So it wasn’t that. There was something else going on. But he didn’t know what it was, and that fact wouldn’t stop gnawing at him.
He woke shortly after two in the morning and sat up in bed, eyes wide.
He sat there for a few minutes, trying to talk himself down. What he was thinking just couldn’t be.
But he couldn’t make it not make sense.
He dressed and left the house quietly, so he wouldn’t wake his sister or grandmother, and got into the Honda. He followed the twin cones of its headlights down Magnolia Creek Road to Parish Road 34, then turned onto Hummingbird Road and took that to Merlotte’s. The restaurant was dark. Andy drove around it and parked outside Sam’s trailer, feeling a little guilty about what he had to do.
He pounded on the trailer door until lights blinked on. Sam opened the door a minute later, wearing boxer shorts and holding a shirt closed over a chest furred with tightly coiled, golden hairs. Andy looked away. “Sorry if I woke you, Sam,” he said.
“If? Of course you woke me. Those Hollywood people ran me ragged all day. What is it?”
“How do you organize your e-mails?”
“What?”
Andy repeated the question, though it had seemed straightforward enough the first time.
Sam blinked a couple of times. “Organize? I run a bar and grill. I’d be surprised if I get ten e-mails a day, if you don’t count groups asking for money and junk mail about growing a bigger—”
“I get those, too,” Andy said, cutting him off. “Not that I need ’em.”
“Anyway, I don’t organize my e-mails. I just leave them in the order they come in, except for the ones I trash. Why?”
“Your computer in here or in the restaurant? Or both?”
“In there. When I’m here, I want to be away from the business.”
“Can’t blame you for that.”
“What’s this all about, Andy?”
“Open the place up and I’ll tell you.”
“You’re not drunk again, are you?”
“Hell no, Sam. I might be seeing clearly for the first time in days.”
“Okay, hang on.” Sam let the door swing closed. When he emerged a minute later, he had shoved his feet into some shoes, pulled on a pair of jeans, and fastened a few of the pearl snaps on his shirt. “Wish you’d tell me what this is about.”
“It’s about what those people are doing in your place,” Andy said.
“What people? Tris? The crew? They’re getting ready to shoot a TV show. This could really put Merlotte’s on the map.”
“You sure you want to be on the map?” Andy asked as they crossed the parking area to the restaurant’s back door. “Seems like for some of the people working here, being put on display in front of the whole world might not be their most favorite thing.”
“Maybe. What’s that got to do with e-mail?”
“Nothing,” Andy replied. “I’m just saying.”
Sam stuck his key in the lock, turned it, hit some light switches on the way in. “Andy, you’re not making much sense.”
“Just find me the e-mail Casey-Lynn sent you when she asked if they could film here. Hell, doesn’t even have to be the first one. Find the one where she sent you a contract, the one where she offered you money. Anything.”
Sam stopped, halfway toward his office, and turned slowly. He looked at Andy, something like comprehension beginning to glimmer in his eyes. “You know? I’m not sure I can.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“What, though? This is all some kind of setup? For what?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s what I want to find out.”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll check my e-mail. I really don’t remember any, but she and Tris said they’d been in touch. They knew so much about the place, I believed them. And you know, things have been a little crazy around here, these last couple months. I could’ve been distracted.”
Sam went into his office, and Andy wandered around the restaurant. It looked like a different place. The crew had remodeled and repainted and refinished. The furniture had been brought back inside, but it looked new. Polished glassware was arrayed behind the bar, and there was a new mirrored back bar with tiny spotlights illuminating the bottles of liquor and artificial blood, creating an elegant effect.
“This looks great!” Andy called. “They did a hell of a job!”
“They did, didn’t they?”
“I thought the point was to show the world the places they found, though, not to turn them into something else.”
“Andy, it’s TV. Nothing’s real on TV.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Sam emerged from his office, looking glum. “I can’t find them. Not a single e-mail.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know, Sam. But I got a feeling Casey-Lynn Jennings is right in the middle of it. Do you know when they’ll be here?”
