Dead to the World

relief being my big emotion.
    “Of course, dammit! Why’d you set her on me? Let me down!”
    “It’s my brother, Pam,” I said. “Please put him down.”
    Pam set Jason down, and he spun around to look at her. “Listen, woman! You don’t just sneak up on a man like that! You’re lucky I didn’t slap you upside the head!”
    Pam looked amused all over again, and even Jason looked embarrassed. He had the grace to smile. “I guess that might be pretty hard,” he admitted, picking up the bags he’d dropped. Pam helped him. “It’s lucky I got the blood in the big plastic bottles,” he said. “Otherwise, this lovely lady would have to go hungry.”
    He smiled at Pam engagingly. Jason loves women. With Pam, Jason was in way over his head, but didn’t have the sense to know it.
    “Thanks. You need to go now,” I said abruptly. I took the plastic bags from his hands. He and Pam were still in an eye-lock. She was putting the whammy on him. “Pam,” I said sharply. “Pam, this is my brother.”
    “I know,” she said calmly. “Jason, did you have something to tell us?”
    I’d forgotten that Jason had sounded like he was barely containing himself when he’d come to the door.
    “Yes,” he said, hardly able to tear his eyes away from the vampire. But when he glanced at me, he caught sight of Chow, and his eyes widened. He had enough sense to fear Chow, at least. “Sookie?” he said. “Are you all right?” He took a step into the room, and I could see the adrenaline left over from the fright Pam had given begin to pump through his system again.
    “Yes. Everything’s all right. These are just friends of Eric’s who came to check on him.”
    “Well, they better go take those wanted posters down.”
    That got everyone’s full attention. Jason enjoyed that.
    “There’s posters up at Wal-Mart, and Grabbit Kwik, and the Bottle Barn, and just about everywhere else in town,” he said. “They all say, ‘Have you seen this man?’ and they go on to tell about him being kidnapped and his friends being so anxious, and the reward for a confirmed sighting is fifty thousand dollars.”
    I didn’t process this too well. I was mostly thinking, Huh? , when Pam got the point.
    “They’re hoping to sight him and catch him,” she said to Chow. “It will work.”
    “We should take care of it,” he said, nodding toward Jason.
    “Don’t you lay one hand on my brother,” I said. I moved between Jason and Chow, and my hands itched for a stake or hammer or anything at all that would keep this vamp from touching Jason.
    Pam and Chow focused on me with that unswerving attention. I didn’t find it flattering, as Jason had. I found it deadly. Jason opened his mouth to speak—I could feel the anger building in him, and the impulse to confront—but my hand clamped down on his wrist, and he grunted, and I said, “Don’t say a word.” For a miracle, he didn’t. He seemed to sense that events were moving forward too rapidly and in a grave direction.
    “You’ll have to kill me, too,” I said.
    Chow shrugged. “Big threat.”
    Pam didn’t say anything. If it came to a choice between upholding vamp interests and being my buddy . . . well, I guessed we were just going to have to cancel our sleepover, and here I’d been planning on French-braiding her hair.
    “What is this about?” Eric asked. His voice was considerably stronger. “Explain . . . Pam.”
    A minute went by while things hung in the balance. Then Pam turned to Eric, and she may have been slightly relieved that she didn’t have to kill me right at the moment. “Sookie and this man, her brother, have seen you,” she explained. “They’re human. They need the money. They will turn you in to the witches.”
    “What witches?” Jason and I said simultaneously.
    “Thank you, Eric, for getting us into this shit,” Jason muttered unfairly. “And could you let go of my wrist, Sook? You’re stronger than you look.”
    I was stronger than I should be because I’d had vampire blood—most recently, Eric’s. The effects would last around three more weeks, maybe longer. I knew this from past experience.
    Unfortunately, I’d needed that extra strength at a low point in my life. The very vampire who was now draped in my former boyfriend’s bathrobe had donated that blood when I was grievously wounded but had to keep going.
    “Jason,” I said in a level voice—as though the vampires couldn’t hear me—“please watch yourself.” That