Dead Ever After: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

by Charlaine Harris

  “Why do you have to?” Bob said.

  “Well, I have to say something, don’t I?”

  “Why?” Barry asked. “Don’t you own part of the bar?”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “Then you don’t have to explain diddly-squat,” Amelia said, with such an air of magnificent indifference that we all laughed, even me.

  So Diantha and I walked into Merlotte’s, and I didn’t explain her presence to anyone but Sam. The part-demon girl was wearing a relatively quiet outfit: yellow miniskirt, kingfisher blue tank top, and rainbow platform flip-flops. This month her hair was a platinum blond, but there were a lot of artificially platinum blondes around Bon Temps, though not many who looked like they were at most eighteen.

  I don’t know what Diantha thought about Merlotte’s clientele, but Merlotte’s clientele was wild about her. She was different, she was alert and bright-eyed, and she talked so fast that everyone thought she was speaking a foreign language. I discovered that since I could evidently understand that language, I had to translate for her. So off and on during the day, I was called on to tell Jane Bodehouse or Antoine the cook or Andy Bellefleur what my “little second cousin” was saying. I don’t know where they got the idea that she was my second cousin, but after the first thirty minutes it became an established fact. I don’t know where they thought she’d come from, since everyone in the bar knew my entire family history, but I guess since I’d introduced the fairy Dermot (a dead ringer for Jason) as my cousin from Florida, and I’d said Claude was from the wrong side of the blanket, my townspeople figured the Stackhouses were simply unpredictable.

  We were real busy that day, though since I was teamed with An Norr, I didn’t have to run as fast as I would’ve with some other waitresses. An was such a worker ant. And with Diantha and An both in the bar, not a single guy thought about my boobs, which were old news to the regulars anyway. I smiled down at my chest. “Girls, you’re outdated,” I said. Sam gave me a strange look, but he didn’t come over to ask me why I was talking to my breasts.

  I stayed away from him, too. I was tired of trying to break through his defenses. I felt like I had enough trouble without trying to coax him out of his funky cave.

  I was surprised when he spoke to me as I was waiting for an order for Andy and Terry Bellefleur. (Yes, it was awkward to see Andy, since he’d put me in handcuffs. We were both trying to ignore that.)

  “Since when do you have a demon for a cousin?” he asked.

  “You haven’t met Diantha before? I couldn’t remember.”

  “I can’t say that I have. And I definitely think I’d recall it.”

  “She and her uncle are at my house. They’re part of Team Sookie,” I said proudly. “They’re helping clear my name. So I don’t have to go to trial.”

  I didn’t expect my words to have such an effect on Sam. He looked almost simultaneously pleased and angry. “I wish I could be there,” he said.

  “Nothing’s stopping you,” I said. “Remember, you said you’d come to dinner.” I’d passed beyond confusion at Sam’s weirdness. I was somewhere in the “What the hell?” zone.

  SOOKIE’S HOUSE

  There was a sort of muted thump at the back door, as if someone were perhaps carrying in bags of groceries and therefore tried to open the door with a finger or foot.

  Bob, just back from town with Amelia and Barry, opened the back door and stepped out on the screened-in porch to investigate. He wasn’t really thinking about who might have arrived. Truth be told, he was worried about Amelia’s pregnancy on many different levels. He was smart enough to know they couldn’t take care of a baby on the meager money they brought in now, and he was also smart enough to know that accepting money from Copley Carmichael (besides the indirect revenue Amelia got from renting out the apartment on the top floor of the house her dad had given her) would be a grave error.

  So Bob was preoccupied, which was why he didn’t react instantly when the man beyond the screen door pulled it open and lunged in. Bob thought, Tyrese, and then he remembered Tyrese worked for a man who’d sold his soul. Bob shoved Tyrese, hoping desperately to knock him down the back steps and out into the yard so Bob could retreat into the kitchen and lock the door.

  But Tyrese was a man of action, and he was full of the fire of despair. He was quicker. He pushed the smaller man back into the house. The door shut behind them.

  Amelia was coming out of the hall bathroom, impelled by a sense that something was wrong. When the two men staggered into the kitchen, she screamed. Barry, in the living room, dropped his e-reader and dashed for the kitchen. Bob landed on the floor, Amelia gathered her power, and Barry stopped dead behind her in the hall.

