First, I don’t monitor every single thought of every person. I block a lot of it out, in general, and I try especially hard to stay out of the heads of my co-workers. Second, people don’t always think about critical stuff in explicit terms. A guy might not think, I believe I’ll get the pistol from under the seat of my truck and shoot Jerry in the head for screwing my wife. I was much more likely to get an impression of sullen anger, with overtones of violence. Or even a projection of how it might feel to shoot Jerry. But the shooting of Jerry might not have reached the specific planning stage at the moment the shooter was in the bar, when I was privy to his thoughts.
And mostly people didn’t act on their violent impulses, something I didn’t learn until after some very painful incidents as I grew up.
If I spent my life trying to figure out the background of every single thought I heard, I wouldn’t have my own life.
At least I had something to think about besides wondering what the hell was happening with Eric and the Long Tooth pack. At the end of my shift, I found myself in Sam’s office with Sam and Antoine.
Sam shut the door behind me. He was furious. I didn’t blame him. Antoine was mad at himself, mad at me, and defensive with Sam. The atmosphere in the room was choking with anger and frustration and fear.
“Listen, man,” Antoine said. He was standing facing Sam. He made Sam look small. “Just listen, okay? After Katrina, I didn’t have no place to live and nothing to do. I was trying to find work and keep myself going. I couldn’t even get a damn FEMA trailer. Things were going bad. So I. I borrowed a car, to get to Texas to some relatives. I was gonna dump it where the cops could find it, get it back to the owner. I know it was stupid. I know I shouldn’ta done it. But I was desperate, and I did something dumb.”
“Yet you’re not in jail,” Sam observed. His words were like a whip that barely flicked Antoine, drew a little bit of blood.
Antoine breathed out heavily. “No, I’m not, and I’ll tell you why. My uncle is a werewolf, in one of the New Orleans packs. So I knew something about ’em. An FBI agent named Sara Weiss came to talk to me in jail. She was okay. But after she spoke with me once, she brought this guy Lattesta, Tom Lattesta. He said he was based in Rhodes, and I couldn’t figure out what he was doing in New Orleans. But he told me that he knew all about my uncle, and he figured that you-all were coming out sooner or later since the vamps did. He knew what you were, that there were other things besides wolves. He knew there’d be a lot of people didn’t like hearing that people who were part animal lived in with the rest of us. He described Sookie to me. He said she was something strange, too, and he didn’t know what. He sent me here to watch, to see what happened.”
Sam and I exchanged glances. I don’t know what Sam had anticipated, but this was way more serious than I’d imagined. I figured back. “Tom Lattesta has known all along?” I said. “When did he start thinking there was something wrong with me?” Had it been before he saw the footage from the hotel explosion in Rhodes, which he’d used as the reason for approaching me a few months ago?
“Half the time he’s sure you’re a fraud. Half the time he thinks you’re the real deal.”
I turned to my boss. “Sam, he came to my house the other day. Lattesta. He told me that someone close to me, one of the great relatives”—I didn’t want to get more specific in front of Antoine—“had fixed it so he had to back off.”
“That explains why he was so mad,” Antoine said, and his face hardened. “That explains a lot.”
“What did he tell you to do?” Sam asked.
“Lattesta said the car theft thing was forgotten as long as I kept an eye on Sam and any other people who weren’t all the way human who came into the bar. He said he couldn’t touch Sookie now, and he was mighty pissed.”
Sam looked at me, a question on his face.
“He’s sincere,” I said.
“Thank you, Sookie,” Antoine said. He looked abjectly miserable.
“Okay,” Sam said, after looking at Antoine for a few more seconds. “You still have a job.”
“No. conditions?” Antoine was looking at Sam unbelievingly. “He expects me to keep watching you.”
“Not a condition, but a warning. If you tell him one thing more besides the fact that I’m here and running this business, you’re outta here, and if I can think of something else to do to you, I will.”
Antoine seemed weak with relief. “I’ll do my best for you, Sam,” he said. “Tell the truth, I’m glad it all came out. It’s been sitting heavy on my conscience.”
“There’ll be a backlash,” I said when Sam and I were alone.
“I know. Lattesta will come down on him hard, and Antoine will be tempted to make something up to tell him.”
“I think Antoine is a good guy. I hope I’m not wrong.” I’d been wrong about people before. In major ways.
“Yeah, I hope he lives up to our expectations.” Sam smiled at me suddenly. He has a great smile, and I couldn’t help but smile back. “It’s good to have faith in people sometimes, give them another chance. And we’ll both keep our eyes on him.”
I nodded. “Okay. Well, I better get home.” I wanted to check my cell phone for messages and my landline, too. And my computer. I was dying for someone to reach out and touch me.
“Is something the matter?” Sam asked. He reached out to give me a tentative pat on the shoulder. “Anything I can do?”
“You’re the greatest,” I said. “But I’m just trying to get through a bad situation.”
“Eric’s out of touch?” he said, proving that Sam is one shrewd guesser.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “And he’s got. relatives in town. I don’t know what the hell’s going on.” The word “relatives” jogged my brain. “How are things going in your family, Sam?”
“The divorce is no-fault, and it’s going through,” he said. “My mom is pretty miserable, but she’ll be better as time goes on, I hope. Some of the people in Wright are giving her the cold shoulder. She let Mindy and Craig watch her change.”
“What form did she pick?” I’d rather be a shapeshifter than a wereanimal, so I’d have a choice.
“A Scottie, I think. My sister took it real well. Mindy’s always been more flexible than Craig.”
I thought women were almost always more flexible than men, but I didn’t think I needed to say that out loud. Generalizations like that can come back to bite you in the ass. “Deidra’s family settled down?”
“It looks like the wedding’s back on, as of two nights ago,” Sam said. “Her mom and dad finally got that the ‘contamination’ couldn’t spread to Deidra and Craig and their kids, if they have any.”
“So you think the wedding will take place?”
“Yeah, I do. You still going to go to Wright with me?”
I started to say, “You still want me to?” but that would have been unduly coy, since he’d just asked me. “When the date is set, you’ll have to ask my boss if I can get off work,” I told him. “Sam, it may be tacky of me to persist in asking, but why aren’t you taking Jannalynn?”
I wasn’t imagining the discomfort that emanated from Sam. “She’s. Well, ah. She’s. I can just tell that she and my mom wouldn’t get along. If I do introduce her to my family, I think I better wait until the tension of the wedding isn’t part of the picture. My mom’s still jangled from the shooting and the divorce, and Jannalynn is. not a calm person.” In my opinion, if you were dating someone you were clearly embarrassed to introduce to your family, you were probably dating the wrong person. But Sam hadn’t asked me for my opinion.
“No, she certainly isn’t a calm individual,” I said. “And now that she’s got those new responsibilities, she’s got to be pretty focused on the pack, I guess.”
“What? What new responsibilities?”
Uh-oh. “I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it,” I said. “I guess you haven’t seen her in a couple of days, huh?”