Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (37 page)

“Tell me what happened in New Orleans,” I wrote. I was beginning to feel sleepy again.

“You will have to know a little about us,” he said hesitantly.

“Woo woo, secret vampire stuff!!” I croaked.

It was his turn to give me disapproving.

“We’re a little organized,” he told me. “I was trying to think of ways to keep us safe from Eric.” Involuntarily, I looked at the red flower arrangement.

“I knew if I were an official, like Eric, it would be much more difficult for him to interfere with my private life.”

I looked encouraging, or at least I tried to.

“So I attended the regional meeting, and though I have never been involved in our politics, I ran for an office. And, through some concentrated lobbying, I won!”

This was absolutely amazing. Bill was a
union rep
? I wondered about the concentrated lobbying, too. Did that mean Bill had killed all the opposition? Or that he’d bought the voters a bottle of A positive apiece?

“What is your job?” I wrote slowly, imagining Bill sitting in a meeting. I tried to look proud, which seemed to be what Bill was looking for.

“I’m the Fifth Area investigator,” he said. “I’ll tell you what that means when you’re home. I don’t want to wear you out.”

I nodded, beaming at him. I sure hoped he didn’t take it into his head to ask me who all the flowers were from. I wondered if I had to write Eric a thank-you note. I wondered why my mind was going off on all these tangents. Must be the pain medication.

I gestured to Bill to draw close. He did, his face resting on the bed next to mine. “Don’t kill Rene,” I whispered.

He looked cold, colder, coldest.

“I may have already done the job. He’s in intensive care. But even if he lives, there’s been enough murder. Let the law do it. I don’t want any more witchhunts coming after you. I want us to have peace.” It was becoming very difficult to talk. I took his hand in both of mine, held it again to my least-bruised cheek. Suddenly, how much I had missed him became a solid lump lodged in my chest, and I held out my arms. He sat carefully on the edge of the bed, and leaning toward me, he carefully, carefully, slid his arms under me and pulled me up to him, a fraction of an inch at a time, to give me time to tell him if it hurt.

“I won’t kill him,” Bill said finally, into my ear.

“Sweetheart,” I breathed, knowing his sharp hearing could pick it up. “I missed you.” I heard his quick sigh, and his arms tightened a little, his hands began their gentle stroking down my back. “I wonder how quickly you can heal,” he said, “without my help?”

“Oh, I’ll try to hurry,” I whispered. “I’ll bet I surprise the doctor as it is.”

A collie trotted down the corridor, looked in the open door, said, “Rowwf,” and trotted away. Astonished, Bill turned to glance out into the corridor. Oh, yeah, it was the full moon, tonight—I could see it out of the window. I could see something else, too. A white face appeared out of the blackness and floated between me and the moon. It was a handsome face, framed by long golden hair. Eric the Vampire grinned at me and gradually disappeared from my view. He was flying.

“Soon we’ll be back to normal,” Bill said, laying me down gently so he could switch out the light in the bathroom. He glowed in the dark.

“Right,” I whispered. “Yeah. Back to normal.”

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Living Dead in dallas

 

AN ACE Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2003 by Charlaine Harris

This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

For information address:

The ACE Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

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ISBN: 0-7865-4099-0

 

AN ACE BOOK®
ACE Books first published byACE Publishing Group,
a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to
Penguin Putnam Inc.

 

Electronic edition: August 2003

 

This book is dedicated to all the people
who told me they enjoyed
Dead Until Dark.
Thanks for the encouragement.

 

My thanks go to Patsy Asher of Remember the Alibi in San Antonio, Texas; Chloe Green of Dallas; and the helpful cyber-friends I’ve made on DorothyL, who answered all my questions promptly and enthusiastically. I have the greatest job in the world.

A
NDY BELLEFLEUR WAS as drunk as a skunk. This wasn’t normal for Andy—believe me, I know all the drunks in Bon Temps. Working at Sam Merlotte’s bar for several years has pretty much introduced me to all of them. But Andy Bellefleur, native son and detective on Bon Temps’s small police force, had never been drunk in Merlotte’s before. I was mighty curious as to why tonight was an exception.

Andy and I aren’t friends by any stretch of the imagination, so I couldn’t ask him outright. But other means were open to me, and I decided to use them. Though I try to limit employing my disability, or gift, or whatever you want to call it, to find out things that might have an effect on me or mine, sometimes sheer curiosity wins out.

I let down my mental guard and read Andy’s mind. I was sorry.

Andy had had to arrest a man that morning for kidnapping. He’d taken his ten-year-old neighbor to a place in the woods and raped her. The girl was in the hospital, and the man was in jail, but the damage that had been dealt was irreparable. I felt weepy and sad. It was a crime that touched too closely on my own past. I liked Andy a little better for his depression.

