Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (173 page)

It could be that Callie was so sharp-edged because she was old enough to remember the bad old days when blacks and whites had different schools, different waiting rooms, different water fountains. I didn’t remember any of those things, and I was not willing to take into account Callie’s bundle of baggage every time I talked to her.

“They paid extra,” I lied, not wanting to call an explanation through the service pass-through that anyone close enough could overhear. I’d put a dollar of my tip into the till, instead, to make up the money. Despite our differences, I wished Andy and his schoolteacher well. Anyone who was going to be Caroline Bellefleur’s granddaughter-in-law deserved a romantic moment.

When Callie called up the basket, I trotted over to get it. Slipping the little box under the fries was harder than I imagined, and it required a bit of surreptitious rearrangement. I wondered if Andy had realized that the velvet would get greasy and salty. Oh well, this wasn’t my romantic gesture, but his.

I carried the tray to the table with happy anticipation. In fact, Andy had to warn me (with a severe glance) to pull my face into more neutral lines as I served their food. Andy already had a beer in front of him, and she had a glass of white wine. Halleigh wasn’t a big drinker, as befitted an elementary school teacher. I turned away as soon as the food was on the table, even forgetting to ask them if they needed anything else, like a good waitress should.

It was beyond me to try to stay detached after that. Though I tried not to be obvious, I watched the couple as closely as I could. Andy was on pins and needles, and I could hear his brain, which was simply agitated. He really wasn’t sure whether he’d be accepted, and his mind was running through the list of things she might object to: the fact that Andy was almost ten years older, his hazardous profession . . .

I knew the moment when she spied the box. Maybe it wasn’t nice of me to eavesdrop mentally on a very special moment, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t even think of that at the time. Though ordinarily I keep myself well guarded, I’m used to dropping into people’s heads if I spy something interesting. I’m also used to believing that my ability is a minus, not a plus, so I guess I feel entitled to whatever fun I can have with it.

I had my back to them, clearing off a table, which I should have left for the busboy to do. So I was close enough to hear.

She was frozen for a long moment. “There’s a box in my food,” she said, finally, keeping her voice very low because she thought she’d upset Sam if she made a fuss.

“I know,” he said. “It’s from me.”

She knew then; everything in her brain began to accelerate, and the thoughts practically tripped over themselves in their eagerness.

“Oh, Andy,” she whispered. She must have opened the box. It was all I could do not to turn around and look right along with her.

“Do you like it?”

“Yes, it’s beautiful.”

“Will you wear it?”

There was a silence. Her head was so confused. Half of it was going “Yippee!” and half of it was troubled.

“Yes, with one stipulation,” she said slowly.

I could feel his shock. Whatever Andy had expected, it wasn’t this.

“And that would be?” he asked, suddenly sounding much more like a cop than a lover.

“We have to live in our own place.”

“What?” Again, she’d surprised Andy.

“I’ve always gotten the idea that you assumed you’d stay in the family home, with your grandmother and your sister, even after you got married. It’s a wonderful old house, and your grandmother and Portia are great women.”

That was tactful. Good for Halleigh.

“But I’d like to have a home of my own,” she said gently, earning my admiration.

And then I really had to haul ass; I had tables to tend to. But as I refilled beer mugs, cleared empty plates, and took more money to Sam at the cash register, I was filled with awe at Halleigh’s stand, since the Bellefleur mansion was Bon Temps’s premier residence. Most young women would give a finger or two to live there, especially since the big old house had been extensively remodeled and freshened with the influx of money from a mysterious stranger. That stranger was actually Bill, who’d discovered that the Bellefleurs were descendants of his. He’d known they wouldn’t accept money from a vampire, so he’d arranged the whole “mysterious legacy” ruse, and Caroline Bellefleur had jumped into spending it on the mansion with as much relish as Andy ate a cheeseburger.

Andy caught up with me a few minutes later. He snagged me on the way to Sid Matt Lancaster’s table, so the aged lawyer had to wait a bit extra for his hamburger and fries.

“Sookie, I have to know,” he said urgently, but in a very low tone.

