True Blood Book 13 Chapters 15-18

Chapter 15
At midnight the alarms went off.
I hadn’t known there were alarms and I hadn’t known it was midnight, but when the chiming started, I
glanced at the clock. I’d been having the best sleep I’d had in days, and I experienced a moment of vicious
disappointment before I launched myself out of bed.
From across the hall, Amelia shouted, “It worked!” I flung open my bedroom door and stumbled out.
Amelia and Bob, in a nightgown and sleep shorts respectively, were hurrying through their doorway and
heading to the back door. I heard Mr. Cataliades bellow something. Diantha shrieked back. They were
pounding down the stairs completely dressed in their day clothes. Barry staggered down after them in
LSU sleep pants and shirtless.
We all crowded onto the back porch, staring outside. There was one big security light in the back,
but we could also see that a ring of blue light had sprung up around the yard and house. A body lay on the
ground outside the ring. “Oh, no!” I said, and put my hand on the porch door.
“Sookie, don’t go out!” Amelia said, grabbing my shoulder and yanking me backward. “That’s
someone who tried to sneak up on the house.”
“But what if it’s Bill and he was only coming to see if everything was okay?”
“Our defensive circle recognizes enmity,” Bob said with simple pride.
“Diantha, do you have your cell phone?” Mr. Cataliades asked.
“SureIgotit,” she said, and I spared a moment to be relieved that she was back to normal.
“Go take a picture of the person who is lying on the ground, but from well within the circle,” he
directed.
Before we could think to stop her or argue with the procedure, Diantha was out of the house and
running across the backyard at an incredible speed. The phone was out in her hand, and as she reached the
perimeter of the protective circle, she paused and took a picture. Then, before we could be more
frightened for her, she was back.
Mr. Cataliades turned the little screen toward me. “Do you recognize this vampire?” he asked.
I peered at it. “Yes, I do. That’s Horst Friedman, Felipe de Castro’s right-hand man.”
“I thought as much. Amelia, Bob, I congratulate you on your power and your perspicacity.”
I didn’t know what “perspicacity” was, but Amelia did, and she beamed with delight. Even the dour
Bob looked proud.
“Yes, thanks,” I said with extra enthusiasm, hoping it wasn’t too belated. “I don’t know what he
wanted, and I don’t want to know, at least right now. Do you have to recharge the circle, or something like
that?”
“We should retest it,” Bob suggested, and Amelia nodded.
I saw Barry’s gaze encompass the nightgown and Amelia in it, and he looked away resolutely. I
really didn’t want to hear his thoughts about my witch friend. I said lalalalala inside my head for a
moment so the lust could abate.
“Sookie!” The call came from outside, from the dark woods.
“Who’s there?” I called in reply.
“Bill,” he said. “What has happened here?”
“I guess Horst tried to sneak up on the house, and Bob and Amelia’s witch spell zapped him,” I
yelled. I opened the back door and took two steps down. I figured if I was still standing on the steps, I
could jump back inside.
Bill emerged from the tree line. “I felt the magic from my house,” he said. He looked down at
Horst’s limp body. I wondered if the vampire was finally dead, but his body seemed intact. “What shall I
do with him?” Bill asked me.
“That’s up to you,” I called, wishing that I could walk out to the blue ring and lower my voice. I was
afraid to, though. “You gotta keep the peace with the king, I guess.” Otherwise, I might be tempted to ask
Bill to use a little persuasion on Horst when the vampire woke up, so we could discover what Horst and
his boss had had in mind for me.
“I’ll take him to my place and call the king,” Bill said, and he hoisted the unconscious vampire to his
shoulder as if Horst weighed nothing. In a moment, Bill and his burden were out of sight.
“That was exciting,” I said, trying to sound calm and casual. I stepped back onto the porch. “I guess
I’ll go back to bed. Thanks, you two, for putting that protection around. Diantha, I appreciate your help.
You all okay? Anybody need anything?”
“We’ll be right back in as soon as we test the spell,” Bob said, and turned to Amelia. “You up to it,
babe?”
“We should check its strength now that it’s reacted,” she said, nodding, and they went down to the
yard in their bare feet. Without any consultation, they each took the other’s hands and began to chant. A
strong scent wafted across the back porch, and I knew it was the scent of their magic. It was musky and
heavy, like sandalwood.
It wasn’t easy to get back to sleep after such a rude awakening, but somehow I managed it. For all I
knew, the sudden drop into deep sleep was part of the spell my friends were casting in my yard. When I
next opened my eyes, the room was full of light and I could hear my guests moving around the house.
Though I knew I was being a bad hostess, I checked my cell phone for messages before I went out to
the kitchen. I had one, a voice message from Bill.
“I called Eric and told him I had the kings friend at my house,” he said. “Eric asked what had
happened, and I told him about the witches’ circle. I told him that you had many friends staying with you
and they were prepared to defend you. He asked if Sam Merlotte was among them, and when I said I
hadn’t seen him, he laughed. He told me he would tell the king where Horst was. Afterward, Felipe sent
his woman, Angie, to collect Horst, who was only beginning to recover consciousness by the time she got
here. Angie seemed quite angry at Horst, so I suspect he was on an unauthorized mission. Your witch
friends did a good job.” Then he hung up. Older vampires are not into phone etiquette.
It wasn’t pretty, the picture of Eric laughing at Sam’s absence. It made me think furiously.
“Sookie, do you have any more milk?” Barry called. Of course, he would know that I was up.
“I’m coming,” I yelled back, and pulled on my clothes.
The needs of the world went on, no matter how many crises erupted. “All God’s children got to eat,”
I said, and found another quart of milk at the back of the top shelf and handed it to Barry. Then I poured
myself a bowl of cereal.
Bob said, “The psychic’s going to be here any minute.” He was not trying to sound like he was
telling me to hurry up, but it was a timely reminder. I was horrified when I looked at the clock.
Everyone but me had already eaten, rinsed out the dishes, and stacked them by the sink. I should have
felt embarrassed, but instead I was simply relieved.
Just after I brushed my teeth, an ancient pickup truck rumbled into my front parking area. Its motor cut
with an ominous rattle. A short, stocky woman slid out of the high cab to land on the gravel. She was
wearing a cowboy hat decorated with the tip portion of a peacock feather. Her dry brown hair brushed
her shoulders and almost matched her skin, as tan and weathered as an old saddle. Delphine Oubre was
nothing like I’d imagined. From her battered boots and jeans to her sleeveless blue blouse, she looked
like she’d be more at home at a country and western bar like Stompin’ Sally’s than coming to the house of
a telepath to practice her touch psychic-ness.
“Paranormal psychometry,” Barry corrected.
I raised an eyebrow.
“It was just called psychometry originally,” he said, “but in the past few years ‘real scientists’ ”—he
made the imaginary quote marks—“have started using that term to designate . . . well, measuring
psychological traits.”
That didn’t sound much like a science to me.
“Me, either,” he confessed. But I read up on this online last night to get ready for her visit. In case
Bob is mistaken about her talent.
Good move, I told him, watching Delphine Oubre come up the back steps.
“You don’t need to tell her your names,” Bob said hastily. “Just mine, that’s all she needs.”
Up close, Delphine seemed to be about forty years old. She wore no jewelry or makeup; her only
decoration was the feather in her hat. Her cowboy boots were ancient and venerable. She looked like she
could pound in nails with her bare hands.
Bob introduced himself to Delphine, and though (following his orders) I didn’t tell her my name, I
offered Delphine a drink (she wanted water from the tap, no ice). She pulled out a kitchen chair and took
a seat. When I put the glass in front of her, she took a big swallow. “Well?” she said impatiently.
Diantha offered her the scarf, still in its plastic bag. I hadn’t seen it, hadn’t wanted to see it. The
scarf had been cut off Arlene, so the knot was intact. It was twisted into a thin rope, and it was stained.
“Dead woman’s scarf,” Delphine said, though not as if that worried her.
“No, it’s my scarf,” I said. “But I want to know how come a dead woman was wearing it. Do you
have a problem with holding something that killed someone?”
I wanted to be sure Ms. Oubre wouldn’t start screaming when she touched the fabric. Though judging
by what I’d seen of her so far, that didn’t seem likely.
“It ain’t the scarf that killed her, but the hands that tightened it,” she said practically. “Show me your
money and hand it over. I got cows to feed back home.”
Money? Bob had called her. Since he’d done the arranging, I’d forgotten to ask him what the payment
should be. Naturally, she wouldn’t take a check.
“Four hundred,” Bob murmured, and I could have slapped him for neglecting to tell me this. Of
course, I should have asked. As I tried to remember what was in my purse, my heart sank. I’d have to pass
Delphine’s cowboy hat to come up with the cash on the spot.
