Dead Reckoning

thought, Judith was gone— whoosh! —and Bill and I were alone together.
    Suddenly he was right in front of me, and he put his cold arms around me. It didn’t seem like a betrayal of Eric to let Bill simply hold me for a moment.
    “You had sex with her?” I said, trying to sound neutral.
    “She had saved me. She seemed to expect it. I felt it was the right thing to do,” he said.
    As if Judith had sneezed so he’d lent her a handkerchief. I really couldn’t think of what to say. Men! Dead or alive, they could be exactly the same.
    I stepped back, and he dropped his arms instantly.
    “Do you really love me?” I said, out of either insanity or sheer curiosity. “Or have we just been through so much that you think you ought to?”
    He smiled. “Only you would say that. I love you. I think you’re beautiful and kind and good, and yet you stand up for yourself. You have a lot of understanding and compassion, but you’re not a pushover. And to descend a few levels to the carnal, you have a pair of breasts that should win the Miss America Tit Competition, if there were such a thing.”
    “That’s an unusual bunch of compliments.” I had a hard time suppressing my own smile.
    “You’re an unusual woman.”
    “Good night, Bill,” I said. Just then my cell phone rang. I jumped a mile. I’d forgotten it was in my pocket. When I looked at the number, it was a local one I didn’t recognize. No call at this hour of the night was a good one. I held up a finger to ask Bill to wait for a moment, and I answered it with a cautious “Hello?”
    “Sookie,” said Sheriff Dearborn, “I thought you oughta know that Sandra Pelt escaped from the hospital. She snuck out the window while Kenya was talking to Dr. Tonnesen. I don’t want you to be worried. If you need us to send a car out to your house, we will. You got someone with you?”
    I was so shocked I couldn’t reply for a second. Then I said, “Yes, I have someone with me.”
    Bill’s dark eyes were serious now. He stepped closer and put one hand on my shoulder.
    “You want me to send a patrol car? I don’t think that crazy woman will head out to find you. I think she’ll find somewhere to hole up and recover. But it seemed like the right thing, telling you, even though it’s the middle of the night.”
    “Definitely the right thing to do, Sheriff. I don’t think I need more help out here. I’ve got friends here. Good friends.” And I met Bill’s eyes.
    Bud Dearborn said the same things all over again several times, but eventually I got to hang up and think about the implications. I’d thought one line of troubles was closed, but I’d been wrong. While I was explaining to Bill, the weariness that had manifested itself earlier began to sweep over me like a blanket of gray. By the time I’d finished answering his questions, I could barely put two words together.
    “Don’t worry,” Bill said. “Go to bed. I’ll watch tonight. I’ve already fed, and I wasn’t busy. It doesn’t feel like a good night for work, anyway.” Bill had created and maintained a CD called The Vampire Directory , which was a catalog of all “living” vampires. It was in popular demand not only among the undead but also among the living, particularly marketing groups. However, the version sold to the public was limited to vampires who’d given their permission to be included, a much shorter list. There were still vampires who didn’t want to be known as vampires, odd as that seemed to me. It was easy to forget, in today’s vampire-saturated culture, that there were still holdouts, vampires who didn’t want to be known to the public in general, vampires who preferred to sleep in the earth or in abandoned buildings rather than in a house or apartment.
    And why I was thinking of this . . . Well, it was better than thinking about Sandra Pelt.
    “Thanks, Bill,” I said gratefully. “I warn you, she’s vicious to the n th degree.”
    “You’ve seen me fight,” he said.
    “Yep. But you don’t know her. She’s completely underhanded and she won’t give you any warning.”
    “I’m a few jumps ahead of her, then, since I know that about her.”
    Huh? “Okay,” I mumbled, putting one foot in front of the other in more or less a straight line. “Night, Bill.”
    “Night, Sookie,” he said quietly. “Lock the doors.”
    I did, and I went into my room and put on my nightshirt, and then I was in bed and under that gray blanket.

Chapter 8
    Schools are