Dead Reckoning

by Harris, Charlaine

  “Yes,” said Jack, surprised. “That’s him. Big guy.”

  I nodded. Mr. Cataliades and I were friendly. He was mostly a demon, but the Leedses didn’t seem to know that. In fact, they didn’t seem to know much of anything about the other world, the one that lay beneath the human one. “So Mr. Cataliades sent you two down here to warn me? He’s the executor?”

  “Yeah. He was going to be away from his desk for some time, and he wanted to be sure you knew the girl was on the loose. He seemed to feel some obligation to you.”

  I pondered that. I only knew of one time I’d done the lawyer a good turn. I had helped him get out of the collapsing hotel in Rhodes. Nice to know that at least one person was serious when he said, “I owe you.” It seemed pretty ironic that the Pelt estate was paying the Leedses to come warn me against the last living Pelt; not ironic as in “ha!” but ironic as in bitter.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, how come he contacted you two? I mean, I’m sure there are lots of private eyes in New Orleans, for example. You all are still based in the Little Rock area, right?”

  Lily shrugged. “He called us; he asked if we were free; he sent the check. His instructions were very specific. Both of us, to the bar, today. In fact . . .” She glanced down at her watch. “To the minute.”

  They looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to explain this oddity on the part of the lawyer.

  I was thinking furiously. If Mr. Cataliades had sent two tough people to the bar, instructing them to arrive at a given time, it must be because he knew they were going to be needed. For some reason, their presence was necessary and desirable. When would you need capable hardbodies?

  When trouble was on its way.

  Before I knew I was going to do it, I stood and turned toward the entrance. Naturally, the Leedses looked where I was looking, so we were all watching the door when trouble opened it.

  Four tough guys came in. My grandmother would have said they were loaded for bear. They might as well have stenciled “Badass and Proud of It” on their foreheads. They were definitely high on something, full of themselves, brimming with aggression. And armed.

  After a second’s peek in their heads, I knew they’d taken vampire blood. That was the most unpredictable drug on the market—also the most expensive, because harvesting it was so dangerous. People who drank vampire blood were—for a length of time impossible to predict—incredibly strong and incredibly reckless . . . and sometimes batshit crazy.

  Though her back was to the newcomers, Jannalynn seemed to smell them. She swung around on her stool and focused, just like someone had drawn a bow and aimed the arrow. I could feel the animal wafting off her. Something wild and savage filled the air, and I realized the smell was coming from Sam, too. Jack and Lily Leeds were on their feet. Jack had his hand under his jacket, and I knew he had a gun. Lily’s hands were poised in a strange way, as if she were about to gesture and had frozen in midmove.

  “Hidee-ho, jerkoffs!” said the tallest one, addressing the bar in general. He had a heavy beard and thick dark hair, but underneath it I saw how young he was. I thought he couldn’t be more than nineteen. “We come to have some fun with you lizards.”

  “No lizards here,” Sam said, his voice even and calm. “You fellas are welcome to have a drink, but after that I think you better leave. This is a quiet place, a local place, and we don’t need trouble.”

  “Trouble’s already here!” boasted the shortest asshole. His face was clean-shaven, and his hair was only blond stubble, showing scars on his scalp. He was built broad and chunky. The third kid was thin and dark, maybe Hispanic. His black hair was slicked back, and his lips had a sensuous pout to them that he tried to counteract by sneering. The fourth guy had gotten off on the vampire blood even more seriously than the rest, and he couldn’t speak because he was lost in his own world. His eyes jerked from side to side as if he were tracking things the rest of us couldn’t see. He was big, too. I thought the first attack would come from him, and though I was the least of the combatants, I began to ease to my right, planning to come at him from the side.

  “We can have peace here,” Sam said. He was still trying, though I knew he understood that there was no way we were going to escape violence. He was buying time for everyone in Merlotte’s to understand what was up.

  That was a good idea. By the time a few more seconds had passed, even the slowest of the few patrons had moved as far from the action as they could get, except for Danny Prideaux, who’d been playing darts with Andy Bellefleur, and Andy himself. Danny was actually holding a dart. Andy was off duty, but he was armed. I watched Jack Leeds’s eyes and saw he’d realized, as I had, where the worst trouble would come from. The dazed hoodlum was actually rocking back and forth on his heels.

