Dead Reckoning

by Harris, Charlaine

Along with pretty nearly everyone I knew, I figured her boyfriend had had it coming, after I saw the pictures of her face swelling black-and-blue in her mug shots. But she’d confessed to shooting him when she called 911, and his family had a little clout, so there was no way Kennedy could walk. She’d gotten a light sentence and time off for good behavior, since she’d taught deportment and grooming to the other inmates. Eventually, Kennedy had done her time. When she’d gotten out, she’d rented a little apartment in Bon Temps, where she had an aunt, Marcia Albanese. Sam had offered her a job pretty much right after he met her, and she’d accepted on the spot.

  “Hey, man,” Danny said to Sam. “Fix us two mojitos?”

  Sam got the mint out of the refrigerator and set to work. I handed him the sliced limes when he was almost through with the drinks.

  “What are you all up to tonight?” I asked. “You look mighty pretty, Kennedy.”

  “I finally lost ten pounds!” she said, and when Sam deposited her glass in front of her, she lifted it to toast with Danny. “To my former figure! May I be on the road to getting it back!”

  Danny shook his head. He said, “Hey! You don’t need to do anything to look beautiful.” I had to turn away so I wouldn’t say, Aw.w.ww. Danny was one tough guy who couldn’t have grown up in a more different environment than Kennedy—the only experience they’d had in common was jail—but boy, he was carrying a big torch for her. I could feel the heat from where I stood. You didn’t have to be telepathic to see Danny’s devotion.

  We hadn’t drawn the curtains on the front window yet, and when I realized it was dark outside, I started forward. Though I was looking out from the bright bar to the dark parking lot, there were lights out there, and something was moving . . . moving fast. Toward the bar. I had a slice of a second to think Odd, and then caught the flicker of flame.

  “Down!” I yelled, but the word hadn’t even gotten all the way out of my mouth when the window shattered and the bottle with its fiery head landed on a table where no one was sitting, breaking the napkin holder and scattering the salt and pepper shakers. Burning napkins flared out from the point of impact to drift down to the floor and the chairs and the people. The table itself was a mass of fire almost instantly.

  Danny moved faster than I’d ever seen a human move. He swept Kennedy off her stool, flipped up the pass-through, and shoved her down behind the bar. There was a brief logjam as Sam, moving even faster, grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall and tried to leap through the pass-through to start spraying.

  I felt heat on my thighs and looked down to see that my apron had been ignited by one of the napkins. I’m ashamed to say that I screamed. Sam swiveled around to spray me and then turned back to the flames. The customers were yelling, dodging flames, running into the passage that led past the bathrooms and Sam’s office through to the back parking lot. One of our perpetual customers, Jane Bodehouse, was bleeding heavily, her hand clapped to her lacerated scalp. She’d been sitting by the window, not her usual place at the bar, so I figured she’d been cut by flying glass. Jane staggered and would have fallen if I hadn’t grabbed her arm.

  “Go that way,” I yelled in her ear, and shoved her in the right direction. Sam was spraying the biggest flame, aiming at the base of it in the approved manner, but the napkins that had floated away were causing lots of little fires. I grabbed the pitcher of water and the pitcher of tea off the bar and began methodically tracking the flames on the floor. The pitchers were full, and I managed to be pretty effective.

  One of the window curtains was on fire, and I took three steps, aimed carefully, and tossed the remaining tea. The flame didn’t quite die out. I grabbed a glass of water from a table and got much closer to the fire than I wanted to. Flinching the whole time, I poured the liquid down the steaming curtain. I felt an odd flicker of warmth behind me and smelled something disgusting. A powerful gust of chemicals made a strange sensation against my back. I turned to try to figure out what had happened and saw Sam whirling away with the extinguisher.

  I found myself looking through the serving hatch into the kitchen. Antoine, the cook, was shutting down all the appliances. Smart. I could hear the fire engine in the distance, but I was too busy looking for yellow flickers to feel much relief. My eyes, streaming with tears from the smoke and the chemicals, were darting around like pinballs as I tried to spot flames, and I was coughing like crazy. Sam had run to retrieve the second extinguisher from his office, and he returned holding it ready. We rocked from side to side on our feet, ready to leap into action to extinguish the next flicker.

