Living Dead in Dallas

'They saved his life,' I told her.

Eric looked at Portia for a long moment, evaluating her, and then he began to search the cars of the dead revelers. He'd gotten their car keys, which I didn't want to picture.

Bill went over to Andy and said, 'Wake up,' in the quietest voice, so quiet it could hardly be heard a few feet away.

Andy blinked. He looked over at me, confused that I wasn't still in his grasp, I guess. He saw Bill, so close to him, and he flinched, expecting retaliation. He registered that Portia was at his side. Then he looked past Bill at the cabin.

'It's on fire,' he observed, slowly.

'Yes,' Bill said. 'They are all dead, except the two who've gone back into town. They knew nothing.'

'Then … these people did kill Lafayette?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Mike, and the Hardaways, and I guess maybe Jan knew about it.'

'But I haven't got any proof.'

'Oh, I think so,' Eric called. He was looking down into the trunk of Mike Spencer's Lincoln.

We all moved to the car to see. Bill's and Eric's superior vision made it easy for them to tell there was blood in the trunk, blood and some stained clothes and a wallet. Eric reached down and carefully flipped the wallet open.

'Can you read whose it is?' Andy asked.

'Lafayette Reynold,' Eric said.

'So if we just leave the cars like this, and we leave, the police will find what's in the trunk and it'll all be over. I'll be clear.'

'Oh, thank God!' Portia said, and gave a kind of sobbing gasp. Her plain face and thick chestnut hair caught a gleam of moonlight filtering through the trees. 'Oh, Andy, let's go home.'

'Portia,' Bill said, 'look at me.'

She glanced up at him, then away. 'I'm sorry I led you on like that,' she said rapidly. She was ashamed to apologize to a vampire, you could tell. 'I was just trying to get one of the people who came here to invite me, so I could find out for myself what was going on.'

'Sookie did that for you,' Bill said mildly.

Portia's gaze darted over to me. 'I hope it wasn't too awful, Sookie,' she said, surprising me.

'It was really horrible,' I said. Portia cringed. 'But it's over.'

'Thank you for helping Andy,' Portia said bravely.

'I wasn't helping Andy. I was helping Lafayette,' I snapped.

She took a deep breath. 'Of course,' she said, with some dignity. 'He was your coworker.'

'He was my friend,' I corrected.

Her back straightened. 'Your friend,' she said.

The fire was catching in the cabin now, and soon there would be police and firefighters. It was definitely time to leave.

I noticed neither Eric nor Bill offered to remove any memories from Andy.

'You better get out of here,' I said to him. 'You better go back to your house, with Portia, and tell your grandmama to swear you were there all night.'

Without a word, brother and sister piled into Portia's Audi and left. Eric folded himself into the Corvette for the drive back to Shreveport, and Bill and I went through the woods to Bill's car, concealed in the trees across the road. He carried me, as he enjoyed doing. I have to say, I enjoyed it, too, on occasion. This was definitely one of the occasions.

It wasn't far from dawn. One of the longest nights of my life was about to come to a close. I lay back against the seat of the car, tired beyond reckoning.

'Where did Callisto go?' I asked Bill.

'I have no idea. She moves from place to place. Not too many maenads survived the loss of the god, and the ones that did find woods, and roam them. They move before their presence is discovered. They're crafty like that. They love war and its madness. You'll never find them far from a battlefield. I think they'd all move to the Middle East if there were more woods.'

'Callisto was here because … ?'

'Just passing through. She stayed maybe two months, now she'll work her way … who knows? To the Everglades, or up the river to the Ozarks.'

'I can't understand Sam, ah, palling around with her.'

'That's what you call it? Is that what we do, pal around?'

I reached over and poked him in the arm, which was like pressing on wood. 'You,' I said.

'Maybe he just wanted to walk on the wild side,' Bill said. 'After all, it's hard for Sam to find someone who can accept his true nature.' Bill paused significantly.

'Well, that can be hard to do,' I said. I recalled Bill coming back in the mansion in Dallas, all rosy, and I gulped. 'But people in love are hard to pry apart.' I thought of how I'd felt when I'd heard he'd been seeing Portia, and I thought of how I'd reacted when I'd seen him at the football game. I stretched my hand over to rest on his thigh and I gave it a gentle squeeze.

With his eyes on the road, he smiled. His fangs ran out a little.

'Did you get everything settled with the shapeshifters in Dallas?' I asked after a moment.

'I settled it in an hour, or rather Stan did. He offered them his ranch for the nights of the full moon, for the next four months.'

'Oh, that was nice of him.'

'Well, it doesn't cost him anything exactly. And he doesn't hunt, so the deer need culling anyway, as he pointed out.'

'Oh,' I said in acknowledgment, and then after a second, 'ooooh.'

'They hunt.'

'Right. Gotcha.'

When we got back to my house, it didn't lack much till dawn. Eric would just make it to Shreveport, I figured. While Bill showered, I ate some peanut butter and jelly, since I hadn't had anything for more hours than I could add up. Then I went and brushed my teeth.

At least he didn't have to rush off. Bill had spent several nights the month before creating a place for himself at my house. He'd cut out the bottom of the closet in my old bedroom, the one I'd used for years before my grandmother died and I'd started using hers. He'd made the whole closet floor into a trapdoor, so he could open it, climb in, and pull it shut after him, and no one would be the wiser but me. If I was still up when he went to earth, I put an old suitcase in the closet and a couple of pairs of shoes to make it look more natural. Bill kept a box in the crawl space to sleep in, because it was mighty nasty down there. He didn't often stay there, but it had come in handy from time to time.

'Sookie,' Bill called from my bathroom. 'Come, I have time to scrub you.'

'But if you scrub me, I'll have a hard time getting to sleep.'

'Why?'

'Because I'll be frustrated.'

'Frustrated?'

'Because I'll be clean but … unloved.'

'It is close to dawn,' Bill admitted, his head poking around the shower curtain. 'But we'll have our time tomorrow night.'

'If Eric doesn't make us go somewhere else,' I muttered, when his head was safely under the cascade of water. As usual, he was using up most of my hot. I wriggled out of the damn shorts and resolved to throw them away tomorrow. I pulled the tee shirt over my head and stretched out on my bed to wait for Bill. At least my new bra was intact. I turned on one side, and closed my eyes against the light coming from the half-closed bathroom door.

'Darling?'

'You out of the shower?' I asked drowsily.

'Yes, twelve hours ago.'