True Blood Book Five Chapters 4-7

Chapter 4
T HE DRIVE BACK to Bon Temps was pleasant. Vampires don’t smell like humans or act like humans, but they’re sure relaxing to my brain. Being with a vampire is almost as tension-free as being alone, except, of course, for the blood-sucking possibilities.
Charles Twining asked a few questions about the work for which he’d been hired and about the bar. My driving seemed to make him a little uneasy—though possibly his unease was due to simply being in a car. Some of the pre–Industrial Revolution vamps loathe modern transportation. His eye patch was on his left eye, on my side, which gave me the curious feeling I was invisible.
I’d run him by the vampire hostel where he’d been living so he could gather a few things. He had a sports bag with him, one large enough to hold maybe three days’ worth of clothes. He’d just moved into Shreveport, he told me, and hadn’t had time to decide where he would settle.
After we’d been on our way for about forty minutes, the vampire said, “And you, Miss Sookie? Do you live with your father and mother?”
“No, they’ve been gone since I was seven,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a hand gesture inviting me to continue. “There was a whole lot of rain in a real short time one night that spring, and my dad tried to cross a little bridge that had water already over it. They got swept away.”
I glanced to my right to see that he was nodding. People died, sometimes suddenly and unexpectedly, and sometimes for very little reason. A vampire knew that better than anyone. “My brother and I grew up with my grandmother,” I said. “She died last year. My brother has my parents’ old house, and I have my grandmother’s.”
“Lucky to have a place to live,” he commented.
In profile, his hooked nose was an elegant miniature. I wondered if he cared that the human race had gotten larger, while he had stayed the same.
“Oh, yes,” I agreed. “I’m major lucky. I’ve got a job, I’ve got my brother, I’ve got a house, I’ve got friends. And I’m healthy.”
He turned to look at me full-face, I think, but I was passing a battered Ford pickup, so I couldn’t return his gaze. “That’s interesting. Forgive me, but I was under the impression from Pam that you have some kind of disability.”
“Oh, well, yeah.”
“And that would be . . .? You look very, ah, robust.”
“I’m a telepath.”
He mulled that over. “And that would mean?”
“I can read other humans’ minds.”
“But not vampires.”
“No, not vampires.”
“Very good.”
“Yes, I think so.” If I could read vampire minds, I’d have been dead long ago. Vampires value their privacy.
“Did you know Chow?” he asked.
“Yes.” It was my turn to be terse.
“And Long Shadow?”
“Yes.”
“As the newest bartender at Fangtasia, I have a definite interest in their deaths.”
Understandable, but I had no idea how to respond. “Okay,” I said cautiously.
“Were you there when Chow died again?” This was the way some vamps referred to the final death.
“Um . . . yes.”
“And Long Shadow?”
“Well . . . yes.”
“I would be interested in hearing what you had to say.”
“Chow died in what they’re calling the Witch War. Long Shadow was trying to kill me when Eric staked him because he’d been embezzling.”
“You’re sure that’s why Eric staked him? For embezzling?”
“I was there. I oughta know. End of subject.”
“I suppose your life has been complicated,” Charles said after a pause.
“Yes.”
“Where will I be spending the sunlight hours?”
“My boss has a place for you.”
“There is a lot of trouble at this bar?”
“Not until recently.” I hesitated.
“Your regular bouncer can’t handle shifters?”
“Our regular bouncer is the owner, Sam Merlotte. He is a shifter. Right now, he’s a shifter with a broken leg. He got shot. And he’s not the only one.”
This didn’t seem to astonish the vampire. “How many?”
“Three that I know of. A werepanther named Calvin Norris, who wasn’t mortally wounded, and then a shifter girl named Heather Kinman, who’s dead. She was shot at the Sonic. Do you know what Sonic is?” Vampires didn’t always pay attention to fast-food restaurants, because they didn’t eat. (Hey, how many blood banks can you locate off the top of your head?)
Charles nodded, his curly chestnut hair bouncing on his shoulders. “That’s the one where you eat in your car?”
“Yes, right,” I said. “Heather had been in a friend’s car, talking, and she got out to walk back to her car a few slots down. The shot came from across the street. She had a milkshake in her hand.” The melting chocolate ice cream had blended with blood on the pavement. I’d seen it in Andy Bellefleur’s mind. “It was late at night, and all the businesses on the other side of the street had been closed for hours. So the shooter got away.”
“All three shootings were at night?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder if that’s significant.”
“Could be; but maybe it’s just that there’s better concealment at night.”
Charles nodded.
“Since Sam got hurt, there’s been a lot of anxiety among the shifters because it’s hard to believe three shootings could be a coincidence. And regular humans are worried because in their view three people have been shot at random, people with nothing in common and few enemies. Since everyone’s tense, there are more fights in the bar.”
“I’ve never been a bouncer before,” Charles said conversationally. “I was the youngest son of a minor baronet, so I’ve had to make my own way, and I’ve done many things. I’ve worked as a bartender before, and many years ago I was shill for a whorehouse. Stood outside, trumpeted the wares of the strumpets—that’s a neat phrase, isn’t it?—threw out men who got too rough with the whores. I suppose that’s the same as being a bouncer.”
I was speechless at this unexpected confidence.
“Of course, that was after I lost my eye, but before I became a vampire,” the vampire said.
“Of course,” I echoed weakly.
“Which was while I was a pirate,” he continued. He was smiling. I checked with a sideways glance.
“What did you, um, pirate?” I didn’t know if that was a verb or not, but he got my meaning clearly.
“Oh, we’d try to catch almost anyone unawares,” he said blithely. “Off and on I lived on the coast of America, down close to New Orleans, where we’d take small cargo ships and the like. I sailed aboard a small hoy, so we couldn’t take on too large or well defended a ship. But when we caught up with some bark, then there was fighting!” He sighed—recalling the happiness of whacking at people with a sword, I guess.
“And what happened to you?” I asked politely, meaning how did he come to depart his wonderful warm-blooded life of rapine and slaughter for the vampire edition of the same thing.
“One evening, we boarded a galleon that had no living crew,” he said. I noticed that his hands had curled into fists. His voice chilled. “We had sailed to the Tortugas. It was dusk. I was first man to go down into the hold. What was in the hold got me first.”
After that little tale, we fell silent by mutual consent.
Sam was on the couch in the living room of his trailer. Sam had had the double-wide anchored so it was at a right angle to the back of the bar. That way, at least he opened his front door to a view of the parking lot, which was better than looking at the back of the bar, with its large garbage bin between the kitchen door and the employees’ entrance.
“Well, there you are,” Sam said, and his tone was grumpy. Sam was never one for sitting still. Now that his leg was in a cast, he was fretting from the inactivity. What would he do during the next full moon? Would the leg be healed enough by then for him to change? If he changed, what would happen to the cast? I’d known other injured shape-shifters before, but I hadn’t been around for their recuperation, so this was new territory for me. “I was beginning to think you’d gotten lost on the way back.” Sam’s voice returned me to the here and now. It had a distinct edge.
“ ‘Gee, thanks, Sookie, I see you returned with a bouncer,’ ” I said. “ ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through the humiliating experience of asking Eric for a favor on my behalf.’ ” At that moment, I didn’t care if he was my boss or not.
Sam looked embarrassed.
“Eric agreed, then,” he said. He nodded at the pirate.
“Charles Twining, at your service,” said the vampire.
Sam’s eyes widened. “Okay. I’m Sam Merlotte, owner of the bar. I appreciate your coming to help us out here.”
“I was ordered to do so,” the vampire said coolly.
“So the deal you struck was room, board, and favor,” Sam said to me. “I owe Eric a favor.” This was said in a tone that a kind person would describe as grudging.
“Yes.” I was mad now. “You sent me to make a deal. I checked the terms with you! That’s the deal I made. You asked Eric for a favor; now he gets a favor in return. No matter what you told yourself, that’s what it boils down to.”
Sam nodded, though he didn’t look happy. “Also, I changed my mind. I think Mr. Twining, here, should stay with you.”
“And why would you think that?”
“The closet looked a little cramped. You have a light-tight place for vampires, right?”
“You didn’t ask me if that was okay.”
“You’re refusing to do it?”
“Yes! I’m not the vampire hotel keeper!”
“But you work for me, and he works for me . . .”
“Uh-huh. And would you ask Arlene or Holly to put him up?”
Sam looked even more amazed. “Well, no, but that’s because—” He stopped then.
“Can’t think of how to finish the sentence, can you?” I snarled. “Okay, buddy, I’m out of here. I spent a whole evening putting myself in an embarrassing situation for you. And what do I get? No effing thanks!”
I stomped out of the double-wide. I didn’t slam the door because I didn’t want to be childish. Door slamming just isn’t adult. Neither is whining. Okay, maybe stomping out isn’t, either. But it was a choice between making an emphatic verbal exit or slapping Sam. Normally Sam was one of my favorite people in the world, but tonight . . . not.
I was working the early shift for the next three days—not that I was sure I had a job anymore. When I got into Merlotte’s at eleven the next morning, dashing to the employees’ door through the pouring rain in my ugly but useful rain slicker, I was nearly sure that Sam would tell me to collect my last paycheck and hit the door. But he wasn’t there. I had a moment of what I recognized as disappointment. Maybe I’d been spoiling for another fight, which was odd.
Terry Bellefleur was standing in for Sam again, and Terry was having a bad day. It wasn’t a good idea to ask him questions or even to talk to him beyond the necessary relay of orders.
Terry particularly hated rainy weather, I’d noticed, and he also didn’t like Sheriff Bud Dearborn. I didn’t know the reason for either prejudice. Today, gray sheets of rain battered at the walls and roof, and Bud Dearborn was pontificating to five of his cronies over on the smoking side. Arlene caught my eye and widened her eyes to give me a warning.
Though Terry was pale, and perspiring, he’d zipped up the light jacket he often wore over his Merlotte’s T-shirt. I noticed his hands shaking as he pulled a draft beer. I wondered if he could last until dark.
At least there weren’t many customers, if something did go wrong. Arlene drifted over to catch up with a married couple who’d come in, friends of hers. My section was almost empty, with the exception of my brother, Jason, and his friend Hoyt.
Hoyt was Jason’s sidekick. If they weren’t both definitely heterosexual, I would have recommended they marry, they complemented each other so well. Hoyt enjoyed jokes, and Jason enjoyed telling them. Hoyt was at a loss to fill his free time, and Jason was always up to something. Hoyt’s mother was a little overwhelming, and Jason was parent-
free. Hoyt was firmly anchored in the here and now, and had an iron sense of what the community would tolerate and what it would not. Jason didn’t.
I thought of what a huge secret Jason now had, and I wondered if he was tempted to share it with Hoyt.
“How you doing, Sis?” Jason asked. He held up his glass, indicating he’d like a refill on his Dr Pepper. Jason didn’t drink until after his workday was over, a large point in his favor.
“Fine, Brother. You want some more, Hoyt?” I asked.
“Please, Sookie. Ice tea,” Hoyt said.
In a second I was back with their drinks. Terry glared at me when I went behind the bar, but he didn’t speak. I can ignore a glare.
“Sook, you want to go with me to the hospital in Grainger this afternoon after you get off?” Jason asked.
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, sure.” Calvin had always been good to me.
Hoyt said, “Sure is crazy, Sam and Calvin and Heather getting shot. What do you make of it, Sookie?” Hoyt has decided I am an oracle.
“Hoyt, you know as much about it as I do,” I told him. “I think we all should be careful.” I hoped the significance of this wasn’t lost on my brother. He shrugged.
When I looked up, I saw a stranger waiting to be seated and hurried over to him. His dark hair, turned black by the rain, was pulled back in a ponytail. His face was scarred with one long thin white line that ran along one cheek. When he pulled off his jacket, I could see that he was a bodybuilder.
“Smoking or non?” I asked, with a menu already in my hand.
