Sookie 09 Dead and Gone (15 page)

He looked as if he were thinking of several different responses. Finally he said, “Do you regret Quinn?”

“Yes,” I said, because I had to be honest. “Because we had the beginning of something good going, and I may have made a huge mistake sending him away. But I’ve never been seriously involved with two men at the same time, and I’m not starting now. Right now, that man is you.”

“You love me,” he said, and he nodded.

“I appreciate you,” I said cautiously. “I have big lust for you. I enjoy your company.”

“There’s a difference,” Eric said.

“Yes, there is. But you don’t see me bugging you to spell out how you feel about me, right? Because I’m pretty damn sure I wouldn’t like the answer. So maybe you better rein it in a little yourself.”

“You don’t want to know how I feel about you?” Eric looked incredulous. “I can’t believe you’re a human woman. Women
always
want to know how you feel about them.”

“And I’ll bet they’re sorry when you tell them, huh?”

He lifted one eyebrow. “If I tell them the truth.”

“That’s supposed to put me in a confiding mood?”

“I always tell you the truth,” he said. And there wasn’t a trace of that smile left on his face. “I may not tell you everything I know, but what I tell you . . . it’s true.”

“Why?”

“The blood exchange has worked both ways,” he said. “I’ve had the blood of many women. I’ve had almost utter control over them. But they never drank mine. It’s been decades, maybe centuries since I gave any woman my blood. Maybe not since I turned Pam.”

“Is this the general policy among vampires you know?” I wasn’t quite sure how to ask what I wanted to know.

He hesitated, nodded. “For the most part. There are some vampires who like to take total control over a human . . . make that human their Renfield.” He used the term with distaste.

“That’s from
Dracula
, right?”

“Yes, Dracula’s human servant. A degraded creature . . . Why someone of Dracula’s eminence would want so debased a man as that . . .” Eric shook his head disgustedly. “But it does happen. The best of us look askance at a vampire who makes servant after servant. The human is lost when the vampire assumes too much control. When the human goes completely under, he isn’t worth turning. He isn’t worth anything at all. Sooner or later, he has to be killed.”

“Killed! Why?”

“If the vampire who’s assumed so much control abandons the Renfield, or if the vampire himself is killed . . . the Renfield’s life is not worth living after that.”

“They have to be put down,” I said. Like a dog with rabies.

“Yes.” Eric looked away.

“But that’s not going to happen to me. And you won’t ever turn me.” I was absolutely serious.

“No. I won’t ever force you into subservience. And I will never turn you, since you don’t want it.”

“Even if I’m going to die, don’t turn me. I would hate that more than anything.”

“I agree to that. No matter how much I may want to keep you.”

Right after we’d met, Bill had not changed me when I had been close to death. I’d never realized he might have been tempted to do so. He’d saved my human life instead. I put that away to consider later. Tacky to think about one man when you’re in bed with another.

“You saved me from being bonded to Andre,” I said. “But it cost me.”

“If he’d lived, it would have cost me, too. No matter how mild his reaction, Andre would have paid me back for my intervention.”

“He seemed so calm about it that night,” I said. Eric had persuaded Andre to let him be his proxy. I’d been very grateful at the time, since Andre gave me the creeps and he didn’t give a damn about me, either. I remembered my talk with Tara.
If I’d let Andre share blood that night, I’d be free now, since he’s dead
. I still couldn’t decide how I felt about that—probably three different ways.

Tonight was turning out to be a huge one for realizations. They could just stop coming any old time now.

“Andre never forgot a challenge to his will,” Eric said. “Do you know how he died, Sookie?”

Ah-oh.

“He got stuck in the chest with a big splinter of wood,” I said, swallowing a little. Like Eric, I didn’t always tell the whole truth. The splinter hadn’t gotten in Andre’s chest by accident. Quinn had done that.

Eric looked at me for what seemed like a very long time. He could feel my anxiety, of course. I waited to see if he’d push the issue. “I don’t miss Andre,” he said finally. “I regret Sophie-Anne, though. She was brave.”

