundred years. It could be that he is that confident. Maybe I could sneak in over the wall, but I wouldn't come out again. The grounds are patrolled by Weres. It's very unlikely we'll get access to such a secure place, and he won't invite us in except in very unusual circumstances." Eric let all this sink in. "I think you must tell me what you know about Bill's project."
"Is that what all this holding and niceness is about?" I was furious. "You want to get some information out of me?" I leaped up, revitalized with wrath.
Eric jumped up himself and did his best to loom over me. "I think Bill is dead," he said. "And I'm trying to save my own life, and yours, you stupid woman." Eric sounded just as angry as I was.
"I will find Bill," I said, enunciating each world carefully. I wasn't sure how I was going to accomplish this, but I'd just do some very good spying tonight, and something would turn up. I am no Pollyanna, but I have always been optimistic.
"You can't make eyes at Edgington, Sookie. He's not interested in women. And if I flirted with him, he would be suspicious. A vampire mating with another—that's unusual. Edgington hasn't gotten where he is by being gullible. Maybe his second, Betty Joe, would be interested in me, but she is a vampire, too, and the same rule applies. I can't tell you how unusual Bill's fascination with Lorena is. In fact, we disapprove of vampires loving others of our kind."
I ignored his last two sentences. "How'd you find all this out?"
"I met up with a young female vampire last night, and her boyfriend also went to parties at Edgington's place."
"Oh, he's bi?"
Eric shrugged. "He's a werewolf, so I guess he's two-natured in more ways than one."
"I thought vamps didn't date werewolves, either."
"She is being perverse. The young ones like to experiment."
I rolled my eyes. "So, what you're saying is that I need to concentrate on getting an invitation into Edgington's compound, since there's nowhere else in Jackson that Bill can be hidden?"
"He could be somewhere else in the city," Eric said cautiously. "But I don't think so. The possibility is faint. Remember, Sookie, they've had him for days now." When Eric looked at me, what I saw in his face was pity.
That frightened me more than anything.