Sookie 09 Dead and Gone (21 page)

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll come over right after I get off work, probably around five.” Phone in my hand, I jumped out and grabbed the mail from my mailbox, which sat up on Hummingbird Road. Then I got back in my car quick as I could.

That had been stupid. I could have gone without checking the mail for one day. Habits are very hard to break, even when they’re unimportant habits. “I really am lucky you live with me, Amelia,” I said. That might have been spreading it on a little thick, but it was the absolute truth.

But Amelia had gone off on another mental path. “You’re speaking to Jason again? You told him? About
things
?”

“Yeah, I had to. Great-grandfather can’t have everything his own way. Stuff has happened.”

“It always does, around you,” Amelia said. She didn’t sound angry, and she wasn’t condemning me.

“Not always,” I said after a sharp moment of doubt.
In fact,
I thought, as I turned left at the end of Hummingbird Road to go to my brother’s,
that point Jason made about everything changing when the vamps came out . . . that just might have been something I really agree with
.

Prosaically, I realized my car was almost out of gas. I had to pull into Grabbit Quik. While I was pumping the liquid gold into my car, I fell back to puzzling over what Jason had told me. What would be urgent enough to bring a reclusive and human-hating half fairy to Jason’s door? Why would he tell Jason . . . ? I shouldn’t be thinking about this.

This was stupid, and I should be watching out for myself instead of trying to solve Jason’s problems.

But after a few more seconds of turning the conversation over in my head, I began to have a sneaking suspicion that I understood it a little better.

I called Calvin. At first he didn’t get what I was saying, but then he agreed to meet me at Jason’s house.

I caught a glimpse of Jason in the backyard when I pulled into the circular driveway of the neat, small house my dad had built when he and my mother were first married. It was out in the country, out farther west than Arlene’s trailer, and though it was visible from the road, it had a pond and several acres lying behind it. My dad had loved to hunt and fish, and my brother did, too. Jason had recently put in a makeshift range, and I could hear the rifle.

I decided to come through the house, and I took care to yell when I was at the back door.

“Hey!” Jason called back. He had a 30-30 in his hands. It had been our father’s. Mel was standing behind him, holding a box of ammo. “We decided we better get in some practice.”

“Good idea. I wanted to be sure you didn’t think I was your crazy caller, come back to yell some more.”

Jason laughed. “I still don’t understand what good Dermot thought he’d do, coming up to the front door like that.”

“I think I do,” I said.

Jason held out his hand without looking, and Mel gave him some bullets. Jason opened the rifle and began loading. I looked over at the sawhorse he’d set up, noted all the empty milk jugs lying on the ground. He’d filled them with water so they’d sit steady, and thanks to the bullet holes, the water was flowing out onto the ground.

“Good shooting,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Hey, Mel, you want to tell me about Hotshot funerals? I haven’t ever been to one, and Crystal’s will take place as soon as the body comes back, I reckon.”

Mel looked a little surprised. “You know I haven’t lived out there for years,” he protested. “It’s just not for me.” Except for the fading bruises, he didn’t look like he’d been thrown across the room by anyone, much less a crazed half fairy.

“I wonder why that guy threw you around instead of Jason,” I said, and felt Mel’s thoughts ripple with fear. “Are you hurt?”

He moved his right shoulder a little. “I thought I’d broken something. But I guess it’s just going to be sore. I wonder what he was. Not one of us.”

He hadn’t answered my question, I noticed.

Jason looked proud that he hadn’t blabbed.

“He’s not entirely human,” I said.

Mel looked relieved. “Well, that’s good to know,” he said. “My pride was pretty much shot to hell when he threw me around. I mean, I’m a full-blood panther, and it was like I was kindling or something.”

Jason laughed. “I thought he’d come on in and kill me then, thought I was a goner. But once Mel was down, this guy just started talking to me. Mel was playing possum, and here’s this fella looks a lot like me, telling me what a favor he’s done me . . .”

“It was weird,” Mel agreed, but he looked uncomfortable. “You know I’d’ve been on my feet if he’d started punching on you, but he really rang my bell, and I figured I might as well stay down once it looked like he wasn’t going to go after you.”