“What, Andy?” I was alarmed at his intensity.

“Does she love me?” There were edges of humiliation in his head, that he’d actually asked me. Andy was proud, and he wanted some kind of assurance that Halleigh didn’t want his family name or his family home as he’d found other women had. Well, he’d found out about the home. Halleigh didn’t want it, and he would move into some humble, small house with her, if she really loved him.

No one had ever demanded this of me before. After all the years of wanting people to believe in me, understand my freakish talent, I found I didn’t enjoy being taken seriously, after all. But Andy was waiting for an answer, and I couldn’t refuse. He was one of the most dogged men I’d ever met.

“She loves you as much as you love her,” I said, and he let go of my arm. I continued on my way to Sid Matt’s table. When I glanced back at him, he was staring at me.

Chew on that, Andy Bellefleur,
I thought. Then I felt a little ashamed of myself. But he shouldn’t have asked, if he didn’t want to know the answer.

 

There was something in the woods around my house.

I’d gotten ready for bed as soon as I’d come home, because one of my favorite moments in every twenty-four hours is when I get to put on my nightgown. It was warm enough that I didn’t need a bathrobe, so I was roaming around in my old blue knee-length sleep tee. I was just thinking of shutting the kitchen window, since the March night was getting a little chilly. I’d been listening to the sounds of the night while I washed dishes; the frogs and the bugs had been filling the air with their chorus.

Suddenly, the noises that had made the night seem as friendly and busy as the day had come to a stop, cut off in midcry.

I paused, my hands immersed in the hot soapy water. Peering out into the darkness didn’t help a bit, and I realized how visible I must be, standing at an open window with its curtains flung wide apart. The yard was lit up with the security light, but beyond the trees that ringed the clearing, the woods lay dark and still.

Something was out there. I closed my eyes and tried to reach out with my brain, and I found some kind of activity. But it wasn’t clear enough to define.

I thought about phoning Bill, but I’d called him before when I’d been worried about my safety. I couldn’t let it become a habit. Hey, maybe the watcher in the woods was Bill himself? He sometimes roamed around at night, and he came to check on me from time to time. I looked longingly over at the telephone on the wall at the end of the counter. (Well, where the counter would be when it was all put together.) My new telephone was portable. I could grab it, retreat to my bedroom, and call Bill in a snap of the fingers, since he was on my speed dial. If he answered the phone, I’d know whatever was out in the woods was something I needed to worry about.

But if he was home, he’d come racing over here. He’d hear my call like this: “Oh, Bill, please come save me! I can’t think of anything to do but call a big, strong vampire to come to my rescue!”

I made myself admit that I really knew that whatever was in the woods, it wasn’t Bill. I’d gotten a brain signal of some kind. If the lurker had been a vampire, I would have sensed nothing. Only twice had I gotten a flicker of a signal from a vampire brain, and it had been like a flash of electricity in an outage.

And right by that telephone was the back door—which wasn’t locked.

Nothing on earth could keep me at the sink after the fact of the open door had occurred to me. I simply ran for it. I stepped out onto the back porch, flipped the latch on the glass door there, and jumped back into the kitchen proper and locked the big wooden door, which I’d had outfitted with a thumb latch and a deadbolt.

I leaned against the door after it was safely locked. Better than anyone I could think of, I knew the futility of doors and locks. To a vampire, the physical barrier was nothing—but a vampire had to be invited in. To a Were, doors were of more consequence, but still not much of a problem; with their incredible strength, Weres could go wherever they damn well chose. The same held true of other shifters.

Why didn’t I just hold an open house?

However, I felt wonderfully better with two locked doors between me and whatever was in the woods. I knew the front door was locked and bolted, since it hadn’t been opened in days. I didn’t get that many visitors, and I normally entered and departed through the back.

I crept back to the window, which I closed and locked. I drew the curtains, too. I’d done everything to increase my security I could do. I went back to the dishes. I got a wet circle on the front of my sleep tee because I had to lean against the edge of the sink to steady my shaking legs. But I made myself continue until all the dishes were safely in the drainer and the sink had been wiped clean.

