“What? Nothing.”
Tara gave me a massively skeptical look. I was going to have to explain. “She’s a Were from Alcide’s pack, but she’s keeping her second nature a secret from her employer,” I said. “You don’t feel obliged to tell Allison, I hope?”
“No, who Allison hires is up to her.” Tara shrugged. “Rosanne’s been there since she was a kid, coming in after school. As long as she does the work, what difference does it make?”
“Good. We’ll keep it under our hats, then.”
“Rosanne didn’t look happy with you,” Tara said, after a long moment.
“No . . . no, she wasn’t. She thinks . . . I’m a witch, a really terrible witch. Terrible in the sense of being very powerful and scary.”
Tara snorted. “I can tell she doesn’t know you worth a damn.”
I smiled, but it was a weak effort. “I hope it’s not a widespread opinion.”
“I would have thought they could
smell
if you were bad or not.”
I tried to look indifferent. “They should know better, but since they don’t, I’m just going to have to weather it out.”
“Sook, don’t you worry. If you need us, you call JB and me. We’ll strap those babies into their car seats, and we’ll be right over. I know I’ve failed you some . . . disappointed you some . . . in the past couple of years. But I swear I’ll help you, no matter what.”
I was taken aback by her vehemence. I looked sharply at my friend. There were tears in her eyes, even while she pulled out into traffic and turned the car back toward Bon Temps.
“Tara? What’re you talking about?”
“I did fail you,” she said, her face grim. “In so many ways. And I failed myself. I made some really dumb decisions. I was trying so hard to escape the way I was brought up. For a couple of years, I would have done
anything
to make sure I never had to live like I had at my folks’ house again. So I looked for protection, and you know how that turned out. When that was over, I hated vampires so much I couldn’t listen to your problems. I’ve grown up now, though.” She gave a sharp and decisive nod, as though in her opinion she’d taken the final step in spiritual growth.
This was the last thing in the world I’d expected: a declaration of reconciliation by my oldest friend. I started to deny every negative thing she’d said about herself. But she’d been so honest that I had to be honest in return—at least, in a tactful kind of way. “Tara, we’ve always been friends. We’ll always be friends,” I said. “If you’ve made mistakes, I have, too. We just got to do the best we can. We’re coming out the other side of a lot of trouble, both of us.” Maybe.
She pulled a Kleenex out of her purse and blotted her face with one hand. “I know we’ll be okay,” she said. “I know it.”
I wasn’t convinced of that, at least about my own future, but I wasn’t going to ruin Tara’s moment. “Sure we will,” I said. I patted her hand on the steering wheel.
For a few miles we drove in silence. I looked out the window at the fields and ditches, choked with growth, the heat hovering over them like a giant blanket. If weeds could flourish with such vigor, maybe I could, too.
Our shopping trip jolted me out of my rut of worry. When Tara went
home, I sat down to make some resolutions.
I promised myself I would go in to work the next day, whether or not I heard from Sam. I had a part interest in the bar, and I didn’t have to get Sam’s permission to show up. I gave myself a rousing speech before I realized I was being ridiculous. Sam wasn’t denying me entrance to the bar. Sam hadn’t told me he didn’t want to see me. I had stayed at home of my own volition. Sam’s noncommunication might mean many things. I needed to get off my butt and find out.
I heated up a DiGiorno’s that night, since no one would deliver out on Hummingbird Road. Actually, the Prescotts, my neighbors closer to town, got their pizza delivered, but no one wanted to venture onto the long, narrow driveway to my house after dark. I’d learned lately (from the thoughts of patrons at Merlotte’s) that the woods around my house and along Hummingbird Road had a reputation of being haunted by creatures
frightening beyond belief.
Actually, that was absolutely true—but the creatures that had sparked the rumor were now departed to a country I couldn’t visit. However, there was a dead man strolling through my yard as I tried to fold the cardboard disk that had been under the pizza. Those things are hell to get into kitchen garbage bags, aren’t they? I’d finally managed it by the time he reached the back door and knocked.
“Hey, Bill,” I called. “Come on in.”
In a second he was standing in the doorway, inhaling deeply to better catch the scent he was scouting for. It was strange to see Bill breathe. “Much better,” he said, in a voice that was almost disappointed. “Though I think your dinner had a little garlic on it.”