“They’re shooting tomorrow. Today, I guess. She said around six.”
“Know where they’re staying?”
“They have some fancy tour buses over at Don’s trailer park. They need the hookups, Bradley said.”
“So we got, what, almost four hours? That should give us time.”
Sam was wide-awake now, but confused. “Time for what?”
“To figure out what they’re up to.” Andy glanced toward the egg-carton construction. “What’s that thing?”
“Bradley called it a decorative accent.”
“I think it’s a lot more than that,” Andy said. He dragged a table and a chair over beside the wall, then stepped up into the chair and onto the table.
“Careful.”
“Don’t worry,” Andy said. He reached inside the little hole at the back of the indentation with two fingers, and withdrew what he had thought were dowels.
They weren’t.
The crew showed up a few minutes after six. Andy and Sam and Bud Dearborn and Alcee Beck were waiting inside, sitting around a table with coffee cups and a mostly empty pot on top of it. Bud was the Renard Parish sheriff, Alcee one of his detectives.
For the past hour, Andy had felt a growing kinship with that old bull Bust-’em-up. The nearer six o’clock came, the more he felt trapped in a narrow space, when all he wanted to do was get out, get away, run. Move.
But he stayed and drank coffee and traded stories with the Renard Parish cops, even though he’d heard theirs before and they’d heard his. When the door opened and Tristan Kowel looked in, Andy sat with his hands on the tabletop, trying to look as if he hadn’t a care.
“Sam?” Kowel said. “Ready for the big day?”
“Come on in, Tris,” Sam said. “Everybody with you?”
“The whole crew.”
Kowel entered, and the others trailed behind him, each looking at the men around the table with some measure of curiosity and surprise. When Casey-Lynn came in, she started toward Andy, then hesitated. The pause was brief; some people might have missed it, but Andy didn’t. Then she was walking toward him again, her steps a little more determined. Also more forced, as was her smile.
“I didn’t expect to see you here so early, Andy,” she said. She put her arms around him, gave him a quick hug. He returned it without enthusiasm. “Something wrong?” she asked.
“You tell me.”
“I don’t— What are you talking about?”
“It’s Bill, isn’t it?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
Andy pointed to the egg-carton wall. “Wooden stakes, loaded into spring-fired launchers, enough to blanket the whole dining area. Silver nitrate coating the inside of every glass in the place—barely enough to be noticeable, maybe enough to make some humans sick. But probably enough to make a vampire dead. Electric
current in the bar, wired separately for each position, probably controlled remotely. I don’t know what else—we only had a few hours, so we haven’t completely torn the place apart.”
“Andy, baby, I—”
“When I told you about him, I called him ‘Vampire Bill.’ You knew he was Bill Compton, even though I never said his last name. And you acted surprised when I mentioned that there was an out vampire livin’ here—but how could it be a surprise if you already knew his name?”
As he spoke, something changed in her face. It was almost like she’d been standing in a light that had been switched off. She closed up, looked away from him, pressed her lips together. For a long moment, she didn’t speak.
Then she touched his arm, a glancing pass, and dropped her hand to her side. “Okay, yes. I told you about my family, Andy. How none of them—none of us—have ever been any good. That’s true, much as I hate to admit it. And that kind of thing has deep roots.”
“What’s that got to do with Bill?”
“Bill’s the taproot,” she said. “The one from which all the rest emerged. He murdered my great-grandfather. It’s family legend. Everybody in my family knows Bill Compton’s name, and everybody knows that after his death, Enoch’s wife, Clara, went a little nuts. More than a little.”
“So you’re trying to kill Bill—and endangering everybody else in Merlotte’s in the bargain—because of something you think he did decades ago?”
