Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set

by Charlaine Harris

  “Good God almighty,” Janice said, suddenly looking about five years older. “I forgot and left something where she could reach it.”

  “She does this all the time?”

  “Yeah. That’s why we’re about the fifth beauty salon she’s patronized in the past ten years. The others put up with it for a while, but eventually she did that one thing too many. She’s so rich, and so educated, and she was brought up right. I don’t know why she does stuff like this.”

  We shrugged at each other, the vagaries of the white-collar well-to-do beyond our comprehension. It was a moment of perfect understanding. “I hope you don’t lose her as a customer. I tried to be tactful,” I said.

  “And I really appreciate that. But I would have hated losing those earrings more than losing her as a client. My husband gave them to me. They tend to pinch after a while, and I didn’t even think when I pulled them off.”

  I’d been thanked more than enough. I pulled on my own coat. “I better be off,” I said. “I’ve really enjoyed the wonderful treat.”

  “Thank my brother,” Janice said, her broad smile restored. “And, after all, you just paid for it.” She held up the earrings.

  I was smiling, too, as I left the warmth and camaraderie of the salon, but that didn’t last too long. The thermometer had dropped and the sky was getting darker by the minute. I walked the distance back to the apartment building very briskly. After a chilly ride on a creaky elevator, I was glad to use the key Alcide had given me and step into the warmth. I switched on a lamp and turned on the television for a little company, and I huddled on the couch and thought about the pleasures of the afternoon. Once I’d thawed out, I realized Alcide must have turned down the thermostat. Though pleasant compared to the out-of-doors, the apartment was definitely on the cool side.

  The sound of the key in the door roused me out of my reverie, and Alcide came in with a clipboard full of paperwork. He looked tired and preoccupied, but his face relaxed when he saw me waiting.

  “Janice called me to tell me you’d come by,” he said. His voice warmed up as he spoke. “She wanted me to say thank you again.”

  I shrugged. “I appreciate my hair and my new nails,” I said. “I’ve never done that before.”

  “You’ve never been to a beauty shop before?”

  “My grandmother went every now and then. I had my ends trimmed, once.”

  He looked as stunned as if I’d confessed I’d never seen a flush toilet.

  To cover my embarrassment, I fanned my nails out for his admiration. I hadn’t wanted very long ones, and these were the shortest ones Corinne could in all conscience manage, she had told me. “My toenails match,” I told my host.

  “Let’s see,” he said.

  I untied my sneakers and pulled off my socks. I held out my feet. “Aren’t they pretty?” I asked.

  He was looking at me kind of funny. “They look great,” he said quietly.

  I glanced at the clock on top of the television. “I guess I better go get ready,” I said, trying to figure out how to take a bath without affecting my hair and nails. I thought of Janice’s news about Debbie. “You’re really ready to dress up tonight, right?”

  “Sure,” he said gamely.

  “ ’Cause I’m going all out.”

  That interested him. “That would mean . . . ?”

  “Wait and see.” This was a nice guy, with a nice family, doing me a heavy-duty favor. Okay, he’d been coerced into it. But he was being extremely gracious to me, under any circumstances.

  I ROLLED OUT of my room an hour later. Alcide was standing in the kitchen, pouring himself a Coke. It ran over the edge of the glass while he took me in.

  That was a real compliment.

  While Alcide mopped up the counter with a paper towel, he kept darting glances at me. I turned around slowly.

  I was wearing red—screaming red, fire engine red. I was going to freeze most of the evening, because my dress didn’t have any shoulders, though it did have long sleeves that you slid on separately. It zipped up the back. It flared below the hips, what there was below the hips. My grandmother would have flung herself across the doorsill to keep me from going out the door in this dress. I loved it. I had got it on extreme sale at Tara’s Togs; I suspected Tara had kind of put it aside for me. Acting on a huge and unwise impulse, I’d bought the shoes and lipstick to go with it. And now the nails, thanks to Janice! I had a gray-and-black fringed silk shawl to wrap around myself, and a little bitty bag that matched my shoes. The bag was beaded.

