I locked the door and pulled it to, and Sam hurried to open the door of his pickup. I was glad I'd worn pants, as I pic­tured trying to get up in the high cab in one of my shorter skirts.
"Need a boost?" he asked hopefully.
"I think I got it," I said, trying not to smile.
We were silent on the way to the Community Building, which was in the older part of Bon Temps; the part that predated the War. The structure was not antebellum, but there had actually been a building on that site that had gotten de­stroyed during the War, though no one seemed to have a record of what it had been.
The Descendants of the Glorious Dead were a mixed bunch. There were some very old, very fragile members, and some not quite so old and very lively members, and there were even a scattering of middle-aged men and women. But there were no young members, which Gran had often la­mented, with many significant glances at me.
Mr. Sterling Norris, a longtime friend of my grand­mother's and the mayor of Bon Temps, was the greeter that night, and he stood at the door shaking hands and having a little conversation with everyone who entered.
"Miss Sookie, you look prettier every day," Mr. Norris said. "And Sam, we haven't seen you in a coon's age! Sookie, is it true this vampire is a friend of yours?" "Yes, sir."
"Can you say for sure that we're all safe?" "Yes, I'm sure you are. He's a very nice ... person." Be­ing? Entity? If you like the living dead, he's pretty neat?
"If you say so," Mr. Norris said dubiously. "In my time, such a thing was just a fairy tale."
"Oh, Mr. Norris, it's still your time," I said with the cheer­ful smile expected of me, and he laughed and motioned us on in, which was what was expected of him. Sam took my hand and sort of steered me to the next to last row of metal chairs, and I waved at my grandmother as we took our seats. It was just time for the meeting to start, and the room held maybe forty people, quite a gathering for Bon Temps. But Bill wasn't there.
Just then the president of Descendants, a massive, solid woman by the name of Maxine Fortenberry, came to the podium.
"Good evening! Good evening!" she boomed. "Our guest of honor has just called to say he's having car trouble and will be a few minutes late. So let's go on and have our business meeting while we're waiting for him."
The group settled down, and we got through all the boring stuff, Sam sitting beside me with his arms crossed over his chest, his right leg crossed over the left at the ankle. I was being especially careful to keep my mind guarded and face smiling, and I was a little deflated when Sam leaned slightly to me and whispered, "It's okay to relax." "I thought I was," I whispered back. "I don't think you know how."
I raised my eyebrows at him. I was going to have a few things to say to Mr. Merlotte after the meeting.
Just then Bill came in, and there was a moment of sheer silence as those who hadn't seen him before adjusted to his presence. If you've never been in the company of a vampire before, it's a thing you really have to get used to. Under the flourescent lighting, Bill really looked much more unhuman than he did under the dim lighting in Merlotte's, or the equally dim lighting in his own home. There was no way he could pass for a regular guy. His pallor was very marked, of course, and the deep pools of his eyes looked darker and colder. He was wearing a lightweight medium-blue suit, and I was willing to bet that had been Gran's advice. He looked great. The dominant line of the arch of his eyebrow, the curve of his bold nose, the chiseled lips, the white hands with their long fingers and carefully trimmed nails ... He was having an exchange with the president, and she was charmed out of her support hose by Bill's close-lipped smile.
I didn't know if Bill was casting a glamor over the whole room, or if these people were just predisposed to be inter­ested, but the whole group hushed expectantly.
Then Bill saw me. I swear his eyebrows twitched. He gave me a little bow, and I nodded back, finding no smile in me to give him. Even in the crowd, I stood at the edge of the deep pool of his silence.
Mrs. Fortenberry introduced Bill, but I don't remember what she said or how she skirted the fact that Bill was a different kind of creature.
Then Bill began speaking. He had notes, I saw with some surprise. Beside me, Sam leaned forward, his eyes fixed on Bill's face.
"... we didn't have any blankets and very little food," Bill was saying calmly. "There were many deserters."
That was not a favorite fact of the Descendants, but a few of them were nodding in agreement. This account must match what they'd learned in their studies.
An ancient man in the first row raised his hand.
"Sir, did you by chance know my great-grandfather, Tol­liver Humphries?"
"Yes," Bill said, after a moment. His face was unreadable. "Tolliver was my friend."
And just for a moment, there was something so tragic in his voice that I had to close my eyes.
"What was he like?" quavered the old man.
"Well, he was foolhardy, which led to his death," said Bill with a wry smile. "He was brave. He never made a cent in his life that he didn't waste."
"How did he die? Were you there?"
"Yes, I was there," said Bill wearily. "I saw him get shot by a Northern sniper in the woods about twenty miles from here. He was slow because he was starved. We all were. About the middle of the morning, a cold morning, Tolliver saw a boy in our troop get shot as he lay in poor cover in the middle of a field. The boy was not dead, but painfully wounded. But he could call to us, and he did, all morning. He called to us to help him. He knew he would die if some­one didn't."
The whole room had grown so silent you could hear a pin drop.
"He screamed and he moaned. I almost shot him myself, to shut him up, because I knew to venture out to rescue him was suicide. But I could not quite bring myself to kill him. That would be murder, not war, I told myself. But later I wished I had shot him, for Tolliver was less able than I to withstand the boy's pleading. After two hours of it, he told me he planned to try to rescue the boy. I argued with him. But Tolliver told me that God wanted him to attempt it. He had been praying as we lay in the woods.
"Though I told Tolliver that God did not wish him to waste his life foolishly—that he had a wife and children praying for his safe return at home—Tolliver asked me to divert the enemy while he attempted the boy's rescue. He ran out into the field like it was a spring day and he was well rested. And he got as far as the wounded boy. But then a shot rang out, and Tolliver fell dead. And, after a time, the boy began screaming for help again."
"What happened to him?" asked Mrs. Fortenberry, her voice as quiet as she could manage to make it.
"He lived," Bill said, and there was tone to his voice that sent shivers down my spine. "He survived the day, and we were able to retrieve him that night."

the old man in the front row there was a memory to cherish, a memory that said much about his ancestor's char­acter.
I don't think anyone who'd come to the meeting that night was prepared for the impact of hearing about the Civil War from a survivor. They were enthralled; they were shattered.
When Bill had answered the last question, there was thun­derous applause, or at least it was as thunderous as forty people could make it. Even Sam, not Bill's biggest fan, man­aged to put his hands together.
Everyone wanted to have a personal word with Bill after­ward except me and Sam. While the reluctant guest speaker was surrounded by Descendants, Sam and I sneaked out to Sam's pickup. We went to the Crawdad Diner, a real dive that happened to have very good food. I wasn't hungry, but Sam had key lime pie with his coffee.
"That was interesting," Sam said cautiously.
"Bill's speech? Yes," I said, just as cautiously.
"Do you have feelings for him?"
After all the indirection, Sam had decided to storm the main gate.
"Yes," I said.
"Sookie," Sam said, "You have no future with him."
"On the other hand, he's been around a while. I expect he'll be around for a another few hundred years."
"You never know what's going to happen to a vampire."
I couldn't argue with that. But, as I pointed out to Sam, I couldn't know what was going to happen to me, a human, either.
We wrangled back and forth like this for too long. Finally, exasperated, I said, "What's it to you, Sam?"
His ruddy skin flushed. His bright blue eyes met mine. "I like you, Sookie. As friend or maybe something else some­time ..."
Huh?
"I just hate to see you take a wrong turn."
I looked at him. I could feel my skeptical face forming, eyebrows drawn together, the corner of my mouth tugging up.
"Sure," I said, my voice matching my face. "I've always liked you."
"So much that you had to wait till someone else showed an interest, before you mentioned it to me?"
"I deserve that." He seemed to be turning something over in his mind, something he wanted to say, but hadn't the res­olution.
Whatever it was, he couldn't come out with it, apparently. "Let's go," I suggested. It would be hard to turn the con­versation back to neutral ground, I figured. I might as well go home.
It was a funny ride back. Sam always seemed on the verge of speaking, and then he'd shake his head and keep silent. I was so aggravated I wanted to swat him.
We got home later than I'd thought. Gran's light was on, but the rest of the house was dark. I didn't see her car, so I figured she'd parked in back to unload the leftovers right into the kitchen. The porch light was on for me.
Sam walked around and opened the pickup door, and I stepped down. But in the shadow, my foot missed the run­ning board, and I just sort of tumbled out. Sam caught me. First his hands gripped my arms to steady me, then they just slid around me. And he kissed me.
I assumed it was going to be a little good-night peck, but his mouth just kind of lingered. It was really more than pleas­ant, but suddenly my inner censor said, "This is the boss."
I gently disengaged. He was immediately aware that I was backing off, and gently slid his hands down my arms until he was just holding hands with me. We went to the door, not speaking.
"I had a good time," I said, softly. I didn't want to wake Gran, and I didn't want to sound bouncy.
"I did, too. Again sometime?"
"We'll see," I said. I really didn't know how I felt about Sam.
I waited to hear his truck turn around before I switched off the porch light and went into the house. I was unbuttoning my blouse as I walked, tired and ready for bed.
Something was wrong.
I stopped in the middle of the living room. I looked around me.
Everything looked all right, didn't it?
Yes. Everything was in its proper place.
It was the smell.
It was a sort of penny smell.
A coppery smell, sharp and salty.
The smell of blood.
It was down here with me, not upstairs where the guest bedrooms sat in neat solitude.
"Gran?" I called. I hated the quavering in my voice.
I made myself move, I made myself go to the door of her room. It was pristine. I began switching on lights as I went through the house.
My room was just as I'd left it.
The bathroom was empty.
The washroom was empty.
I switched on the last light. The kitchen was ...
I screamed, over and over. My hands were fluttering use­lessly in the air, trembling more with each scream. I heard a crash behind me, but couldn't be concerned. Then big hands gripped me and moved me, and a big body was between me and what I'd seen on the kitchen floor. I didn't recognize Bill, but he picked me up and moved me to the living room where I couldn't see any more.
"Sookie," he said harshly, "Shut up! This isn't any good!"
If he'd been kind to me, I'd have kept on shrieking.
"Sorry," I said, still out of my mind. "I am acting like that boy."
He stared at me blankly.
"The one in your story," I said numbly.
"We have to call the police."
"Sure."
"We have to dial the phone."
"Wait. How did you come here?"
"Your grandmother gave me a ride home, but I insisted on coming with her first and helping her unload the car."
"So why are you still here?"
"I was waiting for you."
"So, did you see who killed her?"
"No. I went home, across the cemetery, to change."
He was wearing blue jeans and Grateful Dead T-shirt, and suddenly I began to giggle.
"That's priceless," I said, doubling over with the laughter.
And I was crying, just as suddenly. I picked up the phone and dialled 911.
Andy Bellefleur was there in five minutes.

JASON CAME AS soon as I reached him. I tried to call him at four or five different places, and finally reached him at Merlotte's. Terry Bellefleur was bartending for Sam that night, and when he'd gotten back from telling Jason to come to his grandmother's house, I asked Terry if he'd call Sam and tell him I had troubles and couldn't work for a few days.
Terry must have called Sam right away because Sam was at my house within thirty minutes, still wearing the clothes he'd worn to the meeting that night. At the sight of him I looked down, remembering unbuttoning my blouse as I walked through the living room, a fact I'd completely lost track of; but I was decent. It dawned on me that Bill must have set me to rights. I might find that embarrassing later, but at the moment I was just grateful.
So Jason came in, and when I told him Gran was dead, and dead by violence, he just looked at me. There seemed to be nothing going on behind his eyes. It was as if someone had erased his capacity for absorbing new facts. Then what I'd said sank in, and my brother sank to his knees right where he stood, and I knelt in front of him. He put his arms around me and lay his head on my shoulder, and we just stayed there for a while. We were all that was left.
Bill and Sam were out in the front yard sitting in lawn chairs, out of the way of the police. Soon Jason and I were asked to go out on the porch, at least, and we opted to sit outside, too. It was a mild evening, and I sat facing the house, all lit up like a birthday cake, and the people that came and went from it like ants who'd been allowed at the party. All this industry surrounding the tissue that had been my grand­mother.
"What happened?" Jason asked finally.
"I came in from the meeting," I said very slowly. "After Sam pulled off in his truck. I knew something was wrong. I looked in every room." This was the story of How I Found Grandmother Dead, the official version. "And when I got to the kitchen I saw her."
Jason turned his head very slowly so his eyes met mine.
"Tell me."
I shook my head silently. But it was his right to know. "She was beaten up, but she had tried to fight back, I think. Whoever did this cut her up some. And then strangled her, it looked like."
I could not even look at my brother's face. "It was my fault." My voice was nothing more than a whisper.
"How do you figure that?" Jason said, sounding nothing more than dull and sluggish.
"I figure someone came to kill me like they killed Mau­dette and Dawn, but Gran was here instead."
I could see the idea percolate in Jason's brain.
"I was supposed to be home tonight while she was at the meeting, but Sam asked me to go at the last minute. My car was here like it would be normally because we went in Sam's truck. Gran had parked her ear around back while she was unloading, so it wouldn't look like she was here, just me. She had given Bill a ride home, but he helped her unload and went to change clothes. After he left, whoever it was ... got her."
"How do we know it wasn't Bill?" Jason asked, as though Bill wasn't sitting right there beside him.
"How do we know it wasn't anyone?" I said, exasperated at my brother's slow wits. "It could be anyone, anyone we know. I don't think it was Bill. I don't think Bill killed Mau­dette and Dawn. And I do think whoever killed Maudette and Dawn killed Grandmother."
"Did you know," Jason said, his voice too loud, "that Grandmother left you this house all by yourself?"
It was like he'd thrown a bucket of cold water in my face. I saw Sam wince, too. Bill's eyes got darker and chillier.
"No. I just always assumed you and I would share like we did on the other one." Our parents' house, the one Jason lived in now.
"She left you all the land, too."
"Why are you saying this?" I was going to cry again, just when I'd been sure I was dry of tears now.
"She wasn't fair!" he was yelling. "It wasn't fair, and now she can't set it right!"
I began to shake. Bill pulled me out of the chair and began walking with me up and down the yard. Sam sat in front of Jason and began talking to him earnestly, his voice low and intense.
Bill's arm was around me, but I couldn't stop shaking. "Did he mean that?" I asked, not expecting Bill to answer.
"No," he said. I looked up, surprised.
"No, he couldn't help your grandmother, and he couldn't handle the idea of someone lying in wait for you and killing her instead. So he had to get angry about something. And instead of getting angry with you for not getting killed, he's angry about things. I wouldn't let it worry me."
"I think it's pretty amazing that you're saying this," I told him bluntly.
"Oh, I took some night school courses in psychology," said Bill Compton, vampire.
And, I couldn't help thinking, hunters always study their prey. "Why would Gran leave me all this, and not Jason?"
"Maybe you'll find out later," he said, and that seemed fine to me.
Then Andy Bellefleur came out of the house and stood on the steps, looking up at the sky as if there were clues written on it.
"Compton," he called sharply.
"No," I said, and my voice came out as a growl.
I could feel Bill look down at me with the slight surprise that was a big reaction, coming from him.
"Now it's gonna happen," I said furiously.
"You -were protecting me," he said. "You thought the po­lice would suspect me of killing those two women. That's why you wanted to be sure they were accessible to other vampires. Now you think this Bellefleur will try to blame your grandmother's death on me."
"Yes."

He took a deep breath. We were in the dark, by the trees that lined the yard. Andy bellowed Bill's name again.
"Sookie," Bill said gently, "I am sure you were the in­tended victim, as sure as you are."
It was kind of a shock to hear someone else say it.
"And I didn't kill them. So if the killer was the same as their killer, then I didn't do it, and he will see that. Even if he is a Bellefleur."
We began walking back into the light. I wanted none of this to be. I wanted the lights and the people to vanish, all of them, Bill, too. I wanted to be alone in the house with my grandmother, and I wanted her to look happy, as she had the last time I'd seen her.
It was futile and childish, but I could wish it nonetheless. I was lost in that dream, so lost I didn't see harm coming until it was too late.
My brother, Jason, stepped in front of me and slapped me in the face.
It was so unexpected and so painful that I lost my balance and staggered to the side, landing hard on one knee.
Jason seemed to be coming after me again, but Bill was suddenly in front of me, crouched, and his fangs were out and he was scary as hell. Sam tackled Jason and brought him down, and he may have whacked Jason's face against the ground once for good measure.
Andy Bellefleur was stunned at this unexpected display of violence. But after a second he stepped in between our two little groups on the lawn. He looked at Bill and swallowed, but he said in a steady voice, "Compton, back off. He won't hit her again."
Bill was taking deep breaths, trying to control his hunger for Jason's blood. I couldn't read his thoughts, but I could read his body language.
I couldn't exactly read Sam's thoughts, but I could tell he was very angry. Jason was sobbing. His thoughts were a confused and tan­gled blue mess.
And Andy Bellefleur didn't like any of us and wished he could lock every freaking one of us up for some reason or another.
I pushed myself wearily to my feet and touched the painful spot of my cheek, using that to distract me from the pain in my heart, the dreadful grief that rolled over me. I thought this night would never end.


THE FUNERAL WAS the largest ever held in Renard Par­ish. The minister said so. Under a brilliant early summer sky, my grandmother was buried beside my mother and father in our family plot in the ancient cemetery between the Comp­tons' house and Gran's house.
Jason had been right. It was my house, now. The house and the twenty acres surrounding it were mine, as were the mineral rights. Gran's money, what there was, had been di­vided fairly between us, and Gran had stipulated that I give Jason my half of the home our parents had lived in, if I wanted to retain full rights to her house. That was easy to do, and I didn't want any money from Jason for that half, though my lawyer looked dubious when I told him that. Ja­son would just blow his top if I mentioned paying me for my half; the fact that I was part-owner had never been more than a fantasy to him. Yet Gran leaving her house to me outright had come as a big shock. She had understood him better than I had.
It was lucky I had income other than from the bar, I thought heavily, trying to concentrate on something besides her loss. Paying taxes on the land and house, plus the upkeep of the house, which Gran had assumed at least partially, would really stretch my income.
"I guess you'll want to move," Maxine Fortenberry said when she was cleaning the kitchen. Maxine had brought over devilled eggs and ham salad, and she was trying to be extra helpful by scrubbing.
"No," I said, surprised.
"But honey, with it happening right here..." Maxine's heavy face creased with concern.
"I have far more good memories of this kitchen than bad ones," I explained.
"Oh, what a good way to look at it," she said, surprised. "Sookie, you really are smarter than anyone gives you credit for being."
"Gosh, thanks, Mrs. Fortenberry," I said, and if she heard the dry tone in my voice she didn't react. Maybe that was wise.
"Is your friend coming to the funeral?" The kitchen was very warm. Bulky, square Maxine was blotting her face with a dishtowel. The spot where Gran had fallen had been scrubbed by her friends, God bless them.
"My friend. Oh, Bill? No, he can't."
She looked at me blankly.
"We're having it in the daytime, of course."
She still didn't comprehend.
"He can't come out."
"Oh, of course!" She gave herself a light tap on the temple to indicate she was knocking sense into her head. "Silly me. Would he really fry?"
"Well, he says he would."
"You know, I'm so glad he gave that talk at the club, that has really made such a difference in making him part of the community."
I nodded, abstracted.
"There's really a lot of feeling about the murders, Sookie. There's really a lot of talk about vampires, about how they're responsible for these deaths."

