True Blood Book Five Chapters 12-16

Chapter 12
I LET MYSELF in with the key I’d gotten from Sam. I was on the right side of a duplex, the mirror of the one next door presently occupied by Halleigh Robinson, the young schoolteacher dating Andy Bellefleur. I figured I was likely to have police protection at least part of the time, and Halleigh would be gone during most of the day, which was nice considering my late hours.
The living room was small and contained a flowered couch, a low coffee table, and an armchair. The next room was the kitchen, which was tiny, of course. But it had a stove, a refrigerator, and a microwave. No dishwasher, but I’d never had one. Two plastic chairs were tucked under a tiny table.
After I’d glanced at the kitchen I went through into the small hall that separated the larger (but still small) bedroom on the right from the smaller (tiny) bedroom and the bathroom on the left. At the end of the hall there was a door to the little back porch.
This was a very basic accommodation, but it was quite clean. There was central heating and cooling, and the floors were level. I ran a hand around the windows. They fit well. Nice. I reminded myself I’d have to keep the venetian blinds drawn down, since I had neighbours.
I made up the double bed in the larger bedroom. I put my clothes away in the freshly painted chest of drawers. I started a list of other things I needed: a mop, a broom, a bucket, some cleaning products . . . those had been on the back porch. I’d have to get my vacuum cleaner out of the house. It had been in the closet in the living room, so it should be fine. I’d brought one of my phones to plug in over here, so I would have to arrange with the phone company for them to route calls to this address. I’d loaded my television into my car, but I had to arrange for my cable to be hooked up here. I’d have to call from Merlotte’s. Since the fire, all my time was being absorbed with the mechanics of living.
I sat on the hard couch, staring into space. I tried to think of something fun, something I could look forward to. Well, in two months, it’d be sunbathing time. That made me smile. I enjoyed lying in the sun in a little bikini, timing myself carefully so I didn’t burn. I loved the smell of coconut oil. I took pleasure in shaving my legs and removing most of my other body hair so I’d look smooth as a baby’s bottom. And I don’t want to hear any lectures about how bad tanning is for you. That’s my vice. Everybody gets one.
More immediately, it was time to go to the library and get another batch of books; I’d retrieved my last bagful while I was at the house, and I’d spread them out on my tiny porch here so they’d air out. So going to the library—that would be fun.
Before I went to work, I decided I’d cook myself something in my new kitchen. That necessitated a trip to the grocery store, which took longer than I’d planned because I kept seeing staples I was sure I’d need. Putting the groceries away in the duplex cabinets made me feel that I really lived there. I browned a couple of pork chops and put them in the oven, microwaved a potato, and heated some peas. When I had to work nights, I usually went to Merlotte’s at about five, so my home meal on those days was a combination lunch and dinner.
After I’d eaten and cleaned up, I thought I just had time to drive down to visit Calvin in the Grainger hospital.
The twins had not arrived to take up their post in the lobby again, if they were still keeping vigil. Dawson was still stationed outside Calvin’s room. He nodded to me, gestured to me to stop while I was several feet away, and stuck his head in Calvin’s room. To my relief, Dawson swung the door wide open for me to enter and even patted my shoulder as I went in.
Calvin was sitting up in the padded chair. He clicked off the television as I came in. His color was better, his beard and hair were clean and trimmed, and he looked altogether more like himself. He was wearing pajamas of blue broadcloth. He still had a tube or two in, I saw. He actually tried to push himself up out of the chair.
“No, don’t you dare get up!” I pulled over a straight chair and sat in front of him. “Tell me how you are.”
“Glad to see you,” he said. Even his voice was stronger. “Dawson said you wouldn’t take any help. Tell me who set that fire.”
“That’s the strange thing, Calvin. I don’t know why this man set the fire. His family came to see me . . .” I hesitated, because Calvin was recuperating from his own brush with death, and he shouldn’t have to worry about other stuff.
But he said, “Tell me what you’re thinking,” and he sounded so interested that I ended up relating everything to the wounded shifter: my doubts about the arsonist’s motives, my relief that the damage could be repaired, my concern about the trouble between Eric and Charles Twining. And I told Calvin that the police here had learned of more clusters of sniper activity.
“That would clear Jason,” I pointed out, and he nodded. I didn’t push it.
“At least no one else has been shot,” I said, trying to think of something positive to throw in with the dismal mix.
“That we know of,” Calvin said.
“What?”
“That we know of. Maybe someone else has been shot, and no one’s found ’em yet.”
I was astonished at the thought, and yet it made sense. “How’d you think of that?”
“I don’t have nothing else to do,” he said with a small smile. “I don’t read, like you do. I’m not much one for television, except for sports.” Sure enough, the station he’d had on when I’d entered had been ESPN.
“What do you do in your spare time?” I asked out of sheer curiosity.
Calvin was pleased I’d asked him a personal question. “I work pretty long hours at Norcross,” he said. “I like to hunt, though I’d rather hunt at the full moon.” In his panther body. Well, I could understand that. “I like to fish. I love mornings when I can just sit in my boat on the water and not worry about a thing.”
“Uh-huh,” I said encouragingly. “What else?”
“I like to cook. We have shrimp boils sometimes, or we cook up a whole mess of catfish and we eat outside—catfish and hush puppies and slaw and watermelon. In the summer, of course.”
It made my mouth water just to think about it.
“In the winter, I work on the inside of my house. I go out and cut wood for the people in our community who can’t cut their own. I’ve always got something to do, seems like.”
Now I knew twice as much about Calvin Norris as I had.
“Tell me how you’re recovering,” I asked.
“I’ve still got the damn IV in,” he said, gesturing with his arm. “Other than that, I’m a lot better. We heal pretty good, you know.”
“How are you explaining Dawson to the people from your work who come to visit?” There were flower arrangements and bowls of fruit and even a stuffed cat crowding the level surfaces in the room.
“Just tell ’em he’s my cousin here to make sure I won’t get too wore out with visitors.”
I was pretty sure no one would question Dawson directly.
“I have to get to work,” I said, catching a glimpse of the clock on the wall. I was oddly reluctant to leave. I’d enjoyed having a regular conversation with someone. Little moments like these were rare in my life.
“Are you still worried about your brother?” he asked.
“Yes.” But I’d made my mind up I wouldn’t beg again. Calvin had heard me out the first time. There wasn’t any need for a repeat.
“We’re keeping an eye on him.”
I wondered if the watcher had reported to Calvin that Crystal was spending the night with Jason. Or maybe Crystal herself was the watcher? If so, she was certainly taking her job seriously. She was watching Jason about as close as he could be watched.
“That’s good,” I said. “That’s the best way to find out he didn’t do it.” I was relieved to hear Calvin’s news, and the longer I pondered it, the more I realized I should have figured it out myself.
“Calvin, you take care.” I rose to leave, and he held up his cheek. Rather reluctantly, I touched my lips to it.
He was thinking that my lips were soft and that I smelled good. I couldn’t help but smile as I left. Knowing someone simply finds you attractive is always a boost to the spirits.
I drove back to Bon Temps and stopped by the library before I went to work. The Renard Parish library is an old ugly brown-brick building erected in the thirties. It looks every minute of its age. The librarians had made many justified complaints about the heating and cooling, and the electrical wiring left a lot to be desired. The library’s parking lot was in bad shape, and the old clinic next door, which had opened its doors in 1918, now had boarded-up windows—always a depressing sight. The long-closed clinic’s overgrown lot looked more like a jungle than a part of downtown.
I had allotted myself ten minutes to exchange my books. I was in and out in eight. The library parking lot was almost empty, since it was just before five o’clock. People were shopping at Wal-Mart or already home cooking supper.
The winter light was fading. I was not thinking about anything in particular, and that saved my life. In the nick of time, I identified intense excitement pulsing from another brain, and
reflexively I ducked, feeling a sharp shove in my shoulder as I did so, and then a hot lance of blinding pain, and then wetness and a big noise. This all happened so fast I could not definitely sequence it when I later tried to reconstruct the moment.
A scream came from behind me, and then another. Though I didn’t know how it had happened, I found myself on my knees beside my car, and blood was spattered over the front of my white T-shirt.
Oddly, my first thought was Thank God I didn’t have my new coat on.
The person who’d screamed was Portia Bellefleur. Portia was not her usual collected self as she skidded across the parking lot to crouch beside me. Her eyes went one way, then another, as she tried to spot danger coming from any direction.
“Hold still,” she said sharply, as though I’d proposed running a marathon. I was still on my knees, but keeling over appeared to be a pleasant option. Blood was trickling down my arm. “Someone shot you, Sookie. Oh my God, oh my God.”
“Take the books,” I said. “I don’t want to get blood on the books. I’ll have to pay for them.”
Portia ignored me. She was talking into her cell phone. People talked on their phones at the damnedest times! In the library, for goodness’s sake, or at the optometrist. Or in the bar. Jabber, jabber, jabber. As if everything was so important it couldn’t wait. So I put the books on the ground beside me all by myself.
Instead of kneeling, I found myself sitting, my back against my car. And then, as if someone had taken a slice out of my life, I discovered I was lying on the pavement of the library parking lot, staring at someone’s big old oil stain. People should take better care of their cars. . . .
Out.
“Wake up,” a voice was saying. I wasn’t in the parking lot, but in a bed. I thought my house was on fire again, and Claudine was trying to get me out. People were always trying to get me out of bed. Though this didn’t sound like Claudine; this sounded more like . . .
“Jason?” I tried to open my eyes. I managed to peer through my barely parted lids to identify my brother. I was in a dimly lit blue room, and I hurt so bad I wanted to cry.
“You got shot,” he said. “You got shot, and I was at Merlotte’s, waiting for you to get there.”
“You sound . . . happy,” I said through lips that felt oddly thick and stiff. Hospital.
“I couldn’t have done it! I was with people the whole time! I had Hoyt in the truck with me from work to Merlotte’s, because his truck’s in the shop. I am covered.”
“Oh, good. I’m glad I got shot, then. As long as you’re okay.” It was such an effort to say it, I was glad when Jason picked up on the sarcasm.
“Yeah, hey, I’m sorry about that. At least it wasn’t serious.”
“It isn’t?”
“I forgot to tell you. Your shoulder got creased, and it’s going to hurt for a while. Press this button if it hurts. You can give yourself pain medication. Cool, huh? Listen, Andy’s outside.”
I pondered that, finally deduced Andy Bellefleur was there in his official capacity. “Okay,” I said. “He can come in.” I stretched out a finger and carefully pushed the button.
I blinked then, and it must have been a long blink, because when I pried my eyes open again, Jason was gone and Andy was in his place, a little notebook and a pen in his hands. There was something I had to tell him, and after a moment’s reflection, I knew what it was.
“Tell Portia I said thank you,” I told him.
“I will,” he said seriously. “She’s pretty shook up. She’s never been that close to violence before. She thought you were gonna die.”
I could think of nothing to say to that. I waited for him to ask me what he wanted to know. His mouth moved, and I guess I answered him.
“. . . said you ducked at the last second?”
“I heard something, I guess,” I whispered. That was the truth, too. I just hadn’t heard something with my ears. . . . But Andy knew what I meant, and he was a believer. His eyes met mine and widened.
And out again. The ER doctor had certainly given me some excellent painkiller. I wondered which hospital I was in. The one in Clarice was a little closer to the library; the one in Grainger had a higher-rated ER. If I was in Grainger, I might as well have saved myself the time driving back to Bon Temps and going to the library. I could have been shot right in the hospital parking lot when I left from visiting Calvin, and that would have saved me the trip.
“Sookie,” said a quiet, familiar voice. It was cool and dark, like water running in a stream on a moonless night.
“Bill,” I said, feeling happy and safe. “Don’t go.”
“I’ll be right here.”
And he was there, reading, in a chair by my bed when I woke up at three in the morning. I could feel the minds in the rooms around me all shut down in sleep. But the brain in the head of the man next to me was a blank. At that moment, I realized that the person who’d shot me had not been a vampire, though all the shootings had taken place at dusk or full dark. I’d heard the shooter’s brain in the second before the shot, and that had saved my life.
Bill looked up the instant I moved. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
I pushed the button to raise the head of the bed. “Like hell warmed over,” I said frankly after evaluating my shoulder. “My pain stuff has lapsed, and my shoulder aches like it’s going to fall off. My mouth feels like an army has marched through it, and I need to go to the bathroom in the worst way.”
“I can help you take care of that,” he said, and before I could get embarrassed, he’d moved the IV pole around the bed and helped me up. I stood cautiously, gauging how steady my legs were. He said, “I won’t let you fall.”
“I know,” I said, and we started across the floor to the bathroom. When he got me settled on the toilet, he tactfully stepped out, but left the door cracked while he waited just outside. I managed everything awkwardly, but I became profoundly aware I was lucky I’d been shot in my left shoulder instead of my right. Of course, the shooter must have been aiming for my heart.
Bill got me back into the bed as deftly as if he’d been nursing people all his life. He’d already smoothed the bed and shaken the pillows, and I felt much more comfortable. But the shoulder continued to nag me, and I pressed the pain button. My mouth was dry, and I asked Bill if there was water in the plastic pitcher. Bill pressed the Nurse button. When her tinny voice came over the intercom, Bill said, “Some water for Miss Stackhouse,” and the voice squawked back that she’d be right down. She was, too. Bill’s presence might have had something to do with her speed. People might have accepted the reality of vampires, but that didn’t meant they liked undead Americans. Lots of middle-class Americans just couldn’t relax around vamps. Which was smart of them, I thought.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Grainger,” he said. “I get to sit with you in a different hospital this time.” Last time, I’d been in Renard Parish Hospital in Clarice.
“You can go down the hall and visit Calvin.”
“If I had any interest in doing so.”
He sat on the bed. Something about the deadness of the hour, the strangeness of the night, made me feel like being frank. Maybe it was just the drugs.
“I never was in a hospital till I knew you,” I said.
“Do you blame me?”
“Sometimes.” I watched his face glow. Other people didn’t always know a vamp when they saw one; that was hard for me to understand.
“When I met you, that first night I came into Merlotte’s, I didn’t know what to think of you,” he said. “You were so pretty, so full of vitality. And I could tell there was something different about you. You were interesting.”
“My curse,” I said.
“Or your blessing.” He put one of his cool hands on my cheek. “No fever,” he said to himself. “You’ll heal.” Then he sat up straighter. “You slept with Eric while he was staying with you.”
“Why are you asking, if you already know?” There was such a thing as too much honesty.
“I’m not asking. I knew when I saw you together. I smelled him all over you; I could tell how you felt about him. We’ve had each other’s blood. It’s hard to resist Eric,” Bill went on in a detached way. “He’s as vital as you are, and you share a zest for life. But I’m sure you know that . . .” He paused, seemed to be trying to think how to frame what he wanted to say.
“I know that you’d be happy if I never slept with anyone else in my life,” I said, putting his thoughts into words for him.
“And how do you feel about me?”
“The same. Oh, but wait, you already did sleep with someone else. Before we even broke up.” Bill looked away, the line of his jaw like granite. “Okay, that’s water under the bridge. No, I don’t want to think about you with Selah, or with anyone. But my head knows that’s unreasonable.”
“Is it unreasonable to hope that we’ll be together again?”
I considered the circumstances that had turned me against Bill. I thought of his infidelity with Lorena; but she had been his maker, and he had had to obey her. Everything I’d heard from other vamps had confirmed what he’d told me about that relationship. I thought of his near-rape of me in the trunk of a car; but he’d been starved and tortured, and hadn’t known what he was doing. The minute he’d come to his senses, he’d stopped.
I remembered how happy I’d been when I’d had what I thought was his love. I’d never felt more secure in my life. How false a feeling that had been: He’d become so absorbed in his work for the Queen of Louisiana that I’d begun to come in a distant second. Out of all the vampires who could have walked into Merlotte’s Bar, I’d gotten the workaholic.
“I don’t know if we can ever have the same relationship again,” I said. “It might be possible, when I’m a little less raw from the pain of it. But I’m glad you’re here tonight, and I wish you would lie down with me for a little while . . . if you want to.” I moved over on the narrow bed and turned on my right side, so the wounded shoulder was up. Bill lay down behind me and put his arm over me. No one could approach me without him knowing. I felt perfectly secure, absolutely safe, and cherished. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I mumbled as the medicine kicked in. As I was drifting off to sleep again, I remembered my New Year’s Eve resolution: I wanted not to get beaten up. Note to self: I should have included “shot.”
I was released the next morning. When I went to the business office, the clerk, whose name tag read MS. BEESON, said, “It’s already been taken care of.”
“By who?” I asked.
“The person wishes to remain anonymous,” the clerk said, her round brown face set in a way that implied I shouldn’t look gift horses in the mouth.
This made me uneasy, very uneasy. I actually had the money in the bank to pay the whole bill, instead of sending a check each month. And nothing comes without a price. There were some people to whom I just didn’t want to be beholden. When I absorbed the total at the bottom of the bill, I was shocked to find how very beholden I’d be.
Maybe I should have stayed in the office longer and argued with Ms. Beeson more forcefully, but I just didn’t feel up to it. I wanted to shower, or at least bathe—something more thorough than the high-spots scrub I’d given myself (very slowly and carefully) that morning. I wanted to eat my own food. I wanted some solitude and peace. So I got back in the wheelchair and let the aide wheel me out of the main entrance. I felt like the biggest
idiot when it occurred to me that I didn’t have a way home. My car was still in the library parking lot in Bon Temps—not that I was supposed to drive it for a couple of days.
Just as I was about to ask the aide to wheel me back inside so I could ride up to Calvin’s room (maybe Dawson could give me a lift), a sleek red Impala came to a halt in front of me. Claudine’s brother, Claude, leaned over to push open the passenger door. I sat gaping at him. He said irritably, “Well, are you going to get in?”
“Wow,” muttered the aide. “Wow.” I thought her blouse buttons were going to pop open, she was breathing so hard.
I’d met Claudine’s brother Claude only once before. I’d forgotten what an impact he made. Claude was absolutely breathtaking, so lovely that his proximity made me tense as a high wire. Relaxing around Claude was like trying to be nonchalant with Brad Pitt.
Claude had been a stripper on ladies’ night at Hooligans, a club in Monroe, but lately he’d not only moved into managing the club, he’d also branched into print and runway modeling. The opportunities for such work were few and far between in northern Louisiana, so Claude (according to Claudine) had decided to compete for Mr. Romance at a romance readers’ convention. He’d even had his ears surgically altered so they weren’t pointed anymore. The big payoff was the chance to appear on a romance cover. I didn’t know too much about the contest, but I knew what I saw when I looked at Claude. I felt pretty confident Claude would win by acclamation.
Claudine had mentioned that Claude had just broken up with his boyfriend, too, so he was unattached: all six feet of him, accessorized with rippling black hair and rippling muscles and a six-pack that could have been featured in Abs Weekly. Mentally add to that a pair of brown velour-soft eyes, a chiseled jaw, and a sensuous mouth with a pouty bottom lip, and you’ve got Claude. Not that I was noticing.
Without the help of the aide, who was still saying, “Wow, wow, wow,” very quietly, I got out of the wheelchair and eased myself into the car. “Thanks,” I said to Claude, trying not to sound as astonished as I felt.
“Claudine couldn’t get off work, so she called me and woke me up so I’d be here to chauffeur you,” Claude said, sounding totally put out.
“I’m grateful for the ride,” I said, after considering several possible responses.
I noticed that Claude didn’t have to ask me for directions to Bon Temps, though I’d never seen him in the area—and I think I’ve made the point that he was hard to miss.
“How is your shoulder?” he said abruptly, as if he’d remembered that was the polite question to ask.
“On the mend,” I said. “And I have a prescription for some painkillers to fill.”
“So I guess you need to do that, too?”
“Um, well, that would be nice, since I’m not supposed to drive for another day or two.”
When we reached Bon Temps, I directed Claude to the pharmacy, where he found a parking slot right in front. I managed to get out of the car and take in the prescription, since Claude didn’t offer. The pharmacist, of course, had heard what had happened already and wanted to know what this world was coming to. I couldn’t tell him.
I passed the time while he was filling my prescription by speculating on the possibility that Claude was bisexual—even a little bit? Every woman who came into the pharmacy had a glazed look on her face. Of course, they hadn’t had the privilege of having an actual conversation with Claude, so they hadn’t had the benefit of his sparkling personality.
