Dead Reckoning ss(v-11

by Шарлин Харрис

  I didn’t exactly blame folks for worrying about that. We hadn’t needed the incident of the night before, not at all. It might hasten the decline of Sam’s business.

  “So they need to catch whoever did it,” I said, trying to sound positive. “Then people will know it’s safe to come back, and we’ll be busy again.”

  Claude came downstairs then, giving us Surly. “Noisy down here,” he muttered as he passed on his way to the hall bathroom. Even slouching around in rumpled jeans, Claude walked with a grace that drew attention to his beauty. Sam gave an unconscious sigh and shook his head slightly as his eyes followed Claude, gliding down the hall as though he had ball bearings in his hip joints.

  “Hey,” I said, after I heard the bathroom door shut. “Sam! He doesn’t have anything on you.”

  “Some guys,” Sam began, looking abashed, and then he stopped. “Aw, forget it.”

  I couldn’t, of course, not when I could tell directly from Sam’s brain that he was — not exactly envious, but rueful, about Claude’s physical attraction, though Sam knew as well as anyone that Claude was a pain in the butt.

  I’ve been reading men’s minds for years, and they’re more like women than you would think, really, unless you’re talking trucks. I started to tell Sam that he was plenty attractive, that women in the bar mooned over him more than he thought; but in the end, I kept my mouth shut. I had to let Sam have the privacy of his own thoughts. Because of his shifter nature, most of what was in Sam’s head remained in Sam’s head . . . more or less. I could get the odd thought, the general mood, but seldom anything more specific.

  “Here, I’ll make some coffee,” I said, and when I stepped into the kitchen, Sam close on my heels, I stopped dead. I’d forgotten all about the fight the night before.

  “What happened?” Sam said. “Did Claude do this?” He looked around with dismay.

  “No, Eric and Pam,” I said. “Oh, zombies.” Sam looked at me oddly, and I laughed and began to pick things up. I was abbreviating one of Pam’s curses, because I wasn’t that horrified.

  I couldn’t help reflecting that it would have been really, really nice if Claude and Dermot had straightened the room up before they turned in the night before. Just as lagniappe.

  Then again, it wasn’t their kitchen.

  I set a chair on its legs, and Sam dragged the table back into position. I got the broom and dustpan, and swept up the salt, pepper, and sugar that crunched under my feet, and made a mental note to go to Wal-Mart to replace my toaster if Eric didn’t send one today. My napkin holder was broken, too, and it had survived the fire of a year and a half ago. I double-sighed.

  “At least the table is okay,” I said.

  “And only one broken leg on one of the chairs,” Sam said. “Eric going to get this stuff fixed or replaced?”

  “I expect he will,” I said, and found that the coffeepot was intact, as were the mugs that had been hanging on a mug tree next to it; no, wait, one of them had broken. Well, five good ones. That was plenty.

  I made some coffee. While Sam was carrying the garbage bag outside, I ducked into my room to get ready. I’d showered the evening before, so I only needed to brush my hair and my teeth and pull on some jeans and a “Fight Like a Girl” T-shirt. I didn’t fool with makeup. Sam had seen me under all sorts of conditions.

  “How’s the hair?” he asked, when I emerged. Dermot was in the kitchen, too. Apparently, he’d made a quick run into town, since he and Sam were sharing some fresh doughnuts. Judging from the sound of running water, Claude was in the shower.

  I eyed the bakery box longingly, but I was all too aware that my jeans were feeling tight. I felt like a martyr as I poured a bowl of Special K and sprinkled Equal on the cereal and added some 2 percent milk. When Sam looked as though he wanted to make a comment, I narrowed my eyes at him. He grinned at me, chewing a mouthful of jelly-filled.

  “Dermot, we’re off to Shreveport in a few minutes. If you need my bathroom . . .” I offered, since Claude was terrible about hogging the one in the hall. I rinsed my bowl in the sink.

  “Thanks, Niece,” Dermot said, kissing my hand. “And your hair still looks glorious, though shorter. I think Eric was right to bring someone to cut it last night.”

