Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set

by Charlaine Harris

  Had been a good thing.

  I felt tears well up in my eyes and looked out the window. We’d passed the racetrack and the turnoff to Pierre Bossier Mall, and we went a couple more exits before Tray turned the truck onto the off ramp.

  We meandered through a modest neighborhood for a while, Tray checking his rearview mirror so often that even I realized he was watching for anyone following us. Tray suddenly turned into a driveway and pulled around to the back of one of the slightly larger homes, which was demurely clad in white siding. We parked under a porte cochere in the back, along with another pickup. There was a small Nissan parked off to the side. There were a couple of motorcycles, too, and Tray gave them a glance of professional interest.

  “Whose place?” I was a little hesitant about asking yet another question, but after all, I did want to know where I was.

  “Amanda’s,” he said. He waited for me to precede him, and I went up the three steps leading up to the back door and rang the bell.

  “Who’s there?” asked a muffled voice.

  “Sookie and Dawson,” I said.

  The door opened cautiously, the entrance blocked by Amanda so we couldn’t see past her. I don’t know much about handguns, but she had a big revolver in her hand pointed steadily at my chest. This was the second time in two days I’d had a gun pointed at me. Suddenly, I felt very cold and a little dizzy.

  “Okay,” Amanda said after looking us over sharply.

  Alcide was standing behind the door, a shotgun at the ready. He’d stepped out into view as we came in, and when his own senses had checked us out, he stood down. He put the shotgun on the kitchen counter and sat at the kitchen table.

  “I’m sorry about Maria-Star, Alcide,” I said, forcing the words through stiff lips. Having guns aimed at you is just plain terrifying, especially at close range.

  “I haven’t gotten it yet,” he said, his voice flat and even. I decided he was saying that the impact of her death hadn’t hit him. “We were thinking about moving in together. It would have saved her life.”

  There wasn’t any point in wallowing in what-might-have-been. That was only another way to torture yourself. What had actually happened was bad enough.

  “We know who did it,” Dawson said, and a shiver ran through the room. There were more Weres in the house—I could sense them now—and they had all become alert at Tray Dawson’s words.

  “What? How?” Without my seeing the movement, Alcide was on his feet.

  “She got her witch friends to do a reconstruction,” Tray said, nodding in my direction. “I watched. It was two guys. One I’d never seen, so Furnan’s brought in some wolves from outside. The second was Cal Myers.”

  Alcide’s big hands were clenched in fists. He didn’t seem to know where to start speaking, he had so many reactions. “Furnan’s hired help,” Alcide said, finally picking a jumping-in point. “So we’re within our rights to kill on sight. We’ll snatch one of the bastards and make him talk. We can’t bring a hostage here; someone would notice. Tray, where?”

  “Hair of the Dog,” he answered.

  Amanda wasn’t too crazy about that idea. She owned that bar, and using it as an execution or torture site didn’t appeal to her. She opened her mouth to protest. Alcide faced her and snarled, his face twisting into something that wasn’t quite Alcide. She cowered and nodded her assent.

  Alcide raised his voice even more for his next pronouncement. “Cal Myers is Kill on Sight.”

  “But he’s a pack member, and members get trials,” Amanda said, and then cowered, correctly anticipating Alcide’s wordless roar of rage.

  “You haven’t asked me about the man who tried to kill me,” I said. I wanted to defuse the situation, if that was possible.

  As furious as he was, Alcide was still too decent to remind me that I’d lived and Maria-Star hadn’t, or that he’d loved Maria-Star much more than he’d ever cared about me. Both thoughts crossed his mind, though.

  “He was a Were,” I said. “About five foot ten, in his twenties. He was clean-shaven. He had brown hair and blue eyes and a big birthmark on his neck.”

  “Oh,” said Amanda. “That sounds like what’s-his-name, the brand-new mechanic at Furnan’s shop. Hired last week. Lucky Owens. Ha! Who were you with?”

  “I was with Eric Northman,” I said.

  There was a long, not entirely friendly silence. Weres and vampires are natural rivals, if not out-and-out enemies.

