Book Eight 18-21

Chapter 18
After a quiet and peaceful Monday off, I went in Tuesday to work the lunch
shift. When I’d left home, Amelia had been painting a chest of drawers
she’d found at the local junk store. Octavia had been trimming the dead
heads off the roses. She’d said they needed pruning back for the winter,
and I’d told her to have at it. My grandmother had been the rose person in
our household, and she hadn’t let me lay a finger on them unless they
needed spraying for aphids. That had been one of my jobs.
Jason came into Merlotte’s for lunch with a bunch of his coworkers. They
put two tables together and formed a cluster of happy men. Cooler weather
and no big storms made for happy parish road crews. Jason seemed
almost overly animated, his brain a jumble of leaping thoughts. Maybe
having the pernicious influence of Tanya erased had already made a
difference. But I made a real effort to stay out of his head, because after all,
he was my brother.
When I carried a big tray of Cokes and tea over to the table, Jason said,
“Crystal says hey.”
“How’s she feeling today?” I asked, to show proper concern, and Jason
made a circle of his forefinger and thumb. I served the last mug of tea,
careful to put it down evenly so it wouldn’t spill, and I asked Dove Beck, a
cousin of Alcee’s, if he wanted any extra lemon.
“No, thanks,” he said politely. Dove, who’d gotten married the day after
graduation, was a whole different kettle of fish from Alcee. At thirty, he was
younger, and as far as I could tell—and I could tell pretty far—he didn’t
have that inner core of anger that the detective did. I’d gone to school with
one of Dove’s sisters.
“How’s Angela?” I asked him, and he smiled.
“She married Maurice Kershaw,” he said. “They got a little boy, cutest kid in
the world. Angela’s a new woman—she don’t smoke or drink, and she’s in
church when the doors open.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Tell her I asked,” I said, and began taking orders. I
heard Jason telling his buddies about a fence he was going to build, but I
didn’t have time to pay attention.
Jason lingered after the other men were going out to their vehicles. “Sook,
would you run by and check on Crystal when you get off?”
“Sure, but won’t you be leaving work then?”
“I got to go over to Clarice and pick up some chain-link. Crystal wants us to
fence in some of the backyard for the baby. So it’ll have a safe place to
play.”
I was surprised that Crystal was showing that much foresight and maternal
instinct. Maybe having the baby would change her. I thought about Angela
Kershaw and her little boy.
I didn’t want to count up how many girls younger than me had been married
for years and had babies—or just had the babies. I told myself envy was a
sin, and I worked hard, smiling and nodding to everyone. Luckily, it was a
busy day. During the afternoon lull, Sam asked me to help him take
inventory in the storeroom while Holly covered the bar and the floor. We
only had our two resident alcoholics to serve, so Holly was not going to
have to work very hard. Since I was very nervous with Sam’s Blackberry,
he entered the totals while I counted, and I had to climb up on a stepladder
and then back down about fifty times, counting and dusting. We bought our
cleaning supplies in bulk. We counted all those, too. Sam was just a
counting fool today.
The storeroom doesn’t have any windows, so it got pretty warm in there
while we were working. I was glad to get out of its stuffy confines when
Sam was finally satisfied. I pulled a spiderweb out of his hair as I went by
on my way to the bathroom, where I scrubbed my hands and carefully
wiped my face, checking my ponytail (as best I could) for any spiderwebs I
might have picked up myself.
As I left the bar, I was so looking forward to getting in the shower that I
almost turned left to go home. Just in time, I remembered I’d promised to
look in on Crystal, so I turned right instead.
Jason lived in my parents’ house, and he’d kept it up very nicely. My
brother was a house-proud kind of guy. He didn’t mind spending his free
time on painting, mowing, and basic repairs, a side of him I always found a
bit surprising. He’d recently painted the outside a buff color and the trim a
glowing white, and the little house looked very spruce. There was a
driveway that made a U shape in front. He’d added a branch that led to the
porte cochere in back of the house, but I pulled up to the front steps. I
stuffed my car keys in my pocket and crossed the porch. I turned the knob
because I planned on sticking my head in the door and calling to Crystal,
since I was family. The front door was unlocked, as most front doors were
during the daytime. The family room was empty.
“Hey, Crystal, it’s Sookie!” I called, though I tried to keep my voice subdued
so I wouldn’t startle her if she were napping.
I heard a muffled sound, a moan. It came from the biggest bedroom, the
one my parents had used, which lay across the family room and to my
right.
Oh, shit, she’s miscarrying again, I thought, and dashed to the closed door.
I flung it open so hard it bounced off the wall, but I didn’t pay a bit of
attention, because bouncing on the bed were Crystal and Dove Beck.
I was so shocked, so angry, and so distraught that as they stopped what
they were doing and stared up at me, I said the worst thing I could think of.
“No wonder you lose all your babies.” I spun on my heel and marched out
of the house. I was so outraged I couldn’t even get in the car. It was really
unfortunate that Calvin pulled up behind me and leaped from his truck
almost before it stopped.
“My God, what’s wrong?” he said. “Is Crystal okay?”
“Why don’t you ask her that?” I said nastily, and climbed into my car only to
sit there shaking. Calvin ran into the house as if he had to put out a fire,
and I guess that was about the size of it.
“Jason, dammit,” I yelled, thumping my fist on my steering wheel. I should
have taken the time to listen to Jason’s brain. He’d known good and well
that since he had business in Clarice, Dove and Crystal would probably
take the opportunity to have a tryst. He’d planned on me being dutiful and
dropping by. It was just too big a coincidence that Calvin had shown up. He
must have also told Calvin to check on Crystal. So there was no deniability,
and no chance of hushing this up—not since Calvin and I both knew. I had
been right to worry about the terms of the marriage, and now I had
something entirely new to worry about.
Plus, I was ashamed. I was ashamed of the behavior of everyone involved.
In my code of conduct, which doesn’t really make me a very good Christian
at all, what single people do in caring relationships is their own business.
Even in a more casual relationship—well, if the people respect one
another, okay. But a couple who’s promised to be faithful, who’s pledged
that publicly, are governed by a whole different set of rules, in my world.
Not in Crystal’s world, or Dove’s world, apparently.
Calvin came back down the steps looking years older than he had when
he’d bounded up them. He stopped by my car. He wore an expression twin
to mine—disillusion, disappointment, disgust. Lots of dises there.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said. “We got to have the ceremony now.”
Crystal came out on the porch wrapped in a leopard-print bathrobe, and
rather than endure her speaking to me I started the car and left as quickly
as I could. I drove home in a daze. When I came in the back door, Amelia
was chopping up something on the old cutting board, the one that had
survived the fire with only scorch marks. She turned to speak to me and
had opened her mouth when she saw my face. I shook my head at her,
warning her not to talk, and I went straight into my room.
This would have been a good day for me to be living by myself again.
I sat in my room in the little chair in the corner, the one that had seated so
many visitors lately. Bob was curled up in a ball on my bed, a place he was
expressly forbidden to sleep. Someone had opened my door during the
day. I thought about chewing Amelia out about that, then discarded the
idea when I saw a pile of clean and folded underwear lying on top of my
dresser.
“Bob,” I said, and the cat unfolded and leaped to his feet in one fluid
movement. He stood on my bed, staring at me with wide golden eyes. “Get
the hell out of here,” I said. With immense dignity Bob leaped down from
the bed and stalked to the door. I opened it a few inches and he went out,
managing to leave the impression that he was doing this of his own free
will. I shut the door behind him.
I love cats. I just wanted to be by myself.
The phone rang, and I stood up to answer it.
“Tomorrow night,” Calvin said. “Wear something comfortable. Seven
o’clock.” He sounded sad and tired.
“Okay,” I said, and we both hung up. I sat there a while longer. Whatever
this ceremony consisted of, did I have to be a participant? Yeah, I did.
Unlike Crystal, I kept my promises. I’d had to stand up for Jason at his
wedding, as his closest relative, as a surrogate to take his punishment if he
was unfaithful to his new wife. Calvin had stood up for Crystal. And now
look what we’d come to.
I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I knew it was going to be
awful. Though the werepanthers understood the necessity for breeding
each available pure male panther to each available pure female panther
(the only way to produce purebred baby panthers), they also believed once
the breeding had been given a chance, any partnerships formed should be
monogamous. If you didn’t want to take that vow, you didn’t form a
partnership or marry. This was the way they ran their community. Crystal
would have absorbed these rules from birth, and Jason had learned them
from Calvin before the wedding.
Jason didn’t call, and I was glad. I wondered what was happening at his
house, but only in a dull kind of way. When had Crystal met Dove Beck?
Did Dove’s wife know about this? I wasn’t surprised that Crystal had
cheated on Jason, but I was a little astonished at her choice.
I decided that Crystal had wanted to make her betrayal as emphatic as it
could possibly be. She was saying, “I’ll have sex with someone else while
I’m carrying your child. And he’ll be older than you, and a different race
from you, and he’ll even work for you!” Twisting the knife in deeper with
every layer. If this was retaliation for the damn cheeseburger, I’d say she’d
gotten a steak-size vengeance.
Because I didn’t want to seem like I was sulking, I came out for supper,
which was lowly and comforting tuna noodle casserole with peas and
onions. After stacking the dishes for Octavia to take care of, I retreated
back to my room. The two witches were practically tiptoeing up and down
the hall because they were so anxious not to disturb me, though of course
they were dying to ask me what the problem was.
But they didn’t; God bless them. I really couldn’t have explained. I was too
mortified.
I said about a million prayers before I went to sleep that night, but none of
them ended up making me feel any better.
I went to work the next day because I had to. Staying home wouldn’t have
made me feel any better. I was profoundly glad Jason didn’t come into
Merlotte’s, because I would have thrown a mug at him if he had.
Sam eyed me carefully several times and finally he drew me behind the bar
with him. “Tell me what’s happening,” he said.
Tears flooded my eyes, and I was within an ace of making a real scene. I
squatted down hastily, as if I’d dropped something on the floor, and I said,
“Sam, please don’t ask me. I’m too upset to talk about it.” Suddenly, I
realized it would be a big comfort to tell Sam, but I just couldn’t, not in the
crowded bar.
“Hey, you know I’m here if you need me.” His face was serious. He patted
my shoulder.
I was so lucky to have him for a boss.
His gesture reminded me that I had lots of friends who would not dishonor
themselves as Crystal had done. Jason had dishonored himself, too, by
forcing Calvin and me to witness her cheap betrayal. I had so many friends
who would not do such a thing! It was a trick of fate that the one who would
was my own brother.
This thought made me feel better and stronger.
I actually had a backbone by the time I got home. No one else was there. I
hesitated, wondering whether I could call Tara or beg Sam to take an hour
off, or even call Bill to go with me to Hotshot ... but that was just weakness
talking. This was something I had to do by myself. Calvin had warned me to
wear something comfortable and not to dress up, and my Merlotte’s outfit
was certainly both those things. But it seemed wrong to wear my work
clothes to an event like this. There might be blood. I didn’t know what to
anticipate. I pulled on yoga pants and an old gray sweatshirt. I made sure
my hair was pulled back. I looked like I was dressed to clean out my
closets.
