Page 7 (1/2)

THE NEXT NIGHT Bill and I had an unsettling conversation We were in his bed, his huge bed with the carved headboard and a brand-new Restonic mattress His sheets were flowered like his wallpaper, and I re if he liked flowers printed on his possessions because he couldn’t see the real thing, at least as they wereon his side, looking down at me We’d been to theso for space creatures It had been a real shoot-ely, creepy, bent on killing He’d fumed about that while he’d taken lad when he’d suggested testing the new bed

I was the first to lie on it with hi Maybe he was listening to s I couldn’t, ors I couldn’t, too Our conversation had strayed fro parish elections (Bill was going to try to register to vote, absentee ballot), and then to our childhoods I was realizing that Bill was trying desperately to reular person

"Did you ever play ¡®show me yours’ with your brother?" he asked "They now say that’s nor the tarnation out of my brother Robert after she found hi to sound casual, butof fear inthe truth"

"Yes, I a to think of so if not persistent

"Not your brother, then Who?"

"I don’t want to talk about this" My hands contracted into fists, and I could feelevaded He was used to people telling hi his gla, his eyes big pools of curiosity He ran his thumbnail down my stomach, and I shivered

"I had afunny uncle," I said, feeling the faht smile stretch my lips

He raised his dark arched brows He hadn’t heard the phrase

I said as distantly as I could e, "That’s an adult male relative who an to burn He sed; I could see his Ada my hair back from my face I couldn’t stop it

"And someone did this to you? How old were you?"

"Oh, it started when I was real little," and I could feel in to speed up, my heart beat faster, the panicky traits that always caether "I guess I was five," I babbled, talking faster and faster, "I know you can tell, he never actually, ah, screwedin front of aze "And the worst thing, Bill, the worst thing," I went on, just unable to stop, "is that every ti to do because I could read hisI could do to stop it!" I clamped my hands over my mouth to make myself shut up I wasn’t supposed to talk about it I rolled over onto id

After a long time, I felt Bill’s cool hand on

"This was before your parents died?" he said in his usual calm voice I still couldn’t look at hi?"

"No She thought I was dirty minded, or that I’d found so she didn’t feel I was ready to know" I could remember her face, framed in hair about two shades darker than my medium blond Her face pinched with distaste She had come from a very conservative family, and any public display of affection or any ed

"I wonder that she and my father seemed happy," I told my vampire "They were so different" Then I sa ludicrousthat was I rolled over to my side "As if we aren’t," I told Bill, and tried to smile Bill’s face was quite still, but I could see a

"Did you tell your father?"

"Yes, right before he died I was too eer; and Mother didn’t believeto see reat-uncle Bartlett at least teekends out of every month when he drove up to visit"

"He still lives?"

"Uncle Bartlett? Oh, sure He’s Gran’s brother, and Gran was my dad’s mother My uncle lives in Shreveport But when Jason and I went to live with Gran, after my parents died, the first time Uncle Bartlett came to her house I hid When she found me and asked me why, I told her And she believed ain, the beautiful sound ofain, that he would never never come to the house

And he hadn’t She had cut off her own brother to protect hter, Linda, too, when she was a srandmother had buried the incident in her ownmisunderstood She had told me that she’d never left her brother alone with Linda at any ti hi herself believe that he’d touched her little girl’s privates

"So he’s a Stackhouse, too?"

"Oh, no See, Gran became a Stackhouse when sheto spell this out for Bill He was sure Southern enough, even if he was a vampire, to keep track of a simple family relationship like that

Bill looked distant, rim nasty little story, and I had chilled my own blood, that was for sure

"Here, I’ll leave," I said and slid out of bed, bending to retrieve my clothes Quicker than I could see, he was off the bed and taking the clothes from my hands

"Don’t leavetonight" Two tears trickled down ers wiped the tears froue traced their marks

"Stay with et in your hidey hole by then"

"My what?"

"Wherever you spend the day I don’t want to knohere it is!" I held up et in there before it’s even a little light?"

