Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (55 page)

To my dismay, they proceeded to put their sleeping bags up against a wall on the far side of the sanctuary, still talking. At least this was a family that communicated. In addition to the whiny little girl, there were two older kids, a boy and a girl, and like true siblings they fought like cats and dogs.

A pair of small flat red shoes trotted by the end of my pew and disappeared through the door into Steve’s wing. I wondered if the group in his office was still debating.

The feet went by again after a few seconds, this time going very fast. I wondered about that, too.

I waited about five more minutes, but nothing else happened.

From now on, there would be more people coming in. It was now or never. I rolled out from under the pew and got up. By my good fortune, they were all looking down at their task when I stood up, and I began walking briskly to the double doors at the back of the church. By their sudden silence, I knew they’d spotted me.

“Hi!” called the mother. She rose to her feet beside her bright blue sleeping bag. Her plain face was full of curiosity. “You must be new at the Fellowship. I’m Francie Polk.”

“Yes,” I called, trying to sound cheerful. “Gotta rush! Talk to you later!”

She drew closer. “Have you hurt yourself?” she asked. “You—excuse me—you look awful. Is that blood?”

I glanced down at my blouse. There were some small stains on my chest.

“I had a fall,” I said, trying to sound rueful. “I need to go home and do a little first aid, change my clothes, like that. I’ll be back!”

I could see the doubt on Francie Polk’s face. “There’s a first aid kit in the office, why don’t I just run and get that?” she asked.

Because I don’t want you to.
“You know, I need to get a fresh blouse, too,” I said. I wrinkled my nose to show my low opinion of going around in a spotted blouse all evening.

Another woman had come in the very doors I was hoping to go out of, and she stood listening to the conversation, her dark eyes darting back and forth from me to the determined Francie.

“Hey, girl!” she said in a lightly accented voice, and the little Hispanic woman, the shapeshifter, gave me a hug. I come from a hugging culture, and it was automatic to hug her right back. She gave me a meaningful pinch while we were clenched.

“How are you?” I asked brightly. “It’s been too long.”

“Oh, you know, same old same old,” she said. She beamed up at me, but there was caution in her eyes. Her hair was a very dark brown, rather than black, and it was coarse and abundant. Her skin was the color of a milky caramel, and she had dark freckles. Generous lips were painted an outstanding fuchsia. She had big white teeth, flashing at me in her wide smile. I glanced down at her feet. Flat red shoes.

“Hey, come outside with me while I have a cigarette,” she said.

Francie Polk was looking more satisfied.

“Luna, can’t you see your friend needs to go to the doctor?” she said righteously.

“You do have a few bumps and bruises,” Luna said, examining me. “Have you fallen down again, girl?”

“You know Mama always tells me, ‘Marigold, you’re as clumsy as an elephant.’ ”

“That mama of yours,” Luna said, shaking her head in disgust. “Like that would make you less clumsy!”

“What can you do?” I said, shrugging. “If you’ll excuse us, Francie?”

“Well, sure,” she said. “I’ll see you later, I guess.”

“Sure will,” said Luna. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

And with Luna, I strolled out of the Fellowship of the Sun meeting hall. I concentrated ferociously on keeping my gait even, so Francie wouldn’t see me limp and become even more suspicious.

“Thank God,” I said, when we were outside.

“You knew me for what I was,” she said rapidly. “How did you know?”

“I have a friend who’s a shapeshifter.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s not local. And I won’t tell you without his consent.”

She stared at me, all pretence of friendship dropped in that instant.

“Okay, I respect that,” she said. “Why are you here?”

“What’s it to you?”

“I just saved your ass.”

She had a point, a good point. “Okay. I am a telepath, and I was hired by your vampire area leader to find out what had become of a missing vampire.”

“That’s better. But it ain’t
my
area leader. I’m a supe, but I ain’t no freaking vampire. What vamp did you deal with?”

“I don’t need to tell you that.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“I don’t.”

She opened her mouth as if to yell.

“Yell away. There’re some things I just won’t tell. What’s a supe?”

“A supernatural being. Now, you listen to me,” Luna said. We were walking through the parking lot now, and cars were beginning to pull in regularly from the road. She did a lot of smiling and waving, and I tried to at least look happy. But the limp was no longer concealable, and my face was swelling like a bitch, as Arlene would say.

Gosh, I was homesick all of a sudden. But I thrust that feeling away to pay attention to Luna, who clearly had things to tell me.

“You tell the vampires
we
have this place under surveillance—”

“ ‘We’ being who?”

“ ‘We’ being the shapeshifters of the greater Dallas area.”

“You guys are organized? Hey, that’s great! I’ll have to tell . . . my friend.”

She rolled her eyes, clearly not impressed with my intellect. “Listen here, missy, you tell the vampires that as soon as the Fellowship figures out about us, they will be on us, too. And we aren’t going to mainstream. We’re underground for good. Stupid freakin’ vampires. So we’re keeping an eye on the Fellowship.”

“If you’re keeping such a good eye, how come you didn’t call the vampires and tell them about Farrell being in the basement? And about Godfrey?”

“Hey, Godfrey wants to kill himself, no skin off our teeth. He came to the Fellowship; they didn’t go to him. They about peed their pants, they were so glad to have him, after they got over the shock of sitting in the same room with one of the damned.”

“What about Farrell?”

“I didn’t know who was down there,” Luna admitted. “I knew they’d captured someone, but I’m not exactly in the inner circle yet, and I couldn’t find out who. I even tried buttering up that asshole Gabe, but that didn’t help.”

“You’ll be pleased to know that Gabe is dead.”

“Hey!” She smiled genuinely for the first time. “That
is
good news.”