“Mel, I hope you’re really okay.” I made my voice concerned, and I moved a little closer. “Let me have a look at that shoulder.” I extended my hand, and Jason’s eyebrows knit together.

“Why do you need to . . . ?” An awful suspicion was creeping over his face. Without another word, he stepped behind his friend and held him firm, his hands gripping Mel on either side right below Mel’s shoulders. Mel winced with pain, but he didn’t say anything, not a word; he didn’t even pretend to be indignant or surprised, and that was almost enough.

I put a hand on either side of Mel’s face, and I closed my eyes, and I looked in his head. And this time Mel was thinking about Crystal, not Jason.

“He did it,” I said. I opened my eyes and looked at my brother’s face across Mel’s shoulder. I nodded.

Jason screamed, and it wasn’t a human sound. Mel’s face seemed to melt, as if all the muscles and bones had shifted. He hardly looked human at all.

“Let me look at you,” Mel pleaded.

Jason looked confused, since Mel
was
looking at me; he couldn’t look anywhere else, the way Jason was holding him. Mel wasn’t struggling, but I could see every muscle under his skin standing out, and I didn’t think he’d be passive forever. I bent down and picked up the rifle, glad Jason had reloaded it.

“He wants to look at you, not me,” I told my brother.

“Goddammit,” Jason said. His breathing was heavy and ragged as if he’d been running, and his eyes were wide. “You have to tell me
why
.”

I stepped back and raised the rifle. At this distance, even I couldn’t miss. “Turn him around, since he wants to talk to you face-to-face.”

They were in profile to me when Jason spun Mel around. Jason’s grip refastened on the werepanther, but now Jason’s face was a foot from Mel’s.

Calvin walked around the house. Crystal’s sister, Dawn, was with him. There was also a boy of about fifteen trailing along. I remembered meeting the boy at the wedding. He was Jacky, Crystal’s oldest first cousin. Adolescents practically reek of emotion and confusion, and Jacky was no exception. He was struggling to conceal the fact that he was both nervous and excited. Maintaining a cool demeanor was just killing him.

The three newcomers took in the scene. Calvin shook his head, his face solemn. “This is a bad day,” he said quietly, and Mel jerked at the sound of his leader’s voice.

Some of the tension leaked out of Jason when he saw the other werepanthers.

“Sookie says he did it,” he said to Calvin.

“That’s good enough for me,” Calvin said. “But, Mel—you should tell us yourself, brother.”

“I’m not your brother,” Mel said bitterly. “I haven’t lived with you for years.”

“That was your own choice,” Calvin said. He walked around so he could see Mel’s face, and the other two followed him. Jacky was snarling; any pretense at being cool had vanished. The animal was showing through.

“There isn’t anyone else in Hotshot like me. I would have been alone.”

Jason looked blank. “There are lots of guys in Hotshot like you,” he said.

“No, Jason,” I said. “Mel’s gay.”

“We’re not okay with that?” my brother asked Calvin. Jason hadn’t yet gotten the party line on a few issues, apparently.

“We’re okay with people doing what they want to do in bed after they’ve done their duty to the clan,” Calvin said. “Purebred males have to father a young ’un, no matter what.”

“I couldn’t do it,” Mel said. “I just plain couldn’t do it.”

“But you were married once,” I said, and wished I hadn’t spoken. This was a matter for the clan now. I hadn’t called Bud Dearborn; I’d called Calvin. My word was good enough for Calvin, not for court.

“Our marriage didn’t work in that department,” Mel said. His voice sounded almost normal. “Which was okay with her. She had her own fish to fry. We never had . . . conventional sex.”

If I found this distressing, I could only imagine how hard it had been for Mel. But when I remembered what Crystal had looked like up on that cross, all my sympathy drained away in a hurry.

“Why did you do that to Crystal?” I asked. I could tell from the rage building in the brains around me that the time for talking was almost over.

