Dead until Dark

Mostly, people couldn't get away from me fast enough when I'd given them a taste of mind reading, but Andy Bel­lefleur was fascinated. "It's true, then," he breathed, as if we were somewhere alone instead of sitting in the driveway of a rundown duplex in rural Louisiana.

"No, forget it," I said quickly. "I can just tell sometimes by the way people look what they're thinking."

He deliberately thought about unbuttoning my blouse. But I was wary now, back to my normal state of barricaded seige, and I did no more than smile brightly. I could tell I wasn't fooling him, though.

"When you're ready for me, you come to the bar. We can talk in the storeroom or Sam's office," I said firmly and swung my legs into the car.

The bar was buzzing when I got there. Sam had called Terry Bellefleur, Andy's second cousin if I recalled correctly, in to watch the bar while he talked to the police at Dawn's place. Terry had had a bad war in Vietnam, and he existed narrowly on government disability of some kind. He'd been wounded, captured, held prisoner for two years, and now his thoughts were most often so scary that I was extra special careful when I was around him. Terry had a hard life, and acting normal was even harder for him than it was for me. Terry didn't drink, thank God.

Today I gave him a light kiss on the cheek while I got my tray and scrubbed my hands. Through the window into the little kitchen I could see Lafayette Reynold, the cook, flip­ping burgers and sinking a basket of fries into hot oil. Mer­lotte's serves a few sandwiches, and that's all. Sam doesn't want to run a restaurant, but a bar with some food available.

"What was that for, not that I'm not honored," Terry said. He'd raised his eyebrows. Terry was redhaired, though when he needed a shave, I could tell his whiskers were gray. Terry spent a lot of time outside, but his skin never exactly tanned. It got a rough, reddened look, which made the scars on his left cheek stand out more clearly. That didn't seem to bother Terry. Arlene had been to bed with Terry one night when she'd been drinking, and she'd confided in me that Terry had many scars even worse than the one on his cheek.

"Just for being here," I said.

"It true about Dawn?"

Lafayette put two plates on the serving hatch. He winked at me with a sweep of his thick, false lashes. Lafayette wears a lot of makeup. I was so used to him I never thought of it any more, but now his eye shadow brought the boy, Jerry, to my mind. I'd let him go with the three vampires without protest. That had probably been wrong, but realistic. I couldn't have stopped them from taking him. I couldn't have gotten the police to catch up with them in time. He was dying anyway, and he was taking as many vampires and humans with him as he could; and he was already a killer himself. I told my conscience this would be the last talk we'd have about Jerry.

"Arlene, burgers up," Terry called, jerking me back into the here and how. Arlene came over to grab the plates. She gave me a look that said she was going to pump me dry at the first chance she got. Charlsie Tooten was working, too. She filled in when one of the regular women got sick or just didn't show. I hoped Charlsie would take Dawn's place full-time. I'd always liked her.

"Yeah, Dawn's dead," I told Terry. He didn't seem to mind my long pause.

"What happened to her?"

"I don't know, but it wasn't peaceful." I'd seen blood on the sheets, not a lot, but some.

"Maudette," Terry said, and I instantly understood.

"Maybe," I said. It sure was possible that whoever had done in Dawn was the same person who'd killed Maudette.

Of course, everyone in Renard Parish came in that day, if not for lunch, then for an afternoon cup of coffee or a beer. If they couldn't make their work schedule bend around that, they waited until they clocked out and came in on their way home. Two young women in our town murdered in one month? You bet people wanted to talk.

Sam returned about two, with heat radiating off his body and sweat trickling down his face from standing out in the shadeless yard at the crime scene. He told me that Andy Bellefleur had said he was coming to talk to me again soon.

"I don't know why," I said, maybe a tad sullenly. "I never hung around with Dawn. What happened to her, did they tell you?"

"Someone strangled her after beating on her a little," Sam said. "But she had some old tooth marks, too. Like Mau­dette."

"There are lots of vampires, Sam," I said, answering his unspoken comment.

"Sookie." His voice was so serious and quiet. It made me remember how he'd held my hand at Dawn's house, and then I remembered how he'd shut me out of his mind, known I was probing, known how to keep me out. "Honey, Bill is a good guy, for a vampire, but he's just not human."

"Honey, neither are you," I said, very quietly but very sharply. And I turned my back on Sam, not exactly wanting to admit why I was so angry with him, but wanting him to know it nonetheless.