Dead to the World

night the night before.
    “Hey, Sookie,” she said, identifying me after a moment. “What’re you doing here? I was at Merlotte’s last night, but I didn’t see you there. You still working there?”
    “I am. It was my night off.” Now that I was actually looking at Carla, I wasn’t sure how to explain to her what I needed. I decided to be blunt. “Listen, Jason’s not at work this morning, and I kind of wondered if he might be here with you.”
    “Honey, I got nothing against you, but Jason’s the last man on earth I’d sleep with,” Carla said flatly. I stared at her, hearing that she was telling me truth. “I ain’t gonna stick my hand in the fire twice, having gotten burnt the first time. I did look around the bar a little, thinking I might see him, but if I had, I’d have turned the other way.”
    I nodded. That seemed all there was to say on the subject. We exchanged a few more polite sentences, and I chatted with Dovie, who had a toddler balanced on her hip, but then it was time for me to leave. My most promising lead had just evaporated in the length of two sentences.
    Trying to suppress my desperation, I drove to a busy corner filling station and parked, to check my Shreveport map. It didn’t take me long to figure out how to get from Dovie’s suburb to the vampire bar.
    Fangtasia was in a shopping center close to Toys “R” Us. It opened at six P.M. year-round, but of course the vampires didn’t show up until full dark, which depended on the season. The front of Fangtasia was painted flat gray, and the neon writing was all in red. “Shreveport’s Premier Vampire Bar,” read the newly added, smaller writing under the exotic script of the bar’s name. I winced and looked away.
    Two summers before, a small group of vamps from Oklahoma had tried to set up a rival bar in adjacent Bossier City. After one particularly hot, short August night, they’d never been seen again, and the building they’d been renovating had burned to the ground.
    Tourists thought stories like this were actually amusing and colorful. It added to the thrill of ordering overpriced drinks (from human waitresses dressed in trailing black “vampire” outfits) while staring at real, honest-to-God, undead bloodsuckers. Eric made the Area Five vampires show up for this unappealing duty by giving them a set number of hours each week to present themselves at Fangtasia. Most of his underlings weren’t enthusiastic about exhibiting themselves, but it did give them a chance to hook up with fang-bangers who actually yearned for the chance to be bitten. Such encounters didn’t take place on the premises: Eric had rules about that. And so did the police department. The only legal biting that could take place between humans and vampires was between consenting adults, in private.
    Automatically, I pulled around to the rear of the shopping center. Bill and I had almost always used the employee entrance. Back here, the door was just a gray door in a gray wall, with the name of the bar put on in stick-on letters from Wal-Mart. Right below that, a large, black, stenciled notice proclaimed STAFF ONLY. I lifted my hand to knock, and then I realized I could see that the inner dead bolt had not been employed.
    The door was unlocked.
    This was really, really bad.
    Though it was broad daylight, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Abruptly, I wished I had Bill at my back. I wasn’t missing his tender love, either. It’s probably a bad indicator of your lifestyle when you miss your ex-boyfriend because he’s absolutely lethal.
    Though the public face of the shopping center was fairly busy, the service side was deserted. The silence was crawling with possibilities, and none of them was pleasant. I leaned my forehead against the cold gray door. I decided to get back in my old car and get the hell out of there, which would have been amazingly smart.
    And I would have gone, if I hadn’t heard the moaning.
    Even then, if I’d been able to spot a pay phone, I would’ve just called 911 and stayed outside until someone official showed up. But there wasn’t one in sight, and I couldn’t stand the possibility that someone needed my help real bad, and I’d withheld it because I was chicken.
    There was a heavy garbage can right by the back door, and after I’d yanked the door open—standing aside for a second to avoid anything that might dart out—I maneuvered the can to hold the door ajar. I had goose bumps all over my arms as I