On the drive to Hotshot, I turned up the radio and sang at the top of my
lungs to keep myself from thinking. I harmonized with Evanescence and
agreed with the Dixie Chicks that I wasn’t going to back down ... a good
spine-stiffening song to listen to.
I reached Hotshot well before seven. I’d last been out here at Jason and
Crystal’s wedding, where I’d danced with Quinn. That visit of Quinn’s had
been the only time he and I had been intimate. In hindsight, I regretted
having taken that step. It had been a mistake. I’d been banking on a future
that never came to pass. I’d jumped the gun. I hoped I’d never make that
mistake again.
I parked, as I had the night of Jason’s wedding, by the side of the road.
There weren’t nearly as many cars here tonight as there had been then,
when many plain human people had been guests. But there were a few
extra vehicles. I recognized Jason’s truck. The others belonged to the few
werepanthers who didn’t live in Hotshot.
A little crowd had already assembled in the backyard of Calvin’s house.
People made way for me until I’d gotten to the center of the gathering and
found Crystal, Jason, and Calvin. I saw some familiar faces. A middle-aged
panther named Maryelizabeth nodded to me. I saw her daughter nearby.
The girl, whose name I couldn’t remember, was by no means the only
underage observer. I got that creepy feeling that raised the hairs on my
arms, the way I did every time I tried to picture everyday life in Hotshot.
Calvin was staring down at his boots, and he didn’t look up. Jason didn’t
meet my eyes, either. Only Crystal was upright and defiant, her dark eyes
catching mine, daring me to stare her down. I did dare, and after a moment
she dropped her gaze to somewhere in the middle distance.
Maryelizabeth had a tattered old book in her hand, and she opened it to a
page she’d marked with a torn piece of newspaper. The community
seemed to still and settle. This was the purpose for which they’d
assembled.
“We people of the fang and claw are here because one of us broke her
vows,” Maryelizabeth read. “At the marriage of Crystal and Jason,
werepanthers of this community, they each promised to remain true to their
marriage vows, both in the way of the cat and the way of the human.
Crystal’s surrogate was her uncle Calvin, and Jason’s was his sister,
Sookie.”
I was aware of the eyes of all the assembled community moving from
Calvin to me. A lot of those eyes were golden yellow. Inbreeding in Hotshot
had produced some slightly alarming results.
“Now that Crystal has broken her vows, a fact witnessed by the surrogates,
her uncle has offered to take the punishment since Crystal is pregnant.”
This was going to be even nastier than I’d suspected.
“Since Calvin takes Crystal’s place, Sookie, do you choose to take Jason’s
place?”
Oh, crap. I looked at Calvin and I knew my whole face was asking him if
there was any way out of this. And his whole face told me no. He actually
looked sorry for me.
I would never forgive my brother—or Crystal—for this.
“Sookie,” Maryelizabeth prompted.
“What would I have to do?” I said, and if I sounded sullen and grudging and
angry, I thought I had a good reason.
Maryelizabeth opened the book again and read the answer. “We exist by
our wits and our claws, and if faith is broken, a claw is broken,” she said.
I stared at her, trying to make sense of that.
“Either you or Jason has to break Calvin’s finger,” she said simply. “In fact,
since Crystal broke the faith completely, you have to break two, at least.
More would be better. Jason gets to pick, I guess.”
More would be better. Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea. I tried to be
dispassionate. Who could cause the most damage to my friend Calvin? My
brother, no doubt about it. If I was a true friend to Calvin, I would do this.
Could I bring myself to? And then it was taken out of my hands.
Jason said, “I didn’t think it would happen this way, Sookie.” He sounded
simultaneously angry, confused, and defensive. “If Calvin stands in for
Crystal, I want Sookie to stand in for me,” he told Maryelizabeth. I never
thought I could hate my own brother, but at that moment I found out it was
possible.
“So be it,” said Maryelizabeth.
I tried to boost myself up mentally. After all, this wasn’t maybe quite as bad
as I’d anticipated. I’d pictured Calvin being whipped or having to whip
Crystal. Or we might have had to do some awful thing involving knives; that
would have been way worse.
I tried to believe this might not be so bad right up until the time two of the
males carried out a pair of concrete blocks and put them on top of the
picnic table.
And then Maryelizabeth produced a brick. She held it out to me.
I began to shake my head involuntarily because I felt a heavy twinge in my
stomach. Nausea did flip-flops in my belly. Looking at the common red
brick, I began to have an idea what this was going to cost me.
Calvin stepped forward and took my hand. He leaned over to talk very
close to my ear. “Darlin’,” he said, “you have to do this. I accepted this,
when I stood up for her when she married. And I knew what she was. And
you know Jason. This might easily have been the other way ’round. I might
be about to do this to you. And you don’t heal as well. This is better. And it
has to be. Our people require this.” He straightened and looked me right in
the eyes. His own were golden, utterly strange, and quite steady.
I pinched my lips together, and I made myself nod. Calvin gave me a
bracing look and took his place by the table. He put his hand on the
concrete blocks. With no further ado, Maryelizabeth handed me the brick.
The rest of the panthers waited patiently for me to perform the punishment.
The vampires would have dressed this all up with a special wardrobe and
probably an extraspecial fancy brick from an old temple or something, but
not the panthers. It was just a damn brick. I held it with both hands gripping
one long side.
After I’d looked at it for a long minute, I said to Jason. “I don’t want to talk to
you again. Ever.” I faced Crystal. “I hope you enjoyed it, bitch,” I said, and I
turned as quick as I could and brought the brick down on Calvin’s hand.
Chapter 19
Amelia and Octavia hovered around for two days before they decided
leaving me alone was the best policy. Reading their anxious thoughts just
made me surlier, because I didn’t want to accept comfort. I should suffer for
what I’d done, and that meant I couldn’t accept any easing of my misery.
So I gloomed and sulked and brooded and rained my grim mood all over
my house.
My brother came into the bar once, and I turned my back on him. Dove
Beck didn’t choose to drink at Merlotte’s, which was a good thing, though
he was the least guilty of the bunch as far as I was concerned—though that
didn’t make him any clean Gene. When Alcee Beck came in, it was clear
his brother had confided in him, because Alcee looked even angrier than
usual, and he met my eyes every chance he got, just to let me know he
was my equal.
Thank God, Calvin didn’t show. I couldn’t have stood it. I heard enough talk
around the bar from his coworkers at Nor-cross about the accident he’d
had while he was working on his truck at home.
Most unexpectedly, on the third night Eric walked into Merlotte’s. I took one
look at him and suddenly my throat seemed to ease and I felt tears well up
in my eyes. But Eric walked through as though he owned the place, and he
went into the hall to Sam’s office. Moments later Sam stuck his head out
and beckoned to me.
After I walked in, I didn’t expect Sam to shut the office door.
“What’s wrong?” Sam asked me. He’d been trying to find out for days, and
I’d been fending off his well-meant queries.
Eric was standing to one side, his arms crossed over his chest. He made a
gesture with one hand that said, “Tell us; we’re waiting.” Despite his
brusqueness, his presence relaxed the big knot inside me, the one that had
kept the words locked in my stomach.
“I broke Calvin Norris’s hand into bits,” I said. “With a brick.”
“Then he was . . . He stood up for your sister-in-law at the wedding,” Sam
said, figuring it out quickly.
Eric looked blank. The vampires know something about the wereanimals—
they have to—but the vamps think they are far superior, so they don’t make
an effort to learn specifics about the rituals and rhythms of being a were.
“She had to break his hand, which represents his claws in panther form,”
Sam explained impatiently.
“She stood up for Jason.” And then Sam and Eric exchanged a look that
scared me in its complete agreement. Neither of them liked Jason one little
bit.
Sam looked from me to Eric as if he expected Eric to do something to make
me feel better. “I don’t belong to him,” I said sharply, since all this was
making me feel handled in a major way. “Did you think Eric coming would
make me all happy and carefree?”
“No,” Sam said, sounding a little angry himself. “But I hoped it would help
you talk about whatever was wrong.”
“What’s wrong,” I said very quietly. “Okay, what’s wrong is that my brother
arranged for Calvin and me to check on Crystal, who’s about four months
pregnant, and he fixed it so we’d get there at about the same time. And
when we checked, we found Crystal in bed with Dove Beck. As Jason knew
we would.”
Eric said, “And for this, you had to break the werepanther’s fingers.” He
might have been asking if I’d had to wear chicken bones and turn around
three times, it was so obvious he was inquiring into the quaint customs of a
primitive tribe.
“Yes, Eric, that’s what I had to do,” I said grimly. “I had to break my friend’s
fingers with a brick in front of a crowd.”
For the first time Eric seemed to realize that he’d taken the wrong
approach. Sam was looking at him in total exasperation. “And I thought
you’d be such a big help,” he said.
“I have a few things going in Shreveport,” Eric answered with a shade of
defensiveness. “Including hosting the new king.”
Sam muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “Fucking
vampires.”
This was totally unfair. I’d expected tons of sympathy when I finally
confessed the reason for my bad mood. But now Sam and Eric were so
wrapped up in being irritated with each other that neither one of them was
giving me a moment’s thought. “Well, thanks, guys,” I said. “This has been
a lot of fun. Eric, big help there—I appreciate the kind words.” And I left in
what my grandmother called high dudgeon. I stomped back out into the bar
and waited on tables so grimly that some people were scared to call me
over to order more drinks.
I decided to clean the surfaces behind the bar, because Sam was still in his
office with Eric ... though possibly Eric had left out the back door. I
scrubbed and polished and pulled some beers for Holly, and I straightened
everything so meticulously that Sam might have a wee problem finding
things. Just for a week or two.
Then Sam came out to take his place, looked at the counter in mute
displeasure, and jerked his head to indicate I should get the hell out from
behind the bar. My bad mood was catching.
You know how it is sometimes, when someone really tries to cheer you up?
When you just decide that by golly, nothing in the world is going to make
you feel better? Sam had thrown Eric at me like he was throwing a happy
pill, yet he was aggravated that I hadn’t swallowed it. Instead of being
grateful that Sam was fond enough of me to call Eric, I was mad at him for
his assumption.
I was in a totally black mood.
Quinn was gone. I’d banished him. Stupid mistake or wise decision?
Verdict still out.
Lots of Weres were dead in Shreveport because of Priscilla, and I’d
watched some of them die. Believe me, that sticks with you.
More than a few vampires were dead, too, including some I’d known fairly
well.
My brother was a devious manipulative bastard.
My great-grandfather wasn’t ever going to take me fishing.
Okay, now I was getting silly. Suddenly, I smiled, because I was picturing
the prince of the fairies in old denim overalls and a Bon Temps Hawks
baseball cap, carrying a can of worms and a couple of fishing poles.
