“Eric,” Amelia said, stretching unself-consciously. “How are things going at Fangtasia? How’s the new management?” She couldn’t know she’d hit a nerve. And when Eric’s eyes narrowed — I suspected that he thought she’d said that on purpose to rile him — Amelia was staring at her toes as she touched them with the palms of her hands. I wondered if I could do that, and then my mind snapped back to the current moment.
“Business is going all right,” Eric said. “Victor has opened some new clubs close by.”
Amelia understood immediately that this was a bad development, but she was smart enough not to say anything. Honestly, it was like being in the room with someone who was shouting her inmost thoughts. “Victor’s the smiley guy who was out in the yard the night of the takeover, right?” she said, straightening and rotating her head from side to side.
“Yes,” Eric said, one corner of his mouth going up in a sardonic look. “The smiley guy.”
“So, Sook, what troubles do you have now?” Amelia asked me, evidently considering that she’d been polite enough to Eric. She was ready to plunge into whatever problem I described.
“Yes,” Eric said, looking at me with hard eyes. “What troubles do you have now?”
“I was just going to get Amelia to reinforce the wards around the house,” I said casually. “Since so much stuff has happened at Merlotte’s I was feeling kind of insecure.”
“So she called me,” Amelia said pointedly.
Eric looked from me to Amelia. He looked mighty displeased. “But now that the bitch has been cornered, Sookie, surely the threat’s been removed?”
“What?” Amelia asked. It was her turn to look from face to face. “What happened tonight, Sookie?”
I told her, briefly. “I’d still feel better if you made sure the wards were in place, though.”
“That’s one of the things I’ve come to do, Sookie.” For some reason, she smiled broadly at Eric.
Bob sidled in then and took up a position beside Amelia but slightly behind her. “Those weren’t my kittens,” he told me, and Eric gaped. I’d seldom seen him genuinely startled. It was all I could do to keep from laughing. “I mean, weres can’t breed with the animal they turn into. So I don’t think those were my kittens. Especially since — think about it! — I was only a cat by magic, not a genetic were.”
Amelia said, “Honey, we’ve talked about this. You don’t need to be embarrassed. It was a perfectly natural thing to do. I admit I got a little snitty about it, but, you know . . . the whole thing was my fault, anyway.”
“Don’t worry about it, Bob. Sam already spoke up in your defense.” I smiled at Bob, who looked relieved.
Eric decided to ignore this exchange. “Sookie, I need to get back to Fangtasia.”
We would never have a chance to say the things we needed to say, at this rate. “Okay, Eric. Tell Pam I said hello, if you two are back to speaking.”
“She’s a better friend to you than you know,” Eric said darkly.
I didn’t know how to respond to that, and he turned so quickly my eyes couldn’t track him. I heard his car door slam outside, and then he was driving down the driveway. No matter how many times I saw it, I still found it amazing that vamps could move so fast.
I’d hoped to have a chance to talk more to Amelia that night, but she and Bob were ready to turn in after their drive. They’d left New Orleans after a full day’s work, Amelia at the Genuine Magic Shop and Bob at the Happy Cutter. After fifteen minutes or so of going to and fro between the bathroom and the kitchen and the car, they became silent in the room across the hall. I’d taken off my shoes, and I padded into the kitchen to lock up.
I was just expelling a sigh of relief at the end of the day when there was a very quiet knock at the back door. I jumped like a frog. Who could be there at this time of night? I looked out across the back porch very cautiously.
Bill. I hadn’t seen him since his “sister” Judith had come to see him. I debated for a second, then decided to slip outside to talk to him. Bill was a lot of things to me: neighbor, friend, first lover. I did not fear him.
“Sookie,” he said, his cool, smooth voice as relaxing as a massage. “You have guests?”
“Amelia and Bob,” I explained. “They just got here from New Orleans. The fairies aren’t here tonight. They stay in Monroe most nights, lately.”
“Shall we stay out here, so we won’t wake your friends?”
It was news to me that our conversation was going to last that long. Apparently, Bill hadn’t come over just to borrow a cup of blood. I waved my hand toward the lawn furniture, and we sat in the chairs, already placed at a companionable angle. The warm night with its myriad small sounds closed around us like an envelope. The security light gave the backyard strange patterns of dark and brightness.
When the silence had lasted long enough for me to realize I was sleepy, I said, “How’s things going at your house, Bill? Is Judith still staying with you?”
“I’m fully healed from the silver poisoning,” he said.
“I, ah, I noticed you looked good,” I said. His skin had regained its pale clarity, and even his hair looked more lustrous. “Much better. So Judith’s blood worked.”
“Yes. But now . . .” He looked off into the night forest.
Uh-oh. “She wants to keep on living with you?”
“Yes,” he said, sounding relieved he hadn’t had to spell it out. “She does.”
“I thought you admired her because she looked so much like your first wife. Judith told me that’s why crazy Lorena changed Judith over, to keep you with her. I mean, sorry to bring up bad stuff.”
“It’s true. Judith does look like my first wife, in many respects. Her face is the same shape, her voice very like my wife’s. Her hair is the same color my wife’s was when she was a child. And Judith was raised very gently, like my wife.”
“So, I would have predicted that would make you happy with Judith,” I said.
“But not.” He sounded rueful, and he kept his eyes on the trees, carefully averting his gaze from my face. “And in fact, that’s why I didn’t call Judith when I realized how sick I was. I had to part with her the last time we were together because of her overwhelming obsession with me.”
“Oh,” I said, my voice very small.
“But you did the right thing, Sookie. She came to me and freely offered her blood. Since you invited her here without my knowledge, I’m at least not guilty of using her. My fault lies in letting her stay after . . . after I healed.”
“And why’d you do that?”
“Because I hoped somehow my feelings for her had changed, that I could have a genuine love for her. That would have freed me from . . .” His voice trailed off.
He might have finished the sentence, “loving you.” Or maybe, “freed me from the debt I owed her for healing me.”
I did feel a little better now that I knew he was glad to be well, even though the price was that he had to deal with Judith. And I could understand how awkward and unpleasant it would be to be saddled with a houseguest who adored you when you didn’t return the emotion. Who was the one who’d saddled him? Well, that would be me. Of course, I hadn’t known any of the emotional background. Distressed by Bill’s condition, I’d reasoned that someone of Bill’s bloodline could heal him, and I’d found that there was such a person and tracked her down. I’d further assumed Bill hadn’t done that himself from some perverse pride or perhaps even from a suicidal depression. I’d underestimated Bill’s desire to live.
“What do you plan to do about Judith?” I asked anxiously, scared to hear his answer.
“He need not do anything,” a quiet voice said from the trees.