  But a Glock trumped Amelia’s attempts at a spell, since it was pointed at her chest and her man was on the floor and groaning. Barry was intent on Tyrese’s thoughts, which were full of despair, with a curious deadness to them. Though Tyrese wasn’t sending out any interesting or usable information, Barry was pretty good at interpreting body language.

  “He’s got nothing to lose, Amelia,” he said, when she stopped screaming. “I don’t know why, but he’s given up hope.”

  “I got the HIV,” Tyrese said simply.

  “But . . .” Amelia intended to point out that treatment now was far better, that Tyrese could live a long and good life, that . . .

  “No,” Barry warned her. “Shut up.”

  “Good advice, Amelia,” Tyrese said. “Shut up. My Gypsy killed herself; I just got the phone call from her sister. Gypsy, who gave me this disease, who loved me. She killed herself! Left a note saying she had murdered the man she loved and she couldn’t live with the guilt. She dead. She hung herself. My beautiful woman!”

  “I’m sorry,” Amelia said, and it was the best thing she could have told him. But even the best thing wasn’t going to save them.

  Bob struggled to his feet, taking care to keep his hands visible and his movements slow. “Why are you here with a gun, Tyrese?” he said. “Don’t you think Mr. Carmichael is going to be pretty unhappy about this?”

  “I don’t expect to live through this,” Tyrese said simply.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Barry said, and closed his eyes for a second. He realized he had no advantage at all. He simply could not hear Tyrese’s thoughts clearly enough.

  “Jesus ain’t got nothing to do with it,” Tyrese said. “The devil got everything to do with it.”

  “So, again, why are you here?” Bob moved so that he was standing between the gun and Amelia. Maybe I can save Amelia and the baby, he thought.

  In the meantime, Amelia was struggling to gain control of her fear. She was thinking of spells she could use to temporarily neutralize her father’s bodyguard. She was trying to remember if there were weapons around the house. Sookie had said something about a rifle in the coat closet by the front door, she remembered. Maybe it was still there. BARRY! she screamed in her head.

  “Ow,” he said. “What you got, Amelia?”

  Rifle in the front closet, maybe.

  “The stair closet?” he yelled. Amelia was smart to send thoughts to him, but she couldn’t receive his.

  No, the coat closet by the front door.

  “Okay! Tyrese, listen to Amelia!” Barry began edging to his left, hoping Amelia would take his cue and distract Tyrese. He didn’t think there was a chance in hell he would get to the closet, find the rifle, understand how to use it, and shoot Tyrese Marley. But he had to try.

  “Tyrese, please tell me what you’re doing here,” Amelia said steadily.

  “I’m here,” said Tyrese, “because I’m waiting for Sookie Stackhouse to come home. When she does, I’m going to kill her.”

  “Really!” Amelia said. “Why?”

  “She’s why your dad got mad,” Tyrese said. “She took the thing he wanted so bad. So he said she had to die, and we came up here to do it. But we can’t get her alone. We don’t want to run her off the road; he wants a sure thing, he says. Shoot her, Tyrese, he says.
She lost her vampire protection; no one will care.”

  “I care,” Amelia said.

  “Well, that’s the other thing; he wanted that fairy thing because he wanted to control you. Course, he called it ‘getting you back into his life,’ but we know better, huh? Now he’s so mad at Sookie, he doesn’t care what you want,” Tyrese said. The Glock was steady in his grip. It looked huge from where Amelia was standing, and she thought Bob standing between the gun and her was the bravest thing she’d ever seen.

  “Where’s my dad, Tyrese?” Amelia asked, trying to keep his interest so Barry could get the gun. She turned her eyes very slightly to read the clock on the wall. Sookie should have finished her shift by now. She’d be on her way any minute. This whole pile of shit was Amelia’s father’s doing, and Amelia had to try every strategy she could devise to prevent her friend from getting killed. She wondered if she could cast a stunning spell without any herbs or preparation. It wasn’t like in the Harry Potter books, though she and every other witch of her acquaintance had often wished it were.

