Dead Ever After: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

by Charlaine Harris

  The minute An came in the back door, I could hear her, and I found myself smiling. I hardly knew the woman, but she was a hoot.

  “Sookie, I seen your car outside, so I know you’re back at work, and I’m real glad you came in,” she called from somewhere back by the lockers. “I don’t know what bug you had, but I hope you’re over it, ’cause I sure don’t want to get sick. If I can’t work, I don’t get paid.” Her voice was getting progressively closer, and then she was standing face-to-face with me, her apron strapped on, looking spic-and-span in a Merlotte’s T-shirt and calf-length yoga tights. An had told me during her job interview that she never wore shorts outside the home because her father was a preacher, that her mother was the best cook in An’s hometown, and that she herself had not been allowed to cut her hair until she’d left home at eighteen.

  “Hi, An,” I said. “How’s it been going?”

  “It’s been going great, though I missed seeing you and I hope you’re all better.”

  “I do feel much better. I have to run over and talk to Sam for a minute. I noticed that the salt and pepper shakers need topping up. You mind?”

  “Let me get right on that! Just show me where the salt and pepper are stored. I’ll fill those up in a jiffy.” I’d say this for An: She was a hard worker.

  Everyone was doing what they should be doing. I had to, myself. I took a deep breath. Before I could chicken out, I marched out the back door of the bar and over to Sam’s trailer, following the path of stepping-stones. For the first time, I registered that a strange car was parked beside Sam’s pickup, a little economy car with dents and dust as its main motif. It had Texas plates.

  I wasn’t completely surprised to find a dog curled up on the welcome mat on the little porch Sam had added outside the front door of his trailer. My approach was no surprise to the dog, either. It was on its feet at the sound of my footsteps, watching intently as I passed through the gate and crossed the green grass on the neat stepping-stones.

  I stopped a respectful distance from the steps and eyed the dog. Sam could transform himself into almost anything warm-blooded, so it was possible this dog was Sam . . . but I didn’t think so. He usually picked a collie form. This sleek Labrador just didn’t have the right feel.

  “Bernie?” I asked.

  The Lab gave a neutral sort of bark, and her tail started wagging.

  “Are you going to let me knock on the door?” I asked.

  She seemed to think about it for a minute. Then she trotted down the steps and out onto the grass. She watched me go up to the door.

  I turned away from her (with a little misgiving) and knocked. After a long, long minute, Sam opened it.

  He looked haggard.

  “Are you okay?” I blurted. It was clear he was not.

  Without speaking, he backed up to let me in. He was wearing a short-sleeved summer shirt and his oldest blue jeans, worn so thin in spots that there were little splits in the fabric. The interior of the trailer was surprisingly gloomy. Sam had tried hard, but he couldn’t make the trailer completely dark—not on a bright, hot day like today. Between the drawn curtains, the light came in in sharp shards, like brilliant glass slivers.

  “Sookie,” Sam said, sounding somehow remote. That scared me more than anything else. I eyed him. Though it was hard to see the details, I could tell Sam was unshaven, and though he was naturally wiry, he looked as though he’d lost ten pounds. He’d showered, at least; maybe Bernie had insisted. When I’d evaluated Sam, I looked around at the living room, as best I could. The sharp contrasts of light hurt my eyes.

  “Can I open the curtains?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, his voice sharp. Then he seemed to reconsider. “Well, okay, one.”

  Moving slowly and carefully, I pulled back a curtain over the window mostly shaded by an oak tree. Even so, as light brightened the trailer, Sam winced.

  “Why does the sunshine bother you?” I asked, trying to sound absolutely calm about it.

  “Because I died, Sookie. I died and came back.” He didn’t sound bitter, but he sure didn’t sound happy.

  Okayyyyy. Well, since I hadn’t heard a word from Sam, I’d figured he wasn’t dancing in the streets over his experience, but I guess I’d thought he’d at least be, I dunno, pleased about it. That he would say something along the lines of, Gosh, you wonderful woman, now that I’ve had time to rest and reflect, I thank you for altering your life forever by bringing back mine. What an amazing gift.

