Book Eight 6-8

Chapter 6
There was a knock on the front door the next morning about an hour before
I wanted to wake up. I heard it only because Bob had come into my room
and jumped on my bed, where he wasn’t supposed to be, settling into the
space behind my knees while I lay on my side. He purred loudly, and I
reached down to scratch behind his ears. I loved cats. That didn’t stop me
from liking dogs, too, and only the fact that I was gone so much kept me
from getting a puppy. Terry Bellefleur had offered me one, but I’d wavered
until his pups were gone. I wondered if Bob would mind a kitten companion.
Would Amelia get jealous if I bought a female cat? I had to smile even as I
snuggled deeper into the bed.
But I wasn’t truly asleep, and I did hear the knock.
I muttered a few words about the person at the door, and I slid on my
slippers and threw on my thin blue cotton bathrobe. The morning had a hint
of chill, reminding me that despite the mild and sunny days, this was
October. There were Halloweens when even a sweater was too warm, and
there were Halloweens when you had to wear a light coat when you did
your trick-or-treating.
I looked through the peephole and saw an elderly black woman with a halo
of white hair. She was light-skinned and her features were narrow and
sharp: nose, lips, eyes. She was wearing magenta lipstick and a yellow
pantsuit. But she didn’t seem armed or dangerous. This just goes to show
how misleading first appearances can be. I opened the door.
“Young lady, I’m here to see Amelia Broadway,” the woman informed me in
very precisely pronounced English.
“Please come in,” I said, because this was an older woman and I’d been
brought up to revere old people. “Have a seat.” I indicated the couch. “I’ll go
up and get Amelia.”
I noticed she didn’t apologize for getting me out of bed or for showing up
unannounced. I climbed the stairs with a grim feeling that Amelia wasn’t
going to enjoy this message.
I so seldom went up to the second floor that it surprised me to see how nice
Amelia had made it look. Since the upper bedrooms had only had basic
furniture in them, she’d turned the one to the right, the larger one, into her
bedroom. The one to the left was her sitting room. It held her television, an
easy chair and ottoman, a small computer desk and her computer, and a
plant or two. The bedroom, which I believed had been built for a generation
of Stackhouses that had sired three boys in quick succession, had only a
small closet, but Amelia had bought rolling clothes racks from somewhere
on the Internet and assembled them handily. Then she’d bought a tri-fold
screen at an auction and repainted it and arranged it in front of the racks to
camouflage them. Her bright bedspread and the old table she’d repainted
to serve as her makeup table added to the color that jumped out from the
white-painted walls. Amid all this cheer was one dismal witch.
Amelia was sitting up in bed, her short hair mashed into strange shapes.
“Who is that I hear downstairs?” she asked in a very hushed voice.
“Older black lady, light-skinned? Sharp way about her?”
“Omigod,” Amelia breathed, and slumped back against her dozen or so
pillows. “It’s Octavia.”
“Well, you come down and have a word with her. I can’t entertain her.”
Amelia snarled at me, but she accepted the inevitable. She got out of bed
and pulled off her nightgown. She pulled on a bra and panties and some
jeans, and she extracted a sweater from a drawer.
I went down to tell Octavia Fant that Amelia was coming. Amelia would
have to walk right past her to get to the bathroom, since there was only the
one staircase, but at least I could smooth the way.
“Can I get you some coffee?” I asked. The older woman was busy looking
around the room with her bright brown eyes.
“If you have some tea, I’d like a cup,” Octavia Fant said.
“Yes, ma’am, we have some,” I said, relieved that Amelia had insisted on
buying it. I had no idea what kind it was, and I hoped it was in a bag,
because I’d never made hot tea in my life.
“Good,” she said, and that was that.
“Amelia’s on her way down,” I said, trying to think of some graceful way to
add, “And she’s going to have to hurry through the room to pee and brush
her teeth, so pretend you don’t see her.” I abandoned that lost cause and
fled to the kitchen.
I retrieved Amelia’s tea from one of her designated shelves, and while the
water was getting hot, I got down two cups and saucers and put them on a
tray. I added the sugar bowl and a tiny pitcher with milk and two spoons.
Napkins! I thought, and wished I had some cloth ones instead of regular
paper. (This was how Octavia Fant made me feel, without her using a bit of
magic on me.) I heard the water running in the hall bathroom just as I put a
handful of cookies on a plate and added that to the assemblage. I didn’t
have any flowers or a little vase, which was the only other thing I thought of
that I could’ve added. I picked up the tray and made my way slowly down
the hall to the living room.
I set the tray down on the coffee table in front of Ms. Fant. She looked up at
me with her piercing eyes and gave me a curt nod of thanks. I realized that
I could not read her mind. I’d been holding off, waiting for a moment when I
could really give her her proper due, but she knew how to block me out. I’d
never met a human who could do that. For a second I felt almost irritated.
Then I remembered who and what she was, and I scooted off to my room
to make my bed and visit my own little bathroom. I passed Amelia in the
hall, and she gave me a scared look.
Sorry, Amelia, I thought, as I closed my bedroom door firmly. You’re on
your own.
I didn’t have to be at work until the evening, so I put on some old jeans and
a Fangtasia T-shirt (“The Bar with a Bite”). Pam had given it to me when
the bar first started selling them. I slid my feet into some Crocs and went
into the kitchen to fix my own beverage, coffee. I made some toast and got
the local paper I’d grabbed when I’d answered the door. Rolling the rubber
band off, I glanced at the front page. The school board had met, the local
Wal-Mart had donated generously to the Boys and Girls Club’s after-school
pro gram, and the state legislature had voted to recognize vampire-human
marriages. Well, well. No one had thought that bill would ever pass.
I flipped open the paper to read the obituaries. First the local deaths—no
one I knew, good. Then the area deaths—oh, no.
MARIA-STAR COOPER, read the heading. The item said only, “Maria-Star
Cooper, 25, a resident of Shreveport, died unexpectedly at her home
yesterday. Cooper, a photographer, is survived by her mother and father,
Matthew and Stella Cooper of Minden, and three brothers. Arrangements
are pending.”
I felt suddenly out of breath and sank into the straight-back chair with a
feeling of total disbelief. Maria-Star and I hadn’t exactly been friends, but I’d
liked her well enough, and she and Alcide Herveaux, a major figure in the
Shreveport Were pack, had been going together for months. Poor Alcide!
His first girlfriend had died violently, and now this.
The phone rang and I jumped. I grabbed it up with a terrible feeling of
disaster. “Hello?” I said cautiously, as if the phone could spit at me.
“Sookie,” said Alcide. He had a deep voice, and now it was husky with
tears.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I just read the paper.” There was nothing else to say.
Now I knew why he’d called the night before.
“She was murdered,” Alcide said.
“Oh, my God.”
“Sookie, it was only the beginning. On the off chance that Furnan is after
you, too, I want you to stay alert.”
“Too late,” I said after a moment given to absorbing this awful news.
“Someone tried to kill me last night.”
Alcide held the phone away from him and howled. Hearing this, in the
middle of the day, over the telephone ... Even then, it was frightening.
Trouble within the Shreveport pack had been brewing for a while. Even I,
separated from Were politics, had known that. Patrick Furnan, the leader of
the Long Tooth pack, had gotten his office by killing Alcide’s father in
combat. The victory had been legal—well, Were legal—but there had been
a few not-so-legal plays along the way. Alcide—strong, young, prosperous,
and packing a grudge—had always been a threat to Furnan, at least in
Furnan’s mind.
This was a tense topic, since Weres were secret from the human
population, not out in the open like vampires. The day was coming, and
coming soon, when the shifter population would step forward. I’d heard
them speak of it over and over. But that hadn’t happened yet, and it
wouldn’t be good if the first knowledge the humans had of the Weres was
of bodies turning up all over the place.
“Someone will be over there right away,” Alcide said.
“Absolutely not. I have to go to work tonight, and I’m so utterly on the edge
of this thing that I’m sure they won’t try again. But I do need to know how
the guy knew where and when to find me.”
“Tell Amanda the circumstances,” Alcide said, his voice thick with anger,
and then Amanda came on. Hard to believe that when I’d seen her at the
wedding we’d both been so cheerful.