“But no fairy smell?”
“Very little.”
The smell of a fairy is to vampires what catnip is to cats. When Dermot and Claude had been in residence, their scent had pervaded the house, lingering even when they were not actually there. But my fae kin were gone now. They’d never come back. I’d left the upstairs windows open for one whole night to dispel the lingering eau de fae, and that was no small step in this heat.
“Good,” I said briskly. “Any gossip? Any news? Anything interesting happening at your place?” Bill was my nearest neighbor. His house lay right across the cemetery. In that cemetery was his headstone, erected by his family. They’d known Bill’s body wasn’t there (they thought he’d been eaten by a panther), but they’d given him a place of rest. It hadn’t been a panther that had attacked Bill, but something much worse.
“Thanks for the beautiful roses,” he said. “By the way, I’ve had a visitor.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Good one? Bad one?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Depends,” he said.
“Well, let’s go sit in the living room while you tell me about it,” I said. “Do you want a bottle of blood?”
He shook his head. “I have an appointment with a donor later.” The Federal Bureau of Vampire Affairs had left that issue up to the individual states. Louisiana had permitted private registries first, but the state donor program was much safer for the donor
and
the vampire. Bill could get human blood under supervised conditions.
“How is that? Is it creepy?” I’d wondered if it might be like making a sperm donation: necessary and even admirable, but somewhat awkward.
“It’s a little . . . peculiar,” Bill admitted. “The element of the hunt, the seduction . . . all gone. But it’s human blood, and that’s still better than the synthetic.”
“So you have to go to the facility, and then what?”
“In some states they can come to you, but not in Louisiana. We make an appointment and go in and register. It’s a storefront clinic. In the back there’s a room with a couch. A big couch. And they show in the donor.”
“You get to pick the donor?”
“No, Louisiana BVA wants to take the personal element out of it.”
“So why the couch?”
“I know, mixed messages. But you know how good a bite can be, and there was going to be more than biting going on, no matter what.”
“You ever get the same person twice?”
“Not yet. I’m sure they keep a list, trying to keep the vampires and the humans apart after they’ve met at the bureau.”
While we talked, Bill had taken a seat on my own couch, and I tucked my legs under me in the big old armchair that had been Gran’s favorite. It was curiously comfortable to have my first real boyfriend as a casual visitor. We’d both been through a few relationships since we’d broken up. Though Bill had told me (often) that he would be very glad to resume our intimacy, tonight that topic was not on his mind. Not that I could read Bill’s thoughts; since vampires are dead, their brains just don’t spark like human brains. But a man’s body language usually lets me know when he’s considering my womanly attributes. It was really great, really comforting, to have a friendship with Bill.
I had switched on the overhead light, and Bill looked white as a sheet beneath its glare. His glossy dark brown hair looked even darker, his eyes almost black. He was hesitating over his next topic, and I was not as relaxed and comfortable all of a sudden.
“Karin is in town,” he said, and looked at me solemnly.
I could tell I was supposed to be smacked in the face with this information, but I was utterly at sea. “Who would that be?”
“Karin is Eric’s other child,” he said, shocked. “You hadn’t ever heard her name?”
“Why would I? And why should I be excited that she’s in town?”
“Karin is called the Slaughterer.”
“Well, that’s silly. ‘The Slaughterer’ is just . . . cumbersome. ‘Karin the Killer’ would be way better.”
If Bill had been prone to such gestures, he would have rolled his eyes. “Sookie . . .”
“Look at what a great fighter Pam is,” I said, diverted. “Eric must really like strong women who can defend themselves.”
Bill looked at me pointedly. “Yes, he does.”
Okay, I was going to take that as a compliment . . . maybe kind of a sad one. I hadn’t set out to kill people (or vampires or werewolves or fairies) or to conspire to kill them or even to feel like killing them . . . but I had done all those things in the course of the past two years. Since Bill had walked into Merlotte’s and I had seen him—my first vampire—I had learned more about myself and the world around me than I’d ever wanted to know. And now here we were, Bill and me, sitting in my living room like old buddies, talking about a killer vamp.
