Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set

by Charlaine Harris

  The four men who’d been trying to ignore Jane while sipping their pitcher at the speed of a turtle finished their beer and left, each dropping a dollar on the table by way of tip. Big spenders. I’d never get my driveway regraveled with customers like these.

  With only half an hour to wait, Arlene did her closing chores and asked if she could go on and leave with Buck. Her kids were still with her mom, so she and Buck might have the trailer to themselves for a little while.

  “Bill coming home soon?” she asked me as she pulled on her coat. Buck was talking football with Sam.

  I shrugged. He’d called me three nights before, telling me he’d gotten to “Seattle” safely and was meeting with—whomever he was supposed to meet with. The Caller ID had read “Unavailable.” I felt like that said quite a lot about the whole situation. I felt like that was a bad sign.

  “You . . . missing him?” Her voice was sly.

  “What do you think?” I asked, with a little smile at the corners of my mouth. “You go on home, have a good time.”

  “Buck is very good at good times,” she said, almost leering.

  “Lucky you.”

  So Jane Bodehouse was the only customer in Merlotte’s when Pam arrived. Jane hardly counted; she was so out of it.

  Pam is a vampire, and she is co-owner of Fangtasia, a tourist bar in Shreveport. She’s Eric’s second in command. Pam is blond, probably two hundred-plus years old, and actually has a sense of humor—not a vampire trademark. If a vampire can be your friend, she was as close as I’d gotten.

  She sat on a bar stool and faced me over the shining expanse of wood.

  This was ominous. I had never seen Pam anywhere but Fangtasia. “What’s up?” I said by way of greeting. I smiled at her, but I was tense all over.

  “Where’s Bubba?” she asked, in her precise voice. She looked over my shoulder. “Eric’s going to be angry if Bubba didn’t make it here.” For the first time, I noticed that Pam had a faint accent, but I couldn’t pin it down. Maybe just the inflections of antique English.

  “Bubba’s in the back, in Sam’s office,” I said, focusing on her face. I wished the ax would go on and fall. Sam came to stand beside me, and I introduced them. Pam gave him a more significant greeting than she would have given a plain human (whom she might not have acknowledged at all), since Sam was a shape-shifter. And I expected to see a flicker of interest, since Pam is omnivorous in matters of sex, and Sam is an attractive supernatural being. Though vampires aren’t well-known for facial expressions, I decided that Pam’s was definitely unhappy.

  “What’s the deal?” I asked, after a moment of silence.

  Pam met my gaze. We’re both blue-eyed blonds, but that’s like saying two animals are both dogs. That’s as far as any resemblance went. Pam’s hair was straight and pale, and her eyes were very dark. Now they were full of trouble. She looked at Sam, her stare significant. Without a word, he went over to help Jane’s son, a worn-looking man in his thirties, shift Jane to the car.

  “Bill’s missing,” Pam said, shooting from the conversational hip.

  “No, he’s not. He’s in Seattle,” I said. Willfully obtuse. I had learned that word from my Word-A-Day calendar only that morning, and here I was getting to use it.

  “He lied to you.”

  I absorbed that, made a “come on” gesture with my hand.

  “He’s been in Mississippi all this time. He drove to Jackson.”

  I stared down at the heavily polyurethane-coated wood of the bar. I’d pretty much figured Bill had lied to me, but hearing it said out loud, baldly, hurt like hell. He’d lied to me, and he was missing.

  “So . . . what are you going to do to find him?” I asked, and hated how unsteady my voice was.

  “We’re looking. We’re doing everything we can,” Pam said. “Whoever got him may be after you, too. That’s why Eric sent Bubba.”

  I couldn’t answer. I was struggling to control myself.

  Sam had returned, I suppose when he saw how upset I was. From about an inch behind my back, he said, “Someone tried to grab Sookie on her way into work tonight. Bubba saved her. The body’s out behind the bar. We were going to move him after we’d closed.”