“Tell me,” she said crisply, and I knew this was no time to argue. I told her
the story as tersely as possible (leaving out Niall, and Eric’s name, and
most other details), and she was silent for a few seconds after I’d finished
speaking.
“Since he was taken out, that’s one less we have to worry about,” she said,
sounding simply relieved. “I wish you’d known who he was.”
“Sorry,” I said a bit acidly. “I was thinking about the gun, not his ID. How
come you-all can have a war with as few people as you have?” The
Shreveport pack couldn’t number over thirty.
“Reinforcements from other territories.”
“Why would anyone do that?” Why join in a war that wasn’t yours? What
was the point of losing your own people when it was the other pack’s
dispute?
“There are perks to backing the winning side,” Amanda said. “Listen, you
still got that witch living with you?”
“I do.”
“Then there’s something you can do to help.”
“Okay,” I said, though I didn’t recall offering. “What would that be?”
“You need to ask your witch friend if she’ll go to Maria-Star’s apartment and
get some kind of reading on what happened there. Is that possible? We
want to know the Weres involved.”
“It’s possible, but I don’t know if she’ll do it.”
“Ask her now, please.”
"Ah ... let me call you back. She’s got a visitor.”
Before I went out to the living room, I made a call. I didn’t want to leave this
message on the answering machine at Fangtasia, which wouldn’t be open
yet, so I called Pam’s cell, something I’d never done before. As it rang, I
found myself wondering if it was in the coffin with her. That was an eerie
thing to picture. I didn’t know if Pam actually slept in a coffin or not, but if
she did . . . I shuddered. Of course, the phone went to voice mail, and I
said, “Pam, I’ve found out why Eric and I were pulled over last night, or at
least I think so. There’s a Were war brewing, and I think I was the target.
Someone sold us out to Patrick Furnan. And I didn’t tell anyone where I
was going.” That was a problem Eric and I had been too shaken to discuss
the night before. How had anyone, anyone at all, known where we’d be last
night? That we’d be driving back from Shreveport.
Amelia and Octavia were in the middle of a discussion, but neither of them
looked as angry or upset as I’d feared.
“I hate to intrude,” I said as both pairs of eyes turned to me. Octavia’s eyes
were brown, Amelia’s bright blue, but at the moment they were eerily alike
in expression.
“Yes?” Octavia was clearly queen of the situation.
Any witch worth her salt would know about Weres. I condensed the issues
of the Were war down to a few sentences, told them about the attack the
night before on the interstate, and explained Amanda’s request.
“Is this something you should get involved with, Amelia?” Octavia asked,
her voice making it quite clear there was only one answer she should give.
“Oh, I think so,” Amelia said. She smiled. “Can’t have someone shooting at
my roomie. I’ll help Amanda.”
Octavia couldn’t have been more shocked if Amelia had spat a watermelon
seed on her pants. “Amelia! You’re trying things beyond your ability! This
will lead to terrible trouble! Look what you’ve already done to poor Bob
Jessup.”
Oh, boy, I hadn’t known Amelia that long, but I already knew that was a
poor way to get her to comply with your wishes. If Amelia was proud of
anything, it was her witchy ability. Challenging her expertise was a sure
way to rattle her. On the other hand, Bob was a major fuckup.
“Can you change him back?” I asked the older witch.
Octavia looked at me sharply. “Of course,” she said.
“Then why don’t you do it, and we can go from there?” I said.
Octavia looked very startled, and I knew I shouldn’t have gotten up in her
face like that. On the other hand, if she wanted to show Amelia that her
magic was more powerful, here was her chance. Bob the cat was sitting in
Amelia’s lap, looking unconcerned. Octavia reached in her pocket and
pulled out a pill container filled with what looked like marijuana; but I guess
any dried herb pretty much looks the same, and I haven’t ever actually
handled marijuana, so I’m no judge. Anyway, Octavia took a pinch of this
dried green stuff and reached out to let the bits drop on the cat’s fur. Bob
didn’t seem to mind.
Amelia’s face was a picture as she watched Octavia casting a spell, which
seemed to consist of some Latin, a few motions, and the aforementioned
herb. Finally, Octavia uttered what must have been the esoteric equivalent
of “Allakazam!” and pointed at the cat.
Nothing happened.
Octavia repeated the phrase even more forcefully. Again with the finger
pointing.
And again with the no results.
“You know what I think?” I said. No one seemed to want to know, but it was
my house. “I wonder if Bob was always a cat, and for some reason he was
temporarily human. That’s why you can’t change him back. Maybe he’s in
his true form right now.”
“That’s ridiculous,” the older witch snapped. She was some kind of put out
at her failure. Amelia was trying hard to suppress a grin.
“If you’re so sure after this that Amelia’s incompetent, which I happen to
know she isn’t, you might want to consider coming to see Maria-Star’s
apartment with us,” I said. “Make sure Amelia doesn’t get into any trouble.”
Amelia looked indignant for a second, but she seemed to see my plan, and
she added her entreaty to mine.
“Very well. I’ll come along,” Octavia said grandly.
I couldn’t see into the old witch’s mind, but I’d worked at a bar long enough
to know a lonely person when I saw one.
I got the address from Amanda, who told me Dawson was guarding the
place until we arrived. I knew him and liked him, since he’d helped me out
before. He owned a local motorcycle repair shop a couple of miles out of
Bon Temps, and he sometimes ran Merlotte’s for Sam. Dawson didn’t run
with a pack, and the news that he was pitching in with Alcide’s rebel faction
was significant.
I can’t say the drive to the outskirts of Shreveport was a bonding
experience for the three of us, but I did fill Octavia in on the background of
the pack troubles. And I explained my own involvement. “When the contest
for packmaster was taking place,” I said, “Alcide wanted me there as a
human lie detector. I actually did catch the other guy cheating, which was
good. But after that, it became a fight to the death, and Patrick Furnan was
stronger. He killed Jackson Herveaux.”
“I guess they covered up the death?” The old witch seemed neither
shocked nor surprised.
“Yes, they put the body out at an isolated farm he owned, knowing no one
would look there for a while. The wounds on the body weren’t recognizable
by the time he was found.”
“Has Patrick Furnan been a good leader?”
“I really don’t know,” I admitted. “Alcide has always seemed to have a
discontented group around him, and they’re the ones I know best in the
pack, so I guess I’m on Alcide’s side.”
“Did you ever consider that you could just step aside? Let the best Were
win?”
“No,” I said honestly. “I would have been just as glad if Alcide hadn’t called
me and told me about the pack troubles. But now that I know, I’ll help him if
I can. Not that I’m an angel or anything. But Patrick Furnan hates me, and
it’s only smart to help his enemy, point number one. And I liked Maria-Star,
point number two. And someone tried to kill me last night, someone who
may have been hired by Furnan, point number three.”
Octavia nodded. She was sure no wussy old lady.
Maria-Star had lived in a rather dated apartment building on Highway 3
between Benton and Shreveport. It was a small complex, just two buildings
side by side facing a parking lot, right there on the highway. The buildings
backed onto a field, and the adjacent businesses were day businesses: an
insurance agency and a dentist’s office.
Each of the two red brick buildings was divided into four apartments. I
noticed a familiar battered pickup truck in front of the building on the right,
and I parked by it. These apartments were enclosed; you went in the
common entrance into a hall, and there was a door on either side of the
stairway to the second floor. Maria-Star had lived on the ground-floor left
apartment. This was easy to spot, because Dawson was propped against
the wall beside her door.
I introduced him to the two witches as “Dawson” because I didn’t know his
first name. Dawson was a supersized man. I’d bet you could crack pecans
on his biceps. He had dark brown hair beginning to show just a little gray,
and a neatly trimmed mustache. I’d known who he was all my life, but I’d
never known him well. Dawson was probably seven or eight years older
than me, and he’d married early. And divorced early, too. His son, who
lived with the mother, was quite a football player for Clarice High School.
Dawson looked tougher than any guy I’d ever met. I don’t know if it was the
very dark eyes, or the grim face, or simply the size of him.
