Sookie 07 All Together Dead (4 page)

They all nodded, absolutely fascinated by Amelia's big drama. I felt a twinge of guilt. For a minute or two, everyone gave her opinion about the sad story. Maxine Fortenberry summed it all up.

"Poor girl," said Maxine. "He should've stood up to them."

I passed Halleigh another present to open. "Halleigh, you know that won't happen to you," I said, diverting the conversation back to its proper topic. "Andy is just nuts about you; anyone can tell."

Halleigh blushed, and her mother said, "We all love Andy," and the shower was back on track. The rest of the conversation veered from the wedding to the meals each church was taking in turn to cook for the evacuees. The Catholics had tomorrow night, and Maxine sounded a little relieved when she said the number to cook for had dropped to twenty-five.

As I drove home afterward, I was feeling a little frazzled from the unaccustomed sociability. I also faced the prospect of telling Amelia about her new invented background. But when I saw the pickup standing in my yard, all such thoughts flew out of my head.

Quinn was here – Quinn the weretiger, who made his living arranging and producing special events for the world of the weird – Quinn, my honey. I pulled around back and practically leaped out of my car after an anxious glance in my rearview mirror to make sure my makeup was still good.

Quinn charged out of the back door as I hurried up to the steps, and I gave a little jump. He caught me and whirled me around, and when he put me down he was kissing me, his big hands framing my face.

"You look so beautiful," he said, coming up for air. A moment later, he gasped. "You smell so good." And then he was back into the kissing.

We finally broke it off.

"Oh, I haven't seen you in so long!" I said. "I'm so glad you're here!" I hadn't seen Quinn in weeks, and then I'd been with him only briefly as he'd passed through Shreveport on his way to Florida with a load of props for the coming-of-age ceremony for a packleader's daughter.

"I've missed you, babe," he said, his big white teeth gleaming. His shaved head shone in the sunlight, which was coming at quite an angle this late in the afternoon. "I had a little time to catch up with your roomie while you were at the shower. How'd it go?"

"Like showers usually do. Lots of presents and lots of gossip. This was the second shower I've been to for this gal, plus I gave them a plate in their everyday china for a wedding present, so I've done them proud."

"You can go to more than one shower for the same person?"

"In a small town like this, yeah. And she went home to have a shower and a dinner party in Mandeville during the summer. So I guess Andy and Halleigh are set up pretty well."

"I thought they were supposed to get married last April."

I explained about Caroline Bellefleur's heart attack. "By the time she was getting over that and they were talking wedding dates again, Miss Caroline fell and broke her hip."

"Wow."

"And the doctors didn't think she'd get over that, but she survived that, too. So I think Halleigh and Andy and Portia and Glen are actually going to have the most-anticipated wedding of the Bon Temps year sometime next month. And you're invited."

"I am?"

We were heading inside by this time, since I wanted to take off my shoes and I also wanted to scout out what my housemate was up to. I was trying to think of some long errand I could send her off on, since I so seldom got to see Quinn, who was kind of my boyfriend, if at my age (twenty-seven), I could use that term.

That is, I thought he would be my boyfriend if he could ever slow down enough to latch on to me.

But Quinn's job, working for a subsidiary of Extreme(ly Elegant) Events, covered a lot of territory, literally and figuratively. Since we'd parted in New Orleans after our rescue from Were abductors, I'd seen Quinn three times. He'd been in Shreveport one weekend as he passed through on his way to somewhere else, and we'd gone out to dinner at Ralph and Kacoo's, a popular restaurant. It had been a good evening, but he'd taken me home at the end of it since he had to start driving at seven the next morning. The second time, he'd dropped into Merlotte's while I was at work, and since it was a slow night, I'd taken an hour off to sit and talk to him, and we'd held hands a little. The third time, I'd kept him company while he was loading up his trailer at a U-RENT-SPACE storage shed. It had been in the middle of summer, and we'd both been sweating up a storm. Streaming sweat, lots of dust, storage sheds, the occasional vehicle trolling through the lot... not a romantic ambience.

