Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1)(12)

“Clean things.”

I took a deep breath. “Yep.”

“Would it make you happy if I did this?”

“What difference does that make? It would make Gran happy, and since you’re in Bon Temps and seem to want to live around here, it would be a good public relations move for you.”

“Would it make you happy?”

He was not a guy you could evade. “Well, yes.”

“Then I’ll do it.”

“Gran says to please eat before you come,” I said.

Again I heard the rumbling laugh, deeper this time.

“I’m looking forward to meeting her now. Can I call on you some night?”

“Ah. Sure. I work my last night tomorrow night, and the day after I’m off for two days, so Thursday would be a good night.” I lifted my arm to look at my watch. It was running, but the glass was covered with dried blood. “Oh, yuck,” I said, wetting my finger in my mouth and cleaning the watch face off with spit. I pressed the button that illuminated the hands, and gasped when I saw what time it was.

“Oh, gosh, I got to get home. I hope Gran went to sleep.”

“She must worry about you being out so late at night by yourself,” Bill observed. He sounded disapproving. Maybe he was thinking of Maudette? I had a moment of deep unease, wondering if in fact Bill had known her, if she’d invited him to come home with her. But I rejected the idea because I was stubbornly unwilling to dwell on the odd, awful, nature of Maudette’s life and death; I didn’t want that horror to cast a shadow on my little bit of happiness.

“It’s part of my job,” I said tartly. “Can’t be helped. I don’t work nights all the time, anyway. But when I can, I do.”

“Why?” The vampire gave me a shove up to my feet, and then he rose easily from the ground.

“Better tips. Harder work. No time to think.”

“But night is more dangerous,” he said disapprovingly.

He ought to know. “Now don’t you go sounding like my grandmother,” I chided him mildly. We had almost reached the parking lot.

“I’m older than your grandmother,” he reminded me. That brought the conversation up short.

After I stepped out of the woods, I stood staring. The parking lot was as serene and untouched as if nothing had ever happened there, as if I hadn’t been nearly beaten to death on that patch of gravel only an hour before, as if the Rats hadn’t met their bloody end.

The lights in the bar and in Sam’s trailer were off.

The gravel was wet, but not bloody.

My purse was sitting on the hood of my car.

“And what about the dog?” I said.

I turned to look at my savior.

He wasn’t there.





Chapter 2


I GOT UP very late the next morning, which was not too surprising. Gran had been asleep when I got home, to my relief, and I was able to climb into my bed without waking her.



I WAS DRINKING a cup of coffee at the kitchen table and Gran was cleaning out the pantry when the phone rang. Gran eased her bottom up onto the stool by the counter, her normal chatting perch, to answer it.

“Hel-lo,” she said. For some reason, she always sounded put out, as if a phone call were the last thing on earth she wanted. I knew for a fact that wasn’t the case.

“Hey, Everlee. No, sitting here talking to Sookie, she just got up. No, I haven’t heard any news today. No, no one called me yet. What? What tornado? Last night was clear. Four Tracks Corner? It did? No! No, it did not! Really? Both of ’em? Um, um, um. What did Mike Spencer say?”

Mike Spencer was our parish coroner. I began to have a creepy feeling. I finished my coffee and poured myself another cup. I thought I was going to need it.

Gran hung up a minute later. “Sookie, you are not going to believe what has happened!”

I was willing to bet I would believe it.

“What?” I asked, trying not to look guilty.

“No matter how smooth the weather looked last night, a tornado must have touched down at Four Tracks Corner! It turned over that rent trailer in the clearing there. The couple that was staying in it, they both got killed, trapped under the trailer somehow and crushed to a pulp. Mike says he hasn’t seen anything like it.”

“Is he sending the bodies for autopsy?”

“Well, I think he has to, though the cause of death seems clear enough, according to Stella. The trailer is over on its side, their car is halfway on top of it, and trees are pulled up in the yard.”

“My God,” I whispered, thinking of the strength necessary to accomplish the staging of that scene.

“Honey, you didn’t tell me if your friend the vampire came in last night?”

I jumped in a guilty way until I realized that in Gran’s mind, she’d changed subjects. She’d been asking me if I’d seen Bill every day, and now, at last, I could tell her yes—but not with a light heart.

Predictably, Gran was excited out of her gourd. She fluttered around the kitchen as if Prince Charles were the expected guest.

“Tomorrow night. Now what time’s he coming?” she asked.

“After dark. That’s as close as I can get.”

“We’re on daylight saving time, so that’ll be pretty late.” Gran considered. “Good, we’ll have time to eat supper and clear it away beforehand. And we’ll have all day tomorrow to clean the house. I haven’t cleaned that area rug in a year, I bet!”