“Be sweet,” I said, the first time I had spoken.
“I can’t. It’s been too long, next time I’ll be sweet, I swear,” he said, running his tongue down the line of my jaw. His fangs grazed my neck. Fangs, tongue, mouth, fingers, manhood; it was like being made love to by the Tasmanian Devil. He was everywhere, and everywhere in a hurry.
When he collapsed on top of me, I was exhausted. He shifted to lie by my side, one leg draped over mine, one arm across my chest. He might as well have gotten out a branding iron and had done with it, but it wouldn’t have been as much fun for me.
“Are you okay?” he mumbled.
“Except for having run into a brick wall a few times,” I said indistinctly.
We both drifted off to sleep for a little, though Bill woke first, as he always did at night. “Sookie,” he said quietly. “Darling. Wake up.”
“Oo,” I said, slowly coming to consciousness. For the first time in weeks, I woke with the hazy conviction that all was right with the world. With slow dismay, I realized that things were far from right. I opened my eyes. Bill’s were right above me.
“We have to talk,” he said, stroking the hair back from my face.
“So talk.” I was awake now. What I was regretting was not the sex, but having to discuss the issues between us.
“I got carried away in Dallas,” he said immediately. “Vampires do, when the chance to hunt presents itself so obviously. We were attacked. We have the right to hunt down those who want to kill us.”
“That’s returning to days of lawlessness,” I said.
“But vampires hunt, Sookie. It is our nature,” he said very seriously. “Like leopards; like wolves. We are not human. We can pretend to be, when we’re trying to live with people . . . in your society. We can sometimes remember what it was like to be among you, one of you. But we are not the same race. We are no longer of the same clay.”
I thought this over. He’d told me this, over and over, in different words, since we’d begun seeing each other.
Or maybe, he’d been seeing me, but I hadn’t been seeing him: clearly, truly. No matter how often I thought I’d made my peace with his otherness, I realized that I still expected him to react as he would if he were JB du Rone, or Jason, or my church pastor.
“I think I’m finally getting this,” I said. “But you got to realize, sometimes I’m not going to like that difference. Sometimes I have to get away and cool down. I’m really going to try. I really love you.” Having done my best to promise to meet him halfway, I was reminded of my own grievance. I grabbed his hair and rolled him over so I was looking down at him. I looked right in his eyes.
“Now, you tell me what you’re doing with Portia.”
Bill’s big hands rested on my hips as he explained.
“She came to me after I got back from Dallas, the first night. She had read about what happened there, wondered if I knew anyone who’d been there that day. When I said that I had been there myself—I didn’t mention you—Portia said she had information that some of the arms used in the attack had come from a place in Bon Temps, Sheridan’s Sport Shop. I asked her how she had heard this; she said as a lawyer, she couldn’t say. I asked her why she was so concerned, if there wasn’t anything further she’d tell me about it; she said she was a good citizen and hated to see other citizens persecuted. I asked her why she came to me; she said I was the only vampire she knew.”
I believed that like I believed Portia was a secret belly dancer.
I narrowed my eyes as I worked this through. “Portia doesn’t care one damn thing about vampire rights,” I said. “She might want to get in your pants, but she doesn’t care about vampire legal issues.”
“ ‘Get in my pants?’ What a turn of phrase you have.”
“Oh, you’ve heard that before,” I said, a little abashed.
He shook his head, amusement sparkling in his face. “Get in my pants,” he repeated, sounding it out slowly. “I would be in your pants, if you had any on.” He rubbed his hands up and down to demonstrate.
“Cut that out,” I said. “I’m trying to think.”
His hands were pressing my hips, then releasing, moving me back and forth on him. I began to have difficulty forming thoughts.
“Stop, Bill,” I said. “Listen, I think Portia wants to be seen with you so she might be asked to join that supposed sex club here in Bon Temps.”
“Sex club?” Bill said with interest, not stopping in the least.
