Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (135 page)

I’d parked at the rear of the house last night, and I checked the back porch carefully to make sure there weren’t any lurking vampires before I shut and locked the back door behind me. I’d been surprised before, and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. Though it was barely dark, there might be some early risers around. Probably the last thing the Japanese had expected when they’d developed synthetic blood was that its availability would bring vampires out of the realm of legend and into the light of fact. The Japanese had just been trying to make a few bucks hawking the blood substitute to ambulance companies and hospital emergency rooms. Instead, the way we looked at the world had changed forever.

Speaking of vampires (if only to myself ), I wondered if Bill Compton was home. Vampire Bill had been my first love, and he lived right across the cemetery from me. Our houses lay on a parish road outside the little town of Bon Temps and south of the bar where I worked. Lately, Bill had been traveling a lot. I only found out he was home if he happened to come into Merlotte’s, which he did every now and then to mix with the natives and have some warm O-positive. He preferred TrueBlood, the most expensive Japanese synthetic. He’d told me it almost completely satisfied his cravings for blood fresh from the source. Since I’d witnessed Bill going into a bloodlust fit, I could only thank God for TrueBlood. Sometimes I missed Bill an awful lot.

I gave myself a mental shake. Snapping out of a slump, that was what today was all about. No more worry! No more fear! Free and twenty-six! Working! House paid for! Money in the bank! These were all good, positive things.

The parking lot was full when I got to the bar. I could see I’d be busy tonight. I drove around back to the employees’ entrance. Sam Merlotte, the owner and my boss, lived back there in a very nice double-wide that even had a little yard surrounded by a hedge, Sam’s equivalent of a white picket fence. I locked my car and went in the employees’ back door, which opened into the hallway off of which lay the men’s and the ladies’, a large stock room, and Sam’s office. I stowed my purse and coat in an empty desk drawer, pulled up my red socks, shook my head to make my hair hang right, and went through the doorway (this door was almost always propped open) that led to the big room of the bar/restaurant. Not that the kitchen produced anything but the most basic stuff: hamburgers, chicken strips, fries and onion rings, salads in the summer and chili in the winter.

Sam was the bartender, the bouncer, and on occasion the cook, but lately we’d been lucky in getting our positions filled: Sam’s seasonal allergies had hit hard, making him less than ideal as a food handler. The new cook had shown up in answer to Sam’s ad just the week before. Cooks didn’t seem to stay long at Merlotte’s, but I was hoping that Sweetie Des Arts would stick around a while. She showed up on time, did her job well, and never gave the rest of the staff any trouble. Really, that was all you could ask for. Our last cook, a guy, had given my friend Arlene a big rush of hope that he was The One—in this case, he’d have been her fourth or fifth One—before he’d decamped overnight with her plates and forks and a CD player. Her kids had been devastated; not because they’d loved the guy, but because they missed their CD player.

I walked into a wall of noise and cigarette smoke that made it seem like I was passing into another universe. Smokers all sit on the west side of the room, but the smoke doesn’t seem to know it should stay there. I put a smile on my face and stepped behind the bar to give Sam a pat on the arm. After he expertly filled a glass with beer and slid it to a patron, he put another glass under the tap and began the process all over again.

“How are things?” Sam asked carefully. He knew all about Jason’s problems, since he’d been with me the night I’d found Jason being held prisoner in a toolshed in Hotshot. But we had to be roundabout in our speech; vampires had gone public, but shape-shifters and Weres were still cloaked in secrecy. The underground world of supernatural beings was waiting to see how vampires fared before they followed the vampire example by going public.

“Better than I expected.” I smiled up at him, though not too far up, since Sam’s not a big man. He’s built lean, but he’s much stronger than he looks. Sam is in his thirties—at least, I think he is—and he has reddish gold hair that halos his head. He’s a good man, and a great boss. He’s also a shape-shifter, so he can change into any animal. Most often, Sam turns into a very cute collie with a gorgeous coat. Sometimes he comes over to my place and I let him sleep on the rug in the living room. “He’s gonna be fine.”

“I’m glad,” he said. I can’t read shifter minds as easily as I read human minds, but I can tell if a mood is true or not. Sam was happy because I was happy.