“Non,” he said, and followed me to a table. He carefully hung his wet jacket on the back of a chair and took the menu after he was seated. “My wife will be along in a few minutes,” he said. “She’s meeting me here.”
I put another menu at the adjacent place. “Do you want to order now or wait for her?”
“I’d like some hot tea,” he asked. “I’ll wait until she comes to order food. Kind of a limited menu here, huh?” He glanced over at Arlene and then back at me. I began to feel uneasy. I knew he wasn’t here because this place was convenient for lunch.
“That’s all we can handle,” I said, taking care to sound relaxed. “What we’ve got, it’s good.”
When I assembled the hot water and a tea bag, I put a saucer with a couple of lemon slices on the tray, too. No fairies around to offend.
“Are you Sookie Stackhouse?” he asked when I returned with his tea.
“Yes, I am.” I put the saucer gently on the table, right beside the cup. “Why do you want to know?” I already knew why, but with regular people, you had to ask.
“I’m Jack Leeds, a private investigator,” he said. He laid a business card on the table, turned so I could read it. He waited for a beat, as if he usually got a dramatic reaction to that statement. “I’ve been hired by a family in Jackson, Mississippi—the Pelt family,” he continued, when he saw I wasn’t going to speak.
My heart sank to my shoes before it began pounding at an accelerated rate. This man believed that Debbie was dead. And he thought there was a good chance I might know something about it.
He was absolutely right.
I’d shot Debbie Pelt dead a few weeks before, in self-defense. Hers was the body Eric had hidden. Hers was the bullet Eric had taken for me.
Debbie’s disappearance after leaving a “party” in Shreveport, Louisiana (in fact a life-and-death brawl between witches, vamps, and Weres), had been a nine days’ wonder. I’d hoped I’d heard the end of it.
“So the Pelts aren’t satisfied with the police investigation?” I asked. It was a stupid question, one I picked out of the air at random. I had to say something to break up the gathering silence.
“There really wasn’t an investigation,” Jack Leeds said. “The police in Jackson decided she probably vanished voluntarily.” He didn’t believe that, though.
His face changed then; it was like someone had switched on a light behind his eyes. I turned to look where he was looking, and I saw a blond woman of medium height shaking her umbrella out at the door. She had short hair and pale skin, and when she turned, I saw that she was very pretty; at least, she would have been if she had been more animated.
But that wasn’t a factor to Jack Leeds. He was looking at the woman he loved, and when she saw him, the same light switched on behind her eyes, too. She came across the floor
to his table as smoothly as if she were dancing, and when she shed her own wet jacket, I saw her arms were as muscular as his. They didn’t kiss, but his hand slid over hers and squeezed just briefly. After she’d taken her chair and asked for some diet Coke, her eyes went to the menu. She was thinking that all the food Merlotte’s offered was unhealthy. She was right.
“Salad?” Jack Leeds asked.
“I have to have something hot,” she said. “Chili?”
“Okay. Two chilis,” he told me. “Lily, this is Sookie Stackhouse. Ms. Stackhouse, this is Lily Bard Leeds.”
“Hello,” she said. “I’ve just been out to your house.”
Her eyes were light blue, and she had a stare like a laser. “You saw Debbie Pelt the night she disappeared.” Her mind added, You’re the one she hated so much.
They didn’t know Debbie Pelt’s true nature, and I was relieved that the Pelts hadn’t been able to find a Were investigator. They wouldn’t out their daughter to regular detectives. The longer the two-natured could keep the fact of their existence a secret, the better, as far as they were concerned.
“Yes,” I said. “I saw her that night.”
“Can we come talk to you about that? After you get off work?”
“I have to go see a friend in the hospital after work,” I said.
“Sick?” Jack Leeds asked.
“Shot,” I said.
Their interest quickened. “By someone local?” the blond woman asked.
Then I saw how it might all work. “By a sniper,” I said. “Someone’s been shooting people at random in this area.”
“Have any of them vanished?” Jack Leeds asked.
“No,” I admitted. “They’ve all been left lying. Of course, there were witnesses to all of the shootings. Maybe that’s why.” I hadn’t heard of anyone actually seeing Calvin get shot, but someone had come along right afterward and called 911.
Lily Leeds asked me if they could talk to me the next day before I went to work. I gave them directions to my house and told them to come at ten. I didn’t think talking to them was a very good idea, but I didn’t think I had much of a choice, either. I would become more of an object of suspicion if I refused to talk about Debbie.
I found myself wishing I could call Eric tonight and tell him about Jack and Lily Leeds; worries shared are worries halved. But Eric didn’t remember any of it. I wished that I could forget Debbie’s death, too. It was awful to know something so heavy and terrible, to be unable to share it with a soul.
I knew so many secrets, but almost none of them were my own. This secret of mine was a dark and bloody burden.
Charles Twining was due to relieve Terry at full dark. Arlene was working late, since Danielle was attending her daughter’s dance recital, and I was able to lighten my mood a little by briefing Arlene on the new bartender/bouncer. She was intrigued. We’d never had an Englishman visit the bar, much less an Englishman with an eye patch.
“Tell Charles I said hi,” I called as I began to put on my rain gear. After a couple of hours of sprinkling, the drops were beginning to come faster again.
I splashed out to my car, the hood pulled well forward over my face. Just as I unlocked the driver’s door and pulled it open, I heard a voice call my name. Sam was standing on crutches in the door of his trailer. He’d added a roofed porch a couple of years before, so he wasn’t getting wet, but he didn’t need to be standing there, either. Slamming the car door shut, I leaped over puddles and across the stepping-stones. In a second or two, I was standing on his porch and dripping all over it.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I stared at him. “You should be,” I said gruffly.
“Well, I am.”
“Okay. Good.” I resolutely didn’t ask him what he’d done with the vampire.
“Anything happen over at the bar today?”
I hesitated. “Well, the crowd was thin, to put it mildly. But . . .” I started to tell him about the private detectives, but then I knew he’d ask questions. And I might end up telling him the whole sorry story just for the relief of confessing to someone. “I have to go, Sam. Jason’s taking me to visit Calvin Norris in the hospital in Grainger.”
He looked at me. His eyes narrowed. The lashes were the same red-gold as his hair, so they showed up only when you were close to him. And I had no business at all thinking about Sam’s eyelashes, or any other part of him, for that matter.
“I was a shit yesterday,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you why.”
“Well, I guess you do,” I said, bewildered. “Because I sure don’t understand.”
“The point is, you know you can count on me.”
To get mad at me for no reason? To apologize afterward? “You’ve really confused me a lot lately,” I said. “But you’ve been my friend for years, and I have a very high opinion of you.” That sounded way too stilted, so I tried smiling. He smiled back, and a drop of rain fell off my hood and splashed on my nose, and the moment was over. I said, “When do you think you’ll get back to the bar?”
“I’ll try to come in tomorrow for a while,” he said. “At least I can sit in the office and work on the books, get some filing done.”
“See you.”
“Sure.”
And I dashed back to my car, feeling that my heart was much lighter than it had been before. Being at odds with Sam had felt wrong. I didn’t realize how that wrongness had colored my thoughts until I was right with him again.
Chapter 5
THE RAIN PELTED down as we pulled in to the parking lot of the Grainger hospital. It was as small as the one in Clarice, the one most Renard Parish people were carried to. But the Grainger hospital was newer and had more of the diagnostic machines modern hospitals seemed to require.
I’d changed into jeans and a sweater, but I’d resumed wearing my lined slicker. As Jason and I hurried to the sliding glass doors, I was patting myself on the back for wearing boots. Weather-wise, the evening was proving as nasty as the morning had been.
The hospital was roiling with shifters. I could feel their anger as soon as I was inside. Two of the werepanthers from Hotshot were in the lobby; I figured they were acting as guards. Jason went to them and took their hands firmly. Maybe he exchanged some kind of secret shake or something; I don’t know. At least they didn’t rub against one another’s legs. They didn’t seem quite as happy to see Jason as he was to see them, and I noticed that Jason stepped back from them with a little frown between his eyes. The two looked at me intently. The man was of medium height and stocky, and he had thick brownish-blond hair. His eyes were full of curiosity.
“Sook, this is Dixon Mayhew,” Jason said. “And this is Dixie Mayhew, his twin sister.” Dixie wore her hair, the same color as her brother’s, almost as short as Dixon’s, but she had dark, almost black, eyes. The twins were certainly not identical.
“Has it been quiet here?” I asked carefully.
“No problems so far,” Dixie said, keeping her voice low. Dixon’s gaze was fixed on Jason. “How’s your boss?”
“He’s in a cast, but he’ll heal.”
“Calvin was shot bad.” Dixie eyed me for a minute. “He’s up in 214.”
Having been given the seal of approval, Jason and I went to the stairs. The twins watched us all the way. We passed the hospital auxiliary “pink lady” on duty at the visitors’ desk. I felt kind of worried about her: white-haired, heavy glasses, sweet face with a full complement of wrinkles. I hoped nothing would happen during her watch to upset her worldview.
It was easy to pick which room was Calvin’s. A slab of muscle was leaning against the wall outside, a barrel-shaped man I’d never seen. He was a werewolf. Werewolves make good bodyguards, according to the common wisdom of the two-natured, because they are ruthless and tenacious. From what I’ve seen, that’s just the bad-boy image Weres have. But it’s true that as a rule, they’re the roughest element of the two-natured community. You won’t find too many Were doctors, for example, but you will find a lot of Weres in construction work. Jobs relating to motorcycles are heavily dominated by Weres, too. Some of those gangs do more than drink beer on the full-moon nights.
Seeing a Were disturbed me. I was surprised the panthers of Hotshot had brought in an outsider. Jason murmured, “That’s Dawson. He owns the small engine repair shop between Hotshot and Grainger.”
Dawson was on the alert as we came down the hall.
“Jason Stackhouse,” he said, identifying my brother after a minute. Dawson was wearing a denim shirt and jeans, but his biceps were about to burst through the material. His black leather boots were battle scarred.
“We’ve come to see how Calvin is doing,” Jason said. “This here’s my sister, Sookie.”
“Ma’am,” Dawson rumbled. He eyeballed me slowly, and there wasn’t anything lascivious about it. I was glad I’d left my purse in the locked truck. He would’ve gone through it, I was sure. “You want to take off that coat and turn around for me?”
I didn’t take offense; Dawson was doing his job. I didn’t want Calvin to get hurt again, either. I took off my slicker, handed it to Jason, and rotated. A nurse who’d been entering something in a chart watched this procedure with open curiosity. I held Jason’s jacket as he took his turn. Satisfied, Dawson knocked on the door. Though I didn’t hear a response, he must have, because he opened the door and said, “The Stackhouses.”
Just a whisper of a voice came from the room. Dawson nodded.
“Miss Stackhouse, you can go in,” he said. Jason started to follow me, but Dawson put a massive arm in front of him. “Only your sister,” he said.
Jason and I began to protest at the same moment, but then Jason shrugged. “Go ahead, Sook,” he said. There was obviously no budging Dawson, and there was no point to upsetting a wounded man, for that matter. I pushed the heavy door wide open.
Calvin was by himself, though there was another bed in the room. The panther leader looked awful. He was pale and drawn. His hair was dirty, though his cheeks above his trim
beard had been shaved. He was wearing a hospital gown, and he was hooked up to lots of things.
“I’m so sorry,” I blurted. I was horrified. Though many brains had indicated as much, I could see that if Calvin hadn’t been two-natured, the wound would have killed him instantly. Whoever had shot him had wanted his death.
Calvin turned his head to me, slowly and with effort. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said dryly, his voice a thread. “They’re going to take me off some of this stuff tomorrow.”
“Where were you hit?” I asked.
Calvin moved one hand to touch his upper left chest. His golden brown eyes captured mine. I went closer to him and covered his hand with mine. “I’m so sorry,” I said again. His fingers curled under mine until he was holding my hand.
“There’ve been others,” he said in a whisper of a voice.
“Yes.”
