But my new favorite detective seemed happy enough to be there, joking with his boss and eating a salad with low-fat dressing. Andy was looking slimmer and younger these days. Married life and impending fatherhood agreed with him. I asked him how Halleigh was doing.
“She says her stomach’s huge, but it’s not,” he said with a smile. “I think she’s glad school’s out. She’s making curtains for the baby’s room.” Halleigh taught at the elementary school.
“Miss Caroline would be so proud,” I said. Andy’s grandmother, Caroline Bellefleur, had died just weeks before.
“I’m glad she knew before she passed,” he said. “Hey, did you know my sister’s pregnant, too?”
I tried not to look too astonished. Andy and Portia had had a double wedding in their grandmother’s garden, and though it hadn’t been a surprise to hear that Andy’s wife was pregnant, somehow the older Portia had never struck me as someone who’d welcome motherhood. I told Andy how glad I was, and that was the truth.
“Would you tell Bill?” Andy asked, a little shyly. “I still feel a little weird about calling him.”
My neighbor and former flame, Bill Compton, who happened to be a vampire, had finally told the Bellefleurs that he was their ancestor right before Miss Caroline died. Miss Caroline had reacted beautifully to the startling news, but it had been a little harder for Andy, who was both proud and not too fond of the undead. Portia had actually gone out with Bill a few times before he’d figured out the relationship—awkward, huh? She and her husband had sucked up their reservations about their newly acquired living ancestor, and they’d surprised me with their dignity in acknowledging Bill.
“I’m always glad to pass along good news, but he’d be glad to hear from you.”
“I, ah, I hear he’s got a vampire girlfriend?”
I made myself look cheerful. “Yeah, she’s been there for a few weeks,” I said. “I haven’t talked to him much about it.” Like, not ever.
“You’ve met her.”
“Yeah, she seems nice.” In fact, I’d been responsible for their reunion, but that wasn’t something I wanted to share. “If I see him, I’ll tell him for you, Andy. I know he’ll want to know when the baby’s born. Do you know what you and Halleigh are having?”
“It’s a girl,” he said, and his smile almost split his face in two. “We’re gonna name her Caroline Compton Bellefleur.”
“Oh, Andy! That’s so nice!” I was ridiculously pleased, because I knew Bill would be.
Andy looked embarrassed. I could tell he was relieved when his cell phone chirped.
“Hey, honey,” he said, having glanced at the caller number before he flipped his phone open. “What’s up?” He smiled as he listened. “Okay, I’ll bring you a milkshake,” he said. “See you in a few.”
Bud was coming back to the table, and Andy glanced at the check and slapped a ten down. “There’s my part,” he said. “Keep the change. Bud, I got to go run by the house. Halleigh needs me to put up the curtain rod in the baby’s room, and she’s dying for a butterscotch milkshake. I won’t be but ten minutes.” He grinned at us and was out the door.
Bud resumed his seat while he slowly got his own money out of his worn old wallet.
“Halleigh’s having one, Portia’s having one, Tara’s having two, I hear. Sookie, you need to get you one of those little ’uns,” he said, and took a drink. “Good iced tea.” He set his empty glass down with a little thump.
“I don’t need to have a baby just because other women are doing it,” I said. “I’ll have one when I’m ready.”
“Well, you ain’t having one at all if you keep dating that deader,” Bud said bluntly. “What do you think your gran would say?”
I took the money, turned on my heel, and walked away. I asked Danielle if she’d take Bud his change. I didn’t want to talk to Bud anymore.
Stupid, I know. I had to be thicker-skinned than that. And Bud had only spoken the truth. Of course, he had the perspective that all young women wanted to have children, and he was pointing out to me that I was on the wrong track. As if I didn’t know that! What would Gran have said?
I would have answered without a pause a few days ago. Now, I wasn’t so sure. There’d been so much I hadn’t known about her. But my best guess was that she would have told me to go with my heart. And I loved Eric. As I picked up a burger basket and took it to Maxine Fortenberry’s table (she was having lunch with Elmer Claire Vaudry), I found myself anticipating the moment of dark when he would wake. I looked forward to seeing him with a kind of desperation. I needed the reassurance of his presence, the assurance that he loved me, too, the passionate connection we felt when we touched each other.