  Neither of us spotted anything else.

  Sam aimed one more blast at the bottle that had caused the fire, and then he put down the extinguisher. He leaned over to plant his hands on his thighs and inhaled raggedly. He began coughing. After a second, he bent down to the bottle.

  “Don’t touch it,” I said urgently, and his hand stopped halfway down.

  “Of course not,” he said, chiding himself, and he straightened up. “Did you see who threw it?”

  “No,” I said. We were the only people left in the bar. I could hear the fire engine getting closer and closer, so I knew we had only a minute more to talk to each other alone. “Coulda been the same people who’ve been demonstrating out in the parking lot. I don’t know that the church members are into firebombs, though.” Not everyone in the area was pleased to know there were such creatures as werewolves and shapeshifters following the Great Reveal, and the Holy Word Tabernacle in Clarice had been sending its members to demonstrate at Merlotte’s from time to time.

  “Sookie,” Sam said, “sorry about your hair.”

  “What about it?” I said, lifting my hand to my head. The shock was setting in now. I had a hard time making my hand mind my directions.

  “The end of your ponytail got singed,” Sam said. And he sat down very suddenly. That seemed like a good idea.

  “So that’s what smells so bad,” I said, and collapsed on the floor beside him. We had our backs against the base of the bar, since the stools had gotten scattered in the melee of the rush out the back door. My hair was burned off. I felt tears run down my cheeks. I knew it was stupid, but I couldn’t help it.

  Sam took my hand and gripped it, and we were still sitting like that when the firefighters rushed in. Even though Merlotte’s is outside the city limits, we got the official town firefighters, not the volunteers.

  “I don’t think you need the hose,” Sam called. “I think it’s out.” He was anxious to prevent any more damage to the bar.

  Truman La Salle, the fire chief, said, “You two need first aid?” But his eyes were busy, and his words were almost absentminded.

  “I’m okay,” I said, after a glance at Sam. “But Jane’s out back with a cut on her head, from the glass. Sam?”

  “Maybe my right hand got a little burned,” he said, and his mouth compressed as if he was just now feeling the pain. He released my hand to rub his left over his right, and he definitely winced this time.

  “You need to take care of that,” I advised him. “Burns hurt like the devil.”

  “Yeah, I’m figuring that out,” he said, his eyes squeezing shut.

  Bud Dearborn came in as soon as Truman yelled, “Okay!” The sheriff must have been in bed, because he had a thrown-together look and was minus his hat, a reliable part of his wardrobe. Sheriff Dearborn was probably in his late fifties by now, and he showed every minute of it. He’d always looked like a Pekinese. Now he looked like a gray one. He spent a few minutes going around the bar, watching where his feet went, almost sniffing the disarray. Finally he was satisfied and came up to stand in front of me.

  “What you been up to now?” he asked.

  “Someone threw a firebomb in the window,” I said. “None of my doing.” I was too shocked to sound angry.

  “Sam, they aiming for you?” the sheriff asked. He wandered off without waiting for an answer.

  Sam got up slowly and turned to reach his left hand to me. I gripped
it and he pulled. Since Sam’s much stronger than he looks, I was on my feet in a jiffy.

  Time stood still for a few minutes. I had to think that I was maybe a bit in shock.

  As Sheriff Dearborn completed his slow and careful circuit of the bar, he arrived back at Sam and me.

  By then we had another sheriff to deal with.

  Eric Northman, my boyfriend and the vampire sheriff of Area Five, which included Bon Temps, came through the door so quickly that when Bud and Truman realized he was there, they jumped, and I thought Bud was going to draw his weapon. Eric gripped my shoulders and bent to peer into my face. “Are you hurt?” he demanded.

  It was like his concern gave me permission to drop my bravery. I felt a tear run down my cheek. Just one. “My apron caught fire, but I think my legs are okay,” I said, making a huge effort to sound calm. “I only lost a little hair. So I didn’t come out of it too bad. Bud, Truman, I can’t remember if you’ve met my boyfriend, Eric Northman from Shreveport.” There were several iffy facts in that sentence.

  “How’d you know there was trouble here, Mr. Northman?” Truman asked.

