Dead Ever After

many who looked like they were at most eighteen.
    I don’t know what Diantha thought about Merlotte’s clientele, but Merlotte’s clientele was wild about her. She was different, she was alert and bright-eyed, and she talked so fast that everyone thought she was speaking a foreign language. I discovered that since I could evidently understand that language, I had to translate for her. So off and on during the day, I was called on to tell Jane Bodehouse or Antoine the cook or Andy Bellefleur what my “little second cousin” was saying. I don’t know where they got the idea that she was my second cousin, but after the first thirty minutes it became an established fact. I don’t know where they thought she’d come from, since everyone in the bar knew my entire family history, but I guess since I’d introduced the fairy Dermot (a dead ringer for Jason) as my cousin from Florida, and I’d said Claude was from the wrong side of the blanket, my townspeople figured the Stackhouses were simply unpredictable.
    We were real busy that day, though since I was teamed with An Norr, I didn’t have to run as fast as I would’ve with some other waitresses. An was such a worker ant. And with Diantha and An both in the bar, not a single guy thought about my boobs, which were old news to the regulars anyway. I smiled down at my chest. “Girls, you’re outdated,” I said. Sam gave me a strange look, but he didn’t come over to ask me why I was talking to my breasts.
    I stayed away from him, too. I was tired of trying to break through his defenses. I felt like I had enough trouble without trying to coax him out of his funky cave.
    I was surprised when he spoke to me as I was waiting for an order for Andy and Terry Bellefleur. (Yes, it was awkward to see Andy, since he’d put me in handcuffs. We were both trying to ignore that.)
    “Since when do you have a demon for a cousin?” he asked.
    “You haven’t met Diantha before? I couldn’t remember.”
    “I can’t say that I have. And I definitely think I’d recall it.”
    “She and her uncle are at my house. They’re part of Team Sookie,” I said proudly. “They’re helping clear my name. So I don’t have to go to trial.”
    I didn’t expect my words to have such an effect on Sam. He looked almost simultaneously pleased and angry. “I wish I could be there,” he said.
    “Nothing’s stopping you,” I said. “Remember, you said you’d come to dinner.” I’d passed beyond confusion at Sam’s weirdness. I was somewhere in the “What the hell?” zone.
    SOOKIE’S HOUSE
    There was a sort of muted thump at the back door, as if someone were perhaps carrying in bags of groceries and therefore tried to open the door with a finger or foot.
    Bob, just back from town with Amelia and Barry, opened the back door and stepped out on the screened-in porch to investigate. He wasn’t really thinking about who might have arrived. Truth be told, he was worried about Amelia’s pregnancy on many different levels. He was smart enough to know they couldn’t take care of a baby on the meager money they brought in now, and he was also smart enough to know that accepting money from Copley Carmichael (besides the indirect revenue Amelia got from renting out the apartment on the top floor of the house her dad had given her) would be a grave error.
    So Bob was preoccupied, which was why he didn’t react instantly when the man beyond the screen door pulled it open and lunged in. Bob thought, Tyrese , and then he remembered Tyrese worked for a man who’d sold his soul. Bob shoved Tyrese, hoping desperately to knock him down the back steps and out into the yard so Bob could retreat into the kitchen and lock the door.
    But Tyrese was a man of action, and he was full of the fire of despair. He was quicker. He pushed the smaller man back into the house. The door shut behind them.
    Amelia was coming out of the hall bathroom, impelled by a sense that something was wrong. When the two men staggered into the kitchen, she screamed. Barry, in the living room, dropped his e-reader and dashed for the kitchen. Bob landed on the floor, Amelia gathered her power, and Barry stopped dead behind her in the hall.
    But a Glock trumped Amelia’s attempts at a spell, since it was pointed at her chest and her man was on the floor and groaning. Barry was intent on Tyrese’s thoughts, which were full of despair, with a curious deadness to them. Though Tyrese wasn’t sending out any interesting or