"Oh," he said, "I’ll know I can feel it coht Will you let entlemanly bow, only a little off mark because he was naked "In a little while" Then, as I lay down on the bed and held out my arms to hi I was in the bed byI’d had little niggling thoughts from time to time, but for the first time the flaws in my relationship with the vampire hopped out of their own hidey hole and took over ht I would never fix his breakfast, never h he wasn’t thrilled by the process, and I always had to brush ood habit anyway)

I could never have a child by Bill, which was nice at least when you thought of not having to practice birth control, but

I’d never call Bill at the office to ask him to stop on the way hoive a career speech at the high school, or coach Little League Baseball

He’d never go to church withto the birds chirping theirto ruetting up and putting on the coffee and fetching their papers and planning their day - that the creature I loved was lying soround, to all intents and purposes dead until dark

I was so down by then that I had to think of an upside, while I cleaned up a little in the bathrooenuinely care for , not to know exactly how reat I had never dreamed it would be that wonderful

No one would irlfriend Any hands that had patted me in unwanted caresses were kept in their owner’s laps, now And if the person who’d killed randmother had killed her because she’d walked in on hiet another try at me

And I could relax with Bill, a luxury so precious I could not put a value on it Myhe didn’t tell me

There was that

It was in this kind of contemplative mood that I came down Bill’s steps toin his pickup

This was not exactly a happy ed over to his

"I see it’s true," he said He handed me a Styrofoam cup of coffee from the Grabbit Quik "Get in the truck with me"

I climbed in, pleased by the coffee but cautious overall I put uard up immediately It slipped back into place slowly and painfully, like wiggling back into a girdle that was too tight in the first place

"I can’t say nothing," he told me "Not after the way I lived my life these past few years As near as I can tell, he’s your first, isn’t he?"

I nodded

"He treat you good?"

I nodded again

"I got soot killed last night"

I stared at hi between us as I pried the lid off the cup "He’s dead," I said, trying to understand it I’d worked hard never to think of hi I heard, he was dead

"Yep"

"Wow" I looked out theat the rosy light on the horizon I felt a surge of - freedom The only one who remembered besides me, the only one who’d enjoyed it, who insisted to the end that I had initiated and continued the sick activities he thought were so gratifyinghe was dead I took a deep breath

"I hope he’s in hell," I said "I hope every time he thinks of what he did to me, a demon pokes him in the butt with a pitchfork"

"God, Sookie!"

"He neverwhat?"

"Nothing, Sookie! But he never bothered anyone but you that I know of!"

"Bullshit He molested Aunt Linda, too"

Jason’s face went blank with shock I’d finally gotten through to my brother "Gran told you that?"

"Yes"

"She never said anything to ain when she could tell you loved him But she couldn’t let you be alone with hiirls were all he wanted"

"I’ve seen him the past couple of years"

"You have?" This was news to me It would have been news to Gran, too

"Sookie, he was an old man He was so sick He had prostate trouble, and he was feeble, and he had to use a walker"

"That probably slowed hiht! Like I could!"

We glared at each other over the width of the truck seat

"So what happened to hilar broke into his house last night"

"Yeah? And?"

"And broke his neck Threw hi hoet ready for work"

"That’s all you’re saying?"

"What else is there to say?"

"Don’t want to know about the funeral?"

"No"

"Don’t want to know about his will?"

"No"

He threw up his hands "All right," he said, as if he’d been arguing a point very hard with ?" I asked

"No Just your great-uncle dying I thought that was enough"

"Actually, you’re right," I said, opening the truck door and sliding out "That was enough" I raised my cup to hiot to work that it clicked

I was drying a glass and really not thinking about Uncle Bartlett, and suddenly th

"Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea," I said, looking down at the broken slivers of glass at my feet "Bill had hiht; but I was, the minute the idea crossedthe phone when I was half-asleep Maybe the expression on Bill’s face when I’d finished telling hi bell

I wondered if Bill would pay the other vaot through work in a frozen state I couldn’t talk to anyone about what I was thinking, couldn’t even say I was sick without so So I didn’t speak at all, I just worked I tuned out everything except the next order I had to fill I drove ho to feel just as frozen, but I had to face facts when I was alone

I freaked out

I had known, really I had, that Bill certainly had killed a hu vaained control of his needs sufficiently to exist on a gulp here, aanyone he drank fromhe’d toldthe way And he’d killed the Rattrays But they’d have done ht in back of Merlotte’s, without a doubt, if Bill hadn’t intervened I was naturally inclined to excuse him those deaths

Hoas the murder of Uncle Bartlett different? He’d harmed me, too, dreadfully, htmare Hadn’t I been relieved, even pleased, to hear he’d been found dead? Didn’t my horror at Bill’s intervention reek of hypocrisy of the worst sort?

Yes No?