I caught Sam’s eye as I cleared a table of plates. I winked at him.
He turned away, shaking his head, but I caught a hint of a smile at the
corners of his mouth.
And just like that, my bad mood was officially over. My common sense
kicked in. There was no point in lashing myself over the Hotshot incident
any longer. I’d had to do what I’d had to do. Calvin understood that better
than I did. My brother was an asshole, and Crystal was a whore. These
were facts I had to deal with. Granted, they were both unhappy people who
were acting out because they were married to the wrong spouse, but they
were also both chronologically adults, and I couldn’t fix their marriage any
more than I’d been able to prevent it.
The Weres had dealt with their own problems in their own way, and I’d
done my best to help them. Vampires, ditto ... sort of.
Okay. Not all better, but enough better.
When I got off work, I wasn’t completely annoyed to find Eric waiting by my
car. He seemed to be enjoying the night, standing all by himself in the cold.
I was shivering myself because I hadn’t brought a heavy jacket. My
Windbreaker wasn’t enough.
“It’s been nice to be by myself for a while,” Eric said unexpectedly.
“I guess at Fangtasia you’re always surrounded,” I said.
“Always surrounded by people wanting things,” he said.
“But you enjoy that, right? Being the big kahuna?”
Eric looked like he was mulling that over. “Yes, I like that. I like being the
boss. I don’t like being ... overseen. Is that a word? I’ll be glad when Felipe
de Castro and his minion Sandy take their departure. Victor will stay to take
over New Orleans.”
Eric was sharing. This was almost unprecedented. This was like a normal
give-and-take between equals.
“What’s the new king like?” Cold as I was, I couldn’t resist keeping the
conversation going.
“He’s handsome, ruthless, and clever,” Eric said.
“Like you.” I could have slapped myself.
Eric nodded after a moment. “But more so,” Eric said grimly. “I’ll have to
keep very alert to stay ahead of him.”
“How gratifying to hear you say so,” said an accented voice.
This was definitely an Oh, shit! moment. (An OSM, as I called them to
myself .) A gorgeous man stepped out from the trees, and I blinked as I
took him in. As Eric bowed, I scanned Felipe de Castro from his gleaming
shoes to his bold face. As I bowed, too, belatedly, I realized that Eric hadn’t
been exaggerating when he said the new king was handsome. Felipe de
Castro was a Latin male who threw Jimmy Smits into the shade, and I am a
big admirer of Mr. Smits. Though perhaps five foot ten or so, Castro carried
himself with such importance and straight posture that you couldn’t think of
him as short— rather, he made other men look too tall. His dark thick hair
was clipped close to his head, and he had a mustache and chin strip. He
had caramel skin and dark eyes, strong arched eyebrows, a bold nose. The
king wore a cape—no kidding, a real full-length black cape. I’ll tell you how
impressive he was; I didn’t even think of giggling. Other than the cape, he
seemed dressed for a night that might include flamenco dancing, with a
white shirt, black vest, and black dress slacks. One of Castro’s ears was
pierced, and there was a dark stone in it. The overhead security light didn’t
let me get a better idea of what it might be. Ruby? Emerald?
I’d straightened up and I was staring again. But when I glanced at Eric, I
saw he was still bowing. Ah-oh. Well, I wasn’t one of his subjects and I
wasn’t going to do that again. It had gone against my Americanness to do it
once.
“Hi, I’m Sookie Stackhouse,” I said, since the silence was getting awkward.
I automatically held out my hand, remembered vamps didn’t shake, and
snatched it back. “Excuse me,” I said.
The king inclined his head. “Miss Stackhouse,” he said, his accent
strumming my name delightfully. (“Meees Stekhuss.”)
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry to meet you and run, but it’s really cold out here and I
need to get home.” I beamed at him, my lunatic beam I give when I’m really
nervous. “Good-bye, Eric,” I babbled, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the
cheek. “Give me a call when you have a minute. Unless you need me to
stay, for some crazy reason?”
“No, lover, you need to go home and get into the warmth,” Eric said,
clasping both my hands in his. “I’ll call you when my work permits.”
When he let go of me, I did an awkward sort of dip in the king’s direction
(American! Not used to bowing!) and hopped into my car before either
vampire could change his mind about my departure. I felt like a coward—a
very relieved coward—as I backed out of my space and drove out of the
parking lot. But I was already debating the wisdom of my departure as I
turned onto Hummingbird Road.
I was worried about Eric. This was a fairly new phenomenon, one that
made me very uneasy, and it had started the night of the coup. Worrying
about Eric was like worrying about the well-being of a rock or a tornado.
When had I ever had to worry about him before? He was one of the most
powerful vampires I’d ever met. But Sophie-Anne had been even more
powerful and protected by the huge warrior Sigebert, and look what had
happened to her. I felt abruptly, acutely miserable. What was wrong with
me?
I had a terrible idea. Maybe I was worried simply because Eric was
worried? Miserable because Eric was miserable? Could I receive his
emotions this strongly and from this great a distance? Should I turn around
and find out what was happening? If the king was being cruel to Eric, I
couldn’t possibly be of any assistance. I had to pull over to the side of the
road. I couldn’t drive anymore.
I’d never had a panic attack, but I thought I was having one now. I was
paralyzed with indecision; again, not one of my usual characteristics.
Struggling with myself, trying to think clearly, I realized I had to turn back
whether I wanted to or not. It was an obligation I couldn’t ignore, not
because I was bonded to Eric, but because I liked him.
I turned the wheel and did a U-turn in the middle of Hummingbird Road.
Since I’d seen only two cars since I’d left the bar, the maneuver was no big
traffic violation. I drove back a lot faster than I’d left, and when I got to
Merlotte’s, I found that the customer parking lot was completely empty. I
parked in front and pulled my old softball bat out from under the seat. My
grandmother had given it to me for my sixteenth birthday. It was a very
good bat, though it had seen better days. I crept around the building, taking
advantage of the bushes that grew at the foundation for cover. Nandinas. I
hate nandinas. They’re straggly and ugly and leggy, and I’m allergic to
them. Though I was covered with a Windbreaker, pants, and socks, the
minute I began threading my way among the plants, my nose began to run.
I peeked around the corner very cautiously.
I was so shocked I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Sigebert, the queen’s bodyguard, had not been killed in the coup. No,
sirree, he was still among the undead. And he was here in the Merlotte’s
parking lot, and he was having a lot of fun with the new king, Felipe de
Castro, and with Eric, and with Sam, who had been swept up in the net
probably by simply leaving his bar to walk to his trailer.
I took a deep breath—a deep but silent breath—and made myself analyze
what I was seeing. Sigebert was a mountain of a man, and he’d been the
queen’s muscle for centuries. His brother, Wybert, had died in the queen’s
service, and I was sure Sigebert had been a target of the Nevada vamps;
they’d left their mark on him. Vampires heal fast, but Sigebert had been
wounded badly enough that even days after he’d fought, he was still visibly
damaged. There was a huge cut across his forehead and a horrible-looking
mark just above where I thought his heart would be. His clothes were
ripped and stained and filthy. Maybe the Nevada vamps thought he’d
disintegrated when in fact he’d managed to get away and hide. Not
important, I told myself.
The important part was that he’d succeeded in binding both Eric and Felipe
de Castro with silver chains. How? Not important, I told myself again.
Maybe this tendency to mentally wander was coming from Eric, who was
looking much more battered than the king. Of course, Sigebert would see
Eric as a traitor.
Eric was bleeding from the head and his arm was clearly broken. Castro
was bleeding sluggishly from the mouth, so Sigebert had maybe stomped
on him. Eric and Castro were both lying on the ground, and in the harsh
security light they both looked whiter than snow. Sam had been tied to the
bumper of his own truck somehow, and he wasn’t damaged at all, at least
so far. Thank God.
I tried to figure out how I could conquer Sigebert with my aluminum softball
bat, but I didn’t come up with any good ideas. If I rushed him, he’d just
laugh. Even as grievously wounded as he was, he was still a vampire and I
was no match for him unless I had a great idea. So I watched, and I waited,
but in the end I couldn’t stand to see him hurting Eric anymore; believe me,
when a vampire kicks you, you get plenty hurt. Plus, Sigebert was having a
great time with the big knife he had brought.
The biggest weapon at my disposal? Okay, that would be my car. I felt a
little pang of regret, because it was the best car I’d ever had, and Tara had
sold it to me for a dollar when she’d gotten a newer one. But it was the only
thing I could think of that would make a dent in Sigebert.
So back I crept, praying that Sigebert would be so absorbed in his torture
that he wouldn’t notice the sound of the car door. I laid my head on the
steering wheel and thought as hard as I’ve ever thought. I considered the
parking lot and its topography, and I thought about the location of the
bound vampires, and I took a deep breath and turned the key. I started
around the building, wishing my car could creep through the damn nandina
bushes like I had, and I swung wide to allow room to charge, and my lights
caught Sigebert, and I hit the accelerator and went straight at him. He tried
to get out of the way, but he was none too bright and I’d caught him with his
pants down (literally—I really didn’t like to think about his next torture plan)
and I hit him very hard, and up he bounced, to land on the roof of the car
with a huge thud.
I screamed and braked, because this was as far as my plan had gone. He
slid down the back of the car, leaving a horrible sheet of dark blood, and
disappeared from view. Scared he’d pop up in the rearview mirror, I threw
the car into reverse and hit the pedal again. Bump. Bump. I yanked the
gear stick into park and leaped out, bat in hand, to find Sigebert’s legs and
most of his torso were wedged under the car. I dashed over to Eric and
began fumbling with the silver chain, while he stared at me with his eyes
wide. Castro was cursing in Spanish, fluently and fluidly, and Sam was
saying, “Hurry, Sookie, hurry!” which really didn’t help my powers of
concentration.
I gave up on the damn chains and got the big knife and cut Sam free so he
could help. The knife came close enough to his skin to make him yelp a
time or two, but I was really doing the best I could, and he didn’t bleed. To
give him credit, he made it over to Castro in record time and began freeing
him while I ran back to Eric, laying the knife on the ground beside us as I
worked. Now that I had at least one ally who had the use of his hands and
legs, I was able to concentrate, and I got Eric’s legs unbound (at least now
he could run away—I guess that was my thinking) and then, more slowly,
his arms and hands. The silver had been wound around him many times,
and Sigebert had made sure it touched Eric’s hands.
They looked ghastly. Castro had suffered even more from the chains
because Sigebert had divested him of his beautiful cape and most of his
shirt.
I was unwinding the last strand when Eric shoved me as hard as he could,
grabbed the knife, and leaped to his feet so swiftly I saw only a blur. Then
he was on Sigebert, who had actually lifted the car to release his own
trapped legs. He’d begun dragging himself out from under, and in another
minute he would have been ambulatory.