Mr. Cataliades’s hand appeared in front of Delphine with four hundred-dollar bills in it. She took the
money without comment, stuffing it in her chest pocket. I nodded my thanks to my demon benefactor. He
nodded back in a negligent way. “I’ll add it to my bill,” he murmured.
Now that that was settled, we all watched the touch psychic with anxious interest. Without further
ado, Delphine Oubre opened the plastic bag and extracted the scarf. The smell was pretty bad, and
Amelia immediately went to a window and opened it.
If I’d thought twice, I’d have done this outside, no matter how hot it was.
The psychic’s eyes were closed, and she held the scarf loosely at first. As it revealed things to her,
her grip tightened, until she was clenching the material tightly. Her face turned slightly from side to side
as if she sought a better view; the effect was indescribably eerie. And believe me, seeing inside her head
was eerie, too.
“I’ve killed women,” she said suddenly, in a voice that was not her own. I jumped, and I wasn’t the
only one. We all took a step back from Delphine Oubre.
“I’ve killed whores,” she said gloatingly. “This one’s close enough. She’s so scared. That makes it
sweeter.”
We were frozen, like we’d drawn a collective breath and were holding it.
“My friend there,” said Oubre, still in the slightly accented voice, “he’s squeamish, just a bit. But
it’s his choice, you know?”
I almost recognized that voice. I associated it with . . . trouble. Disaster.
I turned to look at Barry, at the same moment he took my hand in his.
“Johan Glassport,” I whispered.
My comfort level had just shot out of the uneasy area and into the blood-pressure-medication zone.
Barry had mentioned seeing Glassport in New Orleans, and Quinn had seen him at an area motel; but I
couldn’t figure out why. Glassport had no reason to dislike me that I knew of, but I didn’t believe that
reasons were a big part of his operating system when he wasn’t on the clock as a lawyer.
When I’d met Glassport, we’d been on an airplane flight to Rhodes, both hired by the then-queen of
Louisiana, Sophie-Anne. I was supposed to listen in to human brains at the vampire summit, and
Glassport’s job was to defend her against charges brought by a contingent of Arkansas vamps.
I hadn’t seen Glassport since the Pyramid of Gizeh had been blown up by human supremacists who
wanted to make a statement about vampires—namely, that they all ought to die.
I’d thought about Glassport from time to time, always with distaste. I had happily assumed I’d never
see him again in my life. But here he was, speaking through the mouth of a Louisiana rancher named
Delphine Oubre.
“Whose choice?” Bob said, in a very quiet voice.
But Delphine didn’t respond in the Glassport voice. Instead, her body changed subtly, and she
swayed from side to side, as if she were riding an invisible roller coaster. It slowed down and then
stopped. After a long minute, she opened her eyes.
“What I see is this,” she said in her own voice. She spoke rapidly, as if trying to get it all told before
she forgot. “I see a man, a white man, and he’s bad most of the way through, but he keeps a good façade.
He enjoys killing the helpless. He killed that woman, the red-headed one, on assignment. She not his usual
style. She not some random pickup. She knew him. She knew the man with him. She couldn’t believe they
were killing her. She thought the other man was good. She was thinking, ‘I done everything they ask me.
Why they not killing Snookie?’ ”
We hadn’t introduced ourselves. “Sookie,” I corrected her absently. “She wanted to know why they
were killing her instead of Sookie.”
“That you?” Delphine asked.
Catching Bob’s eyes on me and his warning shake of the head, I said, “No.”
“You lucky if you’re not Sookie. Whoever she is, they’d sure like to kill her.”
Damn.
Delphine stood up, shook herself a little, took another swallow of water, and walked out the door to
get into her pickup to go home to feed her cows.
Everyone carefully avoided looking at me. I was the one with the big X on her forehead.
“I have to go to work,” I said, when the silence had lasted long enough. I didn’t give a damn about
what Sam thought about it. I had to get out and do something.
Mr. Cataliades said, “Diantha will go with you.”
“I would be extremely glad to have her with me,” I said with absolute truth. “I’m just not sure how to
explain her being there.”
“Why do you have to?” Bob said.
“Well, I have to say something, don’t I?”
“Why?” Barry asked. “Don’t you own part of the bar?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Then you don’t have to explain diddly-squat,” Amelia said, with such an air of magnificent
indifference that we all laughed, even me.
So Diantha and I walked into Merlotte’s, and I didn’t explain her presence to anyone but Sam. The
part-demon girl was wearing a relatively quiet outfit: yellow miniskirt, kingfisher blue tank top, and
rainbow platform flip-flops. This month her hair was a platinum blond, but there were a lot of artificially
platinum blondes around Bon Temps, though not many who looked like they were at most eighteen.
I don’t know what Diantha thought about Merlotte’s clientele, but Merlotte’s clientele was wild
about her. She was different, she was alert and bright-eyed, and she talked so fast that everyone thought
she was speaking a foreign language. I discovered that since I could evidently understand that language, I
had to translate for her. So off and on during the day, I was called on to tell Jane Bodehouse or Antoine
the cook or Andy Bellefleur what my “little second cousin” was saying. I don’t know where they got the
idea that she was my second cousin, but after the first thirty minutes it became an established fact. I don’t
know where they thought she’d come from, since everyone in the bar knew my entire family history, but I
guess since I’d introduced the fairy Dermot (a dead ringer for Jason) as my cousin from Florida, and I’d
said Claude was from the wrong side of the blanket, my townspeople figured the Stackhouses were
simply unpredictable.
We were real busy that day, though since I was teamed with An Norr, I didn’t have to run as fast as I
would’ve with some other waitresses. An was such a worker ant. And with Diantha and An both in the
bar, not a single guy thought about my boobs, which were old news to the regulars anyway. I smiled down
at my chest. “Girls, you’re outdated,” I said. Sam gave me a strange look, but he didn’t come over to ask
me why I was talking to my breasts.
I stayed away from him, too. I was tired of trying to break through his defenses. I felt like I had
enough trouble without trying to coax him out of his funky cave.
I was surprised when he spoke to me as I was waiting for an order for Andy and Terry Bellefleur.
(Yes, it was awkward to see Andy, since he’d put me in handcuffs. We were both trying to ignore that.)
“Since when do you have a demon for a cousin?” he asked.
“You haven’t met Diantha before? I couldn’t remember.”
“I can’t say that I have. And I definitely think I’d recall it.”
“She and her uncle are at my house. They’re part of Team Sookie,” I said proudly. “They’re helping
clear my name. So I don’t have to go to trial.”
I didn’t expect my words to have such an effect on Sam. He looked almost simultaneously pleased
and angry. “I wish I could be there,” he said.
“Nothing’s stopping you,” I said. “Remember, you said you’d come to dinner.” I’d passed beyond
confusion at Sam’s weirdness. I was somewhere in the “What the hell?” zone.
SOOKIE’S HOUSE
There was a sort of muted thump at the back door, as if someone were perhaps carrying in bags of
groceries and therefore tried to open the door with a finger or foot.
Bob, just back from town with Amelia and Barry, opened the back door and stepped out on the
screened-in porch to investigate. He wasn’t really thinking about who might have arrived. Truth be told,
he was worried about Amelia’s pregnancy on many different levels. He was smart enough to know they
couldn’t take care of a baby on the meager money they brought in now, and he was also smart enough to
know that accepting money from Copley Carmichael (besides the indirect revenue Amelia got from
renting out the apartment on the top floor of the house her dad had given her) would be a grave error.
So Bob was preoccupied, which was why he didn’t react instantly when the man beyond the screen
door pulled it open and lunged in. Bob thought, Tyrese, and then he remembered Tyrese worked for a man
who’d sold his soul. Bob shoved Tyrese, hoping desperately to knock him down the back steps and out
into the yard so Bob could retreat into the kitchen and lock the door.
But Tyrese was a man of action, and he was full of the fire of despair. He was quicker. He pushed
the smaller man back into the house. The door shut behind them.
Amelia was coming out of the hall bathroom, impelled by a sense that something was wrong. When
the two men staggered into the kitchen, she screamed. Barry, in the living room, dropped his e-reader and
dashed for the kitchen. Bob landed on the floor, Amelia gathered her power, and Barry stopped dead
behind her in the hall.
But a Glock trumped Amelia’s attempts at a spell, since it was pointed at her chest and her man was
on the floor and groaning. Barry was intent on Tyrese’s thoughts, which were full of despair, with a
curious deadness to them. Though Tyrese wasn’t sending out any interesting or usable information, Barry
was pretty good at interpreting body language.
“He’s got nothing to lose, Amelia,” he said, when she stopped screaming. “I don’t know why, but
he’s given up hope.”