  “Turn around again,” Alcide suggested a little hoarsely. He himself was wearing a conventional black suit with a white shirt and a green patterned tie that matched his eyes. Nothing, apparently, could tame his hair. Maybe he should have gone to Janice’s beauty shop instead of me. He looked handsome and rough, though “attractive” might be a more accurate word than “handsome.”

  I rotated slowly. I wasn’t confident enough to keep my eyebrows from arching in a silent question as I completed my turn.

  “You look mouthwatering,” he said sincerely. I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  “Thanks,” I said, trying not to beam like an idiot.

  I had a trying time getting into Alcide’s truck, what with the shortness of the dress and the highness of the heels, but with Alcide giving me a tactical boost, I managed.

  Our destination was a small place on the corner of Capitol and Roach. It wasn’t impressive from the outside, but the Mayflower Cafe was as interesting as Alcide had predicted. Some of the people at the tables scattered on the black-and-white tile floor were dressed to the nines, like Alcide and me. Some of them were wearing flannel and denim. Some had brought their own wine or liquor. I was glad we weren’t drinking; Alcide had one beer, and that was it. I had iced tea. The food was really good, but not fancy. Dinner was long, drawn-out, and interesting. Lots of people knew Alcide, and they came by the table to say hello to him and to find out who I was. Some of these visitors were involved in the state government, some were in the building trade like Alcide, and some appeared to be friends of Alcide’s dad’s.

  A few of them were not law-abiding men at all; even though I’ve always lived in Bon Temps, I know hoods when I see the product of their brains. I’m not saying they were thinking about bumping off anyone, or bribing senators, or anything specific like that. Their thoughts were greedy—greedy of money, greedy of me, and in one case, greedy of Alcide (to which he was completely oblivious, I could tell).

  But most of all, these men—all of them—were greedy for power. I guess in a state capital, that lust for power was inevitable, even in as poverty-plagued a state as Mississippi.

  The women with the greediest men were almost all extremely well groomed and very expensively dressed. For this one evening, I could match them, and I held my head up. One of them thought I looked like a high-priced whore, but I decided that was a compliment, at least for tonight. At least she thought I was expensive. One woman, a banker, knew Debbie the-former-girlfriend, and she examined me from head to toe, thinking Debbie would want a detailed description.

  None of these people, of course, knew one thing about me. It was wonderful to be among people who had no idea of my background and upbringing, my occupation or my abilities. Determined to enjoy the feeling, I concentrated on not speaking unless I was spoken to, not spilling any food on my beautiful dress, and minding my manners, both table and social. While I was enjoying myself, I figured it would be a pity if I caused Alcide any embarrassment, since I was entering his life so briefly.

  Alcide snatched the bill before I could reach it, and scowled at me when I opened my mouth to protest. I finally gave a little bob of my head. After that silent struggle, I was glad to observe that Alcide was a generous tipper. That raised him in my estimation. To tell the truth, he was entirely too high in my estimation already. I was on the alert to pick out something negative about the man. When we got back in Alcide’s pickup—this time he gave me even more h
elp when he boosted me up to the seat, and I was pretty confident he enjoyed the procedure—we were both quiet and thoughtful.

  “You didn’t talk much at supper,” he said. “You didn’t have a good time?”

  “Oh, sure, I did. I just didn’t think it was a real good time to start broadcasting any opinions.”

  “What did you think of Jake O’Malley?” O’Malley, a man in his early sixties with thick steel-colored eyebrows, had stood talking to Alcide for at least five minutes, all the while stealing little sideways glances at my boobs.

  “I think he’s planning on screwing you six ways from Sunday.”

  It was lucky we hadn’t pulled away from the curb yet. Alcide switched on the overhead light and looked at me. His face was grim. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “He’s going to underbid you on the next job, because he’s bribed one of the women in your office—Thomasina something?—to let him know what you all’s bid is. And then—”

  “What?”

  I was glad the heater was running full blast. When werewolves got mad, you could feel it in the air around you. I had so hoped I wouldn’t have to explain myself to Alcide. It had been so neat, being unknown.

