Dead and Gone ss(v-9

by Шарлин Харрис

  “Why Merlotte’s?” Calvin said, and his voice came out like a growl.

  “I don’t know, Calvin,” Mel said. His face was almost sublime with his relief from the load of his guilt, with the release of confessing his crime and his love for my brother. “Calvin, I know I’m about to die, and I swear to you that I have no idea what happened to Crystal after I went into the house. I did not do that horrible thing to her.”

  “I don’t know what to make of that,” Calvin said. “But we have your confession, and we’ll have to proceed.”

  “I accept that,” Mel said. “Jason, I love you.”

  Dawn turned her head just a fraction so her eyes could meet mine. “You better go,” she said. “We got things to do.”

  I walked off with the rifle, and I didn’t turn to look even when the other panthers began to tear Mel apart. I could hear it, though.

  He didn’t scream after a second.

  I left Jason’s rifle on his back porch, and I drove to work. Somehow having a bodyguard didn’t seem important anymore.

  Chapter 16

  As I served beers and daiquiris and vodka collinses to the people stopping by on their way home from work, I stood back and eyed myself in amazement. I’d worked for hours, serving and smiling and hustling, and I’d never broken down at all. Sure, I’d had to ask four people to repeat their orders. And I’d walked past Sam twice, and he’d said something to me to which I hadn’t responded—I knew this because he’d stopped me to tell me so. But I’d gotten the right plates and drinks to the right tables, and my tips were running about average, which meant I’d been agreeable and hadn’t forgotten anything crucial.

  You’re doing so good, I told myself.I’m so proud of you. You just have to get through this. You can go home in fifteen minutes .

  I wondered how many women had given themselves the same lecture: the girl who’d held her head up at a dance where her date was paying attention to another classmate; the woman who’d been passed by for promotion at her job; the woman who had listened to a dire diagnosis and yet kept her face together. I knew men must have days like this, too.

  Well, maybe not too many people had daysexactly like this.

  Naturally, I’d been turning over in my head Mel’s strange insistence that he was not responsible for Crystal’s crucifixion, during which she’d actually died. His thoughts had had the ring of truth. And really, there was no reason why he would’ve balked at confessing everything when he’d already confessed so much, found peace doing so. Why would someone steal the half-dead Crystal and the wood, and do a deed so disgusting? It would’ve had to have been someone who’d hated Crystal an awful lot, or maybe someone who had hated Mel or Jason. It was an inhuman act, yet I found myself believing in Mel’s dying assertion that he had not done it.

  I was so glad to leave work that I began driving home on automatic pilot. When I’d gotten almost to the turnoff into my driveway, I remembered that I’d told Amelia hours before that I’d meet her at Tray’s house.

  I’d completely forgotten.

  I could forgive myself, considering the day I’d had—if Amelia was okay. But when I remembered Tray’s mean state and his ingestion of vampire blood, I felt a jolt of panic.

  I looked at my watch and saw I was more than forty-five minutes late. Turning around in the next driveway, I drove back to town like a bat out of hell. I was trying to pretend to myself I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t doing a very good job.

  There weren’t any cars in front of the small house. Its windows were dark. I could see the bumper of Tray’s truck peering out from the carport behind the house.

  I drove right by and turned around on a county road about half a mile farther out. Confused and worried, I returned to park outside Tray’s. His house and the adjacent workshop were outside the Bon Temps city limits but not isolated. Tray had maybe a half-acre lot; his little home and the large metal building housing his repair business were right next to a similar setup owned by Brock and Chessie Johnson, who had an upholstery shop. Obviously, Brock and Chessie had retreated to their house for the night. The living room lights were on; as I watched, Chessie pulled the curtains shut, which most people out here didn’t bother to do.

  The night was dark and quiet; the Johnsons’ dog was barking, but that was the only sound. It was too cold for the chorus of bugs that often made the night come alive.

