This was far from a ringing endorsement.
“And Eric was still at your house then, wasn’t he? Maybe it was Eric?” Alcide sounded almost hopeful.
“No,” I said.
“Maybe I do want the whole story.”
“Maybe I’ve changed my mind about telling it to you. You either believe in me, or you don’t. Either you think I’m the kind of person who’d kill a woman for no good reason, or you know I’m not.” Truly, I was hurt more than I thought I’d be. I was very careful not to slip into Alcide’s head, because I was afraid I might pick up on something that would have been even more painful.
Alcide tried several times to open another conversation, but the drive couldn’t end soon enough for me. When he pulled into the clearing and I knew I was yards away from being in my own house, the relief was overwhelming. I couldn’t scramble out of that fancy car fast enough.
But Alcide was right behind me.
“I don’t care,” he said in a voice that was almost a growl.
“What?” I’d gotten to my front door, and the key was in the lock.
“I don’t care.”
“I don’t believe that for one minute.”
“What?”
“You’re harder to read than a plain human, Alcide, but I can see the pockets of reservation in your mind. Since you wanted me to help you out with your dad, I’ll tell you: Patrick Whatsisname plans to bring up your dad’s gambling problems to show he’s unsuitable as packleader.” Nothing more underhanded and supernatural than the truth. “I’d read his mind before you asked me to. I don’t want to see you for a long, long, long time.”
“What?” Alcide said again. He looked like I’d hit him in the head with an iron.
“Seeing you . . . listening to your head . . . makes me feel bad.” Of course, there were several different reasons they did, but I didn’t want to enumerate them. “So, thanks for the ride to the funeral.” (I may have sounded a bit sarcastic.) “I appreciate your thinking of me.” (Even a higher probability of sarcasm here.) I entered the house, shut the door on his startled face, and locked it just to be on the safe side. I marched across the living room so he could hear my steps, but then I stopped in the hall and waited to listen while he got back in the Lincoln. I listened to the big car rocket down the driveway, probably putting ruts in my beautiful gravel.
As I shed Tara’s suit and bundled it up to drop at the dry cleaner’s, I confess I was mopey. They say when one door shuts, another one opens. But they haven’t been living at my house.
Most of the doors I open seem to have something scary crouched behind them, anyway.
7
S
AM WAS IN THE BAR THAT NIGHT, SEATED AT A CORNER table like a visiting king, his leg propped up on another chair cushioned with pillows. He was keeping one eye on Charles, one eye on the clientele’s reaction to a vampire bartender.
People would stop by, drop down in the chair across from him, visit for a few minutes, and then vacate the chair. I knew Sam was in pain. I can always read the preoccupation of people who are hurting. But he was glad to be seeing other people, glad to be back in the bar, pleased with Charles’s work.
All this I could tell, and yet when it came to the question of who had shot him, I didn’t have a clue. Someone was gunning for the two-natured, someone who’d killed quite a few and wounded even more. Discovering the identity of the shooter was imperative. The police didn’t suspect Jason, but his own people did. If Calvin Norris’s people decided to take matters into their own hands, they could easily find a chance to take out Jason. They didn’t know there were more victims than those in Bon Temps.
I probed into minds, I tried to catch people in unguarded moments, I even tried to think of the most promising candidates for the role of assassin so I wouldn’t waste time listening to (for example) Liz Baldwin’s worries about her oldest granddaughter.
I assumed the shooter was almost certainly a guy. I knew plenty of women who went hunting and plenty more with access to rifles. But weren’t snipers always men? The police were baffled by this sniper’s selection of targets, because they didn’t know the true nature of all the victims. The two-natured were hampered in their search because they were looking only at local suspects.
“Sookie,” Sam said as I passed close to him. “Kneel down here a minute.”
I sank to one knee right by his chair so he could speak in a low voice.
“Sookie, I hate to ask you again, but the closet in the storeroom isn’t working out for Charles.” The cleaning supplies closet in the storeroom was not exactly built to be light tight, but it was inaccessible to daylight, which was good enough. After all, the closet had no windows, and it was inside a room with no windows.
It took me a minute to switch my train of thought to another track. “You can’t tell me he’s not able to sleep,” I said incredulously. Vampires could sleep in the daytime under any circumstances. “And I’m sure you put a lock on the inside of the door, too.”