There was crime scene tape across the apartment doorway. My eyes
welled up when I saw it. Maria-Star had died violently in this space only
hours before. Dawson produced a set of keys (Alcide’s?) and unlocked the
door, and we ducked under the tape to enter.
And we all stood frozen in silence, appalled at the state of the little living
room. My way was blocked by an overturned occasional table with a big
gash marring the wood. My eyes flickered over the irregular dark stains on
the walls until my brain told me the stains were blood.
The smell was faint but unpleasant. I began to breathe shallowly so I
wouldn’t get sick.
“Now, what do you want us to do?” Octavia asked.
“I thought you’d do an ectoplasmic reconstruction, like Amelia did before,” I
said.
“Amelia did an ectoplasmic reconstruction?” Octavia had dropped the
haughty tone and sounded genuinely surprised and admiring. “I’ve never
seen one.”
Amelia nodded modestly. “With Terry and Bob and Patsy,” she said. “It
worked great. We had a big area to cover.”
“Then I’m sure we can do one here,” Octavia said. She looked interested
and excited. It was like her face had woken up. I realized that what I’d seen
before had been her depressed face. And I was getting enough from her
head (now that she wasn’t concentrating on keeping me out) to let me
know that Octavia had spent a month after Katrina wondering where her
next meal would come from, where she’d lay her head from night to night.
Now she lived with family, though I didn’t get a clean picture.
“I brought the stuff with me,” Amelia said. Her brain was radiating pride and
relief. She might yet get out from under the Bob contretemps without
paying a huge price.
Dawson stood leaning against the wall, listening with apparent interest.
Since he was a Were, it was hard to read his thoughts, but he was
definitely relaxed.
I envied him. It wasn’t possible for me to be at ease in this terrible little
apartment, which almost echoed with the violence done in its walls. I was
scared to sit on the love seat or the armchair, both upholstered in blue and
white checks. The carpet was a darker blue, and the paint was white.
Everything matched. The apartment was a little dull for my taste. But it had
been neat and clean and carefully arranged, and less than twenty-four
hours ago it had been a home.
I could see through to the bedroom, where the covers were thrown back.
This was the only sign of disorder in the bedroom or the kitchen. The living
room had been the center of the violence.
For lack of a better place to park myself, I went to lean against the bare
wall beside Dawson.
I didn’t think the motorcycle repairman and I had ever had a long
conversation, though he’d gotten shot in my defense a few months before.
I’d heard that the law (in this case, Andy Bellefleur and his fellow detective
Alcee Beck) suspected more took place at Dawson’s shop than motorcycle
repairs, but they’d never caught Dawson doing anything illegal. Dawson
also hired out as a bodyguard from time to time, or maybe he volunteered
his services. He was certainly suited to the job.
“Were you friends?” Dawson rumbled, nodding his head at the bloodiest
spot on the floor, the spot where Maria-Star had died.
“We were more like friendly acquaintances,” I said, not wanting to claim
more grief than my due. “I saw her at a wedding a couple of nights ago.” I
started to say she’d been fine then, but that would have been stupid. You
don’t sicken before you’re murdered.
“When was the last time anyone talked to Maria-Star?” Amelia asked
Dawson. “I need to establish some time limits.”
“Eleven last night,” he said. “Phone call from Alcide. He was out of town,
with witnesses. Neighbor heard a big to-do from in here about thirty
minutes after that, called the police.” That was a long speech for Dawson.
Amelia went back to her preparations, and Octavia read a thin book that
Amelia had extracted from her little backpack.
“Have you ever watched one of these before?” Dawson said to me.
“Yeah, in New Orleans. I gather this is kind of rare and hard to do. Amelia’s
really good.”
“She’s livin’ with you?”
I nodded.
“That’s what I heard,” he said. We were quiet for a moment. Dawson was
proving to be a restful companion as well as a handy hunk of muscle.
There was some gesturing, and there was some chanting, with Octavia
following her onetime student. Octavia might never have done an
ectoplasmic reconstruction, but the longer the ritual went on the more
power reverberated in the small room, until my fingernails seemed to hum
with it. Dawson didn’t exactly look frightened, but he was definitely on the
alert as the pressure of the magic built. He uncrossed his arms and stood
up straight, and I did, too.
Though I knew what to expect, it was still startling to me when Maria-Star
appeared in the room with us. Beside me, I felt Dawson jerk with surprise.
Maria-Star was painting her toenails. Her long dark hair was gathered into
a ponytail on top of her head. She was sitting on the carpet in front of the
television, a sheet of newspaper spread carefully under her foot. The
magically re-created image had the same watery look I’d seen in a previous
reconstruction, when I’d observed my cousin Hadley during her last few
hours on earth. Maria-Star wasn’t exactly in color. She was like an image
filled with glistening gel. Because the apartment was no longer in the same
order it had been when she’d sat in that spot, the effect was odd. She was
sitting right in the middle of the overturned coffee table.
We didn’t have long to wait. Maria-Star finished her toenails and sat
watching the television set (now dark and dead) while she waited for them
to dry. She did a few leg exercises while she waited. Then she gathered up
the polish and the little spacers she’d had between her toes and folded the
paper. She rose and went into the bathroom. Since the actual bathroom
door was now half-closed, the watery Maria-Star had to walk through it.
From our angle, Dawson and I couldn’t see inside, but Amelia, whose
hands were extended in a kind of sustaining gesture, gave a little shrug as
if to say Maria-Star was not doing anything important. Ectoplasmic peeing,
maybe.
In a few minutes, the young woman appeared again, this t
ime in her nightgown. She went into the bedroom and turned back the bed.
Suddenly, her head turned toward the door.
It was like watching a pantomime. Clearly Maria-Star had heard a sound at
her door, and the sound was unexpected. I didn’t know if she was hearing
the doorbell, a knocking, or someone trying to pick the lock.
Her alert posture turned to alarm, even panic. She went back into the living
room and picked up her cell phone—we saw it appear when she touched
it—and punched a couple of numbers. Calling someone on speed dial. But
before the phone could even have rung on the other end, the door
exploded inward and a man was on her, a half wolf, half man. He showed
up because he was a living thing, but he was clearer when he was close to
Maria-Star, the focus of the spell. He pinned Maria-Star to the floor and bit
her deeply on her shoulder. Her mouth opened wide, and you could tell she
was screaming and she was fighting like a Were, but he’d caught her totally
by surprise and her arms were pinned down. Gleaming lines indicated
blood running down from the bite.
Dawson gripped my shoulder, a growl rising from his throat. I didn’t know if
he was furious at the attack on Maria-Star, excited by the action and the
impression of flowing blood, or all of the above.
A second Were was right behind the first. He was in his human form. He
had a knife in his right hand. He plunged it into Maria-Star’s torso, withdrew
it, reared back, and plunged it in again. As the knife rose and fell, it cast
blood drops on the walls. We could see the blood drops, so there must be
ectoplasm (or whatever it really is) in blood, too.
I hadn’t known the first man. This guy, I recognized. He was Cal Myers, a
henchman of Furnan’s and a police detective on the Shreveport force.
The blitz attack had taken only seconds. The moment Maria-Star was
clearly mortally wounded, they were out the door, closing it behind them. I
was shocked by the sudden and dreadful cruelty of the murder, and I felt
my breath coming faster. Maria-Star, glistening and almost clear, lay there
before us for a moment in the middle of the wreckage, gleaming blood
splotches on her shirt and on the floor around her, and then she just winked
out of existence, because she had died in that moment.
We all stood in appalled silence. The witches were silent, their arms
dropping down by their sides as if they were puppets whose strings had
been cut. Octavia was crying, tears running down her creased cheeks.
Amelia looked as though she were thinking of throwing up. I was shivering
in reaction, and even Dawson looked nauseated.
“I didn’t know the first guy since he’d only half changed,” Dawson said.
“The second one looked familiar. He’s a cop, right? In Shreveport?”
“Cal Myers. Better call Alcide,” I said when I thought my voice would work.
“And Alcide needs to send these ladies something for their trouble, when
he gets his own sorted out.” I figured Alcide might not think of that since he
was mourning for Maria-Star, but the witches had done this work with no
mention of recompense. They deserved to be rewarded for their effort. It
had cost them dearly: both of them had folded onto the love seat.