  “You are . . . what?” he asked, to make sure I understood him.

  “Telepath,” I said, kind of mumbling.

  A long silence fell, while Alcide digested this.

  “Did you hear anything good?” he asked, finally.

  “Sure. Mrs. O’Malley wants to jump your bones,” I told him, smiling brightly. I had to remind myself not to pull at my hair.

  “That’s good?”

  “Comparatively,” I said. “Better to be screwed physically than financially.” Mrs. O’Malley was at least twenty years younger than Mr. O’Malley, and she was the most groomed person I’d ever seen. I was betting she brushed her eyebrows a hundred strokes a night.

  He shook his head. I had no clear picture of what he was thinking. “What about me, you read me?”

  Aha. “Shape-shifters are not so easy,” I said. “I can’t pick out a clear line of thought, more a general mood, intentions, sort of. I guess if you thought directly at me, I’d get it. You want to try? Think something at me.”

  The dishes I use at the apartment have a border of yellow roses.

  “I wouldn’t call them roses,” I said doubtfully. “More like zinnias, if you ask me.”

  I could feel his withdrawal, his wariness. I sighed. Same old, same old. It sort of hurt, since I liked him. “But just to pick your own thoughts out of your head, that’s a murky area,” I said. “I can’t consistently do that, with Weres and shifters.” (A few Supes were fairly easy to read, but I saw no need to bring that up at this point in time.)

  “Thank God.”

  “Oh?” I said archly, in an attempt to lighten the mood. “What are you afraid I’ll read?”

  Alcide actually grinned at me before he turned off the dome light and we pulled out of our parking space. “Never mind,” he said, almost absently. “Never mind. So what you’re going to be doing tonight is reading minds, to try to pick up clues about your vampire’s whereabouts?”

  “That’s right. I can’t read vampires; they don’t seem to put out any brainwaves. That’s just how I put it. I don’t know how I do this, or if there’s a scientific way to phrase it.” I wasn’t exactly lying: Undead minds really were unreadable—except for a little split second’s glimpse every now and then (which hardly counted, and no one could know about). If vampires thought I could read their minds, not even Bill could save me. If he would.

  Every time I forgot for a second that our relationship had radically changed, it hurt all over again to be reminded.

  “So what’s your plan?”

  “I’m aiming for humans dating or serving local vampires. Humans were the actual abductors. He was snatched in daytime. At least, that’s what they told Eric.”

  “I should have asked you about this earlier,” he said, mostly to himself. “Just in case I hear something the regular way—through my ears—maybe you should tell me the circumstances.”

  As we drove by what Alcide said was the old train station, I gave him a quick summary. I caught a glimpse of a street sign reading “Amite” as we pulled up to an awning that stretched over a deserted length of sidewalk in the outskirts of downtown Jackson. The area directly under the awning was lit with a brilliant and cold light. Somehow that length of sidewalk seemed creepily ominous, especially since the rest of the street was dark. Uneasiness crawled down my back. I felt a deep reluctance to stop at that bit of sidewalk.

  It was a stupid feeling, I told myself. It was just a stretch of cement. No beasts were in sight. After the businesses closed at five, downtown Jackson was not exactly teeming, even under ordinary circumstances. I was willing to bet that most of the sidewalks in the whole state of Mississippi were bare on this cold December night.

  But there was something ominous in the air, a watch-fulness laced with a charge of malice. The eyes observing us were invisible; but they were observing us, nonetheless. When Alcide climbed out of the truck and came around to help me down, I noticed that he left the keys in the ignition. I swung my legs outward and put my hands on his shoulders, my long silk stole wound firmly around me and trailing behind, fringe trembling in a gust of chilled air. I pushed off as he lifted, and then I was on the sidewalk.

  The truck drove away.

  I looked at Alcide sideways, to see if this was startling to him, but he looked quite matter-of-fact. “Vehicles parked in front would attract attention from the general public,” he told me, his voice hushed in the vast silence of that coldly lit bit of pavement.