“Your boss.”
I nodded.
“That poor girl.”
I nodded again.
“Whoever’s doing this, they’ve got to be stopped.”
“Yes.”
“It’s got to be someone who hates shifters. The police will never find out who’s doing this. We can’t tell them what to look for.”
Well, that was part of the problem of keeping your condition a secret. “It’ll be harder for them to find the person,” I conceded. “But maybe they will.”
“Some of my people wonder if the shooter is someone who’s a shifter,” Calvin said. His fingers tightened around mine. “Someone who didn’t want to become a shifter in the first place. Someone who was bitten.”
It took a second for the light to click on in my head. I am such an idiot.
“Oh, no, Calvin, no, no,” I said, my words stumbling over each other in my haste. “Oh, Calvin, please don’t let them go after Jason. Please, he’s all I’ve got.” Tears began to run down my cheeks as if someone had turned on a faucet in my head. “He was telling me how much he enjoyed being one of you, even if he couldn’t be exactly like a born panther. He’s so new, he hasn’t had time to figure out who all else is two-natured. I don’t think he even realized Sam and Heather were. . . .”
“No one’s gonna take him out until we know the truth,” Calvin said. “Though I might be in this bed, I’m still the leader.” But I could tell he’d had to argue against it, and I also knew (from hearing it right out of Calvin’s brain) that some of the panthers were still in favor of executing Jason. Calvin couldn’t prevent that. He might be angry afterward, but if Jason were dead, that wouldn’t make one little bit of difference. Calvin’s fingers released mine, and his hand rose with an effort to wipe the tears off my cheek.
“You’re a sweet woman,” he said. “I wish you could love me.”
“I wish I could, too,” I said. So many of my problems would be solved if I loved Calvin Norris. I’d move out to Hotshot, become a member of the secretive little community. Two or three nights a month, I’d have to be sure to stay inside, but other than that, I’d be safe. Not only would Calvin defend me to the death, but so would the other members of the Hotshot clan.
But the thought of it just made me shudder. The windswept open fields, the powerful and ancient crossroads around which the little houses clustered . . . I didn’t think I could handle the perpetual isolation from the rest of the world. My Gran would have urged me to accept Calvin’s offer. He was a steady man, was a shift leader at Norcross, a job that came with good benefits. You might think that’s laughable, but wait until you have to pay for your insurance all by yourself; then laugh.
It occurred to me (as it should have right away) that Calvin was in a perfect position to force my compliance—Jason’s life for my companionship—and he hadn’t taken advantage of it.
I leaned over and gave Calvin a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll pray for your recovery,” I said. “Thank you for giving Jason a chance.” Maybe Calvin’s nobility was partly due to the fact that he was in no shape to take advantage of me, but it was nobility, and I noted and appreciated it. “You’re a good man,” I said, and touched his face. The hair of his neat beard felt soft.
His eyes were steady as he said good-bye. “Watch out for that brother of yours, Sookie,” he said. “Oh, and tell Dawson I don’t want no more company tonight.”
“He won’t take my word for it,” I said.
Calvin managed to smile. “Wouldn’t be much of a bodyguard if he did, I guess.”
I relayed the message to the Were. But sure enough, as Jason and I walked back to the stairs, Dawson was going into the room to check with Calvin.
I debated for a couple of minutes before I decided it would be better if Jason knew what he was up against. In the truck, as he drove home, I relayed my conversation with Calvin to my brother.
He was horrified that his new buddies in the werepanther world could believe such a thing of him. “If I’d thought of that before I changed for the first time, I can’t say it wouldn’t have been tempting,” Jason said as we drove back to Bon Temps through the rain. “I was mad. Not just mad, furious. But now that I’ve changed, I see it different.” He went on and on while my thoughts ran around inside my head in a circle, trying to think of a way out of this mess.
The sniping case had to be solved by the next full moon. If it wasn’t, the others might tear Jason up when they changed. Maybe he could just roam the woods around his house when he turned into his panther-man form, or maybe he could hunt the woods around my place—but he wouldn’t be safe out at Hotshot. And they might come looking for him. I couldn’t defend him against them all.
By the next full moon, the shooter had to be in custody.
Until I was washing my few dishes that night, it didn’t strike me as odd that though Jason was being accused by the werepanther community of being an assassin, I was the one who’d actually shot a shifter. I’d been thinking of the private detectives’ appointment to meet me here the next morning. And, as I found myself doing out of habit, I’d been scanning the kitchen for signs of the death of Debbie Pelt. From watching the Discovery Channel and the Learning Channel, I knew that there was no way I could completely eradicate the traces of blood and tissue that had spattered my kitchen, but I’d scrubbed and cleaned over and over. I was certain that no casual glance—in fact, no careful inspection by the naked eye—could reveal anything amiss in this room.
I had done the only thing I could, short of standing there to be murdered. Was that what Jesus had meant by turning the other cheek? I hoped not, because every instinct in me had urged me to defend myself, and the means at hand had been a shotgun.
Of course, I should immediately have reported it. But by then, Eric’s wound had healed, the one made when Debbie’d hit him while trying to shoot me. Aside from the testimony
of a vampire and myself, there was no proof that she’d fired first, and Debbie’s body would have been a powerful statement of our guilt. My first instinct had been to cover up her visit to my house. Eric hadn’t given me any other advice, which also might have changed things.
No, I wasn’t blaming my predicament on Eric. He hadn’t even been in his right mind at the time. It was my own fault that I hadn’t sat down to think things through. There would have been gunshot residue on Debbie’s hand. Her gun had been fired. Some of Eric’s dried blood would have been on the floor. She’d broken in through my front door, and the door had shown clear signs of her trespass. Her car was hidden across the road, and only her fingerprints would’ve been in it.
I’d panicked, and blown it.
I just had to live with that.
But I was very sorry about the uncertainty her family was suffering. I owed them certainty—which I couldn’t deliver.
I wrung out the washcloth and hung it neatly over the sink divider. I dried off my hands and folded the dish towel. Okay, now I’d gotten my guilt straight. That was so much better! Not. Angry with myself, I stomped out to the living room and turned on the television: another mistake. There was a story about Heather’s funeral; a news crew from Shreveport had come to cover the modest service this afternoon. Just think of the sensation it would cause if the media realized how the sniper was selecting his victims. The news anchor, a solemn African-American man, was saying that police in Renard Parish had discovered other clusters of apparently random shootings in small towns in Tennessee and Mississippi. I was startled. A serial shooter, here?
The phone rang. “Hello,” I said, not expecting anything good.
“Sookie, hi, it’s Alcide.”
I found myself smiling. Alcide Herveaux, who worked in his father’s surveying business in Shreveport, was one of my favorite people. He was a Were, he was both sexy and hardworking, and I liked him very much. He’d also been Debbie Pelt’s fiancé. But Alcide had abjured her before she vanished, in a rite that made her invisible and inaudible to him—not literally, but in effect.
“Sookie, I’m at Merlotte’s. I’d thought you might be working tonight, so I drove over. Can I come to the house? I need to talk to you.”
“You know you’re in danger, coming to Bon Temps.”
“No, why?”
“Because of the sniper.” I could hear the bar sounds in the background. There was no mistaking Arlene’s laugh. I was betting the new bartender was charming one and all.
“Why would I worry about that?” Alcide hadn’t been thinking about the news too hard, I decided.
“All the people who got shot? They were two-natured,” I said. “Now they’re saying on the news there’ve been a lot more across the south. Random shootings in small towns. Bullets that match the one recovered from Heather Kinman here. And I’m betting all the other victims were shape-shifters, too.”
There was a thoughtful silence on the end of the line, if silence can be characterized.
“I hadn’t realized,” Alcide said. His deep, rumbly voice was even more deliberate than normal.
“Oh, and have you talked to the private detectives?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“If they see us talking together, it’ll look very suspicious to Debbie’s family.”
“Debbie’s family has hired private eyes to look for her?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Listen, I’m coming to your house.” He hung up the phone.
I didn’t know why on earth the detectives would be watching my house, or where they’d watch it from, but if they saw Debbie’s former fiancé tootling down my driveway, it would be easy to connect the dots and come up with a totally erroneous picture. They’d think Alcide killed Debbie to clear the way for me, and nothing could be more wrong. I hoped like hell that Jack Leeds and Lily Bard Leeds were sound asleep rather than staked out in the woods somewhere with a pair of binoculars.
Alcide hugged me. He always did. And once again I was overwhelmed by the size of him, the masculinity, the familiar smell. Despite the warning bell ringing in my head, I hugged him back.
We sat on the couch and half turned to face each other. Alcide was wearing work clothes, which in this weather consisted of a flannel shirt worn open over a T-shirt, heavy jeans, and thick socks under his work boots. His tangle of black hair had a crease in it from his hard hat, and he was beginning to look a little bristly.
“Tell me about the detectives,” he said, and I described the couple and told him what they’d said.
“Debbie’s family didn’t say anything to me about it,” Alcide said. He turned it over in his head for a minute. I could follow his thinking. “I think that means they’re sure I made her vanish.”
“Maybe not. Maybe they just think you’re so grieved they don’t want to bring it up.”
“Grieved.” Alcide mulled that over for a minute. “No. I spent all the . . .” He paused, grappling for words. “I used up all the energy I had to spare for her,” he said finally. “I was so blind, I almost think she used some kind of magic on me. Her mother’s a spellcaster and half shifter. Her dad’s a full-blooded shifter.”
“You think that’s possible? Magic?” I wasn’t questioning that magic existed, but that Debbie had used it.
“Why else would I stick with her for so long? Ever since she’s gone missing, it’s been like someone took a pair of dark glasses off my eyes. I was willing to forgive her so much, like when she pushed you into the trunk.”
Debbie had taken an opportunity to push me in a car trunk with my vampire boyfriend, Bill, who’d been starved for blood for days. And she’d walked off and left me in the trunk with Bill, who was about to awake.
I looked down at my feet, pushing away the recollection of the desperation, the pain.
“She let you get raped,” Alcide said harshly.
Him saying it like that, flat out, shocked me. “Hey, Bill didn’t know it was me,” I said. “He hadn’t had anything to eat for days and days, and the impulses are so closely related. I mean, he stopped, you know? He stopped, when he knew it was me.” I couldn’t put it like that to myself; I couldn’t say that word. I knew beyond a doubt that Bill would rather have chewed off his own hand than done that to me if he’d been in his right mind. At that time, he’d been the only sex partner I’d ever had. My feelings about the incident were so confused that I couldn’t even bear to try to pick through them. When I’d thought of rape
before, when other girls had told me what had happened to them or I’d read it in their brains, I hadn’t had the ambiguity I felt over my own short, awful time in the trunk.
“He did something you didn’t want him to do,” Alcide said simply.
“He wasn’t himself,” I said.
“But he did it.”
“Yes, he did, and I was awful scared.” My voice began to shake. “But he came to his senses, and he stopped, and I was okay, and he was really, really sorry. He’s never laid a finger on me since then, never asked me if we could have sex, never . . .” My voice trailed off. I stared down at my hands. “Yes, Debbie was responsible for that.” Somehow, saying that out loud made me feel better. “She knew what would happen, or at least she didn’t care what would happen.”
“And even then,” Alcide said, returning to his main point, “she kept coming back and I kept trying to rationalize her behavior. I can’t believe I would do that if I wasn’t under some kind of magical influence.”
I wasn’t about to try to make Alcide feel guiltier. I had my own load of guilt to carry. “Hey, it’s over.”
“You sound sure.”
I looked Alcide directly in the eyes. His were narrow and green. “Do you think there’s the slightest chance that Debbie’s alive?” I asked.
“Her family . . .” Alcide stopped. “No, I don’t.”
I couldn’t get rid of Debbie Pelt, dead or alive.
“Why’d you need to talk to me in the first place?” I asked. “You said over the phone you needed to tell me something.”
“Colonel Flood died yesterday.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry! What happened?”
