Dead as a Doornail

when I’d been dating Bill Compton.
    “You should go back over there to your friends, Dave. You don’t want your mama to get a phone call about you being killed in a bar fight in Louisiana. Especially not in a vampire bar, right?”
    “How’d you know my name?” he asked slowly.
    “Doesn’t make any difference, does it?”
    From the corner of my eye, I could see that Eric was shaking his head. Mild deflection was not his way of dealing with intrusion.
    Abruptly, Dave began to simmer down.
    “How’d you know about me?” he asked in a calmer voice.
    “I have x-ray vision,” I said solemnly. “I can read your driver’s license in your pants.”
    He began to smile. “Hey, can you see other stuff through my pants?”
    I smiled back at him. “You’re a lucky man, Dave,” I said ambiguously. “Now, I’m actually here to talk business with this guy, so if you’d excuse us . . .”
    “Okay. Sorry, I . . .”
    “No problem at all,” I assured him. He went back to his friends, walking cocky. I was sure he’d give them a highly embellished account of the conversation.
    Though everyone in the bar had tried to pretend they weren’t watching the incident, which had so much potential for some juicy violence, they had to scramble to look busy when Eric’s eyes swept the surrounding tables.
    “You were starting to tell me something when we were so rudely interrupted,” he said. Without my asking, a barmaid came up and deposited a fresh drink in front of me, whisking my old glass away. Anyone sitting with Eric got the deluxe treatment.
    “Yes. Sam isn’t the only shape-shifter who’s been shot in Bon Temps lately. Calvin Norris was shot in the chest a few days ago. He’s a werepanther. And Heather Kinman was shot before that. Heather was just nineteen, a werefox.”
    Eric said, “I still don’t see why this is interesting.”
    “Eric, she was killed.”
    He still looked inquiring.
    I clenched my teeth together so I wouldn’t try to tell him what a nice girl Heather Kinman had been: She’d just graduated from high school and she was working at her first job as a clerk at Bon Temps Office Supplies. She’d been drinking a milkshake at the Sonic when she’d been shot. Today,the crime lab would be comparing the bullet that had shot Sam with the bullet that had killed Heather, and both of those with the bullet from Calvin’s chest. I assumed the bullets would match.
    “I’m trying to explain to you why Sam doesn’t want to ask another shape-shifter or Were to step in to help,” I said through clenched teeth. “He thinks that might be putting him or her in danger. And there’s just not a local human who’s got the qualifications for the job. So he asked me to come to you.”
    “When I stayed at your house, Sookie . . .”
    I groaned. “Oh, Eric, give it a rest .”
    It griped Eric’s butt that he couldn’t remember what had happened while he was cursed. “Someday I’ll remember,” he said almost sullenly.
    When he remembered everything, he wouldn’t just recall the sex.
    He’d also recall the woman who’d been waiting in my kitchen with a gun. He’d remember that he’d saved my life by taking the bullet meant for me. He’d remember that I’d shot her. He’d remember disposing of the body.
    He’d realize that he had power over me forever.
    He might also recall that he’d humbled himself enough to offer to abandon all his businesses and come to live with me.
    The sex, he’d enjoy remembering. The power, he’d enjoy remembering. But somehow I didn’t think Eric would enjoy remembering that last bit.
    “Yes,” I said quietly, looking down at my hands. “Someday, I expect you will remember.” WDED was playing an old Bob Seger song, “Night Moves.” I noticed Pam was twirling unself-consciously in her own dance, her unnaturally strong and limber body bending and twisting in ways human bodies couldn’t.
    I’d like to see her dance to live vampire music. You oughtto hear a vampire band. You’ll never forget that. They mostly play New Orleans and San Francisco, sometimes Savannah or Miami. But when I’d been dating Bill, he’d taken me to hear a group playing in Fangtasia for one night while making their way south to New Orleans. The lead singer of the vampire band—Renfield’s Masters, they’d called themselves—had wept tears of blood as he sang a ballad.
    “Sam was clever to send you to ask me,” Eric said after a long pause. I had nothing to say to that.