“Yes, but he has to kind of huddle on the floor, and he says it smells like old mops.”
“Well, we did keep the cleaning stuff in there.”
“What I’m saying is, would it be so bad for him to stay at your place?”
“Why do you really want me to have him at the house?” I asked. “There’s got to be a reason more than a strange vampire’s comfort during the day, when he’s dead, anyway.”
“Haven’t we been friends a long time, Sookie?”
I smelled something big and rotten.
“Yes,” I admitted, standing so that he would have to look up at me. “And?”
“I hear through the grapevine that the Hotshot community has hired a Were bodyguard for Calvin’s hospital room.”
“Yeah, I think that’s kind of strange, too.” I acknowledged his unspoken concern. “So I guess you heard what they suspect.”
Sam nodded. His bright blue eyes caught mine. “You have to take this seriously, Sookie.”
“What makes you think I don’t?”
“You refused Charles.”
“I don’t see what telling him he couldn’t sleep in my house has to do with worrying about Jason.”
“I think he’d help you protect Jason, if it came to that. I’m down with this leg, or I’d . . . I don’t believe it was Jason who shot me.”
A knot of tension within me relaxed when Sam said that. I hadn’t realized I’d been worried about what he thought, but I had.
My heart softened a little. “Oh, all right,” I said with poor grace. “He can come stay with me.” I stomped off grumpily, still not certain why I’d agreed.
Sam beckoned Charles over, conferred with him briefly. Later in the evening Charles borrowed my keys to stow his bag in the car. After a few minutes, he was back at the bar and signaled he’d returned my keys to my purse. I nodded, maybe a little curtly. I wasn’t happy, but if I had to be saddled with a houseguest, at least he was a polite houseguest.
Mickey and Tara came into Merlotte’s that night. As before, the dark intensity of the vampire made everyone in the bar a little excited, a little louder. Tara’s eyes followed me with a kind of sad passivity. I was hoping to catch her alone, but I didn’t see her leave the table for any reason. I found that was another cause for alarm. When she’d come into the bar with Franklin Mott, she’d always taken a minute to give me a hug, chat with me about family and work.
I caught a glimpse of Claudine the fairy across the room, and though I planned to work my way over to have a word with her, I was too preoccupied with Tara’s situation. As usual, Claudine was surrounded by admirers.
Finally, I got so anxious that I took the vampire by the fangs and went over to Tara’s table. The snakelike Mickey was staring at our flamboyant bartender, and he scarcely flicked a gaze at me as I approached. Tara looked both hopeful and frightened, and I stood by her and laid my hand on her shoulder to get a clearer picture of her head. Tara has done so well for herself I seldom worry over her one weakness: She picks the wrong men. I was remembering when she dated “Eggs” Benedict, who’d apparently died in a fire the previous fall. Eggs had been a heavy drinker and a weak personality. Franklin Mott had at least treated Tara with respect and had showered her with presents, though the nature of the presents had said, “I’m a mistress,” rather than “I’m an honored girlfriend.” But how had it come to pass that she was in Mickey’s company—Mickey, whose name made even Eric hesitate?
I felt like I’d been reading a book only to discover that someone had ripped a few pages from the middle.
“Tara,” I said quietly. She looked up at me, her big brown eyes dull and dead: past fear, past shame.
To the outer eye she looked almost normal. She was well groomed and made up, and her clothing was fashionable and attractive. But inside, Tara was in torment. What was wrong with my friend? Why hadn’t I noticed before that something was eating her up from the inside out?
I wondered what to do next. Tara and I were just staring at each other, and though she knew what I was seeing inside her, she wasn’t responding. “Wake up,” I said, not even knowing where the words were coming from. “Wake up, Tara!”
A white hand grabbed my arm and removed my hand from Tara’s shoulder forcibly. “I’m not paying you to touch my date,” Mickey said. He had the coldest eyes I’d ever seen—mud colored, reptilian. “I’m paying you to bring our drinks.”
“Tara is my friend,” I said. He was still squeezing my arm, and if a vampire squeezes you, you know about it. “You’re doing something to her. Or you’re letting someone else hurt her.”