“I agree,” I said, relieved. “By the way, how are you getting along with your new bosses?”

“So far, so good. They’re very forward-thinking. I like that.”

Since the end of October, Eric had had to learn the structure of a new and larger organization, the characters of the vampires who made it work, and how to liaise with the new sheriffs. Even for him, that was a big bite to chew.

“I bet the vamps you had with you before that night are extra glad they pledged loyalty to you, since they survived when so many of the other vamps in Louisiana died that night.”

Eric smiled broadly. It would have been really scary if I hadn’t seen the fang display before. “Yes,” he said with a whole bunch of satisfaction. “They owe me their lives, and they know it.”

He slid his arms around me and held me against his cool body. I was content and sated, and my fingers trailed through the happy trail of golden hair that led downward. I thought of the provocative picture of Eric as Mr. January in the “Vampires of Louisiana” calendar. I liked the one he’d given me even more. I wondered if I could get a poster-sized blowup.

He laughed when I asked him. “We should think of producing another calendar,” he said. “It was a real earner for us. If I can have a picture of you in the same pose, I’ll give you a poster of me.”

I thought about it for twenty seconds. “I don’t think I could do a nude picture,” I said with some regret. “They always seem to show up to bite you in the ass.”

Eric laughed again, low and husky. “You talk a lot about that,” he said. “Shall I bite you in the ass?” This led to a lot of other things, wonderful and playful things. After those things had come to a happy completion, Eric glanced at the clock beside my bed.

“I have to go,” he whispered.

“I know,” I said. My eyes were heavy with sleep.

He began to dress for his return to Shreveport, and I pulled down the covers and snuggled into the bed properly. It was hard to keep my eyes open, though watching him move around my bedroom was a sweet sight.

He bent to kiss me, and I put my arms around his neck. For a second, I knew he was thinking of crawling back in the bed with me; I hoped it was his body language and his murmur of pleasure that cued me to his thoughts. Every now and then, I got a flash from a vampire mind, and it scared me to death. I didn’t think I’d last long if vampires realized I could read their minds, no matter how seldom that occurred.

“I want you again,” he said, sounding a little surprised. “But I have to go.”

“I’ll see you soon, I guess?” I was awake enough to feel uncertain.

“Yes,” he said. His eyes were bright and his skin glowed. The mark on his wrist was gone. I touched where it had been. He leaned over to kiss the place on my neck where he’d bitten me, and I shivered all over. “Soon.”

Then he was gone, and I heard the back door close quietly behind him. With the last bit of energy in my muscles, I rose and passed through the kitchen in the dark to shoot the dead bolt. I saw Amelia’s car parked by mine; at some point, she’d returned home.

I went to the sink to get a drink of water. I knew the dark kitchen like the back of my hand, so I didn’t need a light. I drank and realized how thirsty I was. As I turned to go back to bed, I saw something move at the edge of the woods. I froze, my heart pounding in a very unpleasant way.

Bill stepped out of the trees. I knew it was him, though I couldn’t see his face clearly. He stood looking up, and I knew he must have watched Eric take flight. Bill had recovered from the fight with Quinn, then.

I expected to be angry that Bill was watching me, but the anger never rose. No matter what had happened between us, I could not rid myself of the feeling that Bill had not simply been spying on me—he had been watching over me.

Also—more practically—there was nothing to be done about it. I could hardly throw open the door and apologize for having male company. At this moment, I wasn’t the least bit sorry I’d gone to bed with Eric. In fact, I felt as sated as if I’d had the Thanksgiving feast of sex. Eric didn’t look anything like a turkey—but after I had a happy mental image of him lying on my kitchen table with some sweet potatoes and marshmallows, I was able to think only of my bed. I slid under the covers with a smile on my face, and almost as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was asleep.

I should have known my brother would come to see me. I
should only have felt surprised that he hadn’t appeared earlier. When I got up the next day at noon, feeling as relaxed as a cat in a pool of sunshine, Jason was in the backyard on the chaise I’d used the day before. I thought it was smart of him not to come inside, considering we were at odds with each other.