“Took you long enough,” Claude said as I got back in the car.
“Yes, Mr. Social Skills,” I snapped. “I’ll try to hurry from now on. Why should getting shot slow me down? I apologize.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Claude’s cheeks reddening.
“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly. “I was abrupt. People tell me I’m rude.”
“No! Really?”
“Yes,” he admitted, and then realized I’d been a tad sarcastic. He gave me a look I would have called a glower from a less beautiful creature. “Listen, I have a favour to ask you.”
“You’re certainly off to a good start. You’ve softened me up now.”
“Would you stop that? I know I’m not . . . not . . .”
“Polite? Minimally courteous? Gallant? Going about this the right way?”
“Sookie!” he bellowed. “Be quiet!”
I wanted one of my pain pills. “Yes, Claude?” I said in a quiet, reasonable voice.
“The people running the pageant want a portfolio. I’ll go to the studio in Ruston for some glamour shots, but I think it might be a good idea to do some posed pictures, too. Like the
covers of the books Claudine is always reading. Claudine says I should have a blonde pose with me, since I’m dark. I thought of you.”
I guess if Claude had told me he wanted me to have his baby I could have been more surprised, but only just. Though Claude was the surliest man I’d ever encountered, Claudine had a habit of saving my life. For her sake, I wanted to oblige.
“Would I need, like, a costume?”
“Yes. But the photographer also does amateur dramatics and he rents out Halloween costumes, so he thought he might have some things that would do. What size do you wear?”
“An eight.” Sometimes more like a ten. But then again, once in a blue moon, a six, okay?
“So when can you do this?”
“My shoulder has to heal,” I said gently. “The bandage wouldn’t look good in the pictures.”
“Oh, right. So you’ll call me?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t forget?”
“No. I’m so looking forward to it.” Actually, at the moment what I wanted was my own space, free and clear of any other person, and a Diet Coke, and one of the pills I was clutching in my hand. Maybe I’d have a little nap before I took the shower that also featured on my list.
“I’ve met the cook at Merlotte’s before,” Claude said, the floodgates evidently now wide open.
“Uh-huh. Sweetie.”
“That’s what she’s calling herself? She used to work at the Foxy Femmes.”
“She was a stripper?”
“Yeah, until the accident.”
“Sweetie was in an accident?” I was getting more worn out by the second.
“Yeah, so she got scarred and didn’t want to strip anymore. It would’ve required too much makeup, she said. Besides, by then she was getting a little on the, ah, old side to be stripping.”
“Poor thing,” I said. I tried to picture Sweetie parading down a runway in high heels and feathers. Disturbing.
“I’d never let her hear you say that,” he advised.
We parked in front of the duplex. Someone had brought my car back from the library parking lot. The door to the other side of the duplex opened, and Halleigh Robinson stepped out, my keys in her hand. I was wearing the black pants I’d had on since I had been on my way to work, but my Merlotte’s T-shirt had been ruined so the hospital had given me a white sweatshirt that someone had left there once upon a time. It was huge on me, but that wasn’t why Halleigh was standing stock-still, catching flies with her mouth. Claude had actually gotten out to help me into the house, and the sight of him had paralyzed the young schoolteacher.
Claude eased his arm tenderly around my shoulders, bent his head to look adoringly into my face, and winked.
This was the first hint I’d had that Claude had a sense of humor. It pleased me to find he wasn’t universally disagreeable.
“Thanks for bringing me my keys,” I called, and Halleigh suddenly remembered she could walk.
“Um,” she said. “Um, sure.” She put the keys somewhere in the vicinity of my hand, and I snagged them.
“Halleigh, this is my friend Claude,” I said with what I hoped was a meaningful smile.
Claude moved his arm down to circle my waist and gave her a distracted smile of his own, hardly moving his eyes from mine. Oh, brother. “Hello, Halleigh,” he said in his richest baritone.
“You’re lucky to have someone to bring you home from the hospital,” Halleigh said. “That’s very nice of you, uh, Claude.”
“I would do anything for Sookie,” Claude said softly.
“Really?” Halleigh shook herself. “Well, how nice. Andy drove your car back over here, Sookie, and he asked if I’d give you your keys. It’s lucky you caught me. I just ran home to
eat lunch. I, um, I have to go back to . . .” She gave Claude a final comprehensive stare before getting into her own little Mazda to drive back to the elementary school.
I unlocked my door clumsily and stepped into my little living room. “This is where I’m staying while my house is being rebuilt,” I told Claude. I felt vaguely embarrassed at the small sterile room. “I just moved in the day I got shot. Yesterday,” I said with some wonder.
Claude, his faux admiration having been dropped when Halleigh pulled away, eyed me with some disparagement. “You have mighty bad luck,” he observed.
“In some ways,” I said. But I thought of all the help I’d already gotten, and of my friends. I remembered the simple pleasure of sleeping close to Bill the night before. “My luck could definitely be worse,” I added, more or less to myself.
Claude was massively uninterested in my philosophy.
After I thanked him again and asked him to give Claudine a hug from me, I repeated my promise to call him when my wound had healed enough for the posing session.
My shoulder was beginning to ache now. When I locked the door behind him, I swallowed a pill. I’d called the phone company from the library the afternoon before, and to my surprise and pleasure I got a dial tone when I picked up my phone. I called Jason’s cell to tell him I was out of the hospital, but he didn’t answer so I left a message on his voice mail. Then I called the bar to tell Sam I’d be back at work the next day. I’d missed two days’ worth of pay and tips, and I couldn’t afford any more.
I stretched out on the bed and took a long nap.
When I woke up, the sky was darkening in a way that meant rain. In the front yard of the house across the street, a small maple was whipping around in an alarming way. I thought of the tin roof my Gran had loved and of the clatter the rain made when it hit the hard surface. Rain here in town was sure to be quieter.
I was looking out my bedroom window at the identical duplex next door, wondering who my neighbour was, when I heard a sharp knock. Arlene was breathless from running through the first drops of rain. She had a bag from Wendy’s in her hand, and the smell of the food made my stomach wake up with a growl.
“I didn’t have time to cook you anything,” she said apologetically as I stood aside to let her in. “But I remembered you liked to get the double hamburger with bacon when you were feeling low, and I figured you’d be feeling pretty low.”
“You figured right,” I said, though I was discovering I was much better than I’d been that morning. I went to the kitchen to get a plate, and Arlene followed, her eyes going to every corner.
“Hey, this is nice!” she said. Though it looked barren to me, my temporary home must have looked wonderfully uncluttered to her.
“What was it like?” Arlene asked. I tried not to hear that she was thinking that I got into more trouble than anyone she knew. “You must have been so scared!”
“Yes.” I was serious, and my voice showed it. “I was very scared.”
“The whole town is talking about it,” Arlene said artlessly. That was just what I wanted to hear: that I was the subject of many conversations. “Hey, you remember that Dennis Pettibone?”
“The arson expert?” I said. “Sure.”
“We’ve got a date tomorrow night.”
“Way to go, Arlene. What are you all gonna do?”
“We’re taking the kids to the roller rink in Grainger. He’s got a girl, Katy. She’s thirteen.”
“Well, that sounds like fun.”
“He’s on stakeout tonight,” Arlene said importantly.
I blinked. “What’s he staking out?”
“They needed all the officers they could call in. They’re staking out different parking lots around town to see if they can catch this sniper in the act.”
I could see a flaw in their plan. “What if the sniper sees them first?”
“These are professionally trained men, Sookie. I think they know how to handle this.” Arlene looked, and sounded, quite huffy. All of a sudden, she was Ms. Law Enforcement.
“Chill,” I said. “I’m just concerned.” Besides, unless the lawmen were Weres, they weren’t in danger. Of course, the big flaw in that theory was that I had been shot. And I was no Were, no shifter. I still hadn’t figured out how to work that into my scenario.
“Where’s the mirror?” Arlene asked, and I looked around.
“I guess the only big one’s in the bathroom,” I said, and it felt strange to have to think about the location of an item in my own place. While Arlene fussed with her hair, I put my food on a plate, hoping I’d get to eat while it was still warm. I caught myself standing like a fool with the empty food bag in my hand, wondering where the garbage can was. Of course there wasn’t a garbage can until I went out to buy one. I’d never lived anywhere but my Gran’s house for the past nineteen years. I’d never had to start housekeeping from the ground up.
“Sam’s still not driving, so he can’t come to see you, but he’s thinking about you,” Arlene called. “You gonna be able to work tomorrow night?”
“I’m planning on it.”
“Good. I’m scheduled to be off, Charlsie’s granddaughter’s in the hospital with pneumonia, so she’s gone, and Holly doesn’t always show up when she’s scheduled. Danielle’s going to be out of town. That new girl, Jada—she’s better than Danielle, anyway.”
“You think?”
“Yeah.” Arlene snorted. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Danielle just doesn’t seem to care anymore. People can be wanting drinks and calling to her, and it doesn’t make a smidge of difference to her. She’ll just stand there talking to her boyfriend while people holler at her.”
It was true that Danielle had been less than scrupulous about her work habits since she’d started steady-dating a guy from Arcadia. “You think she’s gonna quit?” I asked, and that opened up another conversational pit we mined for about five minutes, though Arlene had said she was in a hurry. She’d ordered me to eat while the food was good, so I chewed and swallowed while she talked. We didn’t say anything startlingly new or original, but we had a good time. I could tell that Arlene (for once) was just enjoying sitting with me, being idle.
One of the many downsides to telepathy is the fact that you can tell the difference between when someone’s really listening to you, and when you’re talking to just a face instead of a mind.
Andy Bellefleur arrived as Arlene was getting into her car. I was glad I’d stuffed the bag from Wendy’s in a cabinet just to get it out of the way.
“You’re right next to Halleigh,” Andy said—an obvious opening gambit.
“Thanks for leaving my keys with her and getting my car over here,” I said. Andy had his moments.
“She says the guy that brought you home from the hospital was really, ah, interesting.” Andy was obviously fishing. I smiled at Andy. Whatever Halleigh had said had made him curious and maybe a little jealous.
“You could say that,” I agreed.
He waited to see if I’d expound. When I didn’t, he became all business.
“The reason I’m here, I wanted to find out if you remembered any more about yesterday.”
“Andy, I didn’t know anything then, much less now.”
“But you ducked.”
“Oh, Andy,” I said, exasperated, since he knew good and well about my condition, “you don’t have to ask why I ducked.”
He turned red, slowly and unbecomingly. Andy was a fireplug of a man and an intelligent police detective, but he had such ambiguity toward things he knew to be true, even if those things weren’t completely conventional items of common knowledge.
“We’re here all by ourselves,” I pointed out. “And the walls are thick enough that I don’t hear Halleigh moving around.”
“Is there more?” he asked suddenly, his eyes alight with curiosity. “Sookie, is there more?”
I knew exactly what he meant. He would never spell it out, but he wanted to know if there was even more in this world than humans, and vampires, and telepaths. “So much more,” I said, keeping my voice quiet and even. “Another world.”
Andy’s eyes met mine. His suspicions had been confirmed, and he was intrigued. He was right on the edge of asking me about the people who’d been shot—right on the verge of making the leap—but at the last instant, he drew back. “You didn’t see anything or hear anything that would help us? Was there anything different about the night Sam was shot?”
“No,” I said. “Nothing. Why?”
He didn’t answer, but I could read his mind like a book. The bullet from Sam’s leg didn’t match the other recovered bullets.
After he left, I tried to dissect that quick impression I’d gotten, the one that had prompted me to duck. If the parking lot hadn’t been empty, I might not have caught it at all, since the brain that had made it had been at some distance. And what I’d felt had been a tangle of determination, anger, and above all, disgust. The person who’d been shooting had been sure I was loathsome and inhuman. Stupidly enough, my first reaction was hurt—after all, no one likes to be despised. Then I considered the strange fact that Sam’s bullet didn’t match any of the previous Were shootings. I couldn’t understand that at all. I could think of many explanations, but all of them seemed far-fetched.
The rain began to pour down outside, hitting the north-facing windows with a hiss. I didn’t have a reason to call anyone, but I felt like making one up. It wasn’t a good night to be out of touch. As the pounding of the rain increased, I became more and more anxious. The sky was a leaden gray; soon it would be full dark.
I wondered why I was so twitchy. I was used to being by myself, and it seldom bothered me. Now I was physically closer to people than I’d ever been in my house on Hummingbird Road, but I felt more alone.
Though I wasn’t supposed to drive, I needed things for the duplex. I would have made the errand a necessity and gone to Wal-Mart despite the rain—or because of the rain—if the nurse hadn’t made such a big deal out of resting my shoulder. I went restlessly from room to room until the crunch of gravel told me that I was having yet more company. This was town living, for sure.
When I opened the door, Tara was standing there in a leopard-print raincoat with a hood. Of course I asked her in, and she tried her best to shake out the coat on the little front porch. I carried it into the kitchen to drip on the linoleum.
She hugged me very gently and said, “Tell me how you are.”
After I went over the story once again, she said, “I’ve been worried about you. I couldn’t get away from the shop until now, but I just had to come see you. I saw the suit in my closet. Did you come to my house?”
“Yes,” I said. “The day before yesterday. Didn’t Mickey tell you?”
“He was in the house when you were there? I warned you,” she said, almost panic-stricken. “He didn’t hurt you, did he? He didn’t have anything to do with you getting shot?”
“Not that I know of. But I did go into your house kind of late, and I know you told me not to. It was just dumb. He did, ah, try to scare me. I wouldn’t let him know you’ve been to see me, if I were you. How were you able to come here tonight?”
A shutter dropped over Tara’s face. Her big dark eyes hardened, and she pulled away from me. “He’s out somewhere,” she said.
“Tara, can you tell me how you came to be involved with him? What happened to Franklin?” I tried to ask these questions as gently as I could, because I knew I was treading on delicate ground.
Tara’s eyes filled with tears. She was struggling to answer me, but she was ashamed. “Sookie,” she began at last, almost whispering, “I thought Franklin really cared about me, you know? I mean, I thought he respected me. As a person.”
I nodded, intent on her face. I was scared of disrupting the flow of her story now that she’d finally begun to talk to me.
“But he . . . he just passed me along when he was through with me.”
“Oh, no, Tara! He . . . surely he explained to you why you two were breaking up. Or did you have a big fight?” I didn’t want to believe Tara had been passed from vamp to vamp like some fang-banger at a bloodsucker’s party.
“He said, ‘Tara, you’re a pretty girl and you’ve been good company, but I owe a debt to Mickey’s master, and Mickey wants you now.’ ”
I knew my mouth was hanging open, and I didn’t care. I could scarcely believe what Tara was telling me. I could hear the humiliation rolling off of her in waves of self-loathing. “You couldn’t do anything about it?” I asked. I was trying to keep the incredulity out of my voice.
“Believe me, I tried,” Tara said bitterly. She wasn’t blaming me for my question, which was a relief. “I told him I wouldn’t. I told him I wasn’t a whore, that I’d been dating him because I liked him.” Her shoulders collapsed. “But you know, Sookie, I wasn’t telling the whole truth, and he knew it. I took all the presents he gave me. They were expensive things. But they were freely given, and he didn’t tell me there were strings attached! I never asked for anything!”
“So he was saying that because you’d accepted his gifts, you were bound to do as he said?”
“He said—” Tara began weeping, and her sobs made everything come out in little jerks. “He said that I was acting like a mistress, and he’d paid for everything I had, and that I might as well be of more use to him. I said I wouldn’t, that I’d give him back everything, and he said he didn’t want it. He told me this vamp named Mickey had seen me out with him, that Franklin owed Mickey a big favor.”
“But this is America,” I protested. “How can they do that?”
“Vampires are awful,” Tara said dismally. “I don’t know how you can stand hanging out with them. I thought I was so cool, having a vamp boyfriend. Okay, he was more like a sugar daddy, I guess.” Tara sighed at the admission. “It was just so nice being, you know, treated so well. I’m not used to that. I really thought he liked me, too. I wasn’t just being greedy.”
“Did he take blood from you?” I asked.
“Don’t they always?” she asked, surprised. “During sex?”
“As far as I know,” I said. “Yeah. But you know, after he had your blood, he could tell how you felt about him.”
“He could?”
“After they’ve had your blood, they’re tuned in to your feelings.” I was quite sure that Tara hadn’t been as fond of Franklin Mott as she’d been saying, that she was much more interested in his lavish gifts and courteous treatment than in him. Of course, he’d known that. He might not have much cared if Tara liked him for himself or not, but that had surely made him more inclined to trade her off. “So how’d it happen?”
“Well, it wasn’t so abrupt as I’ve made it sound,” she said. She stared down at her hands. “First Franklin said he couldn’t go somewhere with me, so would it be okay if this other guy took me instead? I thought he was thinking of me, of how disappointed I’d be if I didn’t get to go—it was a concert—so I really didn’t brood over it. Mickey was on his best behavior, and it wasn’t a bad evening. He left me at the door, like a gentleman.”
I tried not to raise my eyebrows in disbelief. The snakelike Mickey, whose every pore breathed “bad to the bone,” had persuaded Tara he was a gentleman? “Okay, so then what?”
“Then Franklin had to go out of town, so Mickey came by to see if I had everything I needed, and he brought me a present, which I thought was from Franklin.”
Tara was lying to me, and halfway lying to herself. She had surely known the present, a bracelet, was from Mickey. She had persuaded herself it was kind of a vassal’s tribute to his lord’s lady, but she had known it wasn’t from Franklin.
“So I took it, and we went out, and then when we came back that night, he started making advances. And I broke that off.” She gave me a calm and regal face.
She may have repulsed his advances that night, but she hadn’t done it instantly and decisively.
Even Tara forgot I could read her mind.
“So that time he left,” she said. She took a deep breath. “The next time, he didn’t.”
He’d given plenty of advance warning of his intentions.
I looked at her. She flinched. “I know,” she wailed. “I know, I did wrong!”
“So, is he living at your place?”
“He’s got a day place somewhere close,” she said, limp with misery. “He shows up at dark, and we’re together the whole night. He takes me to meetings, he takes me out, and he . . .”
“Okay, okay.” I patted her hand. That didn’t seem like enough, and I hugged her closer. Tara was taller than I, so it wasn’t a very maternal hug, but I just wanted my friend to know I was on her side.
“He’s real rough,” Tara said very quietly. “He’s going to kill me some day.”
“Not if we kill him first.”
“Oh, we can’t.”
“You think he’s too strong?”
“I think I can’t kill someone, even him.”
“Oh.” I had thought Tara had more grit to her, after what her parents had put her through. “Then we have to think of a way to pry him off you.”
“What about your friend?”
“Which one?”
“Eric. Everyone says that Eric has a thing for you.”
“Everyone?”
“The vampires around here. Did Bill pass you to Eric?”
He’d told me once I should go to Eric if anything happened to him, but I hadn’t taken that as meaning Eric should assume the same role that Bill had in my life. As it turned out, I had had a fling with Eric, but under entirely different circumstances.
“No, he didn’t,” I said with absolute clarity. “Let me think.” I mulled it over, feeling the terrible pressure of Tara’s eyes. “Who’s Mickey’s boss?” I asked. “Or his sire?”
“I think it’s a woman,” Tara said. “At least, Mickey’s taken me to a place in Baton Rouge a couple of times, a casino, where he’s met with a female vamp. Her name is Salome.”
“Like in the Bible?”
“Yeah. Imagine naming your kid that.”
“So, is this Salome a sheriff?”
“What?”
“Is she a regional boss?”
“I don’t know. Mickey and Franklin never talked about that stuff.”
I tried not to look as exasperated as I felt. “What’s the name of the casino?”
“Seven Veils.”
Hmmm. “Okay, did he treat her with deference?” That was a good Word of the Day entry from my calendar, which I hadn’t seen since the fire.
“Well, he kind of bowed to her.”
“Just his head, or from the waist?”
“From the waist. Well, more than the head. I mean, he bent over.”
“Okay. What did he call her?”
“Mistress.”
“Okay.” I hesitated, and then asked again, “You’re sure we can’t kill him?”
“Maybe you can,” she said morosely. “I stood over him with an ice pick for fifteen minutes one night when he went to sleep after, you know, sex. But I was too scared. If he finds out I’ve been here to see you, he’ll get mad. He doesn’t like you at all. He thinks you’re a bad influence.”
