Dead to the World

worked New Year’s Eve. So I had two whole days off . . . and at least one of them I got to spend alone in a house with a mentally ill vampire. Life just didn’t get any better.
    I had two cups of coffee, put Eric’s jeans in the washer, read a romance for a while, and studied my brand-new Word of the Day calendar, a Christmas gift from Arlene. My first word for the New Year was “exsanguinate.” This was probably not a good omen.
    Jason came by a little after four, flying down my drive in his black pickup with pink and aqua flames on the sides. I’d showered and dressed by then, but my hair was still wet. I’d sprayed it with detangler, and I was brushing through it slowly, sitting in front of the fireplace. I’d turned on the TV to a football game to have something to watch while I brushed, but I kept the sound way down. I was pondering Eric’s predicament while I luxuriated in the feel of the fire’s warmth on my back.
    We hadn’t used the fireplace much in the past couple of years because buying a load of wood was so expensive, but Jason had cut up a lot of trees that had fallen last year after an ice storm. I was well stocked, and I was enjoying the flames.
    My brother stomped up the front steps and knocked perfunctorily before coming in. Like me, he had mostly grown up in this house. We’d come to live with Gran when my parents died, and she’d rented out their house until Jason said he was ready to live on his own, when he’d been twenty. Now Jason was twenty-eight and the boss of a parish road crew. This was a rapid rise for a local boy without a lot of education, and I’d thought it was enough for him until the past month or two, when he’d begun acting restless.
    “Good,” he said, when he saw the fire. He stood squarely in front of it to warm his hands, incidentally blocking the warmth from me. “What time did you get home last night?” he said over his shoulder.
    “I guess I got to bed about three.”
    “What did you think of that girl I was with?”
    “I think you better not date her anymore.”
    That wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. His eyes slid sideways to meet mine. “What did you get off her?” he asked in a subdued voice. My brother knows I am telepathic, but he would never discuss it with me, or anyone else. I’ve seen him get into fights with some man who accused me of being abnormal, but he knows I’m different. Everyone else does, too. They just choose not to believe it, or they believe I couldn’t possibly read their thoughts—just someone else’s. God knows, I try to act and talk like I’m not receiving an unwanted spate of ideas and emotions and regrets and accusations, but sometimes it just seeps through.
    “She’s not your kind,” I said, looking into the fire.
    “She surely ain’t a vamp,” he protested.
    “No, not a vamp.”
    “Well, then.” He glared at me belligerently.
    “Jason, when the vampires came out—when we found out they were real after all those decades of thinking they were just a scary legend—didn’t you ever wonder if there were other tall tales that were real?”
    My brother struggled with that concept for a minute. I knew (because I could “hear” him) that Jason wanted to deny any such idea absolutely and call me a crazy woman—but he just couldn’t. “You know for a fact,” he said. It wasn’t quite a question.
    I made sure he was looking me in the eyes, and I nodded emphatically.
    “Well, shit,” he said, disgusted. “I really liked that girl, and she was a tiger in the sack.”
    “Really?” I asked, absolutely stunned that she had changed in front of him when it wasn’t the full moon. “Are you okay?” The next second, I was chastising myself for my stupidity. Of course she hadn’t.
    He gaped at me for a second, before busting out laughing. “Sookie, you are one weird woman! You looked just like you thought she really could—” And his face froze. I could feel the idea bore a hole through the protective bubble most people inflate around their brain, the bubble that repels sights and ideas that don’t jibe with their expectation of the everyday. Jason sat down heavily in Gran’s recliner. “I wish I didn’t know that,” he said in a small voice.
    “That may not be specifically what happens to her—the tiger thing—but believe me, something happens.”
    It took a minute for his face to settle back into more familiar lines, but it did. Typical Jason behavior: There was nothing he could do