"Get over it!"

"Right! Like I could!"

We glared at each other over the width of the truck seat.

"So what happened to him?" I asked finally, reluctantly.

"A burglar broke into his house last night."

"Yeah? And?"

"And broke his neck. Threw him down the stairs."

"Okay. So I know. Now I'm going home. I gotta shower and get ready for work."

"That's all you're saying?"

"What else is there to say?"

"Don't want to know about the funeral?"

"No."

"Don't want to know about his will?"

"No."

He threw up his hands. "All right," he said, as if he'd been arguing a point very hard with me and realized that I was intractable.

"What else? Anything?" I asked.

"No. Just your great-uncle dying. I thought that was enough."

"Actually, you're right," I said, opening the truck door and sliding out. "That was enough." I raised my cup to him. "Thanks for the coffee, brother."

IT WASN'T TILL I got to work that it clicked. I got to work that it clicked.

I was drying a glass and really not thinking about Uncle Bartlett, and suddenly my fingers lost all strength.

"Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea," I said, looking down at the broken slivers of glass at my feet. "Bill had him killed."

I DON'T KNOW DON'T KNOW why I was so sure I was right; but I was, the minute the idea crossed my mind. Maybe I had heard Bill dialing the phone when I was half-asleep. Maybe the expression on Bill's face when I'd finished telling him about Uncle Bartlett had rung a silent warning bell. why I was so sure I was right; but I was, the minute the idea crossed my mind. Maybe I had heard Bill dialing the phone when I was half-asleep. Maybe the expression on Bill's face when I'd finished telling him about Uncle Bartlett had rung a silent warning bell.

I wondered if Bill would pay the other vampire in money, or if he'd repay him in kind.

I got through work in a frozen state. I couldn't talk to anyone about what I was thinking, couldn't even say I was sick without someone asking me what was wrong. So I didn't speak at all, I just worked. I tuned out everything except the next order I had to fill. I drove home trying to feel just as frozen, but I had to face facts when I was alone.

I freaked out.

I had known, really I had, that Bill certainly had killed a human or two in his long, long, life. When he'd been a young vampire, when he'd needed lots of blood, before he'd gained control of his needs sufficiently to exist on a gulp here, a mouthful there, without actually killing anyone he drank from... he'd told me himself there'd been a death or two along the way. And he'd killed the Rattrays. But they'd have done me in that night in back of Merlotte's, without a doubt, if Bill hadn't intervened. I was naturally inclined to excuse him those deaths.

How was the murder of Uncle Bartlett different? He'd harmed me, too, dreadfully, made my already difficult childhood a true nightmare. Hadn't I been relieved, even pleased, to hear he'd been found dead? Didn't my horror at Bill's intervention reek of hypocrisy of the worst sort?

Yes. No?

Tired and incredibly confused, I sat on my front steps and waited in the darkness, my arms wrapped around my knees. The crickets were singing in the tall grass when he came, arriving so quietly and quickly I didn't hear him. One minute I was alone with the night, and the next, Bill was sitting on the steps beside me.

"What do you want to do tonight, Sookie?" His arm went around me.

"Oh, Bill." My voice was heavy with despair.

His arm dropped. I didn't look up at his face, couldn't have seen it through the darkness, anyway.

"You should not have done it."

He didn't bother with denying it at least.

"I am glad he's dead, Bill. But I can't..."

"Do you think I would ever hurt you, Sookie?" His voice was quiet and rustling, like feet through dry grass.

"No. Oddly enough, I don't think you would hurt me, even if you were really mad at me."

"Then... ?"

"It's like dating the Godfather, Bill. I'm scared to say anything around you now. I'm not used to my problems being solved that way."

"I love you."

He'd never said it before, and I might almost have imagined it now, his voice was so low and whispery.

"Do you, Bill?" I didn't raise my face, kept my forehead pressed against my knees.

"Yes, I do."

"Then you have to let my life get lived, Bill, you can't alter it for me."

"You wanted me to alter it when the Rattrays were beating you."

"Point taken. But I can't have you trying to fine-tune my day-to-day life. I'm gonna get mad at people, people are gonna get mad at me. I can't worry about them being killed. I can't live like that, honey. You see what I'm saying?"

"Honey?" he repeated.

"I love you," I said. "I don't know why, but I do. I want to call you all those gooshy words you use when you love someone, no matter how stupid it sounds since you're a vampire. I want to tell you you're my baby, that I'll love you till we're old and gray-though that's not gonna happen. That I know you'll always be true to me-hey, that's not gonna happen either. I keep running up against a brick wall when I try to tell you I love you, Bill." I fell silent. I was all cried out.

"This crisis came sooner than I thought it would," Bill said from the darkness. The crickets had resumed their chorus, and I listened to them for a long moment.

"Yeah."

"What now, Sookie?"

"I have to have a little time."

"Before... ?"

"Before I decide if the love is worth the misery."

"Sookie, if you knew how different you taste, how much I want to protect you..."

I could tell from Bill's voice that these were very tender feelings he was sharing with me. "Oddly enough," I said, "that's what I feel about you. But I have to live here, and I have to live with myself, and I have to think about some rules we gotta get clear between us."

"So what do we do now?"

"I think. You go do whatever you were doing before we met."

"Trying to figure out if I could live mainstream. Trying to think of who I'd feed on, if I could stop drinking that damn synthetic blood."