“He was driving to the store when another driver hit him broadside.”
“That’s awful. Was anyone in the car with him?”
“No, he was by himself. His kids are coming back to Shreveport for the funeral, of course. I wondered if you’d come to the funeral with me.”
“Of course. It’s not private?”
“No. He knew so many people still stationed at the Air Force base, and he was head of his Neighborhood Watch group and the treasurer of his church, and of course he was the packmaster.”
“He had a big life,” I said. “Lots of responsibility.”
“It’s tomorrow at one. What’s your work schedule?”
“If I can swap shifts with someone, I’d need to be back here at four thirty to change and go to work.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Who’ll be packmaster now?”
“I don’t know,” Alcide said, but his voice wasn’t as neutral as I’d expected.
“Do you want the job?”
“No.” He seemed a little hesitant, I thought, and I felt the conflict in his head. “But my father does.” He wasn’t finished. I waited.
“Were funerals are pretty ceremonial,” he said, and I realized he was trying to tell me something. I just wasn’t sure what it was.
“Spit it out.” Straightforward is always good, as far as I’m concerned.
“If you think you can overdress for this, you can’t,” he said. “I know the rest of the shifter world thinks Weres only go for leather and chains, but that’s not true. For funerals, we go all out.” He wanted to give me even more fashion tips, but he stopped there. I could see the thoughts crowding right behind his eyes, wanting to be let out.
“Every woman wants to know what’s appropriate to wear,” I said. “Thanks. I won’t wear pants.”
He shook his head. “I know you can do that, but I’m always taken by surprise.” I could hear that he was disconcerted. “I’ll pick you up at eleven thirty,” he said.
“Let me see about swapping shifts.”
I called Holly and found it suited her to switch shifts with me. “I can just drive over there and meet you,” I offered.
“No,” he said. “I’ll come get you and bring you back.”
Okay, if he wanted to go to the trouble of fetching me, I could live with it. I’d save mileage on my car, I figured. My old Nova was none too reliable.
“All right. I’ll be ready.”
“I better go,” he said. The silence drew out. I knew Alcide was thinking of kissing me. He leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips. We regarded each other from a few inches apart.
“Well, I have some things I need to be doing, and you should be going back to Shreveport. I’ll be ready at eleven thirty tomorrow.”
After Alcide left, I got my library book, Carolyn Haines’s latest, and tried to forget my worries. But for once, a book just couldn’t do the trick. I tried a hot soak in the bathtub, and I shaved my legs until they were perfectly smooth. I painted my toenails and fingernails a deep pink and then I plucked my eyebrows. Finally, I felt relaxed, and when I crawled into my bed I had achieved peace through pampering. Sleep came upon me in such a rush that I didn’t finish my prayers.
Chapter 6
YOU HAVE TO figure out what to wear to a funeral, just like any other social occasion, even if it seems your clothes should be the last thing on your mind. I had liked and admired Colonel Flood during our brief acquaintance, so I wanted to look appropriate at his burial service, especially after Alcide’s comments.
I just couldn’t find anything in my closet that seemed right. About eight the next morning, I phoned Tara, who told me where her emergency key was. “Get whatever you need out of my closet,” Tara said. “Just be sure you don’t go into any other rooms, okay? Go straight from the back door to my room and back out again.”
“That’s what I’d be doing anyway,” I said, trying not to sound offended. Did Tara think I’d rummage around her house just to pry?
“Of course you would, but I just feel responsible.”
Suddenly, I understood that Tara was telling me that there was a vampire sleeping in her house. Maybe it was the bodyguard Mickey, maybe Franklin Mott. After Eric’s warning, I wanted to stay far away from Mickey. Only the very oldest vampires could rise before dark, but coming across a sleeping vampire would give me a nasty start in and of itself.
“Okay, I get you,” I said hastily. The idea of being alone with Mickey made me shiver, and not with happy anticipation. “Straight in, straight out.” Since I didn’t have any time to waste, I jumped in my car and drove into town to Tara’s little house. It was a modest place in a modest part of town, but Tara’s owning her own home was a miracle, when I recalled the place where she’d grown up.
Some people should never breed; if their children have the misfortune to be born, those children should be taken away immediately. That’s not allowed in our country, or any country that I know of, and I’m sure in my brainier moments that’s a good thing. But the Thorntons, both alcoholics, had been vicious people who should have died years earlier than they did. (I forget my religion when I think of them.) I remember Myrna Thornton tearing my grandmother’s house up looking for Tara, ignoring my grandmother’s protests, until Gran had to call the sheriff’s department to come drag Myrna out. Tara had run out our back door to hide in the woods behind our house when she had seen the set of her mother’s shoulders as Mrs. Thornton staggered to our door, thank God. Tara and I had been thirteen at the time.
I can still see the look on my grandmother’s face while she talked to the deputy who’d just put Myrna Thornton in the back of the patrol car, handcuffed and screaming.
“Too bad I can’t drop her off in the bayou on the way back to town,” the deputy had said. I couldn’t recall his name, but his words had impressed me. It had taken me a minute to be sure what he meant, but once I was, I realized that other people knew what Tara and her siblings were going through. These other people were all-powerful adults. If they knew, why didn’t they solve the problem?
I sort of understood now that it hadn’t been so simple; but I still thought the Thornton kids could have been spared a few years of their misery.
At least Tara had this neat little house with all-new appliances, and a closet full of clothes, and a rich boyfriend. I had an uneasy feeling that I didn’t know everything that was happening in Tara’s life, but on the surface of it, she was still way ahead of the predictions.
As she’d directed, I went through the spanky-clean kitchen, turned right, and crossed a corner of the living room to pass through the doorway to Tara’s bedroom. Tara hadn’t had a chance to make her bed that morning. I pulled the sheets straight in a flash and made it look nice. (I couldn’t help it.) I couldn’t decide if that was a favour to her or not, since now she’d know I minded it not being made, but for the life of me I couldn’t mess it up again.
I opened her walk-in closet. I spotted exactly what I needed right away. Hanging in the middle of the rear rack was a knit suit. The jacket was black with creamy pink facings on the lapels, meant to be worn over the matching pink shell on the hanger beneath it. The black skirt was pleated. Tara had had it hemmed up; the alteration tag was still on the plastic bag covering the garment. I held the skirt up to me and looked in Tara’s full-length mirror. Tara was two or three inches taller than I, so the skirt fell just an inch above my knees, a fine length for a funeral. The sleeves of the jacket were a little long, but that wasn’t so obvious. I had some black pumps and a purse, and even some black gloves that I’d tried to save for nice.
Mission accomplished, in record time.
I slid the jacket and shell into the plastic bag with the skirt and walked straight out of the house. I’d been in Tara’s place less than ten minutes. In a hurry, because of my ten o’clock appointment, I began getting ready. I French braided my hair and rolled the remaining tail under, securing everything with some antique hairpins my grandmother had stashed away; they’d been her grandmother’s. I had some black hose, fortunately, and a black slip, and the pink of my fingernails at least coordinated with the pink of the jacket and shell.
When I heard a knock on the front door at ten, I was ready except for my shoes. I stepped into my pumps on the way to the door.
Jack Leeds looked openly astonished at my transformation, while Lily’s eyebrows twitched.
“Please come in,” I said. “I’m dressed for a funeral.”
“I hope you’re not burying a friend,” Jack Leeds said. His companion’s face might have been sculpted from marble. Had the woman never heard of a tanning bed?
“Not a close one. Won’t you sit down? Can I get you anything? Coffee?”
“No, thank you,” he said, his smile transforming his face.
The detectives sat on the couch while I perched on the edge of the La-Z-Boy. Somehow, my unaccustomed finery made me feel braver.
“About the evening Ms. Pelt vanished,” Leeds began. “You saw her in Shreveport?”
“Yes, I was invited to the same party she was. At Pam’s place.” All of us who’d lived through the Witch War—Pam, Eric, Clancy, the three Wiccans, and the Weres who had survived—had agreed on our story: Instead of telling the police that Debbie had left from the dilapidated and abandoned store where the witches had established their hideout, we’d said that we’d stayed the whole evening at Pam’s house, and Debbie had left in her car from that address. The neighbours might have testified that everyone had left earlier en masse if the Wiccans hadn’t done a little magic to haze their memories of the evening.
“Colonel Flood was there,” I said. “Actually, it’s his funeral I’m going to.”
Lily looked inquiring, which was probably the equivalent of someone else exclaiming, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding!”
“Colonel Flood died in a car accident two days ago,” I told them.
They glanced at each other. “So, were there quite a few people at this party?” Jack Leeds said. I was sure he had a complete list of the people who’d been sitting in Pam’s living room for what had been essentially a war council.
“Oh, yes. Quite a few. I didn’t know them all. Shreveport people.” I’d met the three Wiccans that evening for the first time. I’d known the werewolves slightly. The vampires, I’d known.
“But you’d met Debbie Pelt before?”
“Yes.”
“When you were dating Alcide Herveaux?”
Well. They’d certainly done their homework.
“Yes,” I said. “When I was dating Alcide.” My face was as smooth and impassive as Lily’s. I’d had lots of practice in keeping secrets.
“You stayed with him once at the Herveaux apartment in Jackson?”
I started to blurt out that we’d stayed in separate bedrooms, but it really wasn’t their business. “Yes,” I said with a certain edge to my voice.
“You two ran into Ms. Pelt one night in Jackson at a club called Josephine’s?”
“Yes, she was celebrating her engagement to some guy named Clausen,” I said.
“Did something happen between you that night?”
“Yes.” I wondered whom they’d been talking to; someone had given the detectives a lot of information that they shouldn’t have. “She came over to the table, made a few remarks to us.”
“And you also went to see Alcide at the Herveaux office a few weeks ago? You two were at a crime scene that afternoon?”
They’d done way too much homework. “Yes,” I said.
“And you told the officers at that crime scene that you and Alcide Herveaux were engaged?”
Lies will come back to bite you in the butt. “I think it was Alcide who said that,” I said, trying to look thoughtful.
“And was his statement true?”
Jack Leeds was thinking that I was the most erratic woman he’d ever met, and he couldn’t understand how someone who could get engaged and unengaged so adeptly could be the sensible hardworking waitress he’d seen the day before.
She was thinking my house was very clean. (Strange, huh?) She also thought I was quite capable of killing Debbie Pelt, because she’d found people were capable of the most horrible things. She and I shared more than she’d ever know. I had the same sad knowledge, since I’d heard it directly from their brains.
“Yes,” I said. “At the time, it was true. We were engaged for, like, ten minutes. Just call me Britney.” I hated lying. I almost always knew when someone else was lying, so I felt I had LIAR printed in big letters on my forehead.
Jack Leeds’s mouth quirked, but my reference to the pop singer’s fifty-five-hour marriage didn’t make a dent in Lily Bard Leeds.
“Ms. Pelt object to your seeing Alcide?”
“Oh, yes.” I was glad I’d had years of practice of hiding my feelings. “But Alcide didn’t want to marry her.”
“Was she angry with you?”
“Yes,” I said, since undoubtedly they knew the truth of that. “Yes, you could say that. She called me some names. You’ve probably heard that Debbie didn’t believe in hiding her emotions.”
“So when did you last see her?”
“I last saw her . . .” (with half her head gone, sprawled on my kitchen floor, her legs tangled up in the legs of a chair) “Let me think. . . . As she left the party that night. She walked off into the dark by herself.” Not from Pam’s, but from another location altogether; one full of dead bodies, with blood splashed on the walls. “I just assumed she was starting back to Jackson.” I shrugged.
“She didn’t come by Bon Temps? It’s right off the interstate on her return route.”
“I can’t imagine why she would. She didn’t knock on my door.” She’d broken in.
“You didn’t see her after the party?”
“I have not seen her since that night.” Now, that was the absolute truth.
“You’ve seen Mr. Herveaux?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Are you engaged now?”
I smiled. “Not that I know of,” I said.