“When are you taking off?” I asked. He had that faraway look in his eyes, the look that said he was mentally running through the woods, tracking possums.

“As soon as Terry gets here.” He smiled at me again, but this time the smile was a bit strained. Sam was getting antsy.

The door to the kitchen was just outside the bar area at the west end, and I stuck my head in the door to say hi to Sweetie. Sweetie was bony and brunette and fortyish, and she wore a lot of makeup for someone who was going to be out of sight in the kitchen all evening. She also seemed a little sharper, perhaps better educated, than any of Merlotte’s previous short-order cooks.

“You doing okay, Sookie?” she called, flipping a hamburger as she spoke. Sweetie was in constant motion in the kitchen, and she didn’t like anyone getting in her way. The teenager who assisted her and bussed tables was terrified of Sweetie, and he took care to dodge her as she moved from griddle to fryer. This teenage boy got the plates ready, made the salads, and went to the window to tell the barmaids which order was up. Out on the floor, Holly Cleary and her best friend, Danielle, were working hard. They’d both looked relieved when they’d seen me come in. Danielle worked the smoking section to the west, Holly usually worked the middle area in front of the bar, and I worked the east when three of us were on duty.

“It looks like I better get moving,” I told Sweetie.

She gave me a quick smile and turned back to the griddle. The cowed teenager, whose name I had yet to catch, gave me a ducked-head nod and went back to loading the dishwasher.

I wished Sam had called me before things had gotten so busy; I wouldn’t have minded coming in a little earlier. Of course, he wasn’t exactly himself tonight. I began checking the tables in my section, getting fresh drinks and clearing off food baskets, collecting money and bringing change.

“Barmaid! Bring me a Red Stuff!” The voice was unfamiliar, and the order was unusual. Red Stuff was the cheapest artificial blood, and only the newest vampires would be caught dead asking for it. I got a bottle from the clear-fronted refrigerator and stuck it in the microwave. While it warmed, I scanned the crowd for the vamp. He was sitting with my friend Tara Thornton. I’d never seen him before, which was worrisome. Tara’d been dating an older vampire (much older: Franklin Mott had been older than Tara in human years before he died, and he’d been a vampire for over three hundred years), and he’d been giving her lavish gifts—like a Camaro. What was she doing with this new guy? At least Franklin had nice manners.

I put the warm bottle on a tray and carried it over to the couple. The lighting in Merlotte’s at night isn’t particularly bright, which is how patrons like it, and it wasn’t until I’d gotten quite near that I could appreciate Tara’s companion. He was slim and narrow shouldered with slicked-back hair. He had long fingernails and a sharp face. I supposed that, in a way, he was attractive—if you like a liberal dose of danger with your sex.

I put the bottle down in front of him and glanced uncertainly at Tara. She looked great, as usual. Tara is tall, slim, and dark haired, and she has a wardrobe of wonderful clothes. She’d overcome a truly horrible childhood to own her own business and actually join the chamber of commerce. Then she started dating the wealthy vampire, Franklin Mott, and she quit sharing her life with me.

“Sookie,” she said, “I want you to meet Franklin’s friend Mickey.” She didn’t sound like she wanted us to meet. She sounded like she wished I’d never come over with Mickey’s drink. Her own glass was almost empty, but she said, “No,” when I asked her if she was ready for another.

I exchanged a nod with the vampire; they don’t shake hands, not normally. He was watching me as he took a gulp from the bottled blood, his eyes as cold and hostile as a snake’s. If he was a friend of the ultra-urbane Franklin, I was a silk purse. Hired hand, more like. Maybe a bodyguard? Why would Franklin give Tara a bodyguard?

She obviously wasn’t going to talk openly in front of this slimeball, so I said, “Catch you later,” and took Mickey’s money to the till.

I was busy all night, but in the spare moments I had, I thought about my brother. For a second night, he was out frolicking under the moon with the other beasties. Sam had taken off like a shot the moment Terry Bellefleur arrived, though his office wastebasket was full of crumpled tissues. His face had been tense with anticipation.