  “So, the guy’s dead?” Tray asked practically, and I nodded.

  “How’d he approach you?” Alcide asked in a voice that was more rational.

  “That’s an interesting question,” I said. “I was on the interstate driving home from Shreveport with Eric. We’d been to a restaurant here.”

  “So who would know where you were and who you were with?” Amanda said while Alcide frowned down at the floor, deep in thought.

  “Or that you’d have to return home along the interstate last night.” Tray was really rising in my opinion; he was right in there with the practical and pertinent ideas.

  “I only told my roommate I was going out to dinner, not where,” I said. “We met someone there, but we can leave him out. Eric knew, because he was acting as chauffeur. But I know Eric and the other man didn’t tip anyone off.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Tray asked.

  “Eric got shot protecting me,” I said. “And the person he took me to meet was a relative.”

  Amanda and Tray didn’t realize how small my family was, so they didn’t get how momentous that statement was. But Alcide, who knew more about me, glared. “You’re making this up,” he said.

  “No, I’m not.” I stared back. I knew this was a terrible day for Alcide, but I didn’t have to explain my life to him. But I had a sudden thought. “You know, the waiter—he was a Were.” That would explain a lot.

  “What’s the name of the restaurant?”

  “Les Deux Poissons.” My accent wasn’t good, but the Weres nodded.

  “Kendall works there,” Alcide said. “Kendall Kent. Long reddish hair?” I nodded, and he looked sad. “I thought Kendall would come around to our side. We had a beer together a couple of times.”

  “That’s Jack Kent’s oldest. All he would have had to do was place a phone call,” Amanda said. “Maybe he didn’t know . . .”

  “Not an excuse,” Tray said. His deep voice reverberated in the little kitchen. “Kendall has to know who Sookie is, from the packmaster contest. She’s a friend of the pack. Instead of telling Alcide she was in our territory and should be protected, he called Furnan and told him where Sookie was, maybe let him know when she started home. Made it easy for Lucky to lie in wait.”

  I wanted to protest that there was no certainty that it had happened like that, but when I thought about it, it had to have been exactly that way or in some manner very close to it. Just to be sure I was remembering correctly, I called Amelia and asked her if she’d told any callers where I was the night before.

  “No,” she said. “I heard from Octavia, who didn’t know you. I got a call from that werepanther boy I met at your brother’s wedding. Believe me, you didn’t come up in that conversation. Alcide called, real upset. Tanya. I told her nothing.”

  “Thanks, roomie,” I said. “You recovering?”

  “Yeah, I’m feeling better, and Octavia left to go back to the family she’s been staying with in Monroe.”

  “Okay, see you when I get back.”

  “You going to make it back in time for work?”

  “Yeah, I have to make it to work.” Since I’d spent that week in Rhodes, I have to be careful to stick to the schedule for a while, otherwise the other waitresses would get up in my face about Sam giving me all the breaks. I hung up. “She told no one,” I said.

  “So you—and Eric—had a leisurely dinner at an expensive restaurant, with another man.”

  I looked at him incredulously. This was so far off the point. I concentrated. I’d never poked a mental probe i
nto such turmoil. Alcide was feeling grief for Maria-Star, guilt because he hadn’t protected her, anger that I’d been drawn into the conflict, and above all, eagerness to knock some skulls. As the cherry on top of all that, Alcide—irrationally—hated that I’d been out with Eric.

  I tried to keep my mouth shut out of respect for his loss; I was no stranger to mixed emotions myself. But I found I’d become abruptly and completely tired of him. “Okay,” I said. “Fight your own battles. I came when you asked me to. I helped you when you asked me to, both at the battle for packleader and today, at expense and emotional grief to myself. Screw you, Alcide. Maybe Furnan is the better Were.” I spun on my heel and caught the look Tray Dawson was giving Alcide while I marched out of the kitchen, down the steps, and into the car-port. If there’d been a can, I would’ve kicked it.