I looked at her with narrowed eyes.
"Don't you go all mad on me, Sookie Stackhouse! Since Bill was so sweet about telling those fascinating stories at the Descendants meeting, most people don't think he could do those awful things that were done to those women." I wondered what stories were making the rounds, and I shud­dered to think. "But he's had some visitors that people didn't much like the looks of."
I wondered if she meant Malcolm, Liam, and Diane. I hadn't much liked their looks either, and I resisted the au­tomatic impulse to defend them.
"Vampires are just as different among themselves as hu­mans are," I said.
"That's what I told Andy Bellefleur," she said, nodding vehemently. "I said to Andy, you should go after some of those others, the ones that don't want to learn how to live with us, not like Bill Compton, who's really making an effort to settle in. He was telling me at the funeral home that he'd gotten his kitchen finished, finally."
I could only stare at her. I tried to think of what Bill might make in his kitchen. Why would he need one?
But none of the distractions worked, and finally I just re­alized that for a while I was going to be crying every whip­stitch. And I did.
At the funeral Jason stood beside me, apparently over his surge of anger at me, apparently back in his right mind. He didn't touch me or talk to me, but he didn't hit me, either. I felt very alone. But then I realized as I looked out over the hillside that the whole town was grieving with me. There were cars as far as I could see on the narrow drives through the cemetery, there were hundreds of dark-clad folks around the funeral-home tent. Sam was there in a suit (looking quite unlike himself), and Arlene, standing by Rene, was wearing a flowered Sunday dress. Lafayette stood at the very back of the crowd, along with Terry Bellefleur and Charlsie Tooten; the bar must be closed! And all Gran's friends, all, the ones who could still walk. Mr. Norris wept openly, a snowy white handkerchief held up to his eyes. Maxine's heavy face was set in graven lines'of sadness. While the minister said what he had to, while Jason and I sat alone in family area in the uneven folding chairs, I felt something in me detach and fly up, up into the blue brilliance: and I knew that whatever had happened to my grandmother, now she was at home.
The rest of the day went by in a blur, thank God. I didn't want to remember it, didn't want to even know it was hap­pening. But one moment stood out.
Jason and I were standing by the dining room table in Gran's house, some temporary truce between us. We greeted the mourners, most of whom did their best not to stare at the bruise on my cheek.
We glided through it, Jason thinking that he would go home and have a drink after, and he wouldn't have to see me for a while and then it would be all right, and me thinking almost exactly the same thing. Except for the drink.
A well-meaning woman came up to us, the sort of woman who has thought over every ramification of a situation that was none of her business to start with.
"I am so sorry for you kids," she said, and I looked at her; for the life of me I couldn't remember her name. She was a Methodist. She had three grown children. But her name ran right out the other side of my head.
"You know it was so sad seeing you two there alone today, it made me remember your mother and father so much," she said, her face creasing into a mask of sympathy that I knew was automatic. I glanced at Jason, looked back to the woman, nodded.
"Yes," I said. But I heard her thought before she spoke, and I began to blanch.
"But where was Adele's brother today, your great uncle? Surely he's still living?"
"We're not in touch," I said, and my tone would have discouraged anyone more sensitive than this lady.
"But her only brother! Surely you ..." and her voice died away as our combined stare finally sank home.
Several other people had commented briefly on our Uncle Bartlett's absence, but we had given the "this is family busi­ness" signals that cut them right off. This woman—what was her name?—just hadn't been as quick to read them. She'd brought a taco salad, and I planned to throw it right into the garbage when she'd left.
"We do have to tell him," Jason said quietly after she left. I put my guard up; I had no desire to know what he was thinking.
"You call him," I said.
"All right."
And that was all we said to each other for the rest of the day.

143

Chapter 5 was absolutely brilliant!

I did not expect Gran to die so early. Or at all. I was shocked, and it was very emotional. Great read!

Chapter 6


I STAYED AT home for three days after the funeral. It was too long; I needed to go back to work. But I kept thinking of things I just had to do, or so I told myself. I cleaned out Gran's room. Arlene happened to drop by, and I asked her for help, because I just couldn't be in there alone with my grandmother's things, all so familiar and imbued with her personal odor of Johnson's baby powder and Campho-Phenique.
So my friend Arlene helped me pack everything up to take to the disaster relief agency. There'd been tornadoes in north­ern Arkansas the past few days, and surely some person who had lost everything could use all the clothes. Gran had been smaller and thinner than I, and besides that her tastes were very different, so I wanted nothing of hers except the jewelry. She'd never worn much, but what she wore was real and precious to me.
It was amazing what Gran had managed to pack into her room. I didn't even want to think about what she'd stored in the attic: that would be dealt with later, in the fall, when the attic was bearably cool and I'd time to think.
I probably threw away more than I should have, but it made me feel efficient and strong to be doing this, and I did a drastic job of it. Arlene folded and packed, only putting
aside papers and photographs, letters and bills and cancelled checks. My grandmother had never used a credit card in her life and never bought anything on time, God bless her, which made the winding-up much easier.
Arlene asked about Gran's car. It was five years old and had very little mileage. "Will you sell yours and keep hers?" she asked. "Yours is newer, but it's small."
"I hadn't thought," I said. And I found I couldn't think of it, that cleaning out the bedroom was the extent of what I could do that day.
At the end of the afternoon, the bedroom was empty of Gran. Arlene and I turned the mattress and I remade the bed out of habit. It was an old four-poster in the rice pattern. I had always thought her bedroom set was beautiful, and it occurred to me that now it was mine. I could move into the bigger bedroom and have a private bath instead of using the one in the hall.
Suddenly, that was exactly what I wanted to do. The fur­niture I'd been using in my bedroom had been moved over here from my parents' house when they'd died, and it was kid's furniture; overly feminine, sort of reminiscent of Bar­bies and sleepovers.
Not that I'd ever had many sleepovers, or been to many.
Nope, nope, nope, I wasn't going to fall into that old pit. I was what I was, and I had a life, and I could enjoy things; the little treats that kept me going.
"I might move in here," I told Arlene as she taped a box shut.
"Isn't that a little soon?" she asked. She flushed red when she realized she'd sounded critical.
"It would be easier to be in here than be across the hall thinking about the room being empty," I said. Arlene thought that through, crouched beside the cardboard box with the roll of tape in her hand.
"I can see that," she agreed, with a nod of her flaming red head.
We loaded the cardboard boxes into Arlene's car. She had kindly agreed to drop them by the collection center on her way home, and I gratefully accepted the offer. I didn't want anyone to look at me knowingly, with pity, when I gave away my grandmother's clothes and shoes and nightgowns.
When Arlene left, I hugged her and gave her a kiss on the cheek, and she stared at me. That was outside the bounds our friendship had had up till now. She bent her head to mine and we very gently bumped foreheads.
"You crazy girl," she said, affection in her voice. "You come see us, now. Lisa's been wanting you to baby-sit again."
"You tell her Aunt Sookie said hi to her, and to Coby, too."
"I will." And Arlene sauntered off to her car, her flaming hair puffing in a waving mass above her head, her full body making her waitress outfit look like one big promise.
All my energy drained away as Arlene's car bumped down the driveway through the trees. I felt a million years old, alone and lonely. This was the way it was going to be from now on.
I didn't feel hungry, but the clock told me it was time to eat. I went into the kitchen and pulled one of the many Tup-perware containers from the refrigerator. It held turkey and grape salad, and I liked it, but I sat there at the table just picking at it with a fork. I gave up, returning it to the icebox and going to the bathroom for a much-needed shower. The corners of closets are always dusty, and even a housekeeper as good as my grandmother had been had not been able to defeat that dust.
The shower felt wonderful. The hot water seemed to steam out some of my misery, and I shampooed my hair and scrubbed every inch of skin, shaving my legs and armpits. After I climbed out, I plucked my eyebrows and put on skin lotion and deodorant and a spray to untangle my hair and anything else I could lay my hands on. With my hair trailing down my back in a cascade of wet snarls, I pulled on my nightshirt, a white one with Tweety Bird on the front, and I got my comb. I'd sit in front of the television to have some­thing to watch while I got my hair combed out, always a tedious process.
My little burst of purpose expired, and I felt almost numb.
The doorbell rang just as I was trailing into the living room with my comb in one hand and a towel in the other.
I looked through the peephole. Bill was waiting patiently on the porch.
I let him in without feeling either glad or sorry to see him.
He took me in with some surprise: the nightshirt, the wet hair, the bare feet. No makeup.
"Come in," I said.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
And he came in, looking around him as he always did. "What are you doing?" he asked, seeing the pile of things I'd put to one side because I thought friends of Gran's might want them: Mr. Norris might be pleased to get the framed picture of his mother and Gran's mother together, for ex­ample.
"I cleaned out the bedroom today," I said. "I think I'll move into it." Then I couldn't think of anything else to say. He turned to look at me carefully.
"Let me comb out your hair," he said.
I nodded indifferently. Bill sat on the flowered couch and indicated the old ottoman positioned in front of it. I sat down obediently, and he scooted forward a little, framing me with his thighs. Starting at the crown of my head, he began teasing the tangles out of my hair.
As always, his mental silence was a treat. Each time, it was like putting the first foot into a cool pool of water when I'd been on a long, dusty hike on a hot day.
As a bonus, Bill's long fingers seemed adept at dealing with the thick mane of my hair. I sat with my eyes closed, gradually becoming tranquil. I could feel the slight move­ments of his body behind me as he worked with the comb. I could almost hear his heart beating, I thought, and then realized how strange an idea that was. His heart, after all, didn't.
"I used to do this for my sister, Sarah," he murmured qui­etly, as if he knew how peaceful I'd gotten and was trying not to break my mood. "She had hair darker than yours, even longer. She'd never cut it. When we were children, and my mother was busy, she'd have me work on Sarah's hair."
"Was Sarah younger than you, or older?" 1 asked in a slow, drugged voice.
"She was younger. She was three years younger." "Did you have other brothers or sisters?" "My mother lost two in childbirth," he said slowly, as if he could barely remember. "I lost my brother, Robert, when he was twelve and I was eleven. He caught a fever, and it killed him. Now they would pump him full of penicillin, and he would be all right. But they couldn't then. Sarah survived the war, she and my mother, though my father died while I was soldiering; he had what I've learned since was a stroke. My wife was living with my family then, and my chil­dren ..."
"Oh, Bill," I said sadly, almost in a whisper, for he had lost so much.
"Don't, Sookie," he said, and his voice had regained its cold clarity.
He worked on in silence for a while, until I could tell the comb was running free through my hair. He picked up the white towel I'd tossed on the arm of the couch and began to pat my hair dry, and as it dried he ran his fingers through it to give it body.
"Mmmm," I said, and as I heard it, it was no longer the sound of someone being soothed.
I could feel his cool fingers lifting the hair away from my neck and then I felt his mouth just at the nape. I couldn't speak or move. I exhaled slowly, trying not to make another sound. His lips moved to my ear, and he caught the lobe of it between his teeth. Then his tongue darted in. His arms came around me, crossing over my chest, pulling me back against him.
And for a miracle I only heard what his body was saying, not those niggling things from minds that only foul up mo­ments like this. His body was saying something very simple.

He lifted me as easily as I'd rotate an infant. He turned me so I was facing him on his lap, my legs on either side of his. I put my arms around him and bent a little to kiss him. It went on and on, but after a while Bill settled into a rhythm with his tongue, a rhythm even someone as inexperienced as I could identify. The nightshirt slid up to the tops of my thighs. My hands began to rub his arms helplessly. Strangely, I thought of a pan of caramels my grandmother had put on
the stove for a candy recipe, and I thought of the melted, warm sweet goldenness of them.
He stood up with me still wrapped around him. "Where?" he asked.
And I pointed to my grandmother's former room. He car­ried me in as we were, my legs locked around him, my head on his shoulder, and he lay me on the clean bed. He stood by the bed and in the moonlight coming in the unshaded windows, I saw him undress, quickly and neatly. Though I was getting great pleasure from watching him, I knew I had to do the same; but still a little embarrassed, I just drew off the nightshirt and tossed it onto the floor.
I stared at him. I'd never seen anything so beautiful or so scary in my life.
"Oh, Bill," I said anxiously, when he was beside me in the bed, "I don't want to disappoint you."
"That's not possible," he whispered. His eyes looked at my body as if it were a drink of water on a desert dune.
"I don't know much," I confessed, my voice barely audi­ble.
"Don't worry. I know a lot." His hands began drifting over me, touching me in places I'd never been touched. I jerked with surprise, then opened myself to him.
"Will this be different from doing it with a regular guy?" I asked.
"Oh, yes."
I looked up at him questioningly.
"It'll be better," he said in my ear, and I felt a twinge of pure excitement.
A little shyly, I reached down to touch him, and he made a very human sound. After a moment, the sound became deeper.
"Now?" I asked, my voice ragged and shaking.
"Oh, yes," he said, and then he was on top of me.
A moment later he found out the true extent of my inex­perience.
"You should have told me," he said, but very gently. He held himself still with an almost palpable effort.
"Oh, please don't stop!" I begged, thinking that the top .
would fly off my head, something drastic would happen, if he didn't go on with it.
"I have no intention of stopping," he promised a little grimly. "Sookie ... this will hurt."
In answer, I raised myself. He made an incoherent noise and pushed into me.
I held my breath. I bit my lip. Ow, ow, ow.
"Darling," Bill said. No one had ever called me that. "How are you?" Vampire or not, he was trembling with the effort of holding back.
"Okay," I said inadequately. I was over the sting, and I'd lose my courage if we didn't proceed. "Now," I said, and I bit him hard on the shoulder.
He gasped, and jerked, and he began moving in earnest. At first I was dazed, but I began to catch on and keep up. He found my response very exciting, and I began to feel that something was just around the corner, so to speak—some­thing very big and good. I said, "Oh, please, Bill, please!" and dug my nails in his hips, almost there, almost there, and then a small shift in our alignment allowed him to press even more directly against me and almost before I could gather myself I was flying, flying, seeing white with gold streaks. I felt Bill's teeth against my neck, and I said, "Yes!" I felt his fangs penetrate, but it was a small pain, an exciting pain, and as he came inside me I felt him draw on the little wound.
We lay there for a long time, from time to time trembling with little aftershocks. I would never forget his taste and smell as long as I lived, I would never forget the feel of him inside me this first time—my first time, ever—I would never forget the pleasure.
Finally Bill moved to lie beside me, propped on one el­bow, and he put his hand over my stomach. "I am the first." "Yes."
"Oh, Sookie." He bent to kiss me, his lips tracing the line of my throat.
"You could tell I don't know much," I said shyly. "But was that all right for you? I mean, about on a par with other women at least? I'll get better."
"You can get more skilled, Sookie, but you can't get any better." He kissed me on the cheek. "You're wonderful."
"Will I be sore?"
"I know you'll think this is odd, but I don't remember. The only virgin I was ever with was my wife, and that was a century and a half ago ... yes, I recall, you will be very sore. We won't be able to make love again, for a day or two."
"Your blood heals," I observed after a little pause, feeling my cheeks redden.
In the moonlight, I could see him shift, to look at me more directly. "So it does," he said. "Would you like that?"
"Sure. Wouldn't you?"
"Yes," he breathed, and bit his own arm.
It was so sudden that I cried out, but he casually rubbed a finger in his own blood, and then before I could tense up he slid that finger up inside me. He began moving it very gently, and in a moment, sure enough, the pain was gone.
'Thanks," I said. "I'm better now."
But he didn't remove his finger.
"Oh," I said. "Would you like to do it again so soon? Can you do that?" And as his finger kept up its motion, I began to hope so.
"Look and see," he offered, a hint of amusement in his sweet dark voice.
I whispered, hardly recognizing myself, "Tell me what you want me to do."
And he did.

I WENT BACK to work the next day. No matter what Bill's healing powers were, I was a little uncomfortable, but boy, did I feel powerful. It was a totally new feeling for me. It was hard not to feel—well, cocky is surely the wrong word— maybe incredibly smug is closer.
Of course, there were the same old problems at the bar— the cacophony of voices, the buzzing of them, the persis­tence. But somehow I seemed better able to tone them down, to tamp them into a pocket. It was easier to keep my guard up, and I felt consequently more relaxed. Or maybe since I was more relaxed—boy, was I more relaxed—it was easier
to guard? I don't know. But I felt better, and I was able to accept the condolences of the patrons with calm instead of tears.
Jason came in at lunch and had a couple of beers with his hamburger, which wasn't his normal regimen. He usually didn't drink during the work day. I knew he'd get mad if I said anything directly, so I just asked him if everything was okay.
"The chief had me in again today," he said in a low voice. He looked around to make sure no one else was listening, but the bar was sparsely filled that day since the Rotary Club was meeting at the Community Building.
"What is he asking you?" My voice was equally low. "How often I'd seen Maudette, did I always get my gas at the place she worked.... Over and over and over, like I hadn't answered those questions seventy-five times. My boss is at the end of his patience, Sookie, and I don't blame him. I been gone from work at least two days, maybe three, with all the trips I been making down to the police station." "Maybe you better get a lawyer," I said uneasily. "That's what Rene said." Then Rene Lenier and I saw eye to eye. "What about Sid Matt Lancaster?" Sidney Matthew Lan­caster, native son and a whiskey sour drinker, had the rep­utation of being the most aggressive trial lawyer in the parish. I liked him because he always treated me with respect when I served him in the bar.
"He might be my best bet." Jason looked as petulant and grim as a lovely person can. We exchanged a glance. We both knew Gran's lawyer was too old to handle the case if Jason was ever, God forbid, arrested.
Jason was far too self-absorbed to notice anything different about me, but I'd worn a white golf shirt (instead of my usual round-necked T-shirt) for the protection of its collar. Arlene was not as unaware as my brother. She'd been eyeing me all morning, and by the time the three o'clock lull hit, she was pretty sure she'd got me figured out. "Girl," she said, "you been having fun?" I turned red as a beet. "Having fun" made my relationship with Bill lighter than it was, but it was accurate as far as it went. I didn't know whether to take the high road and say, "No, making love," or keep my mouth shut, or tell Arlene it was none of her business, or just shout, "Yes!"
"Oh, Sookie, who is the man?"

