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"We won&039;t be seeing Claudine any any fairies but Claude The doors are shut However that works Though I understand there&039;s still one or two lurking around my house"

"There&039;s a lot you haven&039;t told reed

"What about this evening? After you get off? Terry&039;s supposed to come back and do some repairs that have piled up around here, but Kennedy is scheduled to take the bar" Sam looked a little worried "I hope Claude doesn&039;tas a barn, and Terry&039;s soYou never kno he&039;s going to take stuff"

"Terry&039;s a grownto reassure myself "They both are"

"Claude isn&039;t a h he&039;s a e relief when I noticed Terry&039;d returned an hour later He see else

I had always tried to keep out of Terry&039;s head, because it could be a very frightening place Terry did well as long as he kept his focus on one thing at a tis a lot He&039;d kept one of the puppies froster (In fact, if ever a dog was taught to read, Terry would be the man who&039;d done it)

After he&039;d worked on a loose doorknob in Sam&039;s office, Terry sat at one of my tables and ordered a salad and some sweet tea After I took his order, Terry silently handed et a new element for the water heater "It&039;s all fi xed now," he said "Your cousin was able to get his hot shower"

"Thanks, Terry," I said "I&039; for your time and labor"

"Not a problem," Terry said "Your cousin took care of that" He turned his attention to hisand Fishing to read while he waited for his food

I wrote Terry a check for the eleht his food He nodded and slipped it in his pocket Since Terry&039;s schedule meant he wasn&039;t always available to fill in, Saular evenings off The new bartender, who&039;d been at work for a couple of weeks, was really pretty in a supersized way Kennedy Keyes was five-eleven, easy; taller than Saood looks you associate with traditional beauty queens: shoulder-length chestnut hair with discreet blond highlights, wide brown eyes, a white and even smile that was an orthodontist&039;s wet drearaduated froy

She&039;d also done time

Sam had asked her if she wanted a job when she&039;d drifted in for lunch the day after she&039;d gotten out of jail She hadn&039;t even asked what she&039;d be doing before she&039;d said yes He&039;d given her a basic bartender&039;s guide, and she&039;d studied every sparenumber of drinks

"Sookie!" she said, as if we&039;d been best friends since childhood That was Kennedy&039;s way "How you doing?"

"Good, thank you Yourself?"

"Happy as a clalass-fronted refrigerator behind the bar "We need us soot the keys from Sam, then went back to the stockrooot two six-packs

"I didn&039;t otten them!" Kennedy smiled at me Her smile was kind of perpetual "I appreciate it"

"No problem"

"Do I look any smaller, Sookie?" she said hopefully She half turned to show me her butt and looked at me over her own shoulder

Kennedy&039;s issue didn&039;t seem to be that she had been in jail, but that she had put on weight in jail The food had been crappy, she&039;d told h on the carbohydrate count "But I&039;m an emotional eater," she&039;d said, as if that were a terrible thing "And I was real eotten back to Bon Temps, she&039;d been anxious to return to her beauty queen measurements

She was still beautiful There was just eous, as always," I said I looked around for Danny Prideaux Saht This arrangement was supposed to last for a e of Kennedy

"You know," she said, interpreting lance, "I can handle myself"

Everyone in Bon Temps knew that Kennedy could handle herself, and that was the problee to certain men (certain men ere assholes) "I know you can," I said mildly Danny Prideaux was insurance

And there he cah the door He was taller than Kennedy by a couple of inches, and he was of soured out Danny had deep olive skin, short brown hair, and a broad face He&039;d been out of the army for a month, and he hadn&039;t yet settled into a career of any sort He worked part-ti enough to be a bouncer for a few nights a week, especially since he got to look at Kennedy the whole tiht and brief Kennedy on a customer whose check had bounced, and then he and I went out the back door together "Let&039;s go to Crawdad Diner," he suggested That sounded good to me It was an old restaurant just off the square around the courthouse Like all the businesses in the area around the square, the oldest part of Bon Teinal owners had been Perdita and Crawdad Jones, who&039;d opened the restaurant in the forties When Perdita had retired, she&039;d sold the business to Charlsie Tooten&039;s husband, Ralph, who&039;d quit his job at the chicken processing plant to take over Their deal was that Perdita would give Ralph all her recipes if he&039;d agree to keep the name Crawdad Diner When Ralph&039;s arthritis had forced him to retire, he&039;d sold Crawdad Diner to Pinkie Arnett with the saenerations of Bon Te in the state, and the heirs of Perdita and Crawdad Jones were able to point with pride

I told Sam this bit of local history after we&039;d ordered country-fried steak with green beans and rice

"Thank God Pinkie got the bread pudding recipe, and when the green toht to have &039;e with your cousin?" He squeezed his lemon slice into his tea

"I hardly know yet He just moved in some stuff, and we haven&039;t had a lot of overlap"

"Have you seen hihed "I e with people watching"

Physically, there sure wouldn&039;t be anything stopping hied frooing with Amelia, but since she went back to New Orleans I haven&039;t been in a strip-club kind of hts off," I said, grinning

"Oh, sure," he said sarcastically, but he looked pleased

We talked about Amelia&039;s departure for a while, and then I asked Sam about his fah," he said "Of course, my stepdad&039;s been in jail since he shot her, so she hasn&039;t seen hi the etting my dad&039;s military pension, but she doesn&039;t know if her job at the school will be waiting for her or not when the summer&039;s over They hired a substitute for the rest of the school year after she got shot, and they&039;re waffling over having Mootten shot, Sam&039;s mom had been the receptionist/ secretary at an ele a wo in the sah Sam&039;s mom was the same woman she&039;d been before I was baffled by this attitude

The waitress brought our plates and a basket of rolls I sighed with anticipated pleasure This was &039;s wedding?" I asked, when I could yank myself away fro," he said with a shrug "Now her parents want the, whatever that is"

"That&039;s nuts"

"So different is bad," Sam said as he buttered his second roll "And it&039;s not like Craig could change" As the firstborn of a pure shifter couple, only Sam felt the call of the moon

"I&039;m sorry" I shook my head "I know the situation&039;s hard on everyone in your faotten over it pretty well She let oing to try to get over to Texas for the Fourth of July Her town has a big fireworks display, and the whole faoes I think I&039;d enjoy it"

I smiled They were lucky to have Saht "Your sisterbite of country-fried steak with hed "Listen, while we&039;re talking family," he said "You ready to tell reat-grandfather and what happened How are your injuries? I don&039;t want to sound like I expect you to tell oes on in your life But you know I care"

I did a little hesitating ive him a nutshell account of the past week "And JB has been helping me with so like nothing happened, unless you get tired," he observed

"There&039;s a couple of bad patches on oing there" I looked down at rew back Mostly There&039;s a kind of dimple I have a few scars, but they&039;re not terrible Eric doesn&039;t seem to mind" In fact, he had a scar or two froainst the whiteness of his skin

"Are you, ah, coping okay with it?"

"I have nightmares sometimes," I confessed "And I have some panic moments But let&039;s not talk about it anyhtest s with a fairy, I&039;ve got a va a ho cracks skulls Would we ever have thought we&039;d say this, the first day I came to work at Merlotte&039;s?"

Sam leaned forward and briefly put his hand over mine, and just then Pinkie herself came by the table to ask us hoe&039;d liked the food I pointed to my nearly e at her She grinned back Pinkie was a big wo Some new customers came in, and she went off to seat theain "I wish " Sah his red gold hair Since he&039;d had it trimmed so short, it had looked tamer than usual until he tousled it He laid his fork down, and I noticed he&039;d ed to dispose of almost all his food, too

"What do you wish?" I asked Most people, I&039;d be scared to ask them to complete that sentence But Sam and I had been friends for years

"I wish that you would find happiness with someone else," he said "I know, I know It&039;s none of my business Eric does seem to really care about you, and you deserve that"

"He does," I said "He&039;s what I&039;ve got, and I&039;d be real ungrateful if I weren&039;t happy with that We love each other" I shrugged, in a self-deprecating way I was uncomfortable with the turn of the conversation

Sah a ist to the corner of his hts, that Salad I couldn&039;t hear all his thoughts clearly I thought Jannalynn was equally inappropriate for Sa-for-the-packht he was the greatest

You can&039;t say I&039; to tell Saht before But I just couldn&039;t I didn&039;t want to involve Sam in vampire shit any more than he already hich was very little No one needed stuff like that Of course, I&039;d worried all day about the fallout fro his half of the bill I glanced at it Pa My heart leaped into my throat I stepped outside the diner

"What&039;s up?" I asked, sounding just as anxious as I really was

"Hello to you, too"

"Pam, what happened?" I wasn&039;t in the mood for playfulness

"Bruno and Corinna didn&039;t show up in New Orleans for work today," Pam said solemnly "Victor didn&039;t call here, because, of course, there was no good reason for them to come up here"

"Did they find the car?"

"Not yet I&039;hway-patrol officers have put a sticker on it today, asking the owners to come and remove it That&039;s what they do, I&039;ve observed"

"Yes That&039;s what they do"

"No bodies will appear Especially since after the downpour of last night, there won&039;t be a trace" Pa about that "No blame can attach to us"

I stood there, phone to ht only a few feet away I&039;d seldom felt more alone "I wish it had been Victor," I said, from the bottom of my heart

"You want to kill someone else?" Pam sounded mildly surprised

"No, I want it to be over I want everything to be okay I don&039;t want anyat all" Sam came out of the restaurant behind me and heard the distress in o, Pam Keep me posted"

I shut the phone and turned to face Sa from overhead cast deep shadows on his face

"You&039;re in trouble," he said

I could only keep silent

"I know you can&039;t talk about it, but if you ever feel like you have to, you knohere I airlfriend like Jannalynn, Saht be in almost as bad a position as I was