As I waited for an order at the hatch, I watched Sam pull a draft. I wondered if he felt the same way about Jannalynn as I felt about Eric. He’d dated her longer than he’d dated anyone since I’d known him. Maybe I figured he was more serious because he was arranging for nights off so he could see her more often, something he’d never done before. Sam smiled at me when his eyes caught mine. It was sure nice to see him happy.
Though Jannalynn was not good enough for him.
I almost clapped a hand over my mouth. I felt as guilty as though I’d said that out loud. Their relationship wasn’t any of my business, I told myself sternly. But a softer voice inside me said that Sam was my friend and that Jannalynn was too ruthless and violent to make him happy in the long run.
Jannalynn had killed people, but I had, too. Maybe I judged her as violent because she sometimes seemed to enjoy the killing. The idea that I might be like Jannalynn at heart—how many people did I want dead?—was another downer. Surely the day had to get better?
Pretty much always a fatal thought.
Sandra Pelt strode into the bar. It had been a long time since I’d seen her—and she’d been trying to kill me then, too. She’d been a teenager then, and she still had yet to turn twenty, I figured; but she looked a little older, her body more mature, and she had a cute shag hairdo that contrasted oddly with the snarl on her face. She brought with her an aura of rage. Though her slim body was appropriately dressed in jeans and a tank top, a loose shirt open and flapping, you could see the crazy in her face. She enjoyed dealing out the damage. You couldn’t see into her head and miss that. Her movements were jerky with tension, and her eyes roved from one person to another until they found mine. They lit up like Fourth of July fireworks. I could see right inside her brain, and I saw she had a gun tucked in the back of her jeans.
“Uh-oh,” I said, very quietly.
“What more do I have to do?” Sandra screamed.
Conversations all over the bar dwindled to silence. From the corner of my eye, I saw Sam reach down under the bar. He wouldn’t make it in time.
“I try to burn you up, and the fire goes out.” She was still at full volume. “I give those jerks free drugs and sex, and send them to grab you, and they bungle it. I try your house, and the magic won’t let me enter. I’ve tried to kill you over and over, and you just won’t die!”
I almost felt like apologizing.
At the same time, it was a good thing that Bud Dearborn had heard all this. But he was standing facing Sandra, his table between them, and I knew it would be much better if he were behind her. Sam began to move to his left, but the pass-through was to his right, and I didn’t see how he could get across the bar and behind her before she worked herself up to killing me. But that wasn’t Sam’s plan. While Sandra was focused on me, he passed the wooden bat to Terry Bellefleur, who’d been playing darts with another vet. Terry was a little crazy at times and awfully scarred, but I’d always liked him and gotten along with him well. Terry put his hand on the bat, and I was glad the jukebox was playing because it covered the little sounds.
In fact, the jukebox was playing the old Whitney Houston ballad “I Will Always Love You,” which was kind of funny, actually.
“Why are you always sending other people to do your jobs?” I asked, to cover the sound
of Terry’s quiet advance. “You some kind of coward? You think a woman can’t do the job right?”
Maybe taunting Sandra hadn’t been such a good idea, because her hand darted to her back with shifter speed, and then the gun was out and pointing at me, and then I saw her finger begin to tighten in a moment that seemed to stretch forever. And then I saw the bat swing and connect, and Sandra went down like someone had cut her strings, and there was blood everywhere.
And Terry went crazy. He crouched, screaming, and dropped the bat as if it had burned him. No matter what anyone said (the most popular thing was “SHUT UP, TERRY!”), he howled.
I never thought I’d end up sitting on the floor cradling Terry Bellefleur in my arms, rocking him and murmuring to him. But that was where I was, since he seemed to get worse if anyone else approached him. Even the ambulance people got nervous when Terry shrieked at them. He was still crouched on the balls of his feet, speckled with blood, after Sandra Pelt had gone to the hospital in Clarice.