“I got the HIV,” Tyrese said simply.
“But . . .” Amelia intended to point out that treatment now was far better, that Tyrese could live a
long and good life, that . . .
“No,” Barry warned her. “Shut up.”
“Good advice, Amelia,” Tyrese said. “Shut up. My Gypsy killed herself; I just got the phone call
from her sister. Gypsy, who gave me this disease, who loved me. She killed herself! Left a note saying
she had murdered the man she loved and she couldn’t live with the guilt. She dead. She hung herself. My
beautiful woman!”
“I’m sorry,” Amelia said, and it was the best thing she could have told him. But even the best thing
wasn’t going to save them.
Bob struggled to his feet, taking care to keep his hands visible and his movements slow. “Why are
you here with a gun, Tyrese?” he said. “Don’t you think Mr. Carmichael is going to be pretty unhappy
about this?”
“I don’t expect to live through this,” Tyrese said simply.
“Oh, Jesus,” Barry said, and closed his eyes for a second. He realized he had no advantage at all. He
simply could not hear Tyrese’s thoughts clearly enough.
“Jesus ain’t got nothing to do with it,” Tyrese said. “The devil got everything to do with it.”
“So, again, why are you here?” Bob moved so that he was standing between the gun and Amelia.
Maybe I can save Amelia and the baby, he thought.
In the meantime, Amelia was struggling to gain control of her fear. She was thinking of spells she
could use to temporarily neutralize her father’s bodyguard. She was trying to remember if there were
weapons around the house. Sookie had said something about a rifle in the coat closet by the front door,
she remembered. Maybe it was still there. BARRY! she screamed in her head.
“Ow,” he said. “What you got, Amelia?”
Rifle in the front closet, maybe.
“The stair closet?” he yelled. Amelia was smart to send thoughts to him, but she couldn’t receive his.
No, the coat closet by the front door.
“Okay! Tyrese, listen to Amelia!” Barry began edging to his left, hoping Amelia would take his cue
and distract Tyrese. He didn’t think there was a chance in hell he would get to the closet, find the rifle,
understand how to use it, and shoot Tyrese Marley. But he had to try.
“Tyrese, please tell me what you’re doing here,” Amelia said steadily.
“I’m here,” said Tyrese, “because I’m waiting for Sookie Stackhouse to come home. When she does,
I’m going to kill her.”
“Really!” Amelia said. “Why?”
“She’s why your dad got mad,” Tyrese said. “She took the thing he wanted so bad. So he said she
had to die, and we came up here to do it. But we can’t get her alone. We don’t want to run her off the
road; he wants a sure thing, he says. Shoot her, Tyrese, he says. She lost her vampire protection; no one
will care.”
“I care,” Amelia said.
“Well, that’s the other thing; he wanted that fairy thing because he wanted to control you. Course, he
called it ‘getting you back into his life,’ but we know better, huh? Now he’s so mad at Sookie, he doesn’t
care what you want,” Tyrese said. The Glock was steady in his grip. It looked huge from where Amelia
was standing, and she thought Bob standing between the gun and her was the bravest thing she’d ever
seen.
“Where’s my dad, Tyrese?” Amelia asked, trying to keep his interest so Barry could get the gun. She
turned her eyes very slightly to read the clock on the wall. Sookie should have finished her shift by now.
She’d be on her way any minute. This whole pile of shit was Amelia’s father’s doing, and Amelia had to
try every strategy she could devise to prevent her friend from getting killed. She wondered if she could
cast a stunning spell without any herbs or preparation. It wasn’t like in the Harry Potter books, though she
and every other witch of her acquaintance had often wished it were.
“He’s in our hotel room, far as I know. I went outside when I got a call from Gypsy’s sister on my
cell phone. I walked around the corner so I could talk to her without Mr. Carmichael hearing me. He
doesn’t like it when I get personal phone calls when I’m with him.”
“That’s kind of crazy,” Amelia said at random. She couldn’t turn around to see where Barry was, so
she was prepared to keep on talking forever if she had to.
“That’s small stuff compared to his real crazy ideas,” Tyrese said, and laughed. “You come sit in
this chair, Amelia.” He nodded at one of the kitchen chairs.
“Why?” she asked instantly.
“Doesn’t make any difference why. Because I told you to,” he said, giving her hard eyes. At that
moment, Bob jumped Tyrese.
The boom of the Glock filled the room, and then there was blood. Amelia screamed until Barry
clapped his hands over his ears, the horror in her thoughts beating at him. While he’d worked for the
vampires in Texas, Barry had seen some bad shit, but Bob’s body in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor
was way up there with the worst of those memories.
“See what the devil made me do?” said Tyrese, smiling slightly. “Amelia, you shut up now.”
Amelia clamped her mouth shut.
“You, whoever you are,” Tyrese said. “Come here now.”
Barry had run out of time and options. He went into the kitchen.
“Put Amelia in that chair.”
Barry, despite the fact that he was shaking and felt scared down to the marrow of his bones, managed
to help Amelia to the chair. Amelia had blood spray on her arms and chest, and in her hair. She was as
pale as a vampire. Barry thought she might faint. But she sat straight in the chair and stared at Tyrese as if
she could bore a hole in him with her eyes.
Tyrese had groped around on the back porch while Amelia sat, and now he tossed a roll of duct tape
at Barry. “Secure her,” he ordered.
Secure her, Barry thought. Like we’re in some kind of spy movie. Fuck him. I’ll kill him if I get the
chance. Anything to avoid thinking about the bloody body at his feet.
Just as he was looking down at the thing he least wanted to see, he was sure Bob moved.
He wasn’t dead.
But it would only be a matter of time, if they didn’t get some help.
Barry realized appealing to Tyrese was a waste of breath. Tyrese was not in a merciful mood and
might just kick Bob in the head or shoot him again. He hoped Amelia would have an idea, but her head
was full of horror and regret and loss. Not a single idea in the place.
Barry had never secured anyone with duct tape before, but he bound Amelia’s wrists together behind
the chair, and that would have to do.
“Now,” Tyrese said. “You sit on the floor and put your hand on that table leg.”
That would put him closer to Bob, and there was nothing Barry could do to help the witch. He sank
to the floor and gripped the table leg with his left hand.
“Now duct tape your hand to the table,” Tyrese said.
With a lot of clumsy effort, Barry managed, ripping off the tape with his teeth.
“Scoot it across the floor to me,” Tyrese said, and Barry did.
Then there was nothing left to do.
“Now we wait,” said Tyrese.
“Tyrese,” Amelia said, “you ought to shoot my dad, not Sookie.”
She had everyone’s attention.
“It’s my dad who got you into this. It’s my dad who sold your soul to the devil. It’s my dad who
doomed your girlfriend.”
“Your dad done everything he could for me,” Tyrese said stubbornly.
“My dad killed you,” Amelia said. Barry admired her courage and straight speaking, but Tyrese did
not. He smacked Amelia across the face, and then he taped her mouth shut.
Barry thought Amelia was absolutely right. And maybe if Tyrese had had a chance to absorb the
worst of his grief, he would have seen that, too. But in his rush to do something, anything, in the wake of
hearing about Gypsy’s suicide, Tyrese had committed himself to this course of action, and he would not
be dissuaded. He would never admit he’d done something so incredibly stupid.
You have to admit, Barry thought, that Tyrese is loyal, in a weird way.
Barry thought of Mr. Cataliades and hoped he’d be alerted to the fact that something was wrong in
the house. He was tough. He could handle this situation. Or maybe when Sookie and Diantha pulled up,
she’d hear Tyrese’s thoughts, though where she parked it was doubtful she’d be able to get a reading. But
if she counted heads in the house, she might think something was off—though she’d have no reason to
suspect danger.
Barry’s thoughts went around in circles as he tried to think of some way to extricate them all from
this situation, some way that wouldn’t get them killed. Get him killed. He wasn’t much of a hero; he’d
always known that about himself. He did good when it would not put him in peril; he believed that in this,
he was like most people.
Suddenly Tyrese, who’d been leaning against the wall, straightened. Barry heard a car coming, and
there was another sound, too. Was that a motorcycle? Sure sounded like one. Who could it be? Would the
presence of other people be enough to stop Tyrese?
But there wasn’t any going back for the bodyguard, apparently.
As the car’s motor died and the other motor, too, Tyrese grinned at Amelia. “Here goes,” he said.
“I’m going to make everything even. This woman is going to die.”
But the person driving the car might not even be Sookie. What if it was Mr. Cataliades in his van?
Tyrese didn’t even look. He’d gotten the whole story set in his mind. This would be Sookie, and he would
kill her, and then everything would somehow balance out.
