Dead in the Family

afraid that Ocella would keep him?
    I pitied Alexei from the bottom of my heart, and I feared him just as much.
    He was as helpless as Eric.
    Ocella had been looking at Alexei with an attention that was almost frightening. “He’s already much better,” Ocella murmured. “Eric, your presence is doing him so much good.”
    I’d kind of figured things couldn’t get more awkward, but a peremptory knock at the back door followed by a “Sookie, you here?” told me that actually the night could get worse.
    My brother, Jason, came in without waiting for me to answer. “Sookie, I saw your light on when I pulled up, so I figured you were awake,” he said, and then he stopped abruptly when he realized how much company I had. And what they were.
    “Sorry to interrupt, Sook,” he said slowly. “Eric, how you doing?”
    Eric said, “Jason, this is my . . . This is Appius Livius Ocella, my maker, and his other son Alexei.” Eric said it properly, “AP-pi-us Li-WEE-us Oh-KEL-ah.”
    Jason nodded at both of the newcomers, but he avoided looking directly at the older vampire. Good instinct. “Good evening, O’Kelly. Hey, Alexei. So you’re Eric’s little brother, huh? Are you a Viking like Eric?”
    “No,” said the boy faintly. “I am Russian.” Alexei’s accent was much lighter than the Roman’s. He looked at Jason with interest. I hoped he wasn’t thinking about biting my brother. The thing about Jason, and what made him so attractive to people (particularly women), was that he practically radiated life. He just seemed to have an extra helping of vigor and vitality, and it was returning with a boom now that the misery of his wife’s death was fading. This was his manifestation of the fairy blood in his veins.
    “Well, good to meet you-all,” Jason said. Then he quit paying attention to the visitors. “Sookie, I came to get that little side table from up in the attic. I came by here once before to pick it up, but you were gone and I didn’t have my key with me.” Jason kept a key to my house for emergencies, just as I kept a key to his.
    I’d forgotten his asking me for the table when we’d had dinner together. At this point, he could have asked me for my bedroom set, and I would have agreed just to get him out of danger. I said, “Sure, I don’t need it. Go on up. I don’t think it’s very far inside the door.”
    Jason excused himself, and everyone’s eyes followed him as he bounded up the stairs. Eric was probably just trying to keep his eyes busy while he thought, but Ocella watched my brother with frank appraisal, and Alexei with a kind of yearning.
    “Would you like some TrueBlood?” I asked the vampires, through clenched teeth.
    “I suppose, if you won’t offer yourself or your brother,” the ancient Roman said.
    “I won’t.”
    I turned to go to the kitchen.
    “I feel your anger,” Ocella said.
    “I don’t care,” I said, without turning to face him. I heard Jason coming downstairs, a little more slowly now that he was carrying the table. “Jason, you want to come with me?” I said over my shoulder.
    He was more than glad to leave the room. Though he was civil to Eric because he knew I loved him, Jason was not happy in the company of vamps. He put the table down in a corner of the kitchen.
    “Sook, what’s going on here?”
    “Come into my room for a second,” I said after I’d gotten the bottles out of my refrigerator. I’d feel a lot better if I had more clothes on. Jason trailed after me. I shut the door once we were inside my bedroom.
    “Watch the door. I don’t trust that old one,” I said, and Jason obligingly turned his back and watched the door while I pulled off the robe, getting into my clothes as fast as I’ve ever dressed in my life.
    “Whoa,” Jason said, and I jumped. I turned to see that Alexei had opened the door and would have entered if Jason hadn’t been holding it.
    “I’m sorry,” Alexei said. His voice was a ghost of a voice, a voice that once had been. “I apologize to you, Sookie, and you, Jason.”
    “Jason, you can let him in. What are you sorry for, Alexei?” I asked. “Come on, let’s go to the kitchen and I’ll warm up the TrueBlood.” We trailed into the kitchen. We were a little farther from the living room, and there was a chance Eric and Ocella wouldn’t hear us.
    “My master is not always like this. His age, it turns him.”
    “Turns him into what? A total jerk? A sadist? A child molester?”
    A faint smile