Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set

by Charlaine Harris

  The best of all possible worlds.

  Maybe Jason and Crystal could work things out now that Tanya’s pernicious influence was gone. After all, Crystal had really wanted to marry Jason, and she had seemed genuinely pleased that she was pregnant again. Why she was so discontented now . . . I simply didn’t get it.

  I could add her to the long list of people I didn’t understand.

  While the witches cleaned up the living room with the windows open—though it was a chilly night, I wanted to get rid of the lingering smell of the herbs—I sprawled on my bed with a book. I found I wasn’t focused enough to read. Finally, I decided to go outside, and I threw on a hoody and called to Amelia to let her know. I sat in one of the wooden chairs Amelia and I had bought at Wal-Mart at end-of-summer clearance-sale prices, and I admired the matching table with its umbrella all over again. I reminded myself to take the umbrella down and cover the furniture for the winter. Then I leaned back and let go of my thoughts.

  For a while it was nice to simply be outside, smelling the trees and the ground, hearing a whip-poor-will give its enigmatic call from the surrounding woods. The security light made me feel safe, though I knew that was an illusion. If there’s light, you can just see what’s coming for you a little more clearly.

  Bill stepped out of the woods and strolled silently over to the yard set. He sat in one of the other chairs.

  We didn’t speak for several moments. I didn’t feel the surge of anguish I’d felt over the past few months when he was around. He barely disturbed the fall night with his presence, he was so much a part of it.

  “Selah has moved to Little Rock,” he said.

  “How come?”

  “She got a position with a large firm,” he said. “It was what she told me she wanted. They specialize in vampire properties.”

  “She hooked on vamps?”

  “I believe so. Not my doing.”

  “Weren’t you her first?” Maybe I sounded a little bitter. He’d been my first, in every way.

  “Don’t,” he said, and turned his face toward me. It was radiantly pale. “No,” he said finally. “I was not her first. And I always knew it was the vampire in me that attracted her, not the person who was a vampire.”

  I understood what he was saying. When I’d learned he’d been ordered to ingratiate himself with me, I’d felt it was the telepath in me that had gotten his attention, not the woman who was the telepath. “What goes around, comes around,” I said.

  “I never cared about her,” he said. “Or very little.” He shrugged. “There’ve been so many like her.”

  “I’m not sure how you think this is going to make me feel.”

  “I’m only telling you the truth. There has been only one you.” And then he got up and walked back into the woods, human slow, letting me watch him leave.

  Apparently Bill was conducting a kind of stealth campaign to win back my regard. I wondered if he dreamed I could love him again. I still felt pain when I thought of the night I’d learned the truth. I figured my regard would be the outer limits of what he could hope to earn. Trust, love? I couldn’t see that happening.

  I sat outside for a few more minutes, thinking about the evening I’d just had. One enemy agent down. The enemy herself to go. Then I thought of the police search for the missing people, all Weres, in Shreveport. I wondered when they’d give up.

  Surely I wouldn’t have to deal with Were politics again any time soon; the survivors would be absorbed in setting their house in order.

  I hoped Alcide was enjoying being the leader, and I wondered if he’d succeeded in creating yet another little purebred Were the night of the takeover. I wondered who had taken the Furnan children.

  As long as I was speculating, I wondered where Felipe de Castro had established his headquarters in Louisiana or if he’d stayed in Vegas. I wondered if anyone had told Bubba that Louisiana was under a new regime, and I wondered if I’d ever see him again. He had one of the most famous faces in the world, but his head had been sadly addled by being brought over at the last possible second by a vampire working in the morgue in Memphis. Bubba had not weathered Katrina well; he’d gotten cut off from the other New Orleans vampires and had had to subsist on rats and small animals (left-behind pet cats, I suspected) until he’d been rescued one night by a search party of Baton Rouge vamps. The last I’d heard, they’d had to send him out of state for rest and recuperation. Maybe he’d wind up in Vegas. He’d always done well in Vegas, when he was alive.