Tyrese swung around to face the back door, the smile still on his lips. Barry started screaming at
Sookie in his head, because that was all he could do, but he didn’t think she’d hear him. He looked up at
Amelia and saw the strain in her face. She was doing the same.
And then Tyrese took a step forward, and another. He was on the porch. He wasn’t going to wait for
Sookie to enter the house, which would have been a sure thing. He was going to meet her.
MERLOTTE’S
earlier
Sam’s lips parted and I just knew he was finally going to explain. But then he looked past me and the
moment passed. “Mustapha Khan,” he said, and he definitely wasn’t happy to see Eric’s daytime guy.
As far as I knew, Sam had nothing against the werewolf. Surely he couldn’t blame Mustapha for
beheading Jannalynn? After all, it had been a fair fight, and Sam, though a shapeshifter, was very familiar
with Were rules. Or was it Mustapha’s job as Eric’s daytime guy that made Sam so grumpy?
I wondered, things being how they were, why Mustapha was coming to see me. Maybe something
had been decided about who would take over Fangtasia, and Eric wanted me to know.
“Hello, Mustapha,” I said, as calmly as I could. “What brings you here today? Can I get you a glass
of water with lemon?” Mustapha didn’t take stimulants of any kind: coffee, Coca-Cola, anything.
“Thank you. A glass of water would be refreshing,” he allowed. As usual, Mustapha was wearing
dark glasses. He’d removed his motorcycle helmet, and I saw he’d shaved a pattern in the stubble on his
head. That was new. It gleamed under the lights of the bar. An Norr did a double take when she got a good
look at the muscled magnificence that was Mustapha Khan. She wasn’t the only one.
When I brought him an icy glass, he was sitting on a bar stool having some kind of silent staring
contest with Sam.
“How is Warren?” I asked. Warren, possibly the only person Mustapha cared for, had been awfully
close to dead when we found him at Jannalynn’s folks’ empty garage apartment.
“He’s better, thank you, Sookie. He ran half a mile today. He walked the rest, with some help. He’s
out there waiting, right now.” Mustapha inclined his patterned head toward the front door. Warren was the
shyest man I’d ever met.
I hadn’t known Warren had been a runner before his ordeal, but I figured the fact that he’d resumed
the exercise was pretty good news, and I told Mustapha to give the convalescent my good wishes. “I’d
have sent him a get-well card if I knew his address,” I added, and felt like a fool when Mustapha took off
his dark glasses to give me an incredulous look. Well, I would have.
“I come here to tell you Eric is leaving tomorrow night,” he said. “He thought you should know.
Plus, he left some shit at your place. He wants it back.”
I stood very still for a long moment, feeling the finality of it hit my heart. “Okay, then,” I said. “I do
have some stuff of his in my closet. I’ll send it—where? Though I don’t suppose they are things he’ll
miss.” I tried to not add any layers of meaning to that.
“I’ll come get them when you get off work,” Mustapha said.
The clock was reading four thirty. “I should be through here in thirty minutes or so,” I said, looking
to Sam for confirmation. “If India gets here on time.”
And here she came, through the front door, weaving her way between the tables. India had had her
hair done, a process she’d described to me in fascinating detail, and the jeweled balls on her braids
clicked together as she walked. She spotted my companion when she was a couple of yards away. She
had a startled look, which she exaggerated for effect when she drew up to us.
“Brother, you are almost enough to make me wish I was straight!” she said, with her beautiful smile.
“Sister, right back at you,” he said politely, which perhaps answered a question I’d had about
Mustapha. Or perhaps not. He was the most secretive and closemouthed person I’d ever encountered, and
I must admit I found that refreshing—occasionally. When you’re used to knowing everything, including a
lot of factoids you wish you had never learned, it can be mighty frustrating to wonder.
“Mustapha Khan, India Unger,” I said, trying to keep up my end of the exchange. “India’s here to take
over my tables, Mustapha, so I guess you can come out to the house now.”
“I’ll see you there,” he said, nodding good-bye to India before striding out the door. He was donning
his dark glasses and helmet as he walked.
India shook her head as she watched him go, thinking about how fine his ass was. “It’s the front half
that doesn’t appeal to me,” she said, before going to the lockers to put on her apron.
Sam was still standing in the same spot, and he was giving me a big stare.
“Sookie, I’m sorry,” he said. “I know this has to be tough. Call me if you need me.” And then he had
to turn away to make a mojito for Christy Aubert. His shoulders were stiff with tension.
He was a problem I couldn’t solve.
Diantha
followed
me
out
to
the
car.
“Sookieunclejustcalledheneedsme.
You’llbeallrightwiththewolf?” I assured her I would.
“Okaythen,” she said, and went back into Merlotte’s, I guessed to wait for Mr. C to pick her up. I
wondered what India would make of her.
When I pulled out from behind Merlotte’s, Mustapha was waiting for me. Warren perched behind
him on the Harley. Warren was like a bird compared to Mustapha—small, pale, narrow. But according to
Mustapha, Warren was the best shot he’d ever seen. That was a compliment Mustapha would not give out
lightly.
As I drove home down Hummingbird Road followed by the Harley, I found myself feeling relieved
that Eric would be gone soon. In fact, I wished he were gone already.
I’d never imagined feeling this way, but I couldn’t handle this emotional jerking around. I’d start to
feel okay, then I’d get poked in the sore spot, like taking a scab off my knee when I was a kid. In books,
the hero was gone after the big blowup. He didn’t stick around in the vicinity doing mysterious shit,
sending messages to the heroine by a third party. He hauled his ass into oblivion. And that was the way
things should be, as far as I was concerned. Life should imitate romance literature far more often.
If the world operated according to romance principles, Mustapha Khan would tell me that Eric had
always been unworthy of me and that Mustapha himself had harbored a deep love for me from the moment
he’d met me. Did Harlequin have a line of books for guys-out-of-prison-get-redeemed romances?
I was just distracting myself, and I knew it. I noticed as I pulled to a stop that Barry’s rental car was
parked in my yard, but Mr. Cataliades and his van were in town, of course.
I got out of my car and turned around to tell Mustapha that I had company. “You and Warren come on
in. I’ll have Eric’s stuff together in a jiffy,” I said. I put my hand on my car door to close it, and Mustapha
got off his bike. I raised a hand to Warren, and hearing the creak of the screen door, I turned my head
slightly to see who was coming out the back door. I caught a glimpse of someone I hadn’t seen in a long
time. I couldn’t recall his name . . .
And he had a gun. He called out my name in a terrible voice.
Mustapha, his eyes hidden behind his shades, was reaching toward me, quick as only a werewolf can
be. When I saw that skinny blond Warren, still on the bike, had drawn the biggest handgun I’d ever seen in
my life, I had a moment to be afraid. I had time to think, “Oh Jesus, that guy is going to kill me,” when two
things happened almost simultaneously. From behind me I heard a crack!, and my left shoulder burned as I
staggered because Mustapha was flinging me face-first to the ground. Then a house landed on top of me.
And I heard a voice screaming from inside the house, a voice that was not mine.
“Barry,” I said. And a huge bee advised me that it had dug its stinger into my shoulder.
Life just sucked some days.
Chapter 16
At that point, it would have been nice if I could have fainted. But I didn’t. I lay there and tried to gather
my wits, tried to comprehend what had just occurred. My shoulder was warm and wet.
I’d been shot.
I slowly understood that Mustapha had tried to save me (and himself) by throwing us to the ground,
while Warren had fired at the shooter. I wondered what had happened inside the house.
“You hurt?” Mustapha growled, and I could feel him sliding off me.
“Yes,” I said. “I think I am.” My shoulder hurt like the very effing hell.
Mustapha had gotten to his knees but pressed himself against my car, using the still-open door as
cover. Warren moved past us, gun at the ready, looking like a different person from the wispy ex-con who
normally seemed a mere shadow of his brawny friend. Warren looked utterly deadly.
“A rattlesnake in a moth outfit,” I said.
“Say what?”
“Warren. He looks like a movie shooter now.”
Mustapha glanced after his buddy-and-maybe-more. “Yeah, he does. He’s the best.”
“Did he get the guy?” I said, and then I groaned between clenched teeth. “Wow, this hurts. We
calling an ambulance?”
“He’s dead,” Warren called.
“Good to know,” Mustapha called back. “I figured. Good shot.”
“How’s Sookie?” Warren’s boots came into my constricting field of vision.
“Shoulder, not fatal, but she’s bleeding like a stuck pig. You calling 911?”
“Sure thing.” I heard the beeps and then the voice of the dispatcher.
“Need at least one ambulance, possibly two,” Warren said. “The Stackhouse place on Hummingbird
Road.” I felt I’d missed part of the conversation.