“Longer than that. And we know he did it. That’s never been at issue. Some don’t think that’s the only reason the family fell apart, but I believe it is. The hatred, the bitterness, the thirst for vengeance—that’s as hereditary as hair color or high cholesterol, and it got passed down to all of us. Bill Compton’s an abomination, and I hate him. But not just him—I hate all bloodsuckers. That’s why I joined the Fellowship of the Sun—because their goals match those I’ve had for so long. And if some vamp-loving people get hurt, too, well, that’ll just make a bigger statement, won’t it?”
“You’re a member of that cu—”
“Don’t say ‘cult,’ Andy. It’s a church. We believe.”
“I thought churches believed in forgiveness. You might try that sometime.”
“Some things aren’t so easily forgiven,” she said.
“Tell me about it.” Even as he spoke, he knew he hadn’t truly forgiven, either. If he had, he might not have been so quick to suspect her. “So, what, is the whole crew in on this?”
“Just a few. Fellowship folks got me the job in the first place. When I told them what I had in mind—what a splash it would make—they were on board. Not Tristan, though, so don’t blame him. He never knew. I was the instigator.” She raised the hand to his arm again, and this time clutched it tight. “I’m sorry, Andy. About . . . you know, everything. The way I was raised. The way I left you. Lying to you.”
“I’m sorry, too, Casey-Lynn. I don’t like vampires, either, but the law’s the law. And Bill’s never done anything to hurt me, or anyone else I know. You’ll have to go with Bud—with Sheriff Dearborn, there. What happens after that is out of my hands.”
She swallowed, eyes glistening, but then she hardened again, dropped her hand, looked him straight in the eye. “It was a hell of a plan, Andy. And this doesn’t change anything. The Fellowship’s work—the Lord’s work—goes on, with or without me.”
She turned away and went toward Dearborn, hands out, wrists together. “I take it you’d like to handcuff me?” she said.
Bud talked quietly with Casey-Lynn for a few minutes, and she pointed out the four Fellowship members who had helped her. Some looked like they wanted to run, but Alcee was blocking the door, and nobody wanted to tangle with him.
While Bud and Casey-Lynn talked, Sam and Tristan Kowel were deep in conversation. Then Dearborn and Alcee led the conspirators away, and Kowel turned to those left behind. “We’re going to put it back, people.”
“Back?” someone asked.
“Merlotte’s. Back to what it was when we came.”
“But it looks so much better now,” Bradley complained.
“Back,” Sam said.
“Back,” Kowel echoed.
As the crew debated how to proceed, Andy walked out the front door and watched Bud and Alcee divide the detained into two vehicles. Bud took Casey-Lynn, though she had to sit in his front seat.
She craned her head as Bud drove out of the lot. When she met Andy’s gaze, her lips curled into a smile. It wasn’t a smile of victory, or even one acknowledging an old friend. He thought perhaps it was the smile of the faithful, of someone who could afford to take the long view. It lasted for only an instant, and then the smile was gone and she looked straight ahead, through the windshield, as if ready to face whatever came next.
Andy watched her leave him again. He’d thought the last time was for keeps, but he knew this one was. Even if she was convicted and incarcerated locally, he wouldn’t visit. He would testify at the trial, but that was all. He wouldn’t be drawn into her life again. That was a trap, as surely as a rodeo chute to a bull, and he wasn’t dumb enough to enter it a third time.
When both sheriff’s vehicles were out of sight, Andy started back into Merlotte’s, but he stopped himself as he reached for the door. He needed some sleep, a clear head.
Bill was safe, for now, but Lafayette’s killer was still out there.
Andy stood there a moment longer. The early-morning sun picked out the needles on the big pines, defining each one distinctly and surrounding it with a halo of light. The smell of the trees hung heavy in the morning air and high clouds dotted the sky, and somewhere a bird chittered, and he heard the whine of a mosquito, and he knew that Bon Temps was waking up.
Bon Temps. His town.
He got into the Honda, but instead of going home and closing his eyes, he drove to Caddo Road, made a right on Court Street, and cruised slowly through downtown, then the side streets leading away. He didn’t have Casey-Lynn, or anyone like her. But he had someplace he knew he belonged, and she’d never had that. Maybe that made a difference. All the difference.