“If you ladies can manage,” Dawson said, “we better get our asses out of
here. No telling when the police’ll be back. The crime lab finished just five
minutes before you got here.”
While the witches gathered their energy and all their paraphernalia, I talked
to Dawson. “You said Alcide’s got a good alibi?”
Dawson nodded. “He got a phone call from Maria-Star’s neighbor. She
called Alcide right after she called the police, when she heard all the
ruckus. Granted, the call was to his cell phone, but he answered right away
and she could hear the sounds of the hotel bar behind the conversation.
Plus, he was in the bar with people he’d just met who swore he was there
when he found out she’d been killed. They aren’t likely to forget.”
“I guess the police are trying to find a motive.” That was what they did on
the TV shows.
“She didn’t have enemies,” Dawson said.
“Now what?” Amelia said. She and Octavia were on their feet, but they
were clearly drained. Dawson shepherded us out of the apartment and
relocked it.
“Thanks for coming, ladies,” Dawson told Amelia and Octavia. He turned to
me. “Sookie, could you come with me, explain to Alcide what we just saw?
Can Amelia drive Miss Fant back?”
“Ah. Sure. If she’s not too tired.”
Amelia said she thought she could manage. We’d come in my car, so I
tossed her the keys. “You okay driving?” I asked, just to reassure myself.
She nodded. “I’ll take it slow.”
I was scrambling into Dawson’s truck when I realized that this step dragged
me even further into the Were war. Then I figured, Patrick Furnan already
tried to kill me. Can’t get any worse.
Chapter 7
Dawson’s pickup, a Dodge Ram, although battered on the outside, was
orderly within. It wasn’t a new vehicle by any means— probably five years
old—but it was very well-maintained both under the hood and in the cab.
“You’re not a member of the pack, Dawson, right?”
“It’s Tray. Tray Dawson.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Dawson shrugged, as if to say No big deal. “I never was a good pack
animal,” he said. “I couldn’t keep in line. I couldn’t follow the chain of
command.”
“So why are you joining in this fight?” I said.
“Patrick Furnan tried to put me out of business,” Dawson said.
“Why’d he do that?”
“Aren’t that many other motorcycle repair shops in the area, especially
since Furnan bought the Harley-Davidson dealership in Shreveport,” Tray
explained. “That so-and-so’s greedy. He wants it all for himself. He doesn’t
care who goes broke. When he realized I was sticking with my shop, he
sent a couple of his guys down to see me. They beat me up, busted up the
shop.”
“They must have been really good,” I said. It was hard to believe anyone
could best Tray Dawson. “Did you call the police?”
“No. The cops in Bon Temps aren’t that crazy about me anyway. But I
threw in with Alcide.”
Detective Cal Myers, obviously, was not above doing Furnan’s dirty work. It
was Myers who’d collaborated with Furnan in cheating in the packmaster
contest. But I was truly shocked that he would go as far as murdering
Maria-Star, whose only sin was being loved by Alcide. We’d seen it with our
own eyes, though.
“What’s the deal with you and the police in Bon Temps?” I asked, as long
as we were talking about law enforcement.
He laughed. “I used to be a cop; did you know that?”
“No,” I said, genuinely surprised. “No kidding?”
“For real,” he said. “I was on the force in New Orleans. But I didn’t like the
politics, and my captain was a real bastard, pardon me.”
I nodded gravely. It had been a long time since someone had apologized
for using bad language within my hearing. “So, something happened?”
“Yeah, eventually things came to a head. The captain accused me of taking
some money this scuzzbag had left lying on a table when we arrested him
in his home.” Tray shook his head in disgust. “I had to quit then. I liked the
job.”
“What did you like about it?”
“No two days were alike. Yeah, sure, we got in the cars and patrolled. That
was the same. But every time we got out something different would
happen.”
I nodded. I could understand that. Every day at the bar was a little different,
too, though probably not as different as Tray’s days had been in the patrol
car.
We drove in silence for a while. I could tell Tray was thinking about the
odds of Alcide overcoming Furnan in the struggle for dominance. He was
thinking Alcide was a lucky guy to have dated Maria-Star and me, and all
the luckier since that bitch Debbie Pelt had vanished. Good riddance, Tray
thought.
“Now I get to ask you a question,” Tray said.
“Only fair.”
“You have something to do with Debbie disappearing?”
I took a deep breath. “Yeah. Self-defense.”
“Good for you. Someone needed to do it.”
We were quiet again for at least ten minutes. Not to drag the past into the
present too much, but Alcide had broken up with Debbie Pelt before I met
him. Then he dated me a little. Debbie decided I was an enemy, and she
tried to kill me. I got her first. I’d come to terms with it . . . as much as you
ever do. However, it had been impossible for Alcide to ever look at me
again in the same way, and who could blame him? He’d found Maria-Star,
and that was a good thing.
Had been a good thing.
I felt tears well up in my eyes and looked out the window. We’d passed the
racetrack and the turnoff to Pierre Bossier Mall, and we went a couple more
exits before Tray turned the truck onto the off ramp.
We meandered through a modest neighborhood for a while, Tray checking
his rearview mirror so often that even I realized he was watching for
anyone following us. Tray suddenly turned into a driveway and pulled
around to the back of one of the slightly larger homes, which was demurely
clad in white siding. We parked under a porte cochere in the back, along
with another pickup. There was a small Nissan parked off to the side. There
were a couple of motorcycles, too, and Tray gave them a glance of
professional interest.
“Whose place?” I was a little hesitant about asking yet another question,
but after all, I did want to know where I was.
“Amanda’s,” he said. He waited for me to precede him, and I went up the
three steps leading up to the back door and rang the bell.
“Who’s there?” asked a muffled voice.
“Sookie and Dawson,” I said.
The door opened cautiously, the entrance blocked by Amanda so we
couldn’t see past her. I don’t know much about handguns, but she had a
big revolver in her hand pointed steadily at my chest. This was the second
time in two days I’d had a gun pointed at me. Suddenly, I felt very cold and
a little dizzy.
“Okay,” Amanda said after looking us over sharply.
Alcide was standing behind the door, a shotgun at the ready. He’d stepped
out into view as we came in, and when his own senses had checked us
out, he stood down. He put the shotgun on the kitchen counter and sat at
the kitchen table.
“I’m sorry about Maria-Star, Alcide,” I said, forcing the words through stiff
lips. Having guns aimed at you is just plain terrifying, especially at close
range.
“I haven’t gotten it yet,” he said, his voice flat and even. I decided he was
saying that the impact of her death hadn’t hit him. “We were thinking about
moving in together. It would have saved her life.”
There wasn’t any point in wallowing in what-might-have-been. That was
only another way to torture yourself. What had actually happened was bad
enough.
“We know who did it,” Dawson said, and a shiver ran through the room.
There were more Weres in the house—I could sense them now—and they
had all become alert at Tray Dawson’s words.
“What? How?” Without my seeing the movement, Alcide was on his feet.
“She got her witch friends to do a reconstruction,” Tray said, nodding in my
direction. “I watched. It was two guys. One I’d never seen, so Furnan’s
brought in some wolves from outside. The second was Cal Myers.”
Alcide’s big hands were clenched in fists. He didn’t seem to know where to
start speaking, he had so many reactions. “Furnan’s hired help,” Alcide
said, finally picking a jumping-in point. “So we’re within our rights to kill on
sight. We’ll snatch one of the bastards and make him talk. We can’t bring a
hostage here; someone would notice. Tray, where?”
“Hair of the Dog,” he answered.
Amanda wasn’t too crazy about that idea. She owned that bar, and using it
as an execution or torture site didn’t appeal to her. She opened her mouth
to protest. Alcide faced her and snarled, his face twisting into something
that wasn’t quite Alcide. She cowered and nodded her assent.
Alcide raised his voice even more for his next pronouncement. “Cal Myers
is Kill on Sight.”
“But he’s a pack member, and members get trials,” Amanda said, and then
cowered, correctly anticipating Alcide’s wordless roar of rage.