And even though Amelia was now obligingly coming down the stairs with her purse over her shoulder and clearly planning to head into town to give us some privacy, it hardly seemed promising that we'd have to grab an instant to consummate a relationship that had had so little face time.

Amelia said, "Good-bye!" She had a big smile all over her face, and since Amelia has the whitest teeth in the world, she looked like the Cheshire cat. Amelia's short hair was sticking out all over (she says no one in Bon Temps can cut it right) and her tan face was bare of makeup. Amelia looks like a young suburban mom who has an infant seat strapped into the back of her minivan; the kind of mom who takes time off to run and swim and play tennis. In point of fact, Amelia did run three times a week and practiced tai chi out in my backyard, but she hated getting in the water and she thought tennis was for (and I quote) "mouth-breathing idiots." I'd always admired tennis players myself, but when Amelia had a point of view, she stuck to it.

"Going to the mall in Monroe," she said. "Shopping to do!" And with an I'm-being-a-good-roommate kind of wave, she hopped into her Mustang and vanished...

...leaving Quinn and me to stare at each other.

"That Amelia!" I said lamely.

"She's... one of a kind," Quinn said, just as uneasy as I was.

"The thing is – " I began, just as Quinn said, "Listen, I think we ought – " and we both floundered to a halt. He made a gesture that indicated I should go first.

"How long are you here for?" I asked.

"I have to leave tomorrow," he said. "I could stay in Monroe or Shreveport."

We did some more staring. I can't read Were minds, not like regular humans. I can get the intent, though, and the intent was... intent.

"So," he said. He went down on one knee. "Please," he said.

I had to smile, but then I looked away. "The only thing is," I began again. This conversation would come much more easily to Amelia, who was frank to a very extreme point. "You know that we have, uh, a lot of... " I gestured back and forth with my hand.

"Chemistry," he said.

"Right," I said. "But if we never get to see any more of each other than we have the past three months, I'm not really sure I want to make that next step." I hated to say it, but I had to. I didn't need to cause myself pain. "I have big lust," I said. "Big, big lust. But I'm not a one-night-stand kind of woman."

"When the summit is over, I'm taking a long time off," Quinn said, and I could tell he was absolutely sincere. "A month. I came here to ask you if I could spend it with you."

"Really?" I couldn't help sounding incredulous. "Really?"

He smiled up at me. Quinn has a smooth, shaved head, an olive complexion, a bold nose, and a smile that makes these little dimples in the corners of his mouth. His eyes are purple, like a spring pansy. He is as big as a pro wrestler, and just as scary. He held up a huge hand, as if he were swearing an oath. "On a stack of Bibles," he said.

"Yes," I said after a moment's scan of my inner qualms to make sure they were minor. And also, I may not have a built-in truth detector, but I could have told if he'd been thinking, I'm saying that to get in her pants. Shifters are very hard to read, their brains are all snarly and semiopaque, but I would've picked up on that. "Then... yes."

"Oh, boy." Quinn took a deep breath and his grin lit up the room. But in the next moment, his eyes got that focused look men get when they're thinking about sex very specifically. And then, lickety-split, Quinn was on his feet and his arms were around me as tightly as ropes tying us together.

His mouth found mine. We picked up where we'd left off with the kissing. His mouth was a very clever one and his tongue was very warm. His hands began examining my topography. Down the line of my back to the curve of my hips, back up to my shoulders to cup my face for a moment, down to brush my neck teasingly with the lightest of fingertips. Then those fingers found my breasts, and after a second he tugged my top out of my pants and began exploring territory he'd only visited briefly before. He liked what he found, if "Mmmmm" was a statement of delight. It spoke volumes to me.

"I want to see you," he said. "I want to see all of you."

I had never made love in the daytime before. It seemed very (excitingly) sinful to be struggling with buttons before the sun had even set, and I was so grateful I'd worn an extra-nice white lace bra and little bitty panties. When I dress up, I like to dress up all the way down to the skin.

