Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (171 page)

I got more and more nervous the closer I came to the new customer. I could feel my cheeks redden. Why was I getting so flustered?

“Hello, Mr. Quinn,” I said. It would be stupid to pretend I didn’t recognize him. “What can I get you? I’m afraid we’re about to close, but I have time to serve you a beer or a drink.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if he were inhaling me. “I’d recognize you in a pitch-black room,” he said, and he smiled at me. It was a broad and beautiful smile.

I looked off in another direction, pinching back the involuntary grin that rose to my lips. I was acting sort of . . . shy. I never acted shy. Or maybe
coy
would be a better term, and one I disliked. “I guess I should say thank you,” I ventured cautiously. “That’s a compliment?”

“Intended as one. Who’s the dog behind the bar who’s giving me the stay-away look?”

He meant
dog
as a statement of fact, not as a derogatory term.

“That’s my boss, Sam Merlotte.”

“He has an interest in you.”

“I should hope so. I’ve worked for him for round about five years.”

“Hmmm. How about a beer?”

“Sure. What kind?”

“Bud.”

“Coming right up,” I said, and turned to go. I knew he watched me all the way to the bar because I could feel his gaze. And I knew from his mind, though his was a closely guarded shifter mind, that he was watching me with admiration.

“What does he want?” Sam looked almost . . . bristly. If he’d been in dog form, the hair on his back would have been standing up.

“A Bud,” I said.

Sam scowled at me. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

I shrugged. I had no idea what Quinn wanted.

Sam slammed the full glass down on the bar right by my fingers, making me jump. I gave him a steady look to make sure he noted that I’d been displeased, and then I took the beer to Quinn.

Quinn gave me the cost of the beer and a good tip—not a ridiculously high one, which would have made me feel bought—which I slipped into my pocket. I began making the rounds of my other tables. “You visiting someone in this area?” I asked Quinn as I passed him on my way back from clearing another table. Most of the patrons were paying up and drifting out of Merlotte’s. There was an afterhours place that Sam pretended he didn’t know about, way out in the country, but most of the Merlotte’s regulars would be going home to bed. If a bar could be family-oriented, Merlotte’s was.

“Yes,” he said. “You.”

That left me with nowhere to go, conversationally.

I kept on going and unloaded the glasses from my tray so absently that I almost dropped one. I couldn’t think of when I’d been so flustered.

“Business or personal?” I asked, the next time I was close.

“Both,” he said.

A little of the pleasure drained away when I heard about the business part, but I was left with a sharpened attention . . . and that was a good thing. You needed all your wits honed when you dealt with the supes. Supernatural beings had goals and desires that regular people didn’t fathom. I knew that, since for my entire life I have been the unwilling repository for human, “normal,” goals and desires.

When Quinn was one of the few people left in the bar—besides the other barmaids and Sam—he stood and looked at me expectantly. I went over, smiling brightly, as I do when I’m tense. I was interested to find that Quinn was almost equally tense. I could feel the tightness in his brain pattern.

“I’ll see you at your house, if that’s agreeable to you.” He looked down at me seriously. “If that makes you nervous, we can meet somewhere else. But I want to talk to you tonight, unless you’re exhausted.”

That had been put politely enough. Arlene and Danielle were trying hard not to stare—well, they were trying hard to stare when Quinn wouldn’t catch them—but Sam had turned his back to fiddle around with something behind the bar, ignoring the other shifter. He was behaving very badly.

Quickly I processed Quinn’s request. If he came out to my house, I’d be at his mercy. I live in a remote place. My nearest neighbor is my ex, Bill, and he lives clear across the cemetery. On the other hand, if Quinn had been a regular date of mine, I’d let him take me home without a second thought. From what I could catch from his thoughts, he meant me no harm.

“All right,” I said, finally. He relaxed, and smiled his big smile at me again.

I whisked his empty glass away and became aware that three pairs of eyes were watching me disapprovingly. Sam was disgruntled, and Danielle and Arlene couldn’t understand why anyone would prefer me to them, though Quinn gave even those two experienced barmaids pause. Quinn gave off a whiff of otherness that must be perceptible to even the most prosaic human. “I’ll be through in just a minute,” I said.