Uh-oh. "Urn, well, he's not..."
"Not local? You dating one of those servicemen from Bos­sier City?"
"No," I said hesitantly.
"Sam? I've seen him looking at you."
"No."
"Who, then?"
I was acting like I was ashamed. Straighten your spine, Sookie Stackhouse, I told myself sternly. Pay the piper.
"Bill," I said, hoping against hope that she'd just say, "Oh, yeah."
"Bill," Arlene said blankly. I noticed Sam had drifted up and was listening. So was Charlsie Tooten. Even Lafayette stuck his head through the hatch.
"Bill," I said, trying to sound firm. "You know. Bill."
"Bill Auberjunois?"
"No."
"Bill... ?"
"Bill Compton," Sam said flatly, just as I opened my mouth to say the same thing. "Vampire Bill."
Arlene was flabbergasted, Charlsie Tooten immediately gave a little shriek, and Lafayette about dropped his bottom jaw.
"Honey, couldn't you just date a regular human fella?" Arlene asked when she got her voice back.
"A regular human fella didn't ask me out." I could feel the color fix in my cheeks. I stood there with my back straight, feeling defiant and looking it, I'm sure.
"But, sweetie," Charlsie Tooten fluted in her babyish voice, "honey ... Bill's, ah, got that virus."
"I know that," I said, hearing the distinct edge in my voice.
"I thought you were going to say you were dating a black, but you've gone one better, ain't you, girl?" Lafayette said, picking at his fingernail polish.
Sam didn't say anything. He just stood leaning against the bar, and there was a white line around his mouth as if he were biting his cheek inside.
I stared at them all in turn, forcing them to either swallow this or spit it out.
Arlene got through it first. "All right, then. He better treat you good, or we'll get our stakes out!"
They were all able to laugh at that, albeit weakly.
"And you'll save a lot on groceries!" Lafayette pointed out.
But then in one step Sam ruined it all, that tentative ac­ceptance, by suddenly moving to stand beside me and pull the collar of my shirt down.
You could have cut the silence of my friends with a knife. "Oh, shit," Lafayette said, very softly. I looked right into Sam's eyes, thinking I'd never forgive him for doing this to me.
"Don't you touch my clothes," I told him, stepping away from him and pulling the collar back straight. "Don't tend to my personal life."
"I'm scared for you, I'm worried about you," he said, as Arlene and Charlsie hastily found other things to do.
"No you're not, or not entirely. You're mad as hell. Well listen, buddy. You never got in line."
And I stalked away to wipe down the formica on one of the tables. Then I collected all the salt shakers and refilled them. Then I checked the pepper shakers and the bottles of hot peppers on each table and booth, the Tabasco sauce, too. I just kept working and kept my eyes in front of me, and gradually, the atmosphere cooled down.
Sam was back in his office doing paperwork or something, I didn't care what, as long as he kept his opinions to himself. I still felt like he'd ripped the curtain off a private area of my life when he'd exposed my neck, and I hadn't forgiven him. But Arlene and Charlsie had found make-work, as I'd done, and by the time the after-work crowd began trickling in, we were once again fairly comfortable with one another. Arlene came into the women's room with me. "Listen, Sookie, I got to ask. Are vampires all everyone says they are, in the lover department?" I just smiled.
Bill came into the bar that evening, just after dark. I'd worked late since one of the evening waitresses had had car trouble. One minute he wasn't there, and the next minute he was, slowing down so I could see him coming. If Bill had any doubts about making our relationship public, he didn't show them. He lifted my hand and kissed it in a gesture that performed by anyone else would have seemed phony as hell. I felt the touch of his lips on the back of my hand all the way down to my toes, and I knew he could tell that.
"How are you this evening?" he whispered, and I shivered.
"A little ..." I found I couldn't get the words out.
"You can tell me later," he suggested. "When are you through?"
"Just as soon as Susie gets here."
"Come to my house."
"Okay." I smiled up at him, feeling radiant and light­headed.
And Bill smiled back, though since my nearness had af­fected him, his fangs were showing, and maybe to anyone else but me the effect was a little—unsettling.
He bent to kiss me, just a light touch on the cheek, and he turned to leave. But just at that moment, the evening went all to hell.
Malcolm and Diane came in, flinging the door open as if they were making a grand entrance, and of course, they were. I wondered where Liam was. Probably parking the car. It was too much to hope they'd left him at home.
Folks in Bon Temps were getting accustomed to Bill, but the flamboyant Malcolm and the equally flamboyant Diane caused quite a stir. My first thought was that this wasn't going to help people get used to Bill and me.
Malcolm was wearing leather pants and a kind of chain-mail shirt. He looked like something on the cover of a rock album. Diane was wearing a one-piece lime green bodysuit spun out of Lycra or some other very thin, stretchy cloth. I was sure I could count her pubic hairs if I so desired. Blacks didn't come into Merlotte's much, but if any black was ab­solutely safe there, it was Diane. I saw Lafayette goggling through the hatch in open admiration, spiced by a dollop of fear.
The two vampires shrieked with feigned surprise when they saw Bill, like demented drunks. As far as I could tell, Bill was not happy about their presence, but he seemed to handle their invasion calmly, as he did almost everything.
Malcolm kissed Bill on the mouth, and so did Diane. It was hard to tell which greeting was more offensive to the customers in the bar. Bill had better show distaste, and quick, I thought, if he wanted to stay in good with the human in­habitants of Bon Temps.
Bill, who was no fool, took a step back and put his arm around me, dissociating himself from the vampires and align­ing himself with the humans.
"So your little waitress is still alive," Diane said, and her clear voice was audible through the whole bar. "Isn't that amazing."
"Her grandmother was murdered last week," Bill said qui­etly, trying to subdue Diane's desire to make a scene.
Her gorgeous lunatic brown eyes fixed on me, and I felt cold.
"Is that right?" she said and laughed.
That was it. No one would forgive her now.

No one would forgive her now. If Bill had been trying to find a way to entrench himself, this would be the scenario I would write. On the other hand, the disgust I could feel massing from the humans in the bar could back­lash and wash over Bill as well as the renegades.
Of course ... to Diane and her friends, Bill was the ren­egade.
"When's someone going to kill you, baby?" She ran a fingernail under my chin, and I knocked her hand away.
She would have been on me if Malcolm hadn't grabbed her hand, lazily, almost effortlessly. But I saw the strain show in the way he was standing.
"Bill," he said conversationally, as if he wasn't exerting every muscle he had to keep Diane still, "I hear this town is losing its unskilled service personnel at a terrible rate. And a little bird in Shreveport tells me you and your friend here were at Fangtasia asking questions about what vampire the murdered fang-bangers might have been with."
"You know that's for us to know, no one else," Malcolm continued, and all of a sudden his face was so serious it was
truly terrifying. "Some of us don't want to go to—baseball— games and ..." (here he was searching his memory for some­thing disgustingly human, I could tell) "barbecues! We are Vampire!" He invested the word with majesty, with glamor, and I could tell a lot of the people in the bar were falling under his spell. Malcolm was intelligent enough to want to erase the bad impression he knew Diane had made, all the while showering contempt on those of us it had been made on.
I stomped on his instep with every ounce of weight I could muster. He showed his fangs at me. The people in the bar blinked and shook themselves.
"Why don't you just get outta here, mister," Rene said. He was slouched at the bar with his elbows flanking a beer.
There was moment when things hung in the balance, when the bar could have turned into a bloodbath. None of my fel­low humans seemed to quite comprehend how strong vam­pires were, or how ruthless. Bill had moved in front of me, a fact registered by every citizen in Merlotte's.
"Well, if we're not wanted..." Malcolm said. His thick-muscled masculinity warred with the fluting voice he sud­denly affected. "These good people would like to eat meat, Diane, and do human things. By themselves. Or with our former friend Bill."
"I think the little waitress would like to do a very human thing with Bill," Diane began, when Malcolm caught her by the arm and propelled her from the room before she could cause more damage.
The entire bar seemed to shudder collectively when they were out the door, and I thought I better leave, even though Susie hadn't shown up yet. Bill waited for me outside; when I asked him why, he said he wanted to be sure they'd really left.
I followed Bill to his house, thinking we'd gotten off rel­atively lightly from the vampire visitation. I wondered why Diane and Malcolm had come; it seemed odd to me that they would be cruising so far from home and decide, on a whim, to drop in Merlotte's. Since they were making no real effort at assimilation, maybe they wanted to scotch Bill's prospects.
The Compton house was visibly different from the last time I'd been in, the sickening evening I'd met the other vampires.
The contractors were really coming through for Bill, whether because they were scared not to or because he was paying well, I didn't know. Maybe both. The living room was getting a new ceiling and the new wallpaper was white with a delicate flowered pattern. The hardwood floors had been cleaned, and they shone as they must have originally. Bill led me to the kitchen. It was sparse, naturally, but bright and cheerful and had a brand-new refrigerator full of bottled synthetic blood (yuck).
The downstairs bathroom was opulent.
As far as I knew, Bill never used the bathroom; at least for the primary human function. I stared around me in amazement.
The space for this grand bathroom had been achieved by including what had formerly been the pantry and about half the old kitchen.
"I like to shower," he said, pointing to a clear shower stall in one corner. It was big enough for two grownups and maybe a dwarf or two. "And I like to lie in warm water." He indicated the centerpiece of the room, a huge sort of tub surrounded by an indoor deck of cedar, with steps on two sides. There were potted plants arranged all around it. The room was as close to being in the middle of a very luxurious jungle as you could get in northern Louisiana. "What is that?" I asked, awed.
"It's a portable spa," Bill said proudly. "It has jets you can adjust individually so each person can get the right force of water. It's a hot tub," he simplified.
"It has seats," I said, looking in. The interior was decorated around the top with green and blue tiles. There were fancy controls on the outside. Bill turned them, and water began to surge. "Maybe we can bathe together?" Bill suggested. I felt my cheeks flame, and my heart began to pound a little faster.
"Maybe now?" Bill's fingers tugging at my shirt where it was tucked into my black shorts. "Oh, well... maybe." I couldn't seem to look at him straight when I thought of how this—okay, man—had seen more of me than I'd ever let anyone see, including my doctor.
"Have you missed me?" he asked, his hands unbuttoning my shorts and peeling them down

"Yes," I said promptly because I knew that to be true.
He laughed, even as he knelt to untie my Nikes. "What did you miss most, Sookie?"
"I missed your silence," I said without thinking at all.
He looked up. His fingers paused in the act of pulling the end of the bow to loosen it.
"My silence," he said.
"Not being able to hear your thoughts. You just can't imagine, Bill, how wonderful that is."
"I was thinking you'd say something else."
"Well, I missed that, too."
"Tell me about it," he invited, pulling my socks off and running his fingers up my thigh, tugging off the panties and shorts.
"Bill! I'm embarrassed," I protested.
"Sookie, don't be embarrassed with me. Least of anyone, with me." He was standing now, divesting me of my shirt and reaching behind me to unsnap my bra, running his hands over the marks the straps had made on my skin, turning his attention to my breasts. He toed off his sandals at some point.
"I'll try," I said, looking at my own toes.
"Undress me."
Now that I could do. I unbuttoned his shirt briskly and eased it out of his pants and off his shoulders. I unbuckled his belt and began to work on the waist button of his slacks. It was stiff, and I had quite a job.
I thought I was going to cry if the button didn't cooperate more. I felt clumsy and inept.
He took my hands and led them up to his chest. "Slow, Sookie, slow," he said, and his voice had gone soft and shiv­ery. I could feel myself relaxing almost inch by inch, and I began to stroke his chest as he'd stroked mine, twining the curly hair around my fingers and gently pinching his flat nipples. His hand went behind my head and pressed gently. I hadn't known men liked that, but Bill sure did, so I paid equal attention to the other one. While I was doing that, my hands resumed work on the damn button, and this time it came undone with ease. I began pushing down his pants, sliding my fingers inside his Jockeys.
He helped me down into the spa, the water frothing around our legs.
"Shall I bathe you first?" he asked.
"No," I said breathlessly. "Give me the soap."

162

Okay, that was erotic to say the least.

great read. I wonder when Tara will show up

Chapter 7

THE NEXT NIGHT BILL and I had an unsettling conver­sation. We were in his bed, his huge bed with the carved headboard and a brand-new Restonic mattress. His sheets were flowered like his wallpaper, and I remember wondering if he liked flowers printed on his possessions because he couldn't see the real thing, at least as they were meant to be seen ... in the daylight.
Bill was lying on his side, looking down at me. We'd been to the movies; Bill was crazy about movies with aliens, maybe having some kindred feeling for space creatures. It had been a real shoot-em-up, with almost all the aliens being ugly, creepy, bent on killing. He'd fumed about that while he'd taken me out to eat, and then back to his place. I'd been glad when he'd suggested testing the new bed.
I was the first to he on it with him.
He was looking at me, as he liked to do, I was learning. Maybe he was listening to my heart pounding, since he could hear things I couldn't, or maybe he was watching my pulse throb, because he could see things I couldn't, too. Our con­versation had strayed from the movie we'd seen to the near-ing parish elections (Bill was going to try to register to vote, absentee ballot), and then to our childhoods. I was realizing that Bill was trying desperately to remember what it had been like to be a regular person.
"Did you ever play 'show me yours' with your brother?" he asked. "They now say that's normal, but I will never forget my mother beating the tarnation out of my brother Robert after she found him in the bushes with Sarah."
"No," I said, trying to sound casual, but my face tightened, and I could feel the clenching of fear in my stomach. "You're not telling the truth."
"Yes, I am." I kept my eyes fixed on his chin, hoping to think of some way to change the topic. But Bill was nothing if not persistent.
"Not your brother, then. Who?"
"I don't want to talk about this." My hands contracted into fists, and I could feel myself begin to shut down.
But Bill hated being evaded. He was used to people telling him whatever he wanted to know because he was used to using his glamor to get his way.
"Tell me, Sookie." His voice was coaxing, his eyes big pools of curiosity. He ran his thumbnail down my stomach, and I shivered.
"I had a ... funny uncle," I said, feeling the familiar tight smile stretch my lips.
He raised his dark arched brows. He hadn't heard the phrase.
I said as distantly as I could manage, "That's an adult male relative who molests his ... the children in the family."
His eyes began to burn. He swallowed; I could see his Adam's apple move. I grinned at him. My hands were pulling my hair back from my face. I couldn't stop it.
"And someone did this to you? How old were you?"
"Oh, it started when I was real little," and I could feel my breathing begin to speed up, my heart beat faster, the panicky traits that always came back when I remembered. My knees drew up and pressed together. "I guess I was five," I babbled, talking faster and faster, "I know you can tell, he never actu­ally, ah, screwed me, but he did other stuff," and now my hands were shaking in front of my eyes where I held them to shield them from Bill's gaze. "And the worst thing, Bill, the worst thing," I went on, just unable to stop, "is that every time he came to visit, I always knew what he was going to do because I could read his mind! And there wasn't anything I could do to stop it!" I clamped my hands over my mouth to make myself shut up. I wasn't supposed to talk about it. I rolled over onto my stomach to conceal myself, and held my body absolutely rigid.
After a long time, I felt Bill's cool hand on my shoulder. It lay there, comforting.
"This was before your parents died?" he said in his usual calm voice. I still couldn't look at him.
"Yes."
"You told your mama? She did nothing?"
"No. She thought I was dirty minded, or that I'd found some book at the library that taught me something she didn't feel I was ready to know." I could remember her face, framed in hair about two shades darker than my medium blond. Her face pinched with distaste. She had come from a very conser­vative family, and any public display of affection or any mention of a subject she thought indecent was flatly dis­couraged.
"I wonder that she and my father seemed happy," I told my vampire.
"They were so different." Then I saw how ludi­crous my saying that was. I rolled over to my side. "As if we aren't," I told Bill, and tried to smile. Bill's face was quite still, but I could see a muscle in his neck jumping.
"Did you tell your father?"
"Yes, right before he died. I was too embarrassed to talk to him about it when I was younger; and Mother didn't be­lieve me. But I couldn't stand it anymore, knowing I was going to see my great-uncle Bartlett at least two weekends out of every month when he drove up to visit."
"He still lives?"
"Uncle Bartlett? Oh, sure. He's Gran's brother, and Gran was my dad's mother. My uncle lives in Shreveport. But when Jason and I went to live with Gran, after my parents died, the first time Uncle Bartlett came to her house I hid. When she found me and asked me why, I told her. And she believed me." I felt the relief of that day all over again, the beautiful sound of my grandmother's voice promising me I'd never have to see her brother again, that he would never never come to the house.
And he hadn't. She had cut off her own brother to protect me. He'd tried with Gran's daughter, Linda, too, when she was a small girl, but my grandmother had buried the incident in her own mind, dismissed it as something misunderstood. She had told me that she'd never left her brother alone with Linda at any time after that, had almost quit inviting him to her home, while not quite letting herself believe that he'd touched her little girl's privates.
"So he's a Stackhouse, too?"
"Oh, no. See, Gran became a Stackhouse when she mar­ried, but she was a Hale before." I wondered at having to spell this out for Bill. He was sure Southern enough, even if he was a vampire, to keep track of a simple family relation­ship like that.
Bill looked distant, miles away. I had put him off with my grim nasty little story, and I had chilled my own blood, that was for sure.
"Here, I'll leave," I said and slid out of bed, bending to retrieve my clothes. Quicker than I could see, he was off the bed and taking the clothes from my hands.
"Don't leave me now," he said. "Stay."
"I'm a weepy ol' thing tonight." Two tears trickled down my cheeks, and I smiled at him.
His fingers wiped the tears from my face, and his tongue traced their marks.
"Stay with me till dawn," he said.
"But you have to get in your hidey hole by then." .,
"My what?"
"Wherever you spend the day. I don't want to know where it is!" I held up my hands to emphasize that. "But don't you have to get in there before it's even a little light?"
"Oh," he said, "I'll know. I can feel it coming."
"So you can't oversleep?"
"No."
"All right. Will you let me get some sleep?"
"Of course I will," he said with a gentlemanly bow, only a little off mark because he was naked. "In a little while."
Then, as I lay down on the bed and held out my arms to him, he said, "Eventually."

