Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (29 page)

“How about this Desiree thing?”

“He had someone drop her off on my doorstep, hoping I would be pleased he’d sent me a pretty gift. Also, it would test my devotion to you if I drank from her. Perhaps he poisoned her blood somehow, and her blood would have weakened me. Maybe she would just have been a crack in my armor.” He shrugged. “Did you think I had a date?”

“Yes.” I felt my face harden, thinking about Bill walking in with the girl.

“You weren’t at home. I had to come find you.” His tone wasn’t accusatory, but it wasn’t happy, either.

“I was trying to help Jason out by listening. And I was still upset from last night.”

“Are we all right now?”

“No, but we’re as all right as we can get,” I said. “I guess no matter who I cared for, it wouldn’t always go smooth. But I hadn’t counted on obstacles this drastic. There’s no way you can ever outrank Eric, I guess, since age is the criterion?”

“No,” said Bill. “Not outrank . . .” and he suddenly looked thoughtful. “Though there may be something I can do along those lines. I don’t want to—it goes against my nature—but we would be more secure.”

I let him think.

“Yes,” he concluded, ending his long brood. He didn’t offer to explain, and I didn’t ask.

“I love you,” he said, as if that was the bottom line to whatever course of action he was considering. His face loomed over me, luminous and beautiful in the half-darkness.

“I feel the same about you,” I said, and put my hands against his chest so he wouldn’t tempt me. “But we have too much against us right now. If we can pry Eric off our backs, that would help. And another thing, we have to stop this murder investigation. That would be a second big piece of trouble off our backs. This murderer has the deaths of your friends to answer for, and the deaths of Maudette and Dawn to answer for.” I paused, took a deep breath. “And the death of my grandmother.” I blinked back tears. I’d gotten adjusted to Gran not being in the house when I came home, and I was getting used to not talking to her and sharing my day with her, but every now and then I had a stab of grief so acute it robbed me of breath.

“Why do you think the same killer is responsible for the Monroe vampires being burned?”

“I think it was the murderer who planted this idea, this vigilante thing, in the men in the bar that night. I think it was the murderer who went from group to group, egging the guys on. I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve never seen people around here act that way. There’s got to be a reason they did this time.”

“He agitated them? Fomented the burning?”

“Yes.”

“Listening hasn’t turned up anything?”

“No,” I admitted glumly. “But that’s not to say tomorrow will be the same.”

“You’re an optimist, Sookie.”

“Yes, I am. I have to be.” I patted his cheek, thinking how my optimism had been justified since he had entered my life.

“You keep on listening, since you think it may be fruitful,” he said. “I’ll work on something else, for now. I’ll see you tomorrow evening at your place, okay? I may . . . no, let me explain then.”

“All right.” I was curious, but Bill obviously wasn’t ready to talk.

On my way home, following the taillights of Bill’s car as far as my driveway, I thought of how much more frightening the past few weeks would have been if I hadn’t had the security of Bill’s presence. As I went cautiously down the driveway, I found myself wishing Bill hadn’t felt he had to go home to make some necessary phone calls. The few nights we’d spent apart, I wouldn’t say I’d been exactly writhing with fear, but I’d been very jumpy and anxious. At the house by myself, I spent lots of time going from locked window to locked door, and I wasn’t used to living that way. I felt disheartened at the thought of the night ahead.

Before I got out of my car, I scanned the yard, glad I’d remembered to turn on the security lights before I left for the bar. Nothing was moving. Usually Tina came running when I’d been gone, anxious to get in the house for some cat kibble, but tonight she must be hunting in the woods.

I separated my house key from the bunch on my key ring. I dashed from the car to the front door, inserted and twisted the key in record time, and slammed and locked the door behind me. This was no way to live, I thought, shaking my head in dismay; and just as I completed that idea, something hit the front door with a thud. I shrieked before I could stop myself.

I ran for the portable phone by the couch. I punched in Bill’s number as I went around the room pulling down the shades. What if the line was busy? He’d said he was going home to use the phone!

But I caught him just as he walked in the door. He sounded breathless as he picked up the receiver. “Yes?” he said. He always sounded suspicious.

