Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (178 page)

After all, I’d discover it sooner or later. You can’t hide what you really are, not from me—not if you’re a regular human person. I try not to listen in, but I can’t block everything out. When I’d dated Bill, he’d helped me learn how to close my mind. Since then, life had been easier—more pleasant, more relaxed.

Tanya was a smiling woman, I’d give her that. She smiled at Sam, and she smiled at me, and she smiled at the customers. It wasn’t a nervous smile, like mine, the grin that says “I’m hearing a clamor inside my head and I’m trying to look normal on the outside”; Tanya’s smile was more of a “I’m really cute and perky and will endear myself to everyone” kind of smile. Before she picked up a tray and started working, Tanya asked a list of sensible questions, and I could tell she’d had experience.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I just . . .”

“She seems nice enough,” he said. “Do you think there’s something wrong with her?”

“Nothing I know of,” I said, trying to sound brisk and cheerful. I knew I was smiling that jittery smile. “Look, Jane Bodehouse is signaling for another round. We’ll have to call her son again.”

Tanya turned around and looked at me just then, as if she felt my eyes on her back. Her own smile was gone, replaced with a look so level that my estimate of her capacity for serious action instantly upgraded. We stood for a moment, regarding each other steadily, and then she beamed at me and continued to the next table, asking the man there if he was ready for another beer.

Suddenly I thought,
I wonder if Tanya is interested in Sam.
I didn’t like the way I felt when I thought about that. I decided the day had been exhausting enough without creating a new worry. And no call from Jason.

After work, I went home with a lot on my mind: Father Riordan, the Pelts, Cody, Crystal’s miscarriage.

I drove down my graveled driveway through the woods, and when I pulled into the clearing and drove behind the house to park at the back door, its isolation struck me all over again. Living in town for a few weeks had made the house seem even lonelier, and though I loved being back in the old place, it didn’t feel the same as it had before the fire.

I’d seldom felt worried living by myself in this isolated spot, but over the past few months my vulnerability had been impressed on me. I’d had a few close calls, and twice there’d been intruders in my house waiting for me when I’d come in. Now I had installed some really good locks on my doors, I had peepholes front and back, and my brother had given me his Benelli shotgun to keep for good.

I had some big lights on the corners of the house, but I didn’t like to leave them on all night. I was considering the purchase of one of those motion-detector lights. The drawback was, since I lived in a large clearing in the middle of the woods, critters often crossed my yard at night, and the light would come on when every little possum rambled across the grass.

The second point about a light coming on was . . .
So what?
The kind of thing I was scared of wasn’t going to be intimidated by a light. I’d just be able to see it better before it ate me. Furthermore, there were no neighbors that a light might startle or rouse. Strange, I reflected, that I’d seldom had a frightened moment when my grandmother had been alive. She’d been a tough little lady for a woman in her late seventies, but she couldn’t have defended me against a flea. Somehow, the simple fact of not being alone had made me feel safer.

After all this thinking about danger, I was in a tense state when I got out of my car. I’d passed a truck parked in front, and I unlocked the back and went through the house to open the front door with the miserable feeling that I was about to have to go through a scene. The quiet interlude on my front porch watching the bees in the pear tree seemed a week ago, instead of hours.

Calvin Norris, leader of the Hotshot werepanthers, got out of his truck and came up the steps. He was a bearded man in his early forties, and he was a serious man whose responsibilities sat squarely on his shoulders. Evidently Calvin had just gotten off work. He was wearing the blue shirt and blue jeans all the Norcross crew leaders wore.

“Sookie,” he said, nodding to me.

“Please come in,” I answered, though I was reluctant. However, Calvin had never been anything but civil to me, and he had helped me rescue my brother a couple of months ago, when Jason had been held hostage. At the least, I owed him civility.

“My niece called me when the danger had passed,” he said heavily, taking a seat on the couch after I’d waved my hand to show he was welcome to stay. “I think you saved her life.”

“I’m real glad to hear Crystal’s better. All I did was make a phone call.” I sat in my favorite old chair, and I noticed I was slumping with weariness. I forced my shoulders back. “Dr. Ludwig was able to stop her bleeding?”

