Dead Ever After

couldn’t have been more lit up. But then his whole face shut down, and he turned his back to me. He began polishing a glass furiously. I was surprised it didn’t shatter in his fingers.
    To say I was hurt and bewildered would be understating by about a ton. I didn’t think Sam was exactly angry with me for being arrested, but he was angry about something. Though I got hugs from all the bar staff and at least six customers, Sam avoided me like I was Typhoid Mary.
    “Jail isn’t catching,” I said tartly, the third time I had to pass him to pick up plates from the serving hatch. He had turned away to examine the list of emergency phone numbers as if there were some new information on it that had to be memorized in the next five minutes.
    “I . . . I know that,” he said, biting off whatever he’d been about to say. “Good you’re back.” An Norr came up to get a pitcher of beer, and that cut our conversation off at the knees . . . if you could call our exchange a conversation. I went about my business, but I was fuming. Not for the first time, I wanted to know what Sam was thinking, but since he was a shapeshifter, I could only feel that his thoughts were dark and frustrated.
    That made two of us.
    On the plus side, if any bar patrons were scared of being served by a woman who’d been arrested for murder, they didn’t act like it. Of course, they were used to Kennedy, who not only had been arrested for killing her abusive ex-boyfriend but had actually done both the killing and the time to pay for it.
    Sam was practically running a work-release program.
    Somehow, thinking about Kennedy made me feel better, especially since she’d been one of the kind people who’d come to court the previous morning. Speaking of Kennedy (if only to myself), a couple of hours later she came in with her honey, Danny Prideaux, in tow. As always, Kennedy looked as if she’d just arrived at a hotel to check in for a pageant weekend: groomed from head to toe, wearing a turquoise and brown tank top and brown shorts. Her turquoise sandals boosted her up another two inches. How did she do it? I marveled at her.
    After pausing for a moment so her entrance would register (something she did quite by habit), Kennedy crossed the floor to wrap her arms around me in a ferocious hug, which was a first. Apparently, we were now sisters under the skin. Though the comparison made me uncomfortable, I could hardly be holier-than-thou—so I reciprocated the hug and thanked her for her concern.
    Kennedy and Danny were there for a drink before Danny went to his second job as daytime guy for Bill Compton. Danny met with Bill every other night, he told me, to get his orders and report on the results of his previous days. Today, he’d be over at the house to let in some workmen.
    “So Bill keeps you busy?” I said, trying to think what Bill would need Danny to do.
    “Oh, it’s not bad,” Danny said, his eyes fixed on Kennedy. “I wasn’t working at the builders’ supply today, so I’m meeting the security guys at the house to show them where Bill wants the sensors put. Then I’ll wait while they do the installing.”
    It struck me as funny that Bill was getting a security system. Surely humans needed intruder alerts more than vampires did? Actually, I might look into that when Claudine’s bank was cleared to resume business. Getting a security system wasn’t a bad idea.
    Kennedy started talking about the bikini wax she’d gotten in Shreveport, and Danny’s new employer was banished in favor of this more interesting topic, but the next idle moment I had I caught myself wondering if Bill’s security system meant that he’d had some trigger event to suggest he really needed one. Since he was my nearest neighbor, I ought to know if someone had tried to break into his house. It would be all too easy to get so wrapped up in my own multilevel troubles that I forgot other folks had troubles, too.
    Also, I was curious as hell. And it was a relief to think about something besides being an accused murderer and breaking up with my boyfriend.
    Kennedy said, “What’s your vampire got to say about this murder charge, Sookie?”
    Her timing couldn’t have been more perfect.
    “Apparently, he put up my bail, but I think that was just for old times’ sake,” I said. I looked at her directly, so she’d get the message.
    “Sorry,” she said, after a moment’s absorption of my message and the depth of my pit o’ breakup misery. “Oh,