A Secret Rage

by Charlaine Harris

  Mimi picked up. ‘But it distracted him, I felt him jump. And I pulled away as he turned to Barbara. He went after her right away. Then the lights went out.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Cully whispered.

  ‘Well, it gave us a second. I knew where the screwdriver was because I’d had to use it to lever the brace off the turkey’s legs, like I always do,’ Mimi explained. ‘A knife would’ve been better, of course, but I grabbed what I could.’

  ‘I’m just lucky he didn’t stab me,’ Barbara said thankfully. ‘He bumped against me just when I was turning to run out the front door to get help. And I feel like a coward, that I wasn’t going to stay to help Mimi, but it was the only thing I could think of to do.’

  ‘The only smart thing to do,’ Mimi told her promptly, and Barbara looked relieved.

  ‘Well, since he caught me as I was turning,’ Barbara continued, ‘I slipped and whammed my head against the refrigerator door handle, I think, and then against the floor when I fell. Two bumps. So I was just about unconscious.’

  ‘I heard Barbara fall,’ Mimi said. ‘I thought he had stabbed her and it was all over for her. I was trying to get to the kitchen door and go out the back. See, Barbara, I was going to leave you, too. I kept remembering all those thrillers I’d read where they tell novice spies or whatever to stab from underneath, so it’ll go under the ribs instead of bouncing off, so I made myself hold the screwdriver that way and was listening to find where he was—’

  ‘And then the lights came on and I was there,’ I finished.

  Mimi then described our epic struggle to Charles. He looked half-proud and half-horrified. He’d certainly never see Mimi in exactly the same light again.

  Barbara asked, ‘But why did you happen to come in just then, Cully? We could have handled it by ourselves, but I guess it was good to have someone untwine us.’ I heard the undercurrent of resentment. I knew, then, that we had all resented Cully’s arrival, his resolution of what was, for all of us, a personal struggle.

  Cully looked surprisingly sheepish. As well he should, I thought, suddenly remembering Miss High School Sweetheart. With so much going on, we had not yet discussed her. Possibly we never would.

  ‘I missed Nickie at the party. Then someone told me her shoe had broken, and I figured she must have come home to change, so . . .’

  He’d really thought I’d gone off in a fit of jealousy. If he’d only been worried about the broken shoe, he’d have called the house rather than set out in pursuit.

  ‘Does anybody know if Theo’s confessed?’ Charles asked.

  Barbara shrugged. ‘I don’t know if he has or if he will. They’ll test samples from him along with the evidence from all of us. Something will match up, even if he doesn’t confess.’

  ‘And he told me he’d killed Alicia. I guess that’ll be admissible in court,’ Mimi said. ‘Though you never know. Think about it and give me a verdict, Charles . . . Listen, gentlemen, I’d like a fire. Why don’t you two bring some wood in? I got a pickup load from Mr Rainham yesterday.’

  After Charles and Cully had slammed the kitchen door on their way out, we three looked at each other for a long moment.

  ‘We would have killed Theo if Cully hadn’t come,’ I said finally.

  ‘Yes,’ Barbara agreed.

  Mimi stared into her glass of wine. ‘How do we feel about that?’ she asked her chenin blanc.

  Barbara extended her thin hand and waggled it to and fro. ‘A little of this, a little of that,’ she said almost casually. We smiled at each other. Mimi smothered a laugh.

  ‘We would have had to live with it,’ I said consideringly.

  ‘Look at what we have to live with now,’ Barbara said in a savage voice.

  ‘Alicia,’ Mimi pointed out.

  ‘Sure, Alicia,’ I said. ‘But after the first satisfaction was gone, wouldn’t we have felt . . . on his level? We might have felt horrible right then, when we looked at him.’

  ‘After our blood stopped singing,’ Barbara murmured.

  ‘When the rage was gone,’ Mimi whispered.

  ‘It’s just as well, I think,’ I concluded.

  Barbara ventured, very hesitantly, ‘Do you suppose, Nickie, that Cully’s going to be able to live with seeing you with your mouth all bloody?’

  If we had not been sharing this moment of close communion, she would not have asked that. Mimi would never have mentioned it, under any circumstances. But in this moment it was acceptable; a valid question.

  ‘In all fairness, I wouldn’t like seeing him that way. I mean, it’s a pretty vile sight.’

  The others nodded.

  ‘I just don’t know. We’ll have to see. It may have been too – maenadlike – for him to handle.’