  I thought of several scenarios that could explain the dead look of the house.

  One. The vampire blood still had hold over Tray, and he’d killed Amelia. Right now, he was in his house, in the dark, thinking of ways to kill himself. Or maybe he was waiting for me to come, so he could kill me, too.

  Two. Tray had recovered from his ingestion of vamp blood, and when Amelia had appeared on his doorstep, they’d decided to treat their free afternoon as a honeymoon. They wouldn’t be at all happy if I interrupted them.

  Three. Amelia had come by, found no one at home, and was now back at the house cooking supper for herself and me, because she expected me to drive up at any moment. At least that explanation accounted for the absence of Amelia’s car.

  I tried to think of an even better series of events, but I couldn’t. I pulled out my cell phone and tried my home number. I heard my own voice on the answering machine. Next, I tried Amelia’s cell. It went to voice mail after three rings. I was running out of happy options. Figuring that a phone call would be less intrusive than a knock at the door, I tried Tray’s number next. I could hear the faint ring of the phone inside . . . but no one answered it.

  I called Bill. I didn’t think about it for more than a second. I just did it.

  “Bill Compton,” said the familiar cool voice.

  “Bill,” I said, and then couldn’t finish.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m sitting in my car outside of Tray Dawson’s house.”

  “The Were who owns the motorcycle repair shop.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m coming.”

  He was there in less than ten minutes. His car pulled up behind mine. I was pulled over on the shoulder, because I hadn’t wanted to drive up onto the gravel in front of the house.

  “I’m weak,” I said, when he got in beside me. “I shouldn’t have called you. But I swear to God, I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You didn’t call Eric.” It was a simple observation.

  “Take too long,” I said. I told him what I’d done. “I can’t believe I forgot Amelia,” I said, stricken by my self-centeredness.

  “I think forgetting one thing after such a day is actually permissible, Sookie,” Bill said.

  “No, it isn’t,” I said. “It’s just that . . . I can’t go in there and find them dead. I just can’t do it. My courage has just collapsed.”

  He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “What’s one more dead person to me?” he said. And then he was out of the car and moving silently in the faint light peeking around the curtains of the house next door. He got to the front door, listened intently. He didn’t hear anything, I knew, because he opened the door and stepped inside.

  Just as he vanished, my cell phone rang. I jumped so hard I almost hit my head on the roof. I dropped the phone and had to grope for it.

  “Hello?” I said, full of fear.

  “Hey, did you call? I was in the shower,” Amelia said, and I collapsed over the steering wheel, thinking,Thank you God thank you God thank you thank you .

  “You okay?” Amelia asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m okay. Where is Tray? Is he there with you?”

  “Nope. I went to his house, but he wasn’t there. I waited a while for you, but you didn’t show, so I figured he’d gone to the doctor, and I decided you must have been held up at work or something. I went back to the insurance agency, and I just got home about thirty minutes ago. What’s up?”

  “I’ll be there soon,” I said. “Lock the doors and don’t let anyone in.”

  “Doors are locked; no one’s knocking,” she
said.

  “Don’t let me in,” I said, “unless I give you the password.”

  “Sure, Sookie,” she said, and I could tell she thought I’d gone over the edge. “What’s the password?”

  “Fairypants,” I said, and how I came up with that I have no idea. It simply seemed super unlikely that anyone else in the world would say it.

  “I got it,” Amelia said. “Fairypants.”

  Bill was back at the car. “I’ve got to go,” I said, and hung up. When he opened the door, the dome light showed his face. It looked grim.

  “He’s not there,” he said immediately. “But there’s been a fight.”

  “Blood?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lots?”

  “He could still be alive. From the way it smelled, I don’t think it was all his.”