  “So quickly,” Pam said. She sounded even unhappier. She gave Sam a once-over, nodded. He was a fellow supernatural being, though that was definitely second best to him being another vampire. “I’d better go over the car and see what I can find.” Pam took it quite for granted that we’d dispose of the body ourselves rather than doing something more official. Vampires are having trouble accepting the authority of law enforcement and the obligation of citizens to notify the police when trouble arises. Though vamps can’t join the armed services, they can become cops, and actually enjoy the hell out of the job. But vamp cops are often pariahs to the other undead.

  I would a lot rather think about vampire cops than what Pam had just told me.

  “When did Bill go missing?” Sam asked. His voice managed to stay level, but there was anger just under the surface.

  “He was due in last night,” Pam said. My head snapped up. I hadn’t known that. Why hadn’t Bill told me he was coming home? “He was going to drive into Bon Temps, phone us at Fangtasia to let us know he’d made it home, and meet with us tonight.” This was practically babbling, for a vampire.

  Pam punched in numbers on a cell phone; I could hear the little beeps. I listened to her resultant conversation with Eric. After relaying the facts, Pam told him, “She’s sitting here. She’s not speaking.”

  She pressed the phone into my hand. I automatically put it to my ear.

  “Sookie, are you listening?” I knew Eric could hear the sounds of my hair moving over the receiver, the whisper of my breath.

  “I can tell you are,” he said. “Listen and obey me. For now, tell no one what’s happened. Act just as normal. Live your life as you always do. One of us will be watching you all the time, whether you think so or not. Even in the day, we’ll find some way to guard you. We will avenge Bill, and we will protect you.”

  Avenge Bill? So Eric was sure Bill was dead. Well, nonexistent.

  “I didn’t know he was supposed to be coming in last night,” I said, as if that was the most important fact I’d learned.

  “He had—bad news he was going to tell you,” Pam said suddenly.

  Eric overheard her and made a disgusted sound. “Tell Pam to shut up,” he said, sounding overtly furious for the first time since I’d known him. I didn’t see any need to relay the message, because I figured Pam had been able to hear him, too. Most vampires have very acute hearing.

  “So you knew this bad news and you knew he was coming back,” I said. Not only was Bill missing and possibly dead—permanently dead—but he had lied to me about where he was going and why, and he’d kept some important secret from me, something concerning me. The pain went so deep, I could not even feel the wound. But I knew I would later.

  I handed the phone back to Pam, and I turned and left the bar.

  I faltered as I was getting into my car. I should stay at Merlotte’s to help dispose of the body. Sam wasn’t a vampire, and he was only involved in this for my sake. This wasn’t fair to him.

  But after only a second’s hesitation, I drove away. Bubba could help him, and Pam—Pam, who knew all, while I knew nothing.

  Sure enough, I caught a glimpse of a white face in the woods when I got home. I almost called out to the watcher, invited the vampire in to at least sit on the couch during the night. But then I thought, No. I had to be by myself. None of this was any of my doing. I had no action to take. I had to remain passive, and I was ignorant through no will of my own.

  I was as wounded and as angry as it was possible for me to be. Or at least I thought I was. Subsequent revelations would prove me wrong.

  I stomped inside my house and locked the door behind me. A lock wouldn’t keep the vampire out, of course, but lack of an invitation to enter would. The vampire could definitely keep any humans out, at le
ast until dawn.

  I put on my old long-sleeved blue nylon gown, and I sat at my kitchen table staring blankly at my hands. I wondered where Bill was now. Was he even walking the earth; or was he a pile of ashes in some barbecue pit? I thought of his dark brown hair, the thick feel of it beneath my fingers. I considered the secrecy of his planned return. After what seemed like a minute or two, I glanced at the clock on the stove. I’d been sitting at the table, staring into space, for over an hour.

  I should go to bed. It was late, and cold, and sleeping would be the normal thing to do. But nothing in my future would be normal again. Oh, wait! If Bill were gone, my future would be normal.

  No Bill. So, no vampires: no Eric, Pam, or Bubba.