  “He’s in our hotel room, far as I know. I went outside when I got a call from Gypsy’s sister on my cell phone. I walked around the corner so I could talk to her without Mr. Carmichael hearing me. He doesn’t like it when I get personal phone calls when I’m with him.”

  “That’s kind of crazy,” Amelia said at random. She couldn’t turn around to see where Barry was, so she was prepared to keep on talking forever if she had to.

  “That’s small stuff compared to his real crazy ideas,” Tyrese said, and laughed. “You come sit in this chair, Amelia.” He nodded at one of the kitchen chairs.

  “Why?” she asked instantly.

  “Doesn’t make any difference why. Because I told you to,” he said, giving her hard eyes. At that moment, Bob jumped Tyrese.

  The boom of the Glock filled the room, and then there was blood. Amelia screamed until Barry clapped his hands over his ears, the horror in her thoughts beating at him. While he’d worked for the vampires in Texas, Barry had seen some bad shit, but Bob’s body in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor was way up there with the worst of those memories.

  “See what the devil made me do?” said Tyrese, smiling slightly. “Amelia, you shut up now.”

  Amelia clamped her mouth shut.

  “You, whoever you are,” Tyrese said. “Come here now.”

  Barry had run out of time and options. He went into the kitchen.

  “Put Amelia in that chair.”

  Barry, despite the fact that he was shaking and felt scared down to the marrow of his bones, managed to help Amelia to the chair. Amelia had blood spray on her arms and chest, and in her hair. She was as pale as a vampire. Barry thought she might faint. But she sat straight in the chair and stared at Tyrese as if she could bore a hole in him with her eyes.

  Tyrese had groped around on the back porch while Amelia sat, and now he tossed a roll of duct tape at Barry. “Secure her,” he ordered.

  Secure her, Barry thought. Like we’re in some kind of spy movie. Fuck him. I’ll kill him if I get the chance. Anything to avoid thinking about the bloody body at his feet.

  Just as he was looking down at the thing he least wanted to see, he was sure Bob moved.

  He wasn’t dead.

  But it would only be a matter of time, if they didn’t get some help.

  Barry realized appealing to Tyrese was a waste of breath. Tyrese was not in a merciful mood and might just kick Bob in the head or shoot him again. He hoped Amelia would have an idea, but her head was full of horror and regret and loss. Not a single idea in the place.

  Barry had never secured anyone with duct tape before, but he bound Amelia’s wrists together behind the chair, and that would have to do.

  “Now,” Tyrese said. “You sit on the floor and put your hand on that table leg.”

  That would put him closer to Bob, and there was nothing Barry could do to help the witch. He sank to the floor and gripped the table leg with his left hand.

  “Now duct tape your hand to the table,” Tyrese said.

  With a lot of clumsy effort, Barry managed, ripping off the tape with his teeth.

  “Scoot it across the floor to me,” Tyrese said, and Barry did.

  Then there was nothing left to do.

  “Now we wait,” said Tyrese.

  “Tyrese,” Amelia said, “you ought to shoot my dad, not Sookie.”

  She had everyone’s attention.

  “It’s my dad who got you into this. It’s my dad who sold your soul to the devil. It’s my dad who doomed your girlfriend.”

  “Your dad done everything he could for me,” Tyrese said stubbornly.

  “My dad killed you,” Amelia said. Barry admired her courage and straight speaking, but Tyrese did not. He smacked Amelia across the face, and then he taped her mouth shut.

  Barry thought Amelia was absolutely right. And maybe if Tyrese had had a chance to absorb the worst of his grief, he would have seen that, too. But in his rush to do something, anything, in the wake of hearing about Gypsy’s suicide, Tyrese had committed himself to this course of action, and he would not be dissuaded. He would never admit he’d done something so incredibly stupid.

  You have to admit, Barry thought, that Tyrese is loyal, in a weird way.

  Barry thought of Mr. Cataliades and hoped he’d be alerted to the fact that something was wrong in the house. He was tough. He could handle this situation. Or maybe when Sookie and Diantha pulled up, she’d hear Tyrese’s thoughts, though where she parked it was doubtful she’d be able to get a reading. But if she counted heads in the house, she might think something was off—though she’d have no reason to suspect danger.