“Sookie, I’m going to turn you over,” Mustapha said.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” I said between clenched teeth. “Really. Don’t.”
I could endure the status quo, but I was afraid any movement at all would make things worse.
“Okay,” he said. “Warren’s going to hold this jacket against your shoulder to apply some pressure,
slow down that bleeding.”
Big boots were replaced by little boots. “Pressure” sounded painful. Sure enough, it was.
“Shepherd of Judea,” I said through clenched teeth, though I wanted to say something much, much
worse. “Wow, dammit. How are the people in the house?”
“Mustapha’s checking on them now. I just glanced in to make sure they were all friendlies. One of
’em’s on the floor.”
“Who shot us?”
“Big guy, looks black but with a lot of white mixed in,” Warren said. “His features are real fine.
Well, they were. And his hair is almost red.”
“Wearing . . . a uniform?”
“No,” Warren said, puzzled by my question. But I remembered the face and the hair, and I associated
it with a uniform of some kind. Not armed forces . . . if I could just stop hurting, I could remember.
Someone in the house started screaming, and this time it was a woman.
“Why is she screaming?” I asked Warren.
“I guess she’s worried about . . .” Warren said.
I must have missed another second or two. Well, the pressure on the shoulder, Warren was serious
about maintaining it. Mustapha was back when I opened my eyes. “Warren’s not supposed to be armed,”
he told me.
“Huh?” I said with a huge effort, because I actually was beginning to feel swimmy and weird.
Finally. Bring on the unconsciousness, I thought; and for once, I got my wish.
I woke to chaos. The two paramedics who had come to get Tara when she went into labor were now
bending over me. They looked intent on their work, which at that moment was wheeling my stretcher to
the ambulance.
So here’s the story , a voice was saying in my head. Thoughts don’t have voices, of course, and I
wasn’t sure who was telling me this, since I was too tired to turn my head to look around the yard. The
gun is yours. Someone gave it to you. You asked Warren to take you target shooting because you
wanted to be sure you knew how to use it. He cleaned it for you. That’s the only reason he had it with
him. Then that asshole came out of the house and fired at you, and naturally, Warren fired back, since
he didn’t want you to get killed. Nod if you understand.
“That’s what really almost happened,” I said, moving my head up and down. The medics looked at
me with concern. I had misspoken. “That’s what happened, but not really.” More accurate?
“Sookie, how are you feeling?” one of them asked. The taller one.
“Not too good,” I said.
“We’re getting you to Clarice. You’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said, a little optimistically.
“Who else is hurt?” I said.
“Just worry about yourself right now,” she said. “The guy who shot you, they tell me he’s dead.”
“Good,” I said, and they seemed surprised. Is it not okay to be glad that someone who tried to kill
you is down on the ground? If I were a better person, a much better person, I would be sorry that anyone
in the world ever got hurt, but I had to face the fact that I was never going to be that nice a person. Even
my grandmother hadn’t been that good.
We got to the hospital, and everything that happened after that was really unpleasant. Fortunately, I
don’t remember a lot of it. And I took a nap for a while after it was over.
I didn’t hear the whole story until much later that evening. Andy Bellefleur was sitting in my room
when I woke up. He was asleep, which I thought was almost funny.
When I giggled out loud, he stirred and looked at me.
“How you feeling?” he asked sternly.
“Okay,” I said. “I must be taking some excellent painkillers.” I was aware that my shoulder really
hurt, but I didn’t care very much.
“Dr. Tonnesen took care of you. We got to talk, now that you’re awake.”
While Andy took me through the story of what had happened that evening, all I could think about was
how weird it was that he and Alcee had the same initials. I pointed out that fact to Andy, and he gave me a
look of sheer incredulity. “Sook, I’m going to come back to talk to you tomorrow,” he said. “You ain’t
making any sense.”
“Did you tell Alcee to search his car? There’s something bad in there,” I said solemnly. “Now I’ve
told you three times. He should do it. Do you think he’d let a friend of mine check it?”
Andy looked at me, and this time I could tell he was taking me seriously. “Could be,” he said.
“Could be I’d let someone do it if I was standing right there. Because Alcee ain’t acting like himself, not
at all.”
“Okeydokey,” I said. “I’ll take care of that just as soooooon as I can.”
“Doc’s just keeping you for the night, she says.”
“Good.”
As soon as Andy left, Barry came in. He looked like he’d been rode hard and put up wet. There were
actually circles under his eyes. He told me what had happened in my house.
“How’s Bob doing?” I asked him out loud. I couldn’t even think at him, I was so out of it.
“He’s alive,” Barry said. “He’s stable. Of course, that’s where Amelia is.”
“Where’s Mr. C and Diantha?” I asked.
“Don’t you want to know who the dead man was?”
“Oh. Sure. Who?”
“Tyrese Marley,” Barry said.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Of course, I’m really on some drugs. Excellent drugs. Tyrese split some
firewood for me the last time he was at the house. But why was Tyrese at my house, and why did he try to
shoot me?”
“You should see the inside of your head, Sookie. It’s like a rainbow in there. Tyrese drove Copley
Carmichael’s car, but he left it in the cemetery and walked through the woods to your house.”
“So where is Copley? Did they really sell their souls?”
“No one knows where Copley is, but I’ll tell you what Tyrese told us . . .”
Barry told me about Tyrese’s Gypsy, about the HIV, about Copley’s conviction that by using the
cluviel dor (Barry had trouble explaining that part since he didn’t know much of anything about the cluviel
dor) I had robbed Copley of regaining possession of Amelia and her life.
I listened to all this with very little comprehension. “I don’t get why Tyrese would set off to kill me
when he learned that Gypsy was dead. Why wouldn’t he shoot Amelia’s dad? It was his fault.”
“My point exactly!” Barry sounded triumphant. “But Tyrese was like a gun pointed in one direction,
and her suicide pulled the trigger.”
I shook my head very, very gently. “How’d he even get to the house? Amelia and Bob put wards on
the house,” I pointed out with great clarity.
“The difference between the vampire who got fried and Tyrese . . . Well, there are two big
differences,” Barry said. “Tyrese was a live human without a soul. The vampire was a dead person. The
wards stopped him, not Tyrese. I don’t know what to make of that, and when Amelia can spare time to
think of it, maybe she can tell us. Maybe we can talk about it tomorrow, okay?” he said. “Meanwhile,
there are some other people waiting to see you.”
Sam came in silently. His hand found mine.
“You gonna tell me what’s wrong?” I whispered. I was fading into sleep.
“I can’t,” he said. “But I couldn’t stay away when I heard you got shot.”
And then Eric was behind him.
My hand must have jerked, because Sam’s tightened around it. I could tell from his face that he knew
Eric was there.
“Heard you were going,” I said, with an effort.
“Yes, very soon. How are you? Do you want me to heal you?” I couldn’t interpret his voice or the
fact that he was here. I was too exhausted to try.
“No, Eric,” I said, and I only sounded flat. I just couldn’t find nice words. “Good-bye. We need to
let go of each other. I can’t do this anymore.”
Eric glared at Sam. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Sam came because I was shot, Eric. That’s what friends do,” I said. Each word was a labor to
enunciate.
Sam didn’t turn to Eric, didn’t look him in the eye. I held on to his hand so I wouldn’t drift away.
Eric spoke once again. “I will not release you.” I frowned. He seemed to be speaking to Sam. Then
he walked out of the hospital room.
What the hell? “Release you from what?” I said, trying to will Sam to tell me what was going on.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Don’t worry, Sookie.” And he kept my hand.
I fell asleep. When I woke up hours later, he was gone.
Chapter 17
Before I checked out of the hospital the next day about noon, Amelia came in. She looked exactly like
someone who’d been held hostage by an armed gunman and watched her boyfriend get shot and sat up all
night by a hospital bed. Which is a long way of saying she looked like hell.
“How are you?” She stood by the bed and looked down at me, swaying slightly on her feet.
“Better than you, I think.” My head was a lot clearer today. I was going to defer the painkillers until I
got home.
“Bob’s going to be okay,” she said.
“That’s a huge relief. I’m so glad. You going to stay here?”
“No, he’s being transferred to Shreveport. The best I can tell, once he’s had a day there, they’ll
reevaluate. Maybe they’ll be able to send him down to New Orleans, which would really be better for
me, but maybe he’ll have to stay in Shreveport if transporting him would be too hard on him.”
A lot of uncertainty. “Any word from your father?”
“No, and none from Diantha and Mr. C, either.”
There were ears all around at the hospital, and we didn’t need to say any more to know we were
both worried about that silence.
“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly.