“Yes, didn’t I tell you . . . oh, Bill, no . . . Bill, I’m still worn out from last . . . Oh. Oh, God.” His hands had gripped me with their great strength, and moved me purposefully, right onto his stiffness. He began rocking me again, back and forth. “Oh,” I said, lost in the moment. I began to see colors floating in front of my eyes, and then I was being rocked so fast I couldn’t keep track of my motion. The end came at the same time for both of us, and we clung together panting for several minutes.
“We should never separate again,” Bill said.
“I don’t know, this makes it almost worth it.”
A little aftershock rippled his body. “No,” he said. “This is wonderful, but I would rather just leave town for a few days, than fight with you again.” He opened his eyes wide. “Did you really suck a bullet from Eric’s shoulder?”
“Yeah, he said I had to get it out before his flesh closed over it.”
“Did he tell you he had a pocketknife in his pocket?”
I was taken aback. “No. Did he? Why would he do that?”
Bill raised his eyebrows, as if I had said something quite ridiculous.
“Guess,” he said.
“So I would suck on his shoulder? You can’t mean that.”
Bill just maintained the skeptical look.
“Oh, Bill. I fell for it. Wait a minute—he got shot! That bullet could have hit me, but instead it hit him. He was guarding me.”
“How?”
“Well, by lying on top of me . . .”
“I rest my case.” There was nothing old-fashioned about Bill at the moment. On the other hand, there was a pretty old-fashioned look on his face.
“But, Bill . . . you mean he’s that devious?”
Again with the raised eyebrows.
“Lying on top of me is not such a big treat,” I protested, “that someone should take a bullet for it. Geez. That’s nuts!”
“It got some of his blood in you.”
“Only a drop or two. I spit the rest out,” I said.
“A drop or two is enough when you are as old as Eric is.”
“Enough for what?”
“He will know some things about you, now.”
“What, like my dress size?”
Bill smiled, not always a relaxing sight. “No, like how you are feeling. Angry, horny, loving.”
I shrugged. “Won’t do him any good.”
“Probably it is not too important, but be careful from now on,” Bill warned me. He seemed quite serious.
“I still can’t believe someone would put themselves in a position to take a bullet for me just in the hopes I’d ingest a drop of blood getting the bullet out. That’s ridiculous. You know, it seems like to me you introduced this subject so I’d quit bugging you about Portia, but I’m not going to. I think Portia believes if she’s dating you, someone will ask her to go to this sex club, since if she’s willing to ball a vampire, she’s willing to do anything. Theythink, ” said hastily after looking at Bill’s face. “So Portia figures she’ll go, she’ll learn stuff, she’ll find out who actually killed Lafayette, Andy’ll be off the hook.”
“That’s a complicated plot.”
“Can you refute it?” I was proud to userefute, which had been on my Word of the Day calendar.
“As a matter of fact, I can’t.” He became immobile. His eyes were fixed and unblinking, and his hands relaxed. Since Bill doesn’t breathe, he was absolutely still.
Finally he blinked. “It would have been better if she had told me th
e truth to begin with.”
“You better not have had sex with her,” I said, finally admitting to myself that the bare possibility had made me nearly blind with jealousy.
“I wondered when you were going to ask me,” he said calmly. “As if I would ever bed a Bellefleur. No, she has not the slightest desire to have sex with me. She even has a hard time pretending she wants to at some later date. Portia is not much of an actress. Most of the time we are together, she takes me on wild goose chases to find this cache of arms the Fellowship has stowed here, saying all the Fellowship sympathizers are hiding them.”
“So why’d you go along with any of this?”
“There’s something about her that’s honorable. And I wanted to see if you would be jealous.”
“Oh, I see. Well, what do you think?”
“I think,” he said, “I had better never see you within a yard of that handsome moron again.”
“JB? I’m like his sister,” I said.
“You forget, you’ve had my blood, and I can tell what you are feeling,” Bill said. “I don’t think you feel exactly like a sister to him.”