“Bill,” I gasped, “there’s someone outside!”

He crashed the phone down. A vampire of action.

He was there in two minutes. Looking out into the yard from a slightly lifted blind, I glimpsed him coming into the yard from the woods, moving with a speed and silence a human could never equal. The relief of seeing him was overwhelming. For a second I felt ashamed at calling Bill to rescue me: I should have handled the situation myself. Then I thought, Why? When you know a practically invincible being who professes to adore you, someone so hard to kill it’s next to impossible, someone preternaturally strong, that’s who you’re gonna call.

Bill investigated the yard and the woods, moving with a sure, silent grace. Finally he came lightly up the steps. He bent over something on the front porch. The angle was too acute, and I couldn’t tell what it was. When he straightened, he had something in his hands, and he looked absolutely . . . expressionless.

This was very bad.

I went reluctantly to the front door and unlocked it. I pushed out the screen door.

Bill was holding the body of my cat.

“Tina?” I said, hearing my voice quaver and not caring at all. “Is she dead?”

Bill nodded, one little jerk of his head.

“What—how?”

“Strangled, I think.”

I could feel my face crumple. Bill had to stand there holding the corpse while I cried my eyes out.

“I never got that live oak,” I said, having calmed a little. I didn’t sound very steady. “We can put her in that hole.” So around to the backyard we went, poor Bill holding Tina, trying to look comfortable about it, and me trying not to dissolve again. Bill knelt and lay the little bundle of black fur at the bottom of my excavation. I fetched the shovel and began to fill it in, but the sight of the first dirt hitting Tina’s fur undid me all over again. Silently, Bill took the shovel from my hands. I turned my back, and he finished the awful job.

“Come inside,” he said gently when it was finished.

We went in the house, having to walk around to the front because I hadn’t yet unlocked the back.

Bill patted me and comforted me, though I knew he hadn’t ever been crazy about Tina. “God bless you, Bill,” I whispered. I tightened my arms around him ferociously, in a sudden convulsion of fear that he, too, would be taken from me. When I’d gotten the sobs reduced to hiccups, I looked up, hoping I hadn’t made him uncomfortable with my flood of emotion.

Bill was furious. He was staring at the wall over my shoulder, and his eyes were glowing. He was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen in my life.

“Did you find anything out in the yard?” I asked.

“No. I found traces of his presence. Some footprints, a lingering scent. Nothing you could bring into court as proof,” he went on, reading my mind.

“Would you mind staying here until you have to go to . . . get away from the sun?”

“Of course.” He stared at me. He’d fully intended to do that whether or not I agreed, I could tell.

“If you still need to make phone calls, just make them here. I don’t care.” I meant if they were on my phone bill.

“I have a calling card,” he said, once again astonishing me. Who would have thought?

I washed my face and took a Tylenol before I put on my nightgown, sadder than I’d been since Gran had been killed, and sadder in different way. The death of a pet is naturally not in the same category as the death of a family member, I chided myself, but it didn’t seem to affect my misery. I went through all the reasoning I was capable of and came no closer to any truth except the fact that I’d fed and brushed and loved Tina for four years, and I would miss her.

M
Y NERVES WERE raw the next day. When I got to work and told Arlene what had happened, she gave me a hard hug, and said, “I’d like to kill the bastard that did that to poor Tina!” Somehow, that made me feel a lot better. Charlsie was just as sympathetic, if more concerned with the shock to me rather than the agonized demise of my cat. Sam just looked grim. He thought I should call the sheriff, or Andy Bellefleur, and tell one of them what had happened. I finally did call Bud Dearborn.

“Usually these things go in cycles,” Bud rumbled. “Ain’t nobody else reported a pet missing or dead, though. I’m afraid it sounds like some kind a personal thing, Sookie. That vampire friend of yours, he like cats?”

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I was using the phone in Sam’s office, and he was sitting behind the desk figuring out his next liquor order.