  “Sookie called me on her cell phone,” Eric said. That was a lie, but I didn’t exactly want to explain our blood bond to our fire chief and our sheriff, and Eric would never volunteer any information to humans.

  One of the most wonderful, and the most appalling, things about Eric loving me was that he didn’t give a shit about anyone else. He ignored the damaged bar, Sam’s burns, and the police and firefighters (who were keeping track of him from the corners of their eyes) still inspecting the building.

  Eric circled me to evaluate the hair situation. After a long moment, he said, “I’m going to look at your legs. Then we’ll find a doctor and a beautician.” His voice was absolutely cold and steady, but I knew he was volcanically angry. It rolled through the bond between us, just as my fear and shock had alerted him to my danger.

  “Honey, we have other things to think about,” I said, forcing myself to smile, forcing myself to sound calm. One corner of my brain pictured a pink ambulance screeching to a halt outside to disgorge emergency beauticians with cases of scissors, combs, and hair spray. “Dealing with a little hair damage can wait until tomorrow. It’s a lot more important to find out who did this and why.”

  Eric glared at Sam as if the attack were Sam’s responsibility. “Yes, his bar is far more important than your safety and well-being,” he said. Sam looked astonished at this rebuke, and the beginnings of anger flickered across his face.

  “If Sam hadn’t been so quick with the fire extinguisher, we’d all have been in bad shape,” I said, keeping up with the calm and the smiling. “In fact, both the bar and the people in it would have been in a lot more trouble.” I was running out of faux serenity, and of course Eric realized it.

  “I’m taking you home,” he said.

  “Not until I talk to her.” Bud showed considerable courage in asserting himself. Eric was scary enough when he was in a good mood, much less when his fangs ran out as they did now. Strong emotion does that to a vamp.

  “Honey,” I said, holding on to my own temper with an effort. I put my arm around Eric’s waist, and tried again. “Honey, Bud and Truman are in charge here, and they have their rules to follow. I’m okay.” Though I was trembling, which of course he could feel.

  “You were frightened,” Eric said. I felt his own rage that something had happened to me that he had not been able to prevent. I suppressed a sigh at having to babysit Eric’s emotions when I wanted to be free to have my own nervous breakdown. Vampires are nothing if not possessive when they’ve claimed someone as theirs, but they’re also usually anxious to blend into the human population, not cause any unnecessary waves. This was an overreaction.

  Eric was mad, sure, but normally he was also quite pragmatic. He knew I wasn’t seriously hurt. I looked up at him, puzzled. My big Viking hadn’t been himself in a week or two. Something other than the death of his maker was bothering him, but I hadn’t built up enough courage to ask him what was wrong. I’d cut myself some slack. I’d simply wanted to enjoy the peace we’d shared for a few weeks.

  Maybe that had been a mistake. Something big was pressing on him, and all this anger was a by-product.

  “How’d you get here so quick?” Bud asked Eric.

  “I flew,” Eric said casually, and Bud and Truman gave each other a wide-eyed look. Eric had had the ability for (give or take) a thousand years, so he disregarded their amazement. He was focused on me, his fangs still out.

  They couldn’t know that Eric had felt the swell of my terror the minute I’d seen the running figure. I hadn’t had to call him when the incident was over. “The sooner we get all this settled,” I said, baring my teeth right back at him in a terrible smile, “the sooner we can leave.” I was trying, not so subtly, to send Eric a message. He finally calmed down enough to get my subtext.

  “Of course, my darling,” he said. “You’re absolutely right.” But his hand took mine and squeezed too hard, and his eyes were so brilliant they looked like little blue lanterns.

  Bud and Truman looked mighty relieved. The tension ratcheted down a few notches. Vampires = drama.

  While Sam was getting his hand treated and Truman was taking pictures of what remained of the bottle, Bud asked me what I’d seen.

  “I caught a glimpse of someone out in the parking lot running toward the building, and then the bottle came through the window,” I said. “I don’t know who threw it. After the window broke and the fire spread from all the lit napkins, I didn’t notice anything but the people trying to leave and Sam trying to put it out.”

  Bud asked me the same thing several times in several different ways, but I couldn’t help him any more than I already had.