“He got that right,” I said with a confidence I was far from feeling. “Let me see what I can think of.”
Tara left after another hug. She even managed a little smile, but I didn’t know how justified her flash of optimism might be.
There was only one thing I could do.
The next night I’d be working. It was full dark by now, and he’d be up.
I had to call Eric.
Chapter 13
“FANGTASIA,”SAID A bored feminine voice. “Where all your bloody dreams come true.”
“Pam, it’s Sookie.”
“Oh, hello,” she said more cheerfully. “I hear you’re in even more trouble. Got your house burned. You won’t live much longer if you keep that up.”
“No, maybe not,” I agreed. “Listen, is Eric there?”
“Yes, he’s in his office.”
“Can you transfer me to him?”
“I don’t know how,” she said disdainfully.
“Could you take the phone to him, please, ma’am?”
“Of course. Something always happens around here after you call. It’s quite the break in routine.” Pam was carrying the phone through the bar; I could tell by the change in the ambient noise. There was music in the background. KDED again: “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes” this time. “What’s happening in Bon Temps, Sookie?” Pam asked, saying in a clear aside to some bar patron, “Step aside, you son of a misbegotten whore!
“They like that kind of talk,” she said to me conversationally. “Now, what’s up?”
“I got shot.”
“Oh, too bad,” she said. “Eric, do you know what Sookie is telling me? Someone shot her.”
“Don’t get so emotional, Pam,” I said. “Someone might think you care.”
She laughed. “Here is the man,” she said.
Sounding just as matter-of-fact as Pam had, Eric said, “It can’t be critical or you wouldn’t be talking to me.”
This was true, though I would have enjoyed a more horrified reaction. But this was no time to think of little issues. I took a deep breath. I knew, sure as shooting, what was coming, but I had to help Tara. “Eric,” I said with a feeling of doom, “I need a favor.”
“Really?” he said. Then, after a notable pause, “Really?”
He began to laugh.
“Gotcha,” he said.
He arrived at the duplex an hour later and paused on the doorsill after I’d responded to his knock. “New building,” he reminded me.
“You are welcome to come in,” I said insincerely, and he stepped in, his white face practically blazing with—triumph? Excitement? Eric’s hair was wet with rain and straggled over his shoulders in rattails. He was wearing a golden brown silk T-shirt and brown pleated trousers with a magnificent belt that was just barbaric: lots of leather, and gold, and dangling tassels. You can take the man out of the Viking era, but you can’t take the Viking out of the man.
“Can I get you a drink?” I said. “I’m sorry, I don’t have any TrueBlood, and I’m not supposed to drive, so I couldn’t go get any.” I knew that was a big breach of hospitality, but there was nothing I could do about it. I hadn’t been about to ask anyone to bring me blood for Eric.
“Not important,” he said smoothly, looking around the small room.
“Please sit down.”
Eric said onto the couch, his right ankle on the knee of his left leg. His big hands were restless. “What’s the favor you need, Sookie?” He was openly gleeful.
I sighed. At least I was pretty sure he’d help, since he could practically taste the leverage he’d have over me.
I perched on the edge of the lumpy armchair. I explained about Tara, about Franklin, about Mickey. Eric got serious in a hurry. “She could leave during the day and she doesn’t,” he pointed out.
“Why should she leave her business and her home? He’s the one should leave,” I argued. (Though I have to confess, I’d wondered to myself why Tara didn’t just take a vacation. Surely Mickey wouldn’t stick around too long if his free ride was gone?) “Tara would be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life if she tried to shake him loose by running,” I said firmly.
“I’ve learned more about Franklin since I met him in Mississippi,” Eric said. I wondered if Eric had learned this from Bill’s database. “Franklin has an outdated mind-set.”
This was rich, coming from a Viking warrior whose happiest days had been spent pillaging and raping and laying waste.
“Vampires used to pass willing humans around,” Eric explained. “When our existence was secret, it was convenient to have a human lover, to maintain that person . . . that is, not to take too much blood . . . and then, when there was no one left who wanted her—or him,” Eric added hastily, so my feminist side would not be offended, “that person would be, ah, completely used.”
I was disgusted and showed it. “You mean drained,” I said.
“Sookie, you have to understand that for hundreds, thousands, of years we have considered ourselves better than humans, separate from humans.” He thought for a second. “Very much in the same relationship to humans as humans have to, say, cows. Edible like cows, but cute, too.”
I was knocked speechless. I had sensed this, of course, but to have it spelled out was just . . . nauseating. Food that walked and talked, that was us. McPeople.
“I’ll just go to Bill. He knows Tara, and she rents her business premises from him, so I bet he’ll feel obliged to help her,” I said furiously.
“Yes. He’d be obliged to try to kill Salome’s underling. Bill doesn’t rank any higher than Mickey, so he can’t order him to leave. Who do you think would survive the fight?”
The idea paralyzed me for a minute. I shuddered. What if Mickey won?
“No, I’m afraid I’m your best hope here, Sookie.” Eric gave me a brilliant smile. “I’ll talk to Salome and ask her to call her dog off. Franklin is not her child, but Mickey is. Since he’s been poaching in my area, she’ll be obliged to recall him.”
He raised a blond eyebrow. “And since you’re asking me to do this for you, of course, you owe me.”
“Gosh, I wonder what you want in return?” I asked, maybe a little on the dry and sarcastic side.
He grinned at me broadly, giving me a flash of fang. “Tell me what happened while I was staying with you. Tell me completely, leaving out nothing. After that, I’ll do what you want.” He put both feet on the floor and leaned forward, focused on me.
“All right.” Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place. I looked down at my hands clasped in my lap.
“Did we have sex?” he asked directly.
For about two minutes, this might actually be fun. “Eric,” I said, “we had sex in every position I could imagine, and some I couldn’t. We had sex in every room in my house, and we had sex outdoors. You told me it was the best you’d ever had.” (At the time he couldn’t recall all the sex he’d ever had. But he’d paid me a compliment.) “Too bad you can’t remember it,” I concluded with a modest smile.
Eric looked like I’d hit him in the forehead with a mallet. For all of thirty seconds his reaction was completely gratifying. Then I began to be uneasy.
“Is there anything else I should know?” he said in a voice so level and even that it was simply scary.
“Um, yes.”
“Then perhaps you’ll enlighten me.”
“You offered to give up your position as sheriff and come to live with me. And get a job.”
Okay, maybe this wasn’t going so well. Eric couldn’t get any whiter or stiller. “Ah,” he said. “Anything else?”
“Yes.” I ducked my head because I’d gotten to the absolutely un-fun part. “When we came home that last night, the night we’d had the battle with the witches in Shreveport, we came in the back door, right, like I always do. And Debbie Pelt—you remember her. Alcide’s—oh, whatever she was to him . . . Debbie was sitting at my kitchen table. And she had a gun and was gonna shoot me.” I risked a glance and found Eric’s brows had drawn in together in an ominous frown. “But you threw yourself in front of me.” I leaned forward very quickly and patted him on the knee. Then I retreated into my own space. “And you took the bullet, which was really, really sweet of you. But she was going to shoot again, and I pulled out my brother’s shotgun, and I killed her.” I hadn’t cried at all that night, but I felt a tear run down my cheek now. “I killed her,” I said, and gasped for breath.
Eric’s mouth opened as though he was going to ask a question, but I held up a hand in a wait gesture. I had to finish. “We gathered up the body and bagged it, and you took it and buried her somewhere while I cleaned the kitchen. And you found her car and you hid it. I don’t know where. It took me hours to get the blood out of the kitchen. It was on everything.” I grabbed desperately at my self-possession. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my wrist. My shoulder ached, and I shifted in the chair, trying to ease it.
“And now someone else has shot at you and I wasn’t there to take the bullet,” Eric said. “You must be living wrong. Do you think the Pelt family is trying to get revenge?”
“No,” I said. I was pleased that Eric was taking all this so calmly. I don’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t this. He seemed, if anything, subdued. “They hired private detectives, and as far as I know, the private detectives didn’t find any reason to suspect me any more than anyone else. The only reason I was a suspect anyway was because when Alcide and I found that body in Shreveport at Verena Rose’s, we told the police we were engaged. We had to explain why we went together to a bridal shop. Since he had such an on-and-off relationship with Debbie, him saying we were getting married naturally raised a red flag when the detectives checked it out. He had a good alibi for the time she died, as it turned out. But if they ever seriously suspect me, I’ll be in trouble. I can’t give you as an alibi, because of course you weren’t even here, as far as anyone knows. You can’t give me an alibi because you don’t remember that night; and of course, I’m just plain old guilty. I killed her. I had to do it.” I’m sure Cain had said that when he’d killed Abel.
“You’re talking too much,” Eric said.
I pressed my lips together. One minute he wanted me to tell him everything; the next minute he wanted me to stop talking.
For maybe five minutes, Eric just looked at me. I wasn’t always sure he was seeing me. He was lost in some deep thoughts.
“I told you I would leave everything for you?” he said at the end of all this rumination.
I snorted. Trust Eric to select that as the pertinent idea.
“And how did you respond?”
Okay, that astonished me. “You couldn’t just stay with me, not remembering. That wouldn’t be right.”
He narrowed his eyes. I got tired of being regarded through slits of blue. “So,” I said, curiously deflated. Maybe I’d expected a more emotional scene than this. Maybe I’d expected Eric to grab me and kiss me silly and tell me he still felt the same. Maybe I was too fond of daydreams. “I did your favor. Now you do mine.”
Not taking his eyes off me, Eric whipped a cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number from memory. “Rose-Anne,” he said. “Are you well? Yes, please, if she’s free. Tell her I have information that will interest her.” I couldn’t hear the response on the other end, but Eric nodded, as he would if the speaker had been present. “Of course I’ll hold. Briefly.” In a minute, he said, “And hello to you, too, most beautiful princess. Yes, it keeps me busy. How’s business at the casino? Right, right. There’s one born every minute. I called to tell
you something about your minion, that one named Mickey. He has some business connection with Franklin Mott?”
Then Eric’s eyebrows rose, and he smiled slightly. “Is that right? I don’t blame you. Mott is trying to stick to the old ways, and this is America.” He listened again. “Yes, I’m giving you this information for free. If you choose not to grant me a small favor in return, of course that’s of no consequence. You know in what esteem I hold you.” Eric smiled charmingly at the telephone. “I did think you should know about Mott’s passing on a human woman to Mickey. Mickey’s keeping her under his thumb by threatening her life and property. She’s quite unwilling.”
After another silence, during which his smile widened, Eric said, “The small favor is removing Mickey. Yes, that’s all. Just make sure he knows he should never again approach this woman, Tara Thornton. He should have nothing more to do with her, or her belongings and friends. The connection should be completely severed. Or I’ll have to see about severing some part of Mickey. He’s done this in my area, without the courtesy of coming to visit me. I really expected better manners of any child of yours. Have I covered all the bases?”
That Americanism sounded strange, coming from Eric Northman. I wondered if he’d ever played baseball.
“No, you don’t need to thank me, Salome. I’m glad to be of service. And if you could let me know when the thing is accomplished? Thanks. Well, back to the grindstone.” Eric flipped the phone shut and began tossing it in the air and catching it, over and over.
“You knew Mickey and Franklin were doing something wrong to start with,” I said, shocked but oddly unsurprised. “You know their boss would be glad to find out they were breaking the rules, since her vamp was violating your territory. So this won’t affect you at all.”
“I only realized that when you told me what you wanted,” Eric pointed out, the very essence of reason. He grinned at me. “How could I know that your heart’s desire would be for me to help someone else?”
“What did you think I wanted?”
“I thought maybe you wanted me to pay for rebuilding your house, or you would ask me to help find out who’s shooting the Weres. Someone who could have mistaken you for a Were,” Eric told me, as if I should have known that. “Who had you been with before you were shot?”
“I’d been to visit Calvin Norris,” I said, and Eric looked displeased.
“So you had his smell on you.”
“Well, I gave him a hug good-bye, so yeah.”
Eric eyed me skeptically. “Had Alcide Herveaux been there?
“He came by the house site,” I said.
“Did he hug you, too?”
“I don’t remember,” I said. “It’s no big deal.”
“It is for someone looking for shifters and Weres to shoot. And you are hugging too many people.”
“Maybe it was Claude’s smell,” I said thoughtfully. “Gosh, I didn’t think of that. No, wait, Claude hugged me after the shooting. So I guess the fairy smell didn’t matter.”
“A fairy,” Eric said, the pupils of his eyes actually dilating. “Come here, Sookie.”
Ah-oh. I might have overplayed my hand out of sheer irritation.
“No,” I said. “I told you what you wanted, you did what I asked, and now you can go back to Shreveport and let me get some sleep. Remember?” I pointed to my bandaged shoulder.
“Then I’ll come to you,” Eric said, and knelt in front of me. He pressed against my legs and leaned over so his head was against my neck. He inhaled, held it, exhaled. I had to choke back a nervous laugh at the similarity the process held to smoking dope. “You reek,” Eric said, and I stiffened. “You smell of shifter and Were and fairy. A cocktail of other races.”
I stayed completely immobile. His lips were about two millimeters from my ear. “Should I just bite you, and end it all?” he whispered. “I would never have to think about you again. Thinking about you is an annoying habit, and one I want to be rid of. Or should I start arousing you, and discover if sex with you was really the best I’ve ever had?”
I didn’t think I was going to get a vote on this. I cleared my throat. “Eric,” I said, a little hoarsely, “we need to talk about something.”
“No. No. No,” he said. With each “no” his lips brushed my skin.
I was looking past his shoulder at the window. “Eric,” I breathed, “someone’s watching us.”
“Where?” His posture didn’t change, but Eric had shifted from a mood that was definitely dangerous to me to one that was dangerous for someone else.
Since the eyes-at-the-window scenario was an eerie echo of the situation the night my house had burned, and that night the skulker had proved to be Bill, I hoped the watcher might be Bill again. Maybe he was jealous, or curious, or just checking up on me. If the trespasser was a human, I could have read his brain and found out who he was, or at least what he intended; but this was a vampire, as the blank hole where the brain pattern should be had informed me.
“It’s a vampire,” I told Eric in the tiniest whisper I could manage, and he put his arms around me and pulled me into him.
“You’re so much trouble,” Eric said, and yet he didn’t sound exasperated. He sounded excited. Eric loved the action moments.
By then, I was sure that the lurker wasn’t Bill, who would have made himself known. And Charles was presumably busy at Merlotte’s, mixing daiquiris. That left one vampire in the area unaccounted for. “Mickey,” I breathed, my fingers gripping Eric’s shirt.
“Salome moved more quickly than I thought,” Eric said in a regular voice. “He’s too angry to obey her, I suppose. He’s never been in here, correct?”
“Correct.” Thank God.
“Then he can’t come inside.”
“But he can break the window,” I said as glass shattered to our left. Mickey had thrown a large rock as big as my fist, and to my dismay the rock hit Eric squarely in the head. He went down like a—well, like a rock. He lay without moving. Dark blood welled from a deep cut in his temple. I leaped to my feet, completely stunned at seeing the powerful Eric apparently out cold.
“Invite me in,” said Mickey, just outside the window. His face, white and angry, shone in the pelting rain. His black hair was plastered to his head.
“Of course not,” I said, kneeling beside Eric, who blinked, to my relief. Not that he could be dead, of course, but still, when you see someone take a blow like that, vampire or not, it’s just plain terrifying. Eric had fallen in front of the armchair, which had its back to the window, so Mickey couldn’t see him.
But now I could see what Mickey was holding by one hand: Tara. She was almost as pale as he was, and she’d been beaten to a pulp. Blood was running out of the corner of her mouth. The lean vampire had a merciless grip on her arm. “I’ll kill her if you don’t let me in,” he said, and to prove his point, he put both hands around her neck and began to squeeze. A clap of thunder and a bolt of lightning lit up Tara’s desperate face as she clawed weakly at his arms. He smiled, fangs completely exposed.
If I let him in, he’d kill all of us. If I left him out there, I would have to watch him kill Tara. I felt Eric’s hands take hold of my arm. “Do it,” I said, not moving my gaze from Mickey. Eric bit, and it hurt like hell. He wasn’t finessing this at all. He was desperate to heal in a hurry.
I’d just have to swallow the pain. I tried hard to keep my face still, but then I realized I had a great reason to look upset. “Let her go!” I yelled at Mickey, trying to buy a few seconds. I wondered if any of the neighbors were up, if they could hear the ruckus, and I prayed they wouldn’t come searching to find out what was going on. I was even afraid for the police, if they came. We didn’t have any vampire cops to handle vampire lawbreakers, like the cities did.
“I’ll let her go when you let me in,” Mickey yelled. He looked like a demon out there in the rain. “How’s your tame vamp doing?”
“He’s still out,” I lied. “You hurt him bad.” It didn’t take any effort at all to make my voice crack as if I were on the verge of tears. “I can see his skull,” I wailed, looking down at Eric to see that he was still feeding as greedily as a hungry baby. His head was mending as I watched. I’d seen vamps heal before, but it was still amazing. “He can’t even open his eyes,” I added in a heartbroken way, and just then Eric’s blue eyes blazed up at me. I didn’t know if he was in fighting trim yet, but I could not watch Tara being choked. “Not yet,” Eric said urgently, but I had already told Mickey to come in.
“Oops,” I said, and then Mickey slithered through the window in an oddly boneless movement. He knocked the broken glass out of the way carelessly, like it didn’t hurt him to get cut. He dragged Tara through after him, though at least he’d switched his grip from her neck to her arm. Then he dropped her on the floor, and the rain coming in the window pelted down on her, though she couldn’t be any wetter than she already was. I wasn’t even sure she was conscious. Her eyes were closed in her bloody face, and her bruises were turning dark. I stood, swaying with the blood loss, but keeping my wrist concealed by resting it on the back of the armchair. I’d felt Eric lick it, but it would take a few minutes to heal.
“What do you want?” I asked Mickey. As if I didn’t know.
“Your head, bitch,” he said, his narrow features twisted with hatred, his fangs completely out. They were white and glistening and sharp in the bright overhead light. “Get down on your knees to your betters!” Before I could react in any way—in fact before I could blink—the vampire backhanded me, and I stumbled across the small room, landing half on the couch before I slid to the floor. The air went out of me in a big whoosh, and I simply couldn’t move, couldn’t even gasp for air, for an agonizingly long minute. In the meantime, Mickey was on top of me, his intentions completely clear when he reached down to unzip his pants. “This is all you’re good for!” he said, contempt making him even uglier. He tried to push his way into my head, too, forcing the fear of him into my brain to cow me.
And my lungs inflated. The relief of breathing was exquisite, even under the circumstances. With air came rage, as if I’d inhaled it along with oxygen. This was the trump card male bullies played, always. I was sick of it—sick of being scared of the bogeyman’s dick.
“No!” I screamed up at him. “No!” And finally I could think again; finally the fear let loose of me. “Your invitation is rescinded!” I yelled, and it was his turn to panic. He reared up off of me, looking ridiculous with his pants open, and he went backward out of the window, stepping on poor Tara as he went. He tried to bend, to grip her so he could yank her with him, but I lunged across the little room to grab her ankles, and her arms were too slick with rain to give him purchase, and the magic that had hold of him was too strong. In a second, he was outside looking in, screaming with rage. Then he looked east, as if he heard someone calling, and he vanished into the darkness.
Eric pushed himself to his feat, looking almost as startled as Mickey. “That was clearer thinking than most humans can manage,” he said mildly into the sudden silence. “How are you, Sookie?” He reached down a hand and pulled me to my feet. “I myself am feeling much better. I’ve had your blood without having to talk you into it, and I didn’t have to fight Mickey. You did all the work.”
“You got hit in the head with a rock,” I pointed out, content just to stand for a minute, though I knew I had to call an ambulance for Tara. I was feeling a little on the weak side myself.
“A small price to pay,” Eric told me. He brought out his cell phone, flipped it open, and pressed the REDIAL button. “Salome,” Eric said, “glad you answered the phone. He’s trying to run. . . .”
I heard the gleeful laughter coming from the other end of the phone. It was chilling. I couldn’t feel the least bit sorry for Mickey, but I was glad I wouldn’t have to witness his punishment.
