Dead and Gone

“I’m so sorry,” Amelia said.

“What can I do to help?” I asked.

“Keep the bar open while I’m gone,” he said, shaking off the shock. “Call Terry. Terry and Tray can work out a bartend ing schedule between them. Tray, you know I’ll pay you when I get back. Sookie, the waitress schedule is on the wall behind the bar. Find someone to cover Arlene’s shifts, please.”

“Sure, Sam,” I said. “You need any help packing? Can I gas up your truck or something?”

“Nope, I’m good. You’ve got the key to my trailer, so can you water my plants? I don’t think I’ll be gone but a couple of days, but you never know.”

“Of course, Sam. Don’t worry. Keep us posted.”

We all cleared out so Sam could get over to his trailer to pack. It was in the lot right behind the bar, so at least he could get everything ready in a hurry.

As I drove home, I tried to imagine how Sam’s stepdad had come to do such a thing. Had he been so horrified at the discovery of his wife’s second life that he’d flipped? Had she changed out of his sight and walked up to him and startled him? I simply couldn’t believe you could shoot someone you loved, someone you lived with, just because they had more to them than you’d thought. Maybe Don had seen her second self as a betrayal. Or maybe it was the fact that she’d concealed it. I could kind of understand his reaction, if I looked at it that way.

People all had secrets, and I was in a position to know most of them. Being a telepath is not any fun. You hear the tawdry, the sad, the disgusting, the petty . . . the things we all want to keep hidden from our fellow humans, so they’ll keep their image of us intact.

The secrets I know least about are my own.

The one I was thinking of tonight was the unusual genetic inheritance my brother and I share, which had come through my father. My father had never known that his mother, Adele, had had a whopper of a secret, one disclosed to me only the past October. My grandmother’s two children—my dad and his sister, Linda—were not the products of her long marriage with my grandfather.

Both had been conceived through her liaison with a half fairy, half human named Fintan. According to Fintan’s father, Niall, the fairy part of my dad’s genetic heritage had been responsible for my mother’s infatuation with him, an infatuation that had excluded her children from all but the fringes of her attention and affection. This genetic legacy hadn’t seemed to change anything for my dad’s sister, Linda; it certainly hadn’t helped her dodge the cancer bullet that had ended her life or kept her husband on-site, much less infatuated. However, Linda’s grandson Hunter was a telepath like me.

I still struggled with parts of this story. I believed the history Niall had related to be true, but I couldn’t understand my grandmother’s desire for children being strong enough to lead her to cheat on my grandfather. That simply didn’t jibe with her character, and I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t read it in her brain during all the years that we’d lived together. She must have thought about the circumstances of her children’s conceptions from time to time. There was just no way she could’ve packed those events away for good in some attic of her mind.

But my grandmother had been dead for over a year now, and I’d never be able to ask her about it. Her husband had passed away years before. Niall had told me that my biological grandfather Fintan, too, was dead and gone. It had crossed my mind to go through my grandmother’s things in search of some clue to her thinking, to her reaction to this extraordinary passage in her life, and then I would think . . .Why bother?

I had to deal with the consequences here and now.

The trace of fairy blood I carried made me more attractive to supes, at least to some vampires. Not all of them could detect the little trace of fairy in my genes, but they tended to at least be interested in me, though occasionally that had negative results. Or maybe this fairy-blood thing was bull, and vampires were interested in any fairly attractive young woman who would treat them with respect and tolerance.

As to the relationship between the telepathy and the fairy blood, who knew? It wasn’t like I had a lot of people to ask or any literature to check, or like I could ask a lab to test for it. Maybe little Hunter and I had both developed the condition through a coincidence—yeah, right. Maybe the trait was genetic but separate from the fairy genes.

Maybe I’d just gotten lucky.

Chapter 2

I went into Merlotte’s early in the morning—for me, that means eight thirty—to check the bar situation, and I remained to cover Arlene’s shift. I’d have to work a double. Thankfully, the lunch crowd was light. I didn’t know if that was a result of Sam’s announcement or just the normal course of things. At least I was able to make a few phone calls while Terry Bellefleur (who made ends meet with several part-time jobs) covered the bar. Terry was in a good mood, or what passed for a good mood for him; he was a Vietnam vet who’d had a very bad war. At heart he was a good guy, and we’d always gotten along. He was really fascinated by the Weres’ revelation; since the war, Terry had done better with animals than people.

“I bet that’s why I’ve always liked to work for Sam,” Terry said, and I smiled at him.

“I like to work for him, too,” I said.

While Terry kept the beers coming and kept an eye on Jane Bodehouse, one of our alcoholics, I started phoning to find a replacement barmaid. Amelia had told me she would help a little but only at night, because she now had a temporary day job covering the maternity leave of a clerk at the insurance agency.

First I phoned Charlsie Tooten. Charlsie, though sympathetic, told me she had the full care of her grandson while her daughter worked, so she was too tired to come in. I called another former Merlotte’s employee, but she’d started work at another bar. Holly had said she could double up once but didn’t want to do it more than that because of her little boy. Danielle, the other full-time server, had said the same. (In Danielle’s case she had twice the excuse because she had two children.)

So, finally, with a huge sigh to let Sam’s empty office know how put-upon I was, I called one of my least favorite people—Tanya Grissom, werefox and former saboteur. It took me a while to track her down, but by calling a couple of people out in Hotshot, I was finally able to reach her at Calvin’s house. Tanya had been dating him for a while. I liked the man myself, but when I thought of that cluster of little houses at the ancient crossroads, I shuddered.

“Tanya, how you doing? This is Sookie Stackhouse.”

“Really. Hmmm. Hello.”

I didn’t blame her for being cautious.

“One of Sam’s barmaids quit—you remember Arlene? She freaked about the were thing and walked out. I was wondering if you could take over a couple of her shifts, just for a while.”

“You Sam’s partner now?”

She wasn’t going to make this easy. “No, I’m just doing the looking for him. He got called away on a family emergency.”

“I was probably on the bottom of your list.”

My brief silence spoke for itself.

“I figure we can work together,” I said, because I had to say something.

“I got a day job now, but I can help a couple of evenings until you find someone permanent,” Tanya said. It was hard to read anything from her voice.

“Thanks.” That gave me two temporaries, Amelia and Tanya, and I could take any hours they couldn’t. This wouldn’t be hard on anyone. “Can you come in tomorrow for the evening shift? If you could be here about five, five thirty, one of us can show you the ropes again, and then you’ll be working until the bar closes.”

There was a short silence. “I’ll be there,” Tanya said. “I got some black pants. You got a T-shirt I can wear?”

“Yep. Medium?”

“That’ll do me.”

She hung up.

Well, I could hardly expect to find her happy to hear from me or delighted to oblige since we’d never been