"Did he tell you he had a pocketknife in his pocket?"
I was taken aback. "No. Did he? Why would he do that?"
Bill raised his eyebrows, as if I had said something quite ridiculous.
"Guess," he said.
"So I would suck on his shoulder? You can't mean that."
Bill just maintained the skeptical look.
"Oh, Bill. I fell for it. Wait a minute—he got shot! That bullet could have hit me, but instead it hit him. He was guarding me."
"How?"
"Well, by lying on top of me . . ."
"I rest my case." There was nothing old-fashioned about Bill at the moment. On the other hand, there was a pretty old-fashioned look on his face.
"But, Bill . . . you mean he's that devious?"
Again with the raised eyebrows.
"Lying on top of me is not such a big treat," I protested, "that someone should take a bullet for it. Geez. That's nuts!"
"It got some of his blood in you."
"Only a drop or two. I spit the rest out," I said.
"A drop or two is enough when you are as old as Eric is."
"Enough for what?"
"He will know some things about you, now."
"What, like my dress size?"
Bill smiled, not always a relaxing sight. "No, like how you are feeling. Angry, horny, loving."
I shrugged. "Won't do him any good."
"Probably it is not too important, but be careful from now on," Bill warned me. He seemed quite serious.
"I still can't believe someone would put themselves in a position to take a bullet for me just in the hopes I'd ingest a drop of blood getting the bullet out. That's ridiculous. You know, it seems like to me you introduced this subject so I'd quit bugging you about Portia, but I'm not going to. I think Portia believes if she's dating you, someone will ask her to go to this sex club, since if she's willing to ball a vampire, she's willing to do anything. They think," said hastily after looking at Bill's face. "So Portia figures she'll go, she'll learn stuff, she'll find out who actually killed Lafayette, Andy'll be off the hook."
"That's a complicated plot."
"Can you refute it?" I was proud to use refute, which had been on my Word of the Day calendar.
"As a matter of fact, I can't." He became immobile. His eyes were fixed and unblinking, and his hands relaxed. Since Bill doesn't breathe, he was absolutely still.
Finally he blinked. "It would have been better if she had told me the truth to begin with."
"You better not have had sex with her," I said, finally admitting to myself that the bare possibility had made me nearly blind with jealousy.
"I wondered when you were going to ask me," he said calmly. "As if I would ever bed a Bellefleur. No, she has not the slightest desire to have sex with me. She even has a hard time pretending she wants to at some later date. Portia is not much of an actress. Most of the time we are together, she takes me on wild goose chases to find this cache of arms the Fellowship has stowed here, saying all the Fellowship sympathizers are hiding them."
"So why'd you go along with any of this?"
"There's something about her that's honorable. And I wanted to see if you would be jealous."
"Oh, I see. Well, what do you think?"
"I think," he said, "I had better never see you within a yard of that handsome moron again."
"JB? I'm like his sister," I said.
"You forget, you've had my blood, and I can tell what you are feeling," Bill said. "I don't think you feel exactly like a sister to him."
"That would explain why I'm here in bed with you, right?"
"You love me."
I laughed, up against his throat.
"It's close to dawn," he said. "I have to go."
"Okay, baby." I smiled up at him as he gathered up his clothes. "Hey, you owe me a sweater and a bra. Two bras. Gabe tore one, so that was a work-related clothes injury. And you tore one last night, plus my sweater."
"That's why I bought a women's clothing store," he said smoothly. "So I could rip if the spirit moves me."
I laughed and lay back down. I could sleep for a couple more hours. I was still smiling when he let himself out of my house, and I woke up in the middle of the morning with a lightness in my heart that hadn't been there for a long time. (Well, it felt like a long time.) I walked, somewhat gingerly, into the bathroom to soak in a tubful of hot water. When I began to wash, I felt something in my earlobes. I stood up in the tub and looked over at the mirror above the sink. He'd put the topaz earrings in while I was asleep.
Mr. Last Word.
***
Since our reunion had been secret, it was I who got invited to the club first. It had never occurred to me that that might happen; but after it did, I realized that if Portia had figured she might be invited after going with a vampire, I was even primer meat.
To my surprise and disgust, the one to broach the subject was Mike Spencer. Mike was the funeral home director and the coroner in Bon Temps, and we had not always had a completely cordial relationship. However, I'd known him all my life and was used to offering him respect, a hard habit to break. Mike was wearing his funeral home duds when he came in to Merlotte's that evening, because he'd come from Mrs. Cassidy's visitation. A dark suit, white shirt, subdued striped tie, and polished wing tips changed Mike Spencer from the guy who really preferred bolo ties and pointy-toed cowboy boots.
Since Mike was at least twenty years older than me, I'd always related to him as an elder, and it shocked me silly when he approached me. He was sitting by himself, which was unusual enough to be noteworthy. I brought him a hamburger and a beer. As he paid me, he said casually, "Sookie, some of us are getting together at Jan Fowler's lake house tomorrow night and we wondered if we could get you to come."
I am fortunate I have a well-schooled face. I felt as if a pit had opened beneath my feet, and I was actually a little nauseated. I understood immediately, but I couldn't quite believe it. I opened my mind to him, while my mouth was saying, "You said 'some of us'? Who would that be, Mr. Spencer?"
"Why don't you call me Mike, Sookie?" I nodded, looking inside his head all the while. Oh, geez Louise. Ick. "Well, some of your friends will be there. Eggs, and Portia, and Tara. The Hardaways."
Tara and Eggs . . . that really shocked me.
"So, what goes on at these parties? Is this just a drinking and dancing type thing?" This was not an unreasonable question. No matter how many people knew I was supposed to be able to read minds, they almost never believed it, no matter how much evidence to the contrary they'd witnessed. Mike simply could not believe that I could receive the images and concepts floating in his mind.
"Well, we get a little wild. We thought since you'd broken up with your boyfriend, that you might want to come let your hair down a little."
"Maybe I'll come," I said, without enthusiasm. It wouldn't do to look eager. "When?"
"Oh, ten o'clock tomorrow night."
"Thanks for the invite," I said, as if remembering my manners, and then sauntered off with my tip. I thought furiously, in the odd moments I had to myself during the rest of my shift.
What good could my going serve? Could I really learn anything that would solve the mystery of Lafayette's death? I didn't like Andy Bellefleur much, and now I liked Portia even less, but it wasn't fair that Andy might be prosecuted, his reputation ruined, for something that wasn't his fault. On the other hand, it stood to reason that no one present at a party at the lake house would trust me with any deep dark secrets until I'd become a regular, and I just couldn't stomach that. I wasn't even sure I could get through one gathering. The last thing in the world I wanted to see was my friends and my neighbors "letting their hair down." I didn't want to see them let down their hair, or anything else.