"I thought so, too, but that didn't prevent me from hearing it when she was telling Charlsie Tooten."
I poured us each a cup of coffee and put the half-empty sugar bowl within Sam's reach, along with a spoon. I glanced over at the kitchen counter to see how full the clear sugar canister was, and I noticed that the message light on the answering machine was blinking. I only had to get up and take a step to press the button. The message had been recorded at 5:01 A.M. Oh. I'd turned the phone ringer off when I'd gone to bed exhausted. Almost invariably my messages were real mundane - Arlene asking me if I'd heard a piece of gossip, Tara passing the time of day during a slow hour at the store - but this one was a real doozy.
Pam's clear voice said, "Tonight we attack the witch and her coven. The Weres have persuaded the local Wiccans to join us. We need you to bring Eric. He can fight, even if he doesn't know who he is. He will be useless to us if we can't break the spell, anyway." That Pam, ever practical. She was willing to use Eric for cannon fodder, since we might not be able to restore him to full Eric leadership mode. After a little pause, she continued, "The Weres of Shreveport are allying with vampires in battle. You can watch history being made, my telepathic friend."
The sound of the phone being put back in the cradle. The click that heralded the next message, which came in two minutes after the first.
"Thinking of that," Pam said, as if she'd never hung up, "there is the idea that your unusual ability can help us in our fight, and we want to explore that. Isn't that the right buzzword now? Explore? So get here as close to first dark as possible." She hung up again.
Click. "'Here' is 714 Parchman Avenue," Pam said. Hung up.
"How can I do that, with Jason still missing?" I asked, when it became clear Pam hadn't called again.
"You're going to sleep now," Sam said. "Come on." He pulled me to my feet, led me to my room. "You're going to take off your boots and jeans, crawl back in the bed, and take a long nap. When you get up, you'll feel better. You leave Pam's number so I can reach you. Tell the cops to call the bar if they learn anything, and I'll phone you if I hear from Bud Dearborn."
"So you think I should do this?" I was bewildered.
"No, I'd give anything if you wouldn't. But I think you have to. It's not my fight; I wasn't invited." Sam gave me a kiss on the forehead and left to go back to Merlotte's.
His attitude was kind of interesting, after all the vampire insistence (both Bill's and Eric's) that I was a possession to be guarded. I felt pretty empowered and gung-ho for about thirty seconds, until I remembered my New Year's resolution: no getting beaten up. If I went to Shreveport with Eric, then I was sure to see things I didn't want to see, learn things I didn't want to know, and get my ass whipped, too.
On the other hand, my brother Jason had made a deal with the vampires, and I had to uphold it. Sometimes I felt that my whole life had been spent stuck between a rock and a hard place. But then, lots of people had complicated lives.
I thought of Eric, a powerful vampire whose mind had been stripped clean of his identity. I thought of the carnage I'd seen in the bridal shop, the white lace and brocade speckled with dried blood and matter. I thought of poor Maria-Star, in the hospital in Shreveport. These witches were bad, and bad should be stopped; bad should be overcome. That's the American model.
It seemed kind of strange to think that I was on the side of vampires and werewolves, and that was the good side. That made me laugh a little, all to myself. Oh, yes, we good guys would save the day.
Chapter 11
11
Amazingly, I did sleep. I woke with Eric on the bed beside me. He was smelling me.
"Sookie, what is this?" he asked in a very quiet voice. He knew, of course, when I woke. "You smell of the woods, and you smell of shifter. And something even wilder."
I supposed the shifter he smelled was Sam. "And Were," I prompted, not wanting him to miss out on anything.
"No, not Were," he said.
I was puzzled. Calvin had lifted me over the brambles, and his scent should still have been on me.
"More than one kind of shifter," Eric said in the near-dark of my room. "What have you been doing, my lover?"
He didn't exactly sound angry, but he didn't sound happy, either. Vampires. They wrote the book on possessive.
"I was in the search party for my brother, in the woods behind his home," I said.
Eric was still for a minute. Then he wrapped his arms around me and hauled me up against him. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know you are worried."
"Let me ask you something," I said, willing to test a theory of mine.
"Of course."
"Look inside yourself, Eric. Are you really, really sorry? Worried about Jason?" Because the real Eric, in his right mind, would not have cared one little bit.
"Of course," he protested. Then, after a long moment - I wished I could see his face - he said, "Not really." He sounded surprised. "I know I should be. I should be concerned about your brother, because I love having sex with you, and I should want you to think well of me so you'll want sex, too."
You just had to like the honesty. This was the closest to the real Eric I'd seen in days.
"But you'll listen, right? If I need to talk? For the same reason?"
"Of course, my lover."
"Because you want to have sex with me."
"That, of course. But also because I find I really do..." He paused, as if he were about to say something outrageous. "I find I have feelings for you."
"Oh," I said into his chest, sounding as astonished as Eric had. His chest was bare, as I suspected the rest of him was. I felt the light sprinkling of curly blond hair against my cheek.
"Eric," I said, after a long pause, "I almost hate to say this, but I have feelings for you, too." There was a lot I needed to tell Eric, and we should be in the car on our way to Shreveport already. But I was taking this moment to savor this little bit of happiness.
"Not love, exactly," he said. His fingers were busy trying to find out how best to get my clothes off.
"No, but something close." I helped him. "We don't have much time, Eric," I said, reaching down, touching him, making him gasp. "Let's make it good."
"Kiss me," he said, and he wasn't talking about his mouth. "Turn this way," he whispered. "I want to kiss you, too."
It didn't take long, after all, for us to be holding each other, sated and happy.