"Oh," he said when he saw the bra, which contrasted nicely with my deep summer tan. "Oh, boy." It wasn't the words; it was the expression of deep admiration. My shoes were already off. Luckily that morning I'd dispensed with handy-but-totally-unsexy knee-high hose in favor of bare legs. Quinn spent some quality time nuzzling my neck and kissing his way down to the bra while I was struggling to undo his belt, though since he would bend while I was trying to deal with the stiff buckle, that wasn't working out fast enough.

"Take off your shirt," I said, and my voice came out as hoarse as his. "I don't have a shirt, you shouldn't have a shirt."

"Fine," he said, and presto, the shirt was off. You'd expect Quinn to be hairy, but he isn't. What he is, is muscular to the nth degree, and right at the moment his olive skin was summer-tan. His nipples were surprisingly dark and (not so surprisingly) very hard. Oh, boy – right at my eye level. He began dealing with his own damn belt while I began to explore one hard nub with my mouth, the other with my hand. Quinn's whole body jerked, and he stopped what he was doing. He ran his fingers into my hair to hold my head against him, and he sighed, though it came out more like a growl, vibrating through his body. My free hand yanked at his pants, and he resumed working on the belt but in an unfocused and distracted way.

"Let's move into the bedroom," I said, but it didn't come out like a calm and collected suggestion, more a ragged demand.

He swooped me up, and I latched my arms around his neck and kissed him on his beautiful mouth again.

"No fair," he muttered. "My hands are full."

"Bed," I said, and he deposited me on the bed and then simply fell on top of me.

"Clothes," I reminded him, but he had a mouthful of white lace and breast, and he didn't reply. "Oh," I said. I may have said "Oh" a few more times; and "Yes," too. A sudden thought yanked me right out of the flow of the moment.

"Quinn, do you have, you know... " I had never needed to have such items before, since vamps can't get a girl pregnant or give her a disease.

"Why do you think I still have my pants on?" he said, pulling a little package out of his back pocket. His smile this time was far more feral.

"Good," I said from my heart. I would have thrown myself from a window if we'd had to quit. "And you might take the pants off now."

I'd seen Quinn naked before but under decidedly stressful circumstances – in the middle of a swamp, in the rain, while we were being pursued by werewolves. Quinn stood by the bed and took off his shoes and socks and then his pants, moving slowly enough to let me watch. He stepped out of his pants, revealing boxer briefs that were suffering their own kind of stress. In one quick movement he eased them off, too. He had a tight, high butt, and the line from his hip to his thigh was just mouthwatering. He had fine, thin white scars striping him at random, but they seemed like such a natural part of him that they didn't detract from his powerful body. I was kneeling on the bed while I admired him, and he said, "Now you."

I unhooked my bra and slid it off my arms, and he said, "Oh, God. I am the luckiest man alive." After a pause, he said, "The rest."

I stood by the bed and eased the little white lacey things off.

"This is like standing in front of a buffet," he said. "I don't know where to begin."

I touched my breasts. "First course," I suggested.

I discovered that Quinn's tongue was just a bit raspier than a regular man's. I was gasping and making incoherent noises when he moved from my right breast to my left as he tried to decide which one he liked best. He couldn't make up his mind immediately, which was fine with me. By the time he settled on the right breast, I was pushing against him and making sounds that couldn't be mistaken for anything but desperate.

"I think I'll skip the second course and go right to dessert," he whispered, his voice dark and ragged. "Are you ready, babe? You sound ready. You feel ready."

"I am so ready," I said, reaching down between us to wrap my hand around his length. He quivered all over when I touched him. He rolled on the condom.

"Now," he growled. "Now!" I guided him to my entrance, thrust my hips up to meet him. "I dreamed of this," he said, and shoved inside me up to the hilt. That was the last thing either of us was able to say.

Quinn's appetite was as outstanding as his equipment.

He enjoyed dessert so much, he came back for seconds.

We were in the kitchen when Amelia returned. I'd fed Bob, her cat, since she'd been so tactful earlier and deserved some reward. Tact does not come naturally to Amelia.