Calvin nodded. He looked at me steadily, his strange eyes solemn. “She’s going to be okay. Our women miscarry a lot. That’s why we were hoping . . . Well.”

I flinched, the weight of Calvin’s hopes that I’d mate with him resting heavily on my shoulders. I’m not sure why I felt guilty; because of his disappointment, I guess. After all, it was hardly my fault that the idea had limited appeal for me.

“I guess Jason and Crystal will be getting hitched,” Calvin said matter-of-factly. “I have to say, I’m not crazy about your brother, but then I’m not the one marrying him.”

I was nonplussed. I didn’t know if this wedding was Jason’s idea, or Calvin’s, or Crystal’s. Jason certainly hadn’t been thinking marriage this morning, unless it was something he’d neglected to mention in the turmoil of his worry about Crystal. I said, “Well, to be honest, I’m not crazy about Crystal. But I’m not the one marrying her.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll do my best to help them out, if they decide to . . . do that. Jason’s about all I’ve got, as you know.”

“Sookie,” he said, and his voice was suddenly far less certain, “I want to talk about something else, too.”

Of course he did. No way was I going to dodge this bullet.

“I know that something you got told, when you came out to the house, put you off me. I’d like to know what it was. I can’t fix it, if I don’t know what’s broken.”

I took a deep breath, while I considered my next words very carefully. “Calvin, I know that Terry is your daughter.” When I’d gone to see Calvin when he’d gotten out of the hospital after being shot, I’d met Terry and her mother Maryelizabeth at Calvin’s house. Though they clearly didn’t live there, it was equally clear that they treated the place as an extension of their own home. Then Terry had asked me if I was going to marry her father.

“Yes,” Calvin said. “I would’ve told you if you’d asked me.”

“Do you have other children?”

“Yes. I have three other children.”

“By different mothers?”

“By three different mothers.”

I’d been right. “Why is that?” I asked, to be sure.

“Because I’m pure-blooded,” he said, as if it were self-evident. “Since only the first child of a pureblood couple turns out to be a full panther, we have to switch off.”

I was profoundly glad I’d never seriously considered marrying Calvin, because if I had, I would have thrown up right then. What I’d suspected, after witnessing the succession-to-packmaster ritual, was true. “So it’s not the woman’s first child, period, that turns out to be a full-blooded shape-shifter . . . it’s her first child with a specific man.”

“Right.” Calvin looked surprised that I hadn’t known that. “The first child of any given pureblood couple is the real thing. So if our population gets too small, a pure-blooded male has to mate with as many pure-blooded women as he can, to increase the pack.”

“Okay.” I waited for a minute, to collect myself. “Did you think that I would be okay with you impregnating other women, if we got married?”

“No, I wouldn’t expect that of an outsider,” he answered, in that same matter-of-fact voice. “I think it’s time I settled down with one woman. I’ve done my duty as leader.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. If it had been anyone else I would have sniggered, but Calvin was an honorable man, and he didn’t deserve that reaction.

“Now I want to mate for life, and it would be good for the pack if I could bring new blood into the community. You can tell that we’ve bred with each other for too long. My eyes can hardly pass for human, and Crystal takes forever to change. We have to add something new to our gene pool, as the scientists call it. If you and I had a baby, which was what I was hoping, that baby wouldn’t ever be a full Were; but he or she might breed into the community, bring new blood and new skills.”

“Why’d you pick me?”

He said, almost shyly. “I like you. And you’re real pretty.” He smiled at me then, a rare and sweet expression. “I’ve watched you at the bar for years. You’re nice to everyone, and you’re a hard worker, and you don’t have no one to take care of you like you deserve. And you know about us; it wouldn’t be any big shock.”

“Do other kinds of shape-shifters do the same thing?” I asked this so quietly, I could hardly hear myself. I stared down at my hands, clenched together in my lap, and I could hardly breathe as I waited to hear his answer. Alcide’s green eyes filled my thoughts.

“When the pack begins to grow too small, it’s their duty to,” he said slowly. “What’s on your mind, Sookie?”

“When I went to the contest for the Shreveport packmaster, the one who won—Patrick Furnan—he had sex with a young Were girl, though he was married. I began to wonder.”