I wasn’t surprised when the woman asked if she could use my bathroom. I’d let down my guard to find out how suspicious the detectives were, so I knew she wanted to have a
more extensive look at my house. I showed her to the bathroom in the hall, not the one in my bedroom; not that she’d find anything suspicious in either of them.
“What about her car?” Jack Leeds asked me suddenly. I’d been trying to steal a glimpse of the clock on the mantel over the fireplace, because I wanted to be sure the duo were gone before Alcide picked me up for the funeral.
“Hmm?” I’d lost track of the conversation.
“Debbie Pelt’s car.”
“What about it?”
“Do you have any idea where it is?”
“Not an idea in the world,” I said with complete honesty.
As Lily came back into the living room, he asked, “Ms. Stackhouse, just out of curiosity, what do you think happened to Debbie Pelt?”
I thought, I think she got what was coming to her. I was a little shocked at myself. Sometimes I’m not a very nice person, and I don’t seem to be getting any nicer. “I don’t know, Mr. Leeds,” I said. “I guess I have to tell you that except for her family’s worry, I don’t really care. We didn’t like each other. She burned a hole in my shawl, she called me a whore, and she was awful to Alcide; though since he’s a grown-up, that’s his problem. She liked to jerk people around. She liked to make them dance to her tune.” Jack Leeds was looking a little dazed at this flow of information. “So,” I concluded, “that’s the way I feel.”
“Thanks for your honesty,” he said, while his wife fixed me with her pale blue eyes. If I’d had any doubt, I understood clearly now that she was the more formidable of the two. Considering the depth of the investigation Jack Leeds had performed, that was saying something.
“Your collar is crooked,” she said quietly. “Let me fix it.” I held still while her deft fingers reached behind me and twitched the jacket until the collar lay down correctly.
They left after that. After I watched their car go down the driveway, I took my jacket off and examined it very carefully. Though I hadn’t picked up any such intention from her brain, maybe she’d put a bug on me? The Leeds might be more suspicious than they’d sounded. No, I discovered: she really was the neat freak she’d seemed, and she really had been unable to withstand my turned-up collar. As long as I was being suspicious, I inspected the hall bathroom. I hadn’t been in it since the last time I’d cleaned it a week
ago, so it looked quite straight and as fresh and as sparkly as a very old bathroom in a very old house can look. The sink was damp, and the towel had been used and refolded, but that was all. Nothing extra was there, and nothing was missing, and if the detective had opened the bathroom cabinet to check its contents, I just didn’t care.
My heel caught on a hole where the flooring had worn through. For about the hundredth time, I wondered if I could teach myself how to lay linoleum, because the floor could sure use a new layer. I also wondered how I could conceal the fact that I’d killed a woman in one minute, and worry about the cracked linoleum in the bathroom the next.
“She was bad,” I said out loud. “She was mean and bad, and she wanted me to die for no very good reason at all.”
That was how I could do it. I’d been living in a shell of guilt, but it had just cracked and fallen apart. I was tired of being all angst-y over someone who would have killed me in a New York minute, someone who’d tried her best to cause my death. I would never have lain in wait to ambush Debbie, but I hadn’t been prepared to let her kill me just because it suited her to have me dead.
To hell with the whole subject. They’d find her, or they wouldn’t. No point in worrying about it either way.
Suddenly, I felt a lot better.
I heard a vehicle coming through the woods. Alcide was right on time. I expected to see his Dodge Ram, but to my surprise he was in a dark blue Lincoln. His hair was as smooth as it could be, which wasn’t very, and he was wearing a sober charcoal gray suit and a burgundy tie. I gaped at him through the window as he came up the stepping-stones to the front porch. He looked good enough to eat, and I tried not to giggle like an idiot at the mental image.
When I opened the door, he seemed equally stunned. “You look wonderful,” he said after a long stare.
“You, too,” I said, feeling almost shy.
“I guess we need to get going.”
“Sure, if we want to be there on time.”
“We need to be there ten minutes early,” he said.
“Why that, exactly?” I picked up my black clutch purse, glanced in the mirror to make sure my lipstick was still fresh, and locked the front door behind me. Fortunately, the day was just warm enough for me to leave my coat at home. I didn’t want to cover up my outfit.
“This is a Were funeral,” he said in a tone of significance.
“That’s different from a regular funeral how?”
“It’s a packmaster’s funeral, and that makes it more . . . formal.”
Okay, he’d told me that the day before. “How do you keep regular people from realizing?”
“You’ll see.”
I felt misgivings about the whole thing. “Are you sure I should be going to this?”
“He made you a friend of the pack.”
I remembered that, though at the time I hadn’t realized it was a title, the way Alcide made it sound now: Friend of the Pack.
I had an uneasy feeling that there was a lot more to know about Colonel Flood’s funeral ceremony. Usually I had more information than I could handle about any given subject, since I could read minds; but there weren’t any Weres in Bon Temps, and the other shifters weren’t organized like the wolves were. Though Alcide’s mind was hard to read, I could tell he was preoccupied with what was going to happen in the church, and I could tell he was worried about a Were named Patrick.
The service was being held at Grace Episcopal, a church in an older, affluent suburb of Shreveport. The church edifice was very traditional, built of gray stone, and topped with a steeple. There wasn’t an Episcopal church in Bon Temps, but I knew that the services were similar to those of the Catholic church. Alcide had told me that his father was attending the funeral, too, and that we’d come over from Bon Temps in his father’s car. “My truck didn’t look dignified enough for the day, my father thought,” Alcide said. I could tell that his father was foremost in Alcide’s thoughts.
“Then how’s your dad getting here?” I asked.
“His other car,” Alcide said absently, as if he weren’t really listening to what I was saying. I was a little shocked at the idea of one man owning two cars: In my experience, men might have a family car and a pickup, or a pickup and a four-wheeler. My little shocks for the day were just beginning. By the time we had reached I-20 and turned west, Alcide’s mood had filled up the car. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it involved silence.
“Sookie,” Alcide said abruptly, his hands tightening on the wheel until his knuckles were white.
“Yes?” The fact that bad stuff was coming into the conversation might as well have been written in blinking letters above Alcide’s head. Mr. Inner Conflict.
“I need to talk to you about something.”
“What? Is there something suspicious about Colonel Flood’s death?” I should have wondered! I chided myself. But the other shifters had been shot. A traffic accident was such a contrast.
“No,” Alcide said, looking surprised. “As far as I know, the accident was just an accident. The other guy ran a red light.”
I settled back into the leather seat. “So what’s the deal?”
“Is there anything you want to tell me?”
I froze. “Tell you? About what?”
“About that night. The night of the Witch War.”
Years of controlling my face came to my rescue. “Not a thing,” I said calmly enough, though I may have been clenching my hands as I said it.
Alcide said nothing more. He parked the car and came around to help me out, which was unnecessary but nice. I’d decided I wouldn’t need to take my purse inside, so I stuck it under the seat and Alcide locked the car. We started toward the front of the church. Alcide took my hand, somewhat to my surprise. I might be a friend of the pack, but I was apparently supposed to be friendlier with one member of the pack than the others.
“There’s Dad,” Alcide said as we approached a knot of mourners. Alcide’s father was a little shorter than Alcide, but he was a husky man like his son. Jackson Herveaux had iron-gray hair instead of black, and a bolder nose. He had the same olive skin as Alcide. Jackson looked all the darker because he was standing by a pale, delicate woman with gleaming white hair.
“Father,” Alcide said formally, “this is Sookie Stackhouse.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Sookie,” Jackson Herveaux said. “This is Christine Larrabee.” Christine, who might have been anything from fifty-seven to sixty-seven, looked like a painting done in pastels. Her eyes were a washed-out blue, her smooth skin was magnolia pale with the faintest tinge of pink, her white hair was immaculately groomed. She was
wearing a light blue suit, which I personally wouldn’t have worn until the winter was completely over, but she looked great in it, for sure.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, wondering if I should curtsy. I’d shaken hands with Alcide’s father, but Christine didn’t extend hers. She gave me a nod and a sweet smile. Probably didn’t want to bruise me with her diamond rings, I decided after a squint at her fingers. Of course, they matched her earrings. I was outclassed, no doubt about it. Eff it, I thought. It seemed to be my day for shrugging off unpleasant things.
“Such a sad occasion,” Christine said.
If she wanted to do polite chitchat, I was up to it. “Yes, Colonel Flood was a wonderful man,” I said.
“Oh, you knew him, dear?”
“Yes,” I said. As a matter of fact, I’d seen him naked, but in decidedly unerotic circumstances.
My brief answer didn’t leave her much of anywhere to go. I saw genuine amusement lurking in her pale eyes. Alcide and his dad were exchanging low-voiced comments, which we were obviously supposed to be ignoring. “You and I are strictly decorations today,” Christine said.
“Then you know more than I do.”
“I expect so. You’re not one of the two-natured?”
“No.” Christine was, of course. She was a full-blooded Were, like Jackson and Alcide. I couldn’t picture this elegant woman changing into a wolf, especially with the down-and-dirty reputation the Weres had in the shifter community, but the impressions I got from her mind were unmistakable.
“The funeral of the packmaster marks the opening of the campaign to replace him,” Christine said. Since that was more solid information than I’d gotten in two hours from Alcide, immediately I felt kindly disposed toward the older woman.
“You must be something extraordinary, for Alcide to choose you as his companion today,” Christine continued.
“I don’t know about extraordinary. In the literal sense, I guess I am. I have extras that aren’t ordinary.”
“Witch?” Christine guessed. “Fairy? Part goblin?”
Gosh. I shook my head. “None of the above. So what’s going to happen in there?”
“There are more roped-off pews than usual. The whole pack will sit at the front of the church, the mated ones with their mates, of course, and their children. The candidates for packmaster will come in last.”
“How are they chosen?”
“They announce themselves,” she said. “But they’ll be put to the test, and then the membership votes.”
“Why is Alcide’s dad bringing you, or is that a real personal question?”
“I’m the widow of the packmaster prior to Colonel Flood,” Christine Larrabee said quietly. “That gives me a certain influence.”
I nodded. “Is the packmaster always a man?”
“No. But since strength is part of the test, males usually win.”
“How many candidates are there?”
“Two. Jackson, of course, and Patrick Furnan.” She inclined her patrician head slightly to her right, and I gave a closer look at the couple that had been on the periphery of my attention.
Patrick Furnan was in his mid-forties, somewhere between Alcide and his father. He was a thick-bodied man with a light brown crew cut and a very short beard shaved into a fancy shape. His suit was brown, too, and he’d had trouble buttoning the jacket. His companion was a pretty woman who believed in a lot of lipstick and jewelry. She had short brown hair, too, but it was highlighted with blond streaks and elaborately styled. Her heels were at least three inches high. I eyed the shoes with awe. I would break my neck if I tried to walk in them. But this woman maintained a smile and offered a good word to everyone who approached. Patrick Furnan was colder. His narrow eyes measured and assessed every Were in the gathering crowd.
“Tammy Faye, there, is his wife?” I asked Christine in a discreetly low tone.
Christine made a sound that I would have called snigger if it had issued from someone less patrician. “She does wear a lot of makeup,” Christine said. “Her name is Libby, actually. Yes, she’s his wife and a full-blooded Were, and they have two children. So he’s added to the pack.”
Only the oldest child would become a Were at puberty.
“What does he do for a living?” I asked.
“He owns a Harley-Davidson dealership,” Christine said.
“That’s a natural.” Weres tended to like motorcycles a lot.
Christine smiled, probably as close as she came to laughing out loud.
“Who’s the front-runner?” I’d been dumped into the middle of a game, and I needed to learn the rules. Later, I was going to let Alcide have it right between the eyes; but right now, I was going to get through the funeral, since that’s what I’d come for.
“Hard to say,” Christine murmured. “I wouldn’t have thrown in with either one, given a choice, but Jackson called on our old friendship, and I had to come down on his side.”