Did I mention it was a big knife? And it must have been sharp, too, because
Eric landed by Sigebert, said, “Go to your maker,” and cut off the warrior
vampire’s head.
“Oh,” I said shakily, and sat down abruptly on the cold parking lot gravel.
“Oh, wow.” We all remained where we were, panting, for a good five
minutes. Then Sam straightened up from the side of Felipe de Castro and
offered him a hand. The vampire took it, and when he was upright, he
introduced himself to Sam, who automatically introduced himself right back.
“Miss Stackhouse,” the king said, “I am in your debt.”
Damn straight.
“It’s okay,” I said in a voice that wasn’t nearly as level as it should be.
“Thank you,” he said. “If your car is too damaged to repair, I will be very
glad to buy you another one.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said with absolute sincerity, as I stood up. “I’ll try to drive it
home tonight. I don’t know how I can explain the damage. Do you think the
body shop would believe I ran over an alligator?” That did happen
occasionally. Was it weird that I was worried about the car insurance?
“Dawson would look at it for you,” Sam said. His voice was as odd as mine.
He, too, had thought he was going to die. “I know he’s a motorcycle
repairman, but I bet he could fix your car. He works on his own all the time.”
“Do what is necessary,” said Castro grandly. “I will pay. Eric, would you
care to explain what just happened?” His voice was considerably more
acerbic.
“You should ask your crew to explain,” Eric retorted, with some justification.
“Didn’t they tell you Sigebert, the queen’s bodyguard, was dead? Yet here
he is.”
“An excellent point.” Castro looked down at the crumbling body. “So that
was the legendary Sigebert. He’s gone to join his brother, Wybert.” He
sounded quite pleased.
I hadn’t known the brothers were famous among the vampires, but they’d
certainly been unique. Their mountainous physiques, their broken and
primitive English, their utter devotion to the woman who’d turned them
centuries before— sure, any right-minded vampire would love that story. I
sagged where I stood, and Eric, moving faster than I could see, picked me
up. It was a very Scarlett and Rhett moment, spoiled only by the fact that
there were two other guys there, we were in a humdrum parking lot, and I
was unhappy about the damage to my car. Plus not a little shocked.
“How’d he get the jump on three strong guys like you-all?” I asked. I didn’t
worry about Eric holding me. It made me feel tiny, not a feeling I got to
enjoy all that often.
There was a moment of general embarrassment.
“I was standing with my back to the woods,” Castro explained. “He had the
chains arranged for throwing. . . . Your word is almost the same. Lazo.”
“Lasso,” Sam said.
“Ah, lasso. The first one, he threw around me, and of course, the shock
was great. Before Eric could land on him, he had Eric as well. The pain
from the silver . . . very quickly we were bound. When this one”—he
nodded toward Sam—“came to our aid, Sigebert knocked him unconscious
and got rope from the back of Sam’s truck and tied him up.”
“We were too involved in our discussion to be wary,” Eric said. He sounded
pretty grim, and I didn’t blame him. But I decided to keep my mouth shut.
“Ironic, eh, that we needed a human girl to rescue us,” the king said
blithely, the very idea that I’d decided not to voice.
“Yes, very amusing,” Eric said in a dreadfully unamused voice. “Why did
you return, Sookie?”
“I felt your, ah, anger at being attacked.” For “anger” read “despair.”
The new king looked very interested. “A blood bond. How interesting.”
“No, not really,” I said. “Sam, I wonder if you’d mind driving me home. I
don’t know where you gentlemen left your cars, or if you flew. I do wonder
how Sigebert knew where to find you.”
Felipe de Castro and Eric shared almost identical expressions of deep
thought.
“We’ll find out,” Eric said, and set me down. “And then heads are going to
roll.” Eric was good at setting heads to rolling. It was one of his favorite
things. I was willing to put my money on Castro sharing that predilection,
because the king was looking positively gleeful in anticipation.
Sam fished his keys out of his pocket without a word, and I climbed into the
truck with him. We left the two vampires involved in a deep conversation.
Sigebert’s corpse, still partially under my poor car, was almost gone,
leaving a dark greasy residue on the gravel of the parking lot. The good
thing about vampires—no corpse disposal.
“I’ll call Dawson tonight,” Sam said unexpectedly.
“Oh, Sam, thank you,” I said. “I’m so glad you were there.”
“It’s the parking lot of my bar,” he said, and it might have been my own
guilty reaction, but I thought I detected some reproach. I suddenly came to
the full realization that Sam had walked into a situation in his own
backyard, a situation he had no stake or interest in, and that he’d almost
died as a result. And why had Eric been in the parking lot back of
Merlotte’s? To talk to me. And then Felipe de Castro had followed to talk to
Eric . . . though I wasn’t sure why. But the point was, them being there at all
was my fault.
“Oh, Sam,” I said, almost in tears, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know Eric would
wait for me, and I sure didn’t know the king would follow him. I still don’t
know why he was there. I’m so sorry,” I said again. I would say it a hundred
times if it would take that tone out of Sam’s voice.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “I asked Eric to come here in the first place. It’s
their fault. I don’t know how we can pry you loose from them.”
“This was bad, but somehow you’re not taking it like I thought you would.”
“I just want to be left in peace,” he said unexpectedly. “I don’t want to get
involved in supernatural politics. I don’t want to have to take sides in Were
shit. I’m not a Were. I’m a shapeshifter, and shifters don’t organize. We’re
too different. I hate vampire politics even more than Were politics.”
“You’re mad at me.”
“No!” He seemed to be struggling with what he wanted to say. “I don’t want
that for you, either!
Weren’t you happier before?”
“You mean before I knew any vampires; before I knew about the rest of the
world that lies outside the boundaries?”
Sam nodded.
“In some ways. It was nice to have a clear path before me,” I said. “I do get
really sick of the politics and the battles. But my life wasn’t any prize, Sam.
Every day was a struggle just to act like I was a regular human, like I didn’t
know all the things I know about other humans. The cheating and infidelity,
the little acts of dishonesty, the unkindness. The really severe judgments
people pass on each other. Their lack of charity. When you know all that,
it’s hard to keep going sometimes. Knowing about the supernatural world
puts all that in a different perspective. I don’t know why. People aren’t any
better or worse than the supernaturals, but they’re not all there is, either.”
’“I guess I understand,” Sam said, though he sounded a little doubtful.
“Plus,” I said very quietly, “it’s nice to be valued for the very thing that
makes regular people think I’m just a crazy girl.”
“Definitely understand that,” Sam said. “But there’s a price.”
“Oh, no doubt about it.”
“You willing to pay?”
“So far.”
We chugged up my driveway. No lights on. The witchy duo had gone to
bed, or else they were out partying or casting spells.
“In the morning, I’ll call Dawson,” Sam said. “He’ll check out your car, make
sure you can drive it, or he’ll get it towed to his place. Think you can get a
ride to work?”
“I’m sure I can,” I said. “Amelia can bring me in.”
Sam walked me to the back door like he was bringing me home from a
date. The porch light was on, which was thoughtful of Amelia. Sam put his
arms around me, which was a surprise, and then he just snugged his head
in close to mine, and we stood there enjoying each other’s warmth for a
long moment.
“We survived the Were war,” he said. “You made it through the vampire
coup. Now we lived through the attack of the berserk bodyguard. I hope we
keep up our record.”
“Now you’re scaring me,” I said as I remembered all the other things I’d
survived. I should be dead, no doubt about it.
His warm lips brushed my cheek. “Maybe that’s a good thing,” he said, and
turned to go back to his truck.
I watched him climb in and reverse, and then I unlocked the back door and
went to my room. After all the adrenaline and the fear and the accelerated
pace of life (and death) in the parking lot of Merlotte’s, my own room
seemed very quiet and clean and secure. I’d done my best to kill someone
tonight. It was only by chance Sigebert had survived my attempt at
vehicular homicide. Twice. I couldn’t help but notice that I wasn’t feeling
remorseful. This was surely a flaw, but at the moment I just didn’t care.
There were definitely parts of my character I didn’t approve of, and maybe
from time to time I had moments when I didn’t like myself much. But I got
through each day as it came to me, and so far I’d survived every thing life
had thrown at me. I could only hope that the survival was worth the price I’d
paid.
Chapter 20
To my relief, I woke up in an empty house. Neither Amelia’s nor Octavia’s
throbbing heads were under my roof. I lay in bed and reveled in the
knowledge. Maybe the next time I had a whole day off, I could spend it
completely alone. That didn’t seem a likely occurrence, but a girl can
dream. After I planned my day (call Sam to find out about my car, pay
some bills, go to work), I got into the shower and really scrubbed. I used as
much hot water as I wanted. I painted my toenails and my fingernails, and I
pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt and went in to make some
coffee. The kitchen was spanking clean; God bless Amelia.
The coffee was great, the toast delicious spread with blueberry jam. Even
my taste buds were happy. After I cleaned up from breakfast, I was
practically singing with the pleasure of solitude. I went back to my room to
make my bed and put on my makeup.
Of course, that was when the knock came at the back door, nearly making
me jump out of my skin. I stepped into some shoes and went to answer it.
Tray Dawson was there, and he was smiling. “Sookie, your car is doing
fine,” he said. “I had to do a little replacing here and there, and it’s the first
time I ever had to scrape vampire ash off an undercarriage, but you’re good
to go.”
“Oh, thanks! Can you come in?”
“Just for a minute,” he said. “You got a Coke in the refrigerator?”
“I sure do.” I brought him a Coke, asked if he wanted some cookies or a
peanut butter sandwich to go with it, and when he’d turned that down, I
excused myself to finish my makeup. I’d figured Dawson would run me to
the car, but he’d driven it over to my place, as it turned out, so I’d need to
give him a ride instead.
I had my checkbook out and my pen in hand when I sat at the table
opposite the big man and asked him how much I owed him.
“Not a dime,” Dawson said. “The new guy paid for it.”
“The new king?”
“Yeah, he called me in the middle of the night last night. Told me the story,
more or less, and asked me if I could look at the car first thing in the
morning. I was awake when he called, so it didn’t make me no nevermind. I
got over to Merlotte’s this morning, told Sam he wasted a phone call since I
already knew all about it. I followed him while he drove the car out to my
place, and we put it up on the rack and had a good look.”
This was a long speech for Dawson. I put my checkbook back in my purse
and listened, silently asking him if he wanted more Coke by pointing at his
glass. He shook his head, letting me know he was satisfied. “We had to
tighten up a few things, replace your windshield fluid reservoir. I knew just
where another car like yours was at Rusty’s Salvage, and it didn’t take no
time to do the job.”
I could only thank him again. I drove Dawson out to his repair shop. Since
the last time I’d driven by, he’d trimmed up the front yard of his home, a
modest but tidy frame house that stood next door to the big shop. Dawson
had also put all the bits and pieces of motorcycles under cover somewhere,
instead of having them strewn around in a handy but unattractive spread.
And his pickup was clean.