“About your dad? You didn’t have anything to do with it. That’s all on him. And I’m sorry about
Bob.”
“Totally not your fault. We okay?”
“We’re okay. Please let me know how he progresses. And the baby.” I could feel the presence of
another mind—but not any thoughts, of course. This baby was going to be an exceptional witch; I’d never
been able to detect a pregnancy this early.
“Yeah, I told the ER doctor, and she gave me a quick exam. Everything seems okay. She gave me the
name of an ob-gyn in Shreveport, in case Bob stays there.”
“Sounds good.”
“Oh, and the wards. Sorry. I couldn’t have known that a soulless person wouldn’t be affected, so I
think I can give myself a pass on that one. How often do you meet someone with no soul?”
“You’ve got a new piece of lore to tell your coven,” I said, and Amelia brightened a bit, as I’d
known she would. “Evidently Bill came by here last night while I was out of it, and he left me a note. I
can see his handwriting. Would you mind handing it to me?” I pointed to the rolling table, which a nurse
had shoved against the wall. Obligingly, Amelia handed me the envelope. I’d read it when she left.
“Sam came by to ask if I needed anything,” Amelia told me.
“Not surprised. He’s a good guy.” And if I felt well enough, next time I saw him I was going to shake
the hell out of him, because I wanted to know what was going on between him and Eric.
“One of the best. Well, I’m going back out to the house to take a shower and pack up our stuff,”
Amelia said. “I’m sorry our attempt to help you worked out so bad.”
“So bad for you,” I said. “It was pretty great for me. Thanks for coming to my rescue. It shouldn’t
have ended up with you all getting hurt.”
“If I knew where my dad was, I’d kill him myself.” She meant it.
“I understand,” I said.
And then she left, after giving me a light kiss on my forehead.
I was sure Bill had left me a flowery get-well note, but as I read the fine script, I realized it was
anything but.
Sookie, I hope you are recovering. About the incident of two nights ago: I have just received a very reluctant apology from my
king. He told me that he regretted that Horst had come into my home territory and caused me so much inconvenience by
attacking my friend and neighbor.
Apparently, Horst thought it would please Felipe if he came to threaten you with something gruesome, thereby ensuring you
didn’t interfere in the arrangements Felipe had made with Freyda. Felipe asked me to apologize to you, too. He will allow
Eric’s measures to remain in place if Eric leaves for Oklahoma tonight. I have some interesting news to tell you, and I will see
you as soon as I can.
I wasn’t totally sure I understood Bill’s note, but if he was coming to see me, I’d have to possess my
soul in patience. Dr. Tonnesen released me, with a long list of restrictions and instructions, and I called
Jason. On his lunch hour, he showed up to wheel me out of the hospital. He’d come to the hospital the
night before to fill out my admission papers and to give them what insurance information I had, and he’d
been out to the house after the police had finished with processing the shooting scene. I was sure giving
Kevin and Kenya a workout for their newfound skills.
“Michele put a casserole in your refrigerator for tonight. I hope you don’t mind, Sook, but Michele
and An are out there scrubbing everything down,” he said in a subdued way.
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” I said, with heartfelt relief. “God bless ’em. I owe them big-time.”
He tried to smile. “Yeah, you do. Michele said she hasn’t cleaned up so much blood since her cat
brought in a rabbit that wasn’t quite dead, and it got away in the house.”
“I never made it inside the house.” I was kind of glad about that. I didn’t need to see my poor kitchen
torn up again.
“Why’d that fucker shoot you? Why’d he shoot Bob?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t remember too much of what Amelia told me.”
“This guy was her dad’s chauffeur? What was his issue? He ever have a thing with Amelia? Maybe
he was jealous of Bob.”
That sounded pretty good. “Maybe that’s it,” I said. “Has Mr. Carmichael turned up?”
“Not that I heard of. Maybe this Tyrese guy bumped him off first.” I wouldn’t feel easy until I knew
where Copley was. I didn’t think Tyrese had killed him. Soulless or not, Tyrese was a loyal employee.
Did the two of them have something to do with Arlene’s death? Were they working with Johan Glassport?
That didn’t make any sense. None of this made any sense. I leaned my head against the glass of Jason’s
pickup window, and I kept silent the rest of the drive home.
The first thing I noticed was my car, exactly where I’d left it yesterday when I’d climbed out of it
and gotten shot. At least someone had shut the driver’s door. My blood was still on the ground beside it. I
tried not to look. Jason came around to open the truck door, and I slid out carefully. I could walk on my
own, but I wasn’t super-steady, and I appreciated the fact that he was there.
He walked me right through the kitchen and into my bedroom, only letting me pause long enough to
thank An and Michele. After depositing me on my bed, he vanished to return to work. I promptly got off
the bed and shuffled into my bathroom to clean up, an awkward process with my bandaged shoulder,
which had to be kept dry. In the end, I was a bit cleaner than I had been, though I couldn’t wash my hair.
With some difficulty, I put on a clean nightgown. At that point, Michele came in to scold me and order me
to get back on the bed. We compromised with the couch in the living room. She turned on the television,
brought me the remote and a big glass of tea, and made me a sandwich for a belated lunch. I ate about half
of it. I wasn’t that hungry, though it had been a while since I had eaten a real meal. Maybe the painkillers
were suppressing my appetite, maybe I was depressed that there was so much death around my house, or
maybe I was worried about Bill’s enigmatic note.
An and Michele finished about an hour after Jason left, and I insisted on getting up to admire the job
they’d done. My kitchen shone like a showroom kitchen and smelled like pine-scented cleaner. That was a
big improvement, An informed me. “My whole family hunts, and I know nothing smells up a place more
than blood,” she said.
“Thank you, An,” I said. “And thanks, almost-sister-in-law. I sure appreciate you two doing this for
me.”
“No problem,” An said.
“Just don’t let it happen again. This is the one and only time I’m scrubbing blood out of your
kitchen,” Michele said. She was smiling. But she meant it.
“Oh, I can promise it will be,” I said. “I’ll call someone else next time.” They laughed, and I smiled
back. Ha effing ha.
An gathered up her cleaning supplies in a big red bucket.
“I’ll give you some Pine-Sol for your birthday, An,” I said.
“You betcha. There’s nothing like it.” She looked around at the sparkling surfaces with some
satisfaction. “My daddy the preacher always said, ‘By your works shall they know thee.’ ”
“Then you’re an industrious and generous woman,” I said, and she beamed. I hugged them both in a
lopsided way. Before they left, Michele asked me if I wanted her to put the casserole in the microwave
ready for me to heat for supper. “It might be too much for you to handle,” she said. She was determined to
feed me.
“I’m sure I can do it later,” I said, and she had to be content with that. The house felt pleasantly
peaceful after they’d left, until I drifted out from under the painkillers long enough to wonder where Mr. C
and Diantha were. I hoped they were okay. And since it seemed apparent that soulless people could come
through the wards, I got out my critter rifle. The shotgun would have been more effective, but I simply
couldn’t handle it in my weakened state. If Copley Carmichael came around to finish what his minion had
started, I had to be armed and ready. I locked the house up tight, closed the curtains in the living room so
he couldn’t tell where I was, and tried to read. Finally, I gave it up. I watched something totally brainless
on TV. Sadly, that wasn’t hard to find.
I kept my cell phone by me, and I got a call from Kennedy Keyes. She was as happy as I’d ever
heard her. “Me and Danny are going to rent one of Sam’s little houses,” she said. “Across from the
duplexes. He said you’d know where.”
“Sure,” I said. “When are you moving in?”
“Right now!” She laughed. “Danny and one of his buddies from the lumberyard are carrying in the
bed right at this moment!”
“Kennedy, that’s wonderful. I hope you’ll be real happy.”
She talked for a while, giddy with her new situation. I had no idea if their love for each other would
last, but I was glad they were giving it a chance, despite the very obvious differences in their upbringings.
Kennedy’s family, as she’d described them to me, had been determined social climbers, wondering where
their next step upward would take them. Danny’s family had worried more about their next meal.
“Good luck to both of you, and I’ll get you a housewarming present,” I said, when Kennedy began to
wind down.
About an hour later, I heard a car park in the gravel area by the front door. After the engine cut off,
footsteps and a gentle knock told me my caller had decided to carry through with the visit, though I was
detecting a lot of hesitation.
I picked up the rifle. It was going to be hell to get a good shot with my weak shoulder, and it was
going to be painful. “Who is it?” I called.
“Halleigh.”
“You alone?” I knew she was, but with undetectable people around, I had to check. Her thoughts
would tell me if someone was forcing her to knock on the door.
“I am. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to open up,” she said.