“Andy Bellefleur, give me your keys,” I said. His broad face turned up to me, showing very little comprehension. After a long pause while my meaning filtered through to his addled brain, Andy fumbled in the pocket of his khakis and handed me his heavy key ring. I put another bourbon-and-Coke on the bar in front of him. “My treat,” I said, and went to the phone at the end of the bar to call Portia, Andy’s sister. The Bellefleur siblings lived in a decaying large white two-story antebellum, formerly quite a showplace, on the prettiest street in the nicest area of Bon Temps. On Magnolia Creek Road, all the homes faced the strip of park through which ran the stream, crossed here and there by decorative bridges for foot traffic only; a road ran on both sides. There were a few other old homes on Magnolia Creek Road, but they were all in better repair than the Bellefleur place, Belle Rive. Belle Rive was just too much for Portia, a lawyer, and Andy, a cop, to maintain, since the money to support such a home and its grounds was long since gone. But their grandmother, Caroline, stubbornly refused to sell.

Portia answered on the second ring.

“Portia, this is Sookie Stackhouse,” I said, having to raise my voice over the background noise in the bar.

“You must be at work.”

“Yes. Andy’s here, and he’s three sheets to the wind. I took his keys. Can you come get him?”

“Andy had too much to drink? That’s rare. Sure, I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she promised, and hung up.

“You’re a sweet girl, Sookie,” Andy volunteered unexpectedly.

He’d finished the drink I’d poured for him. I swept the glass out of sight and hoped he wouldn’t ask for more. “Thanks, Andy,” I said. “You’re okay, yourself.”

“Where’s . . . boyfriend?”

“Right here,” said a cool voice, and Bill Compton appeared just behind Andy. I smiled at him over Andy’s drooping head. Bill was about five foot ten, with dark brown hair and eyes. He had the broad shoulders and hard muscular arms of a man who’s done manual labor for years. Bill had worked a farm with his father, and then for himself, before he’d gone to be a soldier in the war. That would be the Civil War.

“Hey, V. B.!” called Charlsie Tooten’s husband, Micah. Bill raised a casual hand to return the greeting, and my brother, Jason, said, “Evening, Vampire Bill,” in a perfectly polite way. Jason, who had not exactly welcomed Bill into our little family circle, had turned over a whole new leaf. I was sort of mentally holding my breath, waiting to see if his improved attitude was permanent.

“Bill, you’re okay for a bloodsucker,” Andy said judiciously, rotating on his bar stool so he could face Bill. I upgraded my opinion of Andy’s drunkenness, since he had never otherwise been enthusiastic about the acceptance of vampires into America’s mainstream society.

“Thanks,” Bill said dryly. “You’re not too bad for a Bellefleur.” He leaned across the bar to give me a kiss. His lips were as cool as his voice. You had to get used to it. Like when you laid your head on his chest, and you didn’t hear a heartbeat inside. “Evening, sweetheart,” he said in his low voice. I slid a glass of the Japanese-developed synthetic B negative across the bar, and he knocked it back and licked his lips. He looked pinker almost immediately.

“How’d your meeting go, honey?” I asked. Bill had been in Shreveport the better part of the night.

“I’ll tell you later.”

I hoped his work-related story was less distressing than Andy’s. “Okay. I’d appreciate it if you’d help Portia get Andy to her car. Here she comes now,” I said, nodding toward the door.

For once, Portia was not wearing the skirt, blouse, jacket, hose, and low-heeled pumps that constituted her professional uniform. She’d changed to blue jeans and a ragged Sophie Newcomb sweatshirt. Portia was built as squarely as her brother, but she had long, thick, chestnut hair. Keeping it beautifully tended was Portia’s one signal that she hadn’t given up yet. She plowed singlemindedly through the rowdy crowd.

“Well, he’s soused, all right,” she said, evaluating her brother. Portia was trying to ignore Bill, who made her very uneasy. “It doesn’t happen often, but if he decides to tie one on, he does a good job.”

“Portia, Bill can carry him to your car,” I said. Andy was taller than Portia and thick in body, clearly too much of a burden for his sister.

“I think I can handle him,” she told me firmly, still not looking toward Bill, who raised his eyebrows at me.

So I let her get one arm around him and try to hoist him off the stool. Andy stayed perched. Portia glanced around for Sam Merlotte, the bar owner, who was small and wiry in appearance but very strong. “Sam’s bar-tending at an anniversary party at the country club,” I said. “Better let Bill help.”

“All right,” the lawyer said stiffly, her eyes on the polished wood of the bar. “Thanks very much.”

Bill had Andy up and moving toward the door in seconds, in spite of Andy’s legs tending to turn to jelly. Micah Tooten jumped up to open the door, so Bill was able to sweep Andy right out into the parking lot.

“Thanks, Sookie,” Portia said. “Is his bar tab settled up?”

I nodded.

“Okay,” she said, slapping her hand on the bar to signal she was out of there. She had to listen to a chorus of well-meant advice as she followed Bill out the front door of Merlotte’s.

That was how Detective Andy Bellefleur’s old Buick came to sit in the parking lot at Merlotte’s all night and into the next day. The Buick had certainly been empty when Andy had gotten out to enter the bar, he would later swear. He’d also testify that he’d had been so preoccupied by his internal turmoil that he’d forgotten to lock the car.