“Salome’ll catch him?” I asked.
Eric nodded happily as he returned his phone to his pocket. “And she can do things to him more painful than anything I could imagine,” he said. “Though I can imagine plenty right now.”
“She’s that, ah, creative?”
“He’s hers. She’s his sire. She can do with him what she wishes. He can’t disobey her and go unpunished. He has to go to her when she calls him, and she’s calling.”
“Not on the phone, I take it,” I ventured.
His eyes glinted down at me. “No, she won’t need a phone. He’s trying to run away, but he’ll go to her eventually. The longer he holds out, the more severe his torture will be. Of course,” he added, in case I missed the point, “that’s as it should be.”
“Pam is yours, right?” I asked, falling to my knees and putting my fingers to Tara’s cold neck. I didn’t want to look at her.
“Yes,” Eric said. “She’s free to leave when she wants, but she comes back when I let her know I need her help.”
I didn’t know how I felt about that, but it didn’t really make a hell of a lot of difference. Tara gasped and moaned. “Wake up, girl,” I said. “Tara! I’m gonna call an ambulance for you.
“No,” she said sharply. “No.” There was a lot of that word going around tonight.
“But you’re bad hurt.”
“I can’t go to the hospital. Everyone will know.”
“Everyone will know someone beat the shit out of you when you can’t go to work for a couple of weeks, you idiot.”
“You can have some of my blood,” Eric offered. He was looking down at Tara without any obvious emotion.
“No,” she said. “I’d rather die.”
“You might,” I said, looking her over. “Oh, but you’ve had blood from Franklin or Mickey.” I was assuming some tit-for-tat in their lovemaking.
“Of course not,” she said, shocked. The horror in her voice took me aback. I’d had vampire blood when I’d needed it. The first time, I’d have died without it.
“Then you have to go to the hospital.” I was really concerned that Tara might have internal injuries. “I’m scared for you to move,” I protested, when she tried to push herself to a seated position. Mr. Super Strength didn’t help, which irritated me, since he could have shifted her easily.
But at last Tara managed to sit with her back against the wall, the empty window allowing the chilly wind to gust in and blow the curtains to and fro. The rain had abated until only a drop or two was coming in. The linoleum in front of the window was wet with water and blood, and the glass lay in glittering sharp fragments, some stuck to Tara’s damp clothes and skin.
“Tara, listen to me,” Eric said. She looked up at him. Since he was close to the fluorescent light, she had to squint. I thought she looked pitiful, but Eric didn’t seem to see the same person I was seeing. “Your greed and selfishness put my—my friend Sookie in danger. You say you’re her friend, too, but you don’t act like it.”
Hadn’t Tara loaned me a suit when I needed one? Hadn’t she loaned me her car when mine burned? Hadn’t she helped me on other occasions when I needed it? “Eric, this isn’t any of your business,” I said.
“You called me and asked me for my help. That makes it my business. I called Salome and told her what her child was doing, and she’s taken him away and to punish him for it. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Yes,” I said, and I’m ashamed to say I sounded sullen.
“Then I’m going to make my point with Tara.” He looked back down at her. “Do you understand me?”
Tara nodded painfully. The bruises on her face and throat seemed to be darkening more every minute.
“I’m getting some ice for your throat,” I told her, and ran into the kitchen to dump ice from the plastic trays into a Ziploc bag. I didn’t want to listen to Eric scold her; she seemed so pitiful.
When I came back less than a minute later, Eric had finished whatever he was going to say to Tara. She was touching her neck gingerly, and she took the bag from me and held it to her throat. While I was leaning over her, anxious and scared, Eric was back on his cell phone.
I twitched with worry. “You need a doctor,” I urged her.
“No,” she said.
I looked up at Eric, who was just finishing his phone call. He was the injury expert.
“She’ll heal without going to the hospital,” he said briefly. His indifference made a chill run down my spine. Just when I thought I was used to them, vampires would show me their true face, and I would have to remind myself all over again that they were a different race. Or maybe it was centuries of conditioning that made the difference; decades of disposing of people as they chose, taking what they wanted, enduring the dichotomy of being the most powerful beings on earth in the darkness, and yet completely helpless and vulnerable during the hours of light.
“But will she have some permanent damage? Something doctors could fix if she got to them quick?”
“I’m fairly certain that her throat is only badly bruised. She has some broken ribs from the beating, possibly some loose teeth. Mickey could have broken her jaw and her neck very easily, you know. He probably wanted her to be able to talk to you when he brought her here, so he held back a little. He counted on you panicking and letting him in. He didn’t think you could gather your thoughts so quickly. If I’d been him, my first move would have been to damage your mouth or neck so you couldn’t rescind my entrance.”
That possibility hadn’t occurred to me, and I blanched.
“When he backhanded you, I think that was what he was aiming for,” Eric continued dispassionately.
I’d heard enough. I thrust a broom and dustpan into his hands. He looked at them as if they were ancient artifacts and he could not fathom their use.
“Sweep up,” I said, using a wet washcloth to clean the blood and dirt off my friend. I didn’t know how much of this conversation Tara was absorbing, but her eyes were open and her mouth was shut, so maybe she was listening. Maybe she was just working through the pain.
Eric moved the broom experimentally and made an attempt to sweep the glass into the pan while it lay in the middle of the floor. Of course, the pan slid away. Eric scowled.
I’d finally found something Eric did poorly.
“Can you stand?” I asked Tara. She focused on my face and nodded very slightly. I squatted and took her hands. Slowly and painfully, she drew her knees up, and then she pushed as I pulled. Though the window had broken mostly in big pieces, a few bits of glass fell from her as she rose, and I flicked an eye at Eric to make sure he understood he should clean them up. He had a truculent set to his mouth.
I tried to put my arm around Tara to help her into my bedroom, but my wounded shoulder gave a throb of pain so unexpected that I flinched. Eric tossed down the dustpan. He picked up Tara in one smooth gesture and put her on the couch instead of my bed. I opened my mouth to protest and he looked at me. I shut my mouth. I went into the kitchen and fetched one of my pain pills, and I got Tara to swallow one, which took some coaxing. The medicine seemed to knock her out, or maybe she just didn’t want to acknowledge Eric anymore. Anyway, she kept her eyes closed and her body slack, and gradually her breathing grew even and deep.
Eric handed me the broom with a triumphant smile. Since he’d lifted Tara, clearly I was stuck with his task. I was awkward because of my bad shoulder, but I finished sweeping up the glass and disposing of it in a garbage bag. Eric turned toward the door. I hadn’t heard anyone arrive, but Eric opened the door to Bill before Bill even knocked. Eric’s earlier phone conversation must have been with Bill. In a way, that made sense; Bill lived in Eric’s fiefdom, or whatever they called it. Eric needed help, so Bill was obliged to supply it. My ex was burdened with a large piece of plywood, a hammer, and a box of nails.
“Come in,” I said when Bill halted in the doorway, and without speaking a word to each other, the two vampires nailed the wood across the window. To say I felt awkward would be an understatement, though thanks to the events of the evening I wasn’t as sensitive as I would’ve been at another time. I was mostly preoccupied with the pain in my shoulder, and Tara’s recovery, and the current whereabouts of Mickey. In the extra space I had left over after worrying about those items, I crammed in some anxiety about replacing Sam’s window, and whether the neighbours had heard enough of this fracas to call the police. On the whole, I thought they hadn’t; someone would be here by now.
After Bill and Eric finished their temporary repair, they both watched me mopping up the water and blood on the linoleum. The silence began to weigh heavily on all three of us: at least, on my third of the three of us. Bill’s tenderness in caring for me the night before had touched me. But Eric’s just acquired knowledge of our intimacy raised my self-
consciousness to a whole new level. I was in the same room with two guys who both knew I’d slept with the other.
I wanted to dig a hole and lie down in it and pull the opening inside with me, like a character in a cartoon. I couldn’t look either of them in the face.
If I rescinded both their invitations, they’d have to walk outside without a word; but in view of the fact that they’d both just helped me, such a procedure would be rude. I’d solved my problems with them before in exactly that way. Though I was tempted to repeat it to ease my personal embarrassment, I simply couldn’t. So what did we do next?
Should I pick a fight? Yelling at one another might clear the air. Or maybe a frank acknowledgment of the situation . . . no.
I had a sudden mental picture of us all three climbing in the double bed in the little bedroom. Instead of duking out our conflicts, or talking out our problems, we could . . . no. I could feel my face flame red, as I was torn between semihysterical amusement and a big dash of shame at even thinking the thought. Jason and his buddy Hoyt had often discussed (in my hearing) that every male’s fantasy was to be in bed with two women. And men who came into the bar echoed that idea, as I knew from checking Jason’s theory by reading a random sample of male minds. Surely I was allowed to entertain the same kind of fantasy? I gave a hysterical kind of giggle, which definitely startled both vampires.
“This is amusing?” Bill asked. He gestured from the plywood, to the recumbent Tara, to the bandage on my shoulder. He omitted pointing from Eric to himself. I laughed out loud.
Eric cocked a blond eyebrow. “We are amusing?”
I nodded wordlessly. I thought, Instead of a cook-off, we could have a cock-off. Instead of a fishing derby, we could have a. . .
At least in part because I was tired, and strained, and blood depleted, I went way into the silly zone. I laughed even harder when I looked at Eric’s and Bill’s faces. They wore almost identical expressions of exasperation.
Eric said, “Sookie, we haven’t finished our discussion.”
“Oh yes, we have,” I said, though I was still smiling. “I asked you for a favour: releasing Tara from her bondage to Mickey. You asked me for payment for that favour: telling you what happened when you lost your memory. You performed your side of the bargain, and so did I. Bought and paid for. The end.”
Bill looked from Eric to me. Now he knew that Eric knew what I knew. . . . I giggled again. Then the giddiness just poofed out of me. I was a deflated balloon, for sure. “Good night, both of you,” I said. “Thanks, Eric, for taking that rock in the head, and for sticking to your phone throughout the evening. Thanks, Bill, for turning out so late with window-repair supplies. I appreciate it, even if you got volunteered by Eric.” Under ordinary circumstances—if there were such things as ordinary circumstances with vampires around—I would’ve given them each a hug, but that just seemed too weird. “Shoo,” I said. “I have to go to bed. I’m all worn out.”
“Shouldn’t one of us stay here with you tonight?” Bill asked.
If I’d had to say yes to that, had to pick one of them to stay with me that night, it would have been Bill—if I could have counted on him to be as undemanding and gentle as he’d been the night before. When you’re down and hurting, the most wonderful thing in the world is to feel cherished. But that was too big a bunch of if’s for tonight.
“I think I’ll be fine,” I said. “Eric assures me that Salome will scoop up Mickey in no time, and I need sleep more than anything. I appreciate both of you coming out tonight.”
For a long moment I thought they might just say “No” and try to outwait each other. But Eric kissed me on the forehead and left, and Bill, not to be outdone, brushed my lips with his and took his leave. When the two vampires had departed, I was delighted to be by myself.
Of course, I wasn’t exactly alone. Tara was passed out on the couch. I made sure she was comfortable—took off her shoes, got the blanket off my bed to cover her—and then I fell into my own bed.
Chapter 14
I SLEPT FOR hours.
When I woke up, Tara was gone.
I felt a stab of panic, until I realized she’d folded the blanket, washed her face in the bathroom (wet washcloth), and put her shoes on. She had left me a little note, too, on an old envelope that already held the beginnings of my shopping list. It said, “I’ll call you later. T”—a terse note, and not exactly redolent of sisterly love.
I felt a little sad. I figured I wouldn’t be Tara’s favorite person for a while. She’d had to look more closely at herself than she wanted to look.
There are times to think, and times to lie fallow. Today was a fallow day. My shoulder felt much better, and I decided I would drive to the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Clarice and get all my shopping over with in one trip. Also, there I wouldn’t see as many people I knew, and I wouldn’t have to discuss getting shot.
It was very peaceful, being anonymous in the big store. I moved slowly and read labels, and I even selected a shower curtain for the duplex bathroom. I took my time completing my list. When I transferred the bags from the buggy into the car, I tried to do all the lifting with my right arm. I was practically reeking with virtue when I got back to the house on Berry Street.
The Bon Temps Florist van was in the driveway. Every woman has a little lift in her heart when the florist’s van pulls up, and I was no exception.
“I have a multiple delivery here,” said Bud Dearborn’s wife, Greta. Greta was flat-faced like the sheriff and squatty like the sheriff, but her nature was happy and unsuspicious. “You’re one lucky girl, Sookie.”
“Yes, ma’am, I am,” I agreed, with only a tincture of irony. After Greta had helped me carry in my bags, she began carrying in flowers.
Tara had sent me a little vase of daisies and carnations. I am very fond of daisies, and the yellow and white looked pretty in my little kitchen. The card just read “From Tara.”
Calvin had sent a very small gardenia bush wrapped up in tissue and a big bow. It was ready to pop out of the plastic tub and be planted as soon as the danger of a frost was over. I was impressed with the thoughtfulness of the gift, since the gardenia bush would
perfume my yard for years. Because he’d had to call in the order, the card bore the conventional sentiment “Thinking of you—Calvin.”
Pam had sent a mixed bouquet, and the card read, “Don’t get shot anymore. From the gang at Fangtasia.” That made me laugh a little. I automatically thought of writing thank-you notes, but of course I didn’t have my stationery with me. I’d stop by the pharmacy and get some. The downtown pharmacy had a corner that was a card shop, and also it accepted packages for UPS pickup. You had to be diverse in Bon Temps.
I put away my purchases, awkwardly hung the shower curtain, and got cleaned up for work.
Sweetie Des Arts was the first person I saw when I came through the employees’ entrance. She had an armful of kitchen towels, and she’d tied on her apron. “You’re a hard woman to kill,” she remarked. “How you feeling?”
“I’m okay,” I said. I felt like Sweetie had been waiting for me, and I appreciated the gesture.
“I hear you ducked just in time,” she said. “How come? Did you hear something?”
“Not exactly,” I said. Sam limped out of his office then, using his cane. He was scowling. I sure didn’t want to explain my little quirk to Sweetie on Sam’s time. I said, “I just had a feeling,” and shrugged, which was unexpectedly painful.
Sweetie shook her head at my close call and turned to go through the bar and back to the kitchen.
Sam jerked his head toward his office, and with a sinking heart I followed him in. He shut the door behind us. “What were you doing when you got shot?” he asked. His eyes were bright with anger.
I wasn’t going to get blamed for what had happened to me. I stood right up to Sam, got in his face. “I was just checking out library books,” I said through my teeth.
“So why would he think you’re a shifter?”
“I have no idea.”
“Who had you been around?”
“I’d been to see Calvin, and I’d . . .” My voice trailed off as I caught at the tail end of a thought.
“So, who can tell you smell like a shifter?” I asked slowly. “No one but another shifter, right? Or someone with shifter blood. Or a vampire. Some supernatural thing.”
“But we haven’t had any strange shifters around here lately.”
“Have you gone to where the shooter must have been, to smell?”
“No, the only time I was on the spot at a shooting, I was too busy screaming on the ground with blood running out of my leg.”
“But maybe now you could pick up something.”
Sam looked down at his leg doubtfully. “It’s rained, but I guess it’s worth a try,” he conceded. “I should have thought of it myself. Okay, tonight, after work.”
“It’s a date,” I said flippantly as Sam sank down in his squeaky chair. I put my purse in the drawer Sam kept empty and went out to check my tables.
Charles was hard at work, and he gave me a nod and a smile before he concentrated on the level of beer in the pitcher he was holding to the tap. One of our consistent drunks, Jane Bodehouse, was seated at the bar with Charles fixed in her sights. It didn’t seem to make the vampire uncomfortable. I saw that the rhythm of the bar was back to normal; the new bartender had been absorbed into the background.
After I’d worked about an hour, Jason came in. He had Crystal cuddled up in the curve of his arm. He was as happy as I’d ever seen him. He was excited by his new life and very pleased with Crystal’s company. I wondered how long that would last. But Crystal herself seemed of much the same mind.
She told me that Calvin would be getting out of the hospital the next day and going home to Hotshot. I made sure to mention the flowers he’d sent and told her I’d be fixing Calvin some dish to mark his homecoming.
Crystal was pretty sure she was pregnant. Even through the tangle of shifter brain, I could read that thought as clear as a bell. It wasn’t the first time I’d learned that some girl “dating” Jason was sure he was going to be a dad, and I hoped that this time was as false as the last time. It wasn’t that I had anything against Crystal . . . Well, that was a lie I was telling myself. I did have something against Crystal. Crystal was part of Hotshot, and she’d never leave it. I didn’t want any niece or nephew of mine to be brought up in that strange little community, within the pulsing magic influence of the crossroads that formed its center.
Crystal was keeping her late period a secret from Jason right now, determined to stay quiet until she was sure what it meant. I approved. She nursed one beer while Jason downed two, and then they were off to the movies in Clarice. Jason gave me a hug on the way out while I was distributing drinks to a cluster of law enforcement people. Alcee Beck, Bud Dearborn, Andy Bellefleur, Kevin Pryor, and Kenya Jones, plus Arlene’s new crush, arson investigator Dennis Pettibone, were all huddled around two tables pushed together in a corner. There were two strangers with them, but I picked up easily enough that the two men were cops, too, part of some task force.
Arlene might have liked to wait on them, but they were clearly in my territory, and they clearly were talking about something heap big. When I was taking drink orders, they all hushed up, and when I was walking away, they’d start their conversation back up. Of course, what they said with their mouths didn’t make any difference to me, since I knew what each and every one of them was thinking.
And they all knew this good and well; and they all forgot it. Alcee Beck, in particular, was scared to death of me, but even he was quite oblivious to my ability, though I’d demonstrated it for him before. The same could be said of Andy Bellefleur.
“What’s the law enforcement convention in the corner cooking up?” asked Charles. Jane had tottered off to the ladies’, and he was temporarily by himself at the bar.
“Let me see,” I said, closing my eyes so I could concentrate better. “Well, they’re thinking of moving the stakeout for the shooter to another parking lot tonight, and they’re convinced that the arson is connected to the shootings and that Jeff Marriot’s death is tied in with everything, somehow. They’re even wondering if the disappearance of Debbie Pelt is included in this clutch of crimes, since she was last seen getting gas on the interstate at the filling station closest to Bon Temps. And my brother, Jason, disappeared for a while a couple of weeks ago; maybe that’s part of the picture, too.” I shook my head and opened my eyes to find that Charles was disconcertingly close. His one good eye, his right, stared hard into my left.
“You have very unusual gifts, young woman,” he said after a moment. “My last employer collected the unusual.”
“Who’d you work for before you came into Eric’s territory?” I asked. He turned away to get the Jack Daniel’s.
“The King of Mississippi,” he said.
I felt as if someone had pulled the rug out from under my feet. “Why’d you leave Mississippi and come here?” I asked, ignoring the hoots from the table five feet away.
The King of Mississippi, Russell Edgington, knew me as Alcide’s girlfriend, but he didn’t know me as a telepath occasionally employed by vampires. It was quite possible Edgington might have a grudge against me. Bill had been held in the former stables behind Edgington’s mansion and tortured by Lorena, the creature who’d turned Bill into a vampire over a hundred and forty years before. Bill had escaped. Lorena had died. Russell Edgington didn’t necessarily know I was the agent of these events. But then again, he might.
“I got tired of Russell’s ways,” Sir Charles said. “I’m not of his sexual persuasion, and being surrounded by perversity became tiresome.”
Edgington enjoyed the company of men, it was true. He had a house full of them, as well as a steady human companion, Talbot.
It was possible Charles had been there while I was visiting, though I hadn’t noticed him. I’d been severely injured the night I was brought to the mansion. I hadn’t seen all its inhabitants, and I didn’t necessarily remember the ones I’d seen.
I became aware that the pirate and I were maintaining our eye contact. If they’ve survived for any length of time, vampires read human emotions very well, and I wondered what Charles Twining was gleaning from my face and demeanor. This was one of the few times I wished I could read a vampire’s mind. I wondered, very much, if Eric was aware of Charles’s background. Surely Eric wouldn’t have taken him on without a background check? Eric was a cautious vampire. He’d seen history I couldn’t imagine, and he’d lived through it because he was careful.
