"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 compartmentalizing 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 wor
k 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 (like 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 mixed 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.
She seemed intent on her wineglass. She turned it with her ringers, took a sip, positioned it on the exact center of the coaster. "I have a favor to ask you," she said.
No shit, Sherlock. Since I'd never had a casual conversation with Portia longer than two sentences, it was obvious she needed something from me.
"Let me guess. You were sent here by your brother to ask me to listen in on people's thoughts when they're in the bar, so I can find out about this orgy thing Lafayette went to." Like I hadn't seen that coming.
Portia looked embarrassed, but determined. "He would never have asked you if he wasn't in serious trouble, Sookie."
"He would never have asked me because he doesn't like me. Though I've never been anything but nice to him his whole life! But now, it's okay to ask me for help, because he really needs me."
Portia's fair complexion was turning a deep unbecoming red. I knew it wasn't very pleasant of me to take out her brother's problems on her, but she had, after all, agreed to be the messenger. You know what happens to messengers. That made me think of my own messenger role the night before, and I wondered if I should be feeling lucky today.
"I wasn't for this," she muttered. It hurt her pride, to ask a favor of a barmaid; a Stackhouse, to boot.
Nobody liked me having a "gift." No one wanted me to use it on her. But everyone wanted me to find out something to her advantage, no matter how I felt about sifting through the thoughts (mostly unpleasant and irrelevant) of bar patrons to glean pertinent information.
"You'd probably forgotten that just recently Andy arrested my brother for murder?" Of course he'd had to let Jason go, but still.
If Portia had turned any redder she'd have lit a fire. "Just forget it, then," she said, scraping together all her dignity. "We don't need help from a freak like you, anyway."
I had touched her at the quick, because Portia had always been courteous, if not warm.
"Listen to me, Portia Bellefleur. I'll listen a little. Not for you or your brother, but because I liked Lafayette. He was a friend of mine, and he was always sweeter to me than you or Andy."
"I don't like you."
"I don't care."
"Darling, is there a problem?" asked a cool voice from behind me.
Bill. I reached with my mind, and felt the relaxing empty space right behind me. Other minds just buzzed like bees in a jar, but Bill's was like a globe filled with air. It was wonderful. Portia stood up so abruptly that her chair almost went over backwards. She was frightened of even being close to Bill, like he was a venomous snake or something.
"Portia was just asking me for a favor," I said slowly, aware for the first time that our little trio was attracting a certain amount of attention from the crowd.
"In return for the many kind things the Bellefleurs have done for you?" Bill asked. Portia snapped. She whirled around to stalk out of the bar. Bill watched her leave with the oddest expression of satisfaction.
"Now I have to find out what that was about," I said, and leaned back against him. His arms circled me and dre
w me back closer to him. It was like being cuddled by a tree.
"The vampires in Dallas have made their arrangements," Bill said. "Can you leave tomorrow evening?"
"What about you?"
"I can travel in my coffin, if you're willing to make sure I'm unloaded at the airport. Then we'll have all night to find out what it is the Dallas vampires want us to do."
"So I'll have to take you to the airport in a hearse?"
"No, sweetheart. Just get yourself there. There's a transportation service that does that kind of thing."
"Just takes vampires places in daytime?"
"Yes, they're licensed and bonded."
I'd have to think about that for a while. "Want a bottle? Sam has some on the heater."
"Yes, please, I'd like some O positive."
My blood type. How sweet. I smiled at Bill, not my strained normal grin, but a true smile from my heart. I was so lucky to have him, no matter how many problems we had as a couple. I couldn't believe I'd kissed someone else, and I blotted out that idea as soon as it skittered across my mind.
Bill smiled back, maybe not the most reassuring sight, since he was happy to see me. "How soon can you get off?" he asked, leaning closer.
I glanced down at my watch. "Thirty minutes," I promised.
"I'll be waiting for you." He sat at the table Portia had vacated, and I brought him the blood, tout de suite.
Kevin drifted over to talk to him, ended up sitting down at the table. I was near enough only twice to catch fragments of the conversation; they were talking about the types of crimes we had in our small town, and the price of gas, and who would win the next sheriff's election. It was so normal! I beamed with pride. When Bill had first started coming into Merlotte's, the atmosphere had been on the strained side. Now, people came and went casually, speaking to Bill or only nodding, but not making a big issue of it either way. There were enough legal issues facing vampires without the social issues involved, too.
As Bill drove me home that night, he seemed to be in an excited mood. I couldn't account for that until I figured out that he was pleased about his visit to Dallas.
Living Dead in Dallas ss(v-2 Page 5