As Dawson slid out of the car, I said, “I’m so grateful. I know cars aren’t
your specialty and I do appreciate your working on mine.” Repairman to the
underworld, that was Tray Dawson.
“Well, I did it because I wanted to,” Dawson said, and then he paused. “But
if you could see your way to it, I’d sure like it if you’d put in a word for me
with your friend Amelia.”
“I don’t have much influence over Amelia,” I said. “But I’ll be glad to tell her
what a sterling character you are.”
He smiled very broadly: no suppression there. I didn’t think I’d ever seen
Dawson crack such a grin. “She sure looks healthy,” he said, and since I
had no idea what Dawson’s criteria for admiration were, that was a big
clue.
“You call her up, I’ll give a reference,” I said.
“It’s a deal.”
We parted happy, and he loped across the newly neat yard to his shop. I
didn’t know if Dawson would be to Amelia’s taste or not, but I’d do my best
to persuade her to give him a chance.
As I drove home, I listened to the car for any strange noise. It purred away.
Amelia and Octavia came in as I was leaving for work.
“How are you feeling?” Amelia said with a knowing air.
“Fine,” I said automatically. Then I understood she thought I hadn’t come
home the night before. She thought I’d been having a good time with
someone. “Hey, you remember Tray Dawson, right? You met him at Maria-
Star’s apartment.”
“Sure.”
“He’s going to call you. Be sweet.”
I left her grinning after me as I got into my car.
For once, work was boring and normal. Terry was substituting since Sam
hated to work on Sunday afternoons. Merlotte’s was having a calm day. We
opened late on Sunday and we closed early, so I was ready to start home
by seven. No one showed up in the parking lot, and I was able to walk
directly to my car without being accosted for a long, weird conversation or
being attacked.
The next morning I had errands to run in town. I was short on cash, so I
drove to the ATM, waving at Tara Thornton du Rone. Tara smiled and
waved back. Marriage was suiting her, and I hoped she and JB were
having a happier time of it than my brother and his wife. As I drove away
from the bank, to my astonishment I spotted Alcide Herveaux coming out of
the offices of Sid Matt Lancaster, an ancient and renowned lawyer. I pulled
into Sid Matt’s parking lot, and Alcide came over to talk to me.
I should have driven on, hoping he hadn’t noticed me.
The conversation was awkward. Alcide had had a lot to deal with, in all
fairness. His girlfriend was dead, brutally murdered. Several other
members of his pack were also dead. He’d had a huge cover-up to
arrange. But he was now the leader of the pack, and he had gotten to
celebrate his victory in the traditional way. In hindsight, I suspect he was
fairly embarrassed at having sex with a young woman in public, especially
so soon after his girlfriend’s death. This was quite a bundle of emotions I
was reading in his head, and he was flushed when he came to my car
window.
“Sookie, I haven’t had a chance to thank you for all your help that night. It’s
lucky for us your boss decided to come with you.”
Yeah, since you wouldn’t have saved my life and he did, I’m glad, too. “No
problem, Alcide,” I said, my voice wonderfully even and calm. I was going
to have a good day, dammit. “Have things settled down in Shreveport?”
“The police don’t seem to have a clue,” he said, glancing around to make
sure no one else was within hearing distance. “They haven’t found the site
yet, and there’s been a lot of rain. We’re hoping sooner rather than later
they’ll cut back on their investigation.”
“You-all still planning the big announcement?”
“It’ll have to be soon. The heads of other packs in the area have been in
contact with me. We don’t have a meeting of all the leaders like the
vampires do, mostly because they have one leader for each state and we
have a hell of a lot of packleaders. Looks like we’ll all elect a representative
from the packleaders, one from each state, and those representatives will
go to a national meeting.”
“That sounds like a step in the right direction.”
“Also, we might ask other wereanimals if they want to come in with us. Like,
Sam could belong to my pack in an auxiliary way, though he’s not a Were.
And it would be good if the lone wolves, like Dawson, came to some of the
pack parties ... came out howling with us or something.”
“Dawson seems to like his life the way it is,” I said. “And you’ll have to talk
to Sam, not me, about whether he wants to associate with you-all formally.”
“Sure. You seem to have a lot of influence with him. Just thought I’d
mention it.”
I didn’t see it that way. Sam had a lot of influence over me, but whether I
had any over him ... I was dubious. Alcide began making the little shifts in
stance that told me as clearly as his brain had that he was about to go his
way on whatever business had brought him to Bon Temps.
“Alcide,” I said, seized by an impulse, “I do have a question.”
He said, “Sure.”
“Who’s taking care of the Furnan children?”
He looked at me, then away. “Libby’s sister. She’s got three of her own, but
she said she was glad to take them in. There’s enough money for their
upbringing. When it comes time for them to go to college, we’ll see what we
can do for the boy.”
“For the boy?”
“He’s pack.”
If I’d had a brick in my hand, I wouldn’t have minded using it on Alcide.
Good God almighty. I took a deep breath. To give him credit, the sex of the
child wasn’t the issue at all. It was his pure blood.
“There may be enough insurance money for the girl to go, too,” Alcide said,
since he was no fool. “The aunt wasn’t too clear about that, but she knows
we’ll help.”
“And she knows who ‘we’ is?”
He shook his head. “We told her it was a secret society, like the Masons,
that Furnan belonged to.”
There didn’t seem to be anything left to say.
“Good luck,” I said. He’d already had a fair share of that, no matter what
you thought about the two dead women that had been his girlfriends. After
all, he himself had survived to achieve his father’s goal.
“Thank you, and thanks again for your part in that luck. You’re still a friend
of the pack,” he said very seriously. His beautiful green eyes lingered on
my face. “And you’re one of my favorite women in the world,” he added
unexpectedly.
“That’s a real nice compliment, Alcide,” I said, and drove away. I was glad
I’d talked to him. Alcide had grown up a lot in the past few weeks. All in all,
he was changing into a man I admired much more than I had the old one.
I’d never forget the blood and the screaming of the horrific night in the
abandoned office park in Shreveport, but I began to feel that some good
had come out of it.
When I returned home, I found that Octavia and Amelia were in the front
yard, raking. This was a delightful discovery. I hated raking worse than
anything in the world, but if I didn’t go over the yard once or twice during
the fall, the pine needle buildup was dreadful.
I had been thanking people all day long. I parked in the back and came out
the front.
“Do you bag these up or burn them?” Amelia called.
“Oh, I burn ’em when there’s not a burn ban on,” I said. “It’s so nice of you
both to think of doing this.” I wasn’t aiming to gush—but having your very
least favorite chore done for you was really quite a treat.
“I need the exercise,” Octavia said. “We went to the mall in Monroe
yesterday, so I did get some walking in.”
I thought Amelia treated Octavia more like a grandmother than a teacher.
“Did Tray call?” I asked.
“He sure did.” Amelia smiled broadly.
“He thought you were fine-looking.”
Octavia laughed. “Amelia, you’re a femme fatale.”
She looked happy and said, “I think he’s an interesting guy.”
“A bit older than you,” I said, just so she’d know.
Amelia shrugged. “I don’t care. I’m ready to date. I think Pam and I are
more buddies than honeys. And since I found that litter of kittens, I’m open
for guy business.”
“You really think Bob made a choice? Wouldn’t that have been, like,
instinct?” I said.
Just then, the cat in question wandered across the yard, curious to see why
we were all standing out in the open when there was a perfectly good
couch and a few beds in the house.
Octavia gave a gusty sigh. “Oh, hell,” she muttered. She straightened and
held her hands out. “Potestas mea te in formam veram tuam commutabit
natura ips reaffirmet Incantationes praeviae deletae sunt,” she said.
The cat blinked up at Octavia. Then it made a peculiar noise, a kind of cry
I’d never heard come out of a cat’s throat before. Suddenly the air around
him was thick and dense and cloudy and full of sparks. The cat shrieked
again. Amelia was staring at the animal with her mouth wide open. Octavia
looked resigned and a little sad.
The cat writhed on the fading grass, and suddenly it had a human leg.
“God almighty!” I said, and clapped a hand over my mouth.
Now it had two legs, two hairy legs, and then it had a penis, and then it
began to be a man all over, shrieking all the while. After a horrible two
minutes, the witch Bob Jessup lay on the lawn, shaking all over but entirely
human again. After another minute, he stopped shrieking and just twitched.
Not an improvement, really, but easier on the eardrums.
Then he lunged to his feet, leaped onto Amelia, and made a determined
effort to choke her to death.
I grabbed his shoulders to pull him off of her, and Octavia said, “You don’t
want me to use magic on you again, right?”
That proved a very effective threat. Bob let go of Amelia and stood panting
in the cold air. “I can’t believe you did that to me!” he said. “I can’t believe I
spent the last few months as a cat!”
“How do you feel?” I asked. “Are you weak? Do you need help into the
house? Would you like some clothes?”
He looked down at himself vaguely. He hadn’t worn clothes in a while, but
suddenly he turned red, very nearly all over. “Yes,” he said stiffly. “Yes, I
would like some clothes.”
“Come with me,” I said. The dusk was coming on as I led Bob into the
house. Bob was a smallish guy, and I thought a pair of my sweats might fit
him. No, Amelia was a little taller, and a clothes donation from her would be
only fair. I spotted the basket full of folded clothes on the stairs where
Amelia had left it to carry up the next time she went to her room. Lo and
behold, there was an old blue sweatshirt and a pair of black sweat pants. I
handed the clothes to Bob wordlessly, and he pulled them on with
trembling fingers. I flipped through the stack and found a pair of socks that
were plain white. He sat down on the couch to pull them on. That was as
far as I could go toward clothing him. His feet were larger than mine or
Amelia’s, so shoes were out.
Bob wrapped his arms around himself like he feared he was going to
disappear. His dark hair was clinging to his skull. He blinked, and I
wondered what had happened to his glasses. I hoped Amelia had stored
them somewhere.
“Bob, can I get you a drink?” I asked.
“Yes, please,” he said. He seemed to be having a bit of trouble get ting his
mouth to form the words. His hand moved up to his mouth in a curious
gesture, and I realized it was just like my cat Tina’s movement when she
had raised her paw to lick it before she used it to groom herself. Bob
realized what he was doing and lowered his hand abruptly.
I thought about bringing him milk in a bowl but decided that would be
insulting. I brought him some iced tea instead. He gulped it but made a
face.
“Sorry,” I said. “I should have asked if you like tea.”
“I do like tea,” he said, and stared at the glass as if he’d just connected tea
with the liquid he’d had in his mouth. “I’m just not used to it anymore.”
Okay, I know this is really awful, but I actually opened my mouth to ask him
if he wanted some kibble. Amelia had a bag of 9Lives on the back porch
shelf. I bit the inside of my mouth, hard. “What about a sandwich?” I asked.
I had no idea what to talk to Bob about. Mice?
“Sure,” he said. He didn’t seem to know what he wanted to do next.