SURE ENOUGH, IN the morning I was in the bed by myself. I lay there for a little, thinking. I'd had little niggling thoughts from time to time, but for the first time the flaws in my relationship with the vampire hopped out of their own hidey hole and took over my brain.
I would never see Bill in the sunlight. I would never fix his breakfast, never meet him for lunch. (He could bear to watch me eat food, though he wasn't thrilled by the process, and I always had to brush my teeth afterward very thor­oughly, which was a good habit anyway.)
I could never have a child by Bill, which was nice at least when you thought of not having to practice birth control, but...
I'd never call Bill at the office to ask him to stop on the way home for some milk. He'd never join the Rotary, or give a career speech at the high school, or coach Little League Baseball.
He'd never go to church with me.
And I knew that now, while I lay here awake—listening to the birds chirping their morning sounds and the trucks beginning to rumble down the road while all over Bon Temps people were getting up and putting on the coffee and fetching their papers and planning their day—that the creature I loved was lying somewhere in a hole underground, to all intents and purposes dead until dark.
I was so down by then that I had to think of an upside, while I cleaned up a little in the bathroom and dressed.
He seemed to genuinely care for me. It was kind of nice, but unsettling, not to know exactly how much.
Sex with him was absolutely great. I had never dreamed it would be that wonderful.
No one would mess with me while I was Bill's girlfriend. Any hands that had patted me in unwanted caresses were kept in their owner's laps, now. And if the person who'd killed my grandmother had killed her because she'd walked in on him while he was waiting for me, he wouldn't get another try at me.
And I could relax with Bill, a luxury so precious I could not put a value on it. My mind could range at will, and I would not learn anything he didn't tell me.
There was that.
It was in this kind of contemplative mood that I came down Bill's steps to my car.
To my amazement, Jason was there sitting in his pickup.
This was not exactly a happy moment. I trudged over to his window.
"I see it's true," he said. He handed me a Styrofoam cup of coffee from the Grabbit Quik. "Get in the truck with me." I climbed in, pleased by the coffee but cautious overall. I put my guard up immediately. It slipped back into place slowly and painfully, like wiggling back into a girdle that was too tight in the first place.
"I can't say nothing," he told me. "Not after the way I lived my life these past few years. As near as I can tell, he's your first, isn't he?" I nodded.
"He treat you good?" I nodded again. "I got something to tell you." "Okay."
"Uncle Bartlett got killed last night." I stared at him, the steam from the coffee rising between us as I pried the lid off the cup. "He's dead," I said, trying to understand it. I'd worked hard never to think of him, and here I thought of him, and the next thing I heard, he was dead. "Yep."
"Wow." I looked out the window at the rosy light on the horizon. I felt a surge of—freedom. The only one who re­membered besides me, the only one who'd enjoyed it, who insisted to the end that I had initiated and continued the sick activities he thought were so gratifying... he was dead. I took a deep breath. "I hope he's in hell," I said. "I hope every time he thinks of what he did to me, a demon pokes him in the butt with a pitchfork."
"God, Sookie!"
"He never messed with you."
"Damn straight!"
"Implying what?"
"Nothing, Sookie! But he never bothered anyone but you that I know of!"
"Bullshit. He molested Aunt Linda, too."
Jason's face went blank with shock. I'd finally gotten through to my brother. "Gran told you that?"
"Yes."
"She never said anything to me."
"Gran knew it was hard for you, not seeing him again when she could tell you loved him. But she couldn't let you be alone with him, because she couldn't be a hundred percent sure girls were all he wanted."
"I've seen him the past couple of years."
"You have?" This was news to me. It would have been news to Gran, too.
"Sookie, he was an old man. He was so sick. He had prostate trouble, and he was feeble, and he had to use a walker."
"That probably slowed him down chasing the five-year-olds."
"Get over it!"
"Right! Like I could!"
We glared at each other over the width of the truck seat.
"So what happened to him?" I asked finally, reluctantly.
"A burglar broke into his house last night."
"Yeah? And?"
"And broke his neck. Threw him down the stairs."
"Okay. So I know. Now I'm going home. I gotta shower and get ready for work."
"That's all you're saying?"

"What else is there to say?"
"Don't want to know about the funeral?"
"No."
"Don't want to know about his will?"
"No."
He threw up his hands. "All right," he said, as if he'd been arguing a point very hard with me and realized that I was intractable.
"What else? Anything?" I asked.
"No. Just your great-uncle dying. I thought that was enough."
"Actually, you're right," I said, opening the truck door and sliding out. "That was enough." I raised my cup to him. "Thanks for the coffee, brother."
it wasn't till I got to work that it clicked.
I was drying a glass and really not thinking about Uncle Bartlett, and suddenly my fingers lost all strength.
"Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea," I said, looking down at the broken slivers of glass at my feet. "Bill had him killed."
1 don't KNOW why I was so sure I was right; but I was, the minute the idea crossed my mind. Maybe I had heard Bill dialing the phone when I was half-asleep. Maybe the expression on Bill's face when I'd finished telling him about Uncle Bartlett had rung a silent warning bell.
I wondered if Bill would pay the other vampire in money, or if he'd repay him in kind.
I got through work in a frozen state. I couldn't talk to anyone about what I was thinking, couldn't even say I was sick without someone asking me what was wrong. So I didn't speak at all, I just worked. I tuned out everything except the next order I had to fill. I drove home trying to feel just as frozen, but I had to face facts when I was alone. I freaked out. I had known, really I had, that Bill certainly had killed a human or two in his long, long, life. When he'd been a young vampire, when he'd needed lots of blood, before he'd gained control of his needs sufficiently to exist on a gulp here, a mouthful there, without actually killing anyone he drank from ... he'd told me himself there'd been a death or two along the way. And he'd killed the Rattrays. But they'd have done me in that night in back of Merlotte's, without a doubt, if Bill hadn't intervened. I was naturally inclined to excuse him those deaths.
How was the murder of Uncle Bartlett different? He'd harmed me, too, dreadfully, made my already difficult child­hood a true nightmare. Hadn't I been relieved, even pleased, to hear he'd been found dead? Didn't my horror at Bill's intervention reek of hypocrisy of the worst sort?
Yes. No?
Tired and incredibly confused, I sat on my front steps and waited in the darkness, my arms wrapped around my knees. The crickets were singing in the tall grass when he came, arriving so quietly and quickly I didn't hear him. One minute 1 was alone with the night, and the next, Bill was sitting on the steps beside me.
"What do you want to do tonight, Sookie?" His arm went around me.
"Oh, Bill." My voice was heavy with despair.
His arm dropped. I didn't look up at his face, couldn't have seen it through the darkness, anyway.
"You should not have done it."
He didn't bother with denying it at least.
"I am glad he's dead, Bill. But I can't..."
"Do you think I would ever hurt you, Sookie?" His voice was quiet and rustling, like feet through dry grass.
"No. Oddly enough, I don't think you would hurt me, even if you were really mad at me."
"Then...?"
"It's like dating the Godfather, Bill. I'm scared to say any­thing around you now. I'm not used to my problems being solved that way."
"I love you."
He'd never said it before, and I might almost have imag­ined it now, his voice was so low and whispery.
"Do you, Bill?" I didn't raise my face, kept my forehead pressed against my knees.
"Yes, I do."
"Then you have to let my life get lived, Bill, you can't alter it for me."
"You wanted me to alter it when the Rattrays were beating you."
"Point taken. But I can't have you trying to fine-tune my day-to-day life. I'm gonna get mad at people, people are gonna get mad at me. I can't worry about them being killed. I can't live like that, honey. You see what I'm saying?"
"Honey?" he repeated.
"I love you," I said. "I don't know why, but I do. I want to call you all those gooshy words you use when you love someone, no matter how stupid it sounds since you're a vam­pire. I want to tell you you're my baby, that I'll love you till we're old and gray—though that's not gonna happen. That I know you'll always be true to me—hey, that's not gonna happen either. I keep running up against a brick wall when I try to tell you I love you, Bill." I fell silent. I was all cried out.
"This crisis came sooner than I thought it would,"Bill said from the darkness. The crickets had resumed their chorus, and I listened to them for a long moment.
"Yeah."
"What now, Sookie?"

"I have to have a little time."
"Before ... ?"
"Before I decide if the love is worth the misery."
"Sookie, if you knew how different you taste, how much I want to protect you ..."
I could tell from Bill's voice that these were very tender feelings he was sharing with me. "Oddly enough," I said, "that's what I feel about you. But I have to live here, and I have to live with myself, and I have to think about some rales we gotta get clear between us."
"So what do we do now?"
"I think. You go do whatever you were doing before we met."
"Trying to figure out if I could live mainstream. Trying to think of who I'd feed on, if I could stop drinking that damn synthetic blood."
"I know you'll—feed on someone else besides me." I was trying very hard to keep my voice level. "Please, not anyone here, not anyone I have to see. I couldn't bear it. It's not fair of me to ask, but I'm asking."
"If you won't date anyone else, won't bed anyone else."
"I won't." That seemed an easy enough promise to make.
"Will you mind if I come into the bar?"
"No. I'm not telling anyone we're apart. I'm not talking about it."
He leaned over, I could feel the pressure on my arm as his body pressed against it.
"Kiss me," he said.
I lifted my head and turned, and our lips met. It was blue fire, not orange-and-red flames, not that kind of heat: blue fire. After a second, his arms went around me. After another, my arms went around him. I began to feel boneless, limp. With a gasp, I pulled away.
"Oh, we can't, Bill."
I heard his breath draw in. "Of course not, if we're separat­ing," he said quietly, but he didn't sound like he thought I meant it. "We should definitely not be kissing. Still less should I want to throw you back on the porch and fuck you till you faint."
My knees were actually shaking. His deliberately crude language, coming out in that cold sweet voice, made the longing inside me surge even higher. It took everything I had, every little scrap of self-control, to push myself up and go in the house.
But I did it.


IN THE FOLLOWING week, I began to craft a life without Gran and without Bill. I worked nights and worked hard. I was extra careful, for the first time in my life, about locks and security. There was a murderer out there, and I no longer had my powerful protector. I considered getting a dog, but couldn't decide what kind I wanted. My cat, Tina, was only protection in the sense that she always reacted when someone came very near the house.
I got calls from Gran's lawyer from time to time, inform­ing me about the progress of winding up her estate. I got calls from Bartlett's lawyer. My great-uncle had left me twenty thousand dollars, a great sum for him. I almost turned down the legacy. But I thought again. I gave the money to the local mental health center, earmarking it for the treatment of children who were victims of molestation and rape.
They were glad to get it.
I took vitamins, loads of them, because I was a little ane­mic. I drank lots of fluids and ate lots of protein.
And I ate as much garlic as I wanted, something Bill hadn't been able to tolerate. He said it came out through my pores, even, when I had garlic bread with spaghetti and meat sauce one night.
I slept and slept and slept. Staying up nights after a work shift had me rest-deprived.
After three days I felt restored, physically. In fact, it seemed to me that I was a little stronger than I had been. I began to take in what was happening around me. The first thing I noticed was that local folks were really pissed off at the vampires who nested in Monroe. Diane, Liam, and Malcolm had been touring bars in the area, appar­ently trying to make it impossible for other vampires who wanted to mainstream. They'd been behaving outrageously, offensively. The three vampires made the escapades of the Louisiana Tech students look bland.
They didn't seem to ever imagine they were endangering themselves. The freedom of being out of the coffin had gone to their heads. The right to legally exist had withdrawn all their constraints, all their prudence and caution. Malcolm nipped at a bartender in Bogaloosas. Diane danced naked in Farmerville. Liam dated an underage girl in Shongaloo, and her mother, too. He took blood from both. He didn't erase the memory of either.
Rene was talking to Mike Spencer, the funeral director, in Merlotte's one Thursday night, and they hushed when I got near. Naturally, that caught my attention. So I read Mike's mind. A group of local men were thinking of burning out the Monroe vampires.
I didn't know what to do. The three were, if not exactly friends of Bill, at least sort of coreligionists. But I loathed Malcolm, Diane, and Liam just as much as anyone else. On the other hand; and boy—there always was- another hand, wasn't there?—it just went against my grain to know ahead of the fact about premeditated murders and just sit on my hands.
Maybe this was all liquor talking. Just to check, I dipped into the minds of the people around me. To my dismay, many of them were thinking about torching the vampire's nest. But I couldn't track down the origin of the idea. It felt as though the poison had flowed from one mind and infected others.
There wasn't any proof, any proof at all, that Maudette and Dawn and my grandmother had been killed by a vam­pire. In fact, rumor had it that the coroner's report might show evidence against that. But the three vampires were be­having in such a way that people wanted to blame them for something, wanted to get rid of them, and since Maudette and Dawn were both vampire-bitten and habitues of vampire bars, well, folks just cobbled that together to pound out a conviction.
Bill came in the seventh night I'd been alone. He appeared at his table quite suddenly. He wasn't by himself. There was a boy with him, a boy who looked maybe fifteen. He was a vampire, too.
"Sookie, this is Harlen Ives from Minneapolis," Bill said, as if this were an ordinary introduction.
"Harlen," I said, and nodded. "Pleased to meet you."
"Sookie." He bobbed his head at me, too.
"Harlen is in transit from Minnesota to New Orleans," Bill said, sounding positively chatty.
"I'm going on vacation," Harlen said. "I've been wanting to visit New Orleans for years. It's just a mecca for us, you know."
"Oh ... right," I said, trying to sound matter of fact.
"There's this number you can call," Harlen informed me. "You can stay with an actual resident, or you can rent a ..."
"Coffin?" I asked brightly.
"Well, yes."
"How nice for you," I said, smiling for all I was worth. "What can I get you? I believe Sam has restocked the blood, Bill, if you'd like some? It's flavored A neg, or we've got the O positive."

"Oh, A negative, I think," Bill said, after he and Harlen had a silent communication.
"Coming right up!" I stomped back to the cooler behind the bar and pulled out two A neg's, popped the tops, and
carted them back on a tray, I smiled the whole time, just like I used to.
"Are you all right, Sookie?" Bill asked in a more natural voice after I'd plonked their drinks down in front of them.
"Of course, Bill," I said cheerily. I wanted to break the bottle over Bill's head. Harlen, indeed. Overnight stay. Right.
"Harlen would like to drive over to visit Malcolm, later," Bill said, when I came to take the empties and ask if they wanted a refill.
"I'm sure Malcolm would love to meet Harlen," I said, trying not to sound as bitchy as I felt.
"Oh, meeting Bill has just been super," Harlen said, smil­ing at me, showing fangs. Harlen knew how to do bitch, all right. "But Malcolm is absolutely a legend."
"Watch out," I said to Bill. I wanted to tell him how much peril the three nesting vampires had put themselves into, but I didn't think it'd come to a head just yet. And I didn't want to spell it out because Harlen was sitting there, batting his baby blues at me and looking like a teen sex symbol. "No­body's too happy with those three, right now," I added, after a moment. It was not an effectual warning.
Bill just looked at me, puzzled, and I spun on my heel and walked away.
I came to regret that moment, regret it bitterly.


AFTER BILL AND Harlen had left, the bar buzzed even harder with the kind of talk I'd heard from Rene and Mike Spencer. It seemed to me like someone had been lighting fire, keeping the anger level stoked up. But for the life of me I couldn't discover who it was, though I did some random listening, both mental and physical. Jason came into the bar, and we said hello, but not much more. He hadn't forgiven me for my reaction to Uncle Bartlett's death.
He'd get over it. At least he wasn't thinking about burning anything, except maybe creating some heat in Liz Barrett's bed. Liz, even younger than me, had curly short brown hair and big brown eyes and an unexpectedly no-nonsense air about her that made me think Jason might have met his match. After I'd said good-bye to them after their pitcher of beer was empty, I realized that the anger level in the bar had escalated, that the men were really serious about doing some­thing.
I began to be more than anxious.
As the evening wore on, the activity in the bar grew more and more frenetic. Less women, more men. More table-hopping. More drinking. Men were standing, instead of sit­ting. It was hard to pin down, since there wasn't any big meeting, really. It was by word-of-mouth, whispered from ear to ear. No one jumped on the bar and screamed, "Whatta ya say, boys? Are we gonna put up with those monsters in our midst? To the castle!" or anything like that. It was just that, after a time, they all began drifting out, standing in huddled groups out in the parking lot. I looked out one of the windows at them, shaking my head. This wasn't good.
Sam was uneasy, too.
"What do you think?" I asked him, and I realized this was the first time I'd spoken to him all evening, other than "Pass the pitcher," or "Give me another margarita."
"I think we've got a mob," he said. "But they'll hardly go over to Monroe now. The vampires'll be up and about until dawn."
"Where is their house, Sam?"
"I understand it's on the outskirts of Monroe on the west side—in other words, closest to us," he told me. "I don't know for sure."
I drove home after closing, half hoping I'd see Bill lurking in my driveway so I could tell him what was afoot.
But I didn't see him, and I wouldn't go to his house. After a long hesitation, I dialed his number, but got only his an­swering machine. I left a message. I had no idea what the three nesting vampires' phone was listed under, if they had a phone at all.
As I pulled off my shoes and removed my jewelry—all silver, take that, Bill!—I remember worrying, but I wasn't worrying enough. I went to bed and quickly to sleep in the bedroom that was now mine. The moonlight streamed in the open shades, making strange shadows on the floor. But I only stared at them for a few minutes. Bill didn't wake me that night, returning my call.


BUT THE PHONE did ring, early in the morning, after daylight.
"What?" I asked, dazed, the receiver pressed to my ear. I peered at the clock. It was seven-thirty.
"They burned the vampires' house," Jason said. "I hope yours wasn't in it."
"What?" I asked again, but my voice was panicked now.
"They burned the vampires' house outside of Monroe. Af­ter sunrise. It's on Callista Street, west of Archer."
I remembered Bill saying he might take Harlen over there. Had he stayed?
"No." I said it definitely.
"Yes."
"I have to go," I said, hanging up the phone. it smoldered IN the bright sunlight. Wisps of smoke trailed up into the blue sky. Charred wood looked like alli­gator skin. Fire trucks and law enforcement cars were parked helter-skelter on the lawn of the two-story house. A group of the curious stood behind yellow tape.
The remains of four coffins sat side by side on the scorched grass. There was a body bag, too. I began to walk toward them, but for the longest time they seemed to be no closer; it was like one of those dreams where you can never reach your goal.
Someone grabbed my arm and tried to stop me. I can't remember what I said, but I remember a horrified face. I trudged on through the debris, inhaling the smell of burned things, wet charred things, a smell that wouldn't leave me the rest of my life.
I reached the first coffin and looked in. What was left of the lid was open to the light. The sun was coming up; any moment now it would kiss the dreadful thing resting on soggy, white silk lining.
Was it Bill? There was no way to tell. The corpse was disintegrating bit by bit even as I watched. Tiny fragments flaked off and blew into the breeze, or disappeared in a tiny puff of smoke where the sun's rays began to touch the body.
Each coffin held a similar horror.
Sam was standing by me.
"Can you call this murder, Sam?"
He shook his head. "I just don't know, Sookie. Legally, killing the vampires is murder. But you'd have to prove arson first, though I don't think that'd be very hard." We could both smell gasoline. There were men buzzing around the house, climbing here and there, yelling to each other. It didn't appear to me that these men were conducting any serious crime-scene investigation.
"But this body here, Sookie." Sam pointed to the body bag on the grass. "This was a real human, and they have to inves­tigate. I don't think any member of that mob ever realized there might be a human in there, ever considered anything besides what they did."
"So why are you here, Sam?"
"For you," he said simply.
"I won't know if it's Bill all day, Sam."
"Yes, I know."
"What am I supposed to do all day? How can I wait?"
"Maybe some drugs," he suggested. "What about sleeping pills or something?"
"I don't have anything like that," I said. "I've never had trouble sleeping."
This conversation was getting odder and odder, but I don't think I could have said anything else.
A big man was in front of me, the local law. He was sweating in the morning heat, and he looked like he'd been up for hours. Maybe he'd been on the night shift and had to stay on when the fire started.
When men I knew had started the fire.
"Did you know these people, miss?"
"Yes, I did. I'd met them."
"Can you identify the remains?"
"Who could identify that?" I asked incredulously.
The bodies were almost gone now, featureless and disin­tegrating.
He looked sick. "Yes, ma'am. But the person."
"I'll look," I said before I had time to think. The habit of being helpful was mighty hard to break.
As if he could tell I was about to change my mind, the big man knelt on the singed grass and unzipped the bag. The sooty face inside was that of a girl I'd never met. I thanked God.
"I don't know her," I said, and felt my knees give. Sam caught me before I was on the ground, and I had to lean against him.