“Did I ever stand a chance with you?” Calvin asked. He seemed to have drawn his own conclusions.

Calvin could not be blamed for wanting to preserve his way of life. If I found the means distasteful, that was my problem.

“You definitely interested me,” I said. “But I’m just too human to think of having my husband’s children all around me. I’d just be too . . . it would just throw me off all the time, knowing my husband had had sex with almost every woman I saw day-to-day.” Come to think of it, Jason would fit right into the Hotshot community. I paused for a second, but he remained silent. “I hope that my brother will be welcomed into your community, regardless of my answer.”

“I don’t know if he understands what we do,” Calvin said. “But Crystal’s already miscarried once before, by a full-blood. Now she’s miscarried this baby of your brother’s. I’m thinking this means Crystal had better not try any more to have a panther. She may not be able to have a baby of your brother’s. Do you feel obliged to talk to him about that?”

“It shouldn’t be up to me to discuss that with Jason . . . it should be up to Crystal.” I met Calvin’s eyes. I opened my mouth to remark that if all Jason wanted was babies, he shouldn’t get married; but then I recognized that was a sensitive subject, and I stopped while I was ahead.

Calvin shook my hand in an odd, formal way when he left. I believed that marked the end of his courtship. I had never been deeply attracted to Calvin Norris, and I’d never seriously thought about accepting his offer. But I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit that I’d fantasized about a steady husband with a good job and benefits, a husband who came straight home after his shift and fixed broken things on his days off. There were men who did that, men who didn’t change into anything other than their own form, men who were alive twenty-four/seven. I knew that from reading so many minds at the bar.

I’m afraid that what really struck me about Calvin’s confession—or explanation—is what it might reveal to me about Alcide.

Alcide had sparked my affection, and my lust. Thinking of him did make me wonder what marriage to him would be like, wonder in a very personal way, as opposed to my impersonal speculation about health insurance that Calvin had inspired. I’d pretty much abandoned the secret hope Alcide had inspired in me, after I’d been forced to shoot his former fiancée; but something in me had clung to the thought, something I’d kept secret even from myself, even after I’d found out he was dating Maria-Star. As recently as this day, I’d been stoutly denying to the Pelts that Alcide had any interest in me. But something lonely inside me had nursed a hope.

I got up slowly, feeling about twice my actual age, and went into the kitchen to get something out of the freezer for my supper. I wasn’t hungry, but I’d eat unwisely later if I didn’t fix something now, I told myself sternly.

But I never cooked a meal for myself that night.

Instead, I leaned against the refrigerator door and cried.

T
HE NEXT DAY WAS FRIDAY; NOT ONLY WAS IT MY day off this week, but I had a date, so it was practically a red-letter day. I refused to ruin it by moping. Though it was still cool for such a pastime, I did one of my favorite things: I put on a bikini, greased myself up, and went to lie in the sun on the adjustable chaise lounge I’d gotten at Wal-Mart on sale at the end of the previous summer. I took a book, a radio, and a hat into the front yard, where there were fewer trees and flowering plants to encourage bugs that bit. I read, sang along with the tunes on the radio, and painted my toenails and fingernails. Though I was goose-pimply at first, I warmed up quickly along with the sun, and there was no breeze that day to chill me.

I know sunbathing is bad and evil, and I’ll pay for it later, etc., etc., but it’s one of the few free pleasures available to me.

No one came to visit, I couldn’t hear the phone, and since the sun was out, the vampires weren’t. I had a delightful time, all by myself. Around one o’clock, I decided to run into town for some groceries and a new bra, and I stopped at the mailbox out by Hummingbird Road to see if the mail carrier had run yet. Yes. My cable bill and my electric bill were in the mailbox, which was a downer. But lurking behind a Sears sales brochure was an invitation to a wedding shower for Halleigh. Well . . . gosh. I was surprised, but pleased. Of course, I’d lived next to Halleigh in one of Sam’s duplexes for a few weeks while my house was being repaired after the fire, and we’d seen each at least once a day during that time. So it wasn’t a complete stretch, her putting me on her list of invitees. Plus, maybe she was relieved that the Cody situation had been cleared up so quickly?