So I made him a peanut butter and jelly, and a ham and pickle on whole
wheat with mustard. He ate them both, chewing very slowly and carefully.
Then he said, “Excuse me,” and got up to find the bathroom. He shut the
door behind him, and stayed in there for a long time.
Amelia and Octavia had come in by the time Bob emerged.
“I’m so sorry,” Amelia said.
“Me, too,” Octavia said. She looked older and smaller.
“You knew all along how to change him?” I tried to keep my voice level and
nonjudgmental. “Your failed attempt was a fraud?”
Octavia nodded. “I was scared if you didn’t need me, I wouldn’t get to visit
anymore. I’d have to go stay all day at my niece’s. It’s so much nicer here. I
would have said something soon, because my conscience was bothering
me something awful, especially since I’m living here.” She shook her gray
head from side to side. “I’m a bad woman for letting Bob be a cat for extra
days.”
Amelia was shocked. Obviously, her teacher’s fall from grace was an
amazing development to Amelia, clearly overshadowing her own guilt about
what she’d done to Bob in the first place. Amelia was definitely a live-in-themoment
kind of person.
Bob came out of the bathroom. He marched up to us. “I want to go back to
my place in New Orleans,” Bob said. “Where the hell are we? How did I get
here?”
Amelia’s face lost all its animation. Octavia looked grim. I quietly left the
room. It was going to be very unpleasant, the two women telling Bob about
Katrina. I didn’t want to be around while he tried to process that terrible
news on top of everything else he was trying to handle.
I wondered where Bob had lived, if his house or apartment was still
standing, if his possessions were somehow intact. If his family was alive. I
heard Octavia’s voice rising and falling, and then I heard a terrible silence.
Chapter 21
The next day I took Bob to Wal-Mart to purchase some clothes. Amelia had
pressed some money into Bob’s hand, and the young man had accepted it
because he had no choice. He could hardly wait to get away from Amelia.
And I couldn’t say as how I blamed him.
As we drove to town, Bob kept blinking around him in a stunned way. When
we entered the store, he went to the nearest aisle and rubbed his head
against the corner. I smiled brightly at Marcia Albanese, a wealthy older
woman who was on the school board. I hadn’t seen her since she’d given
Halleigh a wedding shower.
“Who’s your friend?” Marcia asked. She was both naturally social and
curious. She didn’t ask about the head rubbing, which endeared her to me
forever.
“Marcia, this is Bob Jessup, a visitor from out of town,” I said, and wished
I’d prepared a story. Bob nodded at Marcia with wide eyes and held out his
hand. At least he didn’t poke her with his head and demand to have his
ears scratched. Marcia shook hands and told Bob she was pleased to meet
him.
“Thanks, nice to meet you, too,” Bob said. Oh, good, he sounded really
normal.
“Are you going to be in Bon Temps long, Bob?” Marcia said.
“Oh, God, no,” he said. “Excuse me, I have to buy some shoes.” And he
walked off (very smoothly and sinuously) to the men’s shoe aisles. He was
wearing a pair of flip-flops Amelia had donated, bright green ones that
weren’t quite big enough.
Marcia was clearly taken aback, but I really couldn’t think of a good
explanation. “See you later,” I said, and followed in his wake. Bob got some
sneakers, some socks, two pairs of pants, two T-shirts, and a jacket, plus
some underwear. I asked Bob what he’d like to eat, and he asked me if I
could make salmon croquettes.
“I sure can,” I said, relieved he’d asked for something so easy, and got the
cans of salmon I’d need. He also wanted chocolate pudding, and that was
easy enough, too. He left the other menu selections up to me.
We had an early supper that night before I had to leave for work, and Bob
seemed really pleased with the croquettes and the pudding. He looked
much better, too, since he’d showered and put on his new clothes. He was
even speaking to Amelia. I gathered from their conversation that she’d
taken him through the websites about Katrina and its survivors, and he’d
been in contact with the Red Cross. The family he’d grown up in, his aunt’s,
had lived in Bay Saint Louis, in southern Mississippi, and we all knew what
had happened there.
“What will you do now?” I asked, since I figured he’d had a while to think
about it now.
“I’ve got to go see,” he said. “I want to try to find out what happened to my
apartment in New Orleans, but my family is more important. And I’ve got to
think of something to tell them, to explain where I’ve been and why I
haven’t been in touch.”
We were all silent, because that was a puzzler.
“You could tell ’em you were enchanted by an evil witch,” Amelia said
glumly.
Bob snorted. “They might believe it,” he said. “They know I’m not a normal
person. But I don’t think they’d be able to swallow that it lasted so long.
Maybe I’ll tell them that I lost my memory. Or that I went to Vegas and got
married.”
“You contacted them regularly, before Katrina?” I said.
He shrugged. “Every couple of weeks,” he said. “I didn’t think of us as
close. But I would definitely have tried after Katrina. I love them.” He looked
away for a minute.
We kicked around ideas for a while, but there really wasn’t a credible
reason he would have been out of touch for so long. Amelia said she was
going to buy Bob a bus ticket to Hattiesburg and he would try to find a ride
from there into the most affected area so he could track down his people.
Amelia was clearing her conscience by spending money on Bob. I had no
issue with that. She should be doing so; and I hoped Bob would find his
folks, or at least discover what had happened to them, where they were
living now.
Before I left for work, I stood in the doorway of the kitchen for a minute or
two, looking at the three of them. I tried to see in Bob what Amelia had
seen, the element that had attracted her so powerfully. Bob was thin and
not particularly tall, and his inky hair naturally lay flat to his skull. Amelia
had unearthed his glasses, and they were black-rimmed and thick. I’d seen
every inch of Bob, and I realized Mother Nature had been generous to him
in the man-bits department, but surely that wasn’t enough to explain
Amelia’s ardent sexcapades with this guy.
Then Bob laughed, the first time he’d laughed since he’d become human
again, and I got it. Bob had white, even teeth and great lips, and when he
smiled, there was a kind of sardonic, intellectual sexiness about him.
Mystery solved.
When I got home, he would be gone, so I said good-bye to Bob, thinking I’d
never see him again, unless he decided to return to Bon Temps to get
revenge on Amelia.
As I drove into town, I wondered if we could get a real cat. After all, we had
the litter box and the cat food. I’d ask Amelia and Octavia in a couple of
days. That would surely give them time to stop being so antsy about Bob’s
cat-dom.
Alcide Herveaux was sitting at the bar talking with Sam when I came into
the main room ready for work. Odd, him turning up again. I stopped for a
second, and then made my feet move again. I managed a nod, and waved
to Holly to tell her I was taking over. She held up a finger, indicating she
was taking care of one customer’s bill, and then she’d be out of there. I got
a hello from one woman and a howdy from another man, and I felt instantly
comfortable. This was my place, my home away from home.
Jasper Voss wanted another rum and Coke, Catfish wanted a pitcher of
beer for himself and his wife and another couple, and one of our alcoholics,
Jane Bodehouse, was ready to eat something. She said she didn’t care
what it was, so I got her the chicken tender basket. Getting Jane to eat at
all was a real problem, and I hoped she’d down at least half of the basket.
Jane was sitting at the other end of the bar from Alcide, and Sam jerked his
head sideways to indicate I should join them. I turned Jane’s order in and
then I reluctantly went over to them. I leaned on the end of the bar.
“Sookie,” Alcide said, nodding to me. “I came to say thank you to Sam.”
“Good,” I said bluntly.
Alcide nodded, not meeting my eyes.
After a moment the new packleader said, “Now no one will dare to try to
encroach. If Priscilla hadn’t attacked at the moment she picked, with us all
together and aware of the danger we faced as a group, she could have
kept us divided and kept picking us off until we’d killed each other.”
“So she went crazy and you got lucky,” I said.
“We came together because of your talent,” Alcide said. “And you’ll always
be a friend of the pack. So is Sam. Ask us to do a service for you, any time,
any place, and we’ll be there.” He nodded to Sam, put some money on the
bar, and left.
Sam said, “Nice to have a favor stashed in the bank, huh?”
I had to smile back. “Yeah, that’s a good feeling.” In fact, I felt full of good
cheer all of a sudden. When I looked at the door, I found out why. Eric was
coming in, with Pam beside him. They sat at one of my tables, and I went
over, consumed with curiosity. Also exasperation. Couldn’t they stay away?
They both ordered TrueBlood, and after I served Jane Bodehouse her
chicken basket and Sam warmed up the bottles, I was headed back to their
table. Their presence wouldn’t have rocked any boats if Arlene and her
buddies hadn’t been in the bar that night.
They were sneering together in an unmistakable way as I put the bottles in
front of Eric and Pam, and I had a hard time maintaining my waitress calm
as I asked the two if they wanted mugs with that.
“The bottle will be fine,” Eric said. “I may need it to smash some skulls.”
If I had been feeling Eric’s good cheer, Eric was feeling my anxiety.
“No, no, no,” I said almost in a whisper. I knew they could hear me. “Let’s
have peace. We’ve had enough war and killing.”
“Yes,” Pam agreed. “We can save the killing for later.”
“I’m happy to see both of you, but I’m having a busy evening,” I said. “Are
you-all just out barhopping to get new ideas for Fangtasia, or can I do
something for you?”
“We can do something for you,” Pam said. She smiled at the two guys in
the Fellowship of the Sun T-shirts, and since she was a wee bit angry, her
fangs were showing. I hoped the sight would subdue them, but since they
were assholes without a lick of sense, it inflamed their zeal. Pam downed
the blood and licked her lips.
“Pam,” I said between my teeth. “For goodness’ sake, stop making it
worse.”
Pam gave me a flirty smile, simply so she’d hit all the buttons.
Eric said, “Pam,” and immediately all the provocation disappeared, though
Pam looked a little disappointed. But she sat up straighter, put her hands in
her lap, and crossed her legs at the ankle. No one could have looked more
innocent or demure.
“Thank you,” Eric said. “Dear one—that’s you, Sookie— you so impressed
Felipe de Castro that he has given us permission to offer you our formal
protection. This is a decision only made by the king, you understand, and
it’s a binding contract. You rendered him such service that he felt this was
the only way to repay you.”
“So, this is a big deal?”
“Yes, my lover, it is a very big deal. That means when you call us for help,
we are obliged to come and risk our lives for yours. This is not a promise
vampires make very often, since we grow more and more jealous of our
lives the longer we live. You’d think it would be the other way around.”
“Every now and then you’ll find someone who wants to meet the sun after a
long life,” Pam said, as if she wanted to set the record straight.
“Yes,” Eric said, frowning. “Every now and then. But he offers you a real
honor, Sookie.”
“I’m real obliged to you for bringing the news, Eric, Pam.”
“Of course, I’d hoped your beautiful roommate would come in,” Pam said.
She leered at me. So maybe her hanging around Amelia hadn’t been
entirely Eric’s idea.
I laughed out loud. “Well, she’s got a lot to think about tonight,” I said.