"Poor girl," I whispered. "Sam, I don't know what to do." . The law took part of my time that day. They wanted to know everything I knew about the vampires who had owned the house, and I told them, but it didn't amount to much. Malcolm, Diane, Liam. Where they'd come from, their age, why they'd settled in Monroe, who their lawyers were; how would I know anything like that? I'd never even been to their house before.
When my questioner, whoever he was, found out that I'd met them through Bill, he wanted to know where Bill was, how he could contact him.
"He may be right there," I said, pointing to the fourth coffin. "I won't know till dark." My hand rose of its own volition and covered my mouth.
Just then one of the firemen started to laugh, and his com­panion, too. "Southern fried vampires!" the shorter one hooted to the man who was questioning me. "We got us some Southern fried vampires here!"
He didn't think it was so damn funny when I kicked him. Sam pulled me off and the man who'd been questioning me grabbed the fireman I'd attacked. I was screaming like a ban­shee and would have gone for him again if Sam had let go. But he didn't. He dragged me toward my car, his hands just as strong as bands of iron. I had a sudden vision of how ashamed my grandmother would have been to see me screaming at a public servant, to see me physically attack someone. The idea pricked my crazy hostility like a needle puncturing a balloon. I let Sam shove me into the passenger's seat, and when he started the car and began backing away, I let him drive me home while I sat in utter silence. We got to my house all too soon. It was only ten o'clock in the morning. Since it was daylight savings time I had at least ten plus hours to wait.

Sam made some phone calls while I sat on the couch star­ing ahead of me. Five minutes had passed when he came back into the living room.
"Come on, Sookie," he said briskly. "These blinds are filthy."
"What?"
"The blinds. How could you have let them go like this?"
"What?"
"We're going to clean. Get a bucket and some ammonia and some rags. Make some coffee."
Moving slowly and cautiously, afraid I might dry up and blow away like the bodies in the coffins, I did as he bid me.
Sam had the curtains down on the living-room windows by the time I got back with the bucket and rags.
"Where's the washing machine?"
"Back there, off the kitchen," I said, pointing.
Sam went back to the washroom with an armful of cur­tains. Gran had washed those not a month ago, for Bill's visit. I didn't say a word.
I lowered one of the blinds, closed it, and began washing. When the blinds were clean, we polished the windows them­selves. It began raining about the middle of the morning. We couldn't get the outside. Sam got the long-handled dust mop and got the spider webs out of the corners of the high ceiling, and I wiped down the baseboards. He took down the mirror over the mantel, dusted the parts that we couldn't normally reach, and then we cleaned the mirror and rehung it. I cleaned the old marble fireplace till there wasn't a trace of winter's fire left. I got a pretty screen and put it over the fireplace, one painted with magnolia blossoms. I cleaned the television screen and had Sam lift it so I could dust underneath. I put all the movies back in their own boxes and labeled what I'd taped. I took all the cushions off the couch and vacuumed up the debris that had collected beneath them, finding a dollar and five cents in change. I vacuumed the carpet and used the dust mop on the wood floors.
We moved into the dining room and polished everything that could be polished. When the wood of the table and chairs was gleaming, Sam asked me how long it'd been since I'd done Gran's silver.
I hadn't ever polished Gran's silver. We opened the buffet to find that, yes, it certainly needed it. So into the kitchen we carried it, and we found the silver polish, and we polished away. The radio was on, but I gradually realized that Sam was turning it off every time the news began.
We cleaned all day. It rained all day. Sam only spoke to me to direct me to the next task.
I worked very hard. So did he.
By the time the light was growing dim, I had the cleanest house in Renard Parish.
Sam said, "I'm going now, Sookie. I think you want to be alone."
"Yes," I said. "I want to thank you some time, but I can't thank you now. You saved me today."
I felt his lips on my forehead and then a minute later I heard the door slam. I sat at the table while the darkness began to fill the kitchen. When I almost could not see, I went outside. I took my big flashlight.
It didn't matter that it was still raining. I had on a sleeve­less denim dress and a pair of sandals, what I'd pulled on that morning after Jason had called me.
I stood in the pouring warm rain, my hair plastered to my skull and my dress clinging wetly to my skin. I turned left to the woods and began to make my way through them, slowly and carefully at first. As Sam's calming influence be­gan to evaporate, I began to run, tearing my cheeks on branches, scratching my legs on thorny vines. I came out of the woods and began to dash through the cemetery, the beam of the flashlight bobbing before me. I had thought I was going to the house on the other side, the Compton house: but then I knew Bill must be here, somewhere in this six acres of bones and stones. I stood in the center of the oldest part of the graveyard, surrounded by monuments and modest tombstones, in the company of the dead.
I screamed, "Bill Compton! Come out now!"
I turned in circles, looking around in the near-blackness, knowing even if I couldn't see him, Bill would be able to see me, if he could see anything—if he wasn't one of those blackened, flaking atrocities I'd seen in the front yard of the house outside Monroe.
No sound. No movement except the falling of the gentle drenching rain.
"Bill! Bill! Come out!"
I felt, rather than heard, movement to my right. I turned the beam of the flashlight in that direction. The ground was buckling. As I watched, a white hand shot up from the red soil. The dirt began to heave and crumble. A figure climbed out of the ground.
"Bill?"
It moved toward me. Covered with red streaks, his hair full of dirt, Bill took a hesitant step in my direction.
I couldn't even go to him.
"Sookie," he said, very close to me, "why are you here?" For once, he sounded disoriented and uncertain.
I had to tell him, but I couldn't open my mouth.
"Sweetheart?"
I went down like a stone. I was abruptly on my knees in the sodden grass.
"What happened while I slept?" He was kneeling by me, bare and streaming with rain.
"You don't have clothes oh," I murmured.
"They'd just get dirty," he said sensibly. "When I'm going to sleep in the soil. I take them off."
"Oh. Sure."
"Now you have to tell me."
"You have to not hate me."
"What have you done?"
"Oh my God, it wasn't me! But I could have warned you more, I could have grabbed you and made you listen. I tried to call you, Bill!"
"What has happened?"
I put one hand on either side of his face, touching his skin, realizing how much I would have lost, how much I might yet lose.
"They're dead, Bill, the vampires from Monroe. And someone else with them."
"Harlen," he said tonelessly. "Harlen stayed over last night, he and Diane really hit if off." He waited for me to finish, his eyes fixed on mine.
"They were burned."
"On purpose."
"Yes."
He squatted beside me in the rain, in the dark, his face not visible to me. The flashlight was gripped in my hand, and all my strength had ebbed away. I could feel his anger.
I could feel his cruelty.
I could feel his hunger.
He had never been more completely vampire. There wasn't anything human in him.
He turned his face to the sky and howled.
I thought he might kill someone, the rage rolling off him was so great. And the nearest person was me.

As I comprehended my own danger, Bill gripped my upper arms. He pulled me to him, slowly. There was no point in struggling, in fact I sensed that would only excite Bill more. Bill held me about an inch from him, I could almost smell his skin, and I could feel the turmoil in him, I could taste his rage.
Directing that energy in another way might save me. I leaned that inch, put my mouth on his chest. I licked the rain off, rubbed my cheek against his nipple, pressed myself against him.
The next moment his teeth grazed my shoulder, and his body, hard and rigid and ready, shoved me so forcefully I was suddenly on my back in the mud. He slid directly into me as if he were trying to reach through me to the soil. I shrieked, and he growled in response, as though we were truly mud people, primitives from caves. My hands, gripping the flesh of his back, felt the rain pelting down and the blood under my nails, and his relentless movement. I thought I would be plowed into this mud, into my grave. His fangs sank into my neck.
Suddenly I came. Bill howled as he reached his own com­pletion, and he collapsed on me, his fangs pulling out and his tongue cleaning the puncture marks. I had thought he might kill me without even meaning to. My muscles would not obey me, even if I had known what I wanted to do. Bill scooped me up. He took me to his house, pushing open the door and carrying me straight through into the large bathroom. Laying me gently on the carpet, where I spread mud and rainwater and a little streak of blood, Bill turned on the warm water in the spa, and when it was full he put me in and then got in himself. We sat on the seats, our legs trailing out in the warm frothing water that became discolored quickly.
Bill's eyes were staring miles away.
"All dead?" he said, his voice nearly inaudible. "All dead, and a human girl, too," I said quietly.
"What have you been doing all day?"
"Cleaning. Sam made me clean my house."
"Sam," Bill said thoughtfully. "Tell me, Sookie. Can you read Sam's mind?"
"No," I confessed, suddenly exhausted. I submerged my head, and when I came up, Bill had gotten the shampoo bottle. He soaped my hair and rinsed it, combed it as he had the first time we'd made love.
"Bill, I'm sorry about your friends," I said, so exhausted I could hardly get the words out. "And I am so glad you are alive." I slid my arms around his neck and lay my head on his shoulder. It was hard as a rock. I remember Bill drying me off with a big white towel, and I remember thinking how soft the pillow was, and I remember him sliding into bed beside me and putting his arm around me. Then I fell into sleep.
In the small hours of the morning, I woke halfway to hear someone moving around the room. I must have been dream­ing, and it must have been bad, because I woke with my heart racing. "Bill?" I asked, and I could hear the fear in my voice.
"What's wrong?" he asked, and I felt the bed indent as he sat on the edge.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, I was just out walking."
"No one's out there?"
"No, sweetheart." I could hear the sound of cloth moving over skin, and then he was under the sheets with me.
"Oh, Bill, that could have been you in one of those coffins," I said, the agony still fresh in my mind.
"Sookie, did you ever think that could have been you in the body bag? What if they come here, to burn this house, at dawn?"
"You have to come to my house! They won't burn my house. You can be safe with me," I said earnestly.
"Sookie, listen: because of me you could die."
"What would I lose?" I asked, hearing the passion in my voice. "I've had the best time since I met you, the best time of my life!"
"If I die, go to Sam."
"Passing me along already?"
"Never," he said, and his smooth voice was cold. "Never." I felt his hands grip my shoulders; he was on one elbow beside me. He scooted a little closer, and I could feel the cool length of his body.
"Listen, Bill," I said. "I'm not educated, but I'm not stupid. I'm not real experienced or worldly, either, but I don't think I'm naive." I hoped he wasn't smiling in the dark. "I can make them accept you. I can."
"If anyone can, you will," he said. "I want to enter you again."
"You mean—? Oh, yeah. I see what you mean." He'd taken my hand and guided it down to him. "I'd like that, too." And I sure would, if I could survive it after the pound­ing I'd taken in the graveyard. Bill had been so angry that now I felt battered. But I could also feel that liquidy warm feeling running through me, that restless excitement to which Bill had addicted me. "Honey," I said, caressing him up and down his length, "honey." I kissed him, felt his tongue in my mouth. I touched his fangs with my own tongue. "Can you do it without biting?" I whispered.
"Yes. It's just like a grand finale when I taste your blood."
"Would it be almost as good without?"
"It can never be as good without, but I don't want to weaken you."
"If you wouldn't mind," I said tentatively. "It took me a few days to feel up to par." "I've been selfish ... you're just so good." "If I'm strong, it'll be even better," I suggested.
"Show me how strong you are," he said teasingly.
"Lie on your back. I'm not real sure how this works, but I know other people do it." I straddled him, heard his breathing quicken. I was glad the room was dark and outside the rain was still pouring. A flash of lightening showed me his eyes, glowing. I carefully maneuvered into what I hoped was the correct position, and guided him inside me. I had great faith in instinct, and sure enough it didn't play me false.

190

Chapter 8


TOGETHER AGAIN, MY doubts at least temporarily drenched by the fear I'd felt when I'd thought I might have lost him, Bill and I settled into an uneasy routine.
If I worked nights, I would go over to Bill's house when I finished, and usually I spent the rest of the night there. If I worked days, Bill would come to my house after sunset, and we would watch TV, or go to the movies, or play Scrab­ble. I had to have every third night off, or Bill had to refrain from biting those nights; otherwise I began to feel weak and draggy. And there was the danger, if Bill fed on me too much ... I kept chugging vitamins and iron until Bill complained about the flavor. Then I cut back on the iron.
When I slept at night, Bill would go do other stuff. Some­times he read, sometimes he wandered the night; sometimes he'd go out and do my yard work under the illumination of the security lights.
If he ever took blood from anyone else, he kept it secret, and he did it far from Bon Temps, which was what I had asked.
I say this routine was uneasy because it seemed to me that we were waiting. The burning of the Monroe nest had en­raged Bill and (I think) frightened him. To be so powerful when awake and so helpless when asleep had to be galling.
Both of us were wondering if public feeling against vam­pires would abate now that the worst troublemakers in the area were dead.
Though Bill didn't say anything directly, I knew from the course our conversation took from time to time that he was worried about my safety with the murderer of Dawn, Mau­dette, and my grandmother still at large.
If the men of Bon Temps and the surrounding towns thought burning out the Monroe vampires would set their minds at ease about the murders, they were wrong. Autopsy reports from the three victims finally proved they had their full complement of blood when they were killed. Further­more, the bite marks on Maudette and Dawn had not only looked old, they were proved to be old. The cause of their deaths was strangulation. Maudette and Dawn had had sex before they'd died. And afterward.
Arlene and Charlsie and I were cautious about things like going out into the parking lot by ourselves, making sure our homes were still locked tight before we entered them, trying to notice what cars were around us as we drove. But it's hard to keep careful that way, a real strain on the nerves, and I am sure we all lapsed back into our sloppy ways. Maybe it was more excusable for Arlene and Charlsie, since they lived with other people, unlike the first two victims; Arlene with her kids (and Rene Lenier, off and on), and Charlsie with her husband, Ralph.
I was the only one who lived alone.
Jason came into the bar almost every night, and he made a point of talking to me every time. I realized he was trying to heal whatever breach lay between us, and I responded as much as I could. But Jason was drinking more, too, and his bed had as many occupants as a public toilet, though he seemed to have real feelings for Liz Barrett. We worked cautiously together on settling the business of Gran's estate and Uncle Bartlett's, though he had more to do with that than I. Uncle Bartlett had left Jason everything but my leg­acy.
Jason told me one night when he'd had an extra beer that he'd been back to the police station twice more, and it was driving him crazy. He'd talked to Sid Matt Lancaster, finally, and Sid Matt had advised Jason not to go to the police station any more unless Sid Matt went with him.
"How come they keep hauling you in?" I asked Jason. "There must be something you haven't told me. Andy Belle­fleur hasn't kept after anybody else, and I know Dawn and Maudette both weren't too picky about who came home with them."
Jason looked mortified. I'd never seen my beautiful older brother look as embarrassed.
"Movies," he mumbled.
I bent closer to be sure I'd heard him right. "Movies?" I said, incredulously.
"Shhh," he hissed, looking guilty as hell. "We made mov­ies."
I guess I was just as embarrassed as Jason. Sisters and brothers don't need to know everything about each other. "And you gave them a copy," I said tentatively, trying to figure out just how dumb Jason had been.
He looked off in another direction, his hazy blue eyes ro­mantically shiny with tears.
"Moron," I said. "Even allowing for the fact that you couldn't know how this was gonna come to public light, what's gonna happen when you decide to get married? What if one of your ex-flames mails a copy of your little tango to your bride-to-be?"
"Thanks for kicking me when I'm down, Sis."
I took a deep breath. "Okay, okay. You've quit making these little videos, right?"
He nodded emphatically. I didn't believe him.
"And you told Sid Matt all about it, right?"
He nodded less firmly.
"And you think that's why Andy is on your case so much?"
"Yeah," Jason said morosely.
"So, if they test your semen and it isn't a match for what was inside Maudette and Dawn, you're clear." By now, I was as shifty-faced as my brother. We had never talked about semen samples before.
"That's what Sid Matt says. I just don't trust that stuff."
My brother didn't trust the most reliable scientific evidence that could be presented in a court. "You think Andy's going to fake the results?"
"No, Andy's okay. He's just doing his job. I just don't know about that DNA stuff."
"Moron," I said, and turned away to get another pitcher of beer for four guys from Ruston, college students on a big night out in the boonies. I could only hope Sid Matt Lancas­ter was good at persuasion.
I spoke to Jason once more before he left Merlotte's. "Can you help me?" he asked, turning up to me a face I hardly recognized. I was standing by his table, and his date for the night had gone to the ladies' room.
My brother had never asked me for help before.
"How?"

"Can't you just read the minds of the men who come in here and find out if one of them did it?"
"That's not as easy as it sounds, Jason," I said slowly, thinking as I went along. "For one thing, the man would have to be thinking of his crime while he sat here, at the exact moment I listened in. For another thing, I can't always read clear thoughts. Some people, it's just like listening to a radio, I can hear every little thing. Other people, I just get a mass of feelings, not spelled out; it's like hearing someone talk in their sleep, see? You can hear they're talking, you can tell if they're upset or happy, but you can't hear the exact words. And then other times, I can hear a thought, but I can't trace it to its source if the room is crowded."
Jason was staring at me. It was the first time we had talked openly about my disability.
"How do you stop from going crazy?" he asked, shaking his head in amazement.
I was about to try to explain putting up my guard, but Liz Barrett returned to the table, newly lipsticked and fluffed. I watched Jason resume his woman-hunting persona like shrugging on a heavy coat, and I regretted not getting to talk to him more when he was by himself.
That night, as the staff got ready to leave, Arlene asked me if I could baby-sit for her the next evening. It would be an off-day for both of us, and she wanted to go to Shreveport with Rene to see a movie and go out to eat.
"Sure!" I said. "I haven't kept the kids in a while." Suddenly Arlene's face froze. She half-turned to me, opened her mouth, thought the better of speaking, then thought again. "Will... ah ... will Bill be there?"
"Yes, we'd planned on watching a movie. I was going to stop by the video rental place, tomorrow morning. But I'll get something for the kids to watch instead." Abruptly, I caught her meaning. "Whoa. You mean you don't want to leave the kids with me if Bill's gonna be there?" I could feel my eyes narrow to slits and my voice drop down to its angry register.
"Sookie," she began helplessly, "honey, I love you. But you can't understand, you're not a mother. I can't leave my kids with a vampire. I just can't."
"No matter that I'm there, and I love your kids, too? No matter that Bill would never in a million years harm a child." I slung my purse over my shoulder and stalked out the back door, leaving Arlene standing there looking torn. By golly, she ought to be upset!
I was a little calmer by the time I turned onto the road to go home, but I was still riled up. I was worried about Jason, miffed at Arlene, and almost permanently frosted at Sam, who was pretending these days that I was a mere acquain­tance. I debated whether to just go home rather than going to Bill's; decided that was a good idea.
It was a measure of how much he worried about me that Bill was at my house about fifteen minutes after I should have been at his.
"You didn't come, you didn't call," he said quietly when I answered the door. "I'm in a temper," I said. "A bad one." Wisely he kept his distance.
"I apologize for making you worry," I said after a moment. "I won't do that again." I strode away from him, toward the . kitchen. He followed behind, or at least I presumed he did. Bill was so quiet you never knew until you looked.
He leaned against the door frame as I stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, wondering why I'd come in the room, feeling a rising tide of anger. I was getting pissed off all over again. I really wanted to throw something, damage something. This was not the way I'd been brought up, to give way to destructive impulses like that. I contained it, screwing my eyes shut, clenching my fists.
"I'm gonna dig a hole," I said, and I marched out the back door. I opened the door to the tool shed, removed the shovel, and stomped to the back of the yard. There was a patch back there where nothing ever grew, I don't know why. I sunk the shovel in, pushed it with my foot, came up with a hunk of soil. I kept on going. The pile of dirt grew as the hole deep­ened.
"I have excellent arm and shoulder muscles," I said, rest­ing against the shovel and panting.
Bill was sitting in a lawn chair watching. He didn't say anything.
I resumed digging.
Finally, I had a really nice hole.
"Were you going to bury anything?" Bill asked, when he could tell I was done.
"No." I looked down at the cavity in the ground. "I'm going to plant a tree."
"What kind?"
"A live oak," I said off the top of my head.
"Where can you get one?"
"At the Garden Center. I'll go sometime this week."
"They take a long time to grow."
"What difference would that make to you?" I snapped. I put the shovel up in the shed, then leaned against it, suddenly exhausted.
Bill made as if to pick me up.
"I am a grown woman," I snarled. "I can walk into the house on my own."
"Have I done something to you?" Bill asked. There was very little loving in his voice, and I was brought up short. I had indulged myself enough.
"I apologize," I said. "Again."
"What has made you so angry?"
I just couldn't tell him about Arlene.
"What do you do when you get mad, Bill?"
"I tear up a tree," he said. "Sometimes I hurt someone."
Digging a hole didn't seem so bad. It had been sort of
constructive. But I was still wired—it was just more of a subdued buzz than a high-frequency whine. I cast around restlessly for something to affect.
Bill seemed adept at reading the symptoms. "Make love," he suggested. "Make love with me."
"I'm not in the right mood for love."
"Let me try to persuade you."
It turned out he could.
At least it wore off the excess energy of anger, but I still had a residue of sadness that sex couldn't cure. Arlene had hurt my feelings. I stared into space while Bill braided my hair, a pastime that he apparently found soothing.
Every now and then I felt like I was Bill's doll.
"Jason was in the bar tonight," I said.
"What did he want?"
Bill was too clever by far, sometimes, at reading people.
"He appealed to my mind-reading powers. He wanted me to scan the minds of the men who came into the bar until I found out who the murderer was."
"Except for a few dozen flaws, that's not a bad idea."
"You think?"
"Both your brother and I will be regarded with less suspi­cion if the murderer is in jail. And you'll be safe."
"That's true, but I don't know how to go about it. It would be hard, and painful, and boring, to wade through all that stuff trying to find a little bit of information, a flash of thought."

"Not any more painful or hard than being suspected of murder. You're just accustomed to keeping your gift locked up."
"Do you think so?" I began to turn to look at his face, but he held me still so he could finish braiding. I'd never seen keeping out of people's minds as selfish, but in this case I supposed it was. I would have to invade a lot of privacy. "A detective," I murmured, trying to see myself in a better light than just nosey.
"Sookie," Bill said, and something in his voice made me take notice. "Eric has told me to bring you to Shreveport again."
It took me a second to remember who Eric was. "Oh, the big Viking vampire?"
"The very old vampire," Bill said precisely.
"You mean, he ordered you to bring me there?" I didn't like the sound of this at all. I'd been sitting on the side of the bed, Bill behind me, and now I turned to look in his face. This time he didn't stop me. I stared at Bill, seeing something in his face that I'd never seen before. "You have to do this," I said, appalled. I could not imagine someone giving Bill an order. "But honey, I don't want to go see Eric."
I could see that made no difference.
"What is he, the Godfather of vampires?" I asked, angry and incredulous. "Did he give you an offer you couldn't re­fuse?"
"He is older than me. More to the point, he is stronger."
"Nobody's stronger than you," I said stoutly.
"I wish you were right."
"So is he the head of Vampire Region Ten, or something?"
"Yes. Something like that."
Bill was always closemouthed about how vampires con­trolled their own affairs. That had been fine with me, until now.
"What does he want? What will happen if I don't go?"
Bill just sidestepped the first question. "He'll send some­one—several someones—to get you."
"Other vampires."
"Yes." Bill's eyes were opaque, shining with his differ­ence, brown and rich.
I tried to think this through. I wasn't used to being ordered around. I wasn't used to no choices at all. It took my thick skull several minutes to evaluate the situation.
"So, you'd feel obliged to fight them?"
"Of course. You are mine."
There was that "mine" again. It seemed he really meant it. I sure felt like whining, but I knew it wouldn't do any good.
"I guess I have to go," I said, trying not to sound bitter. "This is just plain old blackmail."
"Sookie, vampires aren't like humans. Eric is using the best means to achieve his goal, which is getting you to Shreveport. He didn't have to spell all this out; I understood it."
"Well, I understand it now, but I hate it. I'm between a rock and hard place! What does he want me for, anyway?" An obvious answer popped right into my mind, and I looked at Bill, horrified. "Oh, no, I won't do that!"
"He won't have sex with you or bite you, not without killing me." Bill's glowing face lost all vestiges of familiarity and became utterly alien.
"And he knows that," I said tentatively, "so there must be another reason he wants me in Shreveport." "Yes," Bill agreed, "but I don't know what it is." "Well, if it doesn't have to do with my physical charms, or the unusual quality of my blood, it must have to do with my ... little quirk." "Your gift."
"Right," I said, sarcasm dripping from my voice. "My pre­cious gift." All the anger I thought I'd eased off my shoulders came back to sit like a four-hundred-pound gorilla. And I was scared to death. I wondered how Bill felt. I was even scared to ask that. "When?" I asked instead. "Tomorrow night."
"I guess this is the downside of nontraditional dating." I stared over Bill's shoulder at the pattern of the wallpaper my grandmother had chosen ten years ago. I promised myself that if I got through this, I would repaper. "I love you." His voice was just a whisper. This wasn't Bill's fault. "I love you, too," I said. I had to stop myself from begging, Please don't let the bad vampire hurt me, please don't let the vampire rape me. If I was be­tween a rock and a hard place, Bill was doubly so. I couldn't even begin to estimate the self-control he was employing. Unless he really was calm? Could a vampire face pain and this form of helplessness without some inner turmoil?
I searched his face, the familiar clear lines and white matte complexion, the dark arches of his brows and proud line of his nose. I observed that Bill's fangs were only slightly ex­tended, and rage and lust ran them full out.
"Tonight," he said. "Sookie..." His hands began urging me to lie beside him.
"What?"
"Tonight, I think, you should drink from me."
I made a face. "Ick! Don't you need all your strength for tomorrow night? I'm not hurt."
"How have you felt since you drank from me? Since I put my blood inside you?"
I mulled it over. "Good," I admitted.
"Have you been sick?"
"No, but then I almost never am."
"Have you had more energy?"
"When you weren't taking it back!" I said tartly, but I could feel my lips curve up in a little smile.
"Have you been stronger?"
"I—yes, I guess I have." I realized for the first time how extraordinary it was that I'd carried in a new chair, by my­self, the week before.
"Has it been easier to control your power?"
"Yes, I did notice that." I'd written it off to increased relaxation.
"If you drink from me tonight, tomorrow night you will have more resources."
"But you'll be weaker."
"If you don't take much, I'll recoup during the day when I sleep. And I may have to find someone else to drink from tomorrow night before we go."
My face filled with hurt. Suspecting he was doing it and knowing were sure two different things.
"Sookie, this is for us. No sex with anyone else, I promise you."
"You really think all this is necessary."
"Maybe necessary. At least helpful. And we need all the help we can get."
"Oh, all right. How do we do this?" I had only the haziest recollection of the night of the beating, and I was glad of it.
He looked at me quizzically. I had the impression he was amused, "Aren't you excited, Sookie?"
"At drinking blood from you? Excuse me, that's not my turn-on."
He shook his head, as if that was beyond his under­standing. "I forget," he said simply. "I forget how it is to be otherwise. Would you prefer neck, wrist, groin?"

"Not groin," I said hastily. "I don't know, Bill. Yuck. Whichever."
"Neck," he said. "Lie on top of me, Sookie."
"That's like sex."
"It's the easiest way."
So I straddled him and gently let myself down. This felt very peculiar. This was a position we used for lovemaking and nothing else.
"Bite, Sookie," he whispered.
"I can't do that!" I protested.
"Bite, or I'll have to use a knife."
"My teeth aren't sharp like yours."
"They're sharp enough."
"I'll hurt you."
He laughed silently. I could feel his chest moving beneath me.
"Damn." I breathed, and steeling myself, I bit his neck. I did a good job because there was no sense prolonging this. I tasted the metallic blood in my mouth. Bill groaned softly, and his hands brushed my back and continued down. His fingers found me.
I gave a gasp of shock.
"Drink," he said raggedly, and I sucked hard. He groaned, louder, deeper, and I felt him pressing against me. A little ripple of madness went through me, and I attached myself to him like a barnacle, and he entered me, began moving, his hands now gripping my hip bones. I drank and saw visions, visions all with a background of darkness, of white things coming up from the ground and going hunting, the thrill of the run through the woods, the prey panting ahead and the excitement of its fear; pursuit, legs pumping, hearing the thrumming of blood through the veins of the pursued . ..
Bill made a noise deep in his chest and convulsed inside me. I raised my head from his neck, and a wave of dark delight carried me out to sea. This was pretty exotic stuff for a telepathic barmaid from northern Louisiana.

203

Chapter 9


I WAS GETTING ready by sunset the next day. Bill had said he was going to feed somewhere before we went, and as upset as the idea made me, I had to agree it made sense. He was right about how I'd feel after my little informal vita­min supplement the night before, too. I felt super. I felt very strong, very alert, very quick-witted, and oddly enough, I also felt very pretty.
What would I wear for my own little interview with a vampire? I didn't want to look like I was trying to be sexy, but I didn't want to make a fool of myself by wearing a shapeless gunnysack, either. Blue jeans seemed to be the an­swer, as they so often are. I put on white sandals and a pale blue scoop-neck tee. I hadn't worn it since I'd started seeing Bill because it exposed his fang marks. But Bill's "owner­ship" of me, I figured, could not be too strongly reinforced tonight. Remembering the cop last time checking my neck, I tucked a scarf in my purse. I thought again and added a silver necklace. I brushed my hair, which seemed at least three shades lighter, and let it ripple down my back.
Just when I was really having to struggle with picturing Bill with somebody else, he knocked. I opened the door and we stood looking at each other for a minute. His lips had
more color than normal, so he'd done it. I bit my own lips to keep from saying anything.
"You did change," he said first.
"You think anyone else'll be able to tell?" I hoped not.
"I don't know." He held out his hand, and we walked to his car. He opened my door, and I brushed by him to climb in. I stiffened.
"What's wrong?" he asked, after a moment.
"Nothing," I said, trying to keep my voice even, and I sat in the passenger's seat and stared straight ahead of me.
I told myself I might as well be mad at the cow who had given him his hamburger. But somehow the simile just didn't work.
"You smell different," I said after we'd been on the high­way for a few minutes. We drove for a few minutes in si­lence.
"Now you know how I will feel if Eric touches you," he told me. "But I think I'll feel worse because Eric will enjoy touching you, and I didn't much enjoy my feeding."
I figured that wasn't totally, strictly, true: I know I always enjoy eating even if I'm not served my favorite food. But I appreciated the sentiment.
We didn't talk much. We were both worried about what was ahead of us. All too soon, we were parking at Fangtasia again, but this time in the back. As Bill held open the car door, I had to fight an impulse to cling to the seat and refuse to get out. Once I made myself emerge, I had another strug­gle involving my intense desire to hide behind Bill. I gave a kind of gasp, took his arm, and we walked to the door like we were going to a party we were anticipating with pleasure.
Bill looked down at me with approval.
I fought an urge to scowl at him.
He knocked on the metal door with fangtasia stencilled on it. We were in a service and delivery alley that ran behind all the stores in the little strip mall. There were several other cars parked back there, Eric's sporty red convertible among them. All the vehicles were high-priced.
You won't find a vampire in a Ford Fiesta.
Bill knocked, three quick, two spaced apart. The Secret Vampire Knock, I guess. Maybe I'd get to learn the Secret Handshake.
The beautiful blond vampire opened the door, the female who'd been at the table with Eric when I'd been to the bar before. She stood back without speaking to let us enter.
If Bill had been human, he would have protested at how tightly I was holding his hand.
The female was in front of us more quickly than my eyes could follow, and I started. Bill wasn't surprised at all, nat­urally. She led us through a storeroom disconcertingly similar to Merlotte's and into a little corridor. We went through the door on our right.
Eric was in the small room, his presence dominating it. Bill didn't exactly kneel to kiss his ring, but he did nod kind of deep. There was another vampire in the room, the barten­der, Long Shadow; he was in fine form tonight, in a skinny-strap tee and weight-lifting pants, all in deep green.
"Bill, Sookie," Eric greeted us. "Bill, you and Sookie know Long Shadow. Sookie, you remember Pam." Pam was the blond female. "And this is Bruce."
Bruce was a human, the most frightened human I'd ever seen. I had considerable sympathy with that. Middle-aged and paunchy, Bruce had thinning dark hair that curved in stiff waves across his scalp. He was jowly and small-mouthed. He was wearing a nice suit, beige, with a white shirt and a brown-and-navy patterned tie. He was sweating heavily. He was in a straight chair across the desk from Eric. Naturally, Eric was in the power chair. Pam and Long Shadow were standing against the wall across from Eric, by the door. Bill took his place beside them, but as I moved to join him, Eric spoke again.
"Sookie, listen to Bruce."

I stood staring at Bruce for a second, waiting for him to speak, until I understood what Eric meant.
"What exactly am I listening for?" I asked, knowing my voice was sharp.
"Someone has embezzled about sixty thousand dollars from us," Eric explained.
Boy, somebody had a death wish.
"And rather than put all our human employees to death or torture, we thought perhaps you would look into their minds and tell us who it was."
He said "death or torture" as calmly as I said, "Bud or Old Milwaukee."
"And then what will you do?" I asked. Eric seemed surprised.
"Whoever it is will give our money back," he said simply. "And then?"
His big blue eyes narrowed as he stared at me. "Why, if we can produce proof of the crime, we'll turn the culprit over to the police," he said smoothly.
Liar, liar, pants on fire. "I'll make a deal, Eric," I said, not bothering to smile. Winsome did not count with Eric, and he was far from any desire to jump my bones. At the moment. He smiled, indulgently. "What would that be, Sookie?" "If you really do turn the guilty person over to the police, I'll do this for you again, whenever you want." Eric cocked an eyebrow.
"Yeah, I know I'd probably have to anyway. But isn't it better if I come willing, if we have good faith with each other?" I broke into a sweat. I could not believe I was bar­gaining with a vampire.
Eric actually seemed to be thinking that over. And sud­denly, I was in his thoughts. He was thinking he could make me do what he wanted, anywhere, anytime, just by threat­ening Bill or some human I loved. But he wanted to main­stream, to keep as legal as he could, to keep his relations with humans aboveboard, or at least as aboveboard as vampire-human dealings could be. He didn't want to kill anyone if he didn't have to.
It was like suddenly being plunged into a pit of snakes, cold snakes, lethal snakes. It was only a flash, a slice of his mind, sort of, but it left me facing a whole new reality.
"Besides," I said quickly, before he could see I'd been inside his head, "how sure are you that the thief is a human?"
Pam and Long Shadow both moved suddenly, but Eric flooded the room with his presence, commanding them to be still.
"That's an interesting idea," he said. "Pam and Long Shadow are my partners in this bar, and if none of the hu-
mans is guilty, I guess we'll have to look at them."
"Just a thought," I said meekly, and Eric looked at me with the glacial blue eyes of a being who hardly remembers what humanity was like.
"Start now, with this man," he commanded.
I knelt by Bruce's chair, trying to decide how to proceed. I'd never tried to formalize something that was pretty chancy. Touching would help; direct contact clarified the transmis­sion, so to speak. I took Bruce's hand, found that too per­sonal (and too sweaty) and pushed back his coat cuff. I took hold of his wrist. I looked into his small eyes.
I didn't take the money, who took it, what crazy fool would put us in danger like this, what will Lillian do if they kill me, and Bobby and Heather, why did I work for vampires any­way, it's sheer greed, and I'm paying for it, God I'll never work for these things again how can this crazy woman find out who took the fucking money why doesn't she let go of me what is she is she a vampire, too, or some kind of demon her eyes are so strange I should have found out earlier that the money was missing and found out who took it before I even said anything to Eric . . .
"Did you take the money?" I breathed, though I was sure I already knew the answer.
"No," Bruce groaned, sweat running down his face, and his thoughts, his reaction to the question, confirmed what I'd heard already.
"Do you know who did?"
"I wish."
I stood, turned to Eric, shook my head. "Not this guy," I said.
Pam escorted poor Bruce out, brought the next interrogee.
My subject was a barmaid, dressed in trailing black with lots of cleavage on display, her ragged strawberry blond hair straggling down her back. Of course, working at Fangtasia would be a dream job for a fang-banger, and this gal had the scars to prove she enjoyed her perks. She was confident enough to grin at Eric, foolish enough to take the wooden chair with some confidence, even crossing her legs like Sharon Stone—she hoped. She was surprised to see a strange vampire and a new woman in the room, and not pleased by
my presence, though Bill made her lick her lips.
"Hey, sweetie," she said to Eric, and I decided she must have no imagination at all.
"Ginger, answer this woman's questions," Eric said. His voice was like a stone wall, flat and implacable.
Ginger seemed to understand for the first time that this was a time to be serious. She crossed her ankles this time, sat with her hands on the tops of her thighs, and assumed a stern face. "Yes, master," she said, and I thought I was going to barf.
She waved an imperious hand at me, as if to say, "Begin, fellow vampire server." I reached down for her wrist, and she flung my hand away. "Don't touch me," she said, almost hissing.
It was such an extreme reaction that the vampires tensed up, and I could feel that crackling the air in the room.
"Pam, hold Ginger still," Eric commanded, and Pam ap­peared silently behind Ginger's chair, leaning over and put­ting her hands on Ginger's upper arms. You could tell Ginger struggled some because her head moved around, but Pam held her upper body in a grip that kept the girl's body ab­solutely immobile.
My fingers circled her wrist. "Did you take the money?" I asked, staring into Ginger's flat brown eyes.
She screamed, then, long and loud. She began to curse me. I listened to the chaos in the girl's tiny brain. It was like trying to walk over a bombed site.
"She knows who did," I said to Eric. Ginger fell silent then, though she was sobbing. "She can't say the name," I told the blond vampire. "He has bitten her." I touched the scars on Ginger's neck as if that needed more illustration. "It's some kind of compulsion," I reported, after I'd tried again. "She can't even picture him."
"Hypnosis," Pam commented. Her proximity to the fright­ened girl had made Pam's fangs run out. "A strong vampire." "Bring in her closest friend," I suggested. Ginger was shaking like a leaf by then with thoughts she was compelled not to think pressing her from their locked closet. "Should she stay, or go?" Pam asked me directly.
"She should go. It'll only scare someone else."
I was so into this, so into openly using my strange ability, that I didn't look at Bill. I felt that somehow if I looked at him, it would weaken me. I knew where he was, that he and Long Shadow had not moved since the questioning had be­gun.
Pam hauled the trembling Ginger away. I don't know what she did with the barmaid, but she came returned with another waitress in the same kind of clothes. This woman's name was Belinda, and she was older and wiser. Belinda had brown hair, glasses, and the sexiest pouting mouth I'd ever seen.
"Belinda, what vampire has Ginger been seeing?" Eric asked smoothly once Belinda was seated, and I was touching her. The waitress had enough sense to accept the process quietly, enough intelligence to realize she had to be honest.
"Anyone that would have her," Belinda said bluntly.
I saw an image in Belinda's mind, but she had to think the name.
"Which one from here?" I asked suddenly, and then I had the name. My eyes sought his corner before I could open my mouth, and then he was on me, Long Shadow, vaulting over the chair holding Belinda to land on top of me as I crouched in front of her. I was bowled over backward into Eric's desk, and only my upflung arms saved me from his teeth sinking into my throat and ripping it out. He bit my forearm savagely, and I screamed; at least I tried to, but with so little air left from the impact it was more like an alarmed choking noise.
I was only conscious of the heavy figure on top of me and the pain of my arm, my own fear. I hadn't been frightened that the Rats were going to kill me until almost too late, but I understood that to keep his name from leaving my lips, Long Shadow was ready to kill me instantly, and when I heard the awful noise and felt his body press even harder on me I didn't have any idea what it meant. I'd been able to see his eyes over the top of my arm. They were wide, brown, crazed, icy. Suddenly they dulled and seemed to almost flat­ten. Blood gushed out of Long Shadow's mouth, bathing my arm. It flowed into my open mouth, and I gagged. His teeth relaxed, and his face fell in on itself. It began to wrinkle. His eyes turned into gelatinous pools. Handfuls of his thick black hair fell on my face.
I was shocked beyond moving. Hands gripped my shoul­ders and began pulling me out from under the decaying corpse. I pushed with my feet to scrabble back faster.

