When I had completed my journey and pulled on a fleecy blue robe, I inched my way down the hall to the living room to examine the floor. I noticed along the way that the sun outside was brilliant and the sky was the deep rich blue of heaven. It was forty-two, said the thermometer Jason had given me on my birthday. He’d mounted it for me on the window frame, so I could just peek out to read it.
The living room looked real good. I wasn’t sure how long the vampire cleaning crew had been at work the night before, but there were no body parts visible. The wood of the floor was gleaming, and the furniture looked spanky clean. The old throw rug was missing, but I didn’t care. It had been no wonderful heirloom anyway, just a sort of pretty rug Gran had picked up at a flea market for thirty-five dollars. Why did I remember that? It didn’t matter at all. And my grandmother was dead.
I felt the sudden danger of weeping, and I pushed it away. I wasn’t going to fall back into a trough of self-pity. My reaction to Bill’s unfaithfulness seemed faint and far away now; I was a colder woman, or maybe my protective hide had just grown thicker. I no longer felt angry with him, to my surprise. He’d been tortured by the woman—well, the vampire—he’d thought loved him. And she’d tortured him for financial gain—that was the worst.
To my startled horror, suddenly I relived the moment when the stake had gone in under her ribs, and I was feeling the movement of the wood as it plowed through her body.
I made it back to the hall bathroom just in time.
Okay, I’d killed someone.
I’d once hurt someone who was trying to kill me, but that had never bothered me: oh, the odd dream or two. But the horror of staking the vampire Lorena felt worse. She would’ve killed me a lot quicker, and I was sure it would have been no problem whatsoever for Lorena. She probably would’ve laughed her ass off.
Maybe that was what had gotten to me so much. After I’d sunk the stake in, I was sure I’d had a moment, a second, a flash of time in which I’d thought, So there, bitch. And it had been pure pleasure.
A COUPLE OF hours later, I’d discovered it was the early afternoon, and it was Monday. I called my brother on his cell phone, and he came by with my mail. When I opened my door, he stood for a long minute, looking me up and down.
“If he did that to you, I’m heading over there with a torch and a sharpened broom handle,” he said.
“No, he didn’t.”
“What happened to the ones who did?”
“You better not think about it too much.”
“At least he does some things right.”
“I’m not gonna see him anymore.”
“Uh-huh. I’ve heard that before.”
He had a point. “For a while,” I said firmly.
“Sam said you’d gone off with Alcide Herveaux.”
“Sam shouldn’t have told you.”
“Hell, I’m your brother. I need to know who you’re going around with.”
“It was business,” I said, trying a little smile on for size.
“You going into surveying?”
“You know Alcide?”
“Who doesn’t, at least by name? Those Herveauxes, they’re well known. Tough guys. Good to work for. Rich.”
“He’s a nice guy.”
“He coming around anymore? I’d like to meet him. I don’t want to be on a road crew working for the parish my whole life.”
That was news to me. “Next time I see him, I’ll call you. I don’t know if he’ll be stopping by anytime soon, but if he does, you’ll know about it.”
“Good.” Jason glanced around. “What happened to the rug?”
I noticed a spot of blood on the couch, about where Eric had leaned. I sat down so my legs were covering it. “The rug? I spilled some tomato sauce on it. I was eating spaghetti out here while I watched TV.”
“So you took it to get it cleaned?”
I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t know if that was what the vampires had done with the rug, or if it’d had to be torched. “Yes,” I said, with some hesitation. “But they may not be able to get the stain out, they said.”
“New gravel looks good.”
I stared at him in gape-mouthed surprise. “What?”
He looked at me as if I were a fool. “The new gravel. On the driveway. They did a good job, getting it level. Not a single pothole.”
Completely forgetting the bloodstain, I heaved myself up from the couch with some difficulty and peered out the front window, this time really looking.