  Suddenly, I realized I was stiff with sitting so long, and the night had grown uncomfortably cold. My jacket wasn’t doing the job. It was time to go inside and go to bed. The rest of the house was dark, and I figured Octavia and Amelia were exhausted by their witch work.

  I heaved myself up from the chair, let the umbrella down, and opened the toolshed door, leaning the umbrella against a bench where the man I’d thought was my grandfather had made repairs. I shut the toolshed door, feeling I was shutting summer inside.

  Chapter 18

  After a quiet and peaceful Monday off, I went in Tuesday to work the lunch shift. When I’d left home, Amelia had been painting a chest of drawers she’d found at the local junk store. Octavia had been trimming the dead heads off the roses. She’d said they needed pruning back for the winter, and I’d told her to have at it. My grandmother had been the rose person in our household, and she hadn’t let me lay a finger on them unless they needed spraying for aphids. That had been one of my jobs.

  Jason came into Merlotte’s for lunch with a bunch of his coworkers. They put two tables together and formed a cluster of happy men. Cooler weather and no big storms made for happy parish road crews. Jason seemed almost overly animated, his brain a jumble of leaping thoughts. Maybe having the pernicious influence of Tanya erased had already made a difference. But I made a real effort to stay out of his head, because after all, he was my brother.

  When I carried a big tray of Cokes and tea over to the table, Jason said, “Crystal says hey.”

  “How’s she feeling today?” I asked, to show proper concern, and Jason made a circle of his forefinger and thumb. I served the last mug of tea, careful to put it down evenly so it wouldn’t spill, and I asked Dove Beck, a cousin of Alcee’s, if he wanted any extra lemon.

  “No, thanks,” he said politely. Dove, who’d gotten married the day after graduation, was a whole different kettle of fish from Alcee. At thirty, he was younger, and as far as I could tell—and I could tell pretty far—he didn’t have that inner core of anger that the detective did. I’d gone to school with one of Dove’s sisters.

  “How’s Angela?” I asked him, and he smiled.

  “She married Maurice Kershaw,” he said. “They got a little boy, cutest kid in the world. Angela’s a new woman—she don’t smoke or drink, and she’s in church when the doors open.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Tell her I asked,” I said, and began taking orders. I heard Jason telling his buddies about a fence he was going to build, but I didn’t have time to pay attention.

  Jason lingered after the other men were going out to their vehicles. “Sook, would you run by and check on Crystal when you get off?”

  “Sure, but won’t you be leaving work then?”

  “I got to go over to Clarice and pick up some chain-link. Crystal wants us to fence in some of the backyard for the baby. So it’ll have a safe place to play.”

  I was surprised that Crystal was showing that much foresight and maternal instinct. Maybe having the baby would change her. I thought about Angela Kershaw and her little boy.

  I didn’t want to count up how many girls younger than me had been married for years and had babies—or just had the babies. I told myself envy was a sin, and I worked hard, smiling and nodding to everyone. Luckily, it was a busy day. During the afternoon lull, Sam asked me to help him take inventory in the storeroom while Holly covered the bar and the floor. We only had our two resident alcoholics to serve, so Holly was not going to have to work very hard.
Since I was very nervous with Sam’s Blackberry, he entered the totals while I counted, and I had to climb up on a stepladder and then back down about fifty times, counting and dusting. We bought our cleaning supplies in bulk. We counted all those, too. Sam was just a counting fool today.

  The storeroom doesn’t have any windows, so it got pretty warm in there while we were working. I was glad to get out of its stuffy confines when Sam was finally satisfied. I pulled a spiderweb out of his hair as I went by on my way to the bathroom, where I scrubbed my hands and carefully wiped my face, checking my ponytail (as best I could) for any spiderwebs I might have picked up myself.

  As I left the bar, I was so looking forward to getting in the shower that I almost turned left to go home. Just in time, I remembered I’d promised to look in on Crystal, so I turned right instead.