It was one of those nights that made me wonder how the humans around me could be so oblivious to the other world operating right beside ours. Only willful ignorance could ignore the charge of magic in the air. Only a group lack of imagination could account for people not wondering what went on in the dark around them.

But not too long ago, I reminded myself, I’d been as willfully blind as any of the crowd in Merlotte’s. Even when the vampires had made their carefully coordinated worldwide announcement that their existence was fact, few authorities or citizens seemed to take the next mental step:
If vampires exist, what else could be lurking just outside the edge of the light?

Out of curiosity, I began to dip into the brains around me, testing to see their fears. Most of the people in the bar were thinking about Mickey. The women, and some of the men, were wondering what it would be like to be with him. Even stick-in-the-mud lawyer Portia Bellefleur was peeking around her conservative beau to study Mickey. I could only wonder at these speculations. Mickey was terrifying. That negated any physical attraction I might have felt toward him. But I had lots of evidence that the other humans in the bar didn’t feel the same way.

I’ve been able to read minds all my life. The ability is no great gift. Most peoples’ minds don’t bear reading. Their thoughts are boring, disgusting, disillusioning, but very seldom amusing. At least Bill had helped me learn how to cut out some of the buzz. Before he’d given me some clues, it had been like tuning in to a hundred radio stations simultaneously. Some of them had come in crystal clear, some had been remote, and some, like the thoughts of shape-shifters, had been full of static and obscurity. But they’d all added up to cacophony. No wonder lots of people had treated me as a half-wit.

Vampires were silent. That was the great thing about vamps, at least from my point of view: They were dead. Their minds were dead, too. Only once in a coon’s age did I get any kind of flash from a vampire mind.

Shirley Hunter, my brother’s boss at his parish roadwork job, asked me where Jason was when I brought a pitcher of beer to his table. Shirley was universally known as “Catfish.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said mendaciously, and he winked at me. The first guess as to where Jason was always involved a woman, and the second guess usually included another woman. The tableful of men, still in their working clothes, laughed more than the answer warranted, but then they’d had a lot of beer.

I raced back to the bar to get three bourbon-and-Cokes from Terry Bellefleur, Portia’s cousin, who was working under pressure. Terry, a Vietnam vet with a lot of physical and emotional scars, appeared to be holding up well on this busy night. He liked simple jobs that required concentration. His graying auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail and his face was intent as he plied the bottles. The drinks were ready in no time, and Terry smiled at me as I put them on my tray. A smile from Terry was a rare thing, and it warmed me.

Just as I was turning with my tray resting on my right hand, trouble erupted. A Louisiana Tech student from Ruston got into a one-on-one class war with Jeff LaBeff, a redneck who had many children and made a kind of living driving a garbage truck. Maybe it was just a case of two stubborn guys colliding and really didn’t have much to do with town vs. gown (not that we were that close to Ruston). Whatever the reason for the original quarrel, it took me a few seconds to realize the fight was going to be more than a shouting match.

In those few seconds, Terry tried to intervene. Moving quickly, he got between Jeff and the student and caught firm hold of both their wrists. I thought for a minute it would work, but Terry wasn’t as young or as active as he had been, and all hell broke loose.

“You could stop this,” I said furiously to Mickey as I hurried past his and Tara’s table on my way to try to make peace.

He sat back in his chair and sipped his drink. “Not my job,” he said calmly.

I got that, but it didn’t endear the vampire to me, especially when the student whirled and took a swing at me as I approached him from behind. He missed, and I hit him over the head with my tray. He staggered to one side, maybe bleeding a little, and Terry was able to subdue Jeff LaBeff, who was looking for an excuse to quit.

Incidents like this had been happening with more frequency, especially when Sam was gone. It was evident to me that we needed a bouncer, at least on weekend nights . . . and full-moon nights.

The student threatened to sue.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Mark Duffy,” the young man said, clutching his head.

“Mark, where you from?”

“Minden.”

I did a quick evaluation of his clothes, his demeanor, and the contents of his head. “I’m gonna enjoy calling your mama and telling her you took a swing at a woman,” I said. He blanched and said no more about suing, and he and his buds left soon after. It always helps to know the most effective threat.