“You think Karin might be here to hurt me?” I said. I gripped my ankle with my hand and squeezed. Just what I needed, another psycho bitch after me. Hadn’t the Weres pretty much cornered that market?
“That’s not the feeling I get,” Bill said.
“She’s
not
out to get me?” Your life was not right when you were actually surprised that someone didn’t want to kill you.
“No. She asked me many, many questions about you, about Bon Temps, about the strong people and the weak people in your circle. She would have told me if her intent had been to harm you. Karin is not as complex as Pam . . . or Eric, for that matter.”
I had about four instant responses to Bill’s information, but I wisely shut my mouth on all of them. “I wonder why she didn’t come right to my door to ask, if she wanted to know all that,” I contented myself with saying.
“I believe she was gathering information for some purpose of her own.”
Sometimes I just didn’t get vampires.
“There are a few things you need to understand about Karin,” Bill said briskly, when I didn’t respond out loud. “She takes . . . umbrage . . . at any perceived slight to Eric, any disparagement. She was with him for many years. She was his guard dog.”
I was glad I always had a Word of the Day calendar on the kitchen counter. Otherwise, I’d have had to whip out a dictionary to get through that sentence. I started to ask Bill, if Karin was so hung up on Eric, why hadn’t I met her before? But I skipped that in favor of telling him, “I don’t go around disparaging Eric. I love Eric. It’s not my fault he’s upset with me. Or that his asshole of a maker engaged him to a vampire he hardly knows.” I sounded just as bitter as I felt. “She should take umbrage with
that
.”
Bill looked thoughtful, which made me very nervous. He was about to say something he knew I wouldn’t like. I squeezed my ankle a little harder.
“All the Area Five vampires know what happened at the Long Tooth pack meeting,” he said.
That wasn’t exactly a shocker. “Eric told you.” I cast around for something else to say. “It was a horrible night,” I said honestly.
“He returned to Fangtasia in a towering rage, but he wasn’t specific about what had made him that way. He said, ‘Damn wolves,’ a few times.” Here Bill was careful to stop. I figured Eric had added “Damn Sookie” a few times, too. Bill continued, “Palomino is still dating that Were, Roy, the one who works for Alcide.” He shrugged, as if to say there was no accounting for taste. “Since we were all naturally curious, she called Roy to discover the details. She relayed the story to us. It seemed important for us to know.” After a moment Bill added, “We’d asked Mustapha, since we could tell he’d been fighting, but he would not comment. He is very closemouthed about what’s going on in the Were world.”
There was a long silence. I simply didn’t know how to respond, and Bill’s face at this moment didn’t give me any clues. Mostly, I was feeling a rush of appreciation for Mustapha, the Were who was Eric’s daytime guy. Mustapha was that rare thing, a person who could keep his mouth shut.
“So,” I made myself say, “you’re thinking . . . what?”
“Does it make any difference?” Bill asked.
“You’re being very mysterious.”
“You’re the one who kept a huge secret,” he pointed out. “You’re the one who had the fairy equivalent of a wishing well in your possession.”
“Eric knew.”
“What?” Bill was genuinely startled.
“Eric knew I had it. Though I didn’t tell him.”
“How did he know this?”
“My great-grandfather,” I said. “Niall told him.”
“Why would Niall do such a thing?” he said, after an appreciable pause.
“Here’s Niall’s logic,” I said. “Niall thought that I needed to find out if Eric would pressure me to use the cluviel dor for Eric’s own benefit. Niall wanted it himself, but he didn’t take it because it was intended for me to use.” I shivered when I remembered how Niall’s impossibly blue eyes had blazed with desire for the enchanted object, how sharply he’d had to rein himself in.
“So in Niall’s view, giving Eric this piece of knowledge was a test of Eric’s love for you.”
I nodded.
Bill contemplated the floor for a minute or two. “Far be it from me to speak in Eric’s defense,” he said at last, with a hint of a smile, “but in this instance, I will. I don’t know if Eric actually intended you to, say, wish Freyda had never been born or to wish that his maker had never met her . . . or some other wish that would have gotten him out of Freyda’s line of sight. Knowing the Viking, I’m certain he hoped you would be
willing
to use it on his behalf.”