  Jason lived in my parents’ house, and he’d kept it up very nicely. My brother was a house-proud kind of guy. He didn’t mind spending his free time on painting, mowing, and basic repairs, a side of him I always found a bit surprising. He’d recently painted the outside a buff color and the trim a glowing white, and the little house looked very spruce. There was a driveway that made a U shape in front. He’d added a branch that led to the porte cochere in back of the house, but I pulled up to the front steps. I stuffed my car keys in my pocket and crossed the porch. I turned the knob because I planned on sticking my head in the door and calling to Crystal, since I was family. The front door was unlocked, as most front doors were during the daytime. The family room was empty.

  “Hey, Crystal, it’s Sookie!” I called, though I tried to keep my voice subdued so I wouldn’t startle her if she were napping.

  I heard a muffled sound, a moan. It came from the biggest bedroom, the one my parents had used, which lay across the family room and to my right.

  Oh, shit, she’s miscarrying again, I thought, and dashed to the closed door. I flung it open so hard it bounced off the wall, but I didn’t pay a bit of attention, because bouncing on the bed were Crystal and Dove Beck.

  I was so shocked, so angry, and so distraught that as they stopped what they were doing and stared up at me, I said the worst thing I could think of. “No wonder you lose all your babies.” I spun on my heel and marched out of the house. I was so outraged I couldn’t even get in the car. It was really unfortunate that Calvin pulled up behind me and leaped from his truck almost before it stopped.

  “My God, what’s wrong?” he said. “Is Crystal okay?”

  “Why don’t you ask her that?” I said nastily, and climbed into my car only to sit there shaking. Calvin ran into the house as if he had to put out a fire, and I guess that was about the size of it.

  “Jason, dammit,” I yelled, thumping my fist on my steering wheel. I should have taken the time to listen to Jason’s brain. He’d known good and well that since he had business in Clarice, Dove and Crystal would probably take the opportunity to have a tryst. He’d planned on me being dutiful and dropping by. It was just too big a coincidence that Calvin had shown up. He must have also told Calvin to check on Crystal. So there was no deniability, and no chance of hushing this up—not since Calvin and I both knew. I had been right to worry about the terms of the marriage, and now I had something entirely new to worry about.

  Plus, I was ashamed. I was ashamed of the behavior of everyone involved. In my code of conduct, which doesn’t really make me a very good Christian at all, what single people do in caring relationships is their own business. Even in a more casual relationship—well, if the people respect one another, okay. But a couple who’s promised to be faithful, who’s pledged that publicly, are governed by a whole different set of rules, in my world.

  Not in Crystal’s world, or Dove’s world, apparently.

  Calvin came back down the steps looking years older than he had when he’d bounded up them. He stopped by my car. He wore an expression twin to mine—disillusion, disappointment, disgust. Lots of dises there.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said. “We got to have the ceremony now.”

  Crystal came out on the porch wrapped in a leopard-print bathrobe, and rather than endure her speaking to me I started the car and left as quickly as I could. I drove home in a daze. When I came in the back door, Amelia was chopping up something on the old cutting board, the one that had survived the fire with only scorch marks. She turned to speak to me and had opened her mouth when she saw my face. I shook my head at her, warning her not to talk, and I went straight into my room.

  This would have been a good day for me to be living by myself again.

  I sat in my room in the little chair in the corner, the one that had seated so many visitors lately. Bob was curled up in a ball on my bed, a place he was expressly forbidden to sleep. Someone had opened my door during the day. I thought about chewing Amelia out about that, then discarded the idea when I saw a pile of clean and folded underwear lying on top of my dresser.

  “Bob,” I said, and the cat unfolded and leaped to his feet in one fluid movement. He stood on my bed, staring at me with wide golden eyes. “Get the hell out of here,” I said. With immense dignity Bob leaped down from the bed and stalked to the door. I opened it a few inches and he went out, managing to leave the impression that he was doing this of his own free will. I shut the door behind him.

  I love cats. I just wanted to be by myself.

  The phone rang, and I stood up to answer it.

  “Tomorrow night,” Calvin said. “Wear something comfortable. Seven o’clock.” He sounded sad and tired.