“Take your time.”

I finished filling the little china rectangle on each table with packages of sugar and sweetener. I made sure the napkin holders were full and checked the salt and pepper shakers. I was soon through. I gathered my purse from Sam’s office and called good-bye to him.

Quinn pulled out to follow me in a dark green pickup truck. Under the parking lot lights, the truck looked brand spanking new, with gleaming tires and hubcaps, an extended cab, and a covered bed. I’d bet good money it was loaded with options. Quinn’s truck was the fanciest vehicle I’d seen in a long time. My brother, Jason, would have drooled, and he’s got pink and aqua swirls painted on the side of
his
truck.

I drove south on Hummingbird Road and turned left into my driveway. After following the drive through two acres of woods, I reached the clearing where our old family home stood. I’d turned the outside lights on before I left, and there was a security light on the electric pole that was automatic, so the clearing was well lit. I pulled around back to park behind the house, and Quinn parked right beside me.

He got out of his truck and looked around him. The security light showed him a tidy yard. The driveway was in excellent repair, and I’d recently repainted the tool shed in the back. There was a propane tank, which no amount of landscaping could disguise, but my grandmother had planted plenty of flower beds to add to the ones my family had established over the hundred-and-fifty-odd years the family had lived here. I’d lived on this land, in this house, from age seven, and I loved it.

There’s nothing grand about my home. It started out as a family farmhouse and it’s been enlarged and remodeled over the years. I keep it clean, and I try to keep the yard in good trim. Big repairs are beyond my skills, but Jason sometimes helps me out. He hadn’t been happy when Gran left me the house and land, but he’d moved to our parents’ house when he’d turned twenty-one, and I’d never made him pay me for my half of that property. Gran’s will had seemed fair to me. It had taken Jason a while to admit that had been the right thing for her to do.

We’d become closer in the past few months.

I unlocked the back door and led Quinn into the kitchen. He looked around him curiously as I hung my jacket on one of the chairs pushed under the table in the middle of the kitchen where I ate all my meals.

“This isn’t finished,” Quinn said.

The cabinets were resting on the floor, ready to be mounted. After that, the whole room would have to be painted and the countertops installed. Then I’d be able to rest easy.

“My old kitchen got burned down a few weeks ago,” I said. “The builder had a cancellation and got this done in record time, but then when the cabinets didn’t arrive on time, he put his crew on another job. By the time the cabinets got here, they were almost through there. I guess they’ll come back eventually.” In the meantime, at least I could enjoy being back in my own home. Sam had been tremendously kind in letting me live in one of his rent houses (and gosh, I’d enjoyed the level floors and the new plumbing and the neighbors), but there was nothing like being home.

The new stove was in, so I could cook, and I’d laid a sheet of plywood over the top of the cabinets so I could use it as a work station while I was cooking. The new refrigerator gleamed and hummed quietly, quite unlike the one Gran had had for thirty years. The newness of the kitchen struck me every time I crossed the back porch—now larger and enclosed—to unlock the new, heavier back door, with its peephole and deadbolt.

“This is where the old house begins,” I said, going from the kitchen into the hall. Only a few boards had had to be replaced in the floor in the rest of the house, and everything was freshly cleaned and painted. Not only had the walls and ceilings been smoke-stained, but I’d had to eradicate the burned smell. I’d replaced some curtains, tossed out a throw rug or two, and cleaned, cleaned, cleaned. This project had occupied every extra waking moment I’d had for quite a while.

“A good job,” Quinn commented, studying how the two parts had been united.

“Come into the living room,” I said, pleased. I enjoyed showing someone the house now that I knew the upholstery was clean, there were no dust bunnies, and the glass over the pictures was simply gleaming. The living room curtains had been replaced, something I’d wanted to do for at least a year.

God bless insurance, and God bless the money I’d earned hiding Eric from an enemy. I’d gouged a hole in my savings account, but I’d had it when I needed it, and that was something for which I could be grateful.

