“You two had a fight before Sookie’s encounter with the maenad?” Eric asked. “Is that what I heard Sookie say?”
“That’s our business,” I snapped, and the three vampires smiled at each other. I didn’t like that one bit. “By the way, why did you want us to come over here tonight, anyway?” I asked, hoping to get off of the topic of Bill and me.
“You remember your promise to me, Sookie? That you would use your mental ability to help me out, as long as I let the humans involved live?”
“Of course I remember.” I am not one to forget a promise, especially one made to a vampire.
“Since Bill has been appointed investigator of Area 5, we have not had a lot of mysteries. But Area 6, in Texas, has need of your special asset. So we have loaned you out.”
I realized I’d been rented, like a chainsaw or backhoe. I wondered if the vampires of Dallas had had to put down a deposit against damage.
“I won’t go without Bill.” I looked Eric steadily in the eye. Bill’s fingers gave me a little squeeze, so I knew I’d said the right thing.
“He’ll be there. We drove a hard bargain,” Eric said, smiling broadly. The effect was really disconcerting, because he was happy about something, and his fangs were out. “We were afraid they might keep you, or kill you, so an escort was part of our deal all along. And who better than Bill? If anything should render Bill incapable of guarding you, we will send another escort right out. And the vampires of Dallas have agreed to providing a car and chauffeur, lodgings and meals, and of course, a nice fee. Bill will get a percentage of that.”
When I’d be doing the work? “You must work out your financial arrangement with Bill,” Eric said smoothly. “I am sure he will at least recompense you for your time away from your bar job.”
Had Ann Landers ever covered “When Your Date Becomes Your Manager”?
“Why a maenad?” I asked, startling all of them. I hoped I was pronouncing the word correctly. “Naiads are water and dryads are trees, right? So why a maenad, out there in the woods? Weren’t maenads just women driven mad by the god Bacchus?”
“Sookie, you have unexpected depths,” Eric said, after an appreciable pause. I didn’t tell him I’d learned that from reading a mystery. Let him think I read ancient Greek literature in the original language. It couldn’t hurt.
Chow said, “The god entered some women so completely that they became immortal, or very close to it. Bacchus was the god of the grape, of course, so bars are very interesting to maenads. In fact, so interesting that they don’t like other creatures of the darkness becoming involved. Maenads consider that the violence sparked by the consumption of alcohol belongs to them; that’s what they feed off, now that no one formally worships their god. And they are attracted to pride.”
That rang a chime. Hadn’t Bill and I both been feeling our pride, tonight?
“We had only heard rumors one was in the area,” Eric said. “Until Bill brought you in.”
“So what was she warning you of? What does she want?”
“Tribute,” Pam said. “We think.”
“What kind?”
Pam shrugged. It seemed that was the only answer I was going to get.
“Or what?” I asked. Again with the stares. I gave a deep sigh of exasperation. “What’s she gonna do if you don’t pay her tribute?”
“Send her madness.” Bill sounded worried.
“Into the bar? Merlotte’s?” Though there were plenty of bars in the area.
The vampires eyed each other.
“Or into one of us,” Chow said. “It has happened. The Halloween massacre of 1876, in St. Petersburg.”
They all nodded solemnly. “I was there,” Eric said. “It took twenty of us to clean up. And we had to stake Gregory, it took all of us to do that. The maenad, Phryne, received tribute after that, you can be sure.”
For the vampires to stake one of their own, things had to be pretty serious. Eric had staked a vampire who had stolen from him, and Bill had told me Eric had had to pay a severe penalty. Who to, Bill hadn’t said, and I hadn’t asked. There were some things I could live quite well without knowing.
“So you’ll give a tribute to this maenad?”
They were exchanging thoughts on this, I could tell. “Yes,” Eric said. “It is better if we do.”
“I guess maenads are pretty hard to kill,” Bill said, a question in his voice.
Eric shuddered. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Oh, yes.”
DURING OUR RIDE back to Bon Temps, Bill and I were silent. I had a lot of questions about the evening, but I was tired from my bones out to my skin.