Bob ignored his kibble in favor of watching Quinn fry bacon, and I was slicing tomatoes. I'd gotten out the cheese and the mayonnaise and the mustard and the pickles, anything I could imagine a man might want on a bacon sandwich. I'd pulled on some old shorts and a T-shirt, while Quinn had gotten his bag from his truck and put on his workout clothes – a tank top and worn shorts made from sweat material.

Amelia gave Quinn a top-to-bottom scan when he turned back to the stove, and then she looked at me, grinning broadly. "You guys have a good reunion?" she said, tossing her shopping bags on the kitchen table.

"Up to your room, please," I said, because otherwise Amelia would want us to admire every single thing she'd bought. With a pout, Amelia snagged the bags and carried them upstairs, returning in a minute to ask Quinn if there was enough bacon for her.

"Sure," Quinn said obligingly, taking out some strips and putting a few more in the pan.

I liked a man who could cook. While I set out plates and silverware, I was pleasantly aware of the tenderness I felt south of my belly button and of my overwhelmingly relaxed mood. I got three glasses out of the cabinet but kind of forgot what I was doing on my way to the refrigerator, since Quinn stepped away from the stove to give me a quick kiss. His lips were so warm and firm, they reminded me of something else that had been warm and firm. I flashed on my astonished moment of revelation when Quinn had slid into me for the first time. Considering that my only previous sexual encounters had been with vampires, who are definitely on the cool side, you can imagine what a startling experience a breathing lover with a heartbeat and a warm penis would be. In fact, shape-shifters tended to run a bit warmer than regular humans. Even through the condom, I'd been able to feel the heat.

"What?" Quinn asked. "Why the look?" He was smiling quizzically.

I smiled. "I was just thinking of your temperature," I said.

"Hey, you knew I was hot," he said with a grin. "What about the thought reading?" he said more seriously. "How did that work out?"

I thought it was great that he'd even wondered. "I can't call your thoughts any trouble," I said, unable to suppress a huge grin. "It might be a stretch to count 'yesyesyesyespleasepleaseplease' as a thought."

"Not a problem then," he said, totally unembarrassed.

"Not a problem. As long as you're wrapped in the moment and you're happy, I'm gonna be happy."

"Well, hot damn." Quinn turned back to the stove. "That's just great."

I thought it was, too.

Just great.

Amelia ate her sandwich with a good appetite and then picked Bob up to feed him little bits of bacon she'd saved. The big black-and-white cat purred up a storm.

"So," said Quinn, after his first sandwich had disappeared with amazing quickness, "this is the guy you changed by accident?"

"Yeah," said Amelia, scratching Bob's ears. "This is the guy." Amelia was sitting cross-legged in the kitchen chair, which is something I simply couldn't do, and she was focused on the cat. "The little fella," she crooned. "My fuzzy wuzzy honey, isn't he? Isn't he?" Quinn looked mildly disgusted, but I was just as guilty of talking baby talk to Bob when I was alone with him. Bob the witch had been a skinny, weird guy with a kind of geeky charm. Amelia had told me Bob had been a hairdresser; I'd decided if that were true, he'd fixed hair at a funeral parlor. Black pants, white shirt, bicycle? Have you ever known a hairdresser who presented himself that way?

"So," Quinn said. "What are you doing about it?"

"I'm studying," Amelia said. "I'm trying to figure out what I did wrong, so I can make it right. It would be easier if I could... " Her voice trailed off in a guilty kind of way.

"If you could talk to your mentor?" I said helpfully.

She scowled at me. "Yeah," she said. "If I could talk to my mentor."

"Why don't you?" Quinn asked.

"One, I wasn't supposed to use transformational magic. That's pretty much a no-no. Two, I've looked for her online since Katrina, on every message board witches use, and I can't find any news of her. She might have gone to a shelter somewhere, she might be staying with her kids or some friend, or she might have died in the flooding."

