Jason didn't look at me. I was frozen in astonishment. This was a very un-Jason gesture. Could he have grown up a little bit?
"The kind that don't want to hang around with unnatural creatures like your sister," Arlene said. She tore off her apron, said, "I quit this place!" to the collie, and stomped back to Sam's office to retrieve her purse. Maybe a fourth of the people in the bar looked alarmed and upset. Half of them were fascinated with the drama. That left a quarter on the fence. Sam whined like a sad dog and put his nose between his paws. After that got a big laugh, the discomfort of the moment passed. I watched Whit and his buddy ease out the front door, and I relaxed when they were gone.
Just on the off chance Whit might be fetching a rifle from his truck, I glanced over at Bill, who glided out the door after him. In a moment he was back, nodding at me to indicate the FotS guys had driven away.
Once the back door thunked closed behind Arlene, the rest of the evening went pretty well. Sam and Tray retired to Sam's office to change back and get dressed. Sam returned to his place behind the bar afterward as if nothing had happened, and Tray went to sit at the table with Amelia, who kissed him. For a while, people steered a little clear of them, and there were lots of surreptitious glances; but after an hour, the atmosphere of Merlotte's seemed just about back to normal. I pitched in to serve Arlene's tables, and I made sure to be especially nice to the people still undecided about the night's events.
People seemed to drink heartily that night. Maybe they had misgivings about Sam's other persona, but they didn't have any problem adding to his profits. Bill caught my eye and raised his hand in good-bye. He and Clancy drifted out of the bar.
Jason tried to get my attention once or twice, and his buddy Mel sent big smiles my way. Mel was taller and thinner than my brother, but they both had that bright, eager look of unthinking men who operate on their instincts. In his favor, Mel didn't seem to agree with everything Jason said, not the way Hoyt always had. Mel seemed to be an okay guy, at least from our brief acquaintance; that he was one of the few werepanthers who didn't live in Hotshot was also a fact in his favor, and it may even have been why he and Jason were such big buddies. They were like other werepanthers, but separate, too.
If I ever began speaking to Jason again, I had a question for him. On this major evening for all Weres and shifters, how come he hadn't taken the chance to grab a little of the spotlight for himself? Jason was very full of his altered status as a werepanther. He'd been bitten, not born. That is, he'd contracted the virus (or whatever it was) by being bitten by another werepanther, rather than being born with the ability to change as Mel had been. Jason's changed form was manlike, with hair all over and a pantherish face and claws: really scary, he'd told me. But he wasn't a beautiful animal, and that griped my brother. Mel was a purebred, and he would be gorgeous and frightening when he transformed.
Maybe the werepanthers had been asked to lie low because panthers were simply too scary. If something as big and lethal as a panther had appeared in the bar, the reaction of the patrons almost certainly would have been a lot more hysterical. Though wereanimal brains are very difficult to read, I could sense the disappointment the two panthers were sharing. I was sure the decision had been Calvin Norris's, as the panther leader.Good move, Calvin, I thought.
After I'd helped close down the bar, I gave Sam a hug when I stopped by his office to pick up my purse. He was looking tired but happy.
"You feeling as good as you look?" I asked.
"Yep. My true nature's out in the open now. It's liberating. My mom swore she was going to tell my stepdad tonight. I'm waiting to hear from her."
Right on cue, the phone rang. Sam picked it up, still smiling. "Mom?" he said. Then his face changed as if a hand had wiped off the previous expression. "Don? What have you done?"
I sank into the chair by the desk and waited. Tray had come to have a last word with Sam, and Amelia was with him. They both stood stiffly in the doorway, anxious to hear what had happened.
"Oh, my God," Sam said. "I'll come as soon as I can. I'll get on the road tonight." He hung up the phone very gently. "Don shot my mom," he said. "When she changed, he shot her." I'd never seen Sam look so upset.
"Is she dead?" I asked, fearing the answer.
"No," he said. "No, but she's in the hospital with a shattered collarbone and a gunshot wound to her upper left shoulder. He almost killed her. If she hadn't jumped ..."
"I'm so sorry," Amelia said.
"What can I do to help?" I asked.
"Keep the bar open while I'm gone," he said, shaking off the shock. "Call Terry. Terry and Tray can work out a bartending schedule between them. Tray, you know I'll pay you when I get back. Sookie, the waitress schedule is on the wall behind the bar. Find someone to cover Arlene's shifts, please."
"Sure, Sam," I said. "You need any help packing? Can I gas up your truck or something?"
"Nope, I'm good. You've got the key to my trailer, so can you water my plants? I don't think I'll be gone but a couple of days, but you never know."
"Of course, Sam. Don't worry. Keep us posted."
We all cleared out so Sam could get over to his trailer to pack. It was in the lot right behind the bar, so at least he could get everything ready in a hurry.
As I drove home, I tried to imagine how Sam's stepdad had come to do such a thing. Had he been so horrified at the discovery of his wife's second life that he'd flipped? Had she changed out of his sight and walked up to him and startled him? I simply couldn't believe you could shoot someone you loved, someone you lived with, just because they had more to them than you'd thought. Maybe Don had seen her second self as a betrayal. Or maybe it was the fact that she'd concealed it. I could kind of understand his reaction, if I looked at it that way.
People all had secrets, and I was in a position to know most of them. Being a telepath is not any fun. You hear the tawdry, the sad, the disgusting, the petty ... the things we all want to keep hidden from our fellow humans, so they'll keep their image of us intact.
The secrets I know least about are my own.
The one I was thinking of tonight was the unusual genetic inheritance my brother and I share, which had come through my father. My father had never known that his mother, Adele, had had a whopper of a secret, one disclosed to me only the past October. My grandmother's two children - my dad and his sister, Linda - were not the products of her long marriage with my grandfather.Both had been conceived through her liaison with a half fairy, half human named Fintan. According to Fintan's father, Niall, the fairy part of my dad's genetic heritage had been responsible for my mother's infatuation with him, an infatuation that had excluded her children from all but the fringes of her attention and affection. This genetic legacy hadn't seemed to change anything for my dad's sister, Linda; it certainly hadn't helped her dodge the cancer bullet that had ended her life or kept her husband on-site, much less infatuated. However, Linda's grandson Hunter was a telepath like me.