I was beholden to Terry, who had always been kind to me even when he was having one of his bad spells. He’d come to clear away the debris when an arsonist had set fire to my kitchen. He’d offered me one of his puppies. Now he’d damaged his fragile mind to save my life. As I rocked him and patted him on the back while he wept, I listened to the steady stream of his words as the few people left in Merlotte’s did their best to stay a decent distance away.
“I done what he told me,” Terry said, “the shining man, I kept track of Sookie and I tried to keep her from harm, no one should hurt Sookie, I tried to watch out for her, and then today that bitch come in here and I knew she was going to kill Sook, I knew it, I never wanted to take blood again in my life but I couldn’t let her hurt the gal, I couldn’t do it, and I never wanted to kill another person in my whole existence, I never did.”
“She’s not dead, Terry,” I said, kissing him on the head. “You didn’t kill anyone.”
“Sam passed me the bat,” Terry said, sounding a little more alert.
“Sure, because he couldn’t get out from behind the bar in time. Thanks so much, Terry, you’ve been a friend to me always. God bless you for saving my life.”
“Sookie? You knew they wanted me to watch out for you? They come to my trailer at night, for months, that big blond one and then the shining one. They always wanted to know about you.”
“Sure,” I said, thinking, What?
“They wanted to know how you were doing and who was you hanging with and who hated you and who loved you. . . .”
“That’s okay,” I said. “It was okay to tell them.”
Eric and my great-grandfather, I guessed. Picking the damaged one, the one easiest to persuade. I’d known Eric had had someone watching me while I dated Bill and while I was on my own later. I’d guessed that my great-grandfather had had some source of knowledge, too. Whether he’d gotten the name from Eric or had discovered Terry on his own, it was very like Niall to use the handiest tool, whether or not the tool snapped during use.
“I met Elvis in your woods one night,” Terry said. One of the EMTs had given him a shot, and I thought it was beginning to work. “I knew I was nuts then. He was telling me how much he liked cats. I told him I was a dog person, myself.”
The vampire formerly known as Elvis had not translated well because his system had been so saturated with drugs when he’d been brought over by an ardent fan in the Memphis morgue. Bubba, as he preferred to be called now, had a preference for feline blood, luckily for Terry’s beloved Catahoula, Annie.
“We got along real well,” Terry was saying, and his voice was getting slower and sleepier. “I guess I better go home now.”
“We’re gonna take you out back to Sam’s trailer,” I said. “That’s where you’ll wake up.” Didn’t want Terry waking up in a panic. God, no.
The police had taken my statement, in a sketchy kind of way, and at least three people had heard Sandra say she’d firebombed the bar.
Of course, I’d been at the bar much later than I’d planned, and it was now dark. I knew that Eric was outside waiting for me, and I wanted more than anything to get up and foist the problem of Terry on someone else, but I simply couldn’t. What he’d done for me had damaged Terry even more, and I had no way to pay him back. It didn’t bother me that he’d been keeping track of me—okay, spying on me—for Eric before Eric was my lover, or for my great-grandfather. It hadn’t done me any harm. Since I knew Terry, I knew there had to have been pressure involved, of one kind or another.
Sam and I helped Terry to his feet, and we began to move, going down the hall that led to the back of the bar and across the employee parking lot to Sam’s trailer.
“They promised they wouldn’t let nothing happen to my dog,” Terry whispered. “And they promised the dreams would stop.”
“Did they keep their promises?” I asked back, my voice just as quiet.
“Yes,” he said gratefully. “No more dreams, and I got my dog.”
That didn’t seem to be so much to ask. I should be angrier at Terry, but I couldn’t scrape up the emotional energy. I was all worn out.
Eric was standing in the shadow of the trees. He stayed back so his presence wouldn’t agitate Terry. From the sudden stiffness in Sam’s face, I knew he was aware Eric was there, but Sam didn’t say anything.
We got Terry settled on Sam’s couch, and when he drifted away into the stream of sleep, I hugged Sam. “Thanks,” I said.