Today wasn’t going to be nearly as warm as the day before. It was cold and raw. Jason was bundled in a heavy camo jacket and a knit cap. He was staring up into the cloudless sky.

I remembered the twins’ warning, and I looked at him carefully; but no, it was Jason. The feel of his mind was familiar, but maybe a fairy could impersonate even that. I listened in for a second. No, this was definitely my brother.

It was strange to see him sitting idle and even stranger to see him alone. Jason was always talking, drinking, flirting with women, working at his job, or working on his house; and if he wasn’t with a woman, he nearly always had a male shadow—Hoyt (until he’d been preempted by Holly) or Mel. Contemplation and solitude were not states I associated with my brother. Watching him stare at the sky as I sipped my mug of coffee, I thought,
Jason’s a widower now
.

That was a strange new identity for Jason, a heavy one he might not be able to manage. He’d cared for Crystal more than she’d cared for him. That had been a new experience for Jason, too. Crystal—pretty, stupid, and faithless—had been his female counterpart. Maybe her infidelity had been an attempt to reassert her independence, to struggle against the pregnancy that had tied her more securely to Jason. Maybe she’d just been a bad woman. I’d never understood her, and now I never would.

I knew I’d have to go talk to my brother. Though I’d told Jason to stay away from me, he wasn’t listening. When had he ever? Maybe he’d taken the temporary truce caused by Crystal’s death as a sign of a new state of things.

I sighed and went out the back door. Since I’d slept so late, I’d showered before I’d even made my coffee. I grabbed my old quilted pink jacket off the rack by the back door and pulled it over my jeans and sweater.

I put a mug of coffee on the ground by Jason, and I sat on the upright folding chair close to him. He didn’t turn his head, though he knew I was there. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses.

“You forgiven me?” he asked after he’d taken a gulp of coffee. His voice sounded hoarse and thick. I thought he’d been crying.

“I expect that sooner or later I might,” I said. “But I’ll never feel the same about you again.”

“God, you’ve gotten hard. You’re all the family I’ve got left.” The dark glasses turned to face me.
You have to forgive me, because you’re all I have who can forgive
.

I looked at him, feeling a little exasperated, a little sad. If I was getting harder, it was in response to the world around me. “If you need me so much, I guess you should have thought twice before you set me up like that.” I rubbed my face with my free hand. He had some family he didn’t know about, and I wasn’t going to tell him. He would only try to use Niall, too.

“When will they release Crystal’s body?” I asked.

“Maybe in a week,” he said. “Then we can have the funeral. Will you come?”

“Yes. Where will it be?”

“There’s a chapel out close to Hotshot,” he said. “It doesn’t look like much.”

“The Tabernacle Holiness Church?” It was a peeling, white ramshackle building way out in the country.

He nodded. “Calvin said they do the burials for Hotshot from there. One of the guys in Hotshot is the pastor for it.”

“Which one?”

“Marvin Norris.”

Marvin was Calvin’s uncle, though he was four years younger.

“I think I remember seeing a cemetery out back of the church.”

“Yeah. The community digs the hole, one of them puts together the coffin, and one of them does the service. It’s real homey and personal.”

“You’ve been to a funeral there before?”

“Yeah, in October. One of the babies died.”

There hadn’t been an infant death listed in the Bon Temps paper in months. I had to wonder if the baby had been born in a hospital or in one of the houses in Hotshot; if any trace of its existence had ever been recorded.

“Jason, have the police been by any more?”

“Over and over. But I didn’t do it, and nothing they say or ask can make that change. Plus, the alibi.”

I couldn’t argue that.

“How are you fixed as far as work goes?” I wondered if they would fire Jason. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in trouble. And though Jason was never guilty of the worst crimes attributed to him, sooner or later his reputation as being a generally okay guy would simply crumple for good.

“Catfish said to take time off until the funeral. They’re going to send a wreath to the funeral home when we get her body back.”

“What about Hoyt?”

“He hasn’t been around,” Jason said, sounding puzzled and hurt.

Holly, his fiancée, wouldn’t want him hanging around with Jason. I could understand that.

“Mel?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Jason said, brightening. “Mel comes by. We worked on his truck yesterday, and this weekend we’re going to paint my kitchen.” Jason smiled at me, but it faded fast. “I like Mel,” he said, “but I miss Hoyt.”

That was one of the most honest things I’d ever heard Jason say.

“Haven’t you heard anything about this, Sookie?” Jason asked me. “You know—the way you
hear
things? If you could steer the police in the right direction, they could find out who killed my wife and my baby, and I could get my life back.”

I didn’t think Jason was ever going to get his old life back. I was sure he wouldn’t understand, even if I spelled it out. But then I saw what was in his head in a moment of true clarity. Though Jason couldn’t verbalize these ideas, he
did
understand, and he was pretending, pretending hard, that everything would be the same . . . if only he could get out from under the weight of Crystal’s death.

“Or if you tell us,” he said, “we’ll take care of it, Calvin and me.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said. What else could I say? I climbed out of Jason’s head and swore to myself I wouldn’t get inside again.

After a long silence, he got up. Maybe he’d been waiting to see if I’d offer to make lunch for him. “I guess I’ll go back home, then,” he said.

“Good-bye.”

I heard his truck start up a moment later. I went back in, hanging the jacket back where I’d gotten it.

Amelia had left me a note stuck to the milk carton in the refrigerator. “Hey, roomie!” it said by way of opening. “Sounded like you had company last night. Did I smell a vampire? Heard someone shut the back door about three thirty. Listen, be sure and check the answering machine. You got messages.”

Which Amelia had already listened to, because the light wasn’t blinking anymore. I pressed the Play button.

“Sookie, this is Arlene. I’m sorry about everything. I wish you’d come by to talk. Give me a call.”

I stared at the machine, not sure how I felt about this message. It had been a few days, and Arlene had had time to reconsider stomping out of the bar. Could she possibly mean she wanted to recant her Fellowship beliefs?

There was another message, this one from Sam. “Sookie, can you come in to work a little early today or give me a call? I need to talk to you.”

I glanced at the clock. It was just one p.m., and I wasn’t due at work until five. I called the bar. Sam picked up.

“Hey, it’s Sookie,” I said. “What’s up? I just got your message.”

“Arlene wants to come back to work,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell her. You got an opinion?”

“She left a message on my answering machine. She wants to talk to me,” I said. “I don’t know what to think. She’s always on some new thing, isn’t she? Do you think she could have dropped the Fellowship?”

“If Whit dropped her,” he said, and I laughed.

I wasn’t so sure I wanted to rebuild our friendship, and the longer I thought about it, the more doubtful I became. Arlene had said some hurtful and awful things to me. If she’d meant them, why would she want to mend fences with a terrible person like me? And if she hadn’t meant them, why on earth had they passed her lips? But I felt a twinge when I thought of her children, Coby and Lisa. I’d kept them so many evenings, and I’d been so fond of them. I hadn’t seen them in weeks. I found I wasn’t too upset about the passing of my relationship with their mother—Arlene had been killing that friendship for some time now. But the kids, I did miss them. I said as much to Sam.

“You’re too good,
cher
,” he said. “I don’t think I want her back here.” He’d made up his mind. “I hope she can find another job, and I’ll give her a reference for the sake of those kids. But she was causing trouble before this last blowup, and there’s no point putting all of us through the wringer.”

After I’d hung up, I realized that Sam’s decision had influenced me in favor of seeing my ex-friend. Since Arlene and I weren’t going to get the opportunity to gradually make peace at the bar, I’d try to at least fix things so we could nod at each other if we passed in Wal-Mart.

She picked up on the first ring. “Arlene, it’s Sookie,” I said.

“Hey, hon, I’m glad you called back,” she said. There was a moment of silence.

“I thought I’d come over to see you, just for a minute,” I said awkwardly. “I’d like to see the kids and talk to you. If that’s okay.”

