The needs of the world went on, no matter how many crises erupted. “All God’s children got to eat,” I said, and found another quart of milk at the back of the top shelf and handed it to Barry. Then I poured myself a bowl of cereal.
Bob said, “The psychic’s going to be here any minute.” He was not trying to sound like he was telling me to hurry up, but it was a timely reminder. I was horrified when I looked at the clock.
Everyone but me had already eaten, rinsed out the dishes, and stacked them by the sink. I should have felt embarrassed, but instead I was simply relieved.
Just after I brushed my teeth, an ancient pickup truck rumbled into my front parking area. Its motor cut with an ominous rattle. A short, stocky woman slid out of the high cab to land on the gravel. She was wearing a cowboy hat decorated with the tip portion of a peacock feather. Her dry brown hair brushed her shoulders and almost matched her skin, as tan and weathered as an old saddle. Delphine Oubre was nothing like I’d imagined. From her battered boots and jeans to her sleeveless blue blouse, she looked like she’d be more at home at a country and western bar like Stompin’ Sally’s than coming to the house of a telepath to practice her touch psychic-ness.
“Paranormal psychometry,” Barry corrected.
I raised an eyebrow.
“It was just called psychometry originally,” he said, “but in the past few years ‘real scientists’ ”—he made the imaginary quote marks—“have started using that term to designate . . . well, measuring psychological traits.”
That didn’t sound much like a science to me.
“Me, either,” he confessed.
But I read up on this online last night to get ready for her visit. In case Bob is mistaken about her talent.
Good move
, I told him, watching Delphine Oubre come up the back steps.
“You don’t need to tell her your names,” Bob said hastily. “Just mine, that’s all she needs.”
Up close, Delphine seemed to be about forty years old. She wore no jewelry or makeup; her only decoration was the feather in her hat. Her cowboy boots were ancient and venerable. She looked like she could pound in nails with her bare hands.
Bob introduced himself to Delphine, and though (following his orders) I didn’t tell her my name, I offered Delphine a drink (she wanted water from the tap, no ice). She pulled out a kitchen chair and took a seat. When I put the glass in front of her, she took a big swallow. “Well?” she said impatiently.
Diantha offered her the scarf, still in its plastic bag. I hadn’t seen it, hadn’t wanted to see it. The scarf had been cut off Arlene, so the knot was intact. It was twisted into a thin rope, and it was stained.
“Dead woman’s scarf,” Delphine said, though not as if that worried her.
“No, it’s my scarf,” I said. “But I want to know how come a dead woman was wearing it. Do you have a problem with holding something that killed someone?”
I wanted to be sure Ms. Oubre wouldn’t start screaming when she touched the fabric. Though judging by what I’d seen of her so far, that didn’t seem likely.
“It ain’t the scarf that killed her, but the hands that tightened it,” she said practically. “Show me your money and hand it over. I got cows to feed back home.”
Money? Bob had called her. Since he’d done the arranging, I’d forgotten to ask him what the payment should be. Naturally, she wouldn’t take a check.
“Four hundred,” Bob murmured, and I could have slapped him for neglecting to tell me this. Of course, I should have asked. As I tried to remember what was in my purse, my heart sank. I’d have to pass Delphine’s cowboy hat to come up with the cash on the spot.
Mr. Cataliades’s hand appeared in front of Delphine with four hundred-dollar bills in it. She took the money without comment, stuffing it in her chest pocket. I nodded my thanks to my demon benefactor. He nodded back in a negligent way. “I’ll add it to my bill,” he murmured.
Now that that was settled, we all watched the touch psychic with anxious interest. Without further ado, Delphine Oubre opened the plastic bag and extracted the scarf. The smell was pretty bad, and Amelia immediately went to a window and opened it.
If I’d thought twice, I’d have done this outside, no matter how hot it was.
The psychic’s eyes were closed, and she held the scarf loosely at first. As it revealed things to her, her grip tightened, until she was clenching the material tightly. Her face turned slightly from side to side as if she sought a better view; the effect was indescribably eerie. And believe me, seeing inside her head was eerie, too.
“I’ve killed women,” she said suddenly, in a voice that was not her own. I jumped, and I wasn’t the only one. We all took a step back from Delphine Oubre.