Not only was the driveway done, but also there was a new parking area in front of the house. It was outlined with landscaping timbers. The gravel was the very expensive kind, the kind that’s supposed to interlock so it doesn’t roll out of the desired area. I put my hand over my mouth as I calculated how much it had cost. “It’s done like that all the way to the road?” I asked Jason, my voice hardly audible.
“Yeah, I saw the Burgess and Sons crew out here when I drove by earlier,” he said slowly. “Didn’t you fix it up to have it done?”
I shook my head.
“Damn, they did it by mistake?” Quick to rage, Jason flushed. “I’ll call that Randy Burgess and ream his ass. Don’t you pay the bill! Here’s the note that was stuck to the front door.” Jason pulled a rolled receipt from his front pocket. “Sorry, I was going to hand that to you before I noticed your face.”
I unrolled the yellow sheet and read the note scribbled across it. “Sookie—Mr. Northman said not to knock on your door, so I’m sticking this to it. You may need this in case something is wrong. Just call us. Randy.”
“It’s paid for,” I said, and Jason calmed a little.
“The boyfriend? The ex?”
I remembered screaming at Eric about my driveway. “No,” I said. “Someone else.” I caught myself wishing the man who’d been so thoughtful had been Bill.
“You sure are getting around these days,” Jason said. He didn’t sound as judgmental as I expected, but then Jason was shrewd enough to know he could hardly throw many stones.
I said flatly, “No, I’m not.”
He eyed me for a long moment. I met his gaze. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Then someone owes you, big time.”
“That would be closer to the truth,” I said, and wondered in turn if I myself was being truthful. “Thanks for getting my mail for me, Big Bro. I need to crawl back in bed.”
“No problem. You want to go to the doctor?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t face the waiting room.
“Then you let me know if you need me to get you some groceries.”
“Thanks,” I said again, with more pleasure. “You’re a good brother.” To our mutual surprise, I stood on tip-toe and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He awkwardly put his arm around me, and I made myself keep the smile on my face, rather than wincing from the pain.
“Get back in bed, Sis,” he said, shutting the door behind him carefully. I noticed he stood on the porch for a full minute, surveying all that premium gravel. Then he shook his head and got back into his pickup, always clean and gleaming, the pink and aqua flames startling against the black paint that covered the rest of the truck.
I watched a little television. I tried to eat, but my face hurt too much. I felt lucky when I discovered some yogurt in the refrigerator.
A big pickup pulled up to the front of the house about three o’clock. Alcide got out with my suitcase. He knocked softly.
He might be happier if I didn’t answer, but I figured I wasn’t in the business of making Alcide Herveaux happy, and I opened the door.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” he said, not irreverently, as he took me in.
“Come in,” I said, through jaws that were getting so sore I could barely part them. I knew I’d said I’ll call Jason if Alcide came by; but Alcide and I needed to talk.
He came in and stood looking at me. Finally, he put the suitcase back in my room, fixed me a big glass of iced tea with a straw in it, and put it on the table by the couch. My eyes filled with t
ears. Not everyone would have realized that a hot drink made my swollen face hurt.
“Tell me what happened, chere,” he said, sitting on the couch beside me. “Here, put your feet up while you do.” He helped me swivel sideways and lay my legs over his lap. I had plenty of pillows propped behind me, and I did feel comfortable, or as comfortable as I was going to feel for a couple of days.
I told him everything.
“So, you think they’ll come after me in Shreveport?” he asked. He didn’t seem to be blaming me for bringing all this on his head, which frankly I’d half expected.
I shook my head helplessly. “I just don’t know. I wish we knew what had really happened. That might get them off our backs.”
“Weres are nothing if not loyal,” Alcide said.
I took his hand. “I know that.”
Alcide’s green eyes regarded me steadily.
“Debbie asked me to kill you,” he said.
For a moment I felt cold down to my bones. “What did you tell her back?” I asked, through stiff lips.
“I told her she could go fuck herself, excuse my language.”
“And how do you feel now?”