I opened the door. Halleigh Bellefleur was younger than me, a nice-looking brown-haired
schoolteacher who was really, really pregnant. Tara had not fared as well when she was expecting the
twins; Halleigh was truly blooming.
“Come in,” I said. “Does Andy know you’re here?”
“I don’t keep secrets from my husband,” she said, and she came up to me and hugged me very gently.
“Andy’s not too happy right now, but that’s too bad. I don’t believe you killed that woman. And I’m really
sorry that man went crazy and shot you. I know your friend must feel horrible, the one whose dad is
missing. This guy worked for her dad?”
So we sat for a moment and talked a little, and then Halleigh stood to go. I understood that she’d
visited to make her point, both with Andy and with me. She stood by who she liked, no matter what.
“I know Andy’s grandmother was a trial,” I said, surprising even myself, “but you’re so much like
Miss Caroline in so many ways.”
Halleigh looked startled and then pleased. “You know, I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said.
We parted better friends than we’d ever been.
It was twilight when she left, and I began to think of eating supper. I heated part of Michele’s
enchilada casserole in a bowl and dumped salsa on top. It was good, and I ate the bowlful.
The minute it was full dark, Bill was at my back door. I was very tired by then, though I hadn’t done
a damn thing all day, and I shuffled slowly to the door toting the rifle with me, though I was sure from the
—well, from the feeling of the hole a vampire’s head left in my other sense—that this “hole” represented
Bill.
“It’s Bill,” he called, to confirm his identity. I let him in, undoing the locks with one hand, and stood
aside to let him pass. With this much traffic, I was going to need a schedule to keep up with all my callers.
Bill stepped in and gave me a sharp once-over. “You’re healing,” he said. “Good.”
I offered him a drink, but he looked at me and said, “I can get something myself, Sookie, if I need a
drink. But I don’t right now. Can I get you something?”
“Yeah, actually. If you wouldn’t mind pouring me another glass of tea, I’d sure appreciate it.” The
pitcher was pretty heavy to deal with one-handed. Gripping anything with my left hand made the shoulder
hurt in a most unpleasant way.
We sat in the living room, me curled up on the couch, Bill in the armchair opposite. He smiled at me.
“You’re cheerful,” I observed.
“I’m about to do something that gives me intense pleasure,” he said.
Huh. “Okay, have at it,” I said.
“Do you remember what Eric did to me in New Orleans?” he said, and nothing could have surprised
me more.
“You mean, what Eric did to us? By telling me that instead of you being spontaneously smitten with
me, you were ordered to seduce me?”
It had hurt then. It hurt now. Of course, not as badly.
“Yes, exactly,” Bill said. “And I’m not ever going to explain again, since we’ve said all this out
loud and in our heads so many times. Even though I can’t read minds, like you can, I know that.”
I nodded. “We’ll take all that as done.”
“That is why it gives me intense pleasure to tell you, now, what Eric has done to Sam.”
All right! This was what I had waited to discover. I leaned forward. “Do tell,” I said.
Chapter 18
When he had finished, he left, and I called Sam at the bar. “I need you to come out to the house,” I said.
“Sookie?”
“You know it’s me.”
“Kennedy’s not here, so I have to stay at the bar.”
“No, you don’t. You’re not supposed to talk to me or come see me. But I’m telling you I want to talk
to you now, and I expect someone to take care of the bar for you while you get yourself out here.” I was
very, very angry. And I did something so rude that Gran would have choked. I hung up.
In thirty minutes I heard Sam’s truck. I was standing at the back porch door when he walked up. I
could see the cloud of regret around him as clearly as if it had been a tangible thing.
“Don’t you tell me how you’re not supposed to be here and you can’t come in,” I said, though it took
me a minute to stoke my fire back up after seeing his unhappiness. “We’re going to talk.” Sam hung back,
and I reached out to take his hand the way he’d taken mine at the hospital. I pulled him closer, and he tried
to stay away, he really did, but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything rough. “Now, you come sit in the
living room and you talk to me. And before you start making up a story, let me tell you . . . Bill came by
and he had a very interesting tale to tell. So I know everything, though not all the details.”
“I shouldn’t. I promised not to.”
“You don’t have a choice, Sam. I’m not giving you one.”
He took a deep breath. “None of us had enough money for your bail. I wasn’t going to have you
spend any more time in that place than you had to. I called the bank president at home to ask him about a
loan on the bar, but I got turned down.”
That, I hadn’t known. I was horrified. “Oh, no, Sam . . .”
“So,” he bulldozed over me, “I went to Eric the second it got dark. Of course, he’d heard you’d been
arrested and he was totally pissed off. But he was mostly angry that I’d tried to bail you out on my own.
That vampire, Freyda, she was sitting right by him.” Remembering, Sam was so angry that his teeth were
bared. “Finally, she told him he could go on and bail you out, but with conditions.”
“With her conditions.”
“Yeah. The first condition was that you never see Eric again. Or enter Oklahoma. On penalty of
death. But Eric said no, he had a better idea. He was trying to let her think he was doing something bad to
you, but he was really doing something bad to me. He agreed to the part about you not entering Oklahoma,
and he agreed that he would never be alone with you again, but he tacked on another one she wouldn’t
have thought of. It was that I could never tell you I’d asked Eric to put up the bail. And I could never try to
. . . court you.”
“And you agreed.” I was feeling about five different emotions at once.
“I agreed. It seemed to be the only way to get you out of that damn jail. I confess that I needed sleep
bad and my thinking may not have been real clear.”
“Okay. Let me tell you something right now. As of this morning, the assets of Claudine’s bank are
now unfrozen, and I can post my own bail. I don’t exactly know how to do it, but we can go to the
bondsman tomorrow, and tell him I want to give Eric’s money back and put mine in its place. I’m not real
sure how all that works, but I’ll bet it can be done.” Finally, I had a coherent picture. Eric had been angry
at losing control of his own life. Further, Eric was convinced Sam was waiting in the wings to take his
place in my bed. There were some implications that I’d store away to think about later.
“So, are you mad at me?” Sam asked. “Or do you think I’m wonderful for getting you out? Or a fool
for making a deal with Eric? Or lucky that Bill told you the truth?” His head was full of optimism,
pessimism, and apprehension. “I still don’t know what to do about the promise I made Eric.”
“I’m just relieved that you’re okay now. You did the best you could when you thought of it, and your
whole reason to agree to such a stupid thing was to get me out of a terrible situation. How can I not be
grateful for that?”
“I don’t want you grateful,” he said. “I want you mine. Eric was right about that.”
And my life turned upside down. Again. “Either there was just an earthquake in here, or you said . . .
you wanted me to be yours?”
“Yeah. No earthquake.”
“Okay. Well. I guess I have to ask, what changed? I was the last person you wanted to see while you
were . . .”
“Getting over being dead.”
“Yeah. That.”
“Maybe I felt then like you’re feeling now. Maybe I felt like I’d come so close to forever-death that
I’d better step back and take a look at my life. Maybe I didn’t like a lot of what I’d done with it so far.”
This was a side of Sam I’d never seen. “What didn’t you like?” I knew he wanted to move on to the
issue that sat between us like an elephant, but I had to have some answers.
“I didn’t like my choices in women,” he said unexpectedly. “I’d been picking women who were on
the far side of acceptable. That didn’t even occur to me until I knew I didn’t want to take Jannalynn home
to meet my mother. I didn’t want her to meet my sister and my brother. I was scared for her to play with
my niece and nephew. And that made me ask myself—why was I dating her?”
“She was better than the maenad,” I said.
“Oh, Callisto . . .” He reddened. “She’s a force of nature, you understand, Sookie? A maenad is
impossible to resist. If you’re a shifter or a wild thing of any sort, you have to answer her call. I don’t
know how sex is with a vampire, I never did that, but you always seemed to think it was really great . . .
and I guess Callisto would be sort of the shifter equivalent. She’s wild herself, and dangerous.”
There were things about his analogy I didn’t like, but it wasn’t the time to discuss details. “So,
you’ve dated women you’re not proud of dating, and you think you picked them because . . . ?” I really
wanted to know where this was going.
“There was a part of me that recognized . . . Oh, this sounds like the worst self-serving bullshit.
There was a part of me that kept insisting that I was a big bad supe and born to be a lone shifter, and the
women I wanted had to be as wild and antisocial as that stupid picture I had of myself.”
“And now you feel you are . . . ?”
“I feel I’m a man. A man who’s a shifter, too,” he said. “I think I’m ready to begin a relationship . . .
a partnership . . . with someone I respect and admire.”
“Rather than . . . ?”
“Rather than another sociopathic bitch who just offers excitement and wild sex.” He looked at me
hopefully.
“Okay, I think you kind of took a wrong turn there.”