The fireplace was laid ready for a fire, but it was just too warm to justify lighting one. Quinn sat in an armchair, and I sat across from him. “Can I get you a drink—a beer, or some coffee or iced tea?” I asked, conscious of my role as hostess.

“No, thanks,” he said. He smiled at me. “I’ve wanted to see you again since I met you in Shreveport.”

I tried to keep my eyes on him. The impulse to look down at my feet or my hands was almost overwhelming. His eyes really were the deep, deep purple I remembered. “That was a tough day for the Herveauxes,” I said.

“You dated Alcide for a while,” he observed, in a neutral kind of voice.

I thought of a couple of possible answers. I settled for, “I haven’t seen him since the packmaster contest.”

He smiled widely. “So he’s not your steady?”

I shook my head.

“Then you’re unattached?”

“Yes.”

“No toes I’d be stepping on?”

I tried to smile, but my effort was not a happy one. “I didn’t say that.” There were toes. Those toes wouldn’t be happy piggies. But they didn’t have any right to be in the way.

“I guess I can handle some disgruntled exes. So will you go out with me?”

I looked at him for a second or two, scouring my mind for considerations. From his brain I was getting nothing but hopefulness: I saw no deceit or self-serving. When I examined the reservations I had, they dissolved into nothing.

“Yes,” I said. “I will.” His beautiful white smile sparked me to smile in return, and this time my smile was genuine. “There,” he said. “We’ve negotiated the pleasure part. Now for the business part, which is unrelated.”

“Okay,” I said, and put my smile away. I hoped I’d have occasion to haul it out later, but any business he would have with me would be supe-related, and therefore cause for anxiety.

“You’ve heard about the regional summit?”

The vampire summit: the kings and queens from a group of states would gather to confer about . . . vampire stuff. “Eric said something about it.”

“Has he hired you to work there yet?”

“He mentioned he might need me.”

“Because the Queen of Louisiana found out I was in the area, and she asked me to request your services. I think her bid would have to cancel out Eric’s.”

“You’d have to ask Eric about that.”

“I think you would have to
tell
him. The queen’s wishes are Eric’s orders.”

I could feel my face fall. I didn’t want to tell Eric, the sheriff of Louisiana’s Area Five, anything. Eric’s feelings for me were confused. I can assure you, vamps don’t like feeling confused. The sheriff had lost his memory of the short time he’d spent hiding in my house. That memory gap had driven Eric nuts; he liked being in control, and that meant being cognizant of his own actions every second of the night. So he’d waited until he could perform an action on my behalf, and as payment for that action he’d demanded my account of what had passed while he stayed with me.

Maybe I’d carried the frankness thing a little too far. Eric wasn’t exactly surprised that we’d had sex; but he was stunned when I told him he’d offered to give up his hard-won position in the vampire hierarchy and to come live with me.

If you knew Eric, you’d know that was pretty much intolerable to him.

He didn’t talk to me any more. He stared at me when we met, as if he were trying to resurrect his own memories of that time, to prove me wrong. It made me sad to see that the relationship we’d had—not the secret happiness of the few days he’d spent with me, but the entertaining relationship between a man and a woman who had little in common but a sense of humor—didn’t seem to exist any more.

I knew it was up to me to tell him that his queen had superseded him, but I sure didn’t want to.

“Smile’s all gone,” Quinn observed. He looked serious himself.

“Well, Eric is a . . .” I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “He’s a complicated guy,” I said lamely.

“What shall we do on our first date?” Quinn asked. So he was a good subject changer.

“We could go to the movies,” I said, to start the ball rolling.

“We could. Afterward, we could have dinner in Shreveport. Maybe Ralph and Kacoo’s,” he suggested.

“I hear their crawfish etouffee is good,” I said, keeping the conversational ball rolling.

“And who doesn’t like crawfish etouffee? Or we could go bowling.”

My great-uncle had been an avid bowler. I could see his feet, in their bowling shoes, right in front of me. I shuddered. “Don’t know how.”