There wasn't an odor, bat there was gunk, black and streaky, and the absolute horror and disgust of watching Long Shadow deconstruct with incredible speed. There was a stake sticking out of his back. Eric stood watching, as we all were, but he had a mallet in his hand. Bill was behind me, having pulled me out from under Long Shadow. Pam was standing by the door, her hand gripping Belinda's arm. The waitress looked as rocky as I must have.
Even the gunk began to vanish in smoke. We all stood frozen until the last wisp was gone. The carpet had a kind of scorched mark on it.
"You'll have to get you an area rug," I said, completely out of the blue. Honest to God, I couldn't stand the silence any more.
"Your mouth is bloody," Eric said. All the vampires had fully extended fangs. They'd gotten pretty excited. "He bled onto me." "Did any go down your throat?" "Probably. What does that mean?" 'That remains to be seen," Pam said. Her voice was dark and husky. She was eyeing Belinda in a way that would have made me distinctly nervous, but Belinda seemed to be preen­ing, incredibly. "Usually," Pam went on, her eyes on Be­linda's pouty lips, "we drink from humans, not the other way around."
Eric was looking at me with interest, the same kind of interest that Pam had in Belinda. "How do things look to you now, Sookie?" he asked in such a smooth voice you'd never think he'd just executed an old friend.
How did things look to me now? Brighter. Sounds were clearer, and I could hear better. I wanted to turn and look at Bill, but I was scared to take my eyes off Eric.
"Well, I guess Bill and me'll go now," I said, as if no other process was possible. "I did that for you, Eric, and now we get to go. No retaliation for Ginger and Belinda and Bruce, okay? We agreed." I started toward the door with an assurance I was far from feeling. "I'll just bet you need to go see how the bar is doing, huh? Who's mixing the drinks, tonight?"
"We got a substitute," Eric said absently, his eyes never leaving my neck. "You smell different, Sookie," he mur­mured, taking a step closer.
"Well, remember now, Eric, we had a deal," I reminded him, my smile broad and tense, my voice snapping with good cheer. "Bill and I are going home now, aren't we?" I risked a glance behind me at Bill. My heart sank. His eyes were open wide, unblinking, his lips drawn back in a silent snarl to expose his extended fangs. His pupils were dilated enor­mously. He was staring at Eric.
"Pam, get out of the way," I said, quietly but sharply. Once Pam was distracted from her own blood lust, she evaluated the situation in one glance. She swung open the office door and propelled Belinda through it, stood beside it to usher us out. "Call Ginger," I suggested, and the sense of what I was saying penetrated Pam's fog of desire. "Ginger," she called hoarsely, and the blond girl stumbled from a door down the hall. "Eric wants you," Pam told her. Ginger's face lit up like she had a date with David Duchovny, and she was in the room and rubbing against Eric almost as fast as a vampire could have. As if he'd woken from a spell, Eric looked down at Ginger when she ran her hands up his chest. As he bent to kiss her, Eric looked at me over her head. "I'll see you again," he said, and I pulled Bill out the door as quick as a wink. Bill didn't want to go. It was like trying to tow a log. But once we were out in the hall he seemed to be a little more aware of the need to get out of there, and we hurried from Fangtasia and got into Bill's car.
I looked down at myself. I was bloodstained and wrinkled, and I smelled funny. Yuck. I looked over at Bill to share my disgust with him, but he was looking at me in an unmistak­able way.
"No," I said forcefully. "You start this car and get out of here before anything else happens, Bill Compton. I tell you flat, I'm not in the mood."
He scooted across the seat toward me, his arms scooping me up before I could say anything else. Then his mouth was on mine, and after a second his tongue began licking the blood from my face.
I was really scared. I was also really angry. I grabbed his ears and pulled his head away from mine using every ounce of strength I possessed, which happened to be more than I thought I had.
His eyes were still like caves with ghosts dwelling in their depths.
"Bill!" I shrieked. I shook him. "Snap out of it!"
Slowly, his personality seeped back into his eyes. He drew a shuddering sigh. He kissed me lightly on the lips.
"Okay, can we go home now?" I asked, ashamed that my voice was so quavery.
"Sure," he said, sounding none too steady himself.
"Was that like sharks scenting blood?" I asked, after a fifteen-minute silent drive that almost had us out of Shreve­port.
"Good analogy."
He didn't need to apologize. He'd been doing what nature dictated, as least as natural as vampires got. He didn't bother to. I would kind of liked to have heard an apology.
"So, am I in trouble?" I asked finally. It was two in the morning, and I found the question didn't bother me as much as it should have.
"Eric will hold you to your word," Bill said. "As to whether he will leave you alone personally, 1 don't know. I wish..." but his voice trailed off. It was the first time I'd heard Bill wish for anything.
"Sixty thousand dollars isn't a lot of money to a vampire, surely," I observed. "You all seem to have plenty of money." "Vampires rob their victims, of course," Bill said matter-of-factly. "Early on, we take the money from the corpse. Later, when we're more experienced, we can exert enough control to persuade a human to give us money willingly, then forget it's been done. Some of us hire money managers, some of us go into real estate, some of us live on the interest from our investments. Eric and Pam went in together on the bar. Eric put up most of the money, Pam the rest. They had known Long Shadow for a hundred years, and they hired him to be bartender. He betrayed them."
"Why would he steal from them?"
"He must have had some venture he needed the capital for," Bill said absently. "And he was in a mainstreaming position. He couldn't just go out and kill a bank manager after hypnotizing him and persuading the man to give him the money. So he took it from Eric."
"Wouldn't Eric have loaned it to him?"
"If Long Shadow hadn't been too proud to ask, yes," Bill said.
We had another long silence. Finally I said, "I always think of vampires as smarter than humans, but they're not, huh?"
"Not always," he agreed.
When we reached the outskirts of Bon Temps, I asked Bill to drop me off at home. He looked sideways at me, but didn't say anything. Maybe vampires were smarter than humans, after all.

214

Chapter 10

THE NEXT DAY, when I was getting ready for work, I realized I was definitely off vampires for a while. Even Bill.
I was ready to remind myself I was a human.
The trouble was, I had to notice that I was a changed human.
It wasn't anything major. After the first infusion of Bill's blood on the night the Rats had beaten me, I'd felt healed, healthy, stronger. But not markedly different. Maybe more— well, sexier.
After my second draft of Bill's blood, I'd felt really strong, and I'd been braver because I'd had more confidence. I felt more secure in my sexuality and its power. It seemed appar­ent I was handling my disability with more aplomb and capa­bility.
I'd had Long Shadow's blood by accident. The next morn­ing, looking in the mirror, my teeth were whiter and sharper. My hair looked lighter and livelier, and my eyes were brighter. I looked like a poster girl for good hygiene, or some healthy cause like taking vitamins or drinking milk. The sav­age bite on my arm (Long Shadow's last bite on this earth, I realized) was not completely healed, but it was well on its way.
Then my purse spilled as I picked it up, and my change rolled under the couch. I held up the end of the couch with one hand while with the other I retrieved the coins.
Whoa.
I straightened and took a deep breath. At least the sunlight didn't hurt my eyes, and I didn't want to bite everyone I saw. I'd enjoyed my breakfast toast, rather than longing for tomato juice. I wasn't turning into a vampire. Maybe I was sort of an enhanced human?
Life had sure been simpler when I hadn't dated.
When I got to Merlotte's, everything was ready except for slicing the lemons and limes. We served the fruit both with mixed drinks and with tea, and I got out the cutting board and a sharp knife. Lafayette was tying on his apron as I got the lemons from the big refrigerator.
"You highlighted your hair, Sookie?"
I shook my head. Under the enveloping white apron, La­fayette was a symphony of color; he was wearing a fuschia thin-strap tee, dark purple jeans, red thong sandals, and he had sort of raspberry eye shadow on.
"It sure looks lighter," he said skeptically, raising his own plucked brows.
"I've been out in the sun a lot," I assured him. Dawn had never gotten along with Lafayette, whether because he was black or because he was gay, I didn't know ... maybe both. Arlene and Charlsie just accepted the cook, but didn't go out of their ways to be friendly. But I'd always kind of liked Lafayette because he conducted what had to be a tough life with verve and grace.
I looked down at the cutting board. All the lemons had been quartered. All the limes had been sliced. My hand was holding the knife, and it was wet with juices. I had done it without knowing it. In about thirty seconds. I closed my eyes. My God.
When I opened them, Lafayette was staring from my face to my hands.
"Tell me I didn't just see that, girlfriend," he suggested.
"You didn't," I said. My voice was cool and level, I was surprised to note. "Excuse me, I got to put these away." I put the fruit in separate containers in the big cooler behind the bar where Sam kept the beer. When I shut the door, Sam was standing there, his arms crossed across his chest. He didn't look happy.
"Are you all right?" he asked. His bright blue eyes scanned me up and down. "You do something to your hair?" he said uncertainly.
I laughed. I realized that my guard had slid into place easily, that it didn't have to be a painful process. "Been out in the sun," I said. "What happened to your arm?"
I looked down at my right forearm. I'd covered the bite with a bandage. "Dog bit me." "Had it had its shots?" "Sure."
I looked up at Sam, not too far, and it seemed to me his wiry, curly, red-blond hair snapped with energy. It seemed to me I could hear his heart beating. I could feel his uncer­tainly, his desire. My body responded instantly. I focussed on his thin lips, and the rich smell of his aftershave filled my lungs. He moved two inches closer. I could feel the breath going in and out of his lungs. I knew his penis was stiffening. Then Charlsie Tooten came in the front door and slammed it behind her. We both took a step away from each other. Thank God for Charlsie, I thought. Plump, dumb, good-natured, and hardworking, Charlsie was a dream employee. Married to Ralph, her high school sweetheart, who worked at one of the chicken processing plants, Charlsie had a girl in the eleventh grade and a married daughter. Charlsie loved to work at the bar so she could get out and see people, and she had a knack for dealing with drunks that got them out the door without a fight.
"Hi, you two!" she called cheerfully. Her dark brown hair (L'Oreal, Lafayette said) was pulled back dramatically to hang from the crown of her head in a cascade of ringlets. Her blouse was spotless and the pockets of her shorts gaped since the contents were too packed. Charlsie was wearing sheer black support hose and Keds, and her artificial nails were a sort of burgundy red.
"That girl of mine is expecting. Just call me Grandma!" she said, and I could tell Charlsie was happy as a clam. I
gave her the expected hug, and Sam patted her on the shoul­der. We were both glad to see her.
"When is the baby due?" I asked, and Charlsie was off and running. I didn't have to say anything for the next five minutes. Then Arlene trailed in, makeup inexpertly covering the hickeys on her neck, and she listened to everything all over again. Once my eyes met Sam's, and after a little mo­ment, we looked away simultaneously.
Then we began serving the lunchtime crowd, and the in­cident was over.
Most people didn't drink much at lunchtime, maybe a beer or a glass of wine. A hefty proportion just had iced tea or water. The lunch crowd consisted of people who happened to be close to Merlotte's when the lunch hour came, people who were regulars and thought of it naturally, and the local alcoholics for whom their lunchtime drink was maybe the third or fourth. As I began to take orders, I remembered my brother's plea.
I listened in all day, and it was gruelling. I'd never spent the day listening; I'd never let my guard down for so long. Maybe it wasn't as painful as it had been; maybe I felt cooler about what I was hearing. Sheriff Bud Dearborn was sitting at a table with the mayor, my grandmother's friend Sterling Norris. Mr. Norris patted me on the shoulder, standing up to do so, and I realized it was the first time I'd seen him since Gran's funeral.
"How are you doing, Sookie?" he asked in a sympathetic voice. He was looking poorly, himself.
"Just great, Mr. Norris. Yourself?"
"I'm an old man, Sookie," he said with an uncertain smile. He didn't even wait for me to protest. "These murders are wearing me down. We haven't had a murder in Bon Temps since Darryl Mayhew shot Sue Mayhew. And there wasn't no mystery about that."
'That was ... what? Six years ago?" I asked the sheriff, just to keep standing there. Mr. Norris was feeling so sad at seeing me because he was thinking my brother was going to be arrested for murder, for killing Maudette Pickens, and the mayor reckoned that meant Jason had most likely also killed Gran. I ducked my head to hide my eyes.
"I guess so. Let's see, I remember we were dressed up for Jean-Anne's dance recital... so that was ... yes, you're right, Sookie, six years ago." The sheriff nodded at me with approval. "Jason been in today?" he asked casually, as if it were a mere afterthought.
"No, haven't seen him," I said. The sheriff told me he wanted iced tea and a hamburger; and he was thinking of the time he'd caught Jason with his Jean-Anne, making out like crazy in the bed of Jason's pickup truck.
Oh, Lord. He was thinking Jean-Anne was lucky she hadn't been strangled. And then he had a clear thought that cut me to the quick: Sheriff Dearborn thought, These girls are all bottom-feeders, anyway.
I could read his thought in its context because the sheriff happened to be an easy scan. I could feel the nuances of the idea. He was thinking, "Low-skill jobs, no college, screwing vampires ... bottom of the barrel."
Hurt and angry didn't begin to describe how I felt at this assessment.
I went from table to table automatically, fetching drinks and sandwiches and clearing up the remainders, working as hard as I usually did, with that awful smile stretching my face. I talked to twenty people I knew, most of whom had thoughts as innocent as the day is long. Most customers were thinking of work, or tasks they had to get done at home, or some little problem they needed to solve, like getting the Sears repairman to come work on the dishwasher or getting the house clean for weekend company.
Arlene was relieved her period had started.
Charlsie was immersed in pink glowing reflections on her shot at immortality, her grandchild. She was praying earn­estly for an easy pregnancy and safe delivery for her daugh­ter.

Lafayette was thinking that working with me was getting spooky.
Policeman Kevin Pryor was wondering what his partner Kenya was doing on her day off. He himself was helping his mother clean out the tool shed and hating every minute of it.
I heard many comments, both aloud and unspoken, about my hair and complexion and the bandage on my arm. I seemed more desirable to more men, and one woman: Some of the guys who'd gone on the vampire burning expedition were thinking they didn't have a chance with me because of my vampire sympathies, and they were regretting their im­pulsive act. I marked their identities in my mind. I wasn't going to forget they could have killed my Bill, even though at the moment the rest of the vampire community was low on my list of favorite things.
Andy Bellefleur and his sister, Portia, were having lunch together, something they did at least once every week. Portia was a female version of Andy: medium height, blocky build, determined mouth and jaw. The resemblance between brother and sister favored Andy, not Portia. She was a very com­petent lawyer, I'd heard. I might have suggested her to Jason when he was thinking he'd need an attorney, if she'd not been female ... and I'd been thinking about Portia's welfare more than Jason's.
Today the lawyer was feeling inwardly depressed because she was educated and made good money, but never had a date. That was her inner preoccupation.
Andy was disgusted with my continued association with Bill Compton, interested in my improved appearance, and curious about how vampires had sex. He also was feeling sorry he was probably going to arrest Jason. He was thinking that the case against Jason was not much stronger than that against several other men, but Jason was the one who looked the most scared, which meant he had something to hide. And there were the videos, which showed Jason having sex— not exactly regular, garden-variety sex—with Maudette and Dawn.
I stared at Andy while I processed his thoughts, which made him uneasy. Andy really did know what I was capable of. "Sookie, you going to get that beer?" he asked finally, waving a broad hand in the air to make sure he had my attention.
"Sure, Andy," I said absently, and got one out of the cooler. "You need any more tea, Portia?"
"No, thanks, Sookie," Portia said politely, patting her mouth with her paper napkin. Portia was remembering high school, when she would have sold her soul for a date with the gorgeous Jason Stackhouse. She was wondering what Ja­son was doing now, if he had a thought in his head that would interest her—maybe his body would be worth the sac­rifice of intellectual companionship? So Portia hadn't seen the tapes, didn't know of their existence; Andy was being a good cop.
I tried to picture Portia with Jason, and I couldn't help smiling. That would be an experience for both of them. I wished, not for the first time, that I could plant ideas as well as reap them.
By the end of my shift, I'd learned—nothing. Except that the videos my brother had so unwisely made featured mild bondage, which caused Andy to think of the ligature marks around the victims' necks.
So, taken as a whole, letting my head open for my brother had been a futile exercise. All I'd heard tended to make me worry more and didn't supply any additional information that might help his cause.
A different crowd would come in tonight. I had never come to Merlotte's just for fun. Should I come in tonight? What would Bill do? Did I want to see him?
I felt friendless. There was no one I could talk to about Bill, no one who wouldn't be halfway shocked I was seeing him in the first place. How could I tell Arlene I was blue because Bill's vampire buddies were terrifying and ruthless, that one of them had bitten me the night before, bled into my mouth, been staked on top of me? This was not the kind of problem Arlene was equipped to handle. I couldn't think of anyone who was. I couldn't recall anyone dating a vampire who wasn't an indiscriminate vampire groupie, a fang-banger who would go with just any bloodsucker.
By the time I left work, my enhanced physical appearance no longer had the power to make me confident. I felt like a freak.
I puttered around the house, took a short nap, watered Gran's flowers. Toward dusk, I ate something I'd nuked in the microwave. Wavering up until the last moment about going out, I finally put on a red shirt and white slacks and some jewelry and drove back to Merlotte's.
It felt very strange entering as a customer. Sam was back behind the bar, and his eyebrows went up as he marked my entrance. Three waitresses I knew by sight were working tonight, and a different cook was grilling hamburgers, I saw through the serving hatch.
Jason was at the bar. For a wonder, the stool next to him was empty, and I eased onto it.
He turned to me with his face set for a new woman: mouth loose and smiling, eyes bright and wide. When he saw it was me, his expression underwent a comical change. "What the hell are you doing here, Sookie?" he asked, his voice indig­nant.
"You'd think you weren't glad to see me," I remarked. When Sam paused in front of me, I asked him for a bourbon and coke, without meeting his eyes. "I did what you told me to do, and so far nothing," I whispered to my brother. "I came in here tonight to try some more people."
"Thanks, Sookie," he said, after a long pause. "I guess I didn't realize what I was asking. Hey, is something different about your hair?"
He even paid for my drink when Sam slid it in front of me.
We didn't seem to have much to talk about, which was actually okay, since I was trying to listen to the other cus­tomers. There were a few strangers, and I scanned them first, to see if they were possible suspects. It didn't seem they were, I decided reluctantly. One was thinking hard about how much he missed his wife, and the subtext was that he was faithful to her. One was thinking about it being his first time here, and the drinks were good. Another was just concen­trating on sitting up straight and hoping he could drive back to the motel.
I'd had another drink.
Jason and I had been swapping conjectures about how much the lawyer's fees would be when Gran's estate was settled. He glanced at the doorway and said, "Uh-oh."
"What?" I asked, not turning to see what he was looking at.
"Sis, the boyfriend's here. And he's not alone." My first idea was that Bill had brought one of his fellow vampires with him, which would have been upsetting and unwise. But when I turned, I realized why Jason had sounded so angry. Bill was with a human girl. He had a grip on her arm, she was coming on to him like a whore, and his eyes were scanning the crowd. I decided he was looking for my reaction.
I got off the barstool and decided another thing. I was drunk. I seldom drank at all, and two bourbon and cokes consumed within minutes had made me, if not knee-walking drunk, at least tipsy.
Bill's eyes met mine. He hadn't really expected to find me here. I couldn't read his mind as I had Eric' for an awful' moment, but I could read his body language.