“You haven’t asked me about the man who tried to kill me,” I said. I wanted
to defuse the situation, if that was possible.
As furious as he was, Alcide was still too decent to remind me that I’d lived
and Maria-Star hadn’t, or that he’d loved Maria-Star much more than he’d
ever cared about me. Both thoughts crossed his mind, though.
“He was a Were,” I said. “About five foot ten, in his twenties. He was cleanshaven.
He had brown hair and blue eyes and a big birthmark on his neck.”
“Oh,” said Amanda. “That sounds like what’s-his-name, the brand-new
mechanic at Furnan’s shop. Hired last week. Lucky Owens. Ha! Who were
you with?”
“I was with Eric Northman,” I said.
There was a long, not entirely friendly silence. Weres and vampires are
natural rivals, if not out-and-out enemies.
“So, the guy’s dead?” Tray asked practically, and I nodded.
"How’d he approach you?” Alcide asked in a voice that was more rational.
“That’s an interesting question,” I said. “I was on the interstate driving home
from Shreveport with Eric. We’d been to a restaurant here.”
“So who would know where you were and who you were with?” Amanda
said while Alcide frowned down at the floor, deep in thought.
“Or that you’d have to return home along the interstate last night.” Tray was
really rising in my opinion; he was right in there with the practical and
pertinent ideas.
“I only told my roommate I was going out to dinner, not where,” I said. “We
met someone there, but we can leave him out. Eric knew, because he was
acting as chauffeur. But I know Eric and the other man didn’t tip anyone
off.”
“How can you be so sure?” Tray asked.
“Eric got shot protecting me,” I said. “And the person he took me to meet
was a relative.”
Amanda and Tray didn’t realize how small my family was, so they didn’t get
how momentous that statement was. But Alcide, who knew more about me,
glared. “You’re making this up,” he said.
“No, I’m not.” I stared back. I knew this was a terrible day for Alcide, but I
didn’t have to explain my life to him. But I had a sudden thought. “You
know, the waiter—he was a Were.” That would explain a lot.
“What’s the name of the restaurant?”
“Les Deux Poissons.” My accent wasn’t good, but the Weres nodded.
“Kendall works there,” Alcide said. “Kendall Kent. Long reddish hair?” I
nodded, and he looked sad. “I thought Kendall would come around to our
side. We had a beer together a couple of times.”
“That’s Jack Kent’s oldest. All he would have had to do was place a phone
call,” Amanda said. “Maybe he didn’t know ...”
“Not an excuse,” Tray said. His deep voice reverberated in the little kitchen.
“Kendall has to know who Sookie is, from the packmaster contest. She’s a
friend of the pack. Instead of telling Alcide she was in our territory and
should be protected, he called Furnan and told him where Sookie was,
maybe let him know when she started home. Made it easy for Lucky to lie
in wait.”
I wanted to protest that there was no certainty that it had happened like
that, but when I thought about it, it had to have been exactly that way or in
some manner very close to it. Just to be sure I was remembering correctly,
I called Amelia and asked her if she’d told any callers where I was the night
before.
“No,” she said. “I heard from Octavia, who didn’t know you. I got a call from
that werepanther boy I met at your brother’s wedding. Believe me, you
didn’t come up in that conversation. Alcide called, real upset. Tanya. I told
her nothing.”
“Thanks, roomie,” I said. “You recovering?”
“Yeah, I’m feeling better, and Octavia left to go back to the family she’s
been staying with in Monroe.”
“Okay, see you when I get back.”
“You going to make it back in time for work?”
“Yeah, I have to make it to work.” Since I’d spent that week in Rhodes, I
have to be careful to stick to the schedule for a while, otherwise the other
waitresses would get up in my face about Sam giving me all the breaks. I
hung up. “She told no one,” I said.
“So you—and Eric—had a leisurely dinner at an expensive restaurant, with
another man.”
I looked at him incredulously. This was so far off the point. I concentrated.
I’d never poked a mental probe into such turmoil. Alcide was feeling grief
for Maria-Star, guilt because he hadn’t protected her, anger that I’d been
drawn into the conflict, and above all, eagerness to knock some skulls. As
the cherry on top of all that, Alcide—irrationally—hated that I’d been out
with Eric.
I tried to keep my mouth shut out of respect for his loss; I was no stranger
to mixed emotions myself. But I found I’d become abruptly and completely
tired of him. “Okay,” I said. “Fight your own battles. I came when you asked
me to. I helped you when you asked me to, both at the battle for packleader
and today, at expense and emotional grief to myself. Screw you, Alcide.
Maybe Furnan is the better Were.” I spun on my heel and caught the look
Tray Dawson was giving Alcide while I marched out of the kitchen, down
the steps, and into the carport. If there’d been a can, I would’ve kicked it.
“I’ll take you home,” Tray said, appearing at my side, and I marched over to
the side of the truck, grateful that he was giving me the wherewithal to
leave. When I’d stormed out, I hadn’t been thinking about what would
happen next. It’s the ruin of a good exit when you have to go back and look
in the phone book for a cab company.
I’d believed Alcide truly loathed me after the Debbie debacle. Apparently
the loathing was not total.
“Kind of ironic, isn’t it?” I said after a silent spell. “I almost got shot last night
because Patrick Furnan thought that would upset Alcide. Until ten minutes
ago, I would have sworn that wasn’t true.”
Tray looked like he would rather be cutting up onions than dealing with this
conversation. After another pause, he said, “Alcide’s acting like a butthead,
but he’s got a lot on his plate.”
“I understand that,” I said, and shut my mouth before I said one more word.
As it turned out, I was on time to go to work that night. I was so upset while
I was changing clothes that I almost split my black pants, I yanked them on
so hard. I brushed my hair with such unnecessary vigor that it crackled.
“Men are incomprehensible assholes,” I said to Amelia.
“No shit,” she said. “When I was searching for Bob today, I found a female
cat in the woods with kittens. And guess what? They were all black-andwhite.”
I really had no idea what to say.
“So to hell with the promise I made him, right? I’m going to have fun. He
can go have sex; I can have sex. And if he vomits on my bedspread again,
I’ll get after him with the broom.”
I was trying not to look directly at Amelia. “I don’t blame you,” I said, trying
to keep my voice steady. It was nice to be on the verge of laughter instead
of wanting to smack someone. I grabbed up my purse, checked my ponytail
in the mirror in the hall bathroom, and exited out the back door to drive to
Merlotte’s.
I felt tired before I even walked through the employees’ door, not a good
way to start my shift.
I didn’t see Sam when I stowed my purse in the deep desk drawer we all
used. When I came out of the hall that accessed the two public bathrooms,
Sam’s office, the storeroom, and the kitchen (though the kitchen door was
kept locked from the inside, most of the time), I found Sam behind the bar. I
gave him a wave as I tied on the white apron I’d pulled from the stack of
dozens. I slid my order pad and a pencil into a pocket, looked around to
find Arlene, whom I’d be replacing, and scanned the tables in our section.
My heart sank. No peaceful evening for me. Some asses in Fellowship of
the Sun T-shirts were sitting at one of the tables. The Fellowship was a
radical organization that believed (a) vampires were sinful by nature,
almost demons, and (b) they should be executed. The Fellowship
“preachers” wouldn’t say so publicly, but the Fellowship advocated the total
eradication of the undead. I’d heard there was even a little primer to advise
members of how that could be carried out. After the Rhodes bombing
they’d become bolder in their hatred.
The FotS group was growing as Americans struggled to come to terms with
something they couldn’t understand—and as hundreds of vampires
streamed into the country that had given them the most favorable reception
of all the nations on earth. Since a few heavily Catholic and Muslim
countries had adopted a policy of killing vampires on sight, the U.S. had
begun accepting vampires as refugees from religious or political
persecution, and the backlash against this policy was violent. I’d recently
seen a bumper sticker that read, “I’ll say vamps are alive when you pry my
cold dead fingers from my ripped-out throat.”
I regarded the FotS as intolerant and ignorant, and I despised those who
belonged to its ranks. But I was used to keeping my mouth shut on the
topic at the bar, the same way I was used to avoiding discussions on
abortion or gun control or gays in the military.
Of course, the FotS guys were probably Arlene’s buddies. My weak-minded
ex-friend had fallen hook, line, and sinker for the pseudo religion that the
FotS propagated.
Arlene curtly briefed me on the tables as she headed out the back door, her
face set hard against me. As I watched her go, I wondered how her kids
were. I used to babysit them a lot. They probably hated me now, if they
listened to their mother.
I shook off my melancholy, because Sam didn’t pay me to be moody. I
made the rounds of the customers, refreshed drinks, made sure everyone
had enough food, brought a clean fork for a woman who’d dropped hers,
supplied extra napkins to the table where Catfish Hennessy was eating
chicken strips, and exchanged cheerful words with the guys seated at the
bar. I treated the FotS table just like I treated everyone else, and they didn’t
seem to be paying me any special attention, which was just fine with me. I
had every expectation that they’d leave with no trouble ...until Pam walked
in.
Pam is white as a sheet of paper and looks just like Alice in Wonderland
would look if she’d grown up to become a vampire. In fact, this evening
Pam even had a blue band restraining her straight fair hair, and she was
wearing a dress instead of her usual pants set. She was lovely—even if
she looked like a vampire cast in an episode of Leave It to Beaver. Her
dress had little puff sleeves with white trim, and her collar had white trim,
too. The tiny buttons down the front of her bodice were white, to match the
polka dots on the skirt. No hose, I noticed, but any hose she bought would
look bizarre since the rest of her skin was so pale.
“Hey, Pam,” I said as she made a beeline for me.
“Sookie,” she said warmly, and gave me a kiss as light as a snowflake. Her
lips felt cool on my cheek.
“What’s up?” I asked. Pam usually worked at Fangtasia in the evening.
“I have a date,” she said. “Do you think I look good?” She spun around.
“Oh, sure,” I said. “You always look good, Pam.” That was only the truth.
Though Pam’s clothing choices were often ultra-conservative and strangely
dated, that didn’t mean they didn’t become her. She had a kind of sweetbut-
lethal charm. “Who’s the lucky guy?”
She looked as arch as a vampire over two hundred years old can look.
“Who says it’s a guy?” she said.
“Oh, right.” I glanced around. “Who’s the lucky person?”
Just then my roomie walked in. Amelia was wearing a beautiful pair of
black linen pants and heels with an off-white sweater and a pair of amber
and tortoiseshell earrings. She looked conservative, too, but in a more
modern way. Amelia strode over to us, smiled at Pam, and said, “Had a
drink yet?”
Pam smiled in a way I’d never seen her smile before. It was . . . coy. “No,
waiting for you.”
They sat at the bar and Sam served them. Soon they were chatting away,
and when their drinks were gone, they got up to leave.
When they passed me on their way out, Amelia said, “I’ll see you when I
see you”—her way of telling me she might not be home tonight.
“Okay, you two have fun,” I said. Their departure was followed by more
than one pair of male eyes. If corneas steamed up like glasses do, all the
guys in the bar would be seeing blurry.
I made the round of my tables again, fetching new beers for one, leaving
the bill at another, until I reached the table with the two guys wearing the
FotS shirts. They were still watching the door as though they expected Pam
to jump back inside and scream, “BOO!”
“Did I just see what I thought I saw?” one of the men asked me. He was in
his thirties, clean-shaven, brown-haired, just another guy. The other man
was someone I would have eyed with caution if we’d been in an elevator
alone. He was thin, had a beard fringe along his jaw, was decorated with a
few tattoos that looked like home jobs to me—jail tats—and he was
carrying a knife strapped to his ankle, a thing that hadn’t been too hard for
me to spot once I’d heard in his mind that he was armed.
“What do you think you just saw?” I asked sweetly. Brown Hair thought I
was a bit simple. But that was a good camouflage, and it meant that Arlene
hadn’t sunk to telling all and sundry about my little peculiarities. No one in
Bon Temps (if you asked them outside of church on Sunday) would have
said telepathy was possible. If you’d asked them outside of Merlotte’s on a
Saturday night, they might have said there was something to it.
“I think I saw a vamp come in here, just like she had a right. And I think I
saw a woman acting happy to walk out with her. I swear to God, I cannot
believe it.” He looked at me as if I was sure to share his outrage. Jail Tat
nodded vigorously.
“I’m sorry—you see two women walking out of a bar together, and that
bothers you? I don’t understand your problem with that.” Of course I did,
but you have to play it out sometimes.
“Sookie!” Sam was calling me.
“Can I get you gentlemen anything else?” I asked, since Sam was
undoubtedly trying to call me back to my senses.
They were both looking at me oddly now, having correctly deduced that I
was not exactly down with their program.
“I guess we’re ready to leave,” said Jail Tat, clearly hoping I’d be made to
suffer for driving paying customers away. “You got our check ready?” I’d
had their check ready, and I laid it down on the table in between them.
They each glanced at it, slapped a ten on top, and shoved their chairs
back.
“I’ll be back with your change in just a second,” I said, and turned.
“No change,” said Brown Hair, though his tone was surly and he didn’t
seem genuinely thrilled with my service.
“Jerks,” I muttered as I went to the cash register at the bar.
Sam said, “Sookie, you have to suck it up.”
I was so surprised that I stared at Sam. We were both behind the bar, and
Sam was mixing a vodka collins. Sam continued quietly, keeping his eyes
on his hands, “You have to serve them like they were anybody else.”
It wasn’t too often that Sam treated me like an employee rather than a
trusted associate. It hurt; the more so when I realized he was right. Though
I’d been polite on the surface, I would have (and should have) swallowed
their last remarks with no comment—if it hadn’t been for the FotS T-shirts.
Merlotte’s wasn’t my business. It was Sam’s. If customers didn’t come
back, he’d suffer the consequences.
Eventually, if he had to let bar-maids go, I would, too.
“I’m sorry,” I said, though it wasn’t easy to manage saying it. I smiled
brightly at Sam and went off to do an unnecessary round of my tables, one
that probably crossed the line from attentive and into irritating. But if I went
into the employees’ bathroom or the public ladies’ room, I’d end up crying,
because it hurt to be admonished and it hurt to be wrong; but most of all, it
hurt to be put in my place.
When we closed that night, I left as quickly and quietly as possible. I knew I
was going to have to get over being hurt, but I preferred to do my healing in
my own home. I didn’t want to have any “little talks” with Sam—or anyone
else, for that matter. Holly was looking at me with way too much curiosity.
So I scooted out to the parking lot with my purse, my apron still on. Tray
was leaning against my car. I jumped before I could stop myself.
“You running scared?” he asked.
“No, I’m running upset,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m going to follow you home,” he said. “Amelia there?”
“No, she’s out on a date.”
“Then I’m definitely checking out the house,” the big man said, and climbed
into his truck to follow me out Hummingbird Road.
There wasn’t any reason to object that I could see. In fact, it made me feel
good to have someone with me, someone I pretty much trusted.
My house was just as I’d left it, or rather, as Amelia had left it. The outside
security lights had come on automatically, and she’d left the light over the
sink on in the kitchen as well as the back porch light. Keys in hand, I
crossed to the kitchen door.
Tray’s big hand gripped my arm when I started to twist the doorknob.
“There’s no one there,” I said, having checked in my own way. “And it’s
warded by Amelia.”
“You stay here while I look around,” he said gently. I nodded and let him in.
After a few seconds’ silence, he opened the door to tell me I could come
into the kitchen. I was ready to follow him through the house for the rest of
his search, but he said, “I’d sure like a glass of Coke, if you got any.”
He’d deflected me perfectly from following him by appealing to my
hospitality. My grandmother would have hit me with a fly swatter if I hadn’t
gotten Tray a Coke right then.
By the time he arrived back in the kitchen and pronounced the house clear
of intruders, the icy Coke was sitting in a glass on the table, and there was
a meatloaf sandwich sitting by it. With a folded napkin.
Without a word, Tray sat down and put the napkin in his lap and ate the
sandwich and drank the Coke. I sat opposite him with my own drink.
“I hear your man has vanished,” Tray said when he’d patted his lips with
the napkin.
I nodded.
“What do you think happened to him?”
I explained the circumstances. “So I haven’t heard a word from him,” I
concluded. This story was sounding almost automatic, like I ought to tape
it.
“That’s bad” was all he said. Somehow it made me feel better, this quiet,
undramatic discussion of a very touchy subject. After a minute of thoughtful
silence, Tray said, “I hope you find him soon.”
“Thanks. I’m real anxious to know how he’s doing.” That was a huge
understatement.
“Well, I’d better be getting on,” he said. “If you get nervous in the night, you
call me. I can be here in ten minutes. It’s no good, you being alone out here
with the war starting.”
I had a mental image of tanks coming down my driveway.
“How bad do you think it could get?” I asked.
“My dad told me in the last war, which was when his daddy was little, the
pack in Shreveport got into it with the pack in Monroe. The Shreveport pack
was about forty then, counting the halfies.” Halfies was the common term
for Weres who’d become wolves by being bitten. They could only turn into
a kind of wolf-man, never achieving the perfect wolf form that born Weres
thought was vastly superior. “But the Monroe pack had a bunch of college
kids in it, so it come up to forty, forty-five, too. At the end of the fighting,
both packs were halved.”
I thought of the Weres I knew. “I hope it stops now,” I said.
“It ain’t gonna,” Tray said practically. “They’ve tasted blood, and killing
Alcide’s girl instead of trying for Alcide was a cowardly way to open the
fight. Them trying to get you, too; that only made it worse. You don’t have a
drop of Were blood. You’re a friend of the pack. That should make you
untouchable, not a target. And this afternoon, Alcide found Christine
Larrabee dead.”
I was shocked all over again. Christine Larrabee was—had been—the
widow of one of the previous packleaders. She had a high standing in the
Were community, and she’d rather reluctantly endorsed Jackson Herveaux
for packleader. Now she had gotten a delayed payback.
“He’s not going after any men?” I finally managed to speak.
Tray’s face was dark with contempt. “Naw,” the Were said. “The only way I
can read it is, Furnan wants to set Alcide’s temper off. He wants everyone
to be on a hair trigger, while Furnan himself stays cool and collected. He’s
about got what he wants, too. Between grief and the personal insult, Alcide
is aimed to go off like a shotgun. He needs to be more like a sniper rifle.”
“Isn’t Furnan’s strategy real . . . unusual?”
“Yes,” Tray said heavily. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him. Apparently,
he don’t want to face Alcide in personal combat. He don’t want to just beat
Alcide. He’s aiming to kill Alcide and all Alcide’s people, as far as I can tell.
A few of the Weres, the ones with little kids, they already repledged
themselves to him. They’re too scared of what he’d do to their kids, after
the attacks against women.” The Were stood. “Thanks for the food. I’ve got
to go feed my dogs. You lock up good after me, you hear? And where’s
your cell phone?”
I handed it to him, and with surprisingly neat movements for such large
hands, Tray programmed his cell phone number into my directory. Then he
left with a casual wave of his hand. He had a small neat house by his repair
shop, and I was really relieved to find he’d timed the journey from there to
here at only ten minutes. I locked the door behind him, and I checked the
kitchen windows. Sure enough, Amelia had left one open at some point
during the mild afternoon. After that discovery, I felt compelled to check
every window in the house, even the ones upstairs.
After that was done and I felt as secure as I was going to feel, I turned on
the television and sat in front of it, not really seeing what was happening on
the screen. I had a lot to think about.
Months ago, I’d gone to the packmaster contest at Alcide’s request to
watch for trickery. It was my bad luck that my presence had been noticed
and my discovery of Furnan’s treachery had been public. It griped me that
I’d been drawn into this fight, which was none of my own. In fact, bottom
line: knowing Alcide had brought me nothing but grief.
I was almost relieved to feel a head of anger building at this injustice, but
my better self urged me to squash it in the bud. It wasn’t Alcide’s fault that
Debbie Pelt had been such a murderous bitch, and it wasn’t Alcide’s fault
that Patrick Furnan had decided to cheat in the contest. Likewise, Alcide
wasn’t responsible for Furnan’s bloodthirsty and uncharacteristic approach
to consolidating his pack. I wondered if this behavior was even remotely
wolflike.
I figured it was just Patrick Furnan-like.
The telephone rang, and I jumped about a mile. “Hello?” I said, unhappy at
how frightened I sounded.
“The Were Herveaux called me,” Eric said. “He confirms that he’s at war
with his packmaster.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You needed confirmation from Alcide? My message wasn’t
enough?”
“I’d thought of an alternative to the theory that you were attacked in a strike
against Alcide. I’m sure Niall must have mentioned that he has enemies.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I wondered if one of those enemies had acted very swiftly. If the Weres
have spies, so may the fairies.”
I pondered that. “So, in wanting to meet me, he almost caused my death.”
“But he had the wisdom to ask me to escort you to and from Shreveport.”
“So he saved my life, even though he risked it.”
Silence.
“Actually,” I said, leaping to firmer emotional ground, “you saved my life,
and I’m grateful.” I half expected Eric to ask me just how grateful I was, to
refer to the kissing . . . but still he didn’t speak.
Just as I was about to blurt out something stupid to break the silence, the
vampire said, “I’ll only interfere in the Were war to defend our interests. Or
to defend you.”
My turn for a silent spell. “All right,” I said weakly.
“If you see trouble coming, if they try to draw you in further, call me
immediately,” Eric told me. “I believe the assassin truly was sent by the
packmaster. Certainly he was a Were.”
“Some of Alcide’s people recognized the description. The guy, Lucky
somebody, had just been taken on by Furnan as a mechanic.”
“Strange that he’d entrust such an errand to someone he hardly knew.”
“Since the guy turned out to be so unlucky.”
Eric actually snorted. Then he said, “I won’t talk to Niall of this any further.
Of course, I told him what occurred.”
I had a moment’s ridiculous pang because Niall hadn’t rushed to my side or
called to ask if I was okay. I’d only met him once, and now I was sad he
wasn’t acting like my nursemaid.
“All right, Eric, thanks,” I said, and hung up as he was saying good-bye. I
should have asked him about my money again, but I was too dispirited;
besides, it wasn’t Eric’s problem.
I was jumpy the whole time I was getting ready for bed, but nothing
happened to make me more anxious. I reminded myself about fifty times
that Amelia had warded the house. The wards would work whether she
was in the house or not.
I had some good locks on the doors.
I was tired.
Finally, I slept, but I woke up more than once, listening for an assassin.
Chapter 8
I got up with heavy eyes the next day. I felt groggy and my head hurt. I had
what amounted to an emotional hangover. Something had to change. I
couldn’t spend another night like this. I wondered if I should call Alcide and
see if he’d, ah, gone to the mattresses with his soldiers. Maybe they’d let
me have a corner? But the very idea of having to do that to feel safe made
me angry.
I couldn’t stop the thought from going through my head— If Quinn were
here, I could stay in my own home without fear. And for a moment, I wasn’t
just worried about my missing wounded boyfriend, I was mad at him.
I was ready to be mad at someone. There was too much loose emotion
hanging around.
Well, this was the beginning of a very special day, huh?
No Amelia. I had to assume she’d spent the night with Pam. I didn’t have
any problem with their having a relationship. I simply wanted Amelia to be
around because I was lonely and scared. Her absence left a little blank
spot in my landscape.
At least the air was cooler this morning. You could feel clearly that fall was
on the way, was already in the ground waiting to leap up and claim the
leaves and grass and flowers. I put on a sweater over my nightgown and
went out on the front porch to drink my first cup of coffee. I listened to the
birds for a while; they weren’t as noisy as they were in the spring, but their
songs and discussions let finished my coffee and tried to plan out my day,
but I kept running up against a mental roadblock. It was hard to make plans
when you suspected someone might try to kill you. If I could tear myself
away from the issue of my possibly impending death, I needed to vacuum
the downstairs, do a load of my laundry, and go to the library. If I survived
those chores, I had to go to work.
I wondered where Quinn was.
I wondered when I’d hear from my new great-grandfather again.
I wondered if any more Weres had died during the night.