“Sure, come over. Give me a few minutes, so I can pick up the mess.”

“You don’t need to do that for me.” I’d cleaned Arlene’s trailer many a time in return for some favor she’d done me or because I didn’t have anything else to do while she was out and I was there to babysit.

“I don’t want to slide back into my old ways,” she said cheerfully, sounding so affectionate that my heart lifted . . . for just a second.

But I didn’t wait a few minutes.

I left immediately.

I couldn’t explain to myself why I wasn’t doing what she’d asked me to do. Maybe I’d caught something in Arlene’s voice, even over the phone. Maybe I was recalling all the times Arlene had let me down, all the occasions she’d made me feel bad.

I don’t think I’d let myself dwell on these incidents before, because they revealed such a colossal pitifulness on my part. I’d needed a friend so badly I’d clung to the meager scraps from Arlene’s table, though she’d taken advantage of me time after time. When her dating wind had blown the other way, she hadn’t thought twice about discarding me to win favor with her current flame.

In fact, the more I thought, the more I was inclined to turn around and head back to my house. But didn’t I owe Coby and Lisa one more try to mend my relationship with their mom? I remembered all the board games we’d played, all the times I’d put them to bed and spent the night in the trailer because Arlene had called to ask if she could spend the night away.

What the hell was I doing? Why was I trusting Arlene
now
?

I wasn’t, not completely. That’s why I was going to scope out the situation.

Arlene didn’t live in a trailer park but on an acre of land a little west of town that her dad had given her before he passed away. Only a quarter acre had been cleared, just enough for the trailer and a small yard. There was an old swing set in the back that one of Arlene’s former admirers had assembled for the kids, and there were two bikes pushed up against the back of the trailer.

I was looking at the trailer from the rear because I’d pulled off the road into the overgrown yard of a little house that had stood next door until its bad wiring had caused a fire a couple of months before. Since then, the frame house had stood half-charred and forlorn, and the former renters had found somewhere else to live. I was able to pull behind the house, because the cold weather had kept the weeds from taking over.

I picked a path through the fringe of high weeds and trees that separated this house from Arlene’s. Working through the thickest growth, I made my way to a vantage point where I could see part of the parking area in front of the trailer and all of the backyard. Only Arlene’s car was visible from the road, since it had been left in the front yard.

From my vantage point, I could see that behind the trailer was parked a black Ford Ranger pickup, maybe ten years old, and a red Buick Skylark of approximately the same vintage. The pickup was loaded down with pieces of wood, one long enough to protrude beyond the truck bed. They measured about four by four, I estimated.

As I watched, a woman I vaguely recognized came out of the back of the trailer onto the little deck. Her name was Helen Ellis, and she’d worked at Merlotte’s about four years before. Though Helen was competent and so pretty she’d drawn the men in like flies, Sam had had to fire her for repeated lateness. Helen had been volcanically upset. Lisa and Coby followed Helen onto the deck. Arlene was framed in the doorway. She was wearing a leopard print top over brown stretch pants.

The kids looked so much older than the last time I’d seen them! They looked reluctant and a little unhappy, especially Coby. Helen smiled at them encouragingly and turned back to Arlene to say, “Just let me know when it’s over!” There was a pause while Helen seemed to struggle with how to phrase something she didn’t want the kids to understand. “She’s only getting what she deserves.” I could see Helen only in profile, but her cheerful smile made my stomach heave. I swallowed hard.

“Okay, Helen. I’ll call you when you can bring ’em back,” Arlene said. There was a man standing behind her. He was too far back in the interior for me to identify with certainty, but I thought he was the man I’d hit on the head with a tray a couple of months back, the man who’d been so ugly to Pam and Amelia. He was one of Arlene’s new buddies.

Helen and the kids drove off in the Skylark.

Arlene had closed the back door against the chill of the day. I shut my eyes and located her inside the trailer. I found there were two men in there with her. What were they thinking about? I was a little far, but I stretched out with my extra sense.

They were thinking about doing awful things to me.