I’d been thinking so hard about the vampire protection that I hadn’t noticed
the approach of the shorter of the FotS adherants. Now he pushed past me
in such a way that he rammed my shoulder, deliberately knocking me to the
side. I staggered before I managed to regain my balance. Not everyone
noticed, but a few of the bar patrons did. Sam had started around the bar
and Eric was already on his feet when I turned and brought my tray down
on the asshole’s head with all the strength I could muster.
He did a little bit of staggering himself.
Those that had noticed the bit of aggravation began applauding. “Good for
you, Sookie,” Catfish called. “Hey, jerkoff, leave the waitresses alone.”
Arlene was flushed and angry, and she almost exploded then and there.
Sam stepped up to her and murmured something in her ear. She flushed
even redder and glared at him, but she kept her mouth shut. The taller FotS
guy came to his pal’s aid and they left the bar. Neither of them spoke (I
wasn’t sure Shorty could speak), but they might as well have had “You
haven’t seen the last of us” tattooed on their foreheads.
I could see where the vampires’ protection and my friend of the pack status
might come in handy.
Eric and Pam finished their drinks and sat long enough to prove they
weren’t skedaddling because they felt unwelcome and weren’t leaving in
pursuit of the Fellowship fans. Eric tipped me a twenty and blew me a kiss
as he went out the door—so did Pam—earning me an extra-special glare
from my former BFF Arlene.
I worked too hard the rest of the night to think about any of the interesting
things that had happened that day. After the patrons all left, even Jane
Bodehouse (her son came to get her), we put out the Halloween
decorations. Sam had gotten a little pumpkin for each table and painted a
face on each one. I was filled with admiration, because the faces were
really clever, and some of them looked like bar patrons. In fact, one looked
a lot like my dear brother.
“I had no idea you could do this,” I said, and he looked pleased.
“It was fun,” he said, and hung a long strand of fall leaves— of course, they
were actually made of cloth—around the bar mirror and among some of the
bottles. I tacked up a life-size cardboard skeleton with little rivets at the
joints so it could be positioned. I arranged this one so it was clearly
dancing. We couldn’t have any depressing skeletons at the bar. We had to
have happy ones.
Even Arlene unbent a little because this was something different and fun to
do, though we had to stay a bit later to do it.
I was ready to go home and go to bed when I said good night to Sam and
Arlene. Arlene didn’t answer, but she didn’t throw me the look of disgust
she usually awarded me, either.
Naturally, my day wasn’t over.
My great-grandfather was sitting on my front porch when I got to the house.
It was very strange to see him in the front porch swing, in the odd
combination of night and light that the security lamp and the dark hour
combined to create. I wished for one moment that I was as beautiful as he
was, and then I had to smile at myself.
I parked my car in the front and got out. Tried to walk quietly going up the
steps so I wouldn’t wake Amelia, whose bedroom overlooked the front. The
house was dark, so I was sure they were in bed, unless they’d been
delayed at the bus station when they delivered Bob.
“Great-grandfather,” I said. “I’m glad to see you.”
“You’re tired, Sookie.”
“Well, I just got off work.” I wondered if he ever got tired himself. I couldn’t
imagine a fairy prince splitting wood or trying to find a leak in his water line.
“I wanted to see you,” he said. “Have you thought of anything I can do for
you?” He sounded mighty hopeful.
What a night this was for people giving me positive feedback. Why didn’t I
have more nights like this?
I thought for a minute. The Weres had made peace, in their own way.
Quinn had been found. The vampires had settled into a new regime. The
Fellowship fanatics had left the bar with a minimum of trouble. Bob was a
man again. I didn’t suppose Niall wanted to offer Octavia a room in his own
house, wherever that might be. For all I knew, he had a house in a babbling
brook or under a live oak somewhere deep in the woods.
“There is something I want,” I said, surprised I hadn’t thought of it before.
“What is it?” he asked, sounding quite pleased.
“I want to know the whereabouts of a man named Remy Savoy. He may
have left New Orleans during Katrina. He may have a little child with him.” I
gave my great-grandfather Savoy’s last known address.
Niall looked confident. “I’ll find him for you, Sookie.”
“I’d sure appreciate it.”
“Nothing else? Nothing more?”
“I have to say . . . this sounds mighty ungracious . . . but I can’t help but
wonder why you seem to want to do something for me so badly.”
“Why would I not? You are my only living kin.”
“But you seem to have been content without me for the first twenty-seven
years of my life.”
“My son would not let me come near you.”
“You told me that, but I don’t get it. Why? He didn’t make an appearance to
let me know he cared anything about me. He never showed himself to me,
or...” Played Scrabble with me, sent me a graduation present, rented a
limousine for me to go to the prom, bought me a pretty dress, took me in
his arms on the many occasions when I’d cried (growing up isn’t easy for a
telepath). He hadn’t saved me from being molested by my great-uncle, or
rescued my parents, one of whom was his son, when they drowned in a
flash flood, or stopped a vampire from setting my house on fire while I was
sleeping inside. All this guarding and watching my alleged grandfather
Fintan had allegedly done had not paid off in any tangible way for me; and
if it had paid off intangibly, I didn’t know about it.
Would even worse things have happened? Hard to imagine.
I supposed my grandfather could have been fighting off hordes of slavering
demons outside my bedroom window every night, but I couldn’t feel grateful
if I didn’t know about it.
Niall looked upset, which was an expression I’d never seen him wear
before. “There are things I can’t tell you,” he finally said. “When I can make
myself speak of them, I will.”
“Okay,” I said dryly. “But this isn’t exactly the give-and-take thing I wanted
to have with my great-grandfather, I got to say. This is me telling you
everything, and you telling me nothing.”
“This may not be what you wanted, but it’s what I can give,” Niall said with
some stiffness. “I do love you, and I had hoped that would be what
mattered.”
“I’m glad to hear you love me,” I said very slowly, because I didn’t want to
risk seeing him walk away from Demanding Sookie. “But acting like it would
be even better.”
“I don’t act as though I love you?”
“You vanish and reappear when it suits you. All your offers of help aren’t
help of the practical kind, like the stuff most grandfathers—or greatgrandfathers—
do. They fix their grand-daughter’s car with their own hands,
or they offer to help with her college tuition, or they mow her lawn so she
doesn’t have to. Or they take her hunting. You’re not going to do that.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not.” A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “You wouldn’t
want to go hunting with me.”
Okay, I wasn’t going to think about that too closely. “So, I don’t have any
idea of how we’re supposed to be together. You’re outside my frame of
reference.”
“I understand,” he said seriously. “All the great-grandfathers you know are
human, and that I am not. You’re not what I expected, either.”
“Yeah, I got that.” Did I even know any other great-grandfathers? Among
friends my own age, even grandfathers were not a sure thing, much less
great-grandfathers. But the ones I’d met were all 100 percent human. “I
hope I’m not a disappointment,” I said.
“No,” he said slowly. “A surprise. Not a disappointment. I’m as poor at
predicting your actions and reactions as you are at predicting mine. We’ll
have to work through this slowly.” I found myself wondering again why he
wasn’t more interested in Jason, whose name activated an ache deep
inside me. Someday soon I was going to have to talk to my brother, but I
couldn’t face the idea now. I almost asked Niall to check on Jason, but then
I changed my mind and kept silent. Niall eyed my face.
“You don’t want to tell me something, Sookie. I worry when you do that. But
my love is sincere and deep, and I’ll find Remy Savoy for you.” He kissed
me on the cheek. “You smell like my kin,” he said approvingly.
And he poofed.
So, another mysterious conversation with my mysterious great-grandfather
had been concluded by him on his own terms. Again. I sighed, fished my
keys out of my purse, and unlocked the front door. The house was quiet
and dark, and I made my way through the living room and into the hall with
as little noise as I could make. I turned on my bedside lamp and performed
my nightly routine, curtains closed against the morning sun that would try to
wake me in a few short hours.
Had I been an ungrateful bitch to my great-grandfather? When I reviewed
what I’d said, I wondered if I’d sounded demanding and whiney. In a more
optimistic interpretation, I thought I might have sounded like a stand-up
woman, the kind people shouldn’t mess with, the kind of woman who
speaks her mind.
I turned on the heat before I got into bed. Octavia and Amelia hadn’t
complained, but it had definitely been chilly the past few mornings. The
stale smell that always comes when the heat is used the first time filled the
air, and I wrinkled my nose as I snuggled under the sheet and the blanket.
Then the whoosh noise lulled me into sleep.
I’d been hearing voices for some time before I realized they were outside
my door. I blinked, saw it was day, and shut my eyes again. Back to sleep.
The voices continued, and I could tell they were arguing. I cracked open
one eye to peer at the digital clock on the bedside table. It was nine thirty.
Gack. Since the voices wouldn’t shut up or go away, I reluctantly opened
both eyes at one time, absorbed the fact that the day was not bright, and
sat up, pushing the covers back. I moved to the window to the left of the
bed and looked out. Gray and rainy. As I stood there, drops began to hit the
glass; it was going to be that kind of day.
I went to the bathroom and heard the voices outside hush now that I was
clearly up and stirring. I threw open the door to find my two housemates
standing right outside, which was no big surprise.
“We didn’t know if we should wake you,” Octavia said. She looked anxious.
“But I thought we ought to, because a message from a magical source is
clearly important,” Amelia said. She appeared to have said it many times in
the past few minutes, from the expression on Octavia’s face.
“What message?” I asked, deciding to ignore the argument part of this
conversation.
“This one,” Octavia said, handing me a large buff envelope. It was made of
heavy paper, like a super-fancy wedding invitation. My name was on the
outside. No address, just my name. Furthermore, it was sealed with wax.
The imprint in the wax was the head of a unicorn.
“Okey-dokey,” I said. This was going to be an unusual letter.
I walked into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and a knife, in that order,
both the witches trailing behind me like a Greek chorus. Having poured the
coffee and pulled out a chair to sit at the table, I slid the knife under the
seal and detached it gently. I opened the flap and pulled out a card. On the
card was a handwritten address: 1245 Bienville, Red Ditch, Louisiana. That
was all.
“What does it mean?” Octavia said. She and Amelia were naturally
standing right behind me so they could get a good view.
“It’s the location of someone I’ve been searching for,” I said, which was not
exactly the truth but close enough.
“Where’s Red Ditch?” Octavia said. “I’ve never heard of it.” Amelia was
already fetching the Louisiana map from the drawer under the telephone.
She looked up the town, running her finger down the columns of names.
“It’s not too far,” she said. “See?” She put her finger on a tiny dot about an
hour and a half’s drive southeast of Bon Temps.
I drank my coffee as fast as I could and scrambled into some jeans. I
slapped a little makeup on and brushed my hair and headed out the front
door to my car, map in hand.
Octavia and Amelia followed me out, dying to know what I was going to do
and what significance the message had for me. But they were just going to
have to wonder, at least for right now. I wondered why I was in such a hurry
to do this. It wasn’t like he was going to vanish, unless Remy Savoy was a
fairy, too.
