Dead to the World

inside me at the idea. And I was glad I had, the next second, when I realized that the trace evidence they’d get off the car would be wolf fur. Good thinking, Sook.
    “No, she didn’t,” I said, trying to look as though I’d been groping through my memory. “She didn’t really talk much after that, just moaning. It was awful.” And the upholstery on my backseat was probably ruined, too. I immediately wished I hadn’t thought of something so selfish.
    “And you didn’t see any other cars, trucks, any other vehicles on your way to your house from the bar, or even when you were coming back to town?”
    That was a slightly different question. “Not on my road,” I said hesitantly. “I probably saw a few cars when I got closer to Bon Temps and went through town. And of course I saw more between Bon Temps and Clarice. But I don’t recall any in particular.”
    “Can you take us to the spot where you picked her up? The exact place?”
    “I doubt it. There wasn’t anything to mark it besides her,” I said. My coherence level was falling by the minute. “No big tree, or road, or mile marker. Maybe tomorrow? In the daytime?”
    Stans patted me on the shoulder. “I know you’re shook up, miss,” he said consolingly. “You done the best you could for this girl. Now we gotta leave it up to the doctors and the Lord.”
    I nodded emphatically, because I certainly agreed. The older Curlew still looked at me a little skeptