The deeper I went into the countryside, the worse the road seemed to grow. The mowing and maintenance crews hadn’t been out here since the end of summer. Either the residents of the Hotshot community had no pull whatsoever in the parish government, or they just didn’t want visitors. From time to time, the road dipped in some low-lying areas as it ran between bayous. In heavy rains, the low spots would be flooded. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to hear folks out here encountered the occasional gator.
Finally I came to another crossroads, compared to which the one with the bait shop seemed like a mall. There were a few houses scattered around, maybe eight or nine. These were small houses, none of them brick. Most of them had several cars in the front yard. Some of them sported a rusty swing set or a basketball hoop, and in a couple of yards I spotted a satellite dish. Oddly, all the houses seemed pulled away from the actual crossroads; the area directly around the road intersection was bare. It was like someone had tied a rope to a stake sunk in the middle of the crossing and drawn a circle. Within it, there was nothing. Outside it, the houses crouched.
In my experience, in a little settlement like this, you had the same kind of people you had anywhere. Some of them were poor and proud and good. Some of them were poor and mean and worthless. But all of them knew each other thoroughly, and no action went unobserved.
On this chilly day, I didn’t see a soul outdoors to let me know if this was a black community or a white community. It was unlikely to be both. I wondered if I was at the right crossroads, but my doubts were washed away when I saw an imitation green road sign, the kind you can order from a novelty company, mounted on a pole in front of one of the homes. It read, HOTSHOT.
I was in the right place. Now, to find Crystal Norris’s house.
With some difficulty, I spotted a number on one rusty mailbox, and then I saw another. By process of elimination, I figured the next house must be the one where Crystal Norris lived. The Norris house was little different from any of the others; it had a small front porch with an old armchair and two lawn chairs on it, and two cars parked in front, one a Ford Fiesta and the other an ancient Buick.
When I parked and got out, I realized what was so unusual about Hotshot.
No dogs.
Any other hamlet that looked like this would have at least twelve dogs milling around, and I’d be wondering if I could safely get out of the car. Here, not a single yip broke the winter silence.
I crossed over the hard, packed dirt of the yard, feeling as though eyes were on every step I took. I opened the torn screen door to knock on the heavier wooden door. Inset in it was a pattern of three glass panes. Dark eyes surveyed me through the lowest one.
The door opened, just when the pause was beginning to make me anxious.
Jason’s date from New Year’s Eve was less festive today, in black jeans and a cream-colored T-shirt. Her boots had come from Payless, and her short curly hair was a sort of dusty black. She was thin, intense, and though I’d carded her, she just didn’t look twenty-one.
“Crystal Norris?”
“Yeah?” She didn’t sound particularly unfriendly, but she did sound preoccupied.
“I’m Jason Stackhouse’s sister, Sookie.”
“Oh, yeah? Come in.” She stood back, and I stepped into the tiny living room. It was crowded with furniture intended for a much larger space: two recliners and a three-cushion couch of dark brown Naugahyde, the big buttons separating the vinyl into little hillocks. You’d stick to it in the summer and slide around on it in the winter. Crumbs would collect in the depression around the buttons.
There was a stained rug in dark red and yellows and browns, and there were toys strewn in an almost solid layer over it. A picture of the Last Supper hung above the television set, and the whole house smelled pleasantly of red beans and rice and cornbread.
A toddler was experimenting with Duplos in the doorway to the kitchen. I thought it was a boy, but it was hard to be sure. Overalls and a green turtleneck weren’t exactly a clue, and the baby’s wispy brown hair was neither cut short nor decorated with a bow.
“Your child?” I asked, trying to make my voice pleasant and conversational.
“No, my sister’s,” Crystal said. She gestured toward one of the recliners.
“Crystal, the reason I’m here . . . Did you know that Jason is missing?”
She was perched on the edge of the couch, and she’d been staring down at her thin hands. When I spoke, she looked into my eyes intently. This was not fresh news to her.
“Since when?” she asked. Her voice had a pleasantly hoarse sound to it; you’d listen to what this girl had to say, especially if you were a man.
