Alcide said, “You should take Sookie home. She’s tired.”
Quinn put his arm around me and pulled me to his side. “When we’ve received your assurance that the pack will get to the bottom of this unprovoked attack, we’ll leave.”
Neat speech. Quinn seemed to be a master of expressing himself diplomatically and firmly. He was a little overwhelming, truthfully. The power flowed from him in a steady stream, and his physical presence was undeniable.
“We’ll convey all this to the packmaster,” Amanda was saying. “He’ll investigate, I’m sure. Someone must have hired these pups.”
“Someone converted them to start with,” Quinn said. “Unless your pack has degraded to biting street punks and sending them out to scavenge?”
Okay, hostile atmosphere now. I looked up at my large companion and discovered that Quinn was nearasthis to losing his temper.
“Thank you all,” I said to Amanda, my bright smile again yanking at the corners of my mouth. “Alcide, Maria-Star, good to see you. We’re going to go now. Long drive back to Bon Temps.” I gave Biker Bartender and Fishnet Girl a little wave. He nodded, and she scowled. Probably she wouldn’t be interested in becoming my best friend. I wriggled out from under Quinn’s arm and linked his hand with mine.
“Come on, Quinn. Let’s hit the road.”
For a bad little moment, his eyes didn’t recognize me. Then they cleared, and he relaxed. “Sure, babe.” He said good-bye to the Weres, and we turned our backs on them to walk out. Even though the little crowd included Alcide, whom I trusted in most ways, it was an uncomfortable moment for me.
I could feel no fear, no anxiety, coming from Quinn. Either he had great focus and control, or he really wasn’t scared of a bar full of werewolves, which was admirable and all, but kind of . . . unrealistic.
The correct answer turned out to be “great focus and control.” I found out when we got to the dim parking lot. Moving quicker than I could track, I was against the car and his mouth was on mine. After a startled second, I was right in the moment. Shared danger does that, and it was the second time—on our first date—that we’d been in peril. Was that a bad omen? I dismissed that rational thought when Quinn’s lips and teeth traveled down to find that vulnerable and sensitive place where the neck curves into the shoulder. I made an incoherent noise, because along with the arousal I always felt when kissed there, I felt undeniable pain from the bruises that circled my neck. It was an uncomfortable combination.
“Sorry, sorry,” he muttered into my skin, his lips never stopping their assault. I knew if I lowered my hand, I’d be able to touch him intimately. I’m not saying I wasn’t tempted. But I was learning a little caution as I went along . . . probably not enough, I reflected with the sliver of my mind that wasn’t getting more and more involved with the heat that surged up from my lowest nerve bundle to meet the heat generated by Quinn’s lips. Oh, geez. Oh, oh, oh.
I moved against him. It was a reflex, okay? But a mistake, because his hand slipped under my breast and his thumb began stroking. I shuddered and jerked. He was doing a little gasping, too. It was like jumping onto the running board of a car that was already speeding down the dark road.
“Okay.” I breathed, pulled away a little. “Okay, let’s stop this now.”
“Ummm,” he said in my ear, his tongue flicking. I jerked.
“I’m not doing this,” I said, trying to sound definite. Then my resolve gathered. “Quinn! I’m not having sex with you in this nasty parking lot!”
“Not even a little bit of sex?”
“No. Definitely not!”
“Your mouth” (here he kissed it) “is saying one thing, but your body” (he kissed my shoulder) “is saying another.”
“Listen to the mouth, buster.”
“Buster?”
“Okay. Quinn.”
He sighed, straightened. “All right,” he said. He smiled ruefully. “Sorry. I didn’t plan on jumping you like that.”
“Going into a place where you’re not exactly welcome, and getting out unhurt, that’s some excitement,” I said.
He expelled a deep breath. “Right,” he said.
“I like you a lot,” I said. I could read his mind fairly clearly, just at this instant. He liked me, too; right at the moment, he liked me a whole bunch. He wanted to like me right up against the wall.
I battened my hatches. “But I’ve had a couple of experiences that have been warnings for me to slow down. I haven’t been going slow with you tonight. Even with the, ah, special circumstances.” I was suddenly ready to sit down in the car. My back was aching and I felt a slight cramp. I worried for a second, then thought of my monthly cycle. That was certainly enough to wear me out, coming on top of an exciting, and bruising, evening.