“Sam should know about this,” I said, as we stopped at my house.
Bill came around to open my door. “Why, Sookie?” He took my hand to pull me from the car, knowing that I could barely walk.
“Because . . .” and then I stopped dead. Bill knew Sam was supernatural, but I didn’t want to remind him. Sam owned a bar, and we had been closer to Bon Temps than Shreveport when the maenad had interfered.
“He owns a bar, but he should be all right,” Bill said reasonably. “Besides, the maenad said the message was for Eric.”
That was true.
“You think too much about Sam to suit me,” Bill said, and I gaped up at him.
“You’re jealous?” Bill was very wary when other vampires seemed to be admiring me, but I’d assumed that was just territorial. I didn’t know how to feel about this new development. I’d never had anyone feel jealous of my attentions before.
Bill didn’t answer, in a very snitty way.
“Hmmm,” I said thoughtfully. “Well, well, well.” I was smiling to myself as Bill helped me up the steps and through the old house, into my room; the room my grandmother had slept in for so many years. Now the walls were painted pale yellow, the woodwork was off-white, the curtains were off-white with bright flowers scattered over them. The bed had a matching cover.
I went into the bathroom for a moment to brush my teeth and take care of necessities, and came out still in Eric’s shirt.
“Take it off,” Bill said.
“Look, Bill, normally I’d be hot to trot, but tonight—”
“I just hate to see you in his shirt.”
Well, well, well. I could get used to this. On the other hand, if he carried it to extremes, it could be a nuisance.
“Oh, all right,” I said, making a sigh he could hear from yards away. “I guess I’ll just have to take this ole shirt off.” I unbuttoned it slowly, knowing Bill’s eyes were watching my hands move down the buttons, pulling the shirt apart a little more each time. Finally, I doffed it and stood there in Pam’s white underwear.
“Oh,” Bill breathed, and that was tribute enough for me. Maenads be damned, just seeing Bill’s face made me feel like a goddess.
Maybe I’d go to Foxy Femme Lingerie in Ruston my next day off. Or maybe Bill’s newly acquired clothing store carried lingerie?
EXPLAINING TO SAM that I needed to go to Dallas wasn’t easy. Sam had been wonderful to me when I’d lost my grandmother, and I counted him as a good friend, a great boss, and (every now and then) a sexual fantasy. I just told Sam that I was taking a little vacation; God knows, I’d never asked for one before. But he pretty much had figured out what the deal was. Sam didn’t like it. His brilliant blue eyes looked hot and his face stony, and even his red-blond hair seemed to sizzle. Though he practically muzzled himself to keep from saying so, Sam obviously thought Bill should not have agreed to my going. But Sam didn’t know all the circumstances of my dealings with the vampires, just as only Bill, of the vampires I knew, realized that Sam was a shapeshifter. And I tried not to remind Bill. I didn’t want Bill thinking about Sam any more than he already did. Bill might decide Sam was an enemy, and I definitely didn’t want Bill to do that. Bill is a really bad enemy to have.
I am good at keeping secrets and keeping my face blank, after years of reading unwanted items out of peoples’ minds. But I have to confess that compartmentaliz
ing Bill and Sam took a lot of energy.
Sam had leaned back in his chair after he’d agreed to give me the time off, his wiry build hidden by a big kingfisher-blue Merlotte’s Bar tee shirt. His jeans were old but clean, and his boots were heavy-soled and ancient. I was sitting on the edge of the visitor’s chair in front of Sam’s desk, the office door shut behind me. I knew no one could be standing outside the door listening; after all, the bar was as noisy as usual, with the jukebox wailing a zydeco tune and the bellowing of people who’d had a few drinks. But still, when you talked about something like the maenad, you wanted to lower your voice, and I leaned across the desk.
Sam automatically mimicked my posture, and I put my hand on his arm and said in a whisper, “Sam, there’s a maenad out by the Shreveport road.” Sam’s face went blank for a long second before he whooped with laughter.