"Hey, Vampire Bill!" Jason's friend Hoyt called. Bill nod­ded politely in Hoyt's direction, but began to steer the girl— tiny, dark—in my direction. I had no idea what to do.
"Sis, what's his game?" Jason said. He was working up a head of steam. "That gal's a fang-banger from Monroe. I knew her when she liked humans."
I still had no idea what to do. My hurt was overwhelming, but my pride kept trying to contain it. I had to add a dash of guilt to that emotional stew. I hadn't been where Bill had expected me to be, and I hadn't left him a note. Then again— on the other hand (my fifth or sixth)—I'd had a lot of shocks the night before at the command performance in Shreveport; and only my association with him had obliged me to go to that shindig.
My warring impulses held me still. I wanted to pitch my­self on her and beat the shit out of her, but I hadn't been brought up to brawl in barrooms. (I also wanted to beat the shit out of Bill, but I might as well go bang my head on the wall for the all the damage it would do him.) Then, too, I wanted to burst into tears because my feelings were hurt— but that would be weak. The best option was not to show anything because Jason was ready to launch into Bill, and all it needed was some action from me to squeeze his trigger.
Too much conflict on top of too much alcohol.
While I was enumerating all these options, Bill had ap­proached, wending his way through the tables, with the woman in tow. I noticed the room was quieter. Instead of watching, I was being watched.
I could feel my eyes well with tears while my hands fisted. Great. The worst of both responses.
"Sookie," Bill said, "this is what Eric dropped off at my doorstep."
I could hardly understand what he was saying.
"So?" I said furiously. I looked right into the girl's eyes. They were big and dark and excited. I kept my own lids wide apart, knowing if I blinked the tears would flow.
"As a reward," Bill said. I couldn't understand how he felt about this.
"Free beverage?" I said, and couldn't believe how veno­mous my voice sounded.
Jason put his hand on my shoulder. "Steady, girl," he said, his voice as low and mean as mine. "He ain't worth it."
I didn't know what Bill wasn't worth, but I was about to find out. It was almost exhilarating to have no idea what I was about to do, after a lifetime of control.
Bill was regarding me with sharp attention. Under the flou-rescents over the bar, he looked remarkably white. He hadn't fed from her. And his fangs were retracted.
"Come outside and talk," he said.
"With her?" I was almost growling.
"No," he said. "With me. I have to send her back."
The distaste in his voice influenced me, and I followed Bill outside, keeping my head up and not meeting any eyes. He kept ahold of the girl's arm, and she was practically walk­ing on her toes to keep up. I didn't know Jason was coming with us until I turned to see him behind me as we passed into the parking lot. Outside, people were coming and going, but it was marginally better than the crowded bar.
"Hi," the girl said chattily. "My name's Desiree. I think I've met you before, Jason."
"What are you doing here, Desiree?" Jason asked, his voice quiet. You could almost believe he was calm.
"Eric sent me over here to Bon Temps as a reward for Bill," she said coyly, looking at Bill from the corners of her eyes. "But he seems less than thrilled. I don't know why.
I'm practically a special vintage." "Eric?" Jason asked me.
"A vampire from Shreveport. Bar owner. Head honcho." "He left her on my doorstep," Bill told me. "I didn't ask
for her."
"What are you going to do?"
"Send her back," he said impatiently. "You and I have to talk."
I gulped. I felt my fingers uncurl.
"She needs a ride back to Monroe?" Jason asked.
Bill looked surprised. "Yes. Are you offering? I need to talk to your sister."
"Sure," Jason said, all geniality. I was instantly suspicious.
"I can't believe you're refusing me," Desiree said, looking up at Bill and pouting. "No one has ever turned me down before."
"Of course I am grateful, and I'm sure you are, as you put it, a special vintage," Bill said politely. "But I have my own wine cellar."
Little Desiree stared at him blankly for a second before comprehension slowly lit her brown eyes. "This woman yours?" she asked, jerking her head at me. "She is."
Jason shifted nervously at Bill's flat statement. Desiree gave me a good looking over. "She's got funny eyes," she finally pronounced. "She's my sister," Jason said.
"Oh. I'm sorry. You're much more ... normal." Desiree gave Jason the up-and-down, and seemed more pleased with what she saw. "Hey, what's your last name?"
Jason took her hand and began leading her toward his pickup. "Stackhouse," he was saying, giving her the full eye treatment, as they walked away. "Maybe on the way home, you can tell me a little about what you do ..." I turned back to Bill, wondering what Jason's motive was for this generous act, and met Bill's gaze. It was like walking into a brick wall.
"So, you want to talk?" I asked harshly. "Not here. Come home with me."
I scuffed the gravel with my shoe. "Not your house."
"Then yours."
"No."
He raised his arched brows. "Where then?"
Good question.
"My folks' pond." Since Jason was going to be giving Miss Dark and Tiny a ride home, he wouldn't be there.
"I'll follow you," he said briefly, and we parted to go to our respective cars.
The property where I'd spent my first few years was to the west of Bon Temps. I turned down the familiar gravel driveway and parked at the house, a modest ranch that Jason kept up pretty well. Bill emerged from his car as I slid from mine, and I motioned him to follow me. We went around the house and down the slope, following a path set with big paving stones. In a minute we were at the pond, man-made, that my dad had put in our backyard and stocked, anticipating fishing with his son in that water for years.
There was a kind of patio overlooking the water, and on one of the metal chairs was a folded blanket. Without asking me, Bill picked it up and shook it out, spreading it on the grass downslope from the patio. I sat on it reluctantly, think­ing the blanket wasn't safe for the same reasons meeting him in either home wasn't safe. When I was close to Bill, what I thought about was being even closer to him.
I hugged my knees to me and stared off across the water. There was a security light on the other side of the pond, and I could see it reflected in the still water. Bill lay on his back next to me. I could feel his eyes on my face. He laced his fingers together across his ribs, ostentatiously keeping his hands to himself.
"Last night frightened you," he said neutrally.
"Weren't you just a little scared?" I asked, more quietly than I'd thought I would.
"For you. A little for myself."
I wanted to lie on my stomach but worried about getting that close to him. When I saw his skin glow in the moonlight, I yearned to touch him.
"It scared me that Eric can control our lives while we're a couple."
"Do you not want to be a couple anymore?"
The pain in my chest was so bad I put my hand over it, pressing the area above my breast.
"Sookie?" He was kneeling by me, an arm around me.
I couldn't answer. I had no breath.
"Do you love me?" he asked.
I nodded.
"Why do you talk of leaving me?"
The pain made its way out through my eyes in the form of tears.
"I'm too scared of the other vampires and the way they are. What will he ask me to do next? He'll try to make me do something else. He'll tell me he'll kill you otherwise. Or he'll threaten Jason. And he can do it."
Bill's voice was as quiet as the sound of a cricket in the grass. A month ago, I might not have been able to hear it. "Don't cry," he told me. "Sookie, I have to tell you unwel­come facts."
The only welcome thing he could have told me at that point was that Eric was dead.
"Eric is intrigued by you now. He can tell you have mental powers that most humans don't have, or ignore if they know they possess them. He anticipates your blood is rich and sweet." Bill's voice got hoarse when he said that, and I shiv­ered. "And you're beautiful. You're even more beautiful now. He doesn't realize you have had our blood three times." "You know that Long Shadow bled onto me?" "Yes. I saw."

"Is there anything magic about three times?" He laughed, that low, nimbly, rusty laugh. "No. But the more vampire blood you drink, the more desirable you be­come to our kind, and actually, more desirable to anyone. And Desiree thought she was a vintage! I wonder what vam­pire said that to her."
"One that wanted to get in her pants," I said flatly, and he laughed again. I loved to hear him laugh.
"With all this telling me how lovely I am, are you saying that Eric, like, lusts for me?" "Yes."
"What's to stop him from taking me? You say he's stronger than you."
"Courtesy and custom, first of all."
I didn't snort, but I came close.
"Don't discount that. We're all observant of custom, we vampires. We have to live together for centuries."
"Anything else?"
"I am not as strong as Eric, but I'm not a new vampire. He might get badly hurt in a fight with me, or I might even win if I got lucky."
"Anything else?"
"Maybe," Bill said carefully, "you yourself."
"How so?"
"If you can be valuable to him otherwise, he may leave you alone if he knows that is your sincere wish."
"But I don't want to be valuable to him! I don't want to ever see him again!"
"You promised Eric you'd help him again," Bill reminded me.
"If he turned the thief over to the police," I said. "And what did Eric do? He staked him!"
"Possibly saving your life in the process."
"Well, I found his thief!"
"Sookie, you don't know much about the world."
I stared at him, surprised. "I guess that's so."
"Things don't turn out... even." Bill stared out into the darkness. "Even I think sometimes I don't know much, any­more." Another gloomy pause. "I have only once before seen one vampire stake another. Eric is going beyond the limits of our world."
"So, he's not too likely to take much notice of that custom and courtesy you were bragging about earlier."
"Pam may keep him to the old ways."
"What is she to him?"
"He made her. That is, he made her vampire, centuries ago. She comes back to him from time to time and helps him do whatever he is doing at the moment. Eric's always been something of a rogue, and the older he gets the more willful he gets." Calling Eric willful seemed a huge understatement to me.
"So, have we talked our way around in circles?" I asked.
Bill seemed to be considering. "Yes," he confirmed, a tinge of regret in his voice. "You don't like associating with vampires other than myself, and I have told you we have no choice."
"How about this Desiree thing?"
"He had someone drop her off on my doorstep, hoping I would be pleased he'd sent me a pretty gift. Also, it would test my devotion to you if I drank from her. Perhaps he poisoned her blood somehow, and her blood would have weakened me. Maybe she would just have been a crack in my armor." He shrugged. "Did you think I had a date?"
"Yes." I felt my face harden, thinking about Bill walking in with the girl.
"You weren't at home. I had to come find you." His tone wasn't accusatory, but it wasn't happy, either.
"I was trying to help Jason out by listening. And I was still upset from last night." "Are we all right now?"
"No, but we're as all right as we can get," I said. "I guess no matter who I cared for, it wouldn't always go smooth. But I hadn't counted on obstacles this drastic. There's no way you can ever outrank Eric, I guess, since age is the criterion?"
"No," said Bill. "Not outrank..." and he suddenly looked thoughtful. "Though there may be something I can do along those lines. I don't want to—it goes against my nature—but we would be more secure." I let him think.
"Yes," he concluded, ending his long brood. He didn't offer to explain, and I didn't ask.
"I love you," he said, as if that was the bottom line to whatever course of action he was considering. His face loomed over me, luminous and beautiful in the half-darkness. "I feel the same about you," I said, and put my hands against his chest so he wouldn't tempt me. "But we have too much against us right now. If we can pry Eric off our backs, that would help. And another thing, we have to stop this murder investigation. That would be a second big piece of trouble off our backs. This murderer has the deaths of your friends to answer for, and the deaths of Maudette and Dawn to answer for." I paused, took a deep breath. "And the death of my grandmother." I blinked back tears. I'd gotten adjusted to Gran not being in the house when I came home, and I was getting used to not talking to her and sharing my day with her, but every now and then I had a stab of grief so acute it robbed me of breath.
"Why do you think the same killer is responsible for the Monroe vampires being burned?"
"I think it was the murderer who planted this idea, this vigilante thing, in the men in the bar that night. I think it was the murderer who went from group to group, egging the guys on. I've lived here all my life, and I've never seen people around here act that way. There's got to be a reason they did this time."
"He agitated them? Fomented the burning?"
"Yes."
"Listening hasn't turned up anything?"
"No," I admitted glumly. "But that's not to say tomorrow will be the same."
"You're an optimist, Sookie."
"Yes, I am. I have to be." I patted his cheek, thinking how my optimism had been justified since he had entered my life.
"You keep on listening, since you think it may be fruitful," he said. "I'll work on something else, for now. I'll see you tomorrow evening at your place, okay? I may... no, let me explain then."
"All right." I was curious, but Bill obviously wasn't ready to talk.
On my way home, following the taillights of Bill's car as far as my driveway, I thought of how much more frightening the past few weeks would have been if I hadn't had the security of Bill's presence. As I went cautiously down the driveway, I found myself wishing Bill hadn't felt he had to go home to make some necessary phone calls. The few nights we'd spent apart, I wouldn't say I'd been exactly writhing with fear, but I'd been very jumpy and anxious. At the house by myself, I spent lots of time going from locked window to locked door, and I wasn't used to living that way. I felt disheartened at the thought of the night ahead.
Before I got out of my car, I scanned the yard, glad I'd remembered to turn on the security lights before I left for the bar. Nothing was moving. Usually Tina came running when I'd been gone, anxious to get in the house for some cat kibble, but tonight she must be hunting in the woods.
I separated my house key from the bunch on my key ring. I dashed from the car to the front door, inserted and twisted the key in record time, and slammed and locked the door behind me. This was no way to live, I thought, shaking my head in dismay; and just as I completed that idea, something hit the front door with a thud. I shrieked before I could stop myself.
I ran for the portable phone by the couch. I punched in Bill's number as I went around the room pulling down the shades. What if the line was busy? He'd said he was going home to use the phone!
But I caught him just as he walked in the door. He sounded breathless as he picked up the receiver. "Yes?" he said. He always sounded suspicious. "Bill," I gasped, "there's someone outside!" He crashed the phone down. A vampire of action. He was there in two minutes. Looking out into the yard from a slightly lifted blind, I glimpsed him coming into the yard from the woods, moving with a speed and silence a human could never equal. The relief of seeing him was over­whelming. For a second I felt ashamed at calling Bill to rescue me: I should have handled the situation myself. Then I thought, Why? When you know a practically invincible being who professes to adore you, someone so hard to kill it's next to impossible, someone preternaturally strong, that's who you're gonna call.
Bill investigated the yard and the woods, moving with a sure, silent grace. Finally he came lightly up the steps. He bent over something on the front porch. The angle was too acute, and I couldn't tell what it was. When he straightened, he had something in his hands, and he looked absolutely ... expressionless. This was very bad.
I went reluctantly to the front door and unlocked it I pushed out the screen door.
Bill was holding the body of my cat.
"Tina?" I said, hearing my voice quaver and not caring at all. "Is she dead?"

Bill nodded, one little jerk of his head.
"What—how?"
"Strangled, I think."
I could feel my face crumple. Bill had to stand there hold­ing the corpse while I cried my eyes out.
"I never got that live oak," I said, having calmed a little. I didn't sound very steady. "We can put her in that hole." So around to the backyard we went, poor Bill holding Tina, trying to look comfortable about it, and me trying not to dissolve again. Bill knelt and lay the little bundle of black fur at the bottom of my excavation. I fetched the shovel and began to fill it in, but the sight of the first dirt hitting Tina's fur undid me all over again. Silently, Bill took the shovel from my hands. I turned my back, and he finished the awful job.
"Come inside," he said gently when it was finished.
We went in the house, having to walk around to the front because I hadn't yet unlocked the back.
Bill patted me and comforted me, though I knew he hadn't ever been crazy about Tina. "God bless you, Bill," I whis­pered. I tightened my arms around him ferociously, in a sud­den convulsion of fear that he, too, would be taken from me. When I'd gotten the sobs reduced to hiccups, I looked up, hoping I hadn't made him uncomfortable with my flood of emotion.
Bill was furious. He was staring at the wall over my shoul­der, and his eyes were glowing. He was the most frightening thing I'd ever seen in my life.
"Did you find anything out in the yard?" I asked.
"No. I found traces of his presence. Some footprints, a lingering scent. Nothing you could bring into court as proof," he went on, reading my mind.
"Would you mind staying here until you have to go to ... get away from the sun?"
"Of course." He stared at me. He'd fully intended to do that whether or not I agreed, I could tell.
"If you still need to make phone calls, just make them here. I don't care." I meant if they were on my phone bill.
"I have a calling card," he said, once again astonishing me. Who would have thought?
I washed my face and took a Tylenol before I put on my nightgown, sadder than I'd been since Gran had been killed, and sadder in different way. The death of a pet is naturally not in the same category as the death of a family member, I chided myself, but it didn't seem to affect my misery. I went through all the reasoning I was capable of and came no closer to any truth except the fact that I'd fed and brushed and loved Tina for four years, and I would miss her.

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