Quinn was looking down at me. He was wondering about me. I couldn’t tell what his exact concern was, but suddenly he asked, “Which of us was the target of that attack outside the theater?”
Okay, his mind was definitely off sex now. Good. “You think it was just one of us?”
That gave him pause. “I had assumed so,” he said.
“We also have to wonder who put them up to it. I guess they were paid, in some form—either drugs or money, or both. You think they’ll talk?”
“I don’t think they’ll survive the night in jail.”
10
T
HEY DIDN’T EVEN RATE THE FRONT PAGE. THEY were in the local section of the Shreveport paper, below the fold. JAILHOUSE HOMICIDES, the headline read. I sighed.
Two juveniles awaiting transport from the holding cells to the Juvenile Facility were killed last night sometime after midnight.
The newspaper was delivered every morning to the special box at the end of my driveway, right beside my mailbox. But it was getting dark by the time I saw the article, while I was sitting in my car, about to pull out onto Hummingbird Road and go to work. I hadn’t ventured out today until now. Sleeping, laundry, and a little gardening had taken up my day. No one had called, and no one had visited, just like the ads said. I’d thought Quinn might phone, just to check up on my little injuries . . . but not.
The two juveniles, brought into the police station on charges of assault and battery, were put in one of the holding cells to wait for the morning bus to arrive from the Juvenile Facility. The holding cell for juvenile offenders is out of sight from that for adult offenders, and the two were the only juveniles incarcerated during the night. At some point, the two were strangled by a person or persons unknown. No other prisoners were harmed, and all denied seeing any suspicious activity. Both the youths had extensive juvenile records. “They had had many encounters with the police,” a source close to the investigation said.
“We’re going to look into this thoroughly,” said Detective Dan Coughlin, who had responded to the original complaint and was heading the investigation of the incident for which the youths were apprehended. “They were arrested after allegedly attacking a couple in a bizarre manner, and their deaths are equally bizarre.” His partner, Cal Myers, added, “Justice will be done.”
I found that especially ominous.
Tossing the paper on the seat beside me, I pulled my sheaf of mail out of the mailbox and added it to the little pile. I’d sort through it after my shift at Merlotte’s.
I was in a thoughtful mood when I got to the bar. Preoccupied with the fate of the two assailants of the night before, I hardly flinched when I found that I would be working with Sam’s new employee. Tanya was as bright-eyed and efficient as I’d found her previously. Sam was very happy with her; in fact, the second time he told me how pleased he was, I told him a little sharply that I’d already heard about it.
I was glad to see Bill come in and sit at a table in my section. I wanted an excuse to walk away, before I would have to respond to the question forming in Sam’s head:
Why don’t you like Tanya?
I don’t expect to like everyone I meet, any more than I expect everyone to like me. But I usually have a basis for disliking an individual, and it’s more than an unspecified distrust and vague distaste. Though Tanya was some kind of shape-shifter, I should have been able to read her and learn enough to either confirm or disprove my instinctive suspicion. But I couldn’t read Tanya. I’d get a word here and there, like a radio station that’s fading out. You’d think I’d be glad to find someone my own age and sex who could perhaps become a friend. Instead, I was disturbed when I realized she was a closed book. Oddly, Sam hadn’t said a word about her essential nature. He hadn’t said, “Oh, she’s a weremole,” or “She’s a true shifter, like me,” or anything like that.
I was in a troubled mood when I strode over to take Bill’s order. My bad mood compounded when I saw Selah Pumphrey standing in the doorway scanning the crowd, probably trying to locate Bill. I said a few bad words to myself, turned on my heel, and walked away. Very unprofessional.
Selah was staring at me when I glanced at their table after a while. Arlene had gone over to take their order. I simply listened to Selah; I was in a rude mood. She was wondering why Bill always wanted to meet her here, when the natives were obviously hostile. She couldn’t believe that a discerning and sophisticated man like Bill could ever have dated a barmaid. And the way she’d heard it, I hadn’t even gone to college, and furthermore, my grandmother had gotten
murdered.