I thought that highly unlikely.
I had to be back for the evening shift, but I had plenty of time.
I drove with the radio on, and this morning I was in a country-and-western
kind of mood. Travis Tritt and Carrie Underwood accompanied me, and by
the time I drove into Red Ditch, I was feeling my roots. There was even less
to Red Ditch than there was to Bon Temps, and that’s saying something.
I figured it would be easy to find Bienville Street, and I was right. It was the
kind of street you can find anywhere in America. The houses were small,
neat, boxy, with room for one car in the carport and a small yard. In the
case of 1245, the backyard was fenced in and I could see a lively little
black dog running around. There wasn’t a doghouse, so the pooch was an
indoor-outdoor animal. Everything was neat, but not obsessively so. The
bushes around the house were trimmed and the yard was raked. I drove by
a couple of times, and then I wondered what I was going to do. How would
I find out what I wanted to know?
There was a pickup truck parked in the garage, so Savoy was probably at
home. I took a deep breath, parked across from the house, and tried to
send my extra ability hunting. But in a neighborhood full of the thoughts of
the living people in these houses, it was hard. I thought I was getting two
brain signatures from the house I was watching, but it was hard to be
absolutely sure.
“Fuck it,” I said, and got out of the car. I popped my keys in my jacket
pocket and went up the sidewalk to the front door. I knocked.
“Hold on, son,” said a man’s voice inside, and I heard a child’s voice say,
“Daddy, me! I get it!”
“No, Hunter,” the man said, and the door opened. He was looking at me
through a screen door. He unhooked it and pushed it open when he saw I
was a woman. “Hi,” he said. “Can I help you?”
I looked down at the child who wiggled past him to look up at me. He was
maybe four years old. He had dark hair and eyes. He was the spitting
image of Hadley. Then I looked at the man again. Something in his face
had changed during my protracted silence.
“Who are you?” he said in an entirely different voice.
“I’m Sookie Stackhouse,” I said. I couldn’t think of any artful way to do this.
“I’m Hadley’s cousin. I just found out where you were.”
“You can’t have any claim on him,” said the man, keeping a very tight rein
on his voice.
“Of course not,” I said, surprised. “I just want to meet him. I don’t have
much family.”
There was another significant pause. He was weighing my words and my
demeanor and he was deciding whether to slam the door or let me in.
“Daddy, she’s pretty,” said the boy, and that seemed to tip the balance in
my favor.
“Come on in,” Hadley’s ex-husband said.
I looked around the small living room, which had a couch and a recliner, a
television and a bookcase full of DVDs and children’s books, and a
scattering of toys.
“I worked Saturday, so I have today off,” he said, in case I imagined he was
unemployed. “Oh, I’m Remy Savoy. I guess you knew that.”
I nodded.
“This is Hunter,” he said, and the child got a case of the shys. He hid
behind his father’s legs and peeked around at me. “Please sit down,” Remy
added.
I shoved a newspaper to one end of the couch and sat, trying not to stare
at the man or the child. My cousin Hadley had been very striking, and she’d
married a good-looking man. It was hard to peg down what left that
impression. His nose was big, his jaw stuck out a little, and his eyes were a
little wide-spaced. But the sum of all this was a man most women would
look at twice. His hair was that medium shade between blond and brown,
and it was thick and layered, the back hanging over his collar. He was
wearing a flannel shirt unbuttoned over a white Hanes T-shirt. Jeans. No
shoes. A dimple in his chin.
Hunter was wearing corduroy pants and a sweatshirt with a big football on
the front. His clothes were brand-new, unlike his dad’s.
I’d finished looking at them before Remy’d finished looking at me. He didn’t
think I had any trace of Hadley in my face. My body was plumper and my
coloring was lighter and I wasn’t as hard. He thought I looked like I didn’t
have a lot of money. He thought I was pretty, like his son did. But he didn’t
trust me.
“How long has it been since you heard from her?” I asked.
“I haven’t heard from Hadley since a few months after he was born,” Remy
said. He was used to that, but there was sadness in his thoughts, too.
Hunter was sitting on the floor, playing with some trucks. He loaded some
Duplos into the back of a dump truck, which backed up to a fire engine very
slowly, guided by Hunter’s small hands. To the astonishment of the Duplo
man sitting in the cab of the fire engines, the dump truck let go of its load all
over the fire engine. Hunter got a big kick out of this, and he said, “Daddy,
look!”
“I see it, son.” Remy looked at me intently. “Why are you here?” he asked,
deciding to get right to the point.
“I only found out there might be a baby a couple of weeks ago,” I said.
“Wasn’t any point in tracking you down until I heard that.”
“I never met her family,” he said. “How’d you know she was married? Did
she tell you?” Then, reluctantly, he said, “Is she okay?”
“No,” I said very quietly. I didn’t want Hunter to become interested. The boy
was loading all the Duplos back into the dump truck. “She’s been dead
since before Katrina.”
I could hear the shock detonate like a little bomb in his head. “She was
already a vamp, I heard,” he said uncertainly, his voice wavering. “That
kind of dead?”
“No. I mean really, finally.”
“What happened?”
“She was attacked by another vampire,” I said. “He was jealous of Hadley’s
relationship with her, ah, her...”
“Girlfriend?” No mistaking the bitterness in her ex-husband’s voice and in
his head.
“Yeah.”
“That was a shocker,” he said, but in his head all the shock had worn off.
There was only a grim resignation, a loss of pride.
“I didn’t know about any of this until after she passed.”
“You’re her cousin? I remember her telling me she had two. . . . You got a
brother, right?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You knew she had been married to me?”
“I found out when I cleaned out her safe-deposit box a few weeks ago. I
didn’t know there had been a son. I apologize for that.” I wasn’t sure why I
was apologizing or how I could have known, but I was sorry I hadn’t even
considered the fact that Hadley and her husband might have had a child.
Hadley had been a little older than me, and I guessed Remy was probably
thirty or thereabouts.
“You look fine,” he said suddenly, and I flushed, understanding him
instantly.
“Hadley told you I had a disability.” I looked away from him, at the boy, who
jumped to his feet, announced he had to go to the bathroom, and dashed
out of the room. I couldn’t help but smile.
"Yeah, she said something.... She said you had a hard time of it in school,”
he said tactfully. Hadley had told him I was crazy as hell. He was seeing no
signs of it, and he wondered why Hadley had thought so. But he glanced in
the direction the child had gone, and I knew he was thinking he had to be
careful since Hunter was in the house, he had to be alert for any signs of
this instability—though Hadley had never specified what form of craziness I
had.
“That’s true,” I said. “I had a hard time of it. Hadley wasn’t any big help. But
her mom, my aunt Linda, was a great woman before the cancer got her.
She was real kind to me, always. And we had some good moments now
and then.”
“I could say the same. We did have some good moments,” Remy said. His
forearms were braced on his knees and his big hands, scarred and
battered, hung down. He was a man who knew what hard work was.
There was a sound at the front door and a woman came in without
bothering to knock. “Hey, baby,” she said, smiling at Remy. When she
noticed me, her smile faltered and faded away.
“Kristen, this is a relative of my ex-wife’s,” Remy said, and there wasn’t any
haste or apology in his voice.
Kristen had long brown hair and big brown eyes and she was maybe
twenty-five. She was wearing khakis and a polo shirt with a logo on the
chest, a laughing duck. The legend above the duck read, “Jerry’s
Detailing.” “Nice to meet you,” Kristen said insincerely. “I’m Kristen
Duchesne, Remy’s girlfriend.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said, more honestly. “Sookie Stackhouse.”
“You didn’t offer this woman a drink, Remy! Sookie, can I get you a Coke or
a Sprite?”
She knew what was in the refrigerator. I wondered if she lived here. Well,
none of my business, as long as she was good to Hadley’s son.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ve got to be going in a minute.” I made a little
production out of looking at my watch. “I got to go to work this evening.”
“Oh, where is that?” Kristen asked. She was a little more relaxed.
“Merlotte’s. It’s a bar in Bon Temps,” I said. “About eighty miles from here.”
“Sure, that’s where your wife was from,” Kristen said, glancing at Remy.
Remy said, “Sookie came with some news, I’m afraid.” His hands twisted
together, though his voice was steady. “Hadley is dead.”
Kristen inhaled sharply but she had to keep her comment to herself
because Hunter dashed back into the room. “Daddy, I washed my hands!”
he shouted, and his father smiled at him.
“Good for you, son,” he said, and ruffled the boy’s dark hair. “Say hello to
Kristen.”
“Hey, Kristen,” Hunter said without much interest.
I stood. I wished I had a business card to leave. This seemed odd and
wrong, to just walk out. But Kristen’s presence was oddly inhibiting. She
picked up Hunter and slung him on her hip. He was quite a load for her, but
she made a point of making it look easy and habitual, though it wasn’t. But
she did like the little boy; I could see it in her head.
“Kristen likes me,” Hunter said, and I looked at him sharply.
“Sure I do,” Kristen said, and laughed.
Remy was looking from Hunter to me with a troubled face, a face that was
just beginning to look worried.
I wondered how to explain our relationship to Hunter. I was pretty close to
being his aunt, as we reckon things here. Kids don’t care about second
cousins.
“Aunt Sookie,” Hunter said, testing the words. “I got an aunt?”
I took a deep breath. Yes, you do, Hunter, I thought.
“I never had one before.”
“You got one now,” I told him, and I looked into Remy’s eyes. They were
frightened. He hadn’t spelled it out to himself yet, but he knew.
There was something I had to say to him, regardless of Kristen’s presence.
I could feel her confusion and her sense that something was going on
without her knowledge. But I didn’t have the space on my agenda to worry
about Kristen, too. Hunter was the important person.
“You’re gonna need me,” I told Remy. “When he gets a little older, you’re
gonna need to talk. My number’s in the book, and I’m not going anywhere.
You understand?”
Kristen said, “What’s going on? Why are we getting so serious?”
“Don’t worry, Kris,” Remy said gently. “Just family stuff.”
Kristen lowered a wriggling Hunter to the floor. “Uh-huh,” she said, in the
tone of someone who knows full well she’s having the wool pulled over her
eyes.
“Stackhouse,” I reminded Remy. “Don’t put it off till too late, when he’s
already miserable.”
“I understand,” he said. He looked miserable himself, and I didn’t blame
him.
“I’ve got to go,” I said again, to reassure Kristen.
“Aunt Sookie, you going?” Hunter asked. He wasn’t quite ready to hug me
yet, but he thought about it. He liked me. “You coming back?”
“Sometime, Hunter,” I said. “Maybe your dad will bring you to visit me
someday.”
I shook Kristen’s hand, shook Remy’s, which they both thought was odd,
and opened the door. As I put one foot on the steps, Hunter said silently,
Bye, Aunt Sookie.
Bye, Hunter, I said right back.