  “Okay,” I said, and we both hung up. I sat there a while longer. Whatever this ceremony consisted of, did I have to be a participant? Yeah, I did. Unlike Crystal, I kept my promises. I’d had to stand up for Jason at his wedding, as his closest relative, as a surrogate to take his punishment if he was unfaithful to his new wife. Calvin had stood up for Crystal. And now look what we’d come to.

  I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I knew it was going to be awful. Though the werepanthers understood the necessity for breeding each available pure male panther to each available pure female panther (the only way to produce purebred baby panthers), they also believed once the breeding had been given a chance, any partnerships formed should be monogamous. If you didn’t want to take that vow, you didn’t form a partnership or marry. This was the way they ran their community. Crystal would have absorbed these rules from birth, and Jason had learned them from Calvin before the wedding.

  Jason didn’t call, and I was glad. I wondered what was happening at his house, but only in a dull kind of way. When had Crystal met Dove Beck? Did Dove’s wife know about this? I wasn’t surprised that Crystal had cheated on Jason, but I was a little astonished at her choice.

  I decided that Crystal had wanted to make her betrayal as emphatic as it could possibly be. She was saying, “I’ll have sex with someone else while I’m carrying your child. And he’ll be older than you, and a different race from you, and he’ll even work for you!” Twisting the knife in deeper with every layer. If this was retaliation for the damn cheeseburger, I’d say she’d gotten a steak-size vengeance.

  Because I didn’t want to seem like I was sulking, I came out for supper, which was lowly and comforting tuna noodle casserole with peas and onions. After stacking the dishes for Octavia to take care of, I retreated back to my room. The two witches were practically tiptoeing up and down the hall because they were so anxious not to disturb me, though of course they were dying to ask me what the problem was.

  But they didn’t; God bless them. I really couldn’t have explained. I was too mortified.

  I said about a million prayers before I went to sleep that night, but none of them ended up making me feel any better.

  I went to work the next day because I had to. Staying home wouldn’t have made me feel any better. I was profoundly glad Jason didn’t come into Merlotte’s, because I would have thrown a mug at him if he had.

  Sam eyed me carefully several times and finally he drew me behind the ba
r with him. “Tell me what’s happening,” he said.

  Tears flooded my eyes, and I was within an ace of making a real scene. I squatted down hastily, as if I’d dropped something on the floor, and I said, “Sam, please don’t ask me. I’m too upset to talk about it.” Suddenly, I realized it would be a big comfort to tell Sam, but I just couldn’t, not in the crowded bar.

  “Hey, you know I’m here if you need me.” His face was serious. He patted my shoulder.

  I was so lucky to have him for a boss.

  His gesture reminded me that I had lots of friends who would not dishonor themselves as Crystal had done. Jason had dishonored himself, too, by forcing Calvin and me to witness her cheap betrayal. I had so many friends who would not do such a thing! It was a trick of fate that the one who would was my own brother.

  This thought made me feel better and stronger.

  I actually had a backbone by the time I got home. No one else was there. I hesitated, wondering whether I could call Tara or beg Sam to take an hour off, or even call Bill to go with me to Hotshot . . . but that was just weakness talking. This was something I had to do by myself. Calvin had warned me to wear something comfortable and not to dress up, and my Merlotte’s outfit was certainly both those things. But it seemed wrong to wear my work clothes to an event like this. There might be blood. I didn’t know what to anticipate. I pulled on yoga pants and an old gray sweatshirt. I made sure my hair was pulled back. I looked like I was dressed to clean out my closets.

  On the drive to Hotshot, I turned up the radio and sang at the top of my lungs to keep myself from thinking. I harmonized with Evanescence and agreed with the Dixie Chicks that I wasn’t going to back down . . . a good spine-stiffening song to listen to.

  I reached Hotshot well before seven. I’d last been out here at Jason and Crystal’s wedding, where I’d danced with Quinn. That visit of Quinn’s had been the only time he and I had been intimate. In hindsight, I regretted having taken that step. It had been a mistake. I’d been banking on a future that never came to pass. I’d jumped the gun. I hoped I’d never make that mistake again.