Mel looked beyond me, past my brother, away from his leader, his victim’s sister and cousin. He seemed to be focused on the winter-bare limbs of the trees around the still, brown pond. “I love Jason,” he said. “I love him. And she abused him and his child. Then she taunted me. She came here that day. . . . I’d stopped off to get Jason to help me build some shelves at the shop, but he wasn’t here. She drove up while I was out in the yard writing Jason a note. She began to say . . . she said awful things. Then she told me I had to have sex with her, that if I did, she’d tell them at Hotshot and I’d be able to go back to live there, and Jason could come live with me. She said, ‘His baby’s inside me; doesn’t that get you all hot?’ And it got worse and worse. The bed of the truck was down because the wood I’d bought was sticking out, and she kind of backed up to it and lay down, and I could see her. It was . . . she was . . . she kept telling me what a pussy I was and that Jason would never care about me . . . and I slapped her as hard as I could.”

Dawn Norris turned to one side as though she was going to throw up. But she pressed her lips together in a hard line and straightened up. Jacky wasn’t that tough.

“She wasn’t dead, though.” My brother forced the words between his clenched teeth. “She bled all down the cross. She lost the baby after she’d been hung up.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Mel said. His gaze returned from the pond and the trees and focused on my brother. “I thought the blow had killed her—I really did. I would never have left her to go in the house if I’d thought she was still alive. I would never have let someone else get her. What I did was bad enough, because I intended for her to die. But I didn’t crucify her. Please believe me. No matter what you think of me for hurting her, I would never have done that. I thought if I took her somewhere else, no one would think you did it. I knew you were going out that night, and I figured if I put her somewhere else, you’d have an alibi. I figured you’d end up spending the night with Michele.” Mel smiled at Jason, and it was such a tender look that my heart ached. “So I left her in the back of the truck, and I came in the house to have a drink. And when I came back out, she was gone. I couldn’t believe it. I thought she’d gotten up and walked away. But there wasn’t any blood, and the wood was gone, too.”

“Why Merlotte’s?” Calvin said, and his voice came out like a growl.

“I don’t know, Calvin,” Mel said. His face was almost sublime with his relief from the load of his guilt, with the release of confessing his crime and his love for my brother. “Calvin, I know I’m about to die, and I swear to you that I have no idea what happened to Crystal after I went into the house. I did not do that horrible thing to her.”

“I don’t know what to make of that,” Calvin said. “But we have your confession, and we’ll have to proceed.”

“I accept that,” Mel said. “Jason, I love you.”

Dawn turned her head just a fraction so her eyes could meet mine. “You better go,” she said. “We got things to do.”

I walked off with the rifle, and I didn’t turn to look even when the other panthers began to tear Mel apart. I could hear it, though.

He didn’t scream after a second.

I left Jason’s rifle on his back porch, and I drove to work. Somehow having a bodyguard didn’t seem important anymore.

As I served beers and daiquiris and vodka collinses to the
people stopping by on their way home from work, I stood back and eyed myself in amazement. I’d worked for hours, serving and smiling and hustling, and I’d never broken down at all. Sure, I’d had to ask four people to repeat their orders. And I’d walked past Sam twice, and he’d said something to me to which I hadn’t responded—I knew this because he’d stopped me to tell me so. But I’d gotten the right plates and drinks to the right tables, and my tips were running about average, which meant I’d been agreeable and hadn’t forgotten anything crucial.

You’re doing so good,
I told myself.
I’m so proud of you. You just have to get through this. You can go home in fifteen minutes
.

I wondered how many women had given themselves the same lecture: the girl who’d held her head up at a dance where her date was paying attention to another classmate; the woman who’d been passed by for promotion at her job; the woman who had listened to a dire diagnosis and yet kept her face together. I knew men must have days like this, too.

Well, maybe not too many people had days
exactly
like this.

Naturally, I’d been turning over in my head Mel’s strange insistence that he was not responsible for Crystal’s crucifixion, during which she’d actually died. His thoughts had had the ring of truth. And really, there was no reason why he would’ve balked at confessing everything when he’d already confessed so much, found peace doing so. Why would someone steal the half-dead Crystal and the wood, and do a deed so disgusting? It would’ve had to have been someone who’d hated Crystal an awful lot, or maybe someone who had hated Mel or Jason. It was an inhuman act, yet I found myself believing in Mel’s dying assertion that he had not done it.