  My shoulders slumped. “I don’t know what to do,” I confessed, and it felt almost good to say it out loud. “I don’t know where to go to find him or how to help him. He’s supposed to be working as my bodyguard. But he went out in the woods last night and met up with a woman who said she was your new girlfriend. She gave him a drink. It was bad vampire blood, and it made him sick as the flu.” I looked over at Bill. “Maybe she got it from Bubba. I haven’t seen him to ask. I’m kind of worried about him.” I knew Bill could see me far more clearly than I could see him. I spread my hands in query. Did he know this woman?

  Bill looked at me. His mouth curved up in a rather bitter little smile. “I’m not dating anyone,” he said.

  I decided to completely ignore the emotional slant. I didn’t have the time or the energy tonight. I’d been right when I’d discounted the mysterious woman’s identity. “So this was someone who could pretend to be a fangbanger, someone convincing enough to overcome Tray’s good sense, someone who could put him under a spell so he’d drink the blood.”

  “Bubba doesn’t have much good sense at all,” Bill said. “Even though some fairy magic doesn’t work on vampires, I don’t think he’d be hard to bespell.”

  “Have you seen him tonight?”

  “He came over to my place to put drinks in his cooler, but he seemed weak and disoriented. After he drank a couple of bottles of TrueBlood, he seemed to be better. The last I saw of him, he was walking across the cemetery toward your house.”

  “I guess we better go there next.”

  “I’ll follow you.” Bill went to his own car, and we set off to drive the short distance to my place. But Bill caught the light at the intersection of the highway and Hummingbird Road, and I was ahead of him by quite a few seconds. I pulled up in back of the house, which was well-lit. Amelia had never worried about an electric bill in her life; it just made me want to cry sometimes when I followed her around turning off switch after switch.

  I got out of the car and hurried for the back steps, all ready to say, “Fairypants!” when Amelia came to the door. Bill would be there in less than a minute, and we could make a plan on how to find Tray. When Bill got there, he’d check on Bubba; I couldn’t go out in the woods. I was proud of myself for not rushing into the trees to find the vampire.

  I had so much to think about that I didn’t think about the most obvious danger.

  There’s no excuse for my lack of attention to detail.

  A woman by herself always has to be alert, and a woman who’s had the experiences I’ve had has extra cause for alarm when blips are on her radar. The security light was still on at the house and and the backyard looked normal, it was true. I had even glimpsed Amelia in the kitchen through a window. I hurried to the back steps, my purse slung over my shoulder, my trowel and water guns inside it, my keys in my hand.

  But anything can be hiding in the shadows, and it takes only a moment’s inattention for a trap to spring.

  I heard a few words in a language I didn’t recognize, but for a second I thought,He’s mumbling , and I couldn’t imagine what a man behind me would be mumbling, and I was about to put my foot on the first step to the back porch.

  And then I didn’t know a thing.

  Chapter 17

  I thought I was in a cave. It felt like a cave: cool, damp. And the sound was funny.

  My thoughts were anything but speedy. However, the sense of wrongness rose to the top of my consciousness with a kind of dismaying certainty. I was not where I was supposed to be, and I shouldn’t be wherever I was. At the moment, these seemed like two separate and distinct thoughts.

  Someone had bopped me on the head.

  I thought about that. My head didn’t feel sore, exactly: it felt thick, as if I had a bad cold and had taken a serious decon gestant on top of that. So, I concluded (with all the speed of a turtle), I had been knocked out magically rather than physically. The result was about the same. I felt like hell, and I was scared to open my eyes. At the same time, I very much wanted to know who was in this space with me. I braced myself and made my eyelids open. I caught a glimpse of a lovely and indifferent face, and then my eyelids clamped shut again. They seemed to be operating on their own timetable.

  “She’s joining us,” said someone.

  “Good; we can have some fun,” said another voice.

  That didn’t sound promising at all. I didn’t think the fun was going to be anything I could enjoy, too.

  I figured I could get rescued anytime now, and that would be just fine.