“Numb. Isn’t that stupid? I’m pulling her out of me by the roots, though. I told you I would. I had to do it. It’s like being addicted to crack. She’s awful.”
I thought of Lorena. “Sometimes,” I said, and even to my own ears I sounded sad, “the bitch wins.” Lorena was far from dead between Bill and me. Speaking of Debbie raised yet another unpleasant memory. “Hey, you told her we had been to bed together, when you two were fighting!”
He looked profoundly embarrassed, his olive skin flushing. “I’m ashamed of that. I knew she’d been having a good time with her fiancé; she bragged about it. I sort of used your name in vain when I was really mad. I apologize.”
I could understand that, even though I didn’t like it. I raised my eyebrows to indicate that wasn’t quite enough.
“Okay, that was really low. A double apology and a promise to never do it again.”
I nodded. I would accept that.
“I hated to hustle you all out of the apartment like that, but I didn’t want her to see the three of you, in view of conclusions she might have drawn. Debbie can get really mad, and I thought if she saw you in conjunction with the vampires, she might hear a rumor that Russell was missing a prisoner and put two and two together. She might even be mad enough to call Russell.”
“So much for loyalty among Weres.”
“She’s a shifter, not a Were,” Alcide said instantly, and a suspicion of mine was confirmed. I was beginning to believe that Alcide, despite his stated conviction that he was determined to kept the Were gene to himself, would never be happy with anyone but another Were. I sighed: I tried to keep it a nice, quiet sigh. I might be wrong, after all.
“Debbie aside,” I said, waving my hand to show how completely Debbie was out of our conversational picture, “someone killed Jerry Falcon and put him in your closet. That’s caused me—and you—a lot more trouble that the original mission, which was searching for Bill. Who would do something like that? It would have to be someone really malicious.”
“Or someone really stupid,” Alcide said fairly.
“I know Bill didn’t do it, because he was a prisoner. And I’d swear Eric was telling the truth when he said he didn’t do it.” I hesitated, hating to bring a name back up. “But what about Debbie? She’s . . .” I stopped myself from saying “a real bitch,” because only Alcide should call her that. “She was angry with you for having a date,” I said mildly. “Maybe she would put Jerry Falcon in your closet to cause you trouble?”
“Debbie’s mean and she can cause trouble, but she’s never killed anyone,” Alcide said. “She doesn’t have the, the . . . grit for it, the sand. The will to kill.”
Okay. Just call me Sandy.
Alcide must have read my dismay on my face. “Hey, I’m a Were,” he said, shrugging. “I’d do it if I had to. Especially at the right time of the moon.”
“So maybe a fellow pack member did him in, for reasons we don’t know, and decided to lay the blame on you?” Another possible scenario.
“That doesn’t feel right. Another Were would have—well, the body would’ve looked different.” Alcide said, trying to spare my finer feelings. He meant the body would have been ripped to shreds. “And I think I would’ve smelled another Were on him. Not that I got that close.”
We just didn’t have any other ideas, though if I’d tape-recorded that conversation and played it back, I would have thought of another possible culprit easily enough.
Alcide said he had to get back to Shreveport, and I lifted my legs for him to rise. He got up, but went down on one knee by the head of the couch to tell me good-bye. I said the polite things, how nice it had been of him to give me a place to stay, how much I’d enjoyed meeting his sister, how much fun it had been to hide a body with him. No, I didn’t really say that, but it crossed my mind, as I was being Gran’s courteous product.
“I’m glad I met you,” he said. He was closer to me than I’d thought, and he gave me a peck on the lips in farewell. But after the peck, which was okay, he returned for a longer good-bye. His lips felt so warm; and after a second, his tongue felt even warmer. His head turned slightly to get a better angle, and then he went at it again. His right hand hovered above me, trying to find a place to settle that wouldn’t hurt me. Finally he covered my left hand with his. Oh boy, this was good. But only my mouth and my lower pelvis were happy. The rest of me hurt. His hand slid, in a questioning sort of way, up to my breast, and I gave a sharp gasp.