I listened intently after that. The woods were still silent. No matter how I listened with every sense at my disposal, that faint signal did not impinge on my brain again. It was gone.

I sat in the kitchen for a while, brain still in high gear, but then I forced myself to follow my usual routine. My heart rate had returned to normal by the time I brushed my teeth, and as I climbed into bed I had almost persuaded myself that nothing had happened out there in the silent darkness. But I’m careful about being honest inside. I knew some creature had been out in my woods; and that creature had been something bigger and scarier than a raccoon.

Quite soon after I’d turned my bedside light off, I heard the bugs and the frogs resume their chorus. Finally, when it continued uninterrupted, I slept.

I
PUNCHED IN THE NUMBER OF MY BROTHER’S CELL phone when I got up the next morning. I hadn’t spent a very good night, but at least I’d gotten a bit of sleep. Jason answered on the second ring. He sounded a little preoccupied when he said, “Hello?”

“Hi, Brother. How’s it going?”

“Listen, I need to talk to you. I can’t right now. I’ll be there, probably in a couple of hours.” He hung up without saying good-bye, and he’d sounded pretty worried about something. Good. I needed another complication.

I glanced at the clock. A couple of hours would give me enough time to get cleaned up and run into town to go to the grocery store. Jason would be getting here about noon, and if I knew him he’d expect me to feed him lunch. I yanked my hair into a ponytail and then doubled the elastic band around it, making it into a kind of topknot. I had a little fan of the ends waving above my head. Though I tried not to admit it to myself, I thought this slapdash hairstyle was fun-looking and kind of cute.

It was one of those crisp, cool March mornings, the kind that promises a warm afternoon. The sky was so bright and sunny that my spirits rose, and I drove to Bon Temps with the window rolled down, singing along with the radio at the top of my voice. I would’ve sung along with Weird Al Yankovic that morning.

I drove past woods, the occasional house, and a field full of cows (and a couple of buffalo; you never know what people will raise).

The disc jockey played “Blue Hawaii” as a golden oldie, and I wondered where Bubba was—not my own brother, but the vampire now known only as Bubba. I hadn’t seen him in three or four weeks. Maybe the vamps of Louisiana had moved him to another hiding place, or maybe he’d wandered off, as he does from time to time. That’s when you get your long articles in the papers they keep by the grocery check-out stand.

Though I was having a blissful moment of being happy and content, I had one of those stray ideas you get at odd moments. I thought,
How nice it would be if Eric were here with me in the car. He’d look so good with the wind blowing his hair, and he’d enjoy the moment.
Well, yeah, before he burned to a crisp.

But I realized I’d thought of Eric because it was the kind of day you wanted to share with the person you cared about, the person whose company you enjoyed the most. And that would be Eric as he’d been while he was cursed by a witch: the Eric who hadn’t been hardened by centuries of vampire politics, the Eric who had no contempt for humans and their affairs, the Eric who was not in charge of many financial enterprises and responsible for the lives and incomes of quite a few humans and vampires. In other words, Eric as he would never be again.

Ding-dong, the witch was dead, and Eric was restored to his character as it was now. The restored Eric was wary of me, was fond of me, and didn’t trust me (or his feelings) an inch.

I sighed heavily, and the song vanished from my lips. It was nearly quenched in my heart until I told myself to stop being a melancholy idiot. I was young, I was healthy. The day was beautiful. And I had an actual date for Friday night. I promised myself a big treat. Instead of going directly to the grocery store, I went by Tara’s Togs, owned and operated by my friend Tara Thornton.

I hadn’t seen Tara in a while. She’d gone on a vacation to visit an aunt in south Texas, and since she’d returned she’d been working long hours at the store. At least, that’s what she’d said when I’d called her to thank her for the car. When my kitchen had burned, my car had burned with it, and Tara had loaned me her old car, a two-year-old Malibu. She’d acquired a brand-new car (never mind how) and hadn’t gotten around to selling the Malibu.