Dead Reckoning

naked many times before. He was looking me up and down, a sort of puzzled expression on his face. “Sookie, are you wearing my Aunt Edwina’s Spanish shawl?” he asked.
    “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said. “Really, Bill. It was there, and I was cold and damp and feeling like I wanted to be covered. I do apologize.” I thought of unwrapping it and handing it over, but I reconsidered in the same moment.
    “Looks better on you than it does on the table,” he said. “Besides, it has holes. Are you ready to go over to your house to find out what’s happened to your great-uncle? And where are your clothes? Surely . . . Did those men take them off? Have they . . . Are you harmed?”
    “No, no,” I said hastily. “I told you I had to dump my clothes so they wouldn’t see the drips. They’re out front behind the bushes. I couldn’t leave them in sight, of course.”
    “Right,” Bill said. He looked very thoughtful. “If I didn’t know you better, I would think—and pardon me if I offend—that you’d concocted this whole scenario to excuse yourself for wanting to bed me again.”
    “Oh. You mean, you might almost imagine that I made up this story so I could appear naked and in need of help, the damsel in distress, needing big strong equally naked Vampire Bill to rescue me from the evil kidnappers?”
    He nodded, looking a little embarrassed.
    “I wish I had enough free time to sit around and think of things like that.” I admired the mind that could conceive of such a circuitous way to get what it wanted. “I think just knocking on your door and looking lonesome would probably get me where I wanted to be, if that was my goal. Or I could just say, ‘How ’bout it, big boy?’ I don’t think I need to be naked and in danger to get you lusty. Right?”
    “You’re absolutely right,” he said, and he was smiling a little. “And any time you’d like to try one of those other ploys, I’d be glad to play my part. Shall I apologize again?”
    I smiled back. “No need. I don’t suppose you have rain slickers?”
    Of course he didn’t, but he did have an umbrella. In short order he’d fetched my clothes from behind the bushes. While I wrung them out and put them in his dryer, he ran up the stairs to his bedroom, which he’d never slept in, to pull on jeans and a tank top—serious slumming, for Bill.
    My clothes were going to take too long to dry, so clad in Aunt Edwina’s Spanish shawl and sheltered by Bill’s blue umbrella, I climbed into his car. He drove out to Hummingbird Road and over to my house. Putting the car in park, Bill hopped out to remove the tree trunk from the driveway as easily as if it had been a toothpick. We resumed our way to the house, pausing by my poor car, the driver’s door still open to the rain. The interior was soaked, but my would-be abductors hadn’t done anything to it. The key was still in the ignition, my purse still on the front seat along with the remaining groceries.
    Bill eyed the broken plastic of the milk jug, and I wondered which one I’d hit, Hod or Kelvin.
    We both pulled up to the back door, but while I was still gathering my grocery bag and my purse, Bill was out and into the house. I had a second’s worth of worry about how I was going to dry out my car before I made myself focus on the crisis at hand. I thought about what had happened to the fairy woman Cait, and concern about car upholstery left my head with gratifying speed.
    I stepped into my house clumsily. I was having trouble managing my wrapping, the umbrella, my purse, the bag containing the bottled blood, and my bare feet. I could hear Bill moving through the house, and I knew when he found something because he called, “Sookie!” in an urgent voice.
    Dermot was unconscious on the attic floor by the sander he’d rented, which was on its side and switched off. He had fallen forward, so I figured he’d had his back to the door with the sander running when they’d come in the house. When he’d realized he wasn’t alone and switched off the sander, it had been too late. His hair was clotted with blood, and the wound looked horrible. They’d been carrying at least one weapon, then.
    Bill was hunched stiffly over the still figure. Without turning to me he said, “I can’t give him my blood,” as if I’d demanded it.
    “I know,” I said, surprised. “He’s fae.” I circled around to kneel on Dermot’s other side. I was in a position to see Bill’s face.
    “Back away,” I