“That’s not nice.”
“No, but it’s practical,” she said, amused. “He needs all the support he can get. Did Alcide ask you to endorse his father?”
“No. I’d be completely ignorant of the situation if you hadn’t been kind enough to fill me in.” I gave her a nod of thanks.
“Since you’re not a Were—excuse me, honey, but I’m just trying to figure this out—what can you do for Alcide, I wonder? Why’d he drag you into this?”
“He’ll have to tell me that real soon,” I said, and if my voice was cold and ominous, I just didn’t care.
“His last girlfriend disappeared,” Christine said thoughtfully. “They were pretty on-again, off-again, Jackson tells me. If his enemies had something to do with it, you might watch your step.”
“I don’t think I’m in danger,” I said.
“Oh?”
But I’d said enough.
“Hmmmm,” Christine said after a long, thoughtful look at my face. “Well, she was too much of a diva for someone who isn’t even a Were.” Christine’s voice expressed the contempt the Weres feel for the other shifters. (“Why bother to change, if you can’t change into a wolf?” I’d heard a Were say once.)
My attention was caught by the dull gleam of a shaved head, and I stepped a bit to my left to have a better view. I’d never seen this man before. I would certainly have remembered him; he was very tall, taller than Alcide or even Eric, I thought. He had big shoulders and arms roped with muscle. His head and arms were the brown of a Caucasian with a real tan. I could tell, because he was wearing a sleeveless black silk tee tucked into black pants and shiny dress shoes. It was a nippy day at the end of January, but the cold didn’t seem to affect him at all. There was a definite space between him and the people around him.
As I looked at him, wondering, he turned and looked at me, as if he could feel my attention. He had a proud nose, and his face was as smooth as his shaved head. At this distance, his eyes looked black.
“Who is that?” I asked Christine, my voice a thread in the wind that had sprung up, tossing the leaves of the holly bushes planted around the church.
Christine darted a look at the man, and she must have known whom I meant, but she didn’t answer.
Regular people had gradually been filtering through the Weres, going up the steps and into the church. Now two men in black suits appeared at the doors. They crossed their hands in front of them, and the one on the right nodded at Jackson Herveaux and Patrick Furnan.
The two men, with their female companions, came to stand facing each other at the bottom of the steps. The assembled Weres passed between them to enter the church. Some nodded at one, some at the other, some at both. Fence-sitters. Even after their ranks had been reduced by the recent war with the witches, I counted twenty-five full-blooded adult Weres in Shreveport, a very large pack for such a small city. Its size was attributable to the Air Force base, I figured.
Everyone who walked between the two candidates was a full Were. I saw only two children. Of course, some parents might have left their kids in school rather than bring them to the funeral. But I was pretty sure I was seeing the truth of what Alcide had told me: Infertility and a high infant mortality rate plagued the Weres.
Alcide’s younger sister, Janice, had married a human. She herself would never change shape, since she was not the firstborn child. Her son’s recessive Were traits, Alcide had told me, might show as increased vigor and a great healing ability. Many professional athletes came from couples whose genetic pool contained a percentage of Were blood.
“We go in a second,” Alcide murmured. He was standing beside me, scanning the faces as they went by.
“I’m going to kill you later,” I told him, keeping my face calm for the Weres passing by. “Why didn’t you explain this?”
The tall man walked up the steps, his arms swinging as he walked, his large body moving with purpose and grace. His head swung toward me as he went by, and I met his eyes. They were very dark, but still I couldn’t distinguish the color. He smiled at me.
Alcide touched my hand, as if he knew my attention had wandered. He leaned over to whisper in my ear, “I need your help. I need you to find a chance after the funeral to read Patrick’s mind. He’s going to do something to sabotage my father.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me?” I was confused, and mostly I was hurt.
“I thought you might feel like you owed me anyway!”
“How do you figure that?”
“I know you killed Debbie.”
If he’d slapped me, it couldn’t have shocked me more. I have no idea what my face looked like. After the impact of the shock and the reflexive guilt wore off, I said, “You’d abjured her. What’s it to you?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing. She was already dead to me.” I didn’t believe that for a minute. “But you thought it would be a big deal to me, and you concealed it. I figure you’d guess you owed me.”
If I’d had a gun in my purse, I would’ve been tempted to pull it out then. “I don’t owe you squat,” I said. “I think you came to get me in your dad’s car because you knew I’d drive away once you said that.”
“No,” he said. We were still keeping our voices down, but I could see from the sideways glances we were getting that our intense colloquy was attracting attention. “Well, maybe. Please, forget what I said about you owing me. The fact is, my dad’s in trouble and I’d do just about anything to help him out. And you can help.”
“Next time you need help, just ask. Don’t trying blackmailing me into it or maneuvering me into it. I like to help people. But I hate to be pushed and tricked.” He’d lowered his eyes, so I grabbed his chin and made him look into mine. “I hate it.”
I glanced up at the top of the steps to gauge how much interest our quarrel was attracting. The tall man had reappeared. He was looking down at us without perceptible expression. But I knew we had his attention.
Alcide glanced up, too. His face reddened. “We need to go in now. Will you go with me?”
“What is the meaning of me going in with you?”
“It means you’re on my father’s side in his bid for the pack.”
“What does that oblige me to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why is it important for me to do it?”
“Though choosing a packmaster is pack business, it may influence those who know how much you helped us during the Witch War.”
Witch Skirmish would have been more accurate, because though it had certainly been them vs. us, the total number of people involved had been fairly small—say, forty or fifty. But in the history of the Shreveport pack, it was an epic episode, I gathered.
I glared down at my black pumps. I struggled with my warring instincts. They seemed about equally strong. One said, “You’re at a funeral. Don’t make a scene. Alcide has been good to you, and it wouldn’t hurt you to do this for him.” The other said, “Alcide helped you in Jackson because he was trying to get his dad out of trouble with the vampires. Now, again, he’s willing to involve you in something dangerous to help his dad out.” The first voice chipped in, “He knew Debbie was bad. He tried to pull away from her, and then he abjured her.” The second said, “Why’d he love a bitch like Debbie in the first place? Why’d he even consider sticking with her when he had clear evidence she was evil? No one else has suggested she had spellcasting power. This ‘spellcasting’ thing is a cheap excuse.” I felt like Linda Blair in the The Exorcist, with her head whirling around on her neck.
Voice number one won out. I put my hand on Alcide’s crooked elbow and we went up the stairs and into the church.
The pews were full of regular people. The front three rows on both sides had been saved for the pack. But the tall man, who would stand out anywhere, sat in the back row. I caught a glimpse of his big shoulders before I had to pay strict attention to the pack ceremony. The two Furnan children, cute as the dickens, went solemnly down to the front pew on the right of the church. Then Alcide and I entered, preceding the two candidates
for packmaster. This seating ceremony was oddly like a wedding, with Alcide and me being the best man and maid of honor. Jackson and Christine and Patrick and Libby Furnan would enter like the parents of the bride and groom.
What the civilians made of this I don’t know.
I knew they were all staring, but I’m used to that. If being a barmaid will get you used to anything, it’s being looked over. I was dressed appropriately and I looked as good as I could make myself look, and Alcide had done the same, so let them stare. Alcide and I sat on the front row on the left side of the church, and moved in. I saw Patrick Furnan and his wife, Libby, enter the pew across the aisle. Then I looked back to see Jackson and Christine coming in slowly, looking fittingly grave. There was a slight flutter of heads and hands, a tiny buzz of whispers, and then Christine sidled into the pew, Jackson beside her.
The coffin, draped with an elaborately embroidered cloth, was wheeled up the aisle as we all stood, and then the somber service began.
After going through the litany, which Alcide showed me in the Prayer Book, the priest asked if anyone would like to say a few words about Colonel Flood. One of his Air Force friends went first and spoke of the colonel’s devotion to duty and his sense of pride in his command. One of his fellow church members took the next turn, praising the colonel’s generosity and applauding the time he’d spent balancing the church’s books.
Patrick Furnan left his pew and strode to the lectern. He didn’t do a good stride; he was too stout for that. But his speech was certainly a change from the elegies the two previous men had given. “John Flood was a remarkable man and a great leader,” Furnan began. He was a much better speaker than I’d expected. Though I didn’t know who’d written his remarks, it was someone educated. “In the fraternal order we shared, he was always the one who told us the direction we should take, the goal we should achieve. As he grew older, he remarked often that this was a job for the young.”
A right turn from eulogy to campaign speech. I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed this; all around me there were little movements, whispered comments.
Though taken aback by the reaction he’d aroused, Patrick Furnan plowed ahead. “I told John that he was the finest man for the job we’d ever had, and I still believe that. No matter who follows in his footsteps, John Flood will never be forgotten or replaced. The next leader can only hope to work as hard as John. I’ll always be proud that John put his trust in me more than once, that he even called me his right hand.” With those sentences, the Harley dealer underscored his bid to take Colonel’s Flood’s job as packmaster (or, as I referred to it internally, Leader of the Pack).
Alcide, to my right, was rigid with anger. If he hadn’t been sitting in the front row of a funeral, he would have loved to address a few remarks to me on the subject of Patrick Furnan. On the other side of Alcide, I could just barely see Christine, whose face looked carved out of ivory. She was suppressing quite a few things herself.
Alcide’s dad waited a moment to begin his trip to the lectern. Clearly, he wanted us to cleanse our mental palate before he gave his address.
Jackson Herveaux, wealthy surveyor and werewolf, gave us the chance to examine his maturely handsome face. He began, “We will not soon see the likes of John Flood. A man whose wisdom had been tempered and tested by the years . . .” Oh, ouch. This wasn’t going to be pointed or anything, no sirree.
I tuned out for the rest of the service to think my own thoughts. I had plenty of food for thought. We stood as John Flood, Air Force colonel and packmaster, exited this church for the last time. I remained silent during the ride to the cemetery, stood by Alcide’s side during the graveside service, and got back in the car when it was over and all the post-funeral handshaking was done.
I looked for the tall man, but he wasn’t at the cemetery.
On the drive back to Bon Temps, Alcide obviously wanted to keep our silence nice and clean, but it was time to answer some questions.
“How did you know?” I asked.
He didn’t even try to pretend to misunderstand what I was talking about. “When I came to your house yesterday, I could smell a very, very faint trace of her at your front door,” he said. “It took me a while to think it through.”
I’d never considered the possibility.
“I don’t think I would’ve picked up on it if I hadn’t known her so well,” he offered. “I certainly didn’t pick up a whiff anywhere else in the house.”
So all my scrubbing had been to some avail. I was just lucky Jack and Lily Leeds weren’t two-natured. “Do you want to know what happened?”
“I don’t think so,” he said after an appreciable pause. “Knowing Debbie, I’m guessing you only did what you had to do. After all, it was her scent at your house. She had no business there.”
This was far from a ringing endorsement.
“And Eric was still at your house then, wasn’t he? Maybe it was Eric?” Alcide sounded almost hopeful.
“No,” I said.
“Maybe I do want the whole story.”
“Maybe I’ve changed my mind about telling it to you. You either believe in me, or you don’t. Either you think I’m the kind of person who’d kill a woman for no good reason, or you know I’m not.” Truly, I was hurt more than I thought I’d be. I was very careful not to slip into Alcide’s head, because I was afraid I might pick up on something that would have been even more painful.
Alcide tried several times to open another conversation, but the drive couldn’t end soon enough for me. When he pulled into the clearing and I knew I was yards away from being in my own house, the relief was overwhelming. I couldn’t scramble out of that fancy car fast enough.
But Alcide was right behind me.
“I don’t care,” he said in a voice that was almost a growl.
“What?” I’d gotten to my front door, and the key was in the lock.
“I don’t care.”
“I don’t believe that for one minute.”
“What?”