Finally I turned to answer the summons of the impatient roofers who’d been trying to get me to refill their beer pitchers for several minutes.
I avoided speaking to our new bartender for the rest of the evening. I wondered why he’d told me as much as he had. Either Charles wanted me to know he was watching me, or he really had no idea I’d been in Mississippi recently.
I had a lot to think about.
The working part of the night finally came to an end. We had to call Jane’s son to come get his soused relative, but that was nothing new. The pirate bartender had been working at a good clip, never making mistakes, being sure to give every patron a good word as he filled the orders. His tip jar looked healthy.
Bill arrived to pick up his boarder as we were closing up for the night. I wanted to have a quiet word with him, but Charles was by Bill’s side in a flash, so I didn’t have an opportunity. Bill gave me an odd look, but they were gone without my making an opportunity to talk to him. I wasn’t sure what I would say, anyway. I was reassured when I realized that of course Bill had seen the worst employees of Russell Edgington, because those employees had tortured him. If Charles Twining was unknown to Bill, he might be okay.
Sam was ready to go on our sniffing mission. It was cold and brilliant outside, the stars glittering in the night sky. Sam was bundled up, and I pulled on my pretty red coat. I had a matching set of gloves and a hat, and I would need them now. Though spring was coming closer every day, winter hadn’t finished with us yet.
No one was at the bar but us. The entire parking lot was empty, except for Jane’s car. The glare of the security lights made the shadows deeper. I heard a dog bark way off in the distance. Sam was moving carefully on his crutches, trying to negotiate the uneven parking lot.
Sam said, “I’m going to change.” He didn’t mean his clothes.
“What’ll happen to your leg if you do?”
“Let’s find out.”
Sam was full-blood shifter on both sides. He could change when it wasn’t the full moon, though the experiences were very different, he’d said. Sam could change into more than one animal, though dogs were his preference, and a collie was his choice among dogs.
Sam retired behind the hedge in front of his trailer to doff his clothes. Even in the night, I saw the air disturbance that signaled magic was working all around him. He fell to his knees and gasped, and then I couldn’t see him anymore through the dense bushes. After a minute, a bloodhound trotted out, a red one, his ears swinging from side to side. I wasn’t used to seeing Sam this way, and it took me a second to be sure it was him. When the dog looked up at me, I knew my boss was inside.
“Come on, Dean,” I said. I’d named Sam that in his animal guise before I’d realized the man and the dog were the same being. The bloodhound trotted ahead of me across the parking lot and into the woods where the shooter had waited for Sam to come out of the club. I watched the way the dog was moving. It was favouring its right rear leg, but not drastically.
In the cold night woods, the sky was partially blocked. I had a flashlight, and I turned it on, but somehow that just made the trees creepier. The bloodhound—Sam—had already reached the place the police had decided marked the shooter’s vantage point. The dog, jowls jouncing, bent its head to the ground and moved around, sorting through all the scent information he was receiving. I stayed out of the way, feeling useless. Then Dean looked up at me and said, “Rowf.” He began making his way back to the parking lot. I guessed he’d gathered all he could.
As we’d arranged, I loaded Dean in the Malibu to take him to another shooting site, the place behind some old buildings opposite the Sonic where the shooter had hidden on the night poor Heather Kinman had been killed. I turned into the service alley behind the old stores and parked behind Patsy’s Cleaners, which had moved to a new and more convenient location fifteen years ago. Between the cleaners and the dilapidated and long-empty Louisiana Feed and Seed, a narrow gap afforded a great view of the Sonic. The drive-in restaurant was closed for the night but still bright with light. Since the Sonic was on the town’s main drag, there were lights up and down the street, and I could actually see pretty well in the areas where the structures allowed light to go; unfortunately, that made the shadows impenetrable.
Again, the bloodhound worked the area, paying particular interest to the weedy strip of ground between the two old stores, a strip so narrow it was no more than a gap wide enough for one person. He seemed pretty excited at some particular scent he found. I was excited, too, hoping that he’d found something we could translate into evidence for the police.
Suddenly Dean let out a “Whoof!” and raised his head to look past me. He was certainly focusing on something, or someone. Almost unwillingly, I turned to see. Andy Bellefleur stood at the point where the service alley crossed the gap between the buildings. Only his face and upper torso were in the light.
“Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea! Andy, you scared the hell out of me!” If I hadn’t been watching the dog so intently, I would’ve sensed him coming. The stakeout, dammit. I should have remembered.
“What are you doing here, Sookie? Where’d you get the dog?”
I couldn’t think of a single answer that would sound plausible. “It seemed worth a try to see if a trained dog could pick up a single scent from the places where the shooter stood,” I said. Dean leaned against my legs, panting and slobbering.
“So when did you get on the parish payroll?” Andy asked conversationally. “I didn’t realize you’d been hired as an investigator.”
Okay, this wasn’t going well.
“Andy, if you’ll move out of the way, me and the dog’ll just get back into my car, and we’ll drive away, and you won’t have to be mad at me anymore.” He was plenty mad, and he was determined to have it out with me, whatever that entailed. Andy wanted to get the world realigned, with facts he knew forming the tracks it should run on. I didn’t fit in that world. I wouldn’t run on those tracks. I could read his mind, and I didn’t like what I was hearing.
I realized, too late, that Andy’d had one drink too many during the conference at the bar. He’d had enough to remove his usual constraints.
“You shouldn’t be in our town, Sookie,” he said.
“I have as much right to be here as you, Andy Bellefleur.”
“You’re a genetic fluke or something. Your grandmother was a real nice woman, and people tell me your dad and mom were good people. What happened to you and Jason?”
“I don’t think there’s much wrong with me and Jason, Andy,” I said calmly, but his words stung like fire ants. “I think we’re regular people, no better and no worse than you and Portia.”
Andy actually snorted.
Suddenly the bloodhound’s side, pressed against my legs, began to vibrate. Dean was growling almost inaudibly. But he wasn’t looking at Andy. The hound’s heavy head was turned in another direction, toward the dark shadows of the other end of the alley. Another live mind: a human. Not a regular human, though.
“Andy,” I said. My whisper pierced his self-absorption. “You armed?”
I didn’t know whether I felt that much better when he drew his pistol.
“Drop it, Bellefleur,” said a no-nonsense voice, one that sounded familiar.
“Bullshit,” Andy sneered. “Why should I?”
“Because I got a bigger gun,” said the voice, cool and sarcastic. Sweetie Des Arts stepped from the shadows, carrying a rifle. It was pointed at Andy, and I had no doubt she was ready to fire. I felt like my insides had turned to Jell-O.
“Why don’t you just leave, Andy Bellefleur?” Sweetie asked. She was wearing a mechanic’s coverall and a jacket, and her hands were gloved. She didn’t look anything like a short-order cook. “I’ve got no quarrel with you. You’re just a person.”
Andy was shaking his head, trying to clear it. I noticed he hadn’t dropped his gun yet. “You’re the cook at the bar, right? Why are you doing this?”
“You should know, Bellefleur. I heard your little conversation with the shifter here. Maybe this dog is a human, someone you know.” She didn’t wait for Andy to answer. “And Heather Kinman was just as bad. She turned into a fox. And the guy that works at Norcross, Calvin Norris? He’s a damn panther.”
“And you shot them all? You shot me, too?” I wanted to be sure Andy was registering this. “There’s just one thing wrong with your little vendetta, Sweetie. I’m not a shifter.”
“You smell like one,” Sweetie said, clearly sure she was right.
“Some of my friends are shifters, and that day I’d hugged a few of ’em. But me myself—not a shifter of any kind.”
“Guilty by association,” Sweetie said. “I’ll bet you got a dab of shifter from somewhere.”
“What about you?” I asked. I didn’t want to get shot again. The evidence suggested that Sweetie was not a sharpshooter: Sam, Calvin, and I had lived. I knew aiming at night had to be difficult, but still, you would’ve thought she could have done better. “Why are you on this vendetta?”
“I’m just a fraction of a shifter,” she said, snarling just as much as Dean. “I got bit when I had a car wreck. This half-man half-wolf . . . thing . . . ran out of the woods near where I lay bleeding, and the damn thing bit me . . . and then another car came around the curve and it ran away. But the first full moon after that, my hands changed! My parents threw up.”
“What about your boyfriend? You had one?” I kept speaking, trying to distract her. Andy was moving as far away from me as he could get, so she couldn’t shoot both of us quickly. She planned on shooting me first, I knew. I wanted the bloodhound to move away from me, but he stayed loyally pressed against my legs. She wasn’t sure the dog was a shifter. And, oddly, she hadn’t mentioned shooting Sam.
“I was a stripper then, living with a great guy,” she said, rage bubbling through her voice. “He saw my hands and the extra hair and he loathed me. He left when the moon was full. He’d take business trips. He’d go golfing with his buddies. He’d be stuck at a late meeting.”
“So how long have you been shooting shifters?”
“Three years,” she said proudly. “I’ve killed twenty-two and wounded forty-one.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
“I’m proud of it,” she said. “Cleaning the vermin off the face of the earth.”
“You always find work in bars?”
“Gives me a chance to see who’s one of the brethren,” she said, smiling. “I check out the churches and restaurants, too. The day care centers.”
“Oh, no.” I thought I was going to throw up.
My senses were hyperalert, as you can imagine, so I knew there was someone coming up the alley behind Sweetie. I could feel the anger roiling in a two-natured head. I didn’t look, trying to keep Sweetie’s attention for as long as I could. But there was a little noise, maybe the sound of a piece of paper trash rustling against the ground, and that was enough for Sweetie. She whirled around with the rifle up to her shoulder, and she fired. There was a shriek from the darkness at the south end of the alley, and then a high whining.
Andy took his moment and shot Sweetie Des Arts while her back was turned. I pressed myself against the uneven bricks of the old Feed and Seed, and as the rifle dropped from her hand, I saw the blood come out of her mouth, black in the starlight. Then she folded to the earth.
While Andy was standing over her, his gun dangling from his hand, I made my way past them to find out who had come to our aid. I switched on my flashlight to discover a werewolf, terribly wounded. Sweetie’s bullet had hit him in the middle of the chest, as best I could tell through the thick fur, and I yelled at Andy, “Use your cell phone! Call for help!” I was pressing down on the bubbling wound as hard as I could, hoping I was doing the right thing. The wound kept moving in a very disconcerting way, since the Were was in the process of changing back into a human. I glanced back to see that Andy was still lost in his own little vale of horror at what he’d done. “Bite him,” I told Dean, and Dean padded over to the policeman and nipped his hand.
Andy cried out, of course, and raised his gun as if he were going to shoot the bloodhound. “No!” I yelled, jumping up from the dying Were. “Use your phone, you idiot. Call an ambulance.”
Then the gun swung around to point at me.
For a long, tense moment I thought for sure the end of my life had come. We’d all like to kill what we don’t understand, what scares us, and I powerfully scared Andy Bellefleur.
But then the gun faltered and dropped back to Andy’s side. His broad face stared at me with dawning comprehension. He fumbled in his pocket, withdrew a cell phone. To my profound relief, he holstered the gun after he punched in a number.
I turned back to the Were, now wholly human and naked, while Andy said, “There’s been a multiple shooting in the alley behind the old Feed and Seed and Patsy’s Cleaners, across Magnolia Street from Sonic. Right. Two ambulances, two gunshot wounds. No, I’m fine.”
The wounded Were was Dawson. His eyes flickered open, and he tried to gasp. I couldn’t even imagine the pain he must be suffering. “Calvin,” he tried to say.
“Don’t worry now. Help’s on the way,” I told the big man. My flashlight was lying on the ground beside me, and by its oddly skewed light I could see his huge muscles and bare hairy chest. He looked cold, of course, and I wondered where his clothes were. I would have been glad to have his shirt to wad up over the wound, which was steadily leaking blood. My hands were covered in it.
“Told me to finish out my last day by watching over you,” Dawson said. He was shuddering all over. He tried to smile. “I said, ‘Piece of cake.’ ” And then he didn’t say anything else, but lost consciousness.
Andy’s heavy black shoes came to stand in my field of vision. I thought Dawson was going to die. I didn’t even know his first name. I had no idea how we were going to explain a naked guy to the police. Wait . . . was that up to me? Surely Andy was the one who’d have the hard explaining to do?
As if he’d been reading my mind—for a change—Andy said, “You know this guy, right?”
“Slightly.”
“Well, you’re going to have to say you know him better than that, to explain his lack of clothes.”
I gulped. “Okay,” I said, after a brief, grim pause.
“You two were back here looking for his dog. You,” Andy said to Dean. “I don’t know who you are, but you stay a dog, you hear me?” Andy stepped away nervously. “And I came back here because I’d followed the woman—she was acting suspiciously.”
I nodded, listening to the air rattle in Dawson’s throat. If I could only give him blood to heal him, like a vampire. If I only knew a medical procedure . . . But I could already hear the police cars and the ambulances coming closer. Nothing in Bon Temps was very far from anything else, and on this side of town, the south side, the Grainger hospital would be closest.
“I heard her confess,” I said. “I heard her say she shot the others.”
“Tell me something, Sookie,” Andy said in a rush. “Before they get here. There’s nothing weird about Halleigh, right?”
I stared up at him, amazed he could think of such a thing at this moment. “Nothing aside from the stupid way she spells her name.” Then I reminded myself who’d shot the bitch lying on the ground five feet away. “No, not a thing,” I said. “Halleigh is just plain old normal.”
“Thank God,” he said. “Thank God.”
And then Alcee Beck dashed down the alley and stopped in his tracks, trying to make sense of the scene before him. Right behind him was Kevin Pryor, and Kevin’s partner Kenya crept along hugging the wall with her gun out. The ambulance teams were hanging back until they were sure the scene was secure. I was up against the wall getting searched before I knew what was happening. Kenya kept saying, “Sorry, Sookie” and “I have to do this,” until I told her, “Just get it done. Where’s my dog?”
“He run off,” she said. “I guess the lights spooked him. He’s a bloodhound, huh? He’ll come home.” When she’d done her usual thorough job, Kenya said, “Sookie? How come this guy is naked?”
This was just the beginning. My story was extremely thin. I read disbelief written large on almost every face. It wasn’t the temperature for outdoor loving, and I was completely dressed. But Andy backed me up every step of the way, and there was no one to say it hadn’t happened the way I told it.
About two hours later, they let me get back in my car to return to the duplex. The first thing I did when I got inside was phone the hospital to find out how Dawson was. Somehow, Calvin got ahold of the phone. “He’s alive,” he said tersely.
“God bless you for sending him after me,” I said. My voice was as limp as a curtain on a still summer day. “I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him.”
“I hear the cop shot her.”
“Yes, he did.”
“I hear a lot of other stuff.”
“It was complicated.”
“I’ll see you this week.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Go get some sleep.”
“Thanks again, Calvin.”
My debt to the werepanther was piling up at a rate that scared me. I knew I’d have to work it off later. I was tired and aching. I was filthy inside from Sweetie’s sad story, and filthy outside from being on my knees in the alley, helping the bloody Were. I dropped my clothes on the floor of the bedroom, went into the bathroom, and stood under the shower, trying hard to keep my bandage dry with a shower cap, the way one of the nurses had shown me.
When the doorbell rang the next morning, I cursed town living. But as it turned out, this was no neighbor who wanted to borrow a cup of flour. Alcide Herveaux was standing outside, holding an envelope.
I glared at him through eyes that felt crusty with sleep. Without saying a word, I plodded back to my bedroom and crawled into the bed. This wasn’t enough to deter Alcide, who strode in after me.
“You’re now doubly a friend of the pack,” he said, as if he was sure that was the concern uppermost in my mind. I turned my back to him and snuggled under the covers. “Dawson says you saved his life.”
“I’m glad Dawson’s well enough to speak,” I muttered, closing my eyes tightly and wishing Alcide would go away. “Since he got shot on my account, your pack doesn’t owe me a damn thing.”
From the movement of the air, I could tell that Alcide was kneeling at the side of the bed. “That’s not for you to decide, but us,” he said chidingly. “You’re summoned to the contest for the packleader.”
“What? What do I have to do?”
“You just watch the proceedings and congratulate the winner, no matter who it is.”
Of course, to Alcide, this struggle for succession was the most important thing going. It was hard for him to get that I didn’t have the same priorities. I was getting swamped by a wave of supernatural obligations.
The werewolf pack of Shreveport said they owed me. I owed Calvin. Andy Bellefleur owed me and Dawson and Sam for solving his case. I owed Andy for saving my life. Though I’d cleared Andy’s mind about Halleigh’s complete normality, so maybe that canceled my debt to him for shooting Sweetie.
Sweetie had owed payback to her assailant.
Eric and I were even, I figured.
I owed Bill slightly.
Sam and I were more or less caught up.
Alcide personally owed me, as far as I was concerned. I had showed up for this pack shit and tried to follow the rules to help him out.
In the world I lived in, the world of human people, there were ties and debts and consequences and good deeds. That was what bound people to society; maybe that was what constituted society. And I tried to live in my little niche in it the best way I could.
Joining in the secret clans of the two-natured and the undead made my life in human society much more difficult and complicated.
And interesting.
And sometimes . . . fun.
Alcide had been talking at least some of the time I’d been thinking, and I’d missed a lot of it. He was picking up on that. He said, “I’m sorry if I’m boring you, Sookie,” in a stiff voice.
I rolled over to face him. His green eyes were full of hurt. “Not bored. I just have a lot to think about. Leave the invitation, okay? I’ll get back with you on that.” I wondered what you wore to a fighting-for-packmaster event. I wondered if the senior Mr. Herveaux and the somewhat pudgy motorcycle dealership owner would actually roll on the ground and grapple.
Alcide’s green eyes were full of puzzlement. “You’re acting so strange, Sookie. I felt so comfortable with you before. Now I feel like I don’t know you.”
Valid had been one of my Words of the Day last week. “That’s a valid observation,” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “I felt just as comfortable with you when I first met you. Then I started to find out stuff. Like about Debbie, and shifter politics, and the servitude of some shifters to the vamps.”
“No society is perfect,” Alcide said defensively. “As for Debbie, I don’t ever want to hear her name again.”
“So be it,” I said. God knew I couldn’t get any sicker of hearing her name.
Leaving the cream envelope on the bedside table, Alcide took my hand, bent over it, and laid a kiss on the back of it. It was a ceremonial gesture, and I wished I knew its significance. But the moment I would have asked, Alcide was gone.
“Lock the door behind you,” I called. “Just turn the little button on the doorknob.” I guess he did, because I went right back to sleep, and no one woke me up until it was almost time for me to go to work. Except there was a note on my front door that said, “Got Linda T. to stand in for you. Take the night off. Sam.” I went back inside and took off my waitress clothes and pulled on some jeans. I’d been ready to go to work, and now I felt oddly at a loss.
I was almost cheered to realize I had another obligation, and I went into the kitchen to start fulfilling it.
After an hour and a half of struggling to cook in an unfamiliar kitchen with about half the usual paraphernalia, I was on my way to Calvin’s house in Hotshot with a dish of chicken breasts baked with rice in a sour-cream sauce, and some biscuits. I didn’t call ahead. I planned to drop off the food and go. But when I reached the little community, I saw there were several cars parked on the road in front of Calvin’s trim little house. “Dang,” I said. I didn’t want to get involved any further with Hotshot than I already was. My brother’s new nature and Calvin’s courting had already dragged me in too far.
Heart sinking, I parked and ran my arm through the handle of the basket full of biscuits. I took the hot dish of chicken and rice in oven-mitted hands, gritted my teeth against the ache in my shoulder, and marched my butt up to Calvin’s front door. Stackhouses did the right thing.
Crystal answered the door. The surprise and pleasure on her face shamed me. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, doing her best to be offhand. “Please come in.” She stood back, and now I could see that the small living room was full of people, including my brother. Most of them were werepanthers, of course. The werewolves of Shreveport had sent a
representative; to my astonishment, it was Patrick Furnan, contender for the throne and Harley-Davidson salesman.
Crystal introduced me to the woman who appeared to be acting as hostess, Maryelizabeth Norris. Maryelizabeth moved as if she hadn’t any bones. I was willing to bet Maryelizabeth didn’t often leave Hotshot. The shifter introduced me around the room very carefully, making sure I understood the relationship Calvin bore to each individual. They all began to blur after a bit. But I could see that (with a few exceptions) the natives of Hotshot ran to two types: the small, dark-haired, quick ones like Crystal, and the fairer, stockier ones with beautiful green or golden-brown eyes, like Calvin. The surnames were mostly Norris or Hart.