  Since Jack Leeds had a gun and I did not, I carefully inched backward so I wouldn’t interfere with his shot. Lily’s cold eyes followed my small movement, and she nodded almost undetectably. I’d done a sensible thing.

  “We don’t want peace,” snarled Bearded Leader. “We want the blonde.” And he pointed in my direction with his left hand, while his right hand pulled a knife. It looked like it was two feet long, though maybe my fear was acting like a magnifying glass.

  “We gonna take care of her,” Blond Bristles said.

  “And then maybe the resta you,” Pouty Lips added.

  Crazy Guy just smiled.

  “I don’t think so,” Jack Leeds said. Jack pulled his gun in one smooth movement. Possibly he would have done it anyway out of sheer self-defense, but it didn’t hurt that his wife, standing right by me, was a blonde. He couldn’t be completely sure they meant me, the other white meat.

  “I don’t think so, either,” said Andy Bellefleur. His arm was rock steady as he aimed his own Sig Sauer at the man with the knife. “You drop that pigsticker, and we’ll work something out.”

  They might be high as kites, but at least three of the thugs retained enough sense to realize that facing guns was a bad idea. There was a lot of uncertain twitching and eye shifting as they flickered gazes at each other. The moment hung in the balance.

  Unfortunately, Crazy Guy went over the edge and charged for Sam, so now we were all committed to stupidity. With Were swiftness, Pouty Lips whipped out his own gun, aimed, and fired. I’m not sure who he intended to hit, but he winged Jack Leeds, whose return shot went wild as he fell.

  Watching Lily Leeds was a lesson in motion. She took two quick steps, pivoted on her left foot, and her right foot floated through the air to kick Pouty Lips in the head with the force of a mule. Almost before he hit the floor she was on him, pitching his gun toward the bar and breaking his arm in a flow of motion that was nearly hypnotic. As he screamed, Bearded Asshole and Blond Bristles gaped at her.

  That second of inattention was all it took. Jannalynn took a flying leap off her barstool, describing an amazing arc through the air. She landed on Crazy Guy as Sam tackled him, and though CG howled and snapped and tried to throw her off, Jannalynn reared back to punch him in the jaw. I distinctly heard the bone break, and then Jannalynn leaped to her feet and stomped on his femur. Another snap. Sam, still holding him down, yelled, “Stop!”

  In those seconds, Andy Bellefleur rushed Bearded Asshole, who’d whirled to present his back to Andy when Lily attacked Pouty Lips. When the tall guy felt the gun in his back, he froze.

  “Drop the knife,” Andy said. He was in deadly earnest.

  Blond Bristles cocked his arm back to strike a blow. Danny Prideaux threw his dart. It got Blond Bristles square in the meat of his arm, and he shrieked like a teakettle. Sam abandoned Crazy Guy to punch Blond Bristles right in his brisket. The guy went down like a sawn tree.

  Bearded Asshole looked at his buddies, down and disabled, and then he dropped the knife. Sensible.

  Finally.

  In less than two minutes, it was all over.

  I’d whipped my clean white apron off, and I bound Jack Leeds’s wound while Lily held his arm out for me, her face whit
e as a vampire’s. She wanted to kill Pouty Lips in the worst possible way, because she loved her husband with an overwhelming passion. The strength of her feelings almost swamped me. Lily might be icy on the outside, but inside she was Vesuvius.

  As soon as Jack’s bleeding slowed, she turned to Pouty Lips, her face still absolutely calm. “You even move, I’ll break your fucking neck,” she said, her voice uninflected. The young thug probably didn’t even hear her through his own groaning and moaning, but her tone came through and he tried to inch away from her.

  Andy had already talked to the 911 dispatcher. In a moment I heard the siren, a disturbingly familiar sound. We might as well retain an ambulance to stay in the parking lot at this rate.