“Since the night of January first. He left my house, and then the next morning he didn’t show up for work. There was some blood on that little pier out behind the house. His pickup was still in his front yard. The door to it was hanging open.”
“I don’t know nothing about it,” she said instantly.
She was lying.
“Who told you I had anything to do with this?” she asked, working up to being bitchy. “I got rights. I don’t have to talk to you.”
Sure, that was Amendment 29 to the Constitution: Shifters don’t have to talk to Sookie Stackhouse.
“Yes, you do.” Suddenly, I abandoned the nice approach. She’d hit the wrong button on me. “I’m not like you. I don’t have a sister or a nephew,” and I nodded at the toddler, figuring I had a fifty-fifty chance of being right. “I don’t have a mom or a dad or anything, anything, except my brother.” I took a deep breath. “I want to know where Jason is. And if you know anything, you better tell me.”
“Or you’ll do what?” Her thin face was twisted into a snarl. But she genuinely wanted to know what kind of pull I had; I could read that much.
“Yeah, what?” asked a calmer voice.
I looked at the doorway to see a man who was probably on the upside of forty. He had a trimmed beard salted with gray, and his hair was cut close to his head. He was a small man, perhaps five foot seven or so, with a lithe build and muscular arms.
“Anything I have to,” I said. I looked him straight in the eyes. They were a strange golden green. He didn’t seem inimical, exactly. He seemed curious.
“Why are you here?” he asked, again in that neutral voice.
“Who are you?” I had to know who this guy was. I wasn’t going to waste my time repeating my story to someone who just had some time to fill. Given his air of authority, and the fact that he wasn’t opting for mindless belligerence, I was willing to bet this man was worth talking to.
“I’m Calvin Norris. I’m Crystal’s uncle.” From his brain pattern, he was also a shifter of some kind. Given the absence of dogs in this settlement, I assumed they were Weres.
“Mr. Norris, I’m Sookie Stackhouse.” I wasn’t imagining the increased interest in his expression. “Your niece here went to the New Year’s Eve party at Merlotte’s Bar with my brother, Jason. Sometime the next night, my brother went missing. I want to know if Crystal can tell me anything that might help me find him.”
Calvin Norris bent to pat the toddler on the head, and then walked over to the couch where Crystal glowered. He sat beside her, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands dangling, relaxed, between them. His head inclined as he looked into Crystal’s sullen face.
“This is reasonable, Crystal. Girl wants to know where her brother is. Tell her, if you know anything about it.”
Crystal snapped at him, “Why should I tell her anything? She comes out here, tries to threaten me.”
“Because it’s just common courtesy to help someone in trouble. You didn’t exactly go to her to volunteer help, did you?”
“I didn’t think he was just missing. I thought he—” And her voice cut short as she realized her tongue had led her into trouble.
Calvin’s whole body tensed. He hadn’t expected that Crystal actually knew anything about Jason’s disappearance. He had just wanted her to be polite to me.
I could read that, but not much else. I could not decipher their relationship. He had power over the girl, I could tell that easily enough, but what kind? It was more than the authority of an uncle; it felt more like he was her ruler. He might be wearing old work clothes and safety boots, he might look like any blue-collar man in the area, but Calvin Norris was a lot more.
Packmaster, I thought. But who would be in a pack, this far out in the boondocks? Just Crystal? Then I remembered Sam’s veiled warning about the unusual nature of Hotshot, and I had a revelation. Everyone in Hotshot was two-natured.
Was that possible? I wasn’t completely certain Calvin Norris was a Were—but I knew he didn’t change into any bunny. I had to struggle with an almost irresistible impulse to lean over and put my hand on his forearm, touch skin to skin to read his mind as clearly as possible.
I was completely certain about one thing: I wouldn’t want to be anywhere around Hotshot on the three nights of the full moon.
“You’re the barmaid at Merlotte’s,” he said, looking into my eyes as intently as he’d looked into Crystal’s.