  That’s what I’d figured.

  So. Wrong again.

  Chapter 4

  Sam’s mom scratched at the door. Since Sam was still standing in his “tense and tortured” pose, I obliged. Bernie walked in on four paws, nosed at Sam’s leg for a second, and went into the little corridor leading to the bedrooms.

  “Sam,” I said, to get his attention. He looked at me, but I wasn’t getting a lot of expression from him. “You got a bar to run,” I said. “You got people depending on you. After all the stuff you’ve been through, don’t flake out now.”

  His eyes seemed to focus on me. “Sookie,” he said, “you don’t understand. I died.”

  “You don’t understand,” I retorted with some heat. “I was there. I had my hand on you when your heart quit beating. And I brought you back. Maybe that’s what you should be thinking about, huh? The ‘brought back’ part?”

  If he said “I died” one more time, I was going to slap him silly.

  Bernie, in woman form, entered into the living room dressed in khaki shorts and a blouse. Sam and I were too locked in our conversation to speak to her, though I sort of waved my hand in her direction.

  “You had a cluviel dor,” Sam said. “You really had one.”

  “I did,” I said. “Now it’s only a pretty thing that looks like a compact.”

  “Why did you have it with you? Did you expect what was going to happen?”

  I shifted uneasily. “Sam, who could expect that? I just figured there wasn’t any point in having something like that if you didn’t have it on you to use. Maybe Gran wouldn’t have died if she’d kept it on her.”

  “Like a fairy Life Alert,” Sam said.

  “Yeah. Like that.”

  “But you must have had a plan for it, a use. I mean, it was a gift . . . to keep. Maybe to save your own life.”

  I looked away, getting more and more uncomfortable. I’d come over here to find out what was happening in Sam’s head, not to raise questions (or answer questions) that might lay a burden on him he shouldn’t have to assume.

  “It was a gift, which means I could use it as I chose,” I said, trying to sound brisk and matter-of-fact. “And I chose to start your heart again.”

  Sam sat down in his dilapidated armchair, the only item in the trailer that looked as though it needed to be kicked to the curb.

  Bernie said, “Have a seat, Sookie.” She came farther into the room and stared down at her oldest son, the only family member who had received the shifter gene. “I see you looking at the old chair,” she said conversationally, when Sam didn’t speak. “That was my husband’s. It was the only thing of his I gave away when he died, because it just reminded me of him too much. Maybe I should have kept it, and maybe if I’d looked at it every day, I wouldn’t have married Don.”

  Maybe Bernie’s problem wasn’t so much marrying Don as not telling him before the wedding that she could turn into an animal. But Don shouldn’t have shot her when he found out, either. You don’t just haul off and shoot the one you love.

  “ ‘Maybe’ is such a bad word,” I said. “You can ‘maybe’ yourself back to Adam and Eve and the serpent.”

  Bernie laughed, and Sam looked up. I could see a glimmer of his former self in that look. The bitter truth welled up in my throat like bile. The price of bringing back Sam from death was that he wasn’t quite the same man anymore. The experience of death had changed him, maybe forever. And maybe resurrecting him had changed me.

  “How are you feeling physically?�
� I said. “You seem a little shook up.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” he said. “The first day Mom was here, she had to help me walk. It’s weird. I was okay riding back with you that night, and I drove home okay next morning. But after that it was like my body had to relearn things. Sort of like . . . after a long sickness. I’ve felt so bad, and I can’t figure out why.”

  “I guess part of it is that process of grief.”

  “Grief?”

  “Well, it would only be natural,” I said. “You know. Jannalynn?”

  Sam looked at me. His expression was not what I expected; it was compounded of confusion and embarrassment. “What about her?” he asked, and I could swear his puzzlement was genuine.

  I cut my eyes toward Bernie, who was every bit (and more understandably) as unenlightened as Sam. Of course, she hadn’t been at the pack meeting, and she hadn’t talked to anyone else who’d been there until now. She’d met Jannalynn, though I wasn’t sure she’d known how involved Sam had been with the werewolf. There’d been sides of Jannalynn that few men would want their moms to see.