  But the cavalry didn’t ride in. I sighed and forced my eyes open again. This time the lids stayed apart, and by the light of a torch—a real, honest-to-God flaming wood torch—I examined my captors. One was a male fairy. He was as lovely as Claudine’s brother Claude and just about as charming—which is to say, not at all. He had black hair, like Claude’s, and handsome features and a buff body, like Claude’s. But his face couldn’t even simulate interest in me. Claude was at least able to fake it when circumstances required that.

  I looked at Kidnapper Number Two. She hardly seemed more promising. She was a fairy, too, and therefore lovely, but she didn’t appear to be any more lighthearted or fun-loving than her companion. Plus, she was wearing a body stocking, or something very like one, and she looked good in it, which in and of itself was enough to make me hate her.

  “We have the right woman,” Two said. “The vampire-loving whore. I think the one with short hair was a bit more attractive.”

  “As if any human can truly be lovely,” said One.

  It wasn’t enough to be kidnapped; I had to be insulted, too. Though their words were the last thing in the world I needed to be worrying about, a little spark of anger lit in my chest.Just keep that up, asshole, I thought.You just wait till my great-grandfather gets ahold of you .

  I hoped they hadn’t hurt Amelia or Bubba.

  I hoped Bill was all right.

  I hoped he’d called Eric and my great-grandfather.

  That was a lot of hoping. As long as I was in the wishful-thinking zone, I wished that Eric was tuned in to my very great distress and my very real fear. Could he track me by my emotions? That would be wonderful, because I was certainly full of them. This was the worst fix I’d ever been in. Years ago, when Bill and I had exchanged blood, he’d told me he’d be able to find me. I hoped he’d been telling the truth, and I hoped that ability hadn’t faded with time. I was willing to be saved by just about anybody. Soon.

  Kidnapper One slid his hands under my armpits and yanked me to a sitting position. For the first time, I realized my hands were numb. I looked down to see they were tied with a strip of leather. Now I was propped up against a wall, and I could see I was not actually in a cave. We were in an abandoned house. There was a hole in the roof, and I could see stars through it. The smell of mildew was strong, almost choking, and under it trailed the scents of rotting wood and wallpaper. There was nothing in the room but my purse, which had been tossed into a corner, and an old framed photograph, which hung crookedly on the wall behind the two fairies. The picture had been taken outside, probably in the nineteen twenties or thirties, and it was of a black family dresse
d up for their picture-taking adventure. They looked like a farming family. At least I was still in my own world, I figured, though probably not for long.

  While I could, I smiled at Thing One and Thing Two. “My great-grandfather is going to kill you,” I said. I even managed to sound pretty happy about that. “You just wait.”

  One laughed, tossing his black hair behind him in a male modelly gesture. “He’ll never find us. He’ll yield and step down rather than see you killed in a slow and painful way. Heloooooves humans.”

  Two said, “He should have gone to the Summerland long ago. Consorting with humans will kill us off even faster than we are dying already. Breandan will seal us off. We’ll be safe. Niall is out of date.”

  Like he’d expired on the shelves or something.

  “Tell me you have a boss,” I said. “Tell me you’re not the brains of the operation.” I was sort of aware that I was seriously addled, probably as a result of the spell that had knocked me out, but knowing I wasn’t myself didn’t seem to stop me talking, which was a pity.

  “We owe allegiance to Breandan,” One said proudly, as if that would make everything clear to me.

  Instead of connecting their words with my great-grandfather’s archenemy, I pictured the Brandon I’d gone to high school with, who’d been a running back on the football team. He’d gone to Louisiana Tech and then into the air force. “He got out of the service?” I said.

  They stared at me with a total lack of comprehension. I couldn’t really fault them for that. “Service of whom?” asked Two.

  I was still blaming her for saying I was a skank, and I decided I wasn’t speaking to her. “So, what’s the program?” I asked One.

  “We wait to hear from Niall, who will respond to Breandan’s demands,” he said. “Breandan will seal us all in Faery, and we will never have to deal with your like again.”