All Together Dead

washing machine. Quinn had left early that morning, and I was simply sad about that. And then there was Jason’s marriage, which had such potential to be a disaster.
    I could think of a few more items to add to the list (down to the dripping tap in my kitchen), but you get that my day was not a happy one.
    “I’m here working, Selah. I’m not here to have any personal chitchats with you.”
    She ignored that.
    “I know you’re going on a trip with Bill,” she said. “You’re trying to steal him back from me. How long have you been scheming about this?”
    I know my mouth was hanging open, because I just hadn’t gotten enough warning that was coming. My telepathy was affected when I was tired—just as my reaction time and thought processes were—and I was heavily shielded when I worked, as a matter of course. So I hadn’t picked up on Selah’s thoughts. A flash of rage passed through me, lifting my palm and raising it to slap the shit out of her. But a warm, hard hand took mine, gripped it, brought it down to my side. Sam was there, and I hadn’t even seen him coming. I was missing everything today.
    “Miss Pumphrey, you’ll have to get your lunch somewhere else,” Sam said quietly. Of course, everyone was watching. I could feel all the brains go on alert for fresh gossip as eyes drank in every nuance of the scene. I could feel my face redden.
    “I have the right to eat here,” Selah said, her voice loud and arrogant. That was a huge mistake. In an instant, the sympathies of the spectators switched to me. I could feel the wave of it wash over me. I widened my eyes and looked sad like one of those abnormally big-eyed kids in the awful waif paintings. Looking pathetic was no big stretch. Sam put an arm around me as though I were a wounded child and looked at Selah with nothing on his face but a grave disappointment in her behavior.
    “I have the right to tell you to go,” he said. “I can’t have you insulting my staff.”
    Selah was never likely to be rude to Arlene or Holly or Danielle. She hardly knew they existed, because she wasn’t the kind of woman who really looked at a server. It had always stuck in her craw that Bill had dated me before he’d met her. (“Dated,” in Selah’s book, being a euphemism for “had enthusiastic and frequent sex with.”)
    Selah’s body was jerky with anger as she threw her napkin on the floor. She got to her feet so abruptly that her chair would have fallen if Dawson, a boulder of a werewolf who ran a motorcycle repair business, hadn’t caught it with one huge hand. Selah grabbed up her purse to stalk out of the door, narrowly avoiding a collision with my friend Tara, who was entering.
    Dawson was highly amused by the whole scene. “All that over a vamp,” he said. “Them cold-blooded things must be something, to get fine-looking women so upset.”
    “Who’s upset?” I said, smiling and standing straighter to show Sam I was unfazed. I doubt he was fooled, since Sam knows me pretty well, but he got my emotional drift and went back behind the bar. The buzz of discussion of this juicy scene rose from the lunch crowd. I strode over to the table where Tara was sitting. She had JB du Rone in tow.
    “Looking good, JB,” I said brightly, pulling the menus from between the napkin box and the salt and pepper shakers in the middle of the table and handing one to him and one to Tara. My hands were shaking, but I don’t think they noticed.
    JB smiled up at me. “Thanks, Sookie,” he said in his pleasant baritone. JB was just beautiful, but really short on the brains. However, that gave him a charming simplicity. Tara and I had watched out for him in school, because once that simplicity was observed and targeted by other, less handsome boys, JB had been in for some rough patches…especially in junior high. Since Tara and I also both had huge flaws in our own popularity profiles, we’d tried to protect JB as much as we were able. In return, JB had squired me to a couple of dances I’d wanted to go to very badly, and his family had given Tara a place to stay a couple of times when I couldn’t.
    Tara had had sex with JB somewhere along this painful road. I hadn’t. It didn’t seem to make any difference to either relationship.
    “JB has a new job,” Tara said, smiling in a self-satisfied way. So that was why she’d come in. Our relationship had been uneasy for the past few months, but she knew I’d want to share in her pride at having done a good