"I believe you had your main income from your rental property. What are your plans now? What's the state of your property?" Quinn asked, carrying his plate and mine to the sink. He wasn't being bashful with the personal questions tonight. I waited with interest to hear Amelia's answers. I'd always wanted to know a lot of things about Amelia that were just plain rude to ask: like, What was she living on now? Though she had worked part-time for my friend Tara Thornton at Tara's Togs while Tara's help was sick, Amelia's outgo far exceeded her visible income. That meant she had good credit, some savings, or another source of income besides the tarot readings she'd done in a shop off Jackson Square and her rent money, which now wasn't coming in. Her mom had left her some money. It must have been a chunk.

"Well, I've been back into New Orleans once since the storm," Amelia said. "You've met Everett, my tenant?"

Quinn nodded.

"When he could get to a phone, he reported some damage to the bottom floor, where I live. There were trees and branches down, and of course there wasn't electricity or water for a couple of weeks. But the neighborhood didn't suffer as badly as some, thank God, and when the electricity was back on, I snuck down there." Amelia took a deep breath. I could hear right from her brain that she was scared to venture into the territory she was about to reveal to us. "I, um, went to talk to my dad about fixing the roof. Right then, we had a blue roof like half the people around us." The blue plastic that covered damaged roofs was the new norm in New Orleans.

This was the first time Amelia had mentioned her family to me, in more than a very general way. I'd learned more from her thoughts than I'd learned from her conversation, and I had to be careful not to mix the two sources when we talked. I could see her dad's presence in her head, love and resentment mixing in her thoughts to form a confused mishmash.

"Your dad is going to repair your house?" Quinn asked casually. He was excavating in my Tupperware box in which I stored any cookies that happened to cross my threshold – not a frequent occurrence, since I have a tendency to put on weight when sweets are in the house. Amelia had no such problem, and she'd stocked the box with a couple of kinds of Keebler cookies and told Quinn he was welcome to help himself.

Amelia nodded, much more fascinated by Bob's fur than she had been a moment before. "Yeah, he's got a crew on it," she said.

This was news to me.

"So who is your dad?" Quinn was keeping up the directness. So far it had worked for him.

Amelia squirmed on the kitchen chair, making Bob raise his head in protest.

"Copley Carmichael," she muttered.

We were both silent with shock. After a minute, she looked up at us. "What?" she said. "Okay, so he's famous. Okay, so he's rich. So?"

"Different last name?" I said.

"I use my mom's. I got tired of people being weird around me," Amelia said pointedly.

Quinn and I exchanged glances. Copley Carmichael was a big name in the state of Louisiana. He had fingers in all kinds of financial pies, and all those fingers were pretty dirty. But he was an old-fashioned human wheeler-dealer: no whiff of the supernatural around Copley Carmichael.

"Does he know you're a witch?" I asked.

"He doesn't believe it for a minute," Amelia said, sounding frustrated and forlorn. "He thinks I'm a deluded little wannabe, that I'm hanging with weird little people and doing weird little jobs to stick my tongue out at him. He wouldn't believe in vampires if he hadn't seen them over and over."

"What about your mom?" Quinn asked. I got myself a refill on my tea. I knew the answer to this one.

"Dead," Amelia told him. "Three years ago. That's when I moved out of my dad's house and into the bottom floor of the house on Chloe. He'd given it to me when I graduated from high school so I'd have my own income, but he made me manage it myself so I'd have the experience."

That seemed like a pretty good deal to me. Hesitantly I said, "Wasn't that the right thing to do? Get you to learn by doing?"

"Well, yeah," she admitted. "But when I moved out, he wanted to give me an allowance... at my age! I knew I had to make it on my own. Between the rent, and the money I picked up doing fortunes, and magic jobs I got on my own, I've been making a living." She threw up her head proudly.

Amelia didn't seem to realize the rent was income from a gift of her father's, not something she'd actually earned. Amelia was truly pleased as punch with her own self-sufficiency. My new friend, whom I'd acquired almost by accident, was a bundle of contradictions. Since she was a very clear broadcaster, I got her thoughts loud and clear. When I was alone with Amelia, I had to shield like crazy. I'd relaxed with Quinn around, but I shouldn't have. I was getting a whole mess from Amelia's head.

"So, could your dad help you find your mentor?" Quinn asked.