Sam didn’t get over his convulsions for at least three minutes, during which time I got pretty mad. “I’m sorry,” he kept saying, and off he’d go again. You know how irritating that can be when you’re the one who triggered it? He came around the desk, still trying to smother his chuckles. I stood because he was standing, but I was fuming. He grasped my shoulders. “I’m sorry, Sookie,” he repeated. “I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard they’re nasty. Why does this concern you? The maenad, that is.”
“Because she’s not happy, as you would know if you could see the scars on my back,” I snapped, and his face changed then, by golly.
“You were hurt? How did this happen?”
So I told him, trying to leave some of the drama out of it, and toning down the healing process employed by the vampires of Shreveport. He still wanted to see the scars. I turned around, and he pulled up my tee shirt, not past bra strap level. He didn’t make a sound, but I felt a touch on my back, and after a second I realized Sam had kissed my skin. I shivered. He pulled the tee shirt over my scars and turned me around.
“I’m very sorry,” he said, with complete sincerity. He wasn’t laughing now, wasn’t even close to it. He was awful close to me. I could practically feel the heat radiating from his skin, electricity crackling through the small fine hairs on his arms.
I took a deep breath. “I’m worried she’ll turn her attention to you,” I explained. “What do maenads want as tribute, Sam?”
“My mother used to tell my father that they love a proud man,” he said, and for a moment I thought he was still teasing me. But I looked at his face, and he was not. “Maenads love nothing more than to tear a proud man down to size. Literally.”
“Yuck,” I said. “Anything else satisfy them?”
“Large game. Bears, tigers, so on.”
“Hard to find a tiger in Louisiana. Maybe you could find a bear, but how’d you get it to the maenad’s territory?” I pondered this for a while, but didn’t come to any answer. “I assume she’d want it alive,” I said, a question in my voice.
Sam, who seemed to have been watching me instead of thinking over the problem, nodded, and then he leaned forward and kissed me.
I should have seen it coming.
He was so warm after Bill, whose body never got up to warm. Tepid, maybe. Sam’s lips actually felt hot, and his tongue, too. The kiss was deep, intense, unexpected; like the excitement you feel when someone gives you a present you didn’t know you wanted. His arms were around me, mine were around him, and we were giving it everything we had, until I came back to earth.
I pulled away a little, and he slowly raised his head from mine.
“I do need to get out of town for a little while,” I said.
“Sorry, Sookie, but I’ve been wanting to do that for years.”
There were a lot of ways I could go from that statement, but I ratcheted up my determination and took the high road. “Sam, you know I am . . .”
“In love with Bill,” he finished my sentence.
I wasn’t completely sure I was in love with Bill, but I loved him, and I had committed myself to him. So to simplify the matter, I nodded in agreement.
I couldn’t read Sam’s thoughts clearly, because he was a supernatural being. But I would have been a dunce, a telepathic null, not to feel the waves of frustration and longing that rolled off of him.
“The point I was trying to make,” I said, after a minute, during which time we disentangled and stepped away from each other, “is that if this maenad takes a special interest in bars, this is a bar run by someone who is not exactly run-of-the-mill human, like Eric’s bar in Shreveport. So you better watch out.”
Sam seemed to take heart that I was warning him, seemed to get some hope from it. “Thanks for telling me, Sookie. The next time I change, I’ll be careful in the woods.”
I hadn’t even thought of Sam encountering the maenad in his shapeshifting adventures, and I had to sit down abruptly as I pictured that.
“Oh, no,” I told him emphatically. “Don’t change at all.”
“It’s full moon in four days,” Sam said, after a glance at the calendar. “I’ll have to. I’ve already got Terry scheduled to work for me that night.”
“What do you tell him?”
“I tell him I have a date. He hasn’t looked at the calendar to figure out that every time I ask him to work, it’s a full moon.”
“That’s something. Did the police come back any more about Lafayette?”
“No.” Sam shook his head. “And I hired a friend of Lafayette’s, Khan.”
“As in Sher Khan?”
“As in Chaka Khan.”
“Okay, but can he cook?”
“He’s been fired from the Shrimp Boat.”
