'I tell him I have a date. He hasn't looked at the calendar to figure out that every time I ask him to work, it's a full moon.'
'That's something. Did the police come back any more about Lafayette?'
'No.' Sam shook his head. 'And I hired a friend of Lafayette's, Khan.'
'As in Sher Khan?'
'As in Chaka Khan.'
'Okay, but can he cook?'
'He's been fired from the Shrimp Boat.'
'What for?'
'Artistic temperament, I gather.' Sam's voice was dry.
'Won't need much of that around here,' I observed, my hand on the doorknob. I was glad Sam and I had had a conversation, just to ease down from our tense and unprecedented situation. We had never embraced each other at work. In fact, we'd only kissed once, when Sam brought me home after our single date months before. Sam was my boss, and starting something with your boss is always a bad idea. Starting something with your boss when your boyfriend is a vampire is another bad idea, possibly a fatal idea. Sam needed to find a woman. Quickly.
When I'm nervous, I smile. I was beaming when I said, 'Back to work,' and stepped through the door, shutting it behind me. I had a muddle of feelings about everything that had happened in Sam's office, but I pushed it all away, and prepared to hustle some drinks.
There was nothing unusual about the crowd that night in Merlotte's. My brother's friend Hoyt Fortenberry was drinking with some of his cronies. Kevin Prior, whom I was more accustomed to seeing in uniform, was sitting with Hoyt, but Kevin was not having a happy evening. He looked as though he'd rather be in his patrol car with his partner, Kenya. My brother, Jason, came in with his more and more frequent arm decoration, Liz Barrett. Liz always acted glad to see me, but she never tried to ingratiate herself, which earned her high points in my book. My grandmother would have been glad to know Jason was dating Liz so often. Jason had played the scene for years, until the scene was pretty darned tired of Jason. After all, there is a finite pool of women in Bon Temps and its surrounding area, and Jason had fished that pool for years. He needed to restock.
Besides, Liz seemed willing to ignore Jason's little brushes with the law.
'Baby sis!' he said in greeting. 'Bring me and Liz a Seven-and-Seven apiece, would you?'
'Glad to,' I said, smiling. Carried away on a wave of optimism, I listened in to Liz for a moment; she was hoping that very soon Jason would pop the question. The sooner the better, she thought, because she was pretty sure she was pregnant.
Good thing I've had years of concealing what I was thinking. I brought them each a drink, carefully shielding myself from any other stray thoughts I might catch, and tried to think what I should do. That's one of the worst things about being telepathic; things people are thinking, not talking about, are things other people (like me) really don't want to know. Or shouldn't want to know. I've heard enough secrets to choke a camel, and believe me, not a one of them was to my advantage in any way.
If Liz was pregnant, the last thing she needed was a drink, no matter who the baby's daddy was.
I watched her carefully, and she took a tiny sip from her glass. She wrapped her hand around it to partially hide it from public view. She and Jason chatted for a minute, then Hoyt called out to him, and Jason swung around on the bar stool to face his high school buddy. Liz stared down at her drink, as if she'd really like to gulp it in one swallow. I handed her a similar glass of plain 7UP and whisked the mixed drink away.
Liz's big round brown eyes gazed up at me in astonishment. 'Not for you,' I said very quietly. Liz's olive complexion turned as white as it could. 'You have good sense,' I said. I was struggling to explain why I'd intervened, when it was against my personal policy to act on what I learned in such a surreptitious way. 'You have good sense, you can do this right.'
Jason turned back around then, and I got a call for another pitcher from one of my tables. As I moved out from behind the bar to answer the summons, I noticed Portia Bellefleur in the doorway. Portia peered around the dark bar as though she were searching for someone. To my astonishment, that someone turned out to be me.
'Sookie, do you have a minute?' she asked.
I could count the personal conversations I'd had with Portia on one hand, almost on one finger, and I couldn't imagine what was on her mind.
'Sit over there,' I said, nodding at an empty table in my area. 'I'll be with you in a minute.'
'Oh, all right. And I'd better order a glass of wine, I guess. Merlot.'
'I'll have it right there.' I poured her glass carefully, and put it on a tray. After checking visually to make sure all my customers looked content, I carried the tray over to Portia's table and sat opposite her. I perched on the edge of the chair, so anyone who ran out of a drink could see I was fixing to hop up in just a second.
'What can I do for you?' I reached up to check that my ponytail was secure and smiled at Portia.
She seemed intent on her wineglass. She turned it with her ringers, took a sip, positioned it on the exact center of the coaster. 'I have a favor to ask you,' she said.
No shit, Sherlock. Since I'd never had a casual conversation with Portia longer than two sentences, it was obvious she needed something from me.
'Let me guess. You were sent here by your brother to ask me to listen in on people's thoughts when they're in the bar, so I can find out about this orgy thing Lafayette went to.' Like I hadn't seen that coming.
Portia looked embarrassed, but determined. 'He would never have asked you if he wasn't in serious trouble, Sookie.'
'He would never have asked me because he doesn't like me. Though I've never been anything but nice to him his whole life! But now, it's okay to ask me for help, because he really needs me.'
Portia's fair complexion was turning a deep unbecoming red. I knew it wasn't very pleasant of me to take out her brother's problems on her, but she had, after all, agreed to be the messenger. You know what happens to messengers. That made me think of my own messenger role the night before, and I wondered if I should be feeling lucky today.
'I wasn't for this,' she muttered. It hurt her pride, to ask a favor of a barmaid; a Stackhouse, to boot.
Nobody liked me having a 'gift.' No one wanted me to use it on her. But everyone wanted me to find out something to her advantage, no matter how I felt about sifting through the thoughts (mostly unpleasant and irrelevant) of bar patrons to glean pertinent information.
'You'd probably forgotten that just recently Andy arrested my brother for murder?' Of course he'd had to let Jason go, but still.
If Portia had turned any redder she'd have lit a fire. 'Just forget it, then,' she said, scraping together all her dignity. 'We don't need help from a freak like you, anyway.'
I had touched her at the quick, because Portia had always been courteous, if not warm.
'Listen to me, Portia Bellefleur. I'll listen a little. Not for you or your brother, but because I liked Lafayette. He was a friend of mine, and he was always sweeter to me than you or Andy.'
'I don't like you.'
'I don't care.'
'Darling, is there a problem?' asked a cool voice from behind me.
Bill. I reached with my mind, and felt the relaxing empty space right behind me. Other minds just buzzed like bees in a jar, but Bill's was like a globe filled with air. It was wonderful. Portia stood up so abruptly that her chair almost went over backwards. She was frightened of even being close to Bill, like he was a venomous snake or something.
'Portia was just asking me for a favor,' I said slowly, aware for the first time that our little trio was attracting a certain amount of attention from the crowd.
'In return for the many kind things the Bellefleurs have done for you?' Bill asked. Portia snapped. She whirled around to stalk out of the bar. Bill watched her leave with the oddest expression of satisfaction.
'Now I have to find out what that was about,' I said, and leaned back against him. His arms circled me and drew me back closer to him. It was like being cuddled by a tree.
'The vampires in Dallas have made their arrangements,' Bill said. 'Can you leave tomorrow evening?'
'What about you?'
