"That's good," I said. "That's the best way to find out he didn't do it." I was relieved to hear Calvin's news, and the longer I pondered it, the more I realized I should have figured it out myself.
"Calvin, you take care." I rose to leave, and he held up his cheek. Rather reluctantly, I touched my lips to it.
He was thinking that my lips were soft and that I smelled good. I couldn't help but smile as I left. Knowing someone simply finds you attractive is always a boost to the spirits.
I drove back to Bon Temps and stopped by the library before I went to work. The Renard Parish library is an old ugly brown-brick building erected in the thirties. It looks every minute of its age. The librarians had made many justified complaints about the heating and cooling, and the electrical wiring left a lot to be desired. The library's parking lot was in bad shape, and the old clinic next door, which had opened its doors in 1918, now had boarded-up windows - always a depressing sight. The long-closed clinic's overgrown lot looked more like a jungle than a part of downtown.
I had allotted myself ten minutes to exchange my books. I was in and out in eight. The library parking lot was almost empty, since it was just before five o'clock. People were shopping at Wal-Mart or already home cooking supper.
The winter light was fading. I was not thinking about anything in particular, and that saved my life. In the nick of time, I identified intense excitement pulsing from another brain, and reflexively I ducked, feeling a sharp shove in my shoulder as I did so, and then a hot lance of blinding pain, and then wetness and a big noise. This all happened so fast I could not definitely sequence it when I later tried to reconstruct the moment.
A scream came from behind me, and then another. Though I didn't know how it had happened, I found myself on my knees beside my car, and blood was spattered over the front of my white T-shirt.
Oddly, my first thought was Thank God I didn't have my new coat on.
The person who'd screamed was Portia Bellefleur. Portia was not her usual collected self as she skidded across the parking lot to crouch beside me. Her eyes went one way, then another, as she tried to spot danger coming from any direction.
"Hold still," she said sharply, as though I'd proposed running a marathon. I was still on my knees, but keeling over appeared to be a pleasant option. Blood was trickling down my arm. "Someone shot you, Sookie. Oh my God, oh my God."
"Take the books," I said. "I don't want to get blood on the books. I'll have to pay for them."
Portia ignored me. She was talking into her cell phone. People talked on their phones at the damnedest times! In the library, for goodness's sake, or at the optometrist. Or in the bar. Jabber, jabber, jabber. As if everything was so important it couldn't wait. So I put the books on the ground beside me all by myself.
Instead of kneeling, I found myself sitting, my back against my car. And then, as if someone had taken a slice out of my life, I discovered I was lying on the pavement of the library parking lot, staring at someone's big old oil stain. People should take better care of their cars....
Out.
"Wake up," a voice was saying. I wasn't in the parking lot, but in a bed. I thought my house was on fire again, and Claudine was trying to get me out. People were always trying to get me out of bed. Though this didn't sound like Claudine; this sounded more like...
"Jason?" I tried to open my eyes. I managed to peer through my barely parted lids to identify my brother. I was in a dimly lit blue room, and I hurt so bad I wanted to cry.
"You got shot," he said. "You got shot, and I was at Merlotte's, waiting for you to get there."
"You sound... happy," I said through lips that felt oddly thick and stiff. Hospital.
"I couldn't have done it! I was with people the whole time! I had Hoyt in the truck with me from work to Merlotte's, because his truck's in the shop. I am covered."
"Oh, good. I'm glad I got shot, then. As long as you're okay." It was such an effort to say it, I was glad when Jason picked up on the sarcasm.
"Yeah, hey, I'm sorry about that. At least it wasn't serious."
"It isn't?"
"I forgot to tell you. Your shoulder got creased, and it's going to hurt for a while. Press this button if it hurts. You can give yourself pain medication. Cool, huh? Listen, Andy's outside."
I pondered that, finally deduced Andy Bellefleur was there in his official capacity. "Okay," I said. "He can come in." I stretched out a finger and carefully pushed the button.
I blinked then, and it must have been a long blink, because when I pried my eyes open again, Jason was gone and Andy was in his place, a little notebook and a pen in his hands. There was something I had to tell him, and after a moment's reflection, I knew what it was.
"Tell Portia I said thank you," I told him.
"I will," he said seriously. "She's pretty shook up. She's never been that close to violence before. She thought you were gonna die."
I could think of nothing to say to that. I waited for him to ask me what he wanted to know. His mouth moved, and I guess I answered him.
"... said you ducked at the last second?"
"I heard something, I guess," I whispered. That was the truth, too. I just hadn't heard something with my ears.... But Andy knew what I meant, and he was a believer. His eyes met mine and widened.
And out again. The ER doctor had certainly given me some excellent painkiller. I wondered which hospital I was in. The one in Clarice was a little closer to the library; the one in Grainger had a higher-rated ER. If I was in Grainger, I might as well have saved myself the time driving back to Bon Temps and going to the library. I could have been shot right in the hospital parking lot when I left from visiting Calvin, and that would have saved me the trip.
"Sookie," said a quiet, familiar voice. It was cool and dark, like water running in a stream on a moonless night.
"Bill," I said, feeling happy and safe. "Don't go."
"I'll be right here."
And he was there, reading, in a chair by my bed when I woke up at three in the morning. I could feel the minds in the rooms around me all shut down in sleep. But the brain in the head of the man next to me was a blank. At that moment, I realized that the person who'd shot me had not been a vampire, though all the shootings had taken place at dusk or full dark. I'd heard the shooter's brain in the second before the shot, and that had saved my life.
Bill looked up the instant I moved. "How are you feeling?" he asked.
I pushed the button to raise the head of the bed. "Like hell warmed over," I said frankly after evaluating my shoulder. "My pain stuff has lapsed, and my shoulder aches like it's going to fall off. My mouth feels like an army has marched through it, and I need to go to the bathroom in the worst way."