Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1)(33)

When he saw me, I was sure I’d overdone it, and he was really angry. His face went quite still. His eyes flared. His fingers curved as if he were scooping something up with them.

“Is this all right?” I asked anxiously. I felt the blood surge up into my cheeks.

“Yes,” he said finally. But his pause had been long enough to anger my grandmother.

“Anyone with a brain in his head has got to admit that Sookie is one of the prettiest girls around,” she said, her voice friendly on the surface but steel underneath.

“Oh, yes,” he agreed, but there was a curious lack of inflection in his voice.

Well, screw him. I’d tried my best. I stiffened my back, and said, “Shall we go, then?”

“Yes,” he said again, and stood. “Good-bye, Mrs. Stackhouse. It was a pleasure seeing you again.”

“Well, you two have a good time,” she said, mollified. “Drive careful, Bill, and don’t drink too much.”

He raised an eyebrow. “No, ma’am.”

Gran let that sail right on past.

Bill held my car door open as I got in, a carefully calculated series of maneuvers to keep as much of me as possible in the dress. He shut the door and got in on the driver’s side. I wondered who had taught him to drive a car. Henry Ford, probably.

“I’m sorry I’m not dressed correctly,” I said, looking straight ahead of me.

We’d been going slowly on the bumpy driveway through the woods. The car lurched to a halt.

“Who said that?” Bill asked, his voice very gentle.

“You looked at me as though I’d done something wrong,” I snapped.

“I’m just doubting my ability to get you in and out without having to kill someone who wants you.”

“You’re being sarcastic.” I still wouldn’t look.

His hand gripped the back of my neck, forced me to turn to him.

“Do I look like I am?” he asked.

His dark eyes were wide and unblinking.

“Ah . . . no,” I admitted.

“Then accept what I say.”

The ride to Shreveport was mostly silent, but not uncomfortably so. Bill played tapes most of the way. He was partial to Kenny G.

Fangtasia, the vampire bar, was located in a suburban shopping area of Shreveport, close to a Sam’s and a Toys ’R’ Us. It was in a shopping strip, which was all closed down at this hour except for the bar. The name of the place was spelled out in jazzy red neon above the door, and the facade was painted steel gray, a red door providing color contrast. Whoever owned the place must have thought gray was less obvious than black because the interior was decorated in the same colors.

I was carded at the door by a vampire. Of course, she recognized Bill as one of her own kind and acknowledged him with a cool nod, but she scanned me intently. Chalky pale, as all Caucasian vampires are, she was eerily striking in her long black dress with its trailing sleeves. I wondered if the overdone “vampire” look was her own inclination, or if she’d just adopted it because the human patrons thought it appropriate.

“I haven’t been carded in years,” I said, fishing in my red purse for my driver’s license. We were standing in a little boxy entrance hall.

“I can no longer tell human ages, and we must be very careful we serve no minors. In any capacity,” she said with what was probably meant to be a genial smile. She cast a sideways look at Bill, her eyes flicking up and down him with an offensive interest. Offensive to me, at least.

“I haven’t seen you in a few months,” she said to him, her voice as cool and sweet as his could be.

“I’m mainstreaming,” he explained, and she nodded.



“WHAT WERE YOU telling her?” I whispered as we walked down the short hall and through the red double doors into the main room.

“That I’m trying to live among humans.”

I wanted to hear more, but then I got my first comprehensive look at Fangtasia’s interior. Everything was in gray, black, and red. The walls were lined with framed pictures of every movie vampire who had shown fangs on the silver screen, from Bela Lugosi to George Hamilton to Gary Old-man, from famous to obscure. The lighting was dim, of course, nothing unusual about that; what was unusual was the clientele. And the posted signs.

The bar was full. The human clients were divided among vampire groupies and tourists. The groupies (fang-bangers, they were called) were dressed in their best finery. It ranged from the traditional capes and tuxes for the men to many Morticia Adams ripoffs among the females. The clothes ranged from reproductions of those worn by Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire to some modern outfits that I thought were influenced by The Hunger. Some of the fang-bangers were wearing false fangs, some had painted trickles of blood from the corners of their mouths or puncture marks on their necks. They were extraordinary, and extraordinarily pathetic.

The tourists looked like tourists anywhere, maybe more adventurous than most. But to enter into the spirit of the bar, they were nearly all dressed in black like the fang-bangers. Maybe it was part of a tour package? “Bring some black for your exciting visit to a real vampire bar! Follow the rules, and you’ll be fine, catching a glimpse of this exotic underworld.”

Strewn among this human assortment, like real jewels in a bin of rhinestones, were the vampires, perhaps fifteen of them. They mostly favored dark clothes, too.