I wondered when my phone would ring.
Since nothing happened on my front porch, I dragged myself inside and did
my usual morning get-ready routine. When I looked at the mirror, I was
sorry I’d troubled. I didn’t look rested and refreshed. I looked like a worried
person who hadn’t gotten any sleep. I dabbed some concealer beneath my
eyes and put on a little extra eye shadow and blush to give my face some
color. Then I decided I looked like a clown and rubbed most of it off. After
feeding Bob and scolding him for the litter of kittens, I checked all my locks
again and hopped in the car to go to the library.
The Renard Parish library, Bon Temps branch, is not a large building. Our
librarian graduated from Louisiana Tech in Ruston, and she is a super lady
in her late thirties named Barbara Beck. Her husband, Alcee, is a detective
on the Bon Temps force, and I really hope Barbara doesn’t know what he’s
up to. Alcee Beck is a tough man who does good things ... sometimes. He
also does quite a few bad things. Alcee was lucky when he got Barbara to
marry him, and he knows it.
Barbara’s the only full-time employee of the branch library, and I wasn’t
surprised to find her by herself when I pushed open the heavy door. She
was shelving books. Barbara dressed in what I thought of as comfortable
chic, meaning she picked out knits in bright colors and wore matching
shoes. She favored chunky, bold jewelry, too.
“Good morning, Sookie,” she said, smiling her big smile.
“Barbara,” I said, trying to smile back. She noticed I wasn’t my usual self,
but she kept her thoughts to herself. Not really, of course, since I have my
little disability, but she didn’t say anything out loud. I put the books I was
returning on the appropriate desk, and I began looking at the shelves of
new arrivals. Most of them were some permutation on self-help. Going by
how popular these books were and how often they were checked out,
everyone in Bon Temps should have become perfect by now.
I grabbed up two new romances and a couple of mysteries, and even a
science fiction, which I rarely read. (I guess I thought my reality was crazier
than anything a science fiction writer could dream up.) While I was looking
at the jacket of a book by an author I’d never read, I heard a thunk in the
background and knew someone had come in the back door of the library. I
didn’t pay attention; some people habitually used the back door.
Barbara made a little noise, and I looked up. The man behind her was
huge, at least six foot six, and whip thin. He had a big knife, and he was
holding it to Barbara’s throat. For a second I thought he was a robber, and I
wondered who would ever think of robbing a library. For the overdue-book
money?
“Don’t scream,” he hissed through long sharp teeth. I froze. Barbara was in
some space beyond fear. She was way into terror. But I could hear another
active brain in the building.
Someone else was coming in the back door very quietly.
“Detective Beck will kill you for hurting his wife,” I said very loudly. And I
said it with absolute certainty.
“Kiss your ass good-bye.”
“I don’t know who that is and I don’t care,” the tall man said.
“You better care, muthafucker,” said Alcee Beck, who’d stepped up behind
him silently. He put his gun to the man’s head. “Now, you let go of my wife
and you drop that knife.”
But Sharp Teeth wasn’t about to do that. He spun, pushed Barbara at
Alcee, and ran right toward me, knife raised.
I threw a Nora Roberts hardback at him, whacking him upside his head. I
extended my foot. Blinded by the impact of the book, Sharp Teeth tripped
over the foot, just as I’d hoped.
He fell on his own knife, which I hadn’t planned.
The library fell abruptly silent except for Barbara’s gasping breath. Alcee
Beck and I stared down at the creeping pool of blood coming out from
under the man.
“Ah-oh,” I said.
“Welllllll . . . shit,” said Alcee Beck. “Where’d you learn to throw like that,
Sookie Stackhouse?”
“Softball,” I said, which was the literal truth.
As you can imagine, I was late to work that afternoon. I was even more
tired than I had been to start with, but I was thinking that I might live
through the day. So far, two times in a row, fate had intervened to prevent
my assassination. I had to assume that Sharp Teeth had been sent to kill
me and had botched it, just as the fake highway patrolman had done.
Maybe my luck wouldn’t hold a third time; but there was a chance it would.
What were the odds that another vampire would take a bullet for me, or
that, by sheer accident, Alcee Beck would drop off his wife’s lunch that
she’d left at home on the kitchen counter? Slim, right? But I’d beaten those
odds twice.
No matter what the police were officially assuming (since I didn’t know the
guy and no one could say I did—and he’d seized Barbara, not me), Alcee
Beck now had me in his sights. He was really good at reading situations,
and he had seen that Sharp Teeth was focused on me. Barbara had been
a means to get my attention. Alcee would never forgive me for that, even if
it hadn’t been my fault. Plus, I’d thrown that book with suspicious force and
accuracy.
In his place, I would probably feel the same way.
So now I was at Merlotte’s, going through the motions in a weary way,
wondering where to go and what to do and why Patrick Furnan had gone
nuts. And where had all these strangers come from? I hadn’t known the
Were who’d broken down Maria-Star’s door. Eric had been shot by a guy
who’d worked at Patrick Furnan’s dealership only a few days. I’d never
seen Sharp Teeth before, and he was an unforgettable kind of guy.
The whole situation made no sense at all.
Suddenly I had an idea. I asked Sam if I could make a phone call since my
tables were quiet, and he nodded. He’d been giving me those narrow looks
all evening, looks that meant he was going to pin me down and talk to me
soon, but for now I had a breather. So I went into Sam’s office, looked in
his Shreveport phone book to get the listing for Patrick Furnan’s home, and
I called him.
“Hello?”
I recognized the voice.
“Patrick Furnan?” I said, just to be sure.
“Speaking.”
“Why are you trying to kill me?”
“What? Who is this?”
“Oh, come on. It’s Sookie Stackhouse. Why are you doing this?”
There was a long pause.
“Are you trying to trap me?” he asked.
“How? You think I got the phone tapped? I want to know why. I never did
anything to you. I’m not even dating Alcide. But you’re trying to off me like I
am powerful. You killed poor Maria-Star. You killed Christine Larrabee.
What’s with this? I’m not important.”
Patrick Furnan said slowly, “You really believe it’s me doing this?
Killing female pack members? Trying to kill you?”
“Sure I do.”
“It’s not me. I read about Maria-Star. Christine Larrabee is dead?” He
sounded almost frightened.
“Yes,” I said, and my voice was as uncertain as his. “And someone’s tried
to kill me twice. I’m afraid some totally innocent person is going to get
caught in the cross fire. And of course, I don’t want to die.”
Furnan said, “My wife disappeared yesterday.” His voice was ragged with
grief and fear. And anger.
“Alcide’s got her, and that fucker is going to pay.”
“Alcide wouldn’t do that,” I said. (Well, I was pretty sure Alcide wouldn’t do
that.) “You’re saying you didn’t order the hits on Maria-Star and Christine?
And me?”
“No, why would I go for the women? We never want to kill pure-blooded
female Weres. Except maybe Amanda,” Furnan added tactlessly. “If we’re
going to kill someone, it’d be the men.”
“I think you and Alcide need to have a sit-down. He doesn’t have your wife.
He thinks you’ve gone crazy, attacking women.”
There was a long silence. Furnan said, “I think you’re right about that sitdown,
unless you made up this whole thing to get me into a position where
Alcide can kill me.”
“I just want to live to see the next week myself.”
“I’ll agree to meet with Alcide if you’ll be there and if you’ll swear to tell each
of us what the other is thinking. You’re a friend of the pack, all the pack.
You can help us now.”
Patrick Furnan was so anxious to find his wife he was even willing to
believe in me.
I thought of the deaths that had already taken place. I thought of the deaths
that were to come, perhaps including my own. I wondered what the hell
was going on. “I’ll do it if you and Alcide will sit down unarmed,” I said. “If
what I suspect is true, you have a common enemy who’s trying to get you
two to kill each other off.”
“If that black-haired bastard will agree to it, I’ll give it a shot,” said Furnan.
“If Alcide has my wife, not a hair on her body better be disturbed, and he
better bring her with him. Or I swear to God I’ll dismember him.”
“I understand. I’ll make sure he understands, too. We’ll be getting back with
you,” I promised, and I hoped with all my heart that I was telling the truth.