  “I’ll take you home,” Tray said, appearing at my side, and I marched over to the side of the truck, grateful that he was giving me the wherewithal to leave. When I’d stormed out, I hadn’t been thinking about what would happen next. It’s the ruin of a good exit when you have to go back and look in the phone book for a cab company.

  I’d believed Alcide truly loathed me after the Debbie debacle. Apparently the loathing was not total.

  “Kind of ironic, isn’t it?” I said after a silent spell. “I almost got shot last night because Patrick Furnan thought that would upset Alcide. Until ten minutes ago, I would have sworn that wasn’t true.”

  Tray looked like he would rather be cutting up onions than dealing with this conversation. After another pause, he said, “Alcide’s acting like a butthead, but he’s got a lot on his plate.”

  “I understand that,” I said, and shut my mouth before I said one more word.

  As it turned out, I was on time to go to work that night. I was so upset while I was changing clothes that I almost split my black pants, I yanked them on so hard. I brushed my hair with such unnecessary vigor that it crackled.

  “Men are incomprehensible assholes,” I said to Amelia.

  “No shit,” she said. “When I was searching for Bob today, I found a female cat in the woods with kittens. And guess what? They were all black-and-white.”

  I really had no idea what to say.

  “So to hell with the promise I made him, right? I’m going to have fun. He can go have sex; I can have sex. And if he vomits on my bedspread again, I’ll get after him with the broom.”

  I was trying not to look directly at Amelia. “I don’t blame you,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. It was nice to be on the verge of laughter instead of wanting to smack someone. I grabbed up my purse, checked my ponytail in the mirror in the hall bathroom, and exited out the back door to drive to Merlotte’s.

  I felt tired before I even walked through the employees’ door, not a good way to start my shift.

  I didn’t see Sam when I stowed my purse in the deep desk drawer we all used. When I came out of the hall that accessed the two public bathrooms, Sam’s office, the storeroom, and the kitchen (though the kitchen door was kept locked from the inside, most of the time), I found Sam behind the bar. I gave him a wave as I tied on the white apron I’d pulled from the stack of dozens. I slid my order pad and a pencil into a pocket, looked around to find Arlene, whom I’d be replacing, and scanned the tables in our section.

  My heart sank. No peaceful evening for me. Some asses in Fellowship of the Sun T-shirts were sitting at one of the tables. The Fellowship was a radical organization that believed (a) vampires were sinful by nature, almost demons, and (b) they should be executed. The Fellowship “preachers” wouldn’t say so publicly, but the Fellowship advocated the total eradication of the undead. I’d heard there was even a little primer to advise members of how that could be carried out. After the Rhodes bombing they’d become bolder in their hatred.

  The FotS group was growing as Americans struggled to come to terms with something they couldn’t understand—and as hundreds of vampires streamed into the country that had given them the most favorable reception of all the nations on earth. Since a few heavily Catholic and Muslim countries had adopted a policy of killing vampires on sight, the U.S. had begun accepting vampires as refugees from religious or political persecution, and the backlash against this policy was violent. I’d recently seen a bumper sticker that read, “I’ll say vamps are alive when you pry my cold dead fingers from my ripped-out throat.”

  I regarded the FotS as intolerant and ignorant, and I despised those who belonged to its ranks. But I was used to keeping my mouth shut on the topic at the bar, the same way I was used to avoiding discussions on abortion or gun control or gays in the military.

  Of course, the FotS guys were probably Arlene’s buddies. My weak-minded ex-friend had fallen hook, line, and sinker for the pseudo religion that the FotS propagated.

  Arlene curtly briefed me on the tables as she headed out the back door, her face set hard against me. As I watched her go, I wondered how her kids were. I used to babysit them a lot. They probably hated me now, if they listened to their mother.

  I shook off my melancholy, because Sam didn’t pay me to be moody. I made the rounds of the customers, refreshed drinks, made sure everyone had enough food, brought a clean fork for a woman who’d dropped hers, supplied extra napkins to the table where Catfish Hennessy was eating chicken strips, and exchanged cheerful words with the guys seated at the bar. I treated the FotS table just like I treated everyone else, and they didn’t seem to be paying me any special attention, which was just fine with me. I had every expectation that they’d leave with no trouble . . . until Pam walked in.