  “They can come in? Regular people?” I asked, nodding toward the single metal door. It looked as uninviting as a door can look. There was no name anywhere on it, or on the building, for that matter. No Christmas decorations, either. (Of course, vampires don’t observe holidays, except for Halloween. It’s the ancient festival of Samhain dressed up in trappings that the vamps find delightful. So Halloween’s a great favorite, and it’s celebrated worldwide in the vamp community.)

  “Sure, if they want to pay a twenty-dollar cover charge to drink the worst drinks in five states. Served by the rudest waiters. Very slowly.”

  I tried to smother my smile. This was not a smiley kind of place. “And if they stick that out?”

  “There’s no floor show, no one speaks to them, and if they last much longer, they find themselves out on the sidewalk getting into their car with no memory of how they got there.”

  He grasped the handle of the door and pulled it open. The dread that soaked the air did not seem to affect Alcide.

  We stepped into a tiny hall that was blocked by another door after about four feet. There, again, I knew we were being watched, though I couldn’t see a camera or a peephole anywhere.

  “What’s the name of this place?” I whispered.

  “The vamp that owns it calls it Josephine’s,” he said, just as quietly. “But Weres call it Club Dead.”

  I thought about laughing, but the inner door opened just then.

  The doorman was a goblin.

  I had never seen one before, but the word “goblin” popped into my mind as if I had a supernatural dictionary printed on the inside of my eyeballs. He was very short and very cranky-looking, with a knobby face and broad hands. His eyes were full of fire and malignance. He glared up at us as if customers were the last things he needed.

  Why any ordinary person would walk into Josephine’s after the cumulative effect of the haunted sidewalk, the vanishing vehicle, and the goblin at the door . . . well, some people are just born asking to be killed, I guess.

  “Mr. Herveaux,” the goblin said slowly, in a deep, growly voice. “Good to have you back. Your companion is . . . ?”

  “Miss Stackhouse,” Alcide said. “Sookie, this is Mr. Hob.” The goblin examined me with glowing eyes. He looked faintly troubled, as if he couldn’t quite fit me into a slot; but after a sec
ond, he stood aside to let us pass.

  Josephine’s was not very crowded. Of course, it was somewhat early for its patrons. After the eerie build-up, the large room looked almost disappointingly like any other bar. The serving area itself was in the middle of the room, a large square bar with a lift-up panel for the staff to go to and fro. I wondered if the owner had been watching reruns of Cheers. The glasses hung down, suspended on racks, and there were artificial plants and low music and dim lighting. There were polished bar stools set evenly all around the square. To the left of the bar was a small dance floor, and even farther left was a tiny stage for a band or a disc jockey. On the other three sides of the square were the usual small tables, about half of which were in use.

  Then I spotted the list of ambiguous rules on the wall, rules designed to be understood by the regular habitués, but not by the occasional tourist. “No Changing on the Premises,” one said sternly. (Weres and shifters could not switch from animal to human when they were at the bar; well, I could understand that.) “No Biting of Any Kind,” said another. “No Live Snacks,” read a third. Ick.

  The vampires were scattered throughout the bar, some with others of their own kind, some with humans. There was a raucous party of shifters in the southeast corner, where several tables had been drawn together to accommodate the size of the party. The center of this group appeared to be a tall young woman with gleaming short black hair, an athletic build, and a long, narrow face. She was draped over a square man of her own age, which I guessed to be about twenty-eight. He had round eyes and a flat nose and the softest looking hair I’d ever seen—it was almost baby fine, and so light a blond, it was nearly white. I wondered if this were the engagement party, and I wondered if Alcide had known it was to take place. His attention was definitely focused on that group.

  Naturally, I immediately checked out what the other women in the bar were wearing. The female vampires and the women with male vampires were dressed about at my level. The shifter females tended to dress down a bit more. The black-haired woman I’d pegged for Debbie was wearing a gold silk blouse and skintight brown leather pants, with boots. She laughed at some comment of the blond man’s, and I felt Alcide’s arm grow rigid under my fingers. Yep, this must be the ex-girlfriend, Debbie. Her good time had certainly escalated since she’d glimpsed Alcide’s entrance.