Dead as a Doornail

the sniper sees them first?”
    “These are professionally trained men, Sookie. I think they know how to handle this.” Arlene looked, and sounded, quite huffy. All of a sudden, she was Ms. Law Enforcement.
    “Chill,” I said. “I’m just concerned.” Besides, unless the lawmen were Weres, they weren’t in danger. Of course, the big flaw in that theory was that I had been shot. And I was no Were, no shifter. I still hadn’t figured out how to work that into my scenario.
    “Where’s the mirror?” Arlene asked, and I looked around.
    “I guess the only big one’s in the bathroom,” I said, and it felt strange to have to think about the location of an item in my own place. While Arlene fussed with her hair, I put my food on a plate, hoping I’d get to eat while it was still warm. I caught myself standing like a fool with the empty food bag in my hand, wondering where the garbage can was. Of course there wasn’t a garbage can until I went out to buy one. I’d never lived anywhere but my Gran’s house for the past nineteen years. I’d never had to start housekeeping from the ground up.
    “Sam’s still not driving, so he can’t come to see you, buthe’s thinking about you,” Arlene called. “You gonna be able to work tomorrow night?”
    “I’m planning on it.”
    “Good. I’m scheduled to be off, Charlsie’s granddaughter’s in the hospital with pneumonia, so she’s gone, and Holly doesn’t always show up when she’s scheduled. Danielle’s going to be out of town. That new girl, Jada—she’s better than Danielle, anyway.”
    “You think?”
    “Yeah.” Arlene snorted. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Danielle just doesn’t seem to care anymore. People can be wanting drinks and calling to her, and it doesn’t make a smidge of difference to her. She’ll just stand there talking to her boyfriend while people holler at her.”
    It was true that Danielle had been less than scrupulous about her work habits since she’d started steady-dating a guy from Arcadia. “You think she’s gonna quit?” I asked, and that opened up another conversational pit we mined for about five minutes, though Arlene had said she was in a hurry. She’d ordered me to eat while the food was good, so I chewed and swallowed while she talked. We didn’t say anything startlingly new or original, but we had a good time. I could tell that Arlene (for once) was just enjoying sitting with me, being idle.
    One of the many downsides to telepathy is the fact that you can tell the difference between when someone’s really listening to you, and when you’re talking to just a face instead of a mind.
    Andy Bellefleur arrived as Arlene was getting into her car. I was glad I’d stuffed the bag from Wendy’s in a cabinet just to get it out of the way.
    “You’re right next to Halleigh,” Andy said—an obvious opening gambit.
    “Thanks for leaving my keys with her and getting my car over here,” I said. Andy had his moments.
    “She says the guy that brought you home from the hospital was really, ah, interesting.” Andy was obviously fishing. I smiled at Andy. Whatever Halleigh had said had made him curious and maybe a little jealous.
    “You could say that,” I agreed.
    He waited to see if I’d expound. When I didn’t, he became all business.
    “The reason I’m here, I wanted to find out if you remembered any more about yesterday.”
    “Andy, I didn’t know anything then, much less now.”
    “But you ducked.”
    “Oh, Andy,” I said, exasperated, since he knew good and well about my condition, “you don’t have to ask why I ducked.”
    He turned red, slowly and unbecomingly. Andy was a fireplug of a man and an intelligent police detective, but he had such ambiguity toward things he knew to be true, even if those things weren’t completely conventional items of common knowledge.
    “We’re here all by ourselves,” I pointed out. “And the walls are thick enough that I don’t hear Halleigh moving around.”
    “Is there more?” he asked suddenly, his eyes alight with curiosity. “Sookie, is there more?”
    I knew exactly what he meant. He would never spell it out, but he wanted to know if there was even more in this world than humans, and vampires, and telepaths. “So much more,” I said, keeping my voice quiet and even. “Another world.”
    Andy’s eyes met mine. His suspicions had been confirmed, and he was intrigued. He was right on the edge of asking meabout the people who’d