Patrick Furnan was the last person Crystal reached. “Why, of course I know you,” he said heartily, beaming at me as if we’d danced at a wedding together. “This here’s Alcide’s girlfriend,” he said, making sure he was heard by everyone in the room. “Alcide’s the son of the other candidate for packmaster.”
There was long silence, which I would definitely characterize as “charged.”
“You’re mistaken,” I said in a normal conversational tone. “Alcide and I are friends.” I smiled at him in such a way as to let him know he better not be alone with me in an alley anytime soon.
“My mistake,” he said, smooth as silk.
Calvin was receiving a hero’s welcome home. There were balloons and banners and flowers and plants, and his house was meticulously clean. The kitchen had been full of food. Now Maryelizabeth stepped forward, turned her back to cut Patrick Furnan dead, and said, “Come this way, honey. Calvin’s ready to see you.” If she’d had a trumpet handy, she’d have blown a flourish on it. Maryelizabeth was not a subtle woman, though she had a deceptive air of mystery due to her wide-spaced golden eyes.
I guess I could have been more uncomfortable, if there’d been a bed of red-hot coals to walk on.
Maryelizabeth ushered me into Calvin’s bedroom. His furniture was very nice, with spare, clean lines. It looked Scandinavian, though I know little about furniture—or style, for that matter. He had a high bed, a queen-size, and he was propped up in it against sheets with an African motif of hunting leopards. (Someone had a sense of humor, anyway.) Against the deep colors in the sheets and the deep orange of the bedspread, Calvin looked pale. He was wearing brown pajamas, and he looked exactly like a man who’d just been
released from the hospital. But he was glad to see me. I found myself thinking there was something a bit sad about Calvin Norris, something that touched me despite myself.
“Come sit,” he said, indicating the bed. He moved over a little so I’d have room to perch. I guess he’d made some signal, because the man and the woman who’d been in the room—Dixie and Dixon—silently eased out through the door, shutting it behind them.
I perched, a little uneasily, on the bed beside him. He had one of those tables you most often see in hospitals, the kind that can be rolled across the bed. There was a glass of ice tea and a plate on it, steam rising from the food. I gestured that he should begin. He bowed his head and said a silent prayer while I sat quietly. I wondered to whom the prayer was addressed.
“Tell me about it,” Calvin said as he unfolded his napkin, and that made me a lot more comfortable. He ate while I told him what had happened in the alley. I noticed that the food on the tray was the chicken-and-rice casserole I’d brought, with a dab of mixed vegetable casserole and two of my biscuits. He wanted me to see that he was eating the food I’d prepared for him. I was touched, which sounded a warning bell at the back of my brain.
“So, without Dawson, there’s no telling what would’ve happened,” I concluded. “I thank you for sending him. How is he?”
Calvin said, “Hanging on. They airlifted him from Grainger to Baton Rouge. He would be dead, if he wasn’t a Were. He’s lasted this long; I think he’ll make it.”
I felt terrible.
“Don’t go blaming yourself for this,” Calvin said, his voice suddenly sounding deeper. “This is Dawson’s choice.”
“Huh?” would’ve sounded ignorant, so I said, “How so?”
“His choice of professions. His choice of actions. Maybe he should have leaped for her a few seconds earlier. Why’d he wait? I don’t know. How’d she know to aim low, given the poor light? I don’t know. Choices lead to consequences.” Calvin was struggling to express something. He was not naturally an articulate man, and he was trying to convey a thought both important and abstract. “There’s no blame,” he said finally.
“It would be nice to believe that, and I hope some day I do,” I said. “Maybe I’m on my way to believing it.” It was true that I was sick of self-blame and second-guessing.
“I suspect the Weres are going to invite you to their little packleader shindig,” Calvin said. He took my hand. His was warm and dry.
I nodded.
“I bet you’ll go,” he said.
“I think I have to,” I said uneasily, wondering what his goal was.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” Calvin said. “I have no authority over you.” He didn’t sound too happy about that. “But if you go, please watch your back. Not for my sake; that don’t mean nothing to you, yet. But for yourself.”
“I can promise that,” I said after a careful pause. Calvin was not a guy to whom you blurted the first idea in your head. He was a serious man.
Calvin gave me one of his rare smiles. “You’re a damn fine cook,” he said. I smiled back.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, and got up. His hand tightened on mine and pulled. You don’t fight a man who’s just gotten out of the hospital, so I bent toward him and laid my cheek to his lips.
“No,” he said, and when I turned a little to find out what was wrong, he kissed me on the lips.
Frankly, I expected to feel nothing. But his lips were as warm and dry as his hands, and he smelled like my cooking, familiar and homey. It was surprising, and surprisingly comfortable, to be so close to Calvin Norris. I backed off a little, and I am sure my face showed the mild shock I felt. The werepanther smiled and released my hand.
“The good thing about being in the hospital was you coming to see me,” he said. “Don’t be a stranger now that I’m home.”
“Of course not,” I said, ready to be out of the room so I could regain my composure.
The outer room had emptied of most of its crowd while I talked to Calvin. Crystal and Jason had vanished, and Maryelizabeth was gathering up plates with the help of an adolescent werepanther. “Terry,” Maryelizabeth said with a sideways inclination of her head. “My daughter. We live next door.”
I nodded to the girl, who gave me a darting look before turning back to her task. She was not a fan of mine. She was from the fairer bloodstock, like Maryelizabeth and Calvin, and she was a thinker. “Are you going to marry my dad?” she asked me.
“I’m not planning on marrying anyone,” I said cautiously. “Who’s your dad?”
Maryelizabeth gave Terry a sidelong look that promised Terry she’d be sorry later. “Terry is Calvin’s,” she said.
I was still puzzled for a second or two, but suddenly, the stance of both the younger and the older woman, their tasks, their air of comfort in this house, clicked into place.
I didn’t say a word. My face must have shown something, for Maryelizabeth looked alarmed, and then angry.
“Don’t presume to judge how we live our life,” she said. “We are not like you.”
“That’s true,” I said, swallowing my revulsion. I forced a smile to my lips. “Thank you for introducing me around. I appreciate it. Is there anything I can help you with?”
“We can take care of it,” said Terry, giving me another look that was a strange combination of respect and hostility.
“We should never have sent you to school,” Maryelizabeth said to the girl. Her wide-spaced golden eyes were both loving and regretful.
“Good-bye,” I said, and after I recovered my coat, I left the house, trying not to hurry. To my dismay, Patrick Furnan was waiting for me beside my car. He was holding a motorcycle helmet under his arm, and I spotted the Harley a little farther down the road.
“You interested in hearing what I’ve got to say?” the bearded Were asked.
“No, actually not,” I told him.
“He’s not going to keep on helping you out for nothing,” Furnan said, and my whole head snapped around so I could look at this man.
“What are you talking about?”
“A thank-you and a kiss ain’t going to hold him. He’s going to demand payment sooner or later. Won’t be able to help it.”
“I don’t recall asking you for advice,” I said. He stepped closer. “And you keep your distance.” I let my gaze roam to the houses surrounding us. The watchful gaze of the community was full upon us; I could feel its weight.
“Sooner or later,” Furnan repeated. He grinned at me suddenly. “I hope it’s sooner. You can’t two-time a Were, you know. Or a panther. You’ll get ripped to shreds between’em.”
“I’m not two-timing anyone,” I said, frustrated almost beyond bearing at his insistence that he knew my love life better than I did. “I’m not dating either of them.”
“Then you have no protection,” he said triumphantly.
I just couldn’t win.
“Go to hell,” I said, completely exasperated. I got in my car and drove away, letting my eyes glide over the Were as if he weren’t there. (This “abjure” concept could come in handy.) The last thing I saw in my rearview mirror was Patrick Furnan sliding his helmet on, still watching my retreating car.
If I hadn’t really cared who won the King of the Mountain contest between Jackson Herveaux and Patrick Furnan, I did now.
Chapter 15
I WAS WASHING the dishes I’d used as I cooked for Calvin. My little duplex was peaceful. If Halleigh was home, she was being quiet as a mouse. I didn’t mind washing dishes, to tell you the truth. It was a good time to let my mind drift around, and often I made good decisions while I was doing something completely mundane. Not too surprisingly, I was thinking of the night before. I was trying to remember exactly what Sweetie had said. Something about it had struck me wrong, but at the moment I hadn’t exactly been in a position to raise my hand to ask a question. It had something to do with Sam.
I finally recalled that though she’d told Andy Bellefleur that the dog in the alley was a shapeshifter, she hadn’t known it was Sam. There wasn’t anything strange about that, since Sam had been in a bloodhound shape, not his usual collie form.
After I’d realized what had been bothering me, I thought my mind would be at peace. That didn’t happen. There was something else—something else Sweetie had said. I thought and thought, but it just wouldn’t pop to the top of my brain.
To my surprise, I found myself calling Andy Bellefleur at home. His sister Portia was just as surprised as I was when she answered, and she said rather coldly that she’d find Andy.
“Yes, Sookie?” Andy sounded neutral.
“Let me ask a question, Andy.”
“I’ll listen.”
“When Sam was shot,” I said, and paused, trying to figure out what to say.
“Okay,” Andy said. “What about it?”
“Is it true that the bullet didn’t match the others?”
“We didn’t retrieve a bullet in every case.” Not a direct answer, but probably as good as I was going to get.
“Hmmm. Okay,” I said, then thanked him and hung up, uncertain if I’d learned what I wanted or not. I had to push it out of my mind and do something else. If there was a question there, it would eventually work its way to the top of the heap of the issues that burdened my thoughts.
What remained of the evening was quiet, which was getting to be a rare pleasure. With so little house to clean, and so little yard to care for, there would be lots of free hours to come. I read for an hour, worked a crossword puzzle, and went to bed at about eleven.
Amazingly, no one woke me all night. No one died, there weren’t any fires, and no one had to alert me to any emergency.
The next morning I rose feeling better than I had in a week. A glance at the clock told me I’d slept all the way through to ten o’clock. Well, that wasn’t so surprising. My shoulder felt nearly healed; my conscience had settled itself. I didn’t think I had many secrets to keep, and that was a tremendous relief. I was used to keeping other people’s secrets, but not my own.
The phone rang as I swallowed the last of my morning coffee. I put my paperback facedown on the kitchen table to mark my place and got up to answer it. “Hello,” I said cheerfully.
“It’s today,” Alcide said, voice vibrating with excitement. “You need to come.”
Thirty minutes my peace had lasted. Thirty minutes.
“I’m guessing you mean the contest for the position of packmaster.”
“Of course.”
“And I need to be there why?”
“You need to be there because the entire pack and all friends of the pack have to be there,” Alcide said, his voice brooking no dissent. “Christine especially thought you should be a witness.”
I might have argued if he hadn’t added the bit about Christine. The wife of the former packmaster had struck me as a very intelligent woman with a cool head.
“All right,” I said, trying not to sound grumpy. “Where and when?”
“At noon, be at the empty building at 2005 Clairemont. It used to be David & Van Such, the printing company.”
I got a few directions and hung up. While I showered, I reasoned that this was a sporting event, so I dressed in my old denim skirt with a long-sleeved red tee. I pulled on some red tights (the skirt was quite short) and some black Mary Janes. They were a little scuffed, so I hoped that Christine would not look down at my shoes. I tucked my silver cross into my shirt; the religious significance wouldn’t bother the Weres at all, but the silver might.
The defunct printing company of David & Van Such had been in a very modern building, in an equally modern industrial park, largely deserted this Saturday. All the businesses had been constructed to match: low gray stone and dark glass edifices, with crepe myrtle bushes all around, grass medians, and nice curbing. David & Van Such featured an ornamental bridge over an ornamental pond, and a red front door. In the spring, and after some restorative maintenance, it would be as pretty as a modern business building could get. Today, in the fading phase of winter, the dead weeds that had grown high during the previous summer waved in a chilly breeze. The skeletal crepe myrtles needed pruning back, and the water in the pond looked stagnant, with trash floating dismally here and there. The David & Van Such parking lot contained about thirty cars, including—ominously—an ambulance.
Though I wore a jacket, the day suddenly seemed colder as I went from the parking lot and across the bridge to the front door. I was sorry I’d left my heavier coat at home, but it hadn’t seemed worth bringing for a brief run between enclosed spaces. The glass front of David & Van Such, broken only by the red door, reflected the clear pale blue sky and the dead grass.
It didn’t seem right to knock at a business door, so I slipped inside. Two people were ahead of me, having crossed the now-empty reception area. They passed through plain gray double doors. I followed them, wondering what I was getting into.
We entered what had been the manufacturing area, I suppose; the huge presses were long gone. Or maybe this cavern of a room had been full of desks manned by clerks taking orders or doing accounting work. Skylights in the roof let in some illumination. There was a cluster of people close to the middle of the space.
Well, I hadn’t gotten the clothes thing right. The women were mostly wearing nicer pants outfits, and I glimpsed a dress here and there. I shrugged. Who could have known?
There were a few people in the crowd I hadn’t seen at the funeral. I nodded at a red-haired Were named Amanda (I knew her from the Witch War), and she nodded back. I was surprised to spot Claudine and Claude. The twins looked marvelous, as always. Claudine was wearing a deep green sweater and black pants, and Claude was wearing a black sweater and deep green pants. The effect was striking. Since the two fairies were the only obvious non-Weres in attendance, I went to stand with them.
Claudine bent and kissed me on the cheek, and so did Claude. Their kisses felt exactly the same.
“What’s going to happen?” I whispered the question because the group was abnormally quiet. I could see things hanging from the ceiling, but in the poor light I couldn’t imagine what they were.
“There will be several tests,” Claudine murmured. “You’re not much of a screamer, right?”
I never had been, but I wondered if I’d break new ground today.
A door opened on the far side of the room, and Jackson Herveaux and Patrick Furnan came in. They were naked. Having seen very few men naked, I didn’t have much basis for comparison, but I have to say that these two Weres weren’t my ideal. Jackson, though certainly fit, was an older man with skinny legs, and Patrick (though he, too, looked strong and muscular) was barrel-like in form.
After I’d adjusted to the nakedness of the men, I noticed that each was accompanied by another Were. Alcide followed his father, and a young blond man trailed Patrick. Alcide and the blond Were remained fully clothed. “It would’ve been nice if they’d been naked, huh?” Claudine whispered, nodding at the younger men. “They’re the seconds.”
Like in a duel. I looked to see if they carried pistols or swords, but their hands were empty.
I noticed Christine only when she went to the front of the crowd. She reached above her head and clapped her hands one time. There hadn’t been much chatter before this, but now the huge space fell completely silent. The delicate woman with her silver hair commanded all attention.
She consulted a booklet before she began. “We meet to discern the next leader of the Shreveport pack, also called the Long Tooth pack. To be the leader of the pack, these Weres must compete in three tests.” Christine paused to look down at the book.
Three was a good mystical number. I would have expected three.
I hoped none of these tests involved blood. Fat chance.
“The first test is the test of agility.” Christine gestured behind her at a roped-off area. It looked like a giant playground in the dim light. “Then the test of endurance.” She pointed at a carpeted area to her left. “Then the test of might in battle.” She waved a hand at a structure behind her.
So much for no blood.
“Then the winner must mate with another Were, to ensure the survival of the pack.”
I sure hoped part four would be symbolic. After all, Patrick Furnan had a wife, who was standing apart with a group that was definitely pro-Patrick.
That seemed like four tests to me, not three, unless the mating part was kind of like the winner’s trophy.
Claude and Claudine took my hands and gave them a simultaneous squeeze. “This is gonna be bad,” I whispered, and they nodded in unison.
I saw two uniformed paramedics standing toward the back of the crowd. They were both shifters of some kind, their brain patterns told me. With them was a person—well, maybe a creature—I hadn’t seen for months: Dr. Ludwig. She caught my eye and bowed to me. Since she was around three feet tall, she didn’t have far to lean. I bowed back. Dr. Ludwig had a large nose, olive skin, and thick wavy brown hair. I was glad she was there. I had no idea what Dr. Ludwig actually was, other than nonhuman, but she was a good doctor. My back would have been permanently scarred—assuming I’d lived—if Dr. Ludwig hadn’t treated me after a maenad attack. I’d escaped with a couple of bad days and a fine white tracery across my shoulder blades, thanks to the tiny doctor.
The contestants entered the “ring”—actually a large square marked off by those velvet ropes and metal-topped posts that they use in hotels. I’d thought the enclosed area looked like a playground, but now, as the lights came up, I realized I was seeing something more like a jumping arena for horses crossed with a gymnastics arena—or a course for a dog agility competition for giant dogs.
Christine said, “You will change.” Christine moved away to melt back into the crowd. Both candidates dropped to the ground, and the air around them began to shimmer and distort. Changing quickly at one’s desire was a great source of pride among shifters. The two Weres achieved their change at nearly the same instant. Jackson Herveaux became a huge black wolf, like his son. Patrick Furnan was pale gray, broad in the chest, a bit shorter in length.
As the small crowd drew closer, hugging the velvet ropes, one of the biggest men I’d ever seen emerged from the darkest shadows to step into the arena. I recognized him as the man whom I’d last seen at Colonel Flood’s funeral. At least six and half feet tall, today he was bare-chested and barefoot. He was impressively muscular, and his chest was as hairless as his head. He looked like a genie; he would have appeared quite natural with a sash and pantaloons. Instead, he was wearing aged blue jeans. His eyes were pits of pitch. Of course, he was a shape-shifter of some kind, but I could not imagine what he turned into.
“Whoa,” breathed Claude.
“Hooboy,” whispered Claudia.
“Wowzers,” I muttered.
Standing between the contenders, the tall man led them to the start of the course.
“Once the test begins, no pack member can interrupt,” he said, looking from one Were to the other.
“First contestant is Patrick, wolf of this pack,” the tall man said. His bass voice was as dramatic as the distant rumble of drums.
I understood, then; he was the referee. “Patrick goes first, by coin flip,” the tall man said.
Before I could think it was pretty funny that all this ceremony included a coin toss, the pale wolf was off, moving so fast that I could hardly keep track of him. He flew up a ramp, leaped three barrels, hit the ground on the far side at a dash, went up another ramp and through a ring hanging from the ceiling (which rocked violently after he was through it), and dropped down on the ground, crawling on all fours through a clear tunnel that was very narrow and twisted at intervals. It was like the one sold in pet stores for ferrets or gerbils, just bigger. Once out of the tunnel, the wolf, mouth open in a pant, came to a level area covered with Astroturf. Here, he paused and considered before putting out a foot. Every step was like that, as the wolf worked its way across the twenty yards or so of this particular area. Suddenly a section of Astroturf leaped up as a trap snapped shut, narrowly missing the wolf’s hind leg. The wolf yipped in consternation, frozen in place. It must have been agonizing, trying to restrain himself from dashing for the safety of the platform that was now only a few feet away.
I was shivering, though this contest had little to do with me. The tension was clearly showing among the Weres. They didn’t seem to be moving quite as humans did anymore. Even the overly made-up Mrs. Furnan had wide round eyes now, eyes that didn’t look like a woman’s even under all that makeup.
As the gray wolf took his final test, a leap from a dead stop that had to cover the length of perhaps two cars, a howl of triumph erupted from Patrick’s mate’s throat. The gray wolf stood safely on the platform. The referee checked a stopwatch in his hand.
“Second candidate,” said the big man, “Jackson Herveaux, wolf of this pack.” A brain close to me supplied me with the big man’s name.
“Quinn,” I whispered to Claudine. Her eyes opened wide. The name was significant to her in a way I could not guess.
Jackson Herveaux began the same test of skills that Patrick had already completed. He was more graceful going through the suspended hoop; it scarcely moved as he sailed through. He took a little longer, I thought, getting through the tunnel. He seemed to realize it, too, because he stepped into the trap field more hastily than I thought wise. He stopped dead, maybe coming to the same conclusion. He bent to use his nose more carefully. The information he got from this made him quiver all over. With exquisite care, the werewolf raised one black forepaw and moved it a fraction of an inch. We were holding our breath as he worked forward in a completely different style from his predecessor. Patrick Furnan had moved in big steps, with longish pauses in between for careful sniffing, a sort of hurry-up-and-wait style. Jackson Herveaux moved very steadily in small increments, his nose always busy, his movements cannily plotted. To my relief, Alcide’s father made it across unharmed, without springing any of the traps.