“Uh-oh.” He thought about that. “Someone I respect and admire whom I also suspect is capable of
exciting and wild sex,” he amended.
“Better.”
He looked relieved.
“I’m not as surprised by this as I ought to be,” I said. “I guess Eric read you better than I did. He
knew if he let me go, you were standing first in line waiting. Not that I think there’s a line!” I added
hastily, when Sam looked startled. “I just mean . . . he saw more than I did. Or he could see it more
clearly.”
“I’m kind of ready for Eric to have no part of this conversation,” Sam said.
“I can manage that.”
“Do you still love him?” Sam promptly reintroduced the forbidden topic.
I thought before I answered. “I guess the cluviel dor magic changed you into someone who wants a
different thing out of life than you wanted before. Well, using it changed me, too. Or maybe it just woke
me up. I want to make sure. I don’t want any more impulse relationships or relationships that could kill
me. I don’t want any secret agendas or misunderstandings on a massive scale. I’ve done enough of that.
Call me chicken, if it seems I’m being cowardly. I want something different now.”
“All right,” he said. “We’ve listened to each other. Enough serious stuff for today, huh? I’m going to
help you get to bed, because I think that’s where you need to be.”
“You’re right,” I said, stifling a groan as I got up from the couch. “And I’d appreciate your help.
Would you bring me a pain pill and some water? They’re on the kitchen counter.” Sam vanished. I called
after him, “I keep expecting Mr. Cataliades and Diantha to come in. Or Barry. I wish I knew where my
houseguests are.”
Sam was back with the pill and a glass of water in nothing flat. “I’m sorry, Sook. I got so—
distracted—by our talk. I forgot to tell you Barry came into the bar early this evening to say that he and the
two demons were looking for something. Or someone? He said to tell you not to worry, they’d be in
touch. Oh, and he gave me this. If you hadn’t called, I would have sent Jason out here with it.”
That made me feel some better.
Sam pulled a folded yellow sheet of paper from his pocket. It was legal paper, and it smelled faintly
as though it had come out of a garbage bag. With no regard for the lines, one side was covered by large
writing in very strange penmanship. Whoever had done the writing had used a fading Sharpie. It said,
“Your front door was open, so I stored something in your hiding place. See you later.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “They’ve put something in the vampire hidey-hole, the one in the guest
bedroom.” Bill had built it when I was dating him, so he could spend the day in my house if he had to. The
floor of the closet in my guest room could be lifted up. Mustapha had come to get a few possessions of
Eric’s from it before Eric left. I wondered if he’d had the chance to complete that task the day Warren had
shot Tyrese.
“Do you think there’s a vampire in there?” Sam was startled, to put it mildly. He handed me the
water and pill, and I swallowed and drank.
“If it were a vampire, he’d be up by now.”
“I guess we better check,” Sam said. “You don’t want to spend the night wondering what might come
out of that hole.” He helped me up, and together we went to the guest bedroom. We opened the door and
went into the room. Amelia had packed all her belongings and Bob’s, too, but the bed was disheveled. I
spied a sock under the night table as I got a flashlight out of the drawer and handed it to Sam.
He had the unenviable job of opening the hole.
The tension got worse and worse as he figured out how to lift the floor of the closet. Then he swung
it up and looked inside the hidey-hole.
“Well, shit,” Sam said. “Sookie, come see.”
I slowly made my way over to the open closet door. I looked down over Sam’s shoulder. Copley
Carmichael was there, securely bound and gagged. He glared up at us.
“Close it up, please,” I said, and walked out of the room slowly.
I’d imagined spending a day or two relaxing and recuperating, reading in bed with maybe a foray
into the living room to watch television or to try to learn how to play computer games. There was plenty
of food in the refrigerator since I’d so recently stocked up for my houseguests. I would not have anything
more to worry about than getting well and who was working in my place at the bar.
“But no,” I said out loud. “Unh-uh. Not gonna happen.”
“Are you feeling sorry for yourself?” Sam asked. “Come on, Sook, if we’re not pulling him out, let
me help you climb into bed.”
But I sat down in the chair in the corner of my room. “Yes, I’m feeling sorry for myself. And I may
whine a little. What’s it to you?”
“Oh, nothing,” he said, with a suspicion of a smile. “I’m all for a good sulk every now and then.”
“I’m just supposing that Mr. Cataliades or Diantha thought this would be a good after-birthday
present for me, if they’re responsible,” I said. “I wonder what they’re doing for their follow-up. Maybe
they’ll wash my car. I wish they’d call. I’m kind of worried about Barry.” In case it wasn’t obvious, the
pain pill was beginning to work.
“Have you checked your cell phone or your answering machine?” Sam asked.
“Well, no, kind of busy getting shot and going to the hospital,” I said, my self-pity deflated by Sam’s
practical suggestion. After a moment, I asked Sam if he’d bring me my purse from the kitchen.
I had all kinds of voice mail: Tara, India, Beth Osiecki, the bank, and, weirdly, Pam, who only said
she needed to have a word with me. I subdued my curiosity and continued going down the list. Yes, here
was a call from Mr. Cataliades.
“Sookie,” he said in his rich voice. “When we returned and found you had been shot, we knew we
had to search farther afield. Copley Carmichael has vanished, but we are on the trail of other game. I truly
think you take the prize for having more people wanting to kill you than anyone I’ve ever known. I’m only
trying to get to them first. But it’s fun, in a way.”
“Right,” I muttered. “I arranged all this so you’d have a good time. Sounds like Mr. C and Diantha
didn’t know Copley was in my house all today.”
“Text him and then move over,” Sam said. “You’re in the middle of the bed. Pick a side.”
“What?”
“I need to take a nap. Move over.”
I blinked. “Presuming? Much?”
“If someone comes to get him out of the hole, wouldn’t you rather have me in here beside you?”
“I’d rather have you out on the porch with a rifle,” I muttered, but I moved over a little.
“Doors are locked,” Sam said. His eyes closed the second he lay down. And within two minutes, he
was asleep. I could tell by his breathing and his brain waves.
Well, damn. I was in bed with Sam Merlotte, and we were both going to sleep.
When I woke up, it was daytime again. I heard someone moving around the house. I didn’t open my
eyes. Instead, I reached out with my other sense, the sense that Mr. Cataliades had given me. Tara was
here, but I couldn’t sense Amelia’s dad, so I assumed his soullessness was really acting as a mask.
Apparently, not having a soul nullified you as a person.
Tara came in, wearing her new shorts. “Hey, sleepyhead,” she said. “I was just going to come wake
you up. Sam had to go do some paperwork, so he asked me if I could come over to stay for a few minutes.
He said you’d started tossing and turning.” She tried very hard not to stare significantly at the dent in the
pillow beside me.
“Hey, sleeping was all that went on,” I told her.
“With the vamp gone, the door’s wide open,” she said innocently. “Nobody to say nothing about how
you spend your time. You’re a free woman.”
“I’m just saying, that’s premature.” I gave her a no-nonsense look.
“All righty. If that’s the way you want to play it.”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m not playing it. That’s the way it is. I’m still working through some stuff.”
Tara looked at me blandly. “Sure, that’s real smart. You need to get up and have some sausage-and-
egg biscuits. My mother-in-law says it’ll build your blood back up.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. Suddenly, I was hungry.
While I ate, she showed me a few dozen pictures of the twins and talked about the babysitter she’d
just hired, Quiana something. “She’s like me, she’s got a bad past,” Tara said. “We’re going to get along
fine. Listen, I know Sam’s handy, and since you and him are so tight, maybe you can help us? We’re going
to plan how to make the baby’s room bigger. We sure can’t afford to move.”
“Sure, after my shoulder gets better. Just name the day,” I said. It was nice to think about the future.
A home-improvement project sounded both wholesome and normal.
Tara got restless after ten minutes, and I could tell she was thinking about getting back to the twins.
There was a suspicious damp spot on the front of her blouse. I hurried her off with sincere thanks for the
meal, and after she was gone, I got dressed, which took time and a surprising amount of energy. I also put
my phone on its charger and began returning calls. I tried very hard to forget there was a bound man in my
closet, and I tried not to imagine how many hours he’d been there without access to a bathroom. I had no
sympathy for Copley Carmichael, and more practically, I couldn’t even imagine how I could get him to a
toilet without endangering myself.
Calling Andy Bellefleur flitted across my mind for maybe half a second. I could just see myself
trying to explain that I really hadn’t known my friend’s dad was tied up and a prisoner in my home. Even I
could hardly believe it, and I knew it was true. I would not go back to jail for anything. Anything.
So, for the time being, there Copley Carmichael would have to stay, even if he peed all over himself