  Sam shook his head as we were getting into his truck. “Sook, that guy treats you like a queen.”

  “Which guy do you mean? Eric or Dermot?”

  “Not Eric,” Sam said, trying his best to look neutral. “Dermot.”

  “Yeah, too bad he’s related! And also, he looks way too much like Jason.”

  “That’s no obstacle to a fairy,” Sam said seriously.

  “You’ve got to be joking.” I felt serious in a hurry. From Sam’s expression, he wasn’t joking one little bit. “Listen, Sam, Dermot has never even looked at me like I was a woman, and Claude is gay. We’re strictly family.” We’d all slept in the same bed, and there’d never been anything but the comfort of their presence in that, though of course I’d felt a little weird about it the first time. I’d been sure that was just my human hang-up. Due to Sam’s words, now I was second-guessing myself like crazy, wondering if I’d picked up on a vibe. After all, Claude did like to run around nude, and he’d told me he’d actually had sex with a female before. (I figured there’d been another man involved, frankly.)

  “And I’m saying again, weird things happen in fae families.” Sam glanced over at me.

  “I don’t mean to sound rude, but how would you know?” If Sam had spent a lot of time with fairies, he had kept it a close secret.

  “I read up on it after I met your great-grandfather.”

  “Read up on it? Where?” It would be great to learn more about my dab of fairy heritage. Dermot and Claude, having decided to live apart from their fairy kin (though I wasn’t sure how voluntary those decisions had been), remained closemouthed about fairy beliefs and customs. Aside from making derogatory comments from time to time about trolls and sprites, they didn’t talk about their race at all . . . at least, around me.

  “Ah . . . the shifters have a library. We have records of our history and what we’ve observed about other supes. Keeping track has helped us survive. There’s always been a place we could go on each continent to read and study about the other races. Now it’s all electronic. I’m sworn not to show it to anyone. If I could, I’d let you read it all.”

  “So it’s not okay for me to read it, but it’s okay for you to tell me about it?” I wasn’t trying to be snarky; I was genuinely curious.

  “Within limits.” Sam flushed.

  I didn’t want to press him. I could tell that Sam had already stretched those limits for me.

  We were each preoccupied with our own thoughts for the rest of the drive. While Eric was dead for the day, I felt alone in my skin, and usually I enjoyed that feeling. It wasn’t that being bonded to Eric made me feel I was possessed, or anything like that. It was more like during the dark hours, I could feel his life continuing parallel to mine — I knew he was working or arguing or content or absorbed in what he was doing. A little trickle of awareness, rather than a book of knowledge.

  “So, the bomber yesterday,” Sam said abruptly.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think maybe a twoey of some kind, right?”

  He nodded without looking at me.

  “Not a hate crime,” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

  “Not a human hate crime,” Sam said. “But I’m sure it’s some kind of hatred.”

  “Economic?”

  “I can’t think of any economic reason,” he said. “I’m insured, but I’m the only beneficiary if the bar burns down. Of course, I’d be out of business for a while, and I’m sure the other bars in the area would take up the slack, but I can’t see that as an incentive. Much of an incentive,” he corrected himself. “Merlotte’s has always been kind of a family bar, not a wild place. Not like Vic’s Redneck Roadhouse,” he added, a little bitterly.

  That was true. “Maybe someone doesn’t like you
personally, Sam,” I said, though it came out sounding harsher than I’d intended. “I mean,” I added quickly, “maybe someone wants to hurt you through damaging your business. Not you as a shapeshifter, but you as a person.”

  “I don’t recall anything that personal,” he said, genuinely bewildered.

  “Ah . . . Jannalynn have a vengeful ex, anything like that?”

  Sam was startled by the idea. “I really haven’t heard of anyone who resented me dating her,” he said. “And Jannalynn’s more than capable of speaking her mind. It’s not like I could coerce her into going out with me.”

  I had a hard time repressing a snort of laughter. “Just trying to think of all possibilities,” I said apologetically.

  “That’s okay,” he said. He shrugged. “Bottom line is, I can’t remember when I’ve made anyone really mad.”