“What for?”
“Artistic temperament, I gather.” Sam’s voice was dry.
“Won’t need much of that around here,” I observed, my hand on the doorknob. I was glad Sam and I had had a conversation, just to ease down from our tense and unprecedented situation. We had never embraced each other at work. In fact, we’d only kissed once, when Sam brought me home after our single date months before. Sam was my boss, and starting something with your boss is always a bad idea. Starting something with your boss when your boyfriend is a vampire is another bad idea, possibly a fatal idea. Sam needed to find a woman. Quickly.
When I’m nervous, I smile. I was beaming when I said, “Back to work,” and stepped through the door, shutting it behind me. I had a muddle of feelings about everything that had happened in Sam’s office, but I pushed it all away, and prepared to hustle some drinks.
There was nothing unusual about the crowd that night in Merlotte’s. My brother’s friend Hoyt Fortenberry was drinking with some of his cronies. Kevin Prior, whom I was more accustomed to seeing in uniform, was sitting with Hoyt, but Kevin was not having a happy evening. He looked as though he’d rather be in his patrol car with his partner, Kenya. My brother, Jason, came in with his more and more frequent arm decoration, Liz Barrett. Liz always acted glad to see me, but she never tried to ingratiate herself, which earned her high points in my book. My grandmother would have been glad to know Jason was dating Liz so often. Jason had played the scene for years, until the scene was pretty darned tired of Jason. After all, there is a finite pool of women in Bon Temps and its surrounding area, and Jason had fished that pool for years. He needed to restock.
Besides, Liz seemed willing to ignore Jason’s little brushes with the law.
“Baby sis!” he said in greeting. “Bring me and Liz a Seven-and-Seven apiece, would you?”
“Glad to,” I said, smiling. Carried away on a wave of optimism, I listened in to Liz for a moment; she was hoping that very soon Jason would pop the question. The sooner the better, she thought, because she was pretty sure she was pregnant.
Good thing I’ve had years of concealing what I was thinking. I brought them each a drink, carefully shielding myself from any other stray thoughts I might catch, and tried to think what I should do. That’s one of the worst things about being telepathic; things people are thinking, not talking about, are things other people (lik
e me) really don’t want to know. Or shouldn’t want to know. I’ve heard enough secrets to choke a camel, and believe me, not a one of them was to my advantage in any way.
If Liz was pregnant, the last thing she needed was a drink, no matter who the baby’s daddy was.
I watched her carefully, and she took a tiny sip from her glass. She wrapped her hand around it to partially hide it from public view. She and Jason chatted for a minute, then Hoyt called out to him, and Jason swung around on the bar stool to face his high school buddy. Liz stared down at her drink, as if she’d really like to gulp it in one swallow. I handed her a similar glass of plain 7UP and whisked the mived drink away.
Liz’s big round brown eyes gazed up at me in astonishment. “Not for you,” I said very quietly. Liz’s olive complexion turned as white as it could. “You have good sense,” I said. I was struggling to explain why I’d intervened, when it was against my personal policy to act on what I learned in such a surreptitious way. “You have good sense, you can do this right.”
Jason turned back around then, and I got a call for another pitcher from one of my tables. As I moved out from behind the bar to answer the summons, I noticed Portia Bellefleur in the doorway. Portia peered around the dark bar as though she were searching for someone. To my astonishment, that someone turned out to be me.
“Sookie, do you have a minute?” she asked.
I could count the personal conversations I’d had with Portia on one hand, almost on one finger, and I couldn’t imagine what was on her mind.
“Sit over there,” I said, nodding at an empty table in my area. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
“Oh, all right. And I’d better order a glass of wine, I guess. Merlot.”
“I’ll have it right there.” I poured her glass carefully, and put it on a tray. After checking visually to make sure all my customers looked content, I carried the tray over to Portia’s table and sat opposite her. I perched on the edge of the chair, so anyone who ran out of a drink could see I was fixing to hop up in just a second.
“What can I do for you?” I reached up to check that my ponytail was secure and smiled at Portia.
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