“Oh, God, I hurt you!” he said. His lips looked very full and red after the long kiss, and his eyes were brilliant.
I felt obliged to apologize. “I’m just so sore,” I said.
“What did they do to you?” he asked. “Not just a few slaps across the face?”
He had imagined my swollen face was my most serious problem.
“I wish that had been it,” I said, trying to smile.
He truly looked stricken. “And here I am, making a pass at you.”
“Well, I didn’t push you away,” I said mildly. (I was too sore to push.) “And I didn’t say, ‘No, sir, how dare you force your attentions on me!’ ”
Alcide looked somewhat startled. “I’ll come back by soon,” he promised. “If you need anything, you call me.” He fished a card out of his pocket and laid it on the table by the couch. “This has got my work number on it, and I’m writing my cell number on the back, and my home number. Give me yours.” Obediently, I recited the numbers to him, and he wrote them down in, no kidding, a little black book. I didn’t have the energy to make a joke.
When he was gone, the house felt extra empty. He was so big and so energetic—so alive—he filled large spaces with his personality and presence.
It was a day for me to sigh.
Having talked to Jason at Merlotte’s, Arlene came by at half past five. She surveyed me, looked as if she were suppressing a lot of comments she really wanted to make, and heated me up some Campbell’s. I let it cool before I ate it very carefully and slowly, and felt the better for it. She put the dishes in the dishwasher, and asked me if I needed any other help. I thought of her children waiting for her at home, and I said I was just fine. It did me good to see Arlene, and to know she was struggling with herself about speaking out of turn made me feel even better.
Physically, I was feeling more and more stiff. I made myself get up and walk a little (though it looked more like a hobble), but as my bruises became fully developed and the house grew colder, I began to feel much worse. This was when living alone really got to you, when you felt bad or sick and there was no one there.
You might feel a little sorry for yourself, too, if you weren’t careful.
To my surprise, the first vampire to arrive after dark was Pam. Tonight she was wearing a trailing black gown, so she was scheduled to work at Fangtasia. Ordinarily, Pam shunned
black; she was a pastels kind of female. She yanked at the chiffon sleeves impatiently.
“Eric says you may need a female to help you,” she said impatiently. “Though why I am supposed to be your lady’s maid, I don’t know. Do you really need help, or is he just trying to curry favor with you? I like you well enough, but after all, I am vampire, and you are human.”
That Pam, what a sweetie.
“You could sit and visit with me for a minute,” I suggested, at a loss as to how to proceed. Actually, it would be nice to have help getting into and out of the bathtub, but I knew Pam would be offended to be asked to perform such a personal task. After all, she was vampire, I was human. . . .
Pam settled into the armchair facing the couch. “Eric says you can fire a shotgun,” she said, more conversationally. “Would you teach me?”
“I’d be real glad to, when I’m better.”
“Did you really stake Lorena?”
The shotgun lessons were more important than the death of Lorena, it seemed.
“Yes. She would’ve killed me.”
“How’d you do it?”
“I had the stake that had been used on me.”
Then Pam had to hear about that, and ask me how it felt, since I was the only person she knew who’d survived being staked, and then she asked me exactly how I’d killed Lorena, and there we were, back at my least favorite topic.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I admitted.
“Why not?” Pam was curious. “You say she was trying to kill you.”
“She was.”
“And after she had done that, she would have tortured Bill more, until he broke, and you would have been dead, and it all would have been for nothing.”
Pam had a point, a good one, and I tried to think about it as a practical step to have taken, rather than a desperate reflex.
“Bill and Eric will be here soon,” Pam said, looking at her watch.
“I wish you had told me that earlier,” I said, struggling to my feet.
“Got to brush your teeth and hair?” Pam was cheerfully sarcastic. “That’s why Eric thought you might need my help.”
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