“That would explain why I’m here in bed with you, right?”
“You love me.”
I laughed, up against his throat.
“It’s close to dawn,” he said. “I have to go.”
“Okay, baby.” I smiled up at him as he gathered up his clothes. “Hey, you owe me a sweater and a bra. Two bras. Gabe tore one, so that was a work-related clothes injury. And you tore one last night, plus my sweater.”
“That’s why I bought a women’s clothing store,” he said smoothly. “So I could rip if the spirit moves me.”
I laughed and lay back down. I could sleep for a couple more hours. I was still smiling when he let himself out of my house, and I woke up in the middle of the morning with a lightness in my heart that hadn’t been there for a long time. (Well, it felt like a long time.) I walked, somewhat gingerly, into the bathroom to soak in a tubful of hot water. When I began to wash, I felt something in my earlobes. I stood up in the tub and looked over at the mirror above the sink. He’d put the topaz earrings in while I was asleep.
Mr. Last Word.
SINCE OUR REUNIONhad been secret, it was I who got invited to the club first. It had never occurred to me that that might happen; but after it did, I realized that if Portia had figured she might be invited after going with a vampire, I was even primer meat.
To my surprise and disgust, the one to broach the subject was Mike Spencer. Mike was the funeral home director and the coroner in Bon Temps, and we had not always had a completely cordial relationship. However, I’d known him all my life and was used to offering him respect, a hard habit to break. Mike was wearing his funeral home duds when he came in to Merlotte’s that evening, because he’d come from Mrs. Cassidy’s visitation. A dark suit, white shirt, subdued striped tie, and polished wing tips changed Mike Spencer from the guy who really preferred bolo ties and pointy-toed cowboy boots.
Since Mike was at least twenty years older than me, I’d always related to him as an elder, and it shocked me silly when he approached me. He was sitting by himself, which was unusual enough to be noteworthy. I brought him a hamburger and a beer. As he paid me, he said casually, “Sookie, some of us are getting together at Jan Fowler’s lake house tomorrow night and we wondered if we could get you to come.”
I am fortunate I have a well-schooled face. I felt as if a pit had opened beneath my feet, and I was actually a little nauseated. I understood immediately, but I couldn’t quite believe it. I opened my mind to him, while my mouth was saying, “You said ‘some of us’? Who would that be, Mr. Spencer?”
“Why don’t you call me Mike, Sookie?” I nodded, looking inside his head all the while. Oh, geez Louise. Ick. “Well, some of your friends will be there. Eggs, and Portia, and Tara. The Hardaways.”
Tara and Eggs . . . that really shocked me.
“So, what goes on at these parties? Is this just a drinking and dancing type thing?” This was not an unreasonable question. No matter how many people knew I was supposed to be able to read minds, they almost never believed it, no matter how much evidence to the contrary they’d witnessed. Mike simply could not believe that I could receive the images and concepts floating in his mind.
“Well, we get a little wild. We thought since you’d broken up with your boyfriend, that you might want to come let your hair down a little.”
“Maybe I’ll come,” I said, without enthusiasm. It wouldn’t do to look eager. “When?”
“Oh, ten o’clock tomorrow night.”
“Thanks for the invite,” I said, as if remembering my manners, and then sauntered off with my tip. I thought furiously, in the odd moments I had to myself during the rest of my shift.
What good could my going serve? Could I really learn anything that would solve the mystery of Lafayette’s death? I didn’t like Andy Bellefleur much, and now I liked Portia even less, but it wasn’t fair that Andy might be prosecuted, his reputation ruined, for something that wasn’t his fault. On the other hand, it stood to reason that no one present at a party at the lake house would trust me with any deep dark secrets until I’d become a regular, and I just couldn’t stomach that. I wasn’t even sure I could get through one gathering. The last thing in the world I wanted to see was my friends and my neighbors “letting their hair down.” I didn’t want to see them let down their hair, or anything else.