  I couldn’t remember any such incident myself, and I’d known Sam for years.

  Pretty soon we were pulling up to the antiques shop, which was located in a former paint store in a down-sliding older business street in Shreveport.

  The big front windows were sparkling clean, and the pieces that had been positioned there were beautiful. The largest was what my grandmother had called a hunt sideboard. It was heavy and ornate and just about as tall as my chest. The other window featured a collection of jardinières, or vases, I wasn’t sure which to call them. The one in the center, positioned to show that it was the cream of the crop, was sea green and blue and had cherubs stuck on it. I thought it was hideous, but it definitely had style.

  Sam and I looked at the display for a moment in thoughtful silence before we went in. A bell — a real bell, not an electronic chime — jangled as we pushed open the door. A woman sitting on a stool behind a counter to the right looked up. She pushed her glasses up on her nose.

  “Nice to see you again, Mr. Merlotte,” she said, smiling with just the right intensity. I remember you, I’m glad you came back, but I’m not personally interested in you as a man. She was good.

  “Thanks, Ms. Hesterman,” Sam said. “This is my friend, Sookie Stackhouse.”

  “Welcome to Splendide,” Ms. Hesterman said. “Please call me Brenda. What can I do for you today?”

  “We’ve got two errands,” Sam said. “I’m here to look at the pieces you called me about. . . .”

  “And I’ve just cleaned out my attic and I have some things I wondered if you could take a look at,” I said. “I need to get rid of some of the odds and ends I brought down. I don’t want to put it all back.” I smiled, to show general goodwill.

  “So you’ve had a family place a long time?” she asked, encouraging me to give her a clue about what sort of possessions my family might have accumulated.

  “We’ve lived in the same house for about a hundred and seventy years,” I told her, and she brightened. “But it’s an old farm, not a mansion. Might be some things you’d be interested in, though.”

  “I’d love to come take a look,” she said, though clearly “love” was overstating it a little. “We’ll set up a time as soon as I help Sam pick out a gift for Jannalynn. She’s so modern, who would have thought she’d be interested in antiques? She’s such a little cutie!”

  I had a hard time keeping my mouth from dropping open. Did we know the same Jannalynn Hopper?

  Sam poked me in the ribs when Brenda turned her back to fetch a ring of small keys. He made a significant face, and I smoothed out my expression and batted my eyelashes at him. He looked away, but not before I caught a reluctant grin.

  “Sam, I’ve put together some things Jannalynn might like,” Brenda said, and led us over to a display case, keys jingling in her hand. The case was full of little things, pretty things. I couldn’t identify most of them. I leaned over the glass top to look down.

  “What are those?” I pointed at some lethal sharp-pointed objects with ornate heads. I wondered if you could kill a vampire with one

  “Hat pins and stickpins, for scarves and cravats.”

  There were also earrings and rings and brooches, plus enamel boxes, beaded boxes, painted boxes. All these little containers were carefully arranged. Were they snuffboxes? I read the price tag discreetly peeking out from under a tortoiseshell and silver oval box, and had to clamp my lips together to restrain my gasp.

  While I was still wondering about the items I was examining, Brenda and Sam were comparing the merits of art deco pearl earrings versus a Victorian pressed-glass hair receiver with an enameled brass lid. Whatever the hell that was.

  “What do you think, Sookie?” he asked, looking from one item to another.

  I examined the art deco earrings, pearl drops dangling from a rose gold setting. The hair receiver was pretty, too, though I couldn’t imagine what it was for or what Jannalynn would do with it. Did anyone need to receive hair anymore?

  “She’ll wear the earrings to show them off,” I said. “It’s harder to brag about getting a hair receiver.” Brenda gave me a veiled look, and I understood from her thoughts that this opinion branded me as a philistine. So be it.

  “The hair receiver’s older,” Sam said, wavering.

  “But less personal. Unless you’re Victorian.”