  “That Were that showed up at the house?” Bernie said. “The one Sam didn’t want me to know he’d been seeing?”

  I felt horribly awkward. “Yes, that Jannalynn,” I said.

  “I have been wondering why I hadn’t heard from her,” Sam said readily. “But considering all the bad things she was accused of—and the fact that I believed she’d done them—I hadn’t planned on seeing her again. Someone told me she’d gone to Alaska.”

  There wasn’t a psychologist hotline at hand. I didn’t know how to handle this.

  “Sam, do you remember what happened to you that night? You remember why we were there?” Begin at the beginning.

  “Not exactly,” he admitted. “It’s pretty hazy. Jannalynn was accused of doing something to Alcide, right? I remember feeling mad and pretty miserable, because I’d liked her so much when we started dating. But I wasn’t exactly surprised, so I guess I’d figured out that she wasn’t basically . . . a good person. I remember driving to Alcide’s farm with you, and I remember seeing Eric and Alcide and the pack, and I think I remember—there was a swimming pool? And some sand?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, a swimming pool and a sand volleyball area. Remember anything else?”

  Sam began to look uneasy. “I remember the pain,” he said. He sounded hoarse. “And something about the sand. It was all . . . I remember riding back in the truck, with you driving.”

  Well, shit. I hated to be the designated revelator. “You’ve forgotten a few things, Sam,” I said, as gently as I could. I’d heard of people forgetting traumatic stuff, especially when they’d been badly injured: people in car wrecks, people who’d gotten attacked. I figured Sam was entitled to blank out on a thing or two since he’d actually passed over.

  “What did I forget?” He was looking at me with the sidelong wide eyes of a nervous horse, and his back was stiff as a board. Somewhere in his head, he knew what had happened.

  I held out my hands to him, palms up. Do you really want to do this now?

  “Yeah, I guess I should know,” he said. Bernie crouched by her son’s chair in a distinctly nonhuman way. She was looking at me with a level gaze. She knew I wasn’t going to say anything that would make Sam feel better. I could understand her unhappiness with me, but Bernie or no Bernie, I had to go through with it.

  “Since Jannalynn turned traitor and almost killed Warren with neglect while she held him hostage, she and Mustapha Khan fought,” I said, paring down the story to the essentials that affected Sam. “You remember Mustapha?”

  Sam nodded.

  “She got a trial by combat, though I don’t know the hows and whys of that. I was surprised they’d give her the privilege. But she and Mustapha were fighting with swords.”

  Suddenly Sam’s face went white. I paused, but he didn’t say anything, so I went on.

  “Jannalynn was doing real well, but instead of focusing on beating Mustapha, she decided to make one last attempt to control the pack—at least, I guess that was her goal.” I exhaled deeply. I’d thought about that night over and over, and I still didn’t understand. “Or maybe she just had an impulse, to get the better of Alcide, to have the last word, sort of. Anyway, Jannalynn maneuvered the fight until she was close to where you and Alcide were standing.” I paused again, hoping that he would tell me to stop, that he remembered what came next.

  He didn’t, though by now he looked almost as pale as a vampire. I bit my lip and braced myself to continue.

  “She leaped for Alcide and swiped down with her sword, but Alcide saw her coming in time and jumped to the side. Instead, you got cut. She never intended to hurt you.”

  Sam didn’t respond to my lame attempt at consolation. Sure, your lover killed you, but she didn’t really mean to. ’Kay?

  “So . . . the blow was bad, as you know. You fell down, and there was . . . It was pretty awful.” I’d thrown away the clothes I’d been wearing. And Sam’s shirt, the one he’d left at my house. “You got cut,” I said. “You got cut so bad you died.”

  “It hurt,” he said, hunching over as if a strong wind were blowing at him. Bernie put her hand over her son’s.

  “I can’t even imagine,” I said quietly, though I was certainly no stranger to pain. “Your heart stopped beating. I used my cluviel dor to heal you and bring you back.”