  Barry’s thoughts went around in circles as he tried to think of some way to extricate them all from this situation, some way that wouldn’t get them killed. Get him killed. He wasn’t much of a hero; he’d always known that about himself. He did good when it would not put him in peril; he believed that in this, he was like most people.

  Suddenly Tyrese, who’d been leaning against the wall, straightened. Barry heard a car coming, and there was another sound, too. Was that a motorcycle? Sure sounded like one. Who could it be? Would the presence of other people be enough to stop Tyrese?

  But there wasn’t any going back for the bodyguard, apparently.

  As the car’s motor died and the other motor, too, Tyrese grinned at Amelia. “Here goes,” he said. “I’m going to make everything even. This woman is going to die.”

  But the person driving the car might not even be Sookie. What if it was Mr. Cataliades in his van? Tyrese didn’t even look. He’d gotten the whole story set in his mind. This would be Sookie, and he would kill her, and then everything would somehow balance out.

  Tyrese swung around to face the back door, the smile still on his lips. Barry started screaming at Sookie in his head, because that was all he could do, but he didn’t think she’d hear him. He looked up at Amelia and saw the strain in her face. She was doing the same.

  And then Tyrese took a step forward, and another. He was on the porch. He wasn’t going to wait for Sookie to enter the house, which would have been a sure thing. He was going to meet her.

  MERLOTTE’S

  earlier

  Sam’s lips parted and I just knew he was finally going to explain. But then he looked past me and the moment passed. “Mustapha Khan,” he said, and he definitely wasn’t happy to see Eric’s daytime guy.

  As far as I knew, Sam had nothing against the werewolf. Surely he couldn’t blame Mustapha for beheading Jannalynn? After all, it had been a fair fight, and Sam, though a shapeshifter, was very familiar with Were rules. Or was it Mustapha’s job as Eric’s daytime guy that made Sam so grumpy?

  I wondered, things being how they were, why Mustapha was coming to see me. Maybe something had been decided about who would take over Fangtasia, and Eric wanted me to know.

  “Hello, Mustapha,” I said, as calmly as I could. “What brings you here today? Can I get
you a glass of water with lemon?” Mustapha didn’t take stimulants of any kind: coffee, Coca-Cola, anything.

  “Thank you. A glass of water would be refreshing,” he allowed. As usual, Mustapha was wearing dark glasses. He’d removed his motorcycle helmet, and I saw he’d shaved a pattern in the stubble on his head. That was new. It gleamed under the lights of the bar. An Norr did a double take when she got a good look at the muscled magnificence that was Mustapha Khan. She wasn’t the only one.

  When I brought him an icy glass, he was sitting on a bar stool having some kind of silent staring contest with Sam.

  “How is Warren?” I asked. Warren, possibly the only person Mustapha cared for, had been awfully close to dead when we found him at Jannalynn’s folks’ empty garage apartment.

  “He’s better, thank you, Sookie. He ran half a mile today. He walked the rest, with some help. He’s out there waiting, right now.” Mustapha inclined his patterned head toward the front door. Warren was the shyest man I’d ever met.

  I hadn’t known Warren had been a runner before his ordeal, but I figured the fact that he’d resumed the exercise was pretty good news, and I told Mustapha to give the convalescent my good wishes. “I’d have sent him a get-well card if I knew his address,” I added, and felt like a fool when Mustapha took off his dark glasses to give me an incredulous look. Well, I would have.

  “I come here to tell you Eric is leaving tomorrow night,” he said. “He thought you should know. Plus, he left some shit at your place. He wants it back.”

  I stood very still for a long moment, feeling the finality of it hit my heart. “Okay, then,” I said. “I do have some stuff of his in my closet. I’ll send it—where? Though I don’t suppose they are things he’ll miss.” I tried to not add any layers of meaning to that.

  “I’ll come get them when you get off work,” Mustapha said.

  The clock was reading four thirty. “I should be through here in thirty minutes or so,” I said, looking to Sam for confirmation. “If India gets here on time.”

  And here she came, through the front door, weaving her way between the tables. India had had her hair done, a process she’d described to me in fascinating detail, and the jeweled balls on her braids clicked together as she walked. She spotted my companion when she was a couple of yards away. She had a startled look, which she exaggerated for effect when she drew up to us.