That made me sleazy, I guess.
I try to take things like this with a grain of salt. After all, I could have shielded myself pretty effectively from these thoughts. People who eavesdrop seldom hear good about themselves, right? An old adage, and a true one. I told myself (about six times in row) that I had no business listening to her, that it would be too drastic a reaction to go slap her upside the head or snatch her baldheaded. But the anger swelled in me, and I couldn’t seem to get it under control. I put three beers down on the table in front of Catfish, Dago, and Hoyt with unnecessary force. They looked up at me simultaneously in astonishment.
“We do something wrong, Sook?” Catfish said. “Or is it just your time of the month?”
“You didn’t do anything,” I said. And it wasn’t my time of the month—oh. Yes, it was. I’d had the warning with the ache in my back, the heaviness in my stomach, and my swollen fingers. My little friend had come to visit, and I felt the sensation even as I realized what was contributing to my general irritation.
I glanced over at Bill and caught him staring at me, his nostrils flaring. He could smell the blood. A wave of acute embarrassment rolled over me, turning my face red. For a second, I glimpsed naked hunger on his face, and then he wiped his features clean of all expression.
If he wasn’t weeping with unrequited love on my doorstep, at least he was suffering a little. A tiny pleased smile was on my lips when I glimpsed myself in the mirror behind the bar.
A second vampire came in an hour later. She looked at Bill for a second, nodded to him, and then sat at a table in Arlene’s section. Arlene hustled over to take the vamp’s order. They spoke for a minute, but I was too busy to check in on them. Besides, I’d just have heard the vamp filtered through Arlene, since vampires are silent as the grave (ho ho) to me. The next thing I knew, Arlene was wending her way through the crowd to me.
“The dead gal wants to talk to you,” she said, not moderating her voice in the least, and heads turned in our direction. Arlene is not long on subtlety—or tact, for that matter.
After I made sure all my customers were happy, I went to the vamp’s table. “What can I do for you?” I asked, in the lowest voice I could manage. I knew the vamp could hear me; their hearing is phenomenal, and their vision is not far behind in acuity.
“You’re Sookie Stackhouse?” asked the vamp. She was very tall, just under six feet, and she was of some racial blend that had turned out awfully well. Her skin was a golden color, and her hair was thick and coarse and dark. She’d had it cornrowed, and her arms were weighed down with jewelry. Her clothes, in contrast, were simple; she wore a severely tailored white blouse with long sleeves, and black leggings with black sandals.
“Yes,” I said. “Can I help you?” She was looking at me with an expression I could only identify as doubtful.
“Pam sent me here,” she said. “My name is Felicia.” Her voice was as lilting and exotic as her appearance. It made you think about rum drinks and beaches.
“How-de-do, Felicia,” I said politely. “I hope Pam is well.”
Since vampires don’t have variable health, this was a stumper for Felicia. “She seems all right,” the vamp said uncertainly. “She has sent me here to identify myself to you.”
“Okay, I know you now,” I said, just as confused as Felicia had been.
“She said you had a habit of killing the bartenders of Fangtasia,” Felicia said, her lovely doe eyes wide with amazement. “She said I must come to beg your mercy. But you just seem like a human, to me.”
That Pam. “She was just teasing you,” I said as gently as I could. I didn’t think Felicia was the sharpest tool in the shed. Super hearing and super strength do not equal super intelligence. “Pam and I are friends, sort of, and she likes to embarrass me. I guess she likes to do the same thing to you, Felicia. I have no intention of harming anyone.” Felicia looked skeptical. “It’s true, I have a bad history with the bartenders of Fangtasia, but that’s just, ah, coincidence,” I babbled on. “And I am really, truly just a human.”
After chewing that over for a moment, Felicia looked relieved, which made her even prettier. Pam often had multiple reasons for doing something, and I found myself wondering if she’d sent Felicia here so I could observe her attractions—which of course would be obvious to Eric. Pam might be trying to stir up trouble. She hated a dull life.
“You go back to Shreveport and have a good time with your boss,” I said, trying to sound kind.
“Eric?” the lovely vampire said. She seemed startled. “He’s good to work for, but I’m not a lover of men.”