  While Sam compared the two smaller items to the beauties of a seventy-year-old New Bedford police badge, I wandered around the store, looking at the furniture. I discovered I was not an antiques appreciator. This was just one more flaw in my mundane character, I decided. Or maybe it was because I was surrounded by antiques all the day long? Nothing in my house was new except the kitchen, and that only because the old one had been destroyed by fire. I’d still be using Gran’s ancient refrigerator if the flames hadn’t eaten it up. (That refrigerator was one antique I didn’t miss, for sure.)

  I slid open a long, narrow drawer on what the tag described as a “map chest.” There was a sliver of paper left in it.

  “Look at that,” Brenda Hesterman’s voice said from behind me. “I’d thought I’d gotten that thoroughly clean. Let that be a lesson, Miss Stackhouse. Before we come to look at your things, be sure to go through them and remove all papers and other objects. You don’t want to sell us something you didn’t intend to part with.”

  I turned around to see that Sam was holding a wrapped package. While I’d been lost in exploration, he’d made his purchase (the earrings, to my relief; the hair receiver was back in its spot in the case).

  “She’ll love the earrings. They’re beautiful,” I said honestly, and for a second Sam’s thoughts got snarled, almost . . . purple. Strange, that I would think of colors. Lingering effect of the shaman drug I’d taken for the Weres? I hoped to hell not.

  “I’ll be sure to look over everything real carefully, Brenda,” I said to the antiques dealer.

  We made an appointment for two days later. She assured me that she could find my isolated house with her GPS, and I warned her about the long driveway through the woods, which had led several visitors to believe they’d become lost. “I don’t know if I’ll come, or my partner, Donald,” Brenda said. “Maybe both of us.”

  “I’ll be glad to see you,” I said. “If you run into any trouble or need to change the date, please let me know.”

  “Do you really think she’ll like them?” Sam asked when we were in the truck and buckled up. We’d reverted to the topic of Jannalynn.

  “Sure,” I said, surprised. “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “I can’t shake the feeling I’m on the wrong track with Jannalynn,” Sam said. “You want to stop and get something to eat at the Ruby Tuesday’s on Youree?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Sam, why do you think that?”

  “She likes me,” he said. “I mean, I can tell. But she’s always thinking about the pack.”

  “You think maybe she’s more focused on Alcide than on you?” That was what I was getting from Sam’s head. Maybe I was being too blunt, though. Sam flushed.

  “Yeah, maybe,” he admitted.

  “She’s a great enforcer, and she was real excite
d to get the job,” I said. I wondered if that had come out neutral enough.

  “She was,” he said.

  “You seem to like strong women.”

  He smiled. “I do like strong women, and I’m not afraid of the different ones. Run-of-the-mill just doesn’t cut it with me.”

  I smiled back at him. “I can tell. I don’t know what to say about Jannalynn, Sam. She’d be an idiot not to appreciate you. Single, self-supporting, good looking? And you don’t even pick your teeth at the table! What’s not to love?” I took a deep breath, because I was about to change the subject and I didn’t want to offend my boss. “Hey, Sam, about that website you visit? You think you could find out about why I’m feeling more fairy after hanging out with my fairy relatives? I mean, I couldn’t actually be changing into more of a fairy, right?”

  “I’ll see what I can find,” Sam said, after a fraught moment. “But let’s try asking your bunk buddies. They ought to cough up any information that would help you. Or I could beat it out of them.”

  He was serious.

  “They’ll tell me.” I sounded more sure of that than I felt.

  “Where are they now?” he asked.

  “By this time, they’ve gone to the club,” I said, after a glance at my watch. “They get all their business done before the club opens.”

  “Then that’s where we’ll go,” Sam said. “Kennedy was opening for me today, and you’re not on until tonight, right?”

  “Right,” I said, discarding my plans for the afternoon, which hadn’t been very urgent to start with. If we ate lunch at Ruby Tuesday’s, we couldn’t reach Monroe until one thirty, but I could make it home in time to change for work. After I’d ordered, I excused myself. While I was in the ladies’ room, my cell phone rang. I don’t answer my phone while I’m in a bathroom. I wouldn’t like to be talking to someone and hear a toilet flush, right? Since the restaurant was noisy, I stepped outside to return the call after a wave at Sam. The number seemed faintly familiar.