Dead as a Doornail

didn’t have a clue as to what he was.
    The drive home was grim.
    I might as well have phoned in to Merlotte’s that evening. Oh, sure, I went through all the motions of taking orders and carrying them to the right tables, refilling pitchers of beer, popping my tips in the tip jar, wiping up spills and making sure the temporary cook (a vampire named Anthony Bolivar; he’d subbed for us before) remembered the busboy was off limits. But I didn’t have any sparkle, any joy, in my work.
    I did notice that Sam seemed be getting around better. He was obviously restive, sitting in his corner watching Charles work. Possibly Sam was also a little piqued, since Charles just seemed to get more and more popular with the clientele. The vamp was charming, that was for sure. He was wearing a red sequined eye patch tonight and his usual poet shirt under a black sequined vest—flashy in the extreme, but entertaining, too.
    “You seem depressed, beautiful lady,” he said when I came to pick up a Tom Collins and a rum and Coke.
    “Just been a long day,” I said, making an effort to smile. I had so many other things to digest emotionally that I didn’t even mind when Bill brought Selah Pumphrey in again. Even when they sat in my section, I didn’t care. But when Bill took my hand as I was turning away to get their order, I snatched it away as if he’d tried to set me on fire.
    “I only want to know what’s wrong,” he said, and for a second I remembered how good it had felt that night at the hospital when he’d lain down with me. My mouth actually began to open, but then I caught a glimpse of Selah’s indignant face, and I shut my emotional water off at the meter.
    “I’ll be right back with that blood,” I said cheerfully, smiling wide enough to show every tooth in my head.
    To heck with him, I thought righteously. Him and the horse he rode in on.
    After that it was strictly business. I smiled and worked,and worked and smiled. I stayed away from Sam, because I didn’t want to have a long conversation with yet another shifter that evening. I was afraid—since I didn’t have any reason to be mad at Sam—that if he asked me what was wrong, I’d tell him; and I just didn’t want to talk about it. You ever just feel like stomping around and being miserable for a while? That was the kind of mood I was in.
    But I had to go over to Sam, after all, when Catfish asked if he could pay with a check for this evening’s festivities. That was Sam’s rule: he had to approve checks. And I had to stand close to Sam, because the bar was very noisy.
    I thought nothing of it, aside from not wanting to get into my own mood with him, but when I bent over him to explain Catfish’s cash-flow problem, Sam’s eyes widened. “My God, Sookie,” he said, “Who have you been around?”
    I backed off, speechless. He was both shocked and appalled by a smell I hadn’t even known I carried. I was tired of supes pulling this on me.
    “Where’d you meet up with a tiger?” he asked.
    “A tiger,” I repeated numbly.
    So now I knew what my new acquaintance Quinn turned into when the moon was full.
    “Tell me,” Sam demanded.
    “No,” I snapped, “I won’t. What about Catfish?”
    “He can write a check this once. If there’s a problem, he’ll never write another one here again.”
    I didn’t relay this last sentence. I took Catfish’s check and his alcohol-fueled gratitude, and deposited both where they belonged.
    To make my bad mood worse, I snagged my silver chain on a corner of the bar when I bent over to pick up a napkin some slob had tossed to the floor. The chain broke, and I caught it up and dropped it in my pocket. Dammit. This had been a rotten day, followed by a rotten night.
    I made sure to wave at Selah as she and Bill left. He’d left me a good tip, and I stuffed it in my other pocket with so much force I almost ripped the fabric. A couple of times during the evening, I had heard the bar phone ring, and when I was taking some dirty glasses to the kitchen hatch, Charles said, “Someone keeps calling and hanging up. Very irritating.”
    “They’ll get tired and quit,” I said soothingly.
    About an hour later, as I put a Coke in front of Sam, the busboy came to tell me there was someone at the employees’ entrance, asking for me.
    “What were you doing outside?” Sam asked sharply.
    The boy looked embarrassed. “I smoke, Mr. Merlotte,” he said. “I was outside taking me a break, ’cause the vamp said