“I’m a barmaid at Merlotte’s.”
“You’re a friend of Sam’s.”
“Yes,” I said carefully. “I am. I’m a friend of Alcide Herveaux’s, too. And I know Colonel Flood.”
These names meant something to Calvin Norris. I wasn’t surprised that Norris would know the names of some prominent Shreveport Weres—and he’d know Sam, of course. It had taken my boss time to connect with the local two-natured community, but he’d been working on it.
Crystal had been listening with wide dark eyes, in no better mood than she had been before. A girl wearing overalls appeared from the back of the house, and she lifted the toddler from his nest of Duplos. Though her face was rounder and less distinctive and her figure was fuller, she was clearly Crystal’s younger sister. She was also just as apparently pregnant again.
“You need anything, Uncle Calvin?” she asked, staring at me over the toddler’s shoulder.
“No, Dawn. Take care of Matthew.” She disappeared into the back of the house with her burden. I had guessed right on the sex of the kid.
“Crystal,” said Calvin Norris, in a quiet and terrifying voice, “you tell us now what you done.”
Crystal had believed she’d gotten away with something, and she was shocked at being ordered to confess.
But she’d obey. After a little fidgeting, she did.
“I was out with Jason on New Year’s Eve,” she said. “I’d met him at Wal-Mart in Bon Temps, when I went in to get me a purse.”
I sighed. Jason could find potential bedmates anywhere. He was going to end up with some unpleasant disease (if he hadn’t already) or slapped with a paternity suit, and there was nothing I could do about it except watch it happen.
“He asked me if I’d spend New Year’s Eve with him. I had the feeling the woman he’d had a date with had changed her mind, ’cause he’s not the kind of guy to go without lining up a date for something big like that.”
I shrugged. Jason could have made and broken dates with five women for New Year’s Eve, for all I knew. And it wasn’t infrequent for women to get so exasperated by his earnest pursuit of anything with a vagina that they broke off plans with him.
“He’s a cute guy, and I like to get out of Hotshot, so I said yeah. He asked me if he could come pick me up, but I knew some of my neighbors wouldn’t like that, so I said I’d just meet him at the Fina station, and then we’d go in his truck. So that’s what we did. And I had a real good time with him, went home with him, had a good night.” Her eyes gleamed at me. “You want to know how he is in bed?”
There was a blur of movement, and then there was blood at the corner of her mouth. Calvin’s hand was back dangling between his legs before I even realized he’d moved. “You be polite. Don’t show your worst face to this woman,” he said, and his voice was so serious I made up my mind I’d be extra polite, too, just to be safe.
“Okay. That wasn’t nice, I guess,” she admitted, in a softer and chastened voice. “Well, I wanted to see him the night after, too, and he wanted to see me again. So I snuck out and went over to his place. He had to leave to see his sister—you? You’re the only sister he’s got?”
I nodded.
“And he said to stay there, he’d be back in a bit. I wanted to go with him, and he said if his sister didn’t have company, that woulda been fine, but she had vamp company, and he didn’t want me to mix with them.”
I think Jason knew what my opinion of Crystal Norris would be, and he wanted to dodge hearing it, so he left her at his house.
“Did he come back home?” Calvin said, nudging her out of her reverie.
“Yes,” she said, and I tensed.
“What happened then?” Calvin asked, when she stopped again.
“I’m not real sure,” she said. “I was in the house, waiting for him, and I heard his truck pull up, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, good, he’s here, we can party,’ and then I didn’t hear him come up the front steps, and I’m wondering what’s happening, you know? Of course all the outside lights are on, but I didn’t go to the window, ’cause I knew it was him.” Of course a Were would know his step, maybe catch his smell. “I’m listening real good,” she went on, “and I hear him going around the outside of the house, so I’m thinking he’s going to come in the back door, for some reason—muddy boots, or something.”
I took a deep breath. She’d get to the point in just a minute. I just knew she would.
“And then, to the back of the house, and farther ’way, yards away from the porch, I hear a lot of noise, and some shouting and stuff, and then nothing.”