“I’ve killed whores,” she said gloatingly. “This one’s close enough. She’s so scared. That makes it sweeter.”
We were frozen, like we’d drawn a collective breath and were holding it.
“My friend there,” said Oubre, still in the slightly accented voice, “he’s squeamish, just a bit. But it’s his choice, you know?”
I almost recognized that voice. I associated it with . . . trouble. Disaster.
I turned to look at Barry, at the same moment he took my hand in his.
“Johan Glassport,” I whispered.
My comfort level had just shot out of the uneasy area and into the blood-pressure-medication zone. Barry had mentioned seeing Glassport in New Orleans, and Quinn had seen him at an area motel; but I couldn’t figure out why. Glassport had no reason to dislike me that I knew of, but I didn’t believe that reasons were a big part of his operating system when he wasn’t on the clock as a lawyer.
When I’d met Glassport, we’d been on an airplane flight to Rhodes, both hired by the then-queen of Louisiana, Sophie-Anne. I was supposed to listen in to human brains at the vampire summit, and Glassport’s job was to defend her against charges brought by a contingent of Arkansas vamps.
I hadn’t seen Glassport since the Pyramid of Gizeh had been blown up by human supremacists who wanted to make a statement about vampires—namely, that they all ought to die.
I’d thought about Glassport from time to time, always with distaste. I had happily assumed I’d never see him again in my life. But here he was, speaking through the mouth of a Louisiana rancher named Delphine Oubre.
“Whose choice?” Bob said, in a very quiet voice.
But Delphine didn’t respond in the Glassport voice. Instead, her body changed subtly, and she swayed from side to side, as if she were riding an invisible roller coaster. It slowed down and then stopped. After a long minute, she opened her eyes.
“What I see is this,” she said in her own voice. She spoke rapidly, as if trying to get it all told before she forgot. “I see a man, a white man, and he’s bad most of the way through, but he keeps a good façade. He enjoys killing the helpless. He killed that woman, the red-headed one, on assignment. She not his usual style. She not some random pickup. She knew him. She knew the man with him. She couldn’t believe they were killing her. She thought the other man was good. She was thinking, ‘I done everything they ask me. Why they not killing Snookie?’ ”
We hadn’t introduced ourselves. “Sookie,” I corrected her absently. “She wanted to know why they were killing her instead of Sookie.”
“That you?” Delphine asked.
Catching Bob’s eyes on me and his warning shake of the head, I said, “No.”
“You lucky if you’re not Sookie. Whoever she is, they’d sure like to kill her.”
Damn.
Delphine stood up, shook herself a little, took another swallow of water, and walked out the door to get into her pickup to go home to feed her cows.
Everyone carefully avoided looking at me. I was the one with the big
X
on her forehead.
“I have to go to work,” I said, when the silence had lasted long enough. I didn’t give a damn about what Sam thought about it. I had to get out and do something.
Mr. Cataliades said, “Diantha will go with you.”
“I would be extremely glad to have her with me,” I said with absolute truth. “I’m just not sure how to explain her being there.”
“Why do you have to?” Bob said.
“Well, I have to say
something
, don’t I?”
“Why?” Barry asked. “Don’t you own part of the bar?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Then you don’t have to explain diddly-squat,” Amelia said, with such an air of magnificent indifference that we all laughed, even me.
So Diantha and I walked into Merlotte’s, and I didn’t explain her presence to anyone but Sam. The part-demon girl was wearing a relatively quiet outfit: yellow miniskirt, kingfisher blue tank top, and rainbow platform flip-flops. This month her hair was a platinum blond, but there were a lot of artificially platinum blondes around Bon Temps, though not many who looked like they were at most eighteen.
I don’t know what Diantha thought about Merlotte’s clientele, but Merlotte’s clientele was wild about her. She was different, she was alert and bright-eyed, and she talked so fast that everyone thought she was speaking a foreign language. I discovered that since I could evidently understand that language, I had to translate for her. So off and on during the day, I was called on to tell Jane Bodehouse or Antoine the cook or Andy Bellefleur what my “little second cousin” was saying. I don’t know where they got the idea that she was my second cousin, but after the first thirty minutes it became an established fact. I don’t know where they thought she’d come from, since everyone in the bar knew my entire family history, but I guess since I’d introduced the fairy Dermot (a dead ringer for Jason) as my cousin from Florida, and I’d said Claude was from the wrong side of the blanket, my townspeople figured the Stackhouses were simply unpredictable.
