When I'd met Glassport, we'd been on an airplane flight to Rhodes, both hired by the then-queen of Louisiana, Sophie-Anne. I was supposed to listen in to human brains at the vampire summit, and Glassport's job was to defend her against charges brought by a contingent of Arkansas vamps.
I hadn't seen Glassport since the Pyramid of Gizeh had been blown up by human supremacists who wanted to make a statement about vampires - namely, that they all ought to die.
I'd thought about Glassport from time to time, always with distaste. I had happily assumed I'd never see him again in my life. But here he was, speaking through the mouth of a Louisiana rancher named Delphine Oubre.
"Whose choice?" Bob said, in a very quiet voice.
But Delphine didn't respond in the Glassport voice. Instead, her body changed subtly, and she swayed from side to side, as if she were riding an invisible roller coaster. It slowed down and then stopped. After a long minute, she opened her eyes.
"What I see is this," she said in her own voice. She spoke rapidly, as if trying to get it all told before she forgot. "I see a man, a white man, and he's bad most of the way through, but he keeps a good façade. He enjoys killing the helpless. He killed that woman, the red-headed one, on assignment. She not his usual style. She not some random pickup. She knew him. She knew the man with him. She couldn't believe they were killing her. She thought the other man was good. She was thinking, 'I done everything they ask me. Why they not killing Snookie?' "
We hadn't introduced ourselves. "Sookie," I corrected her absently. "She wanted to know why they were killing her instead of Sookie."
"That you?" Delphine asked.
Catching Bob's eyes on me and his warning shake of the head, I said, "No."
"You lucky if you're not Sookie. Whoever she is, they'd sure like to kill her."
Damn.
Delphine stood up, shook herself a little, took another swallow of water, and walked out the door to get into her pickup to go home to feed her cows.
Everyone carefully avoided looking at me. I was the one with the big X on her forehead.
"I have to go to work," I said, when the silence had lasted long enough. I didn't give a damn about what Sam thought about it. I had to get out and do something.
Mr. Cataliades said, "Diantha will go with you."
"I would be extremely glad to have her with me," I said with absolute truth. "I'm just not sure how to explain her being there."
"Why do you have to?" Bob said.
"Well, I have to say something, don't I?"
"Why?" Barry asked. "Don't you own part of the bar?"
"Yes," I admitted.
"Then you don't have to explain diddly-squat," Amelia said, with such an air of magnificent indifference that we all laughed, even me.
So Diantha and I walked into Merlotte's, and I didn't explain her presence to anyone but Sam. The part-demon girl was wearing a relatively quiet outfit: yellow miniskirt, kingfisher blue tank top, and rainbow platform flip-flops. This month her hair was a platinum blond, but there were a lot of artificially platinum blondes around Bon Temps, though not many who looked like they were at most eighteen.
I don't know what Diantha thought about Merlotte's clientele, but Merlotte's clientele was wild about her. She was different, she was alert and bright-eyed, and she talked so fast that everyone thought she was speaking a foreign language. I discovered that since I could evidently understand that language, I had to translate for her. So off and on during the day, I was called on to tell Jane Bodehouse or Antoine the cook or Andy Bellefleur what my "little second cousin" was saying. I don't know where they got the idea that she was my second cousin, but after the first thirty minutes it became an established fact. I don't know where they thought she'd come from, since everyone in the bar knew my entire family history, but I guess since I'd introduced the fairy Dermot (a dead ringer for Jason) as my cousin from Florida, and I'd said Claude was from the wrong side of the blanket, my townspeople figured the Stackhouses were simply unpredictable.
We were real busy that day, though since I was teamed with An Norr, I didn't have to run as fast as I would've with some other waitresses. An was such a worker ant. And with Diantha and An both in the bar, not a single guy thought about my boobs, which were old news to the regulars anyway. I smiled down at my chest. "Girls, you're outdated," I said. Sam gave me a strange look, but he didn't come over to ask me why I was talking to my br**sts.
I stayed away from him, too. I was tired of trying to break through his defenses. I felt like I had enough trouble without trying to coax him out of his funky cave.
I was surprised when he spoke to me as I was waiting for an order for Andy and Terry Bellefleur. (Yes, it was awkward to see Andy, since he'd put me in handcuffs. We were both trying to ignore that.)
"Since when do you have a demon for a cousin?" he asked.
"You haven't met Diantha before? I couldn't remember."
"I can't say that I have. And I definitely think I'd recall it."
"She and her uncle are at my house. They're part of Team Sookie," I said proudly. "They're helping clear my name. So I don't have to go to trial."
I didn't expect my words to have such an effect on Sam. He looked almost simultaneously pleased and angry. "I wish I could be there," he said.
"Nothing's stopping you," I said. "Remember, you said you'd come to dinner." I'd passed beyond confusion at Sam's weirdness. I was somewhere in the "What the hell?" zone.
SOOKIE'S HOUSE
There was a sort of muted thump at the back door, as if someone were perhaps carrying in bags of groceries and therefore tried to open the door with a finger or foot.
Bob, just back from town with Amelia and Barry, opened the back door and stepped out on the screened-in porch to investigate. He wasn't really thinking about who might have arrived. Truth be told, he was worried about Amelia's pregnancy on many different levels. He was smart enough to know they couldn't take care of a baby on the meager money they brought in now, and he was also smart enough to know that accepting money from Copley Carmichael (besides the indirect revenue Amelia got from renting out the apartment on the top floor of the house her dad had given her) would be a grave error.
So Bob was preoccupied, which was why he didn't react instantly when the man beyond the screen door pulled it open and lunged in. Bob thought, Tyrese, and then he remembered Tyrese worked for a man who'd sold his soul. Bob shoved Tyrese, hoping desperately to knock him down the back steps and out into the yard so Bob could retreat into the kitchen and lock the door.