Anyway, it did to him.
KNIT A SWEATER OUT OF SKY
SEANAN MCGUIRE
Seanan McGuire has always found Amelia fascinating. The witch has crossed paths with Sookie time and again, but her true home is New Orleans, a city that needs its witches more than ever after the last few years. Luckily for Amelia, she has her boyfriend, Bob, to keep her from biting off more than she can chew . . . most of the time.
—
The cherry tree on my dining room table was growing steadily. According to my notes, it was likely maturing about a day every two seconds, giving me a respectable “one minute equals one month” benchmark to use for judging its age. It had been a seed when I’d dropped it into the pot filled with rich bayou soil and started the stopwatch. In the fifteen minutes since then, it had reached and passed a year’s growth, putting out branches and stretching eagerly toward the ceiling. If Wikipedia was correct, I’d be seeing the first pale cherry blossoms within the next three-minute “season,” even though I couldn’t expect fruit until the tree reached its fourth year.
The trouble with witchcraft is that, for the most part, the only people practicing it are witches. That’s sort of like taking an entire field of engineering and only letting it be used by Boy Scouts, or handing obstetric medicine off to bird-watchers. You’ll still get bridges built and babies born, but it’ll come with a lot of weird bric-a-brac around the edges, like the tolls have to be paid with merit badges, and you can’t go into labor until someone’s spotted a blue-winged blackbird or something. Witches enjoy tinkering with the subtle fabric of the universe. It’s how we’re made. We’re the sort of people who see a loose thread and think, “I should yank on that to see what happens,” and it doesn’t much matter whether it’s a thread on a sweater or a weather pattern. Yan
k the wrong thread on a sweater and the whole thing unravels. Yank the wrong thread on a heat wave and you’re having a snowstorm in New Orleans in July. Half the bizarre weather in the South can be blamed on witchcraft gone stupid—only half, thankfully. No one who grows up in hurricane territory goes playing with those threads, because there’s just too much chance that your try at a Hail Mary pass will cause another Katrina. We don’t mess with big weather, but no witch born has ever been able to resist the little threads—and sometimes little threads can be more effective than big ones. Which brought us back to the cherry tree, spreading branches as big around as my wrist and laying in the infrastructure that would eventually be used to support a healthy crop of delicious fruit.
Witching isn’t like shapeshifting or being a telepathic fairy lady that all the vampires want to cozy up to; it’s big and it’s versatile and it’s dangerous as all hell. But that’s also what makes it so much fun.
The cherry tree was brushing the ceiling, and I was no longer confident in my ability to get it out of the apartment. I glanced at the stopwatch. The tree was entering its fourth year and should be reaching its private summer in another eighteen seconds. I watched intently as petals fell down like confetti, blanketing the room in pink and white, and small green fruit began to appear.
There were footsteps behind me. Bob was back from the store. The footsteps stopped abruptly, and he said, sounding bemused, “Amelia, there’s a tree in the dining room.”
“I know,” I said, not taking my eyes off the rapidly swelling fruits of my labor. “It’s a modification on that stasis spell I used right after Sookie’s cousin got killed. I was thinking if I could use it to freeze time for a while, maybe turning it on its ear would make it so I could speed time up within a certain limited sphere. I started it on the cherry seed, didn’t enchant the dirt or the pot I planted it in, and look—it’s working.”
Bob didn’t say anything. That wasn’t a surprise, although it was something of a disappointment. Then again, we’d been together for both more and less time than the calendar would admit; we’d been dating as humans for less than a month when I’d accidentally turned him into a cat by trying something outside my witchy weight class. He’d lived with me throughout his “feline period,” been turned back by someone who wasn’t me, tried to kill me, dumped me, taken me back, and, finally, taken me to Paris. It had been a weird relationship progression at best, and a really problematic one at worst. But he was a witch, too. He understood what it was like to see a thread and want to yank on it just to find out what would happen.
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