“Here’s the rest. As soon as I get in touch with the vampires, they’re going to be here to get Farrell. So if I were you, I wouldn’t go back to the Fellowship tonight.”

She chewed on her lower lip for a minute. We were at the far end of the parking lot.

“In fact,” I said, “it would be perfect if you would give me a lift to the hotel.”

“Well, I’m not in the business of making your life perfect,” she snarled, recalled to her tough cookie persona. “I got to get back in that church before the shit hits the fan, and get some papers out. Think about this, girl. What are the vampires gonna do with Godfrey? Can they let him live? He’s a child molester and a serial killer; so many times over you couldn’t even count. He can’t stop, and he knows it.”

So there was a good side to the church . . . it gave vampires like Godfrey a venue to commit suicide while being watched?

“Maybe they should just put it on pay-per-view,” I said.

“They would if they could.” Luna was serious. “Those vampires trying to mainstream, they’re pretty harsh to anyone who might upset their plan. Godfrey’s no poster boy.”

“I can’t solve every problem, Luna. By the way, my real name is Sookie. Sookie Stackhouse. Anyway, I’ve done what I could. I did the job I was hired to do, and now I have to get back and report. Godfrey lives or Godfrey dies. I think Godfrey will die.”

“You better be right,” she said ominously.

I couldn’t figure out why it was my fault if Godfrey changed his mind. I had just questioned his chosen venue. But maybe she was right. I might have some responsibility, here.

It was all just too much for me.

“Good-bye,” I said, and began limping along the back of the parking lot to the road. I hadn’t gotten far when I heard a hue and cry arise from the church, and all the outside lights popped on. The sudden glare was blinding.

“Maybe I won’t go back in the Fellowship Center after all. Not a good idea,” Luna said from the window of a Subaru Outback. I scrambled into the passenger’s seat, and we sped toward the nearest exit onto the four-lane road. I fastened my seat belt automatically.

But as swiftly as we had moved, others had moved even more swiftly. Various family vehicles were being positioned to block the exits from the parking lot.

“Crap,” said Luna.

We sat idling for a minute while she thought.

“They’ll never let me out, even if we hide you somehow. I can’t get you back into the church. They can search the parking lot too easily.” Luna chewed on her lip some more.

“Oh, freak this job, anyway,” she said, and threw the Outback into gear. She drove conservatively at first, trying to attract as little attention as possible. “These people wouldn’t know what religion was if it bit them in the ass,” she said. Up by the church, Luna drove over the curb separating the parking lot from the lawn. Then we were flooring it over the lawn, circling the fenced play area, and I discovered I was grinning from ear to ear, though it hurt to do so.

“Yee-hah!” I yelled, as we hit a sprinkler head on the lawn watering system. We flew across the front yard of the church, and, out of sheer shock, no one was pursuing us. They’d organize themselves in a minute, though, the die-hards. Those people who didn’t espouse the more extreme measures of this Fellowship were going to get a real wake-up call tonight.

Sure enough, Luna looked in her rearview mirror and said, “They’ve unblocked the exits, and someone’s coming after us.” We pulled out into traffic on the road running in front of the church, another major four-lane road, and horns honked all around at our sudden entry into the traffic flow.

“Holy shit,” Luna said. She slowed down to a reasonable speed and kept looking in her rearview mirror. “It’s too dark now, I can’t tell which headlights are them.”

I wondered if Barry had alerted Bill.

“You got a cell phone?” I asked her.

“It’s in my purse, along with my driver’s license, which is still sitting in my office in the church. That’s how I knew you were loose. I went in my office, smelled your scent. Knew you’d been hurt. So I went outside and scouted around, and when I couldn’t find you, I came back in. We’re damn lucky I had my keys in my pocket.”

God bless shapeshifters. I felt wistful about the phone, but it couldn’t be helped. I suddenly wondered where my purse was. Probably back in the Fellowship of the Sun office. At least I’d taken all my i.d. out of it.

“Should we stop at a pay phone, or the police station?”

“If you call the police, what are they going to do?” asked Luna, in the encouraging voice of someone leading a small child to wisdom.

“Go to the church?”

“And what will happen then, girl?”

“Ah, they’ll ask Steve why he was holding a human prisoner?”

“Yep. And what will he say?”

“I don’t know.”

“He’ll say, ‘We never held her prisoner. She got into some kind of argument with our employee Gabe, and he ended up dead. Arrest her!’ ”

“Oh. You think?”

“Yeah, I think.”

“What about Farrell?”

“If the police start coming in, you can better believe they’ve got someone detailed to hustle down to the basement and stake him. By the time the cops get there, no more Farrell. They could do the same to Godfrey, if he wouldn’t back them up. He would probably stand still for it. He wants to die, that Godfrey.”

“Well, what about Hugo?”

“You think Hugo is going to explain how come he got locked in a basement there? I don’t know what that jerk would say, but he won’t tell the truth. He’s led a double life for months now, and he can’t say whether his head is on straight or not.”

“So we can’t call the police. Who can we call?”

“I got to get you with your people. You don’t need to meet mine. They don’t want to be known, you understand?”

“Sure.”

“You have to be something weird yourself, huh? To recognize us.”

“Yes.”

“So what are you? Not a vamp, for sure. Not one of us, either.”

“I’m a telepath.”

“You are! No shit! Well, woooo woooo,” Luna said, imitating the traditional ghost sound.

“No more woo woo than you are,” I said, feeling I could be pardoned for sounding a bit testy.

“Sorry,” she said, not meaning it. “Okay, here’s the plan—”

But I didn’t get to hear what the plan was, because at that moment we were hit from the rear.