  No supernatural creatures: no Weres, shape-shifters, or maenads. I wouldn’t have encountered them, either, if it hadn’t been for my involvement with Bill. If he’d never come into Merlotte’s, I’d just be waiting tables, listening to the unwanted thoughts of those around me: the petty greed, the lust, the disillusionment, the hopes, and the fantasies. Crazy Sookie, the village telepath of Bon Temps, Louisiana.

  I’d been a virgin until Bill. Now the only sex I might possibly have would be with JB du Rone, who was so lovely that you could almost overlook the fact that he was dumb as a stump. He had so few thoughts that his companionship was nearly comfortable for me. I could even touch JB without receiving unpleasant pictures. But Bill . . . I found that my right hand was clenched in a fist, and I pounded it on the table so hard, it hurt like hell.

  Bill had told me that if anything happened to him, I was to “go to” Eric. I’d never been sure if he was telling me that Eric would see to it that I received some financial legacy of Bill’s, or that Eric would protect me from other vampires, or that I’d be Eric’s . . . well, that I’d have to have the same relationship with Eric that I had with Bill. I’d told Bill I wasn’t going to be passed around like a Christmas fruitcake.

  But Eric had already come to me, so I didn’t even have the chance to decide whether or not to follow Bill’s last piece of advice.

  I lost the trail of my thought. It had never been a clear one anyway.

  Oh, Bill, where are you? I buried my face in my hands.

  My head was throbbing with exhaustion, and even my cozy kitchen was chilly in this small hour. I rose to go to bed, though I knew I wouldn’t sleep. I needed Bill with such gut-clenching intensity that I wondered if it was somehow abnormal, if I’d been enchanted by some supernatural power.

  Though my telepathic ability provided immunity from the vampires’ glamour, maybe I was vulnerable to another power? Or maybe I was just missing the only man I’d ever loved. I felt eviscerated, empty, and betrayed. I felt worse than I had when my grandmother had died, worse than when my parents had drowned. When my parents had died, I’d been very young, and maybe I hadn’t fully comprehended, all at once, that they were permanently gone. It was hard to remember now. When my grandmother had died a few months ago, I had taken comfort in the ritual surrounding death in the South.

  And I’d known they hadn’t willingly left me.

  I found myself standing in the kitchen doorway. I switched off the overhead light.

  Once I was wrapped up in bed in the dark, I began crying, and I didn’t stop for a long, long time. It was not a night to count my blessings. It was a night when every loss I’d ever had pressed hard on me. It did seem I’d had more bad luck than most people. Though I made a token attempt to fend off a deluge of self-pity, I wasn’t too successful. It was pretty much twined in there with the misery of not knowing Bill’s fate.

  I wanted Bill to curl up against my back; I wanted his cool lips on my neck. I wanted his white hands running down my stomach. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted him to laugh off my terrible suspicions. I wanted to tell him about my day; about the stupid problem I was having with the gas company, and the new channels our cable company had added. I wanted to remind him that he needed a new washer on the sink in his bathroom, let him know that my brother, Jason, had found out he wasn’t going to be a father after all (which was good, since he wasn’t a husband, either).

  The sweetest part of being a couple was sharing your life with someone else.

  But my life, evidently, had not been good enough to share.

  Chapter Three

  WHEN THE SUN came up, I’d managed a half hour of sleep. I started to rise and make some coffee, but there didn’t seem to be much point. I just stayed in bed. The phone rang during the morning, but I didn’t pick it up. The doorbell rang, but I didn’t answer it.

  At some point toward the middle of the afternoon, I realized that there was one thing I had to do, the task Bill had insisted on my accomplishing if he was delayed. This situation exactly fit what he’d told me.

  Now I sleep in the largest bedroom, formerly my grandmother’s. I wobbled across the hall to my former room. A couple of months before, Bill had taken out the floor of my old closet and made it into a trapdoor. He’d established a lighttight hidey-hole for himself in the crawl space under the house. He’d done a great job.