“What’s the matter, Sookie?” Sam asked, so close to me that I jumped.
I looked at him, wishing that I could ask what he thought. Sam was strong and wiry, and he was clever, too. The bookkeeping, the ordering, the maintenance and planning, he never seemed to be taxed with any of it. Sam was a self-sufficient man, and I liked and trusted him.
“I’m just in a little quandary,” I said. “What’s up with you, Sam?”
“I got an interesting phone call last night, Sookie.”
“Who from?”
“A squeaky woman in Dallas.”
“Really?” I found myself smiling, really, not the grin I used to cover my nerves. “Would that be a lady of Mexican descent?”
“I believe so. She spoke of you.”
“She’s feisty,” I said.
“She’s got a lot of friends.”
“Kind of friends you’d want to have?”
“I already have some good friends,” Sam said, squeezing my hand briefly. “But it’s always nice to know people who share your interests.”
“So, are you driving over to Dallas?”
“I just might. In the meantime, she’s put me in touch with some people in Ruston who also . . .”
Change their appearance when the moon is full,I finished mentally.
“How did she trace you? I didn’t give her your name, on purpose, because I didn’t know if you’d want me to.”
“She traced you,” Sam said. “And she found out who your boss was through local . . . people.”
“How come you had never hooked up with them on your own?”
“Until you told me about the maenad,” Sam said, “I never realized that there were so many more things I had to learn.”
“Sam, you haven’t been hanging around with her?”
“I’ve spent a few evenings in the woods with her, yes. As Sam, and in my other skin.”
“But she’s so evil,” I blurted.
Sam’s back stiffened. “She’s a supernatural creature like me,” he said evenly. “She’s neither evil nor good, she just is.”
“Oh, bullshit.” I couldn’t believe I was hearing this from Sam. “If she’s feeding you this line, then she wants something from you.” I remembered how beautiful the maenad had been, if you didn’t mind bloodstains. And Sam, as a shapeshifter, wouldn’t. “Oh,” I said, comprehension sweeping me. Not that I could read Sam’s mind clearly, since he was a supernatural creature, but I could get a lock on his emotional state, which was—embarrassed, horny, resentful, and horny.
&
nbsp; “Oh,” I said again, somewhat stiffly. “Excuse me, Sam. I didn’t mean to speak ill of someone you . . . you, ah . . .” I could hardly say, “are screwing,” however apropos it might be. “You’re spending time with,” I finished lamely. “I’m sure she’s lovely once you get to know her. Of course, the fact that she cut my back to bloody ribbons may have something to do with my prejudice against her. I’ll try to be more open-minded.” And I stalked off to take an order, leaving Sam openmouthed behind me.
I left a message on Bill’s answering machine. I didn’t know what Bill intended to do about Portia, and I guessed there was a possibility someone else would be there when he played his messages, so I said, “Bill, I got invited to that party tomorrow night. Let me know if you think I should go.” I didn’t identify myself, since he’d know my voice. Possibly, Portia had left an identical message, an idea that just made me furious.
When I drove home that night, I half-hoped Bill would be waiting to ambush me again in an erotic way, but the house and yard were silent. I perked up when I noticed the light on my answering machine was blinking.
“Sookie,” said Bill’s smooth voice, “stay out of the woods. The maenad was dissatisfied with our tribute. Eric will be in Bon Temps tomorrow night to negotiate with her, and he may call you. The—other people—of Dallas, the ones who helped you, are asking for outrageous recompense from the vampires of Dallas, so I am going over there on Anubis to meet with them, with Stan. You know where I’ll be staying.”
Yikes. Bill wouldn’t be in Bon Temps to help me, and he was out of my reach. Or was he? It was one in the morning. I called the number I’d put in my address book, for the Silent Shore. Bill had not yet checked in, though his coffin (which the concierge referred to as his “baggage”) had been put in his room. I left a message, which I had to phrase so guardedly that it might be incomprehensible.