“For what?”
“For passing Terry the bat.”
Sam stepped back. “It was all I could think of to do. I couldn’t clear the bar without alerting her. She had to be surprised or it was all over.”
“She’s that strong?”
“Yeah,” he said. “And she’s convinced her world would be okay if it weren’t for you, sounded like. Fanatics are hard to beat down. They keep coming.”
“Are you thinking about the people who are trying to get Merlotte’s closed?”
His smile was bitter. “Maybe I am. I can’t believe this is happening in our country, and me a veteran. Born and bred in the USA.”
“I feel guilty, Sam. Some of this has happened because of me. The firebombing . . . Sandra wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t been there. And the fight. Maybe you should let me go. I can work somewhere else, you know.”
“Do you want to?”
I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but at least it wasn’t relief.
“No, of course not.”
“Then you have a job. We’re a package deal.”
He smiled, and somehow it didn’t light up his blue eyes the way his smiles usually did, but he meant what he said. Shifter or not, snarly brained or not, I could tell that much.
“Thanks, Sam. I better go see what my better half wants.”
“Whatever Eric is to you, Sook, he’s not your better half.”
I paused, my hand on the doorknob, and couldn’t think of anything to say to that. So I just left.
Eric was waiting, but not patiently. He took my face between his big hands and examined it under the harsh glare of the security lights on the corners of the bar. India came out the back way, gave us a startled look, and got in her car and drove off. Sam stayed in the trailer.
“I want you to move in with me,” Eric said. “You can stay in one of the upstairs bedrooms if you want. The one we usually use. You don’t have to stay down in the dark with me. I don’t want you to be alone. I don’t want to feel your fear one more time. It makes me crazy to know someone is attacking you, and I’m not there.”
We had gotten into the habit of making love in the largest upstairs bedroom. (Waking up in the windowless room downstairs gave me the heebie-jeebies.) Now Eric was offering that room to me permanently. I knew this was a big deal for Eric, a major deal. And it was huge for me, too. But a decision this big couldn’t be made at a moment when I was not myself, and tonight I wasn’t myself.
“We need to talk,” I said. “Do you have time?�
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“Tonight, I’m making time,” he said. “Are the fairies at your house?”
I called Claude on my cell. When he answered, I could hear the noise of Hooligans in the background. “I’m just checking to see where you are before Eric and I go to the house,” I said.
“We’re staying at the club tonight,” Claude answered. “Have a good time with your vampire hunk, Cousin.”
Eric followed me over to my house. He’d brought the car, because as soon as he’d known I was in danger, he’d known it had passed and he could take the time to drive.
I poured myself a glass of wine—unusual for me—and I microwaved some bottled blood for Eric. We sat in the living room. I pulled up my legs onto the couch and swung around with my back against the arm to face him. He angled toward me on the other end.
“Eric, I know you don’t ask people to stay in your house lightly. So, I want you to know how . . . touched and flattered I am that you invited me.”
Right away, I realized I’d said the wrong thing. That sounded way too impersonal.
Eric’s blue eyes narrowed. “Oh, think nothing of it,” he said coldly.
“I didn’t say that right.” I took a deep breath. “Listen, I love you. I . . . feel thrilled that you want us to live together.” He looked a little more relaxed. “But before I make up my mind whether to do that, we need to get some stuff straight.”
“Stuff?”
“You married me to protect me. You hired Terry Bellefleur to spy on me, and you applied pressure where he couldn’t take it, to get him to comply.”
Eric said, “That happened before I knew you, Sookie.”
“Yeah, I get that. But it’s the nature of the pressure you applied to a man whose mental state is so wobbly. It’s the way you got me to marry you, without knowing what I was doing.”
“You wouldn’t have done it otherwise,” Eric said. As always, practical and to the point.
“You’re right, I wouldn’t,” I said, trying to smile at him. But it wasn’t easy. “And Terry wouldn’t have told you things about me, if you’d offered him money. I know you see this as the smart way to do business, and I’m sure a lot of people would agree with you.”
Dead Reckoning: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel Page 14