I was so glad to leave work that I began driving home on automatic pilot. When I’d gotten almost to the turnoff into my driveway, I remembered that I’d told Amelia hours before that I’d meet her at Tray’s house.

I’d completely forgotten.

I could forgive myself, considering the day I’d had—if Amelia was okay. But when I remembered Tray’s mean state and his ingestion of vampire blood, I felt a jolt of panic.

I looked at my watch and saw I was more than forty-five minutes late. Turning around in the next driveway, I drove back to town like a bat out of hell. I was trying to pretend to myself I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t doing a very good job.

There weren’t any cars in front of the small house. Its windows were dark. I could see the bumper of Tray’s truck peering out from the carport behind the house.

I drove right by and turned around on a county road about half a mile farther out. Confused and worried, I returned to park outside Tray’s. His house and the adjacent workshop were outside the Bon Temps city limits but not isolated. Tray had maybe a half-acre lot; his little home and the large metal building housing his repair business were right next to a similar setup owned by Brock and Chessie Johnson, who had an upholstery shop. Obviously, Brock and Chessie had retreated to their house for the night. The living room lights were on; as I watched, Chessie pulled the curtains shut, which most people out here didn’t bother to do.

The night was dark and quiet; the Johnsons’ dog was barking, but that was the only sound. It was too cold for the chorus of bugs that often made the night come alive.

I thought of several scenarios that could explain the dead look of the house.

One. The vampire blood still had hold over Tray, and he’d killed Amelia. Right now, he was in his house, in the dark, thinking of ways to kill himself. Or maybe he was waiting for me to come, so he could kill me, too.

Two. Tray had recovered from his ingestion of vamp blood, and when Amelia had appeared on his doorstep, they’d decided to treat their free afternoon as a honeymoon. They wouldn’t be at all happy if I interrupted them.

Three. Amelia had come by, found no one at home, and was now back at the house cooking supper for herself and me, because she expected me to drive up at any moment. At least that explanation accounted for the absence of Amelia’s car.

I tried to think of an even better series of events, but I couldn’t. I pulled out my cell phone and tried my home number. I heard my own voice on the answering machine. Next, I tried Amelia’s cell. It went to voice mail after three rings. I was running out of happy options. Figuring that a phone call would be less intrusive than a knock at the door, I tried Tray’s number next. I could hear the faint ring of the phone inside . . . but no one answered it.

I called Bill. I didn’t think about it for more than a second. I just did it.

“Bill Compton,” said the familiar cool voice.

“Bill,” I said, and then couldn’t finish.

“Where are you?”

“I’m sitting in my car outside of Tray Dawson’s house.”

“The Were who owns the motorcycle repair shop.”

“Right.”

“I’m coming.”

He was there in less than ten minutes. His car pulled up behind mine. I was pulled over on the shoulder, because I hadn’t wanted to drive up onto the gravel in front of the house.

“I’m weak,” I said, when he got in beside me. “I shouldn’t have called you. But I swear to God, I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You didn’t call Eric.” It was a simple observation.

“Take too long,” I said. I told him what I’d done. “I can’t believe I forgot Amelia,” I said, stricken by my self-centeredness.

“I think forgetting one thing after such a day is actually permissible, Sookie,” Bill said.

“No, it isn’t,” I said. “It’s just that . . . I can’t go in there and find them dead. I just can’t do it. My courage has just collapsed.”

He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “What’s one more dead person to me?” he said. And then he was out of the car and moving silently in the faint light peeking around the curtains of the house next door. He got to the front door, listened intently. He didn’t hear anything, I knew, because he opened the door and stepped inside.

Just as he vanished, my cell phone rang. I jumped so hard I almost hit my head on the roof. I dropped the phone and had to grope for it.

“Hello?” I said, full of fear.