If she hadn’t been a shifter, she wouldn’t have heard so much. There, I knew I’d think of a bright side if I searched hard enough.
“Did you go out and look?” Calvin asked Crystal. His worn hand stroked her black curls, as if he were petting a favorite dog.
“No sir, I didn’t look.”
“Smell?”
“I didn’t get close enough,” she admitted, just on the good side of sullen. “The wind was blowing the other way. I caught a little of Jason, and blood. Maybe a couple of other things.”
“Like what?”
Crystal looked at her own hands. “Shifter, maybe. Some of us can change when it’s not the full moon, but I can’t. Otherwise, I’d have had a better chance at the scent,” she said to me in near-apology.
“Vampire?” Calvin asked.
“I never smelled a vampire before,” she said simply. “I don’t know.”
“Witch?” I asked.
“Do they smell any different from regular people?” she asked doubtfully.
I shrugged. I didn’t know.
Calvin said, “What did you do after that?”
“I knew something had carried Jason off into the woods. I just . . . I lost it. I’m not brave.” She shrugged. “I came home after that. Nothing more I could do.”
I was trying not to cry, but tears just rolled down my cheeks. For the first time, I admitted to myself that I wasn’t sure I’d ever see my brother again. But if the attacker’s intention was to kill Jason, why not just leave his body in the backyard? As Crystal had pointed out, the night of New Year’s Day there hadn’t been a full moon. There were things that didn’t have to wait for the full moon. . . .
The bad thing about learning about all the creatures that existed in the world besides us is that I could imagine that there were things that might swallow Jason in one gulp. Or a few bites.
But I just couldn’t let myself think about that. Though I was still weeping, I made an effort to smile. “Thank you so much,” I said politely. “It was real nice of you to take the time to see me. I know you have things you need to do.”
Crystal looked suspicious, but her uncle Calvin reached over and patted my hand, which seemed to surprise everyone, himself included.
He walked me out to my car. The sky was clouding over, which made it feel colder, and the w
ind began to toss the bare branches of the large bushes planted around the yard. I recognized yellow bells (which the nursery calls forsythia), and spirea, and even a tulip tree. Around them would be planted jonquil bulbs, and iris—the same flowers that are in my grandmother’s yard, the same bushes that have grown in southern yards for generations. Right now everything looked bleak and sordid. In the spring, it would seem almost charming, picturesque; the decay of poverty gilded by Mother Nature.
Two or three houses down the road, a man emerged from a shed behind his house, glanced our way, and did a double take. After a long moment, he loped back into his house. It was too far away to make out more of his features than thick pale hair, but his grace was phenomenal. The people out here more than disliked strangers; they seemed to be allergic to them.
“That’s my house over there,” Calvin offered, pointing to a much more substantial home, small but foursquare, painted white quite recently. Everything was in good repair at Calvin Norris’s house. The driveway and parking area were clearly defined; the matching white toolshed stood rust-free on a neat concrete slab.
I nodded. “It looks real nice,” I said in a voice that wasn’t too wobbly.
“I want to make you an offer,” Calvin Norris said.
I tried to look interested. I half turned to face him.
“You’re a woman without protection now,” he said. “Your brother’s gone. I hope he comes back, but you don’t have no one to stand up for you while he’s missing.”
There were a lot of things wrong with this speech, but I wasn’t in any mood to debate the shifter. He’d done me a large favor, getting Crystal to talk. I stood there in the cold wind and tried to look politely receptive.
“If you need some place to hide, if you need someone to watch your back or defend you, I’ll be your man,” he said. His green and golden eyes met mine directly.
I’ll tell you why I didn’t dismiss this with a snort: He wasn’t being superior about it. According to his mores, he was being as nice as he could be, extending a shield to me if I should need it. Of course he expected to “be my man” in every way, along with protecting me; but he wasn’t being lascivious in his manner, or offensively explicit. Calvin Norris was offering to incur injury for my sake. He meant it. That’s not something to get all snitty about.
Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set Page 89
