Dead to the World

Farm. Bill wouldn’t want you hurt in defense of plants and bricks.”
    “I don’t plan on doing anything that dangerous,” I said, and truly, I didn’t plan it. “But I do think I’ll run home. Just in case. When I see their car lights leaving Bill’s house, I’ll go over and check it out.”
    “You need me to come with you?”
    “Nah, I’m just going to do damage assessment, that’s all. Holly’ll be enough help here?” She’d popped out of the kitchen the minute the Stonebrooks had left.
    “Sure.”
    “Okay, I’m gone. Thanks so much.” My conscience didn’t twinge as much when I noticed that the place wasn’t nearly as busy as it’d been an hour ago. You got nights like that, when people just cleared out all of a sudden.
    I had an itchy feeling between my shoulder blades, and maybe all our patrons had, too. It was that feeling that something was prowling that shouldn’t be: that Halloween feeling, I call it, when you kind of picture something bad is easing around the corner of your house, to peer into your windows.
    By the time I grabbed my purse, unlocked my car, and drove back to my house, I was almost twitching from uneasiness. Everything was going to hell in a handbasket, seemed to me. Jason was missing, the witch was here instead of Shreveport, and now she was within a half mile of Eric.
    As I turned from the parish road onto my long, meandering driveway and braked for the deer crossing it from the woods on the south side to the woods on the north—moving away from Bill’s house, I noticed—I had worked myself into a state. Pulling around to the back door, I leaped from the car and bounded up the back steps.
    I was caught in midbound by a pair of arms like steel bands. Lifted and whirled, I was wrapped around Eric’s waist before I knew it.
    “Eric,” I said, “you shouldn’t be out—”
    My words were cut off by his mouth over mine.
    For a minute, going along with this program seemed like a viable alternative. I’d just forget all the badness and screw his brains out on my back porch, cold as it was. But sanity seeped back in past my overloaded emotional state, and I pulled a little away. He was wearing the jeans and Louisiana Tech Bulldogs sweatshirt Jason had bought for him at Wal-Mart. Eric’s big hands supported my bottom, and my legs circled him as if they were used to it.
    “Listen, Eric,” I said, when his mouth moved down to my neck.
    “Ssshh,” he whispered.
    “No, you have to let me speak. We have to hide.”
    That got his attention. “From whom?” he said into my ear, and I shivered. The shiver was unrelated to the temperature.
    “The bad witch, the one that’s after you,” I scrambled to explain. “She came into the bar with her brother and they put up that poster.”
    “So?” His voice was careless.
    “They asked what other vampires lived locally, and of course we had to say Bill did. So they asked for directions to Bill’s house, and I guess they’re over there looking for you.”
    “And?”
    “That’s right across the cemetery from here! What if they come over here?”
    “You advise me to hide? To get back in that black hole below your house?” He sounded uncertain, but it was clear to me his pride was piqued.
    “Oh, yes. Just for a little while! You’re my responsibility; I have to keep you safe.” But I had a sinking feeling I’d expressed my fears in the wrong way. This tentative stranger, however uninterested he seemed in vampire concerns, however little he seemed to remember of his power and possessions, still had the vein of pride and curiosity Eric had always shown at the oddest moments. I’d tapped right into it. I wondered if maybe I could talk him into at least getting into my house, rather than standing out on the porch, exposed.
    But it was too late. You just never could tell Eric anything.

Chapter  8
    “ C OME ON, LOVER, LET’S HAVE A LOOK,” ERIC SAID, giving me a quick kiss. He jumped off the back porch with me still attached to him—like a large barnacle—and he landed silently, which seemed amazing. I was the noisy one, with my breathing and little sounds of surprise. With a dexterity that argued long practice, Eric slung me around so that I was riding his back. I hadn’t done this since I was a child and my father had carried me piggyback, so I was considerably startled.
    Oh, I was doing one great job of hiding Eric. Here we were, bounding through the cemetery, going toward the Wicked Witch of the West,