  Crazy Guy was screaming weakly at the pain in his leg and jaw. Sam had saved his life: Jannalynn was actually panting, she was so close to changing after the excitement and stimulation of the violence. The bones had slid around underneath the skin of her face, which was looking long and lumpy.

  It wouldn’t be good if she became a wolf before law enforcement got here. I didn’t try to spell out why to myself. I said, “Hey, Jannalynn.” Her eyes met mine. Hers were changing shape and color. Her little figure began to twist and turn restlessly.

  “You have to stop,” I said. All around us there was yelling, and excitement, and the thick atmosphere of fear—not a good atmosphere for a young werewolf. “You can’t change now.” I kept my eyes fixed on hers. I didn’t speak again but made sure she kept looking at me. “Breathe with me,” I said, and she made the effort. Gradually her own breathing slowed, and even more gradually her face resumed its normal contours. Her body ceased its restless movement, and her eyes returned to their regular brown.

  “All right,” she said.

  Sam put his hands on her thin shoulders. He gave her a tight hug. “Thanks, honey,” he said. “Thanks. You’re the greatest.” I felt the faintest thrum of exasperation.

  “Left your ass in the dust,” she said, and laughed raggedly. “Was that a good jump, or what? Wait’ll I tell Alcide.”

  “You’re the quickest,” Sam said, his voice gentle. “You’re the best pack enforcer I ever met.” You would have thought he’d told her she was as sexy as Heidi Klum, she was so proud.

  And then the law enforcement people and the emergency people were there, and we had to go through the whole procedure again.

  Lily and Jack Leeds took off to the hospital. She told the ambulance personnel she could take him herself in their car, and I understood from her thoughts that their insurance wouldn’t cover the whole cost of the ambulance ride. Considering the emergency room was only a few blocks away and Jack was walking and talking, I could see her reasoning. They never did get their food, and I didn’t get to thank them for the warning and for their promptness in obeying Mr. Cataliades’s orders. I wondered more than ever how he’d managed to shunt them into the bar in such a timely manner.

  Andy was pardonably proud of his part in the incident, and he got some pats on the back from his fellow officers. They all regarded Jannalynn with barely concealed mistrust and respect. All the bar patrons who’d tried to stay out of the way were falling all over themselves to describe Lily Leeds’s great kick and Jannalynn’s show-stopping leap onto Crazy Guy.

  Somehow, the picture the police got was that these four strangers had announced their intention to take Lily hostage and then to rob Merlotte’s. I’m not sure how that impression gathered credibility, but I was glad it did. If the bar patrons assumed that the blonde in question had been Lily Leeds, that was fine with me. She was certainly an outstanding-looking woman, and the strangers might have been following her, or they might have decided to rob the bar and take Lily as a bonus.

  Due to this welcome misconception, I escaped from any more questioning than the other patrons got.

  In the grand scheme of things, I thought it was about time I got a break.

  Chapter 6

  Sunday morning I woke up worried.

  I’d been too sleepy the night before, when I finally got home, to think much about what had happened at the bar. But evidently my subconscious had been chewing it over while I slept. My eyes flew open, and though the room was quiet and sunny, I gasped.

  I had that panicky feeling; it hadn’t taken me over yet, but it was just around the corner, physically and mentally. You know the feeling? When you think any second your heart’s going to start pounding, that your breathing is picking up, that your palms will start sweating.

  Sandra Pelt was after me, and I didn’t know where she was or what she was plotting.

  Victor had it in for Eric and, by extension, me.

  I was sure I was the blonde the four thugs had been after, and I didn’t know who’d sent them or what they would have done when they got me, though I had a pretty bad feeling about that.

  Eric and Pam were on the outs, and I was sure that somehow I was involved in their dispute.

  And I had a list of questions. At the top of the list: How had Mr. Cataliades known that I would need help at that particular time in that particular place? And how had he known to send the private investigators from Little Rock? Of course, if he had been the Pelts’ lawyer, he might have known that they’d sent Lily and Jack Leeds to investigate their daughter Debbie’s disappearance. He wouldn’t have had to brief the Leeds as much, and he would have known they could handle themselves in a fight.