We were real busy that day, though since I was teamed with An Norr, I didn’t have to run as fast as I would’ve with some other waitresses. An was such a worker ant. And with Diantha and An both in the bar, not a single guy thought about my boobs, which were old news to the regulars anyway. I smiled down at my chest. “Girls, you’re outdated,” I said. Sam gave me a strange look, but he didn’t come over to ask me why I was talking to my breasts.
I stayed away from him, too. I was tired of trying to break through his defenses. I felt like I had enough trouble without trying to coax him out of his funky cave.
I was surprised when he spoke to me as I was waiting for an order for Andy and Terry Bellefleur. (Yes, it was awkward to see Andy, since he’d put me in handcuffs. We were both trying to ignore that.)
“Since when do you have a demon for a cousin?” he asked.
“You haven’t met Diantha before? I couldn’t remember.”
“I can’t say that I have. And I definitely think I’d recall it.”
“She and her uncle are at my house. They’re part of Team Sookie,” I said proudly. “They’re helping clear my name. So I don’t have to go to trial.”
I didn’t expect my words to have such an effect on Sam. He looked almost simultaneously pleased and angry. “I wish I could be there,” he said.
“Nothing’s stopping you,” I said. “Remember, you said you’d come to dinner.” I’d passed beyond confusion at Sam’s weirdness. I was somewhere in the “What the hell?” zone.
SOOKIE’S HOUSE
There was a sort of muted thump at the back door, as if someone
were perhaps carrying in bags of groceries and therefore tried to open the door with a finger or foot.
Bob, just back from town with Amelia and Barry, opened the back door and stepped out on the screened-in porch to investigate. He wasn’t really thinking about who might have arrived. Truth be told, he was worried about Amelia’s pregnancy on many different levels. He was smart enough to know they couldn’t take care of a baby on the meager money they brought in now, and he was also smart enough to know that accepting money from Copley Carmichael (besides the indirect revenue Amelia got from renting out the apartment on the top floor of the house her dad had given her) would be a grave error.
So Bob was preoccupied, which was why he didn’t react instantly when the man beyond the screen door pulled it open and lunged in. Bob thought,
Tyrese
, and then he remembered Tyrese worked for a man who’d sold his soul. Bob shoved Tyrese, hoping desperately to knock him down the back steps and out into the yard so Bob could retreat into the kitchen and lock the door.
But Tyrese was a man of action, and he was full of the fire of despair. He was quicker. He pushed the smaller man back into the house. The door shut behind them.
Amelia was coming out of the hall bathroom, impelled by a sense that something was wrong. When the two men staggered into the kitchen, she screamed. Barry, in the living room, dropped his e-reader and dashed for the kitchen. Bob landed on the floor, Amelia gathered her power, and Barry stopped dead behind her in the hall.
But a Glock trumped Amelia’s attempts at a spell, since it was pointed at her chest and her man was on the floor and groaning. Barry was intent on Tyrese’s thoughts, which were full of despair, with a curious deadness to them. Though Tyrese wasn’t sending out any interesting or usable information, Barry was pretty good at interpreting body language.
“He’s got nothing to lose, Amelia,” he said, when she stopped screaming. “I don’t know why, but he’s given up hope.”
“I got the HIV,” Tyrese said simply.
“But . . .” Amelia intended to point out that treatment now was far better, that Tyrese could live a long and good life, that . . .
“No,” Barry warned her. “Shut up.”
“Good advice, Amelia,” Tyrese said. “Shut up. My Gypsy killed herself; I just got the phone call from her sister. Gypsy, who gave me this disease, who loved me. She killed herself! Left a note saying she had murdered the man she loved and she couldn’t live with the guilt. She dead. She hung herself. My beautiful woman!”
“I’m sorry,” Amelia said, and it was the best thing she could have told him. But even the best thing wasn’t going to save them.
Bob struggled to his feet, taking care to keep his hands visible and his movements slow. “Why are you here with a gun, Tyrese?” he said. “Don’t you think Mr. Carmichael is going to be pretty unhappy about this?”
“I don’t expect to live through this,” Tyrese said simply.