Amelia looked blank for a moment, as if she was considering that. "I don't see how," she said slowly. "He's a powerful guy; you know that. But he's having as much trouble in New Orleans since Katrina as the rest of the people are."

Except he had a lot more money and he could go somewhere else, returning when he pleased, which most of the inhabitants of the city could not. I closed my mouth to keep this observation to myself. Time to change the topic.

"Amelia," I said. "How well did you know Bob, anyway? Who's looking for him?"

She looked a little frightened, not Amelia's normal thing. "I'm wondering, too," she said. "I just knew Bob to speak to, before that night. But I do know that Bob had – has – great friends in the magic community. I don't think any of them know we got together. That night, the night before the queen's ball when the shit hit the fan between the Arkansas vamps and our vamps, Bob and I went back to my place after we'd left Terry and Patsy at the pizza place. Bob called in sick to work the next day, since we had celebrated so hard, and then he spent that day with me."

"So it's possible Bob's family has been looking for him for months? Wondering if he's dead or alive?"

"Hey, chill. I'm not that awful. Bob was raised by his aunt, but they don't get along at all. He hasn't had much contact with her for years. I'm sure he does have friends that are worrying, and I'm really, really sorry about that. But even if they knew what had happened, that wouldn't help Bob, right? And since Katrina, everyone in New Orleans has a lot to worry about."

At this interesting point in the discussion, the phone rang. I was closest, so I picked it up. My brother's voice was almost electric with excitement.

"Sookie, you need to come out to Hotshot in about an hour."

"Why?"

"Me and Crystal are getting married. Surprise!"

While this was not a total shock (Jason had been "dating" Crystal Norris for several months), the suddenness of the ceremony made me anxious.

"Is Crystal pregnant again?" I asked suspiciously. She'd miscarried a baby of Jason's not long ago.

"Yes!" Jason said, like that was the best news he could possibly impart. "And this time, we'll be married when the baby comes."

Jason was ignoring reality, as he was increasingly willing to do. The reality was that Crystal had been pregnant at least once before she was pregnant by Jason, and she had lost that child, too. The community at Hotshot was a victim of its own inbreeding.

"Okay, I'll be there," I said. "Can Amelia and Quinn come, too?"

"Sure," Jason said. "Crystal and me'll be proud to have them."

"Is there anything I can bring?"

"No, Calvin and them are getting ready to cook. It's all going to be outside. We got lights strung up. I think they'll have a big pot of jambalaya, some dirty rice, and coleslaw, and me and my buddies are bringing the alcohol. Just come looking pretty! See you at Hotshot in an hour. Don't be late."

I hung up and sat there for a minute, my hand still clutching the cordless phone. That was just like Jason: come in an hour to a ceremony planned at the last minute for the worst possible reason, and don't be late! At least he hadn't asked me to bring a cake.

"Sookie, you okay?" Quinn asked.

"My brother Jason's getting married tonight," I said, trying to keep my voice even. "We're invited to the wedding, and we need to be there in an hour." I'd always figured Jason wouldn't marry a woman I truly adored; he'd always shown a partiality to tough sluts. And that was Crystal, sure enough. Crystal was also a werepanther, a member of a community that guarded its own secrets jealously. In fact, my brother was now a werepanther himself because he'd been bitten over and over by a rival for Crystal's attentions.

Jason was older than I, and God knows, he'd had his share of women. I had to assume he knew when one suited him.

I emerged from my thoughts to find that Amelia was looking startled and excited. She loved to go out and party, and the chances for that around Bon Temps were limited. Quinn, who'd met Jason when he was visiting me, looked at me with a skeptical raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, I know," I said. "It's crazy and dumb. But Crystal's pregnant again, and there's no stopping him. Do you two want to come along with me? You don't have to. I'm afraid I've got to get ready right now."

Amelia said, "Oh, goody, I can wear my new outfit," and sped upstairs to tear the tags off.

Quinn said, "Babe, do you want me to come?"

"Yes, please," I said. He came over to me and wrapped his heavy arms around me. I felt comforted, even though I knew Quinn was thinking what a fool Jason was.

I pretty much agreed with him.