Tired and incredibly confused, I sat on my front steps and waited in the darkness,in the tall grass when he ca so quietly and quickly I didn’t hear hiht, and the next, Bill was sitting on the steps beside ht, Sookie?" His arm went around me

"Oh, Bill" My voice was heavy with despair

His arm dropped I didn’t look up at his face, couldn’t have seen it through the darkness, anyway

"You should not have done it"

He didn’t bother with denying it at least

"I alad he’s dead, Bill But I can’t"

"Do you think I would ever hurt you, Sookie?" His voice was quiet and rustling, like feet through dry grass

"No Oddly enough, I don’t think you would hurt me, even if you were reallythe Godfather, Bill I’ around you now I’ solved that way"

"I love you"

He’d never said it before, and I ined it now, his voice was so low and whispery

"Do you, Bill?" I didn’t raise ainst et lived, Bill, you can’t alter it for me"

"You wantedyou"

"Point taken But I can’t have you trying to fine-tune et etkilled I can’t live like that, honey You see what I’?"

"Honey?" he repeated

"I love you," I said "I don’t knohy, but I do I want to call you all those gooshy words you use when you love someone, no matter how stupid it sounds since you’re a vampire I want to tell you you’re ray - though that’s not gonna happen That I know you’ll always be true toup against a brick hen I try to tell you I love you, Bill" I fell silent I was all cried out

"This crisis caht it would," Bill said from the darkness The crickets had resu moment

"Yeah"

"What now, Sookie?"

"I have to have a little time"

"Before?"

"Before I decide if the love is worth the misery"

"Sookie, if you kne different you taste, how much I want to protect you"

I could tell fros he was sharing with h," I said, "that’s what I feel about you But I have to live here, and I have to live with et clear between us"

"So what do we do now?"

"I think You go do whatever you were doing before we ure out if I could liveto think of who I’d feed on, if I could stop drinking that damn synthetic blood"

"I know you’ll - feed on so very hard to keep my voice level "Please, not anyone here, not anyone I have to see I couldn’t bear it It’s not fair of "

"If you won’t date anyone else, won’t bed anyone else"

"I won’t" That seeh promise to make

"Will youanyone we’re apart I’ about it"

He leaned over, I could feel the pressure on ainst it

"Kiss me," he said

I lifted my head and turned, and our lips e-and-red flames, not that kind of heat: blue fire After a second, his arms went around an to feel boneless, liasp, I pulled away

"Oh, we can’t, Bill"

I heard his breath draw in "Of course not, if we’re separating," he said quietly, but he didn’t sound like he thought IStill less should I want to throw you back on the porch and fuck you till you faint"

My knees were actually shaking His deliberately crude language, co insideI had, every little scrap of self-control, to push o in the house

But I did it

IN THE FOLLOWING week, I began to craft a life without Gran and without Bill I worked nights and worked hard I was extra careful, for the first time in my life, about locks and security There was a er had , but couldn’t decide what kind I wanted My cat, Tina, was only protection in the sense that she always reacted when soot calls fro ot calls froreat-uncle had left reat suain I gave theit for the treatment of children ere victiet it

I took vitamins, loads of them, because I was a little anemic I drank lots of fluids and ate lots of protein

And I ate asBill hadn’t been able to tolerate He said it caarlic bread with spaghetti andup nights after a work shift had me rest-deprived

After three days I felt restored, physically In fact, it seeer than I had been

I began to take in as happening aroundI noticed was that local folks were really pissed off at the vampires who nested in Monroe Diane, Lia bars in the area, apparently trying to make it impossible for other va outrageously, offensively The three vampires made the escapades of the Louisiana Tech students look bland

They didn’t see theone to their heads The right to legally exist had withdrawn all their constraints, all their prudence and caution Malcolaloosas Diane danced naked in Faraloo, and her mother, too He took blood from both He didn’t erase theto Mike Spencer, the funeral director, in Merlotte’s one Thursday night, and they hushed when I got near Naturally, that caught roup of localout the Monroe vampires

I didn’t knohat to do The three were, if not exactly friends of Bill, at least sort of coreligionists But I loathed Malcolm, Diane, and Liam just as much as anyone else On the other hand; and boy - there alas another hand, wasn’t there? - it just went against rain to know ahead of the fact about premeditated murders and just sit onJust to check, I dipped into the minds of the people aroundthe vain of the idea It felt as though the poison had flowed from one mind and infected others

There wasn’t any proof, any proof at all, that Maudette and Dawn and randmother had been killed by a vaht show evidence against that But the three va in such a way that people wanted to blaet rid of them, and since Maudette and Daere both vampire-bitten and habitues of vaether to pound out a conviction

Bill caht I’d been alone He appeared at his table quite suddenly He wasn’t by himself There was a boy with him, a boy who looked maybe fifteen He was a vampire, too

"Sookie, this is Harlen Ives from Minneapolis," Bill said, as if this were an ordinary introduction