"I know you'll-feed on someone else besides me." I was trying very hard to keep my voice level. "Please, not anyone here, not anyone I have to see. I couldn't bear it. It's not fair of me to ask, but I'm asking."

"If you won't date anyone else, won't bed anyone else."

"I won't." That seemed an easy enough promise to make.

"Will you mind if I come into the bar?"

"No. I'm not telling anyone we're apart. I'm not talking about it."

He leaned over, I could feel the pressure on my arm as his body pressed against it.

"Kiss me," he said.

I lifted my head and turned, and our lips met. It was blue fire, not orange-and-red flames, not that kind of heat: blue fire. After a second, his arms went around me. After another, my arms went around him. I began to feel boneless, limp. With a gasp, I pulled away.

"Oh, we can't, Bill."

I heard his breath draw in. "Of course not, if we're separating," he said quietly, but he didn't sound like he thought I meant it. "We should definitely not be kissing. Still less should I want to throw you back on the porch and fuck you till you faint."

My knees were actually shaking. His deliberately crude language, coming out in that cold sweet voice, made the longing inside me surge even higher. It took everything I had, every little scrap of self-control, to push myself up and go in the house.

But I did it.

IN THE FOLLOWING week, I began to craft a life without Gran and without Bill. I worked nights and worked hard. I was extra careful, for the first time in my life, about locks and security. There was a murderer out there, and I no longer had my powerful protector. I considered getting a dog, but couldn't decide what kind I wanted. My cat, Tina, was only protection in the sense that she always reacted when someone came very near the house. week, I began to craft a life without Gran and without Bill. I worked nights and worked hard. I was extra careful, for the first time in my life, about locks and security. There was a murderer out there, and I no longer had my powerful protector. I considered getting a dog, but couldn't decide what kind I wanted. My cat, Tina, was only protection in the sense that she always reacted when someone came very near the house.

I got calls from Gran's lawyer from time to time, informing me about the progress of winding up her estate. I got calls from Bartlett's lawyer. My great-uncle had left me twenty thousand dollars, a great sum for him. I almost turned down the legacy. But I thought again. I gave the money to the local mental health center, earmarking it for the treatment of children who were victims of molestation and rape.

They were glad to get it.

I took vitamins, loads of them, because I was a little anemic. I drank lots of fluids and ate lots of protein.

And I ate as much garlic as I wanted, something Bill hadn't been able to tolerate. He said it came out through my pores, even, when I had garlic bread with spaghetti and meat sauce one night.

I slept and slept and slept. Staying up nights after a work shift had me rest-deprived.

After three days I felt restored, physically. In fact, it seemed to me that I was a little stronger than I had been.

I began to take in what was happening around me.

The first thing I noticed was that local folks were really pissed off at the vampires who nested in Monroe. Diane, Liam, and Malcolm had been touring bars in the area, apparently trying to make it impossible for other vampires who wanted to mainstream. They'd been behaving outrageously, offensively. The three vampires made the escapades of the Louisiana Tech students look bland.

They didn't seem to ever imagine they were endangering themselves. The freedom of being out of the coffin had gone to their heads. The right to legally exist had withdrawn all their constraints, all their prudence and caution. Malcolm nipped at a bartender in Bogaloosas. Diane danced naked in Farmerville. Liam dated an underage girl in Shongaloo, and her mother, too. He took blood from both. He didn't erase the memory of either.

Rene was talking to Mike Spencer, the funeral director, in Merlotte's one Thursday night, and they hushed when I got near. Naturally, that caught my attention. So I read Mike's mind. A group of local men were thinking of burning out the Monroe vampires.

I didn't know what to do. The three were, if not exactly friends of Bill, at least sort of coreligionists. But I loathed Malcolm, Diane, and Liam just as much as anyone else. On the other hand; and boy-there always was another hand, wasn't there?-it just went against my grain to know ahead of the fact about premeditated murders and just sit on my hands.

Maybe this was all liquor talking. Just to check, I dipped into the minds of the people around me. To my dismay, many of them were thinking about torching the vampire's nest. But I couldn't track down the origin of the idea. It felt as though the poison had flowed from one mind and infected others.

There wasn't any proof, any proof at all, that Maudette and Dawn and my grandmother had been killed by a vampire. In fact, rumor had it that the coroner's report might show evidence against that. But the three vampires were behaving in such a way that people wanted to blame them for something, wanted to get rid of them, and since Maudette and Dawn were both vampire-bitten and habitues of vampire bars, well, folks just cobbled that together to pound out a conviction.

Bill came in the seventh night I'd been alone. He appeared at his table quite suddenly. He wasn't by himself. There was a boy with him, a boy who looked maybe fifteen. He was a vampire, too.

"Sookie, this is Harlen Ives from Minneapolis," Bill said, as if this were an ordinary introduction.

"Harlen," I said, and nodded. "Pleased to meet you."

"Sookie." He bobbed his head at me, too.

"Harlen is in transit from Minnesota to New Orleans," Bill said, sounding positively chatty.

"I'm going on vacation," Harlen said. "I've been wanting to visit New Orleans for years. It's just a mecca for us, you know."

"Oh... right," I said, trying to sound matter of fact.

"There's this number you can call," Harlen informed me. "You can stay with an actual resident, or you can rent a..."

"Coffin?" I asked brightly.