Amelia phoned while I was folding the laundry. She told me she was about to leave work and was going to meet Tray for dinner and a movie. She asked me if I wanted to come along, but I said I was busy. Amelia and Tray didn’t need a third wheel, and I didn’t need to feel like one.
It would have been nice to have some company. But what would I have done for social chitchat?Wow, that trowel slid into his stomach like it was Jell-O .
I shuddered and tried to think of what to do next. An uncritical companion, that was who I needed. I missed the cat we’d called Bob (though he hadn’t been born a cat and wasn’t one now). Maybe I could get another cat a real one. It wasn’t the first time I’d considered going to the animal shelter. I’d better wait until this fairy crisis was over before I did that. There wasn’t any point in picking out a pet if I was liable to be abducted or killed at any moment, right? Wouldn’t be fair to the animal. I caught myself giggling, and I knew that couldn’t be good.
Time to stop brooding; time to get something done. First, I’d clean off the trowel and put it away. I carried it to the kitchen sink, and I scrubbed it and rinsed it. The dull iron seemed to have a new gloss on it, like a bush that had gotten watered after a drought. I held it to the light and stared at the old tool. I shook myself.
Okay, that had really been an unpleasant simile. I banished the idea and scrubbed. When I thought the trowel looked spotless, I washed it and dried it all over again. Then I walked quickly out the back door and through the dark to hang the damn thing back in the toolshed on its designated hook.
I wondered if I might not get a cheap new trowel at Wal-Mart after all. I wasn’t sure I could use the iron one the next time I wanted to move some jonquil bulbs. It would feel like using a gun to pry out nails. I hesitated, the trowel poised to hang from its designated hook. Then I made up my mind and carried it back to the house. I paused on the back steps, admiring the last streak of light for a few moments until my stomach growled.
What a long day it had been. I was ready to settle in front of the television with a plate of something bad for me, watching some show that wouldn’t improve my mind at all.
I heard the crunching of a car coming up the driveway as I was opening the screen door. I waited outside to see who my caller might be. Whoever it was, they knew me a little, because the car proceeded around to the back.
In a day full of shocks, here was another: my caller was Quinn, who was not supposed to stick his big toe into Area Five. He was driving a Ford Taurus, a rental car.
“Oh,great ,” I said. I’d wanted company earlier, but not this company. As much as I’d liked and admired Quinn, this conversation promised to be just as upsetting as the day had been.
He got out of his car and strode over to me, his walk graceful, as always. Quinn is a very large shaved-bald man with pansy purple eyes. He is one of the few remaining weretigers in the world and probably the only male weretiger on the North American continent. We’d broken up the last time I’d seen him. I wasn’t proud of how I’d told him or why I’d done it, but I thought I’d been pretty clear about us not being a couple.
Yet here he was, and his big warm hands were resting on my shoulders. Any pleasure I might have felt at seeing him again was drowned by the wave of anxiety that swept over me. I felt trouble in the air.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said. “Eric turned down your request; he told me so.”
“Did he ask you first? Did you know I wanted to see you?” The darkness was now intense enough to trigger the outside security light. Quinn’s face had harsh lines in the yellow glare. His gaze locked with mine.
“No, but that’s not the point,” I said. I felt rage on the wind. It wasn’t my rage.
“I think it is.”
It was sunset. There simply wasn’t time to get into an extended argument. “Didn’t we say it all last time?” I didn’t want to go through another scene, no matter how fond I was of this man.
“You said what you thought was all, babe. I disagree.”
Oh, great. Just what I needed! But since I really do know that not everything is about me, I counted to ten and said, “I know I didn’t give you any slack when I told you we shouldn’t see each other anymore, Quinn, but I did mean what I said. What’s changed in your personal situation? Is your mom able to take care of herself now? Or has Frannie grown up enough to be able to manage your mom if she escapes?” Quinn’s mom had been through an awful time, and she’d come out of it more or less nuts. Actually, more. His sister, Frannie, was still a teenager.
He bowed his head for a moment, as if he were gathering himself. Then he looked directly into my eyes again. “Why are you harder on me than on anyone else?” he asked.
“I am not,” I said instantly. But then I thought,Am I?
“Have you asked Eric to give up Fangtasia? Have you asked Bill to give up his computer enterprise? Have you asked Sam to turn his back on his family?”
“What . . . ?” I began, trying to work out the connection.
“You’re asking me to give up other people I love—my mother and my sister—if I want to have you,” he said.
“I’m not asking you to doanything ,” I said, feeling the tension inside me ratchet up to an almost intolerable level. “I told you that I wanted to be first with the guy in my life. And I figured—I still figure—that your family has got to come first with you because your mom and your sister are not exactly stand-on-their-own-two-feet kind of women. I haven’t asked Eric to give up Fangtasia! Why would I do that? And where does Sam come into it?” I couldn’t even think of a reason to mention Bill. I was so over him.
“Bill loves his status in the human and vampire worlds, and Eric loves his little piece of Louisiana more than he’ll ever love you,” Quinn said, and he sounded almost sorry for me. That was ridiculous.
“Where did all the hating come from?” I asked, holding my hands spread in front of me. “I didn’t quit dating you because of any feelings I had for someone else. I quit dating you because I thought your plate was full already.”
“He’s trying to wall you off from everyone else who cares for you,” Quinn said, focusing on me with unnerving intensity. “And look at all the dependentshe has.”
“You’re talking about Eric?” All Eric’s “dependents” were vampires who could damn well take care of themselves.
“He’llnever dump his little area for you. He’d never let his little pack of sworn vamps serve someone else. He’ll never—”
I couldn’t stand this anymore. I gave a scream of sheer frustration. I actually stomped my foot like a three-year-old. “I haven’t asked him to!” I yelled. “What are you talking about? Did you show up to tell me no else will ever love me? What’s wrong with you?”
“Yes, Quinn,” said a familiar, cold voice. “What’s wrong with you?”
I swear I jumped at least six inches. I’d let my quarrel with Quinn absorb my attention, and I hadn’t felt Bill’s arrival.
“You’re frightening Sookie,” Bill said from a yard behind me, and my spine shivered at the menace in his voice. “That won’t happen, tiger.”
Quinn snarled. His teeth began growing longer, sharper, before my eyes. Bill stood at my side in the next second. His eyes were glowing an eerie silvery brown.
Not only was I afraid they’d kill each other, I realized that I was really tired of people popping on and off of my property like it was a train station on the supernatural railroad.
Quinn’s hands became clawed. A growl rumbled deep in his chest.