“Hey, did you call? I was in the shower,” Amelia said, and I collapsed over the steering wheel, thinking,
Thank you God thank you God thank you thank you
.

“You okay?” Amelia asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m okay. Where is Tray? Is he there with you?”

“Nope. I went to his house, but he wasn’t there. I waited a while for you, but you didn’t show, so I figured he’d gone to the doctor, and I decided you must have been held up at work or something. I went back to the insurance agency, and I just got home about thirty minutes ago. What’s up?”

“I’ll be there soon,” I said. “Lock the doors and don’t let anyone in.”

“Doors are locked; no one’s knocking,” she said.

“Don’t let me in,” I said, “unless I give you the password.”

“Sure, Sookie,” she said, and I could tell she thought I’d gone over the edge. “What’s the password?”

“Fairypants,” I said, and how I came up with that I have no idea. It simply seemed super unlikely that anyone else in the world would say it.

“I got it,” Amelia said. “Fairypants.”

Bill was back at the car. “I’ve got to go,” I said, and hung up. When he opened the door, the dome light showed his face. It looked grim.

“He’s not there,” he said immediately. “But there’s been a fight.”

“Blood?”

“Yes.”

“Lots?”

“He could still be alive. From the way it smelled, I don’t think it was all his.”

My shoulders slumped. “I don’t know what to do,” I confessed, and it felt almost good to say it out loud. “I don’t know where to go to find him or how to help him. He’s supposed to be working as my bodyguard. But he went out in the woods last night and met up with a woman who said she was your new girlfriend. She gave him a drink. It was bad vampire blood, and it made him sick as the flu.” I looked over at Bill. “Maybe she got it from Bubba. I haven’t seen him to ask. I’m kind of worried about him.” I knew Bill could see me far more clearly than I could see him. I spread my hands in query. Did he know this woman?

Bill looked at me. His mouth curved up in a rather bitter little smile. “I’m not dating anyone,” he said.

I decided to completely ignore the emotional slant. I didn’t have the time or the energy tonight. I’d been right when I’d discounted the mysterious woman’s identity. “So this was someone who could pretend to be a fangbanger, someone convincing enough to overcome Tray’s good sense, someone who could put him under a spell so he’d drink the blood.”

“Bubba doesn’t have much good sense at all,” Bill said. “Even though some fairy magic doesn’t work on vampires, I don’t think he’d be hard to bespell.”

“Have you seen him tonight?”

“He came over to my place to put drinks in his cooler, but he seemed weak and disoriented. After he drank a couple of bottles of TrueBlood, he seemed to be better. The last I saw of him, he was walking across the cemetery toward your house.”

“I guess we better go there next.”

“I’ll follow you.” Bill went to his own car, and we set off to drive the short distance to my place. But Bill caught the light at the intersection of the highway and Hummingbird Road, and I was ahead of him by quite a few seconds. I pulled up in back of the house, which was well-lit. Amelia had never worried about an electric bill in her life; it just made me want to cry sometimes when I followed her around turning off switch after switch.

I got out of the car and hurried for the back steps, all ready to say, “Fairypants!” when Amelia came to the door. Bill would be there in less than a minute, and we could make a plan on how to find Tray. When Bill got there, he’d check on Bubba; I couldn’t go out in the woods. I was proud of myself for not rushing into the trees to find the vampire.

I had so much to think about that I didn’t think about the most obvious danger.

There’s no excuse for my lack of attention to detail.

A woman by herself always has to be alert, and a woman who’s had the experiences I’ve had has extra cause for alarm when blips are on her radar. The security light was still on at the house and and the backyard looked normal, it was true. I had even glimpsed Amelia in the kitchen through a window. I hurried to the back steps, my purse slung over my shoulder, my trowel and water guns inside it, my keys in my hand.

But anything can be hiding in the shadows, and it takes only a moment’s inattention for a trap to spring.

I heard a few words in a language I didn’t recognize, but for a second I thought,
He’s mumbling
, and I couldn’t imagine what a man behind me would be mumbling, and I was about to put my foot on the first step to the back porch.

And then I didn’t know a thing.