  Would the four thugs tell the police why they’d come to the bar, and who’d put them up to it? And where they’d gotten the vampire blood—that would be helpful knowledge, also.

  What would the things I’d gotten from the secret drawer tell me about my past?

  “This is a fine kettle of fish,” I said out loud. I pulled the sheet over my head and searched the house mentally. No one was here but me. Maybe Dermot and Claude were all talked out, after their big reveal. They seemed to have stayed in Monroe. Sighing, I sat up in bed, letting the sheet fall away. There was no hiding from my problems. The best I could do was to try to prioritize my crises and figure out what information I could gather about each one.

  The most important problem was the one closest to my heart. And its solution was right to hand.

  I gently extracted the pattern envelope and the worn velvet bag from the drawer of the bedside table. In addition to the practical contents (a flashlight, a candle, and matches), the drawer held the strange mementoes of my strange life. But I wasn’t interested in anything today but the two new precious items. I carried them into the kitchen and laid them carefully back on the counter well away from the sink as I made my coffee.

  While the coffeepot dripped, I almost pushed back the flap of the pattern envelope. But I pulled back my hand. I was scared. Instead I tracked down my address book. I’d charged my cell phone overnight, so I stowed the little cord away neatly—any delay would do—and at last, taking a deep breath, I punched in Mr. Cataliades’s number. It rang three times.

  “This is Desmond Cataliades,” his rich voice said. “I’m traveling and unavailable at the moment, but if you’d like to leave a message, I may call you back. Or not.”

  Well, hell. I made a face at the telephone, but at the sound of the tone I dutifully recorded a guarded message that I hoped would convey my urgent need to talk to the lawyer. I crossed Mr. Cataliades—Desmond!—off my mental list and moved on to my second method of approach to the problem of Sandra Pelt.

  Sandra was going to keep after me until either I was dead or she was. I had a real, true, personal enemy. It was hard to believe that every member of a family had turned out so rotten (especially since both Debbie and Sandra were adopted), but all the Pelts were selfish, strong willed, and hateful. The girls were fruits of the poisonous tree, I guess. I needed to know where Sandra was, and I knew someone who might be able to help me.

  “Hello?” Amelia said briskly.

  “How’s life in the Big Easy?” I asked.

  “Sookie! Gosh, it’s good to hear your voice! Things are going great for me, actua
lly.”

  “Do tell?”

  “Bob showed up on my doorstep last week,” she said.

  After Amelia’s mentor, Octavia, had turned Bob back into his skinny Mormonish self, Bob had been so angry with Amelia that he’d taken off like—well, like a scalded cat. As soon as he’d reoriented to being human, Bob had left Bon Temps to track down his family, who’d been in New Orleans during Katrina. Evidently Bob had calmed down about the whole transformation-into-a-cat issue.

  “Did he find his folks?”

  “Well, he did! His aunt and his uncle, the ones who raised him. They had gotten an apartment in Natchez just big enough for the two of them, and he could tell they didn’t have any way to add him to the household, so he traveled around a bit checking on other coven members, and then he wandered back down here. He’s got a job cutting hair in a shop three blocks away from where I work! He came in the magic shop, asked after me.” Members of Amelia’s coven ran the Genuine Magic Shop in the French Quarter. “I was surprised to see him. But real happy.” She was practically purring on the last sentence, and I figured Bob had entered the room. “He says hey, Sookie.”

  “Hey back at him. Listen, Amelia, I hate to interfere in love’s young dream, but I got a favor to ask.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I need to find out where someone is.”

  “Telephone book?”

  “Ha-ha. Not that simple. Sandra Pelt is out of jail and gunning for me, literally. The bar’s been firebombed, and yesterday four druggedup goons came in to get me, and I think Sandra might be behind both things. I mean, how many enemies can I have?”

  I heard Amelia take a long breath. “Don’t answer that,” I said hastily. “So, she’s failed twice, and I’m afraid that soon she’ll pick up the pace and send someone here to the house. I’ll be alone, and it won’t end good for me.”

  “Why didn’t she start there?”

  “I finally figured out I should have asked myself that a few days ago. Do you think your wards are still active?”