  ‘The women who ripped apart anything in their path, in a kind of holy madness, one night out of the year,’ Barbara reminded Mimi, who had been trying to remember.

  ‘Oh,’ Mimi said, flaming up. ‘You mean maybe we should have sat there nice and quiet and been killed?’

  ‘Maybe if one of us hadn’t acted, if just one of us had submitted, the others would have, too,’ I said.

  ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ Barbara murmured, after trying for a moment.

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘We shouldn’t. We won’t.’ We would try not to, anyway.

  ‘Sarah Chase and Nell,’ Mimi said. ‘I wonder.’

  ‘If Sarah Chase knew?’

  ‘Oh my God, no!’ Mimi protested in horror.

  ‘That was what I was wondering,’ Barbara said calmly.

  I nodded. It had crossed my mind, too. How on earth had Theo explained to Sarah Chase that she was going to have visitors for tea? There was a slim chance that Sarah Chase really had intended to invite us. In that case, maybe he’d told her he’d bumped into Mimi and me by chance, that Barbara was the only guest she’d have to call herself, but . . . Surely even the dimmest woman would smell something fishy?

  ‘Not consciously,’ Mimi said vehemently. ‘She just couldn’t have had all three of us over that day. She just couldn’t.’

  I had to agree with Mimi. ‘But Mimi, we can’t go see her or call her,’ I said firmly, for I knew that that was what Mimi had intended to bring up. She would see the obscenity of it in a second.

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I – no.’

  Charles and Cully reappeared carrying armloads of dry oak, and proceeded to build the fire with much unnecessary hustle and bustle and advice to each other. They felt the pressure of our silence as we thought our separate thoughts and each viewed her own movie. The film was getting grainy and worn, the soundtrack fading, at least on mine. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to watch those scenes much longer. Mimi was gazing at the bandage on her arm; she’d had to leave the sleeve of her blouse undone to allow for its bulk.

  I had put on a dress, in honor of the day and my survival. Cully had zipped it for me that morning; my arms were too sore for the job. He hadn’t kissed me then, even though I’d scrubbed my mouth till it was raw, inside and out, the night before.

  He bent now, as he passed the couch, and gave me a quick kiss – on the forehead. He and Charles were going out for more wood.

  I rose with my empty glass in hand. I walked to Barbara, stooped over her chair, and kissed her. I went to Mimi on her couch, sat beside her, and kissed her. She held me for a minute.

  Then I went to the kitchen to get some more wine.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Charlaine Harris is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series, the basis for the critically-acclaimed HBO show True Blood, as well as the award-nominated The Aurora Teagarden Mysteries, The Lily Bard Mysteries, and The Harper Connelly Mysteries.

  ALSO BY CHARLAINE HARRIS

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  Sweet and Deadly

  A Secret Rage

  THE SOOKIE STACKHOUSE SERIES

  Dead Until Dark

  Living Dead in Dallas

  Club Dead

  Dead to the World
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  Dead as a Doornail

  Definitely Dead

  All Together Dead

  From Dead to Worse

  Dead and Gone

  Dead in the Family

  Dead Reckoning

  Deadlocked

  Dead Ever After

  A Touch of Dead

  The Sookie Stackhouse Companion

  After Dead: What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse

  THE AURORA TEAGARDEN MYSTERIES

  Real Murders

  A Bone to Pick

  Three Bedrooms, One Corpse

  The Julius House

  Dead Over Heels

  A Fool and His Honey

  Last Scene Alive

  Poppy Done to Death

  THE LILY BARD MYSTERIES

  Shakespeare’s Landlord

  Shakespeare’s Champion

  Shakespeare’s Christmas

  Shakespeare’s Trollop

  Shakespeare’s Counselor

  THE HARPER CONNELLY SERIES

  Grave Sight

  Grave Surprise

  An Ice Cold Grave

  Grave Secret

  MIDNIGHT, TEXAS

  Midnight Crossroad

  THE CEMETERY GIRL MYSTERIES

  Pretenders, co-written with Christopher Golden

  ANTHOLOGIES, co-edited with Toni L. P. Kelner

  Many Bloody Returns

  Wolfsbane and Mistletoe

  Death’s Excellent Vacation

  Home Improvement: Undead Edition

  An Apple for the Creature

  Games Creatures Play

  Weird World of Sports

  THANK YOU FOR READING

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