Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1)(16)

“My father’s people were Comptons, my mother’s people Loudermilks,” Bill said readily. He seemed quite relaxed.

“There are lots of Loudermilks left,” Gran said happily. “But I’m afraid old Mr. Jessie Compton died last year.”

“I know,” Bill said easily. “That’s why I came back. The land reverted to me, and since things have changed in our culture toward people of my particular persuasion, I decided to claim it.”

“Did you know the Stackhouses? Sookie says you have a long history.” I thought Gran had put it well. I smiled at my hands.

“I remember Jonas Stackhouse,” Bill said, to Gran’s delight. “My folks were here when Bon Temps was just a hole in the road at the edge of the frontier. Jonas Stackhouse moved here with his wife and his four children when I was a young man of sixteen. Isn’t this the house he built, at least in part?”

I noticed that when Bill was thinking of the past, his voice took on a different cadence and vocabulary. I wondered how many changes in slang and tone his English had taken on through the past century.

Of course, Gran was in genealogical hog heaven. She wanted to know all about Jonas, her husband’s great-great-great-great-grandfather. “Did he own slaves?” she asked.

“Ma’am, if I remember correctly, he had a house slave and a yard slave. The house slave was a woman of middle age and the yard slave a very big young man, very strong, named Minas. But the Stackhouses mostly worked their own fields, as did my folks.”

“Oh, that is exactly the kind of thing my little group would love to hear! Did Sookie tell you . . .” Gran and Bill, after much polite do-si-doing, set a date for Bill to address a night meeting of the Descendants.

“And now, if you’ll excuse Sookie and me, maybe we’ll take a walk. It’s a lovely night.” Slowly, so I could see it coming, he reached over and took my hand, rising and pulling me to my feet, too. His hand was cold and hard and smooth. Bill wasn’t quite asking Gran’s permission, but not quite not, either.

“Oh, you two go on,” my grandmother said, fluttering with happiness. “I have so many things to look up. You’ll have to tell me all the local names you remember from when you were . . .” and here Gran ran down, not wanting to say something wounding.

“Resident here in Bon Temps,” I supplied helpfully.

“Of course,” the vampire said, and I could tell from the compression of his lips that he was trying not to smile.

Somehow we were at the door, and I knew that Bill had lifted me and moved me quickly. I smiled, genuinely. I like the unexpected.

“We’ll be back in a while,” I said to Gran. I didn’t think she’d noticed my odd transition, since she was gathering up our tea glasses.

“Oh, you two don’t hurry on my account,” she said. “I’ll be just fine.”

Outside, the frogs and toads and bugs were singing their nightly rural opera. Bill kept my hand as we strolled out into the yard, full of the smell of new-mown grass and budding things. My cat, Tina, came out of the shadows and asked to be tickled, and I bent over and scratched her head. To my surprise, the cat rubbed against Bill’s legs, an activity he did nothing to discourage.

“You like this animal?” he asked, his voice neutral.

“It’s my cat,” I said. “Her name is Tina, and I like her a lot.”

Without comment, Bill stood still, waiting until Tina went on her way into the darkness outside the porch light.

“Would you like to sit in the swing or the lawn chairs, or would you like to walk?” I asked, since I felt I was now the hostess.

“Oh, let’s walk for a while. I need to stretch my legs.”

Somehow this statement unsettled me a little, but I began moving down the long driveway in the direction of the two-lane parish road that ran in front of both our homes.

“Did the trailer upset you?”

I tried to think how to put it.

“I feel very . . . hmmm. Fragile. When I think about the trailer.”

“You knew I was strong.”

I tilted my head from side to side, considering. “Yes, but I didn’t realize the full extent of your strength,” I told him. “Or your imagination.”

“Over the years, we get good at hiding what we’ve done.”

“So. I guess you’ve killed a bunch of people.”

“Some.” Deal with it, his voice implied.

I clasped both hands behind my back. “Were you hungrier right after you became a vampire? How did that happen?”

He hadn’t expected that. He looked at me. I could feel his eyes on me even though we were now in the dark. The woods were close around us. Our feet crunched on the gravel.

“As to how I became a vampire, that’s too long a story for now,” he said. “But yes, when I was younger—a few times—I killed by accident. I was never sure when I’d get to eat again, you understand? We were always hunted, naturally, and there was no such thing as artificial blood. And there were not as many people then. But I had been a good man when I was alive—I mean, before I caught the virus. So I tried to be civilized about it, select bad people as my victims, never feed on children. I managed never to kill a child, at least. It’s so different now. I can go to the all-night clinic in any city and get some synthetic blood, though it’s disgusting. Or I can pay a whore and get enough blood to keep going for a couple of days. Or I can glamor someone, so they’ll let me bite them for love and then forget all about it. And I don’t need so much now.”