  Pam is white as a sheet of paper and looks just like Alice in Wonderland would look if she’d grown up to become a vampire. In fact, this evening Pam even had a blue band restraining her straight fair hair, and she was wearing a dress instead of her usual pants set. She was lovely—even if she looked like a vampire cast in an episode of Leave It to Beaver. Her dress had little puff sleeves with white trim, and her collar had white trim, too. The tiny buttons down the front of her bodice were white, to match the polka dots on the skirt. No hose, I noticed, but any hose she bought would look bizarre since the rest of her skin was so pale.

  “Hey, Pam,” I said as she made a beeline for me.

  “Sookie,” she said warmly, and gave me a kiss as light as a snowflake. Her lips felt cool on my cheek.

  “What’s up?” I asked. Pam usually worked at Fangtasia in the evening.

  “I have a date,” she said. “Do you think I look good?” She spun around.

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “You always look good, Pam.” That was only the truth. Though Pam’s clothing choices were often ultra-conservative and strangely dated, that didn’t mean they didn’t become her. She had a kind of sweet-but-lethal charm. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

  She looked as arch as a vampire over two hundred years old can look. “Who says it’s a guy?” she said.

  “Oh, right.” I glanced around. “Who’s the lucky person?”

  Just then my roomie walked in. Amelia was wearing a beautiful pair of black linen pants and heels with an off-white sweater and a pair of amber and tortoiseshell earrings. She looked conservative, too, but in a more modern way. Amelia strode over to us, smiled at Pam, and said, “Had a drink yet?”

  Pam smiled in a way I’d never seen her smile before. It was . . . coy. “No, waiting for you.”

  They sat at the bar and Sam served them. Soon they were chatting away, and when their drinks were gone, they got up to leave.

  When they passed me on their way out, Amelia said, “I’ll see you when I see you”—her way of telling me she might not be home tonight.

  “Okay, you two have fun,” I said. Their departure was followed by more than one pair of male eyes. If corneas steamed up like glasses do, all the guys in the bar would be seeing blurry.

  I made the round of my tables again, fetching new beers for one, leaving the bill at another, until I reached the table with the two guys wearing the FotS shirt
s. They were still watching the door as though they expected Pam to jump back inside and scream, “BOO!”

  “Did I just see what I thought I saw?” one of the men asked me. He was in his thirties, clean-shaven, brown-haired, just another guy. The other man was someone I would have eyed with caution if we’d been in an elevator alone. He was thin, had a beard fringe along his jaw, was decorated with a few tattoos that looked like home jobs to me—jail tats—and he was carrying a knife strapped to his ankle, a thing that hadn’t been too hard for me to spot once I’d heard in his mind that he was armed.

  “What do you think you just saw?” I asked sweetly. Brown Hair thought I was a bit simple. But that was a good camouflage, and it meant that Arlene hadn’t sunk to telling all and sundry about my little peculiarities. No one in Bon Temps (if you asked them outside of church on Sunday) would have said telepathy was possible. If you’d asked them outside of Merlotte’s on a Saturday night, they might have said there was something to it.

  “I think I saw a vamp come in here, just like she had a right. And I think I saw a woman acting happy to walk out with her. I swear to God, I cannot believe it.” He looked at me as if I was sure to share his outrage. Jail Tat nodded vigorously.

  “I’m sorry—you see two women walking out of a bar together, and that bothers you? I don’t understand your problem with that.” Of course I did, but you have to play it out sometimes.

  “Sookie!” Sam was calling me.

  “Can I get you gentlemen anything else?” I asked, since Sam was undoubtedly trying to call me back to my senses.

  They were both looking at me oddly now, having correctly deduced that I was not exactly down with their program.

  “I guess we’re ready to leave,” said Jail Tat, clearly hoping I’d be made to suffer for driving paying customers away. “You got our check ready?” I’d had their check ready, and I laid it down on the table in between them. They each glanced at it, slapped a ten on top, and shoved their chairs back.