"Amelia?" I called.
"Yeah," she answered, and I went to find her. She was in the living room, and she was as exhausted as I was.
"Are you going to be able to sleep?" I asked.
"I don't know. I'm going to try." She shook her head. "This changes everything."
"Which this?" Amazingly, she understood me.
"Oh, the vampire takeover. My dad had lots of dealings with the New Orleans vampires. He was going to be working for Sophie-Anne, repairing her headquarters in New Orleans. All her other properties, too. I better call him and tell him. He's going to want to get in there early with the new guy."
In her own way Amelia was being as practical as Eric. I felt out of tune with the whole world. I couldn't think of anyone I could call who would feel the least bit mournful over the loss of Sophie-Anne, Arla Yvonne, Cleo . . . And the list went on. It made me wonder, for the first time, if vampires might not get inured to loss. Look at all the life that passed them by and then vanished. Generation after generation went to their graves, while still the undead lived on. And on.
Well, this tired human—who would eventually pass on— needed some sleep in the worst possible way. If there was another hostile takeover tonight, it would have to proceed without me. I locked the doors all over again, called up the stairs to Amelia to tell her good night, and crawled back into my bed. I lay awake for at least thirty minutes, because my muscles twitched just when I was about to drift off. I would start up into full wakefulness, thinking someone was coming in the room to warn me about a great disaster.
But finally even the twitching couldn't keep me awake any longer. I fell into a heavy sleep. When I woke, the sun was up and shining in the window, and Quinn was sitting in the chair in the corner where I'd slumped the night before while I was trying to deal with Eric.
This was an unpleasant trend. I didn't want a lot of guys popping in and out of my bedroom. I wanted one who would stay.
"Who let you in?" I asked, propping myself up on one elbow. He looked good for someone who hadn't gotten much sleep. He was a very large man with a very smooth head and huge purple eyes. I had always loved the way he looked.
"Amelia," he said. "I know I shouldn't have come in; I should have waited until you were up. You might not want me in the house."
I went in the bathroom to give myself a minute, another ploy that was getting all too familiar. When I came out, a little neater and more awake than when I'd entered, Quinn had a mug of coffee for me. I took a sip and instantly felt better able to cope with whatever was coming. But not in my bedroom.
"Kitchen," I said, and we went to the room that had always been the heart of the house. It had been dated when the fire had gotten it. Now I had a brand-new kitchen, but I still missed the old one. The table where my family had eaten for years had been replaced with a modern one, and the new chairs were lots more comfortable than the old ones, but regret still caught at me every now and then when I thought of what had been lost.
I had an ominous feeling that "regret" was going to be the theme of the day. During my troubled sleep, apparently I'd absorbed a dose of the practicality that had seemed so sad to me the night before. To stave off the conversation we were going to have to have, I stepped to the back door and looked to see that Amelia's car was gone. At least we were alone.
I sat down opposite the man I'd hoped to love.
"Babe, you look like someone just told you I was dead," Quinn said.
"Might as well have," I said, because I had to plow into this and look to neither the right nor the left. He flinched.
"Sookie, what could I have done?" he asked. "What could I have done?" There was an edge of anger in his voice.
"What canI do?" I asked in return, because I had no answer for him.
"I sent Frannie! I tried to warn you!"
"Too little, too late," I said. I second-guessed myself immediately: Was I being too hard, unfair, ungrateful? "If you'd called me weeks ago, even once, I might feel different. But I guess you were too busy trying to find your mother."
"So you're breaking up with me because of my mother," he said. He sounded bitter and I didn't blame him.
"Yes," I said after a moment's inner testing of my own resolve. "I think I am. It's not your mom as much as her whole situation. Your mother will always have to come first as long as she's alive, because she's so damaged. I've got sympathy for that, believe me. And I'm sorry that you and Frannie have a hard row to hoe. I know all about hard rows."
Quinn was looking down into his coffee mug, his face drawn with anger and weariness. This was probably the worst possible moment to be having this showdown, and yet it had to be done. I hurt too bad to let it last any longer.
"Yet, knowing all this, and knowing I care for you, you don't want to see me anymore," Quinn said, biting each word out. "You don't want to try to make it work."
"I care for you, too, and I had hoped we'd have a lot more," I said. "But last night was just too much for me. Remember, I had to find out your past from someone else? I think maybe you didn't tell me about it from the start because you knew it would be an issue. Not your pit fighting—I don't care about that. But your mom and Frannie . . . Well, they're your family. They're . . . dependent. They have to have you. They'll always come first." I stopped for a moment, biting the inside of my cheek. This was the hardest part. "I want to be first. I know that's selfish, and maybe unattainable, and maybe shallow. But I just want to come first with someone. If that's wrong of me, so be it. I'll be wrong. But that's the way I feel."
"Then there's nothing left to talk about," Quinn said after a moment's thought. He looked at me bleakly. I couldn't disagree. His big hands flat on the table, he pushed to his feet and left.
I felt like a bad person. I felt miserable and bereft. I felt like a selfish bitch.
But I let him walk out the door.
Chapter 14
While I was getting ready for work—yes, even after a night like the one I'd had, I had to go to work—there was a knock at the front door. I'd heard something big coming down the driveway, so I'd tied my shoes hastily.
The FedEx truck was not a frequent visitor at my house, and the thin woman who hopped out was a stranger. I opened the battered front door with some difficulty. It was never going to be the same after Quinn's entrance the night before. I made a mental note to call the Lowe's in Clarice to ask about a replacement. Maybe Jason would help me hang it. The FedEx lady gave a long look at the door's splintered condition when I finally got it open.
"You want to sign for this?" she said as she held out a package, tactfully not commenting.
"Sure." I accepted the box, a little puzzled. It had come from Fangtasia. Huh. As soon as the truck had wheeled back out to Hummingbird Road, I opened the package. It was a red cell phone. It was programmed to my number. There was a note with it. "Sorry about the other one, lover," it read. Signed with a big "E." There was a charger included. And a car charger, too. And a notice that my first six months' bill had been paid.
With a kind of bemused feeling, I heard another truck coming. I didn't even bother to move from the front porch. The new arrival was from the Shreveport Home Depot. It was a new front door, very pretty, with a two-man crew to install it. All charges had been taken care of.
I wondered if Eric would clean out my dryer vent.
I got to Merlotte's early so I could have a talk with Sam. But his office door was shut, and I could hear voices inside. Though not unheard of, the closed door was rare. I was instantly concerned and curious. I could read Sam's familiar mental signature, and there was another one that I had encountered before. I heard a scrape of chair legs inside, and I hastily stepped into the storeroom before the door opened.