here this afternoon?” When I had a second of not feeling stunned and miserable, I wondered why he’d shown himself, why he’d come. Was he tracking me somehow? Was there some kind of supernatural bug planted on me?
“Sookie,” Bud Dearborn said. I blinked.
“Yessir?” I stood up, and my muscles were trembling.
“You can go now, and we’ll talk to you again later,” he said.
“Thanks,” I told him, hardly aware of what I was saying. I climbed into my car, feeling absolutely numb. I told myself to drive home and put on my waitress outfit and get to work. Hustling drinks would be better than sitting at home recycling the events of the day, if I could manage to stand up that long.
Amelia was at work, so I had the house to myself as I pulled on my working pants and my long-sleeved Merlotte’s T-shirt. I felt cold to the bone and wished for the first time that Sam had thought about stocking a Merlotte’s sweatshirt. My reflection in the bathroom mirror was awful: I was white as a vampire, I had big circles under my eyes, and I guessed I looked exactly like someone who’d seen a lot of people bleeding that day.
The evening felt cold and still as I walked out to my car. Night would fall soon. Since Eric and I had bonded, I’d found myself thinking of him every day as the sky grew dark. Now that we’d slept together, my thoughts had turned into cravings. I tried to stuff him in the back of my mind on the drive to the bar, but he persisted in popping to the fore.
Maybe because the day had been such a nightmare, I discovered I would give my entire savings account to see Eric
“Geez Louise, Antoine, you scared me to death.”
“Sorry, Sookie. You planning on doing some planting?” He eyed the trowel I’d whipped out of my bag. “We ain’t too busy this evening. I took me a minute to have a smoke.”
“Everybody calm tonight?” I stuffed the trowel down into my purse without trying to explain. Maybe he would chalk it up to my general strangeness.
“Yeah, no one preaching to us; no one getting killed.” He smiled. “D’Eriq’s full of talk about some guy showing up earlier that D’Eriq thought was a fairy. D’Eriq’s on the simple side, but he can see stuff no one else can. But—fairies?”
“Not fairy like gay, but fairy like Tinker Bell?” I’d thought I didn’t have enough remaining energy to be alarmed. I’d thought wrong. I glanced around the parking lot with considerable alarm.
“Sookie? It’s true?” Antoine was staring at me.
I shrugged weakly. Busted.
“Shit,” Antoine said. “Well, shit. This ain’t the same world I was born into, is it?”
“No, Antoine. It isn’t. If D’Eriq says anything else, please tell me. It’s important.” Could have been my great- grandfather watching over me, or his son Dillon. Or it could have been Mr. Hostile who’d been lurking in the woods. What had set the fae world off? For years, I’d never seen one. Now you couldn’t throw a trowel without hitting a fairy.
Antoine eyed me doubtfully. “Sure, Sookie. You in any trouble I should know about?”
Hip-deep in alligators. “No, no. I’m just trying to avoid a problem,” I said, because I didn’t want Antoine to worry and I especially didn’t want him to share that worry with Sam. Sam was sure to be worried enough.
Of course, Sam had heard several versions of the events at Arlene’s trailer, and I had to give him a quick summary as I got ready to work. He was deeply upset about the intentions of Donny and Whit, and when I told him Donny was dead, he said, “Whit should have got killed, too.”
I wasn’t sure I was hearing him right. But when I looked into Sam’s face, I could see he was really angry, really vengeful. “Sam, I think enough people have died,” I said. “I haven’t exactly forgiven them, and maybe that’s not even something I can do, but I don’t think they were the ones who killed Crystal.”
Sam turned away with a snort and put a bottle of rum away with such force that I thought it might shatter.
Despite a measure of alarm, as it turned out I treasured that evening . . . because nothing happened.
No one suddenly announced that he was a gargoyle and wanted a place at the American table.
No one stomped out in a hissy. No one tried to kill me or warn me or lie to me; no one paid me any special attention at all. I was back to being part of the ambience at Merlotte’s, a situation that used to make me bored. I remembered the evenings before I’d met Bill Compton, when I’d known there were vampires but hadn’t actually met one or seen one in the flesh. I remembered how I’d longed to meet an actual vampire. I’d believed their press, which alleged that they were victims of a virus that left them allergic to various things (sunlight, garlic, food) and only able to survive by ingesting blood.
That part, at least, had been quite true.
As I worked, I thought about the fairies. They were different from the vampires and the Weres. Fairies could escape and go to their very own world, however that happened. It was a world I had no desire to visit or see. Fairies had never been human. At least vampires might remember what being human was like, and Weres were human most of the time, even if they had a different culture; being a Were was like having dual citizenship, I figured. This was an important difference between the fairies and other supernaturals, and it made the fairies more frightening. As the evening wore on and I plodded from table to table, making an effort to get the orders right and to serve with a smile, I had times of wondering whether it would have been better if I’d never met my great- grandfather at all. There was a lot of attraction in that idea.
I served Jane Bodehouse her fourth drink and signaled to Sam that we needed to cut her off. Jane would drink whether we served her or not. Her decision to quit drinking hadn’t lasted a week, but I’d never imagined it would. She’d made such resolutions before, with the same result.
At least if Jane drank here, we would make sure she got home okay.
After a second or two, I felt steadier. I wondered if I could make it through the evening. By dint of putting one foot in front of the other and blocking out the bad stuff (from past experience I was an expert at that), I made it through. I even remembered to ask Sam how his mother was doing.
“She’s getting better,” he said, closing out the cash register. “My stepdad’s filed for divorce, too. He says she doesn’t deserve any alimony because she didn’t disclose her true nature when they got married.”
Though I’d always be on Sam’s side, whatever it was, I had to admit (strictly to myself) that I could see his stepdad’s point.
“I’m sorry,” I said inadequately. “I know this is a tough time for your mom, for your whole family.”
“My brother’s fiancée isn’t too happy about it, either,” Sam said.
“Oh, no, Sam. She’s freaked out by the fact that your mom—?”
“Yeah, and of course she knows about me now, too. My brother and sister are getting used to it. So they’re okay—but Deidra doesn’t feel that way. And I don’t think her parents do, either.”
I patted Sam’s shoulder because I didn’t know what to say. He gave me a little smile and then a hug. He said, “You’ve been a rock, Sookie,” and then he stiffened. Sam’s nostrils flared. “You smell like—there’s a trace of vampire,” he said, and all the warmth had gone out of his voice. He released me and looked at me hard.
I’d really scrubbed myself and I’d used all my usual skin products afterward, but Sam’s fine nose had picked up that trace of scent Eric had left behind.
“Well,” I said, and then stopped dead. I tried to organize what I wanted to say, but the past forty hours had been so tiring. “Yes,” I said, “Eric was over last night.” I left it at that. My heart sank. I’d thought of trying to explain to Sam about my great-grandfather and the trouble we were in, but Sam had enough troubles of his own. Plus, the whole staff was feeling pretty miserable about Arlene and her arrest.
There was too much happening.
I had another moment of sickening dizziness, but it passed quickly, as it had before. Sam didn’t even notice. He was lost in gloomy reflection, at least as far as I could read his twisty shapeshifter mind.
“Walk me to my car,” I said impulsively. I needed to get home and get some sleep, and I had no idea if Eric