  I made sure I couldn’t be seen from the window before I opened the closet door. The floor of the closet was bare of everything but the carpet, which was an extension of the one cut to fit the room. After I’d retracted the flap that covered the closet floor, I ran a pocketknife around the flooring and eventually pried it up. I looked down into the black box below. It was full: Bill’s computer, a box of disks, even his monitor and printer.

  So Bill had foreseen this might happen, and he’d hidden his work before he’d left. He’d had some faith in me, no matter how faithless he might have been himself. I nodded, and rolled the carpet back into place, fitting it carefully into the corners. On the floor of the closet I put out-of-season things—shoe boxes containing summer shoes, a beach bag filled with big sunbathing towels and one of my many tubes of suntan lotion, and my folding chaise that I used for tanning. I stuck a huge umbrella back in the corner, and decided that the closet looked realistic enough. My sundresses hung from the bar, along with some very lightweight bathrobes and nightgowns. My flare of energy faded as I realized I’d finished the last service Bill had asked of me, and I had no way to let him know I had followed his wishes.

  Half of me (pathetically) wanted to let him know I’d kept the faith; half of me wanted to get in the toolshed and sharpen me some stakes.

  Too conflicted to form any course of action, I crawled back to my bed and hoisted myself in. Abandoning a lifetime of making the best of things, and being strong and cheerful and practical, I returned to wallowing in my grief and my overwhelming sense of betrayal.

  When I woke, it was dark again, and Bill was in bed with me. Oh, thank God! Relief swept over me. Now all would be well. I felt his cool body behind me, and I rolled over, half asleep, and put my arms around him. He eased up my long nylon gown, and his hand stroked my leg. I put my head against his silent chest and nuzzled him. His arms tightened around me, he pressed firmly against me, and I sighed with joy, inserting a hand between us to unfasten his pants. Everything was back to normal.

  Except he smelled different.

  My eyes flew open, and I pushed back against rock-hard shoulders. I let out a little squeak of horror.

  “It’s me,” said a familiar voice.

  “Eric, what are you doing here?”

  “Snuggling.”

  “You son of a bitch! I thought you were Bill! I thought he was back!”

  “Sookie, you need a shower.”

  “What?”

  “Your hair is dirty, and your breath could knock down a horse.”

  “Not that I care what you think,” I said flatly.

  “Go get cleaned up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we have to talk, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to have a long conversation in bed. Not that I have any objection to being in bed with you”—he pressed himself against me to prove how little he objected—“but I’d enjoy it more if I were with the hygi
enic Sookie I’ve come to know.”

  Possibly nothing he could have said would have gotten me out of the bed faster than that. The hot shower felt wonderful to my cold body, and my temper took care of warming up my insides. It wasn’t the first time Eric had surprised me in my own home. I was going to have to rescind his invitation to enter. What had stopped me from that drastic step before—what stopped me now—was the idea that if I ever needed help, and he couldn’t enter, I might be dead before I could yell, “Come in!”

  I’d entered the bathroom carrying my jeans and underwear and a red-and-green Christmas sweater with reindeer on it, because that’s what had been at the top of my drawer. You only get a month to wear the darn things, so I make the most of it. I used a blow-dryer on my hair, wishing Bill were there to comb it out for me. He really enjoyed doing that, and I enjoyed letting him. At that mental image, I almost broke down again, but I stood with my head resting against the wall for a long moment while I gathered my resolve. I took a deep breath, turned to the mirror, and slapped on some makeup. My tan wasn’t great this far into the cold season; but I still had a nice glow, thanks to the tanning bed at Bon Temps Video Rental.

  I’m a summer person. I like the sun, and the short dresses, and the feeling you had many hours of light to do whatever you chose. Even Bill loved the smells of summer; he loved it when he could smell suntan oil and (he told me) the sun itself on my skin.

  But the sweet part of winter was that the nights were much longer—at least, I’d thought so when Bill was around to share those nights with me. I threw my hair-brush across the bathroom. It made a satisfying clatter as it ricocheted into the tub. “You bastard!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Hearing my voice saying such a thing out loud calmed me down as nothing else could have.