The black wolf gathered himself for the final long leap and launched himself into the air with all his power. His landing was less than graceful, as his hind paws had to scrabble to cling to the edge of the landing site. But he made it, and a few congratulatory yips echoed through the empty space.
“Both candidates pass the agility test,” Quinn said. His eyes roamed the crowd. When they passed over our odd trio—two tall black-haired twin fairies and a much shorter blond human—his gaze may have lingered a moment, but it was hard to say.
Christine was trying to get my attention. When she saw I was looking at her, she gave a tiny, sharp nod of her head to a spot by the test-of-endurance pen. Puzzled but obedient, I eased through the crowd. I didn’t know the twins had followed me until they resumed standing to either side of me. There was something about this that Christine wanted me to see, to . . . Of course. She wanted me to use my talent here. She suspected . . . skulduggery. As Alcide and his blond counterpart took their places in the pen, I noticed they were both gloved. Their attention was totally absorbed by this contest; leaving nothing for me to sieve from that focus. That left the two wolves. I’d never tried to look inside the mind of a shifted person.
With considerable anxiety, I concentrated on opening myself to their thoughts. As you might expect, the blend of human and dog thought patterns was quite challenging. At first scan I could only pick up the same kind of focus, but then I detected a difference.
As Alcide lifted an eighteen-inch-long silver rod, my stomach felt cold and shivery. Watching the blond Were next to him repeat the gesture, I felt my lips draw back in distaste. The gloves were not totally necessary, because in human form, a Were’s skin would not be damaged by the silver. In wolf form, silver was terribly painful.
Furnan’s blond second ran his covered hands over the silver, as if testing the bar for hidden faults.
I had no idea why silver weakened vampires and burned them, and why it could be fatal to Weres, while it had no effect on fairies—who, however, could not bear prolonged exposure to iron. But I knew these things were true, and I knew the upcoming test would be awful to watch.
However, I was there to witness it. Something was going to happen that needed my attention. I turned my mind back to the little difference I’d read in Patrick’s thoughts. In his Were form, these were so primitive they hardly qualified as “thoughts.”
Quinn stood between the two seconds, his smooth scalp picking up a gleam of light. He had a timing watch in his hands.
“The candidates will take the silver now,” he said, and with his gloved hands Alcide put the bar in his father’s mouth. The black wolf clamped down and sat, just as the light gray wolf did with his silver bar. The two seconds drew back. A high whine of pain came from Jackson Herveaux, while Patrick Furnan showed no signs of stress other than heavy panting. As the delicate skin of his gums and lips began to smoke and smell a little, Jackson’s whining became louder. Patrick’s skin showed the same painful symptoms, but Patrick was silent.
“They’re so brave,” whispered Claude, watching with fascinated horror at the torment the two wolves were enduring. It was becoming apparent that the older wolf would not win this contest. The visible signs of pain were increasing every second, and though Alcide stood there focusing solely on his father to add his support, at any moment it would be over. Except . . .
“He’s cheating,” I said clearly, pointing at the gray wolf.
“No member of the pack may speak.” Quinn’s deep voice was not angry, merely matter-of-fact.
“I’m not a pack member.”
“You challenge the contest?” Quinn was looking at me now. All the pack members who’d been standing close around me dropped back until I stood alone with the two fairies, who were looking down at me with some surprise and dismay.
“You bet your ass I do. Smell the gloves Patrick’s second was wearing.”
The blond second looked completely blindsided. And guilty.
“Drop the bars,” Quinn commanded, and the two wolves complied, Jackson Herveaux with a whimper. Alcide dropped to his knees by his father, putting his arms around the older wolf.
Quinn, moving as smoothly as if his joints were oiled, knelt to retrieve the gloves that Patrick’s second had tossed to the floor. Libby Furnan’s hand darted over the velvet rope to snatch them up, but a deep snarl from Quinn told her to stop. It made my own spine tingle, and I was much farther away than Libby.
Quinn picked up the gloves and smelled them.
He looked down at Patrick Furnan with a contempt so heavy that I was surprised the wolf didn’t crumple under its weight.
He turned to face the rest of the crowd. “The woman is right.” Quinn’s deep voice gave the words the gravity of stone. “There’s a drug on the gloves. It made Furnan’s skin numb when the silver was placed in his mouth, so he could last longer. I declare him loser of this part of the contest. The pack will have to decide whether he should forfeit any right to continue, and whether his second should still be a pack member.” The fair-haired Were was cringing as if he expected someone to hit him. I didn’t know why his punishment should be worse than Patrick’s; maybe the lower your rank, the worse your punishment? Not exactly fair; but then, I wasn’t a Were.
“The pack will vote,” Christine called. She met my eyes and I knew this was why she wanted me here. “If the rest of you would step into the outer room?”
Quinn, Claude, Claudine, and three shape-shifters moved with me to the doors leading into the other room. There was more natural light there, which was a pleasure. Less of a pleasure was the curiosity that pooled around me. My shields were still down, and I felt the suspicion and conjecture flowing from the brains of my companions, except, of course, from the two fairies. To Claude and Claudine, my peculiarity was a rare gift, and I was a lucky woman.
“Come here,” Quinn rumbled, and I thought about telling him to take his commands and shove them where the sun don’t shine. But that would be childish, and I had nothing to fear. (At least that’s what I told myself about seven times in rapid succession.) I made my spine stiffen, and I strode up to him and looked up into his face.
“You don’t have to stick your jaw out like that,” he said calmly. “I’m not going to hit you.”
“I never thought you were,” I said with a snap in my voice that I was proud of. I found that his round eyes were the very dark, rich, purple-brown of pansies. Wow, they were pretty! I smiled out of sheer pleasure . . . and a dollop of relief.
Unexpectedly, he smiled back. He had full lips, very even white teeth, and a sturdy column of a neck.
“How often do you have to shave?” I asked, fascinated with his smoothness.
He laughed from the belly.
“Are you scared of anything?” he asked.
“So many things,” I said regretfully.
He considered that for a moment. “Do you have an extrasensitive sense of smell?”
“Nope.”
“Do you know the blond one?”
“Never saw him before.”
“Then how did you know?”
“Sookie is a telepath,” Claude said. When he got the full weight of the big man’s stare, he looked like he was sorry he’d interrupted. “My sister is her, ah, guardian,” Claude concluded in a rush.
“Then you’re doing a terrible job,” Quinn told Claudine.
“Don’t you get onto Claudine,” I said indignantly. “Claudine’s saved my life a bunch.”
Quinn looked exasperated. “Fairies,” he muttered. “The Weres aren’t going to be happy about your piece of information,” he told me. “At least half of them are going to wish you were dead. If your safety is Claudine’s top priority, she should have held your mouth shut.”
Claudine looked crushed.
“Hey,” I said, “cut it out. I know you’ve got friends in there you’re worried about, but don’t take that out on Claudine. Or me,” I added hastily, as his eyes fixed on mine.
“I have no friends in there. And I shave every morning,” he said.
“Okay, then.” I nodded, nonplussed.
“Or if I’m going out in the evening.”
“Gotcha.”
“To do something special.”
What would Quinn consider special?
The doors opened, interrupting one of the strangest conversations I’d ever had.
“You can come back in,” said a young Were in three-inch-high fuck-me shoes. She was wearing a burgundy sheath, and when we followed her back into the big room, she gave her walk some extra sway. I wondered whom she was trying to entrance, Quinn or Claude. Or maybe Claudine?
“This is our judgment,” said Christine to Quinn. “We’ll resume the contest where it ended. According to the vote, since Patrick cheated on the second test, he is declared the loser of that test. Of the agility test, too. However, he’s allowed to stay in the running. But, to win, he has to win the last test decisively.” I wasn’t sure what “decisively” meant in this context. From Christine’s face, I was certain it didn’t bode well. For the first time, I realized that justice might not prevail.
Alcide looked very grim, when I found his face in the crowd. This judgment seemed clearly biased in favor of his father’s opponent. I hadn’t realized that there were more Weres in the Furnan camp than the Herveaux camp, and I wondered when that shift had occurred. The balance had seemed more even at the funeral.
Since I had already interfered, I felt free to interfere some more. I began wandering among the pack members, listening to their brains. Though the twisted and turned brains of all Weres and shifters are difficult to decipher, I began to pick up a clue here and there. The Furnans, I learned, had followed their plan of leaking stories about Jackson Herveaux’s gambling habits, talking up how unreliable that made Jackson as a leader.
I knew from Alcide that the stories about his father’s gambling were true. Though I didn’t admire the Furnans for playing this card, I didn’t consider it stacking the deck, either.
The two competitors were still in wolf form. If I had understood correctly, they had been scheduled to fight anyway. I was standing by Amanda. “What’s changed about the last test?” I asked. The redhead whispered that now the fight was no longer a regular match, with the contestant left standing after five minutes declared the winner. Now, to win the fight “decisively,” the loser had to be dead or disabled.
This was more than I’d bargained for, but I knew without asking that I couldn’t leave.
The group gathered around a wire dome that reminded me irresistibly of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. You remember—“Two men enter, one man leaves.” I guess this was the wolf equivalent. Quinn opened the door, and the two large wolves slunk in, casting their gazes from side to side as they counted their supporters. Or at least, that’s what I guessed they were doing.
Quinn turned and beckoned to me.
Ah-oh. I frowned. The dark, purple-brown eyes were intent. The man meant business. I approached him reluctantly.
“Go read their minds again,” he told me. He laid a huge hand on my shoulder. He turned me to face him, which brought me face-to-face—well, so to speak—with his dark brown nipples. Disconcerted, I looked up. “Listen, blondie, all you have to do is go in there and do your thing,” he said reassuringly.
He couldn’t have had this idea while the wolves were outside the cage? What if he shut the door on me? I looked over my shoulder at Claudine, who was frantically shaking her head.
“Why do I need to? What purpose will it serve?” I asked, not being a total idiot.
“Is he gonna cheat again?” Quinn asked so softly that I knew no one else could hear him. “Does Furnan have some means of cheating that I can’t see?”
“Do you guarantee my safety?”
He met my eyes. “Yes,” he said without hesitation. He opened the door to the cage. Though he had to stoop, he came in behind me.
The two wolves approached me cautiously. Their smell was strong; like dog, but muskier and wilder. Nervously, I laid my hand on Patrick Furnan’s head. I looked in his head as hard as I could, and I could discern nothing but rage at me for costing him his win in the endurance contest. There was a glowing coal of purpose about the coming battle, which he intended to win by sheer ruthlessness.
I sighed, shook my head, moved my hand away. To be fair, I put my hand on Jackson’s shoulders, which were so high I was startled all over. The wolf was literally vibrating, a faint shiver that made his fur quiver under my touch. His whole resolve was bent toward rending his rival limb from limb. But Jackson was afraid of the younger wolf.
“All clear,” I said, and Quinn turned away to open the door. He crouched to step through, and I was about to follow him when the burgundy-sheathed girl shrieked. Moving faster than I thought such a large man could move, Quinn spun on his foot, grabbed my arm with one hand, and yanked with all his might. With his other hand he slammed shut the door, and I heard something crash against it.
The noises behind me told me the battle had already started, but I was pinned against a huge expanse of smooth tan skin.
With my ear to Quinn’s chest, I could hear the rumble inside as well as outside as he asked, “Did he get you?”
I had my own shaking and quivering going on. My leg was wet, and I saw that my tights were ripped, and blood was running from an abrasion on the side of my right calf. Had my leg scraped the door when Quinn had shut it so quickly, or had I been bitten? Oh my God, if I’d been bitten . . .
Everyone else was pressed against the wire cage, watching the snarling, whirling wolves. Their spittle and blood flew in fine sprays, dotting the spectators. I glanced back to see Jackson’s grip on Patrick’s hind leg broken when Patrick bent himself backward to bite Jackson’s muzzle. I caught a glimpse of Alcide’s face, intent and anguished.
I didn’t want to watch this. I would rather look at this stranger’s hide than watch the two men killing each other.
“I’m bleeding,” I told Quinn. “It’s not bad.”
A high yip from the cage suggested that one of the wolves had scored a hit. I cringed.
The big man half carried me over to the wall. That was a good distance from the fight. He helped me turn and sink down into a sitting position.
Quinn lowered himself to the floor, too. He was so graceful for someone so large that I was absorbed in just watching him move. He knelt by me to pull off my shoes, and then my tights, which were ripped to shreds and dabbled with blood. I was silent and shaking as he sank down to lie on his stomach. He gripped my knee and my ankle in his huge hands as if my leg were a large drumstick. Without saying a word, Quinn began to lick the blood
from my calf. I was afraid this was preparatory to taking a bite, but Dr. Ludwig trotted over, looked down, and nodded. “You’ll be fine,” she said dismissively. After patting me on the head as if I were an injured dog, the tiny doctor trotted back to her attendants.
Meanwhile, though I would not have thought it was possible for me to be anything but on the knife-edge of suspense, the leg-licking thing was providing an entirely unexpected diversion. I shifted restlessly, stifling a gasp. Maybe I should remove my leg from Quinn’s possession? Watching the gleaming bald head bob up and down as he licked was making me think of something worlds away from the life-and-death battle taking place across the room. Quinn was working more and more slowly, his tongue warm and a little rough as he cleaned my leg. Though his brain was the most opaque shifter brain I’d ever encountered, I got the idea he was having the same reaction that I was.
When he finished, he laid his head on my thigh. He was breathing heavily, and I was trying not to. His hands released their grip but stroked my leg deliberately. He looked up at me. His eyes had changed. They were golden, solid gold. The color filled his eyes. Whoa.
I guess he could tell from my face that I was, to put it mildly, conflicted about our little interlude.
“Not our time and place, babe,” he said. “God, that was . . . great.” He stretched, and it wasn’t an outward extension of arms and chest, the way humans stretch. He rippled from the base of his spine to his shoulders. It was one of the oddest things I’d ever seen, and I’d seen a lot of odd things. “Do you know who I am?” he asked.
I nodded. “Quinn?” I said, feeling my cheeks color.
“I’ve heard your name is Sookie,” he said, rising to his knees.
“Sookie Stackhouse,” I said.
He put his hand under my chin so I’d look up at him. I stared into his eyes as hard as I could. He didn’t blink.
“I wonder what you’re seeing,” he said finally, and removed his hand.
I glanced down at my leg. The mark on it, now clear of blood, was almost certainly a scrape from the metal of the door. “Not a bite,” I said, my voice faltering on the last word. The tension left me in a rush.
“Nope. No she-wolf in your future,” he agreed, and flowed to his feet. He held out his hand. I took it, and he had me on my feet in a second. A piercing yelp from the cage yanked me back into the here and now.
“Tell me something. Why the hell can’t they just vote?” I asked him.
Quinn’s round eyes, back to their purple-brown color and properly surrounded with white, crinkled at the corners with amusement.
“Not the way of the shifter, babe. You’re going to see me later,” Quinn promised. Without another word he strode back to the cage, and my little field trip was over. I had to turn my attention back to the truly important thing happening in this building.
Claudine and Claude were looking anxiously over their shoulders when I found them. They made a little space for me to ease in between them, and wrapped their arms around me when I was in place. They seemed very upset, and Claudine had two tears trailing down her cheeks. When I saw the situation in the cage, I understood why.
The lighter wolf was winning. The black wolf’s coat was matted with blood. He was still on his feet, still snarling, but one of his hind legs was giving way under his weight from time to time. He managed to pull himself back up twice, but the third time the leg collapsed, the younger wolf was on him, the two spinning over and over in a terrifying blur of teeth, torn flesh, and fur.
Forgetting the silence rules, all the Weres were screaming their support of one contestant or the other, or just howling. The violence and the noise blended together to make a chaotic collage. I finally spotted Alcide pounding his hands against the metal in futile agitation. I had never felt so sorry for anyone in my life. I wondered if he’d try to break into the combat cage. But another look told me that even if Alcide’s respect for pack rules broke down and he attempted to go to his father’s aid, Quinn was blocking the door. That was why the pack had brought in an outsider, of course.
Abruptly, the fight was over. The lighter wolf had the darker one by the throat. He was gripping, but not biting. Maybe Jackson would have gone on struggling if he hadn’t been so severely wounded, but his strength was exhausted. He lay whining, quite unable to defend himself, disabled. The room fell completely silent.
“Patrick Furnan is declared the winner,” said Quinn, his voice neutral.
And then Patrick Furnan bit down on Jackson Herveaux’s throat and killed him.
Chapter 16
QUINN TOOK OVER the cleanup with the sure authority of one who’s supervised such things before. Though I was dull and stupid with shock, I noticed he gave clear, concise directions as to the dispersal of the testing materials. Pack members dismantled the cage into sections and took apart the agility arena with efficient dispatch. A cleanup crew took care of mopping up the blood and other fluids.
Soon the building was empty of all but the people. Patrick Furnan had reverted to his human form, and Dr. Ludwig was attending his many wounds. I was glad he had every one of them. I was only sorry they weren’t worse. But the pack had accepted Furnan’s choice. If they would not protest such unnecessary brutality, I couldn’t.
Alcide was being comforted by Maria-Star Cooper, a young Were I knew slightly.
Maria-Star held him and stroked his back, providing support by her sheer closeness. He didn’t have to tell me that on this occasion, he preferred another Were’s companionship to mine. I’d gone to hug him, but when I’d neared him and met his eyes, I’d known. That hurt, and it hurt bad; but today wasn’t about me and my feelings.
Claudine was crying in her brother’s arms. “She’s so tenderhearted,” I whispered to Claude, feeling a bit abashed that I wasn’t crying myself. My concern was for Alcide; I’d hardly known Jackson Herveaux.
“She went through the second elf war in Iowa fighting with the best of them,” Claude said, shaking his head. “I’ve seen a decapitated goblin stick its tongue out at her in its death throes, and she laughed. But as she gets closer to the light, she becomes more sensitive.”
That effectively shut me up. I was not about to ask for any explanation of yet another arcane supernatural rule. I’d had a bellyful this day.
Now that all the mess was cleared away (that mess included Jackson’s body, which Dr. Ludwig had taken somewhere to be altered, to make the story of how he’d met his death more plausible), all the pack members present gathered in front of Patrick Furnan, who hadn’t resumed clothes. According to his body, victory had made him feel manly. Ick.
He was standing on a blanket; it was a red plaid stadium blanket, like you’d take to a football game. I felt my lips twitch, but I became completely sober when the new packmaster’s wife led a young woman to him, a brown-haired girl who seemed to be in her late teens. The girl was as bare as the packmaster, though she looked considerably better in that state.
What the hell?
Suddenly I remembered the last part of the ceremony, and I realized Patrick Furman was going to fuck this girl in front of us. No. No way was I going to watch this. I tried to turn to walk out. But Claude hissed, “You can’t leave.” He covered my mouth and picked me up bodily to move me to the back of the crowd. Claudine moved with us and stood in front of me, but with her back to me, so I wouldn’t have to see. I made a furious sound into Claude’s hand.
“Shut up,” the fairy said grimly, his voice as concentrated with sincerity as he could manage. “You’ll land us all in trouble. If it makes you feel any better, this is traditional. The girl volunteered. After this, Patrick’ll be a faithful husband once more. But he’s already bred his whelp by his wife, and he has to make the ceremonial gesture of breeding another one. May take, may not, but it has to be done.”
I kept my eyes shut and was grateful when Claudine turned to me and placed her tear-wet hands over my ears. A shout went up from the crowd when the thing was completed. The two fairies relaxed and gave me some room. I didn’t see what happened to the girl. Furnan remained naked, but as long as he was in a calm state, I could handle that.
To seal his status, the new packmaster began to receive the pledges of his wolves. They went in turn, oldest to youngest, I figured, after a moment’s observation. Each Were licked the back of Patrick Furnan’s hand and exposed his or her neck for a ritual moment. When it was Alcide’s turn, I suddenly realized there was potential for even more disaster.
I found I was holding my breath.
From the profound silence, I knew I wasn’t the only one.