“It’s none of your concern.”
“It is my concern,” I said. I knew my eyes were tearing up from the pain, and I had a moment of sheer cowardice. Looking into his face, I knew he could kill me and be out of the bar before anyone there could stop him. He could take Tara with him, like a pet dog or his livestock. Before the fear could get a grip, I said, “Let go of me.” I made each word clear and distinct, even though I knew he could hear a pin drop in a storm.
“You’re shaking like a sick dog,” he said scornfully.
“Let go of me,” I repeated.
“Or you’ll do—what?”
“You can’t stay awake forever. If it’s not me, it’ll be someone else.”
Mickey seemed to be reconsidering. I don’t think it was my threat, though I meant it from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair.
He looked down at Tara, and she spoke, as though he’d pulled a string. “Sookie, don’t make such a big deal out of nothing. Mickey is my man now. Don’t embarrass me in front of him.”
My hand dropped back to her shoulder and I risked taking my eyes off Mickey to look down at her. She definitely wanted me to back off; she was completely sincere about that. But her thinking about her motivation was curiously murky.
“Okay, Tara. Do you need another drink?” I asked slowly. I was feeling my way through her head, and I was meeting a wall of ice, slippery and nearly opaque.
“No, thank you,” Tara said politely. “Mickey and I need to be going now.”
That surprised Mickey, I could tell. I felt a little better; Tara was in charge of herself, at least to some extent.
“I’ll return your suit. I took it by the cleaner’s, already,” I said.
“No hurry.”
“All right. I’ll see you later.” Mickey had a firm grip on my friend’s arm as the two made their way through the crowd.
I got the empty glasses off the table, swabbed it down, and turned back to the bar. Charles Twining and Sam were on alert. They’d been observing the whole small incident. I shrugged, and they relaxed.
When we closed the bar that night, the new bouncer was waiting at the back door for me when I pulled on my coat and got my keys out of my purse.
I unlocked my car doors and he climbed in.
“Thanks for agreeing to have me in your home,” he said.
I made myself say the polite thing back. No point in being rude.
“Do you think Eric will mind my being here?” Charles asked as we drove down the narrow parish road.
“It’s not his say-so,” I said curtly. It irked me that he automatically wondered about Eric.
“He doesn’t come to see you often?” enquired Charles with unusual persistence.
I didn’t answer until we’d parked behind my house. “Listen,” I said, “I don’t know what you heard, but he’s not . . . we’re not . . . like that.” Charles looked at my face and wisely said nothing as I unlocked my back door.
“Feel free to explore,” I said after I’d invited him over the threshold. Vampires like to know entrances and exits. “Then I’ll show you your sleeping place.” While the bouncer looked curiously around the humble house where my family had lived for so many years, I hung up my coat and put my purse in my room. I made myself a sandwich after asking Charles if he wanted some blood. I keep some type O in the refrigerator, and he seemed glad to sit down and drink after he’d studied the house. Charles Twining was a peaceful sort of guy to be around, especially for a vampire. He didn’t letch after me, and he didn’t seem to want anything from me.
I showed him the lift-up floor panel in the guest bedroom closet. I told him how the television remote worked, showed him my little collection of movies, and pointed out the books on the shelves in the guest bedroom and living room.
“Is there anything else you can think of you might need?” I asked. My grandmother brought me up right, though I don’t think she ever imagined I’d have to be hostess to a bunch of vampires.
“No, thank you, Miss Sookie,” Charles said politely. His long white fingers tapped his eye patch, an odd habit of his that gave me the cold gruesomes.
“Then, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll say good night.” I was tired, and it was exhausting work making conversation with a near stranger.
“Of course. Rest easy, Sookie. If I want to roam in the woods . . . ?”
“Feel free,” I said immediately. I had an extra key to the back door, and I got it out of the drawer in the kitchen where I kept all the keys. This had been the odds and ends drawer for perhaps eighty years, since the kitchen had been added onto the house. There were at least a hundred keys in it. Some, those that were old when the kitchen was added, were mighty strange looking. I’d labeled the ones from my generation, and I’d put the back door key on a bright pink plastic key ring from my State Farm insurance agent. “Once you’re in for the night—well, for good—shoot the dead bolt, please.”