  “Why do you think someone would do this to Merlotte’s, to Sam?” Bud asked.

  “I don’t understand it,” I said. “You know, we had those demonstrators from the church in the parking lot a few weeks ago. They’ve only come back once since then. I can’t imagine any of them making a—was that a Molotov cocktail?”

  “How do you know about those, Sookie?”

  “Well, one, I read books. Two, Terry doesn’t talk about the war much, but every now and then he does talk about weapons.” Terry Bellefleur, Detective Andy Bellefleur’s cousin, was a decorated and damaged Vietnam veteran. He cleaned the bar when everyone was gone and came in occasionally to substitute for Sam. Sometimes he just hung at the bar watching people come in and out. Terry did not have much of a social life.

  As soon as Bud declared himself satisfied, Eric and I went to my car. He took the keys from my shaking hand. I got in the passenger side. He was right. I shouldn’t drive until I’d recovered from the shock.

  Eric had been busy on his cell phone while I was talking to Bud, and I wasn’t totally surprised to see a car parked in front of my house. It was Pam’s, and she had a passenger.

  Eric pulled around back where I always park, and I scrambled out of the car to hurry through the house to unlock the front door. Eric followed me at a leisurely pace. We hadn’t exchanged a word on the short drive. He was preoccupied and still dealing with his temper. I was shocked by the whole incident. Now I felt a little more like myself as I went out on the porch to call, “Come in!”

  Pam and her passenger got out. He was a young human, maybe twenty-one, and thin to the point of emaciation. His hair was dyed blue and cut in an extremely geometric way, rather as if he’d put a box on his head, knocked it sideways, then trimmed around the edges. What didn’t fit inside the lines had been shaved.

  It was eye-catching, I’ll say that.

  Pam smiled at the expression on my face, which I hastily transformed into something more welcoming. Pam has been a vampire since Victoria was on the English throne, and she’s been Eric’s right hand since he called her in from her wanderings in northern America. He’s her maker.

  “Hello,” I said to the young man as he entered the front door. He was extremely
nervous. His eyes darted to me, away from me, took in Eric, and then kind of strafed the room to absorb it. A flicker of contempt crossed his clean-shaven face as he took in the cluttered living room, which was never more than homey even when it was clean.

  Pam thumped him on the back of his head. “Speak when you’re spoken to, Immanuel!” she growled. She was standing slightly behind him, so he couldn’t see her when she winked at me.

  “Hello, ma’am,” he said to me, taking a step forward. His nose twitched.

  Pam said, “You smell, Sookie.”

  “It was the fire,” I explained.

  “You can tell me about it in a moment,” she said, her pale eyebrows shooting up. “Sookie, this man is Immanuel Earnest,” she said. “He cuts hair at Death by Fashion in Shreveport. He’s brother to my lover, Miriam.”

  That was a lot of information in three sentences. I scrambled to absorb it.

  Eric was eyeing Immanuel’s coiffure with fascinated disgust. “This is the one you brought to correct Sookie’s hair?” he said to Pam. His lips were pressed together in a very tight line. I could feel his skepticism pulsing along the line that bound us.

  “Miriam says he is the best,” Pam said, shrugging. “I haven’t had a haircut in a hundred fifty years. How would I know?”

  “Look at him!”

  I began to be a little worried. Even for the circumstances, Eric was in a foul mood. “I like his tattoos,” I said. “The colors are real pretty.”

  Aside from his extreme haircut, Immanuel was covered with very sophisticated tattoos. No “MOM” or “BETTY SUE” or naked ladies; elaborate and colorful designs extended from wrists to shoulders. He’d look dressed even when he was naked. The hairdresser had a flat leather case tucked under one of his skinny arms.

  “So, you’re going to cut off the bad parts?” I said brightly.

  “Of your hair,” he said carefully. (I wasn’t sure I’d needed that particular reassurance.) He glanced at me, then back down at the floor. “Do you have a high stool?”

  “Yes, in the kitchen,” I said. When I’d rebuilt my burned-out kitchen, custom had made me buy a high stool like the one my gran had perched on while she talked on the old telephone. The new phone was cordless, and I didn’t need to stay in the kitchen when I used it, but the counter simply hadn’t looked right without a stool beside it.