"I hope that hurt like hell," I said, my voice choking but clear enough.
"Yes," he said. "It hurt like hell."
Bill pulled me down to the floor by him, covered us both with the blanket. He gently pushed my head into the notch of his neck and shoulder.
We lay there in silence for what seemed like a long time, though maybe it was only minutes. My body nestled into his out of habit and out of a deep need; though I didn't know if the need was for Bill specifically, or the intimacy I'd only shared with him. I hated him. I loved him.
"Sookie," he said, against my hair, "I'm-"
"Hush," I said. "Hush." I huddled closer against him. I relaxed. It was like taking off an Ace bandage, one that had been wrapped too tight.
"You're wearing someone else's clothes," he whispered, after a minute or two.
"Yes, a vampire named Bernard. He gave me clothes to wear after my dress got ruined at the bar."
"At Josephine's?"
"Yes."
"How did your dress get ruined?"
"I got staked."
Everything about him went still. "Where? Did it hurt?" He folded down the blanket. "Show me."
"Of course it hurt," I said deliberately. "It hurt like hell." I lifted the hem of the sweatshirt carefully.
His fingers stroked the shiny skin. I would not heal like Bill. It might take a night or two more for him to become as smooth and perfect as he had been, but he would look just as before, despite a week of torture. I would have a scar the rest of my life, vampire blood or no vampire blood. The scar might not be as severe, and it was certainly forming at a phenomenal rate, but it was undeniably red and ugly, the flesh underneath it still tender, the whole area sore.
"Who did this to you?"
"A man. A fanatic. It's a long story."
"Is he dead?"
"Yeah. Betty Joe Pickard killed him with two big blows of her fist. It kind of reminded me of a story I read in elementary school, about Paul Bunyan."
"I don't know that story." His dark eyes caught mine.
I shrugged.
"As long as he's dead now." Bill had a good grip on that idea.
"Lots of people are dead now. All because of your program."
There was a long moment of silence.
Bill cast a glance at the door Eric had tactfully closed behind him. Of course, he was probably listening right outside, and like all vampires, Eric had excellent hearing. "It's safe?"
"Yes."
Bill's mouth was right by my ear. It tickled when he whispered, "Did they search my house?"
"I don't know. Maybe the vamps from Mississippi went in. I never had a chance to get over there after Eric and Pam and Chow came to tell me you'd been snatched."
"And they told you … ?"
"That you were planning on leaving me. Yes. They told me."
"I already got paid back for that piece of madness," Bill said.
"You might have been paid back enough to suit you" I said, "but I don't know if you've been paid back enough to suit me."
There was a long silence in the cold, empty room. It was quiet out in the living room, too. I hoped Eric had worked out what we were going to do next, and I hoped it involved going home. No matter what happened between Bill and me, I needed to be home in Bon Temps. I needed to go back to my job and my friends and I needed to see my brother. He might not be much, but he was what I had.
I wondered what was happening in the next apartment.
"When the queen came to me and said she'd heard I was working on a program that had never been attempted before, I was flattered," Bill told me. "The money she offered was very good, and she would have been within her rights not to offer any, since I am her subject."
I could feel my mouth twisting at hearing yet another reminder of how different Bill's world was from mine. "Who do you think told her?" I asked.
"I don't know. I don't really want to," Bill said. His voice sounded offhand, even gentle, but I knew better.
"You know I had been working on it for some time," Bill said, when he figured I wasn't going to say anything.
"Why?"
"Why?" He sounded oddly disconcerted. "Well, because it seemed like a good idea to me. Having a list of all America's vampires, and at least some of the rest of the world's? That was a valuable project, and actually, it was kind of fun to compile. And once I started doing research, I thought of including pictures. And aliases. And histories. It just grew."
"So you've been, um, compiling a-like a directory? Of vampires?"
"Exactly." Bill's glowing face lit up even brighter. "I just started one night, thinking how many other vampires I'd come across in my travels over the past century, and I started making a list, and then I started adding a drawing I'd done or a photograph I'd taken."
"So vampires do photograph? I mean, they show up in pictures?"
"Sure. We never liked to have our picture made, when photography became a common thing in America, because a picture was proof we'd been in a particular place at a particular time, and if we showed up looking exactly the same twenty years later, well, it was obvious what we were. But since we have admitted our existence, there is no point clinging to the old ways."
"I'll bet some vampires still do."
"Of course. There are some who still hide in the shadows and sleep in crypts every night."
(This from a guy who slept in the soil of the cemetery from time to time.)
"And other vampires helped you with this?"
"Yes," he said, sounding surprised. "Yes, a few did. Some enjoyed the exercise of memory … some used it as a reason to search for old acquaintances, travel to old haunts. I am sure that I don't have all the vampires in America, especially the recent immigrants, but I think I have probably eighty percent of them."
"Okay, so why is the queen so anxious to have this program? Why would the other vampires want it, once they learned about it? They could assemble all the same information, right?"
"Yes," he said. "But it would be far easier to take it from me. And as for why it's so desirable to have this program … wouldn't you like to have a booklet that listed all the other telepaths in the United States?"
"Oh, sure," I said. "I could get lots of tips on how to handle my problem, or maybe how to use it better."
"So, wouldn't it be good to have a directory of vampires in the United States, what they're good at, where their gifts lie?"
"But surely some vampires really wouldn't want to be in such a book," I said. "You've told me that some vamps don't want to come out, that they want to stay in the darkness and hunt secretly."
"Exactly."
"Those vamps are in there, too?"
Bill nodded.
"Do you want to get yourself staked?"
"I never realized how tempting this project would be to anyone else. I never thought of how much power it would give to the one who owned it, until others began trying to steal it."
Bill looked glum.
The sound of shouting in the apartment next door drew our attention.
Alcide and Debbie were at it again. They were really bad for each other. But some mutual attraction kept them ricocheting back to each other. Maybe, away from Alcide, Debbie was a nice person.
Nah, I couldn't bring myself to believe that. But maybe she was at least tolerable when Alcide's affections weren't an issue.
Of course they should separate. They should never be in the same room again.
And I had to take this to heart.
Look at me. Mangled, drained, staked, battered. Lying in a cold apartment in a strange city with a vampire who had betrayed me.
A big decision was standing right in front of my face, waiting to be recognized and enacted.
I shoved Bill away, and wobbled to my feet. I pulled on my stolen jacket. With his silence heavy at my back, I opened the door to the living room. Eric was listening with some amusement to the battle going on in the next apartment.