It wasn't too often that Sam treated me like an employee rather than a trusted associate. It hurt; the more so when I realized he was right. Though I'd been polite on the surface, I would have (and should have) swallowed their last remarks with no comment—if it hadn't been for the FotS T-shirts. Merlotte's wasn't my business. It was Sam's. If customers didn't come back, he'd suffer the consequences. Eventually, if he had to let bar-maids go, I would, too.
"I'm sorry," I said, though it wasn't easy to manage saying it. I smiled brightly at Sam and went off to do an unnecessary round of my tables, one that probably crossed the line from attentive and into irritating. But if I went into the employees' bathroom or the public ladies' room, I'd end up crying, because it hurt to be admonished and it hurt to be wrong; but most of all, it hurt to be put in my place.
When we closed that night, I left as quickly and quietly as possible. I knew I was going to have to get over being hurt, but I preferred to do my healing in my own home. I didn't want to have any "little talks" with Sam—or anyone else, for that matter. Holly was looking at me with way too much curiosity.
So I scooted out to the parking lot with my purse, my apron still on. Tray was leaning against my car. I jumped before I could stop myself.
"You running scared?" he asked.
"No, I'm running upset," I said. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm going to follow you home," he said. "Amelia there?"
"No, she's out on a date."
"Then I'm definitely checking out the house," the big man said, and climbed into his truck to follow me out Hummingbird Road.
There wasn't any reason to object that I could see. In fact, it made me feel good to have someone with me, someone I pretty much trusted.
My house was just as I'd left it, or rather, as Amelia had left it. The outside security lights had come on automatically, and she'd left the light over the sink on in the kitchen as well as the back porch light. Keys in hand, I crossed to the kitchen door.
Tray's big hand gripped my arm when I started to twist the doorknob.
"There's no one there," I said, having checked in my own way. "And it's warded by Amelia."
"You stay here while I look around," he said gently. I nodded and let him in. After a few seconds' silence, he opened the door to tell me I could come into the kitchen. I was ready to follow him through the house for the rest of his search, but he said, "I'd sure like a glass of Coke, if you got any."
He'd deflected me perfectly from following him by appealing to my hospitality. My grandmother would have hit me with a fly swatter if I hadn't gotten Tray a Coke right then.
By the time he arrived back in the kitchen and pronounced the house clear of intruders, the icy Coke was sitting in a glass on the table, and there was a meatloaf sandwich sitting by it. With a folded napkin.
Without a word, Tray sat down and put the napkin in his lap and ate the sandwich and drank the Coke. I sat opposite him with my own drink.
"I hear your man has vanished," Tray said when he'd patted his lips with the napkin.
I nodded.
"What do you think happened to him?"
I explained the circumstances. "So I haven't heard a word from him," I concluded. This story was sounding almost automatic, like I ought to tape it.
"That's bad" was all he said. Somehow it made me feel better, this quiet, undramatic discussion of a very touchy subject. After a minute of thoughtful silence, Tray said, "I hope you find him soon."
"Thanks. I'm real anxious to know how he's doing." That was a huge understatement.
"Well, I'd better be getting on," he said. "If you get nervous in the night, you call me. I can be here in ten minutes. It's no good, you being alone out here with the war starting."
I had a mental image of tanks coming down my driveway.
"How bad do you think it could get?" I asked.
"My dad told me in the last war, which was when his daddy was little, the pack in Shreveport got into it with the pack in Monroe. The Shreveport pack was about forty then, counting the halfies." Halfies was the common term for Weres who'd become wolves by being bitten. They could only turn into a kind of wolf-man, never achieving the perfect wolf form that born Weres thought was vastly superior. "But the Monroe pack had a bunch of college kids in it, so it come up to forty, forty-five, too. At the end of the fighting, both packs were halved."
I thought of the Weres I knew. "I hope it stops now," I said.
"It ain't gonna," Tray said practically. "They've tasted blood, and killing Alcide's girl instead of trying for Alcide was a cowardly way to open the fight. Them trying to get you, too; that only made it worse. You don't have a drop of Were blood. You're a friend of the pack. That should make you untouchable, not a target. And this afternoon, Alcide found Christine Larrabee dead."
I was shocked all over again. Christine Larrabee was—had been—the widow of one of the previous packleaders. She had a high standing in the Were community, and she'd rather reluctantly endorsed Jackson Herveaux for packleader. Now she had gotten a delayed payback.
"He's not going after any men?" I finally managed to speak.
Tray's face was dark with contempt. "Naw," the Were said. "The only way I can read it is, Furnan wants to set Alcide's temper off. He wants everyone to be on a hair trigger, while Furnan himself stays cool and collected. He's about got what he wants, too. Between grief and the personal insult, Alcide is aimed to go off like a shotgun. He needs to be more like a sniper rifle."
"Isn't Furnan's strategy real . . . unusual?"
"Yes," Tray said heavily. "I don't know what's gotten into him. Apparently, he don't want to face Alcide in personal combat. He don't want to just beat Alcide. He's aiming to kill Alcide and all Alcide's people, as far as I can tell. A few of the Weres, the ones with little kids, they already repledged themselves to him. They're too scared of what he'd do to their kids, after the attacks against women." The Were stood. "Thanks for the food. I've got to go feed my dogs. You lock up good after me, you hear? And where's your cell phone?"
I handed it to him, and with surprisingly neat movements for such large hands, Tray programmed his cell phone number into my directory. Then he left with a casual wave of his hand. He had a small neat house by his repair shop, and I was really relieved to find he'd timed the journey from there to here at only ten minutes. I locked the door behind him, and I checked the kitchen windows. Sure enough, Amelia had left one open at some point during the mild afternoon. After that discovery, I felt compelled to check every window in the house, even the ones upstairs.
After that was done and I felt as secure as I was going to feel, I turned on the television and sat in front of it, not really seeing what was happening on the screen. I had a lot to think about.
Months ago, I'd gone to the packmaster contest at Alcide's request to watch for trickery. It was my bad luck that my presence had been noticed and my discovery of Furnan's treachery had been public. It griped me that I'd been drawn into this fight, which was none of my own. In fact, bottom line: knowing Alcide had brought me nothing but grief.
I was almost relieved to feel a head of anger building at this injustice, but my better self urged me to squash it in the bud. It wasn't Alcide's fault that Debbie Pelt had been such a murderous bitch, and it wasn't Alcide's fault that Patrick Furnan had decided to cheat in the contest. Likewise, Alcide wasn't responsible for Furnan's bloodthirsty and uncharacteristic approach to consolidating his pack. I wondered if this behavior was even remotely wolflike.