“You’re harder to read than a plain human, Alcide, but I can see the pockets of reservation in your mind. Since you wanted me to help you out with your dad, I’ll tell you: Patrick Whatsisname plans to bring up your dad’s gambling problems to show he’s unsuitable as packleader.” Nothing more underhanded and supernatural than the truth. “I’d read his mind before you asked me to. I don’t want to see you for a long, long, long time.”
“What?” Alcide said again. He looked like I’d hit him in the head with an iron.
“Seeing you . . . listening to your head . . . makes me feel bad.” Of course, there were several different reasons they did, but I didn’t want to enumerate them. “So, thanks for the ride to the funeral.” (I may have sounded a bit sarcastic.) “I appreciate your thinking of me.” (Even a higher probability of sarcasm here.) I entered the house, shut the door on his startled face, and locked it just to be on the safe side. I marched across the living room so he could hear my steps, but then I stopped in the hall and waited to listen while he got
back in the Lincoln. I listened to the big car rocket down the driveway, probably putting ruts in my beautiful gravel.
As I shed Tara’s suit and bundled it up to drop at the dry cleaner’s, I confess I was mopey. They say when one door shuts, another one opens. But they haven’t been living at my house.
Most of the doors I open seem to have something scary crouched behind them, anyway.
Chapter 7
SAM WAS IN the bar that night, seated at a corner table like a visiting king, his leg propped up on another chair cushioned with pillows. He was keeping one eye on Charles, one eye on the clientele’s reaction to a vampire bartender.
People would stop by, drop down in the chair across from him, visit for a few minutes, and then vacate the chair. I knew Sam was in pain. I can always read the preoccupation of people who are hurting. But he was glad to be seeing other people, glad to be back in the bar, pleased with Charles’s work.
All this I could tell, and yet when it came to the question of who had shot him, I didn’t have a clue. Someone was gunning for the two-natured, someone who’d killed quite a few and wounded even more. Discovering the identity of the shooter was imperative. The police didn’t suspect Jason, but his own people did. If Calvin Norris’s people decided to take matters into their own hands, they could easily find a chance to take out Jason. They didn’t know there were more victims than those in Bon Temps.
I probed into minds, I tried to catch people in unguarded moments, I even tried to think of the most promising candidates for the role of assassin so I wouldn’t waste time listening to (for example) Liz Baldwin’s worries about her oldest granddaughter.
I assumed the shooter was almost certainly a guy. I knew plenty of women who went hunting and plenty more with access to rifles. But weren’t snipers always men? The police were baffled by this sniper’s selection of targets, because they didn’t know the true nature of all the victims. The two-natured were hampered in their search because they were looking only at local suspects.
“Sookie,” Sam said as I passed close to him. “Kneel down here a minute.”
I sank to one knee right by his chair so he could speak in a low voice.
“Sookie, I hate to ask you again, but the closet in the storeroom isn’t working out for Charles.” The cleaning supplies closet in the storeroom was not exactly built to be light tight, but it was inaccessible to daylight, which was good enough. After all, the closet had no windows, and it was inside a room with no windows.
It took me a minute to switch my train of thought to another track. “You can’t tell me he’s not able to sleep,” I said incredulously. Vampires could sleep in the daytime under any circumstances. “And I’m sure you put a lock on the inside of the door, too.”
“Yes, but he has to kind of huddle on the floor, and he says it smells like old mops.”
“Well, we did keep the cleaning stuff in there.”
“What I’m saying is, would it be so bad for him to stay at your place?”
“Why do you really want me to have him at the house?” I asked. “There’s got to be a reason more than a strange vampire’s comfort during the day, when he’s dead, anyway.”
“Haven’t we been friends a long time, Sookie?”
I smelled something big and rotten.
“Yes,” I admitted, standing so that he would have to look up at me. “And?”
“I hear through the grapevine that the Hotshot community has hired a Were bodyguard for Calvin’s hospital room.”
“Yeah, I think that’s kind of strange, too.” I acknowledged his unspoken concern. “So I guess you heard what they suspect.”
Sam nodded. His bright blue eyes caught mine. “You have to take this seriously, Sookie.”
“What makes you think I don’t?”
“You refused Charles.”
“I don’t see what telling him he couldn’t sleep in my house has to do with worrying about Jason.”
“I think he’d help you protect Jason, if it came to that. I’m down with this leg, or I’d . . . I don’t believe it was Jason who shot me.”
A knot of tension within me relaxed when Sam said that. I hadn’t realized I’d been worried about what he thought, but I had.
My heart softened a little. “Oh, all right,” I said with poor grace. “He can come stay with me.” I stomped off grumpily, still not certain why I’d agreed.
Sam beckoned Charles over, conferred with him briefly. Later in the evening Charles borrowed my keys to stow his bag in the car. After a few minutes, he was back at the bar and signaled he’d returned my keys to my purse. I nodded, maybe a little curtly. I wasn’t happy, but if I had to be saddled with a houseguest, at least he was a polite houseguest.
Mickey and Tara came into Merlotte’s that night. As before, the dark intensity of the vampire made everyone in the bar a little excited, a little louder. Tara’s eyes followed me with a kind of sad passivity. I was hoping to catch her alone, but I didn’t see her leave the table for any reason. I found that was another cause for alarm. When she’d come into the bar with Franklin Mott, she’d always taken a minute to give me a hug, chat with me about family and work.
I caught a glimpse of Claudine the fairy across the room, and though I planned to work my way over to have a word with her, I was too preoccupied with Tara’s situation. As usual, Claudine was surrounded by admirers.
Finally, I got so anxious that I took the vampire by the fangs and went over to Tara’s table. The snakelike Mickey was staring at our flamboyant bartender, and he scarcely flicked a gaze at me as I approached. Tara looked both hopeful and frightened, and I stood by her and laid my hand on her shoulder to get a clearer picture of her head. Tara has done so well for herself I seldom worry over her one weakness: She picks the wrong men. I was remembering when she dated “Eggs” Benedict, who’d apparently died in a fire the previous fall. Eggs had been a heavy drinker and a weak personality. Franklin Mott had at least treated Tara with respect and had showered her with presents, though the nature of the presents had said, “I’m a mistress,” rather than “I’m an honored girlfriend.” But how had it come to pass that she was in Mickey’s company—Mickey, whose name made even Eric hesitate?
I felt like I’d been reading a book only to discover that someone had ripped a few pages from the middle.
“Tara,” I said quietly. She looked up at me, her big brown eyes dull and dead: past fear, past shame.
To the outer eye she looked almost normal. She was well groomed and made up, and her clothing was fashionable and attractive. But inside, Tara was in torment. What was wrong with my friend? Why hadn’t I noticed before that something was eating her up from the inside out?
I wondered what to do next. Tara and I were just staring at each other, and though she knew what I was seeing inside her, she wasn’t responding. “Wake up,” I said, not even knowing where the words were coming from. “Wake up, Tara!”
A white hand grabbed my arm and removed my hand from Tara’s shoulder forcibly. “I’m not paying you to touch my date,” Mickey said. He had the coldest eyes I’d ever seen—mud colored, reptilian. “I’m paying you to bring our drinks.”
“Tara is my friend,” I said. He was still squeezing my arm, and if a vampire squeezes you, you know about it. “You’re doing something to her. Or you’re letting someone else hurt her.”
“It’s none of your concern.”
“It is my concern,” I said. I knew my eyes were tearing up from the pain, and I had a moment of sheer cowardice. Looking into his face, I knew he could kill me and be out of the bar before anyone there could stop him. He could take Tara with him, like a pet dog or his livestock. Before the fear could get a grip, I said, “Let go of me.” I made each word clear and distinct, even though I knew he could hear a pin drop in a storm.
“You’re shaking like a sick dog,” he said scornfully.
“Let go of me,” I repeated.
“Or you’ll do—what?”
“You can’t stay awake forever. If it’s not me, it’ll be someone else.”
Mickey seemed to be reconsidering. I don’t think it was my threat, though I meant it from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair.
He looked down at Tara, and she spoke, as though he’d pulled a string. “Sookie, don’t make such a big deal out of nothing. Mickey is my man now. Don’t embarrass me in front of him.”
My hand dropped back to her shoulder and I risked taking my eyes off Mickey to look down at her. She definitely wanted me to back off; she was completely sincere about that. But her thinking about her motivation was curiously murky.
“Okay, Tara. Do you need another drink?” I asked slowly. I was feeling my way through her head, and I was meeting a wall of ice, slippery and nearly opaque.
“No, thank you,” Tara said politely. “Mickey and I need to be going now.”
That surprised Mickey, I could tell. I felt a little better; Tara was in charge of herself, at least to some extent.
“I’ll return your suit. I took it by the cleaner’s, already,” I said.
“No hurry.”
“All right. I’ll see you later.” Mickey had a firm grip on my friend’s arm as the two made their way through the crowd.
I got the empty glasses off the table, swabbed it down, and turned back to the bar. Charles Twining and Sam were on alert. They’d been observing the whole small incident. I shrugged, and they relaxed.
When we closed the bar that night, the new bouncer was waiting at the back door for me when I pulled on my coat and got my keys out of my purse.
I unlocked my car doors and he climbed in.
“Thanks for agreeing to have me in your home,” he said.
I made myself say the polite thing back. No point in being rude.
“Do you think Eric will mind my being here?” Charles asked as we drove down the narrow parish road.
“It’s not his say-so,” I said curtly. It irked me that he automatically wondered about Eric.
“He doesn’t come to see you often?” enquired Charles with unusual persistence.
I didn’t answer until we’d parked behind my house. “Listen,” I said, “I don’t know what you heard, but he’s not . . . we’re not . . . like that.” Charles looked at my face and wisely said nothing as I unlocked my back door.
“Feel free to explore,” I said after I’d invited him over the threshold. Vampires like to know entrances and exits. “Then I’ll show you your sleeping place.” While the bouncer looked curiously around the humble house where my family had lived for so many years, I hung up my coat and put my purse in my room. I made myself a sandwich after asking Charles if he wanted some blood. I keep some type O in the refrigerator, and he seemed glad to sit down and drink after he’d studied the house. Charles Twining was a peaceful sort of guy to be around, especially for a vampire. He didn’t letch after me, and he didn’t seem to want anything from me.
I showed him the lift-up floor panel in the guest bedroom closet. I told him how the television remote worked, showed him my little collection of movies, and pointed out the books on the shelves in the guest bedroom and living room.
“Is there anything else you can think of you might need?” I asked. My grandmother brought me up right, though I don’t think she ever imagined I’d have to be hostess to a bunch of vampires.
“No, thank you, Miss Sookie,” Charles said politely. His long white fingers tapped his eye patch, an odd habit of his that gave me the cold gruesomes.
“Then, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll say good night.” I was tired, and it was exhausting work making conversation with a near stranger.
“Of course. Rest easy, Sookie. If I want to roam in the woods . . . ?”
“Feel free,” I said immediately. I had an extra key to the back door, and I got it out of the drawer in the kitchen where I kept all the keys. This had been the odds and ends drawer for perhaps eighty years, since the kitchen had been added onto the house. There were at least a hundred keys in it. Some, those that were old when the kitchen was added, were mighty strange looking. I’d labeled the ones from my generation, and I’d put the back door key on a bright pink plastic key ring from my State Farm insurance agent. “Once you’re in for the night—well, for good—shoot the dead bolt, please.”
He nodded and took the key.
It was usually a mistake to feel sympathy for a vampire, but I couldn’t help but think there was something sad about Charles. He struck me as lonely, and there’s always something pathetic about loneliness. I’d experienced it myself. I would ferociously deny I was pathetic, but when I viewed loneliness in someone else, I could feel the tug of pity.
I scrubbed my face and pulled on some pink nylon pajamas. I was already half-asleep as I brushed my teeth and crawled into the high old bed my grandmother had slept in until she died. My great-grandmother had made the quilt I pulled over me, and my great-aunt Julia had embroidered the pattern on the edges of the bedspread. Though I might actually be alone in the world—with the exception of my brother, Jason—I went to sleep surrounded by my family.