“Bill was at home when whoever killed Tina threw her on my porch,” I said as calmly as I could. “I called him directly afterward, and he answered the phone.” Sam looked up quizzically, and I rolled my eyes to let him know my opinion of the sheriff’s suspicions.

“And he told you the cat was strangled,” Bud went on ponderously.

“Yes.”

“Do you have the ligature?”

“No. I didn’t even see what it was.”

“What did you do with the kitty?”

“We buried her.”

“Was that your idea or Mr. Compton’s?”

“Mine.” What else would we have done with Tina?

“We may come dig your kitty up. If we had had the ligature and the cat, maybe we could see if the method of strangulation matched the method used in killing Dawn and Maudette,” Bud explained ponderously.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think about that.”

“Well, it don’t matter much. Without the ligature.”

“Okay, good-bye.” I hung up, probably applying a little more pressure than the receiver required. Sam’s eyebrows lifted.

“Bud is a jerk,” I told him.

“Bud’s not a bad policeman,” Sam said quietly. “None of us here are used to murders that are this sick.”

“You’re right,” I admitted, after a moment. “I wasn’t being fair. He just kept saying ‘ligature’ like he was proud he’d learned a new word. I’m sorry I got mad at him.”

“You don’t have to be perfect, Sookie.”

“You mean I get to screw up and be less than understanding and forgiving, from time to time? Thanks, boss.” I smiled at him, feeling the wry twist to my lips, and got up off the edge of his desk where I’d been propped to make my phone call. I stretched. It wasn’t until I saw the way Sam’s eyes drank in that stretch that I became self-conscious again. “Back to work!” I said briskly and strode out of the room, trying to make sure there wasn’t a hint of sway to my hips.

“Would you keep the kids for a couple of hours this evening?” Arlene asked, a little shyly. I remembered the last time we’d talked about my keeping her kids, and I remembered the offense I’d taken at her reluctance to leave her kids with a vampire. I hadn’t been thinking like a mother would think. Now, Arlene was trying to apologize.

“I’d be glad to.” I waited to see if Arlene would mention Bill again, but she didn’t. “When to when?”

“Well, Rene and I are gonna go to the movies in Monroe,” she said. “Say, six-thirty?”

“Sure. Will they have had supper?”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll feed ’em. They’ll be excited to see their aunt Sookie.”

“I look forward to it.”

“Thanks,” Arlene said. She paused, almost said something else, then appeared to think again. “See you at six-thirty.”

I got home about five, most of the way driving against the sun, which was glaring like it was staring me down. I changed to a blue-and-green knit short set, brushed my hair and secured it with a banana clip. I had a sandwich, sitting uneasily by myself at the kitchen table. The house felt big and empty, and I was glad to see Rene drive up with Coby and Lisa.

“Arlene’s having trouble with one of her artificial nails,” he explained, looking embarrassed at having to relay this feminine problem. “And Coby and Lisa were raring to get over here.” I noticed Rene was still in his work clothes—heavy boots, knife, hat, and all. Arlene wasn’t going to let him take her anywhere until he showered and changed.

Coby was eight and Lisa was five, and they were hanging all over me like big earrings when Rene bent to kiss them good-bye. His affection for the kids gave Rene a big gold star in my book, and I smiled at him approvingly. I took the kids’ hands to lead them back to the kitchen for some ice cream.

“We’ll see you about ten-thirty, eleven,” he said. “If that’s all right.” He put his hand on the doorknob.

“Sure,” I agreed. I opened my mouth to offer to keep the kids for the night, as I’d done on previous occasions, but then I thought of Tina’s limp body. I decided that tonight they’d better not stay. I raced the kids to the kitchen, and a minute or two later I heard Rene’s old pickup rattling down the driveway.

I picked up Lisa. “I can hardly lift you anymore, girl, you’re getting so big! And you, Coby, you shaving yet?” We sat at the table for a good thirty minutes while the children ate ice cream and rattled off their list of achievements since we’d last visited.

Then Lisa wanted to read to me, so I got out a coloring book with the color and number words printed inside, and she read those to me with some pride. Coby, of course, had to prove he could read much better, and then they wanted to watch a favorite show. Before I knew it, it was dark.