  “You were calling me. You told me to live.” Now he was finally looking at me directly, meeting my eyes.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I remember opening my eyes again to see your face.”

  “Your heart started beating again,” I said, as the enormity of it swept over me. My skin tingled all over.

  “Eric was standing behind you, looking down at us as though he hated us,” Sam said. “And then he was gone, vamp quick.”

  “Do you remember us talking on the way home?”

  He ignored that question. “But what happened to Jannalynn?” he said. “Isn’t that what you were going to tell me?”

  He’d walked right by her body—and her head—as I’d helped him get to his truck. He’d looked at the corpse. I could see why he didn’t want to recall that. I didn’t, either, and I hadn’t even liked Jannalynn.

  “Mustapha executed her,” I said. I didn’t elaborate.

  Sam’s gaze was fixed on me, but there wasn’t anyone home. I had no idea what he was thinking. Maybe he was trying to recall what he’d seen. Maybe he remembered very clearly and didn’t want to.

  Bernie was shaking her head at me from behind Sam’s shoulder. She thought Sam had had enough, and she was ready for me to go; that was easy to read even if you weren’t a telepath. I’m not so sure I would have walked out otherwise—I figured I needed to offer a little more debriefing—but this was Sam’s mother. I heaved myself to my feet, feeling about ten years older than when I’d knocked on the trailer door.

  “See you later, Sam,” I said. “Please come back to work soon.” He didn’t answer. He was still staring at the spot where I’d been sitting.

  “Good-bye, Sookie,” Bernie said. “You and me need to have a talk later.”

  I would rather walk on nails. “Sure,” I said, and left.

  Back in the bar, the working day proceeded in a strangely normal rhythm. It can be hard to recall that not everyone knows all the big events that occur in the supe world, even when those events take place right under the noses of the general human populace. And even if every human soul in the bar knew, they might not care very much.

  The big topic of bar gossip was Halleigh Bellefleur fainting at the Rotary Club when she’d stood up to go to the bathroom. Since she was seven months pregnant, everyone was concerned. Terry, her husband’s cousin, came in to get some fried pickles, and he was able to reassure us that Halleigh was fine, that Andy had taken her right in to her doctor. According to Terry, the doctor had told Andy and Halleigh that the baby had been pressing against something, and when the baby shifted, Hal
leigh’s blood pressure had, too. Or something like that.

  The lunch rush was moderate, which made sense since the Rotary was meeting at the Sizzler Steak House. When we were down to a light sprinkle of customers, I turned my tables over to An while I ran to the post office to pick up the bar mail. I was horrified to see how much had accumulated in the Merlotte’s box. Sam’s recovery took on a new urgency.

  I brought the mail back to the bar and settled in Sam’s office to go through it. Sure, I’d been working at Merlotte’s for five years. I’d paid attention, and I knew a lot about how the business was run. Now I could write checks and sign them, but there were decisions that had to be made. Our cable contract for the bar was up for renewal, and Sam had talked about switching providers. Two charity fund-raisers had asked for expensive liquor to auction off. Five local charities just flat-out asked for money.

  Most startling of all, we’d gotten a letter from a Clarice lawyer, a guy new to the area. He wanted to know if we were going to pay for the emergency room visit of Jane Clementine Bodehouse. The lawyer gently threatened to sue Merlotte’s for Jane’s mental and physical suffering if we didn’t cough up. I looked at the figure at the bottom of a copy of Jane’s bill. Damn. Jane had ridden in the ambulance and had an X-ray. She’d also required some stitches, which might as well have been of spun gold thread.

  “Shepherd of Judea,” I muttered. I reread the letter.

  When Merlotte’s had been firebombed the previous May, Jane, one of our alcoholic customers, had been cut by flying glass. She’d been treated by the ambulance drivers, who’d taken her to the emergency room to be checked over. She’d had a few stitches. She’d been fine . . . drunk, but fine. All her injuries had been minor. Jane had been reminiscing about that night in the past week or two, recalling her own bravery and how good that had made her feel. Now she was sending us a huge bill and threatening to sue?