My deepest sleep is around three a.m., and sometime during that period I was awakened by the grip of a hand on my shoulder.
I was shocked into total awareness, like a person being thrown into a cold pool. To fight off the shock that was close to paralyzing me, I swung my fist. It was caught in a chilly grip.
“No, no, no, ssshhh” came a piercing whisper out of the darkness. English accent. Charles. “Someone’s creeping around outside your house, Sookie.”
My breath was as wheezy as an accordion. I wondered if I was going to have a heart attack. I put a hand over my heart, as if I could hold it in when it seemed determined to pound its way out of my chest.
“Lie down!” he said right into my ear, and then I felt him crouch beside my bed in the shadows. I lay down and closed my eyes almost all the way. The headboard of the bed was situated between the two windows in the room, so whoever was creeping around my house couldn’t really get a good look at my face. I made sure I was lying still and as relaxed as I could get. I tried to think, but I was just too scared. If the creeper was a vampire, he or she couldn’t come in—unless it was Eric. Had I rescinded Eric’s invitation to enter? I couldn’t remember. That’s the kind of thing I need to keep track of, I babbled to myself.
“He’s passed on,” Charles said in a voice so faint it was almost the ghost of a voice.
“What is it?” I asked in a voice I hoped was nearly as soundless.
“It’s too dark outside to tell.” If a vampire couldn’t see what was out there, it must be really dark. “I’ll slip outside and find out.”
“No,” I said urgently, but it was too late.
Jesus Christ, shepherd of Judea! What if the prowler was Mickey? He’d kill Charles—I just knew it.
“Sookie!” The last thing I expected—though frankly, I was way beyond consciously expecting anything—was for Charles to call to me. “Come out here, if you please!”
I slid my feet into my pink fuzzy slippers and hurried down the hall to the back door; that was where the voice had been coming from, I thought.
“I’m turning on the outside light,” I yelled. Didn’t want anyone to be blinded by the sudden electricity. “You sure it’s safe out there?”
“Yes,” said two voices almost simultaneously.
I flipped the switch with my eyes shut. After a second, I opened them and stepped to the door of the screened-in back porch, in my pink jammies and slippers. I crossed my arms over my chest. Though it wasn’t cold tonight, it was cool.
I absorbed the scene in front of me. “Okay,” I said slowly. Charles was in the graveled area where I parked, and he had an elbow around the neck of Bill Compton, my neighbour. Bill is a vampire, has been since right after the Civil War. We have a history. It’s probably just a pebble of a history in Bill’s long life, but in mine, it’s a boulder.
“Sookie,” Bill said between clenched teeth. “I don’t want to cause this foreigner harm. Tell him to get his hands off me.”
I mulled that over at an accelerated rate. “Charles, I think you can let him go,” I said, and as fast as I could snap my fingers, Charles was standing beside me.
“You know this man?” Charles’s voice was steely.
Just as coldly, Bill said, “She does know me, intimately.”
Oh, gack.
“Now, is that polite?” I may have had a little cold steel in my own voice. “I don’t go around telling everyone the details of our former relationship. I would expect the same of any gentleman.”
To my gratification, Charles glared at Bill, raising one eyebrow in a very superior and irritating way.
“So this one is sharing your bed now?” Bill jerked his head toward the smaller vampire.
If he’d said anything else, I could’ve held on to my temper. I don’t lose it a lot, but when I do, it’s well and truly lost. “Is that any of your business?” I asked, biting off each word. “If I sleep with a hundred men, or a hundred sheep, it’s not any of your business! Why are you creeping around my house in the middle of the night? You scared me halfway to death.”
Bill didn’t look remotely repentant. “I’m sorry you wakened and were frightened,” he said insincerely. “I was checking on your safety.”
“You were roaming around the woods and smelled another vampire,” I said. He’d always had an extremely acute sense of smell. “So you came over here to see who it was.”
“I wanted to be sure you weren’t being attacked,” Bill said. “I thought I caught a sniff of human, too. Did you have a human visitor today?”
I didn’t believe for a minute Bill was only concerned with my safety, but I didn’t want to believe jealousy brought him to my window, or some kind of prurient curiosity. I just breathed in and out for a minute, calming down and considering.
“Charles is not attacking me,” I said, proud I was speaking so levelly.
Bill sneered. “Charles,” he repeated in tones of great scorn.
“Charles Twining,” said my companion, bowing—if you could call a slight inclination of his curly brown head a bow.
“Where did you come up with this one?” Bill’s voice had regained its calm.
“Actually, he works for Eric, like you do.”
“Eric’s provided you with a bodyguard? You need a bodyguard?”
“Listen, bozo,” I said through clenched jaws, “my life goes on while you’re gone. So does the town. People are getting shot around here, among them Sam. We needed a substitute bartender, and Charles was volunteered to help us out.” That may not have been entirely accurate, but I was not in the accuracy business at the moment. I was in the Make My Point business.
At least Bill was appropriately taken aback by the information.
“Sam. Who else?”
I was shivering, since it wasn’t nylon pajama weather. But I didn’t want Bill in the house. “Calvin Norris and Heather Kinman.”
“Shot dead?”
“Heather was. Calvin was pretty badly wounded.”
“Have the police arrested anyone?”
“No.”
“Do you know who did it?”
“No.”
“You’re worried about your brother.”
“Yes.”
“He turned at the full moon.”
“Yes.”
Bill looked at me with what might have been pity. “I’m sorry, Sookie,” he said, and he meant it.
“No point telling me about it,” I snapped. “Tell Jason—it’s him who turns fuzzy.”
Bill’s face went cold and stiff. “Excuse my intrusion,” he said. “I’ll go.” He melted into the woods.
I don’t know how Charles reacted to the episode, because I turned and stalked back into the house, turning off the outside light as I went. I threw myself back in bed and lay there, fuming and fussing silently. I pulled the covers up over my head so the vampire would take the hint that I didn’t want to discuss the incident. He moved so quietly, I couldn’t be sure where he was in the house; I think he paused in the doorway for a second, and then moved on.
I lay awake for at least forty-five minutes, and then I found myself settling back into sleep.
Then someone shook me by the shoulder. I smelled sweet perfume, and I smelled something else, something awful. I was terribly groggy.
“Sookie, your house is on fire,” a voice said.
“Couldn’t be,” I said. “I didn’t leave anything on.”
“You have to get out now,” the voice insisted. A persistent shriek reminded me of fire drills at the elementary school.
“Okay,” I said, my head thick with sleep and (I saw when I opened my eyes) smoke. The shriek in the background, I slowly realized, was my smoke detector. Thick gray plumes were drifting through my yellow and white bedroom like evil genies. I wasn’t moving fast enough for Claudine, who yanked me out of bed and carried me out the front door. A woman had never lifted me, but, of course, Claudine was no ordinary woman. She set me on my feet in the chilly grass of the front yard. The cold feel of it suddenly woke me up. This was not a nightmare.
“My house caught on fire?” I was still struggling to be alert.
“The vampire says it was that human, there,” she said, pointing to the left of the house. But for a long minute my eyes were fixed on the terrible sight of flames, and the red glow of fire lighting the night. The back porch and part of the kitchen were blazing.
I made myself look at a huddled form on the ground, close to a forsythia in bud. Charles was kneeling by it. “Have you called the fire department?” I asked them both as I picked my way around the house in my bare feet to have a look at the recumbent figure. I peered at the dead man’s slack face in the poor light. He was white, clean-shaven, and probably in his thirties. Though conditions were hardly ideal, I didn’t recognize him.
“Oh, no, I didn’t think of it.” Charles looked up from the body. He came from a time before fire departments.
“And I forgot my cell phone,” said Claudine, who was thoroughly modern.
“Then I have to go back in and do it, if the phones still work,” I said, turning on my heel. Charles rose to his inconsiderable height and stared at me.
“You will not go back in there.” This was definitely an order from Claudine. “New man, you run fast enough to do that.”
“Fire,” Charles said, “is very quickly fatal to vampires.”
It was true; they went up like a torch once they caught. Selfishly, for a second I almost insisted; I wanted my coat and my slippers and my purse.
“Go call from Bill’s phone,” I said, pointing in the right direction, and off he took like a jackrabbit. The minute he was out of sight and before Claudine could stop me, I dashed back in the front door and made my way to my room. The smoke was much thicker, and I could see the flames a few feet down the hall in the kitchen. As soon as I saw the flames I knew I’d made a huge mistake by reentering the house, and it was hard not to panic. My purse was right where I’d left it, and my coat was tossed over the slipper chair in a corner of my room. I couldn’t find my slippers, and I knew I couldn’t stay. I fumbled in a drawer for a pair of socks, since I knew for sure they were there, and then I ran out of my room, coughing and choking. Acting through sheer instinct, I turned briefly to my left to shut the door to the kitchen, and then whirled to hurry out the front door. I fell over a chair in the living room.
“That was stupid,” said Claudine the fairy, and I shrieked. She grabbed me around the waist and ran out of the house again, with me under her arm like a rolled-up carpet.
The combination of shrieking and coughing tied my respiratory system in knots for a minute or two, during which time Claudine moved me farther away from my house. She sat me down on the grass and put the socks on my feet. Then she helped me stand up and get my arms into the coat. I buttoned it around me gratefully.
This was the second time Claudine had appeared out of nowhere when I was about to get into serious trouble. The first time, I’d fallen asleep at the wheel after a very long day.
“You’re making it awfully hard on me,” she said. She still sounded cheerful, but maybe not quite as sweet.
Something changed about the house, and I realized the night-light in the hall had gone out. Either the electricity was out, or the line had been shut down in town by the fire department.
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling that was appropriate, though I had no idea why Claudine felt put upon when it was my house that was burning. I wanted to hurry to the backyard to get a better view, but Claudine caught hold of my arm.
“No closer,” she said simply, and I could not break her hold. “Listen, the trucks are coming.”
Now I could hear the fire engines, and I blessed every person who was coming to help. I knew the pagers had gone off all over the area, and the volunteers had rushed to the firehouse straight from their beds.
Catfish Hunter, my brother’s boss, pulled up in his car. He leaped out and ran right to me. “Anyone left inside?” he asked urgently. The town’s fire truck pulled in after him, scattering my new gravel all to hell.
“No,” I said.
“Is there a propane tank?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Backyard.”
“Where’s your car, Sookie?”
“In the back,” I said, and my voice was starting to shake.
“Propane tank in the back!” Catfish bellowed over his shoulder.
There was an answering yell, followed by a lot of purposeful activity. I recognized Hoyt Fortenberry and Ralph Tooten, plus four or five other men and a couple of women.
Catfish, after a quick conversation with Hoyt and Ralph, called over a smallish woman who seemed swamped by her gear. He pointed to the still figure in the grass, and she threw off her helmet and knelt beside him. After some peering and touching, she shook her head. I barely recognized her as Dr. Robert Meredith’s nurse, Jan something.
“Who’s the dead man?” asked Catfish. He didn’t seem too upset by the corpse.
“I have no idea,” I said. I only discovered how shocked I was by the way my voice came out—quavery, small. Claudine put her arm around me.
A police car pulled in to the side of the fire truck, and Sheriff Bud Dearborn got out of the driver’s seat. Andy Bellefleur was his passenger.
Claudine said, “Ah-oh.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Then Charles was with me again, and Bill was right on his heels. The vampires took in the frantic but purposeful activity. They noticed Claudine.
The small woman, who’d stood to resume her gear, called, “Sheriff, do me a favor and call an ambulance to take this body away.”
Bud Dearborn glanced at Andy, who turned away to speak into the car radio.
“Having one dead beau ain’t enough, Sookie?” Bud Dearborn asked me.
Bill snarled, the firefighters broke out the window by my great-great-grandmother’s dining table, and a visible rush of heat and sparks gushed into the night. The pumper truck made a lot of noise, and the tin roof that covered the kitchen and porch separated from the house.
My home was going up in flames and smoke.