After a long hesitation, Furnan bent over and placed his teeth on Alcide’s neck; I opened my mouth to protest, but Claudine clapped her hand over it. Furnan’s teeth came away from Alcide’s flesh, leaving it unscathed.
Packmaster Furnan had sent a clear signal.
By the time the last Were had performed the ritual, I was exhausted from all the emotion. Surely this was an end to it? Yes, the pack was dispersing, some members giving the Furnans congratulatory hugs, and some striding out silently.
I dodged them myself and made a beeline for the door. The next time someone told me I had to watch a supernatural rite, I was going to tell him I had to wash my hair.
Once out in the open air, I walked slowly, my feet dragging. I had to think about things I’d put to one side, like what I’d seen in Alcide’s head after the whole debacle was over. Alcide thought I’d failed him. He’d told me I had to come, and I had; I should have known he had some purpose in insisting I be present.
Now I knew that he’d suspected Furnan had some underhanded trick in mind. Alcide had primed Christine, his father’s ally, ahead of time. She made sure I used my telepathy on Patrick Furnan. And, sure enough, I had found that Jackson’s opponent was cheating. That disclosure should have ensured Jackson’s win.
Instead, the will of the pack had gone against Jackson, and the contest had continued with the stakes even higher. I’d nothing to do with that decision. But right now Alcide, in his grief and rage, was blaming me.
I was trying to be angry, but I was too sad.
Claude and Claudine said good-bye, and they hopped into Claudine’s Cadillac and peeled out of the parking lot as if they couldn’t wait to get back to Monroe. I was of the same mind, but I was a lot less resilient than the fairies. I had to sit behind the wheel of the borrowed Malibu for five or ten minutes, steadying myself for the drive home.
I found myself thinking of Quinn. It was a welcome relief from thinking of torn flesh and blood and death. When I’d looked into his head, I’d seen a man who knew his way. And I still didn’t have a clue as to what he was.
The drive home was grim.
I might as well have phoned in to Merlotte’s that evening. Oh, sure, I went through all the motions of taking orders and carrying them to the right tables, refilling pitchers of beer, popping my tips in the tip jar, wiping up spills and making sure the temporary cook (a vampire named Anthony Bolivar; he’d subbed for us before) remembered the busboy was off limits. But I didn’t have any sparkle, any joy, in my work.
I did notice that Sam seemed be getting around better. He was obviously restive, sitting in his corner watching Charles work. Possibly Sam was also a little piqued, since Charles just seemed to get more and more popular with the clientele. The vamp was charming, that was for sure. He was wearing a red sequined eye patch tonight and his usual poet shirt under a black sequined vest—flashy in the extreme, but entertaining, too.
“You seem depressed, beautiful lady,” he said when I came to pick up a Tom Collins and a rum and Coke.
“Just been a long day,” I said, making an effort to smile. I had so many other things to digest emotionally that I didn’t even mind when Bill brought Selah Pumphrey in again. Even when they sat in my section, I didn’t care. But when Bill took my hand as I was turning away to get their order, I snatched it away as if he’d tried to set me on fire.
“I only want to know what’s wrong,” he said, and for a second I remembered how good it had felt that night at the hospital when he’d lain down with me. My mouth actually began to open, but then I caught a glimpse of Selah’s indignant face, and I shut my emotional water off at the meter.
“I’ll be right back with that blood,” I said cheerfully, smiling wide enough to show every tooth in my head.
To heck with him, I thought righteously. Him and the horse he rode in on.
After that it was strictly business. I smiled and worked, and worked and smiled. I stayed away from Sam, because I didn’t want to have a long conversation with yet another shifter that evening. I was afraid—since I didn’t have any reason to be mad at Sam—that if he asked me what was wrong, I’d tell him; and I just didn’t want to talk about it. You ever just feel like stomping around and being miserable for a while? That was the kind of mood I was in.
But I had to go over to Sam, after all, when Catfish asked if he could pay with a check for this evening’s festivities. That was Sam’s rule: he had to approve checks. And I had to stand close to Sam, because the bar was very noisy.
I thought nothing of it, aside from not wanting to get into my own mood with him, but when I bent over him to explain Catfish’s cash-flow problem, Sam’s eyes widened. “My God, Sookie,” he said, “Who have you been around?”
I backed off, speechless. He was both shocked and appalled by a smell I hadn’t even known I carried. I was tired of supes pulling this on me.
“Where’d you meet up with a tiger?” he asked.
“A tiger,” I repeated numbly.
So now I knew what my new acquaintance Quinn turned into when the moon was full.
“Tell me,” Sam demanded.
“No,” I snapped, “I won’t. What about Catfish?”
“He can write a check this once. If there’s a problem, he’ll never write another one here again.”
I didn’t relay this last sentence. I took Catfish’s check and his alcohol-fueled gratitude, and deposited both where they belonged.
To make my bad mood worse, I snagged my silver chain on a corner of the bar when I bent over to pick up a napkin some slob had tossed to the floor. The chain broke, and I caught it up and dropped it in my pocket. Dammit. This had been a rotten day, followed by a rotten night.
I made sure to wave at Selah as she and Bill left. He’d left me a good tip, and I stuffed it in my other pocket with so much force I almost ripped the fabric. A couple of times during the evening, I had heard the bar phone ring, and when I was taking some dirty glasses to the kitchen hatch, Charles said, “Someone keeps calling and hanging up. Very irritating.”
“They’ll get tired and quit,” I said soothingly.
About an hour later, as I put a Coke in front of Sam, the busboy came to tell me there was someone at the employees’ entrance, asking for me.
“What were you doing outside?” Sam asked sharply.
The boy looked embarrassed. “I smoke, Mr. Merlotte,” he said. “I was outside taking me a break, ’cause the vamp said he’d drain me if I lit up inside, when this man walked up outta nowhere.”
“What’s he look like?” I asked.
“Oh, he’s old, got black hair,” the boy said, shrugging. Not long on the gift of description.
“Okay,” I said. I was glad to take a break. I suspected who the visitor might be, and if he’d come into the bar, he’d have caused a riot. Sam found an excuse to follow me out by saying that he needed a pit stop, and he picked up his cane and used it to hobble down the hall after me. He had his own tiny bathroom off his office, and he limped into it as I continued past the men’s and women’s to the back door. I opened it cautiously and peered outside. But then I began smiling. The man waiting for me had one of the most famous faces in the world—except, apparently, to adolescent busboys.
“Bubba,” I said, pleased to see the vampire. You couldn’t call him by his former name, or he got real confused and agitated. Bubba was formerly known as . . . Well, let me just put it this way. You wondered about all those sightings after his death? This was the explanation.
The conversion hadn’t been a complete success because his system had been so fuddled with drugs; but aside from his predilection for cat blood, Bubba managed pretty well. The vampire community took good care of him. Eric kept Bubba on staff as an errand boy. Bubba’s glossy black hair was always combed and styled, his long sideburns sharply trimmed. Tonight he was wearing a black leather jacket, new blue jeans, and a black-and-silver plaid shirt.
“Looking good, Bubba,” I said admiringly.
“You too, Miss Sookie.” He beamed at me.
“Did you want to tell me something?”
“Yessum. Mr. Eric sent me over here to tell you that he’s not what he seems.”
I blinked.
“Who, Bubba?” I asked, trying to keep my voice gentle.
“He’s a hit man.”
I stared at Bubba’s face not because I thought staring would get me anywhere, but because I was trying to figure out the message. This was a mistake; Bubba’s eyes began darting from side to side, and his face lost its smile. I should have turned to stare at the wall—it would’ve given me as much information, and Bubba wouldn’t have become as anxious.
“Thanks, Bubba,” I said, patting him on his beefy shoulder. “You did good.”
“Can I go now? Back to Shreveport?”
“Sure,” I said. I would just call Eric. Why hadn’t he used the phone for a message as urgent and important as this one seemed to be?
“I found me a back way into the animal shelter,” Bubba confided proudly.
I gulped. “Oh, well, great,” I said, trying not to feel queasy.
“See ya later, alligator,” he called from the edge of the parking lot. Just when you thought Bubba was the worst vampire in the world, he did something amazing like moving at a speed you simply could not track.
“After a while, crocodile,” I said dutifully.
“Was that who I think it was?” The voice was right behind me.
I jumped. I spun around to find that Charles had deserted his post at the bar.
“You scared me,” I said, as though he hadn’t been able to tell.
“Sorry.”
“Yes, that was him.”
“Thought so. I’ve never heard him sing in person. It must be amazing.” Charles stared out at the parking lot as though he were thinking hard about something else. I had the definite impression he wasn’t listening to his own words.
I opened my mouth to ask a question, but before my words reached my lips I really thought about what the English pirate had just said, and the words froze in my throat. After a long hesitation, I knew I had to speak, or he would know something was wrong.
“Well, I guess I’d better get back to work,” I said, smiling the bright smile that pops onto my face when I’m nervous. And, boy, was I nervous now. The one blinding revelation I’d had made everything begin to click into place in my head. Every little hair on my arms and neck stood straight up. My fight-or-flight reflex was fixed firmly on “flight.” Charles was between the outside door and me. I began to back down the hall toward the bar.
The door from the bar into the hall was usually left open, because people had to pass into the hall all the time to use the bathrooms. But now it was closed. It had been open when I’d come down the hall to talk to Bubba.
This was bad.
“Sookie,” Charles said, behind me. “I truly regret this.”
“It was you who shot Sam, wasn’t it?” I reached behind me, fumbled for the handle that would open that door. He wouldn’t kill me in front of all those people, would he? Then I remembered the night Eric and Bill had polished off a roomful of men in my house. I remembered it had taken them only three or four minutes. I remembered what the men had looked like afterward.
“Yes. It was a stroke of luck when you caught the cook, and she confessed. But she didn’t confess to shooting Sam, did she?”
“No, she didn’t,” I said numbly. “All the others, but not Sam, and the bullet didn’t match.”
My fingers found the knob. If I turned it, I might live. But I might not. How much did Charles value his own life?
“You wanted the job here,” I said.
“I thought there was a good chance I’d come in handy when Sam was out of the picture.”
“How’d you know I’d go to Eric for help?”
“I didn’t. But I knew someone would tell him the bar was in trouble. Since that would mean helping you, he would do it. I was the logical one to send.”
“Why are you doing all this?”
“Eric owes a debt.”
He was moving closer, though not very quickly. Maybe he was reluctant to do the deed. Maybe he was hoping for a more advantageous moment, when he could carry me off in silence.
“It looks like Eric’s found out I’m not from the Jackson nest, as I’d said.”
“Yeah. You picked the wrong one.”
“Why? It seemed ideal to me. Many men there; you wouldn’t have seen them all. No one can remember all the men who’ve passed through that mansion.”
“But they’ve heard Bubba sing,” I said softly. “He sang for them one night. You’d never have forgotten that. I don’t know how Eric found out, but I knew as soon as you said you’d never—”
He sprang.
I was on my back on the floor in a split second, but my hand was already in my pocket, and he opened his mouth to bite. He was supporting himself on his arms, courteously trying not to actually lie on top of me. His fangs were fully out, and they glistened in the light.
“I have to do this,” he said. “I’m sworn. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” I said, and thrust the silver chain into his mouth, using the heel of my hand to snap his jaw shut.
He screamed and hit at me, and I felt a rib go, and smoke was coming out of his mouth. I scrambled away and did a little yelling of my own. The door flew open, and a flood of bar patrons thundered into the little hallway. Sam shot out of the door of his office like he’d been fired from a cannon, moving very well for a man with a broken leg, and to my amazement he had a stake in his hand. By that time, the screaming vampire was weighted
down by so many beefy men in jeans you couldn’t even see him. Charles was trying to bite whoever he could, but his burned mouth was so painful his efforts were weak.
Catfish Hunter seemed to be on the bottom of the pile, in direct contact. “You pass me that stake here, boy!” he called back to Sam. Sam passed it to Hoyt Fortenberry, who passed it to Dago Guglielmi, who transferred it to Catfish’s hairy hand.
“We gonna wait for the vampire police, or we gonna take care of this ourselves?” Catfish asked. “Sookie?”
After a horrified second of temptation, I opened my mouth to say, “Call the police.” The Shreveport police had a squad of vampire policemen, as well as the necessary special transportation vehicle and special jail cells.
“End it,” said Charles, somewhere below the heaving pile of men. “I failed in my mission, and I can’t abide jails.”
“Okeydokey,” Catfish said, and staked him.
After it was over and the body had disintegrated, the men went back into the bar and settled down at the tables where they’d been before they heard the fight going on in the hall. It was beyond strange. There wasn’t much laughing, and there wasn’t much smiling, and no one who’d stayed in the bar asked anyone who’d left what had happened.
Of course, it was tempting to think this was an echo of the terrible old days, when black men had been lynched if there was even a rumor they’d winked at a white woman.
But, you know, the simile just didn’t hold. Charles was a different race, true. But he’d been guilty as hell of trying to kill me. I would have been a dead woman in thirty more seconds, despite my diversionary tactic, if the men of Bon Temps hadn’t intervened.
We were lucky in a lot of ways. There was not one law enforcement person in the bar that night. Not five minutes after everyone resumed his table, Dennis Pettibone, the arson investigator, came in to have a visit with Arlene. (The busboy was still mopping the hall, in fact.) Sam had bound my ribs with some Ace bandages in his office, and I walked out, slowly and carefully, to ask Dennis what he wanted to drink.
We were lucky that there weren’t any outsiders. No college guys from Ruston, no truckers from Shreveport, no relatives who’d dropped in for a beer with a cousin or an uncle.
We were lucky there weren’t many women. I don’t know why, but I imagined a woman would be more likely to get squeamish about Charles’s execution. In fact, I felt pretty squeamish about it, when I wasn’t counting my lucky stars I was still alive.
And Eric was lucky when he dashed into the bar about thirty minutes later, because Sam didn’t have any more stakes handy. As jittery as everyone was, some foolhardy soul would have volunteered to take out Eric: but he wouldn’t have come out of it relatively unscathed, as those who’d tackled Charles had.
And Eric was also lucky that the first words out of his mouth were “Sookie, are you all right?” In his anxiety, he grabbed me, one hand on either side of my waist, and I cried out.
“You’re hurt,” he said, and then realized five or six men had jumped to their feet.
“I’m just sore,” I said, making a huge effort to look okay. “Everything’s fine. This here’s my friend Eric,” I said a little loudly. “He’s been trying to get in touch with me, and now I know why it was so urgent.” I met the eyes of each man, and one by one, they dropped back into their seats.
“Let’s us go sit and talk,” I said very quietly.
“Where is he? I will stake the bastard myself, no matter what Hot Rain sends against me.” Eric was furious.
“It’s been taken care of,” I hissed. “Will you chill?”
With Sam’s permission, we went to his office, the only place in the building that offered both chairs and privacy. Sam was back behind the bar, perched on a high stool with his leg on a lower stool, managing the bartending himself.
“Bill searched his database,” Eric said proudly. “The bastard told me he came from Mississippi, so I wrote him down as one of Russell’s discarded pretty boys. I had even called Russell, to ask him if Twining had worked well for him. Russell said he had so many new vampires in the mansion, he had only the vaguest recollection of Twining. But Russell, as I observed at Josephine’s Bar, is not the kind of manager I am.”
I managed a smile. That was definitely true.
“So when I found myself wondering, I asked Bill to go to work, and Bill traced Twining from his birth as a vampire to his pledge to Hot Rain.”
“This Hot Rain was the one who made him a vampire?”
“No, no,” Eric said impatiently. “Hot Rain made the pirate’s sire a vampire. And when Charles’s sire was killed during the French and Indian War, Charles pledged himself to Hot Rain. When Hot Rain was dissatisfied with Long Shadow’s death, he sent Charles to exact payment for the debt he felt was owed.”
“Why would killing me cancel the debt?”
“Because he decided after listening to gossip and much reconnoitering that you were important to me, and that your death would wound me the way Long Shadow’s had him.”
“Ah.” I could not think of one thing to say. Not one thing.
At last I asked, “So Hot Rain and Long Shadow were doing the deed, once upon a time?”
Eric said, “Yes, but it wasn’t the sexual connection, it was the . . . the affection. That was the valuable part of the bond.”
“So because this Hot Rain decided the fine you paid him for Long Shadow’s death just didn’t give him closure, he sent Charles to do something equally painful to you.”
“Yes.”
“And Charles got to Shreveport, kept his ears open, found out about me, decided my death would fill the bill.”
“Apparently.”
“So he heard about the shootings, knew Sam is a shifter, and shot Sam so there’d be a good reason for him to come to Bon Temps.”
“Yes.”
“That’s real, real complicated. Why didn’t Charles just jump me some night?”
“Because he wanted it to look like an accident. He didn’t want blame attached to a vampire at all, because not only did he not want to get caught, he didn’t want Hot Rain to incur any penalty.”
I closed my eyes. “He set fire to my house,” I said. “Not that poor Marriot guy. I bet Charles killed him before the bar even closed that night and brought him back to my house so he’d take the blame. After all, the guy was a stranger to Bon Temps. No one would miss him. Oh my God! Charles borrowed my keys! I bet the man was in my trunk! Not dead, but hypnotized. Charles planted that card in the guy’s pocket. The poor fella wasn’t a member of the Fellowship of the Sun anymore than I am.”
“It must have been frustrating for Charles, when he found you were surrounded by friends,” Eric said a little coldly, since a couple of those “friends” had just clomped by noisily, using a trip to the john as a pretext to keep an eye on him.
“Yes, must have been.” I smiled.
“You seem better than I expected,” Eric said a little hesitantly. “Less traumatized, as they say now.”
“Eric, I’m a lucky woman,” I said. “Today I’ve seen more bad stuff than you can imagine. All I can think is, I escaped. By the way, Shreveport now has a new packmaster, and he’s a lying, cheating bastard.”
“Then I take it Jackson Herveaux lost his bid for the job.”
“Lost more than that.”
Eric’s eyes widened. “So the contest was today. I’d heard Quinn was in town. Usually, he keeps transgressions to a minimum.”
“It wasn’t his choice,” I said. “A vote went against Jackson; it should have helped him, but it . . . didn’t.”
“Why were you there? Was that blasted Alcide trying to use you for some purpose in the contest?”
“You should talk about using.”
“Yes, but I’m straightforward about it,” Eric said, his blue eyes wide and guileless.
I had to laugh. I hadn’t expected to laugh for days, or weeks, and yet here I was, laughing. “True,” I admitted.
“So, I’m to understand that Charles Twining is no more?” Eric asked quite soberly.
“That’s correct.”
“Well, well. The people here are unexpectedly enterprising. What damage have you suffered?”
“Broken rib.”
“A broken rib is not much when a vampire is fighting for his life.”
“Correct, again.”
“When Bubba got back and I found he hadn’t exactly delivered his message, I rushed here gallantly to rescue you. I had tried calling the bar tonight to tell you to beware, but Charles answered the phone every time.”
“It was gallant of you, in the extreme,” I admitted. “But, as it turns out, unnecessary.”
“Well, then . . . I’ll go back to my own bar and look at my own bar patrons from my own office. We’re expanding our Fangtasia product line.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. What would you think of a nude calendar? ‘Fangtasia’s Vampire Hunks’ is what Pam thinks it should be called.”
“Are you gonna be in it?”
“Oh, of course. Mr. January.”
“Well, put me down for three. I’ll give one to Arlene and one to Tara. And I’ll put one up on my own wall.”
“If you promise to keep it open to my picture, I’ll give you one for free,” Eric promised.
“You got a deal.”
He stood up. “One more thing, before I go.”
I stood, too, but much more slowly.
“I may need to hire you in early March.”
“I’ll check my calendar. What’s up?”
“There’s going to be a little summit. A meeting of the kings and queens of some of the southern states. The location hasn’t been settled, but when it is, I wonder if you can get time off from your job here to accompany me and my people.”
“I can’t think that far ahead just at the moment, Eric,” I said. I winced as I began to walk out of the office.
“Wait one moment,” he said suddenly, and justlikethat he was in front of me.
I looked up, feeling massively tired.
He bent and kissed me on my mouth, as softly as a butterfly’s fluttering.
“You said I told you you were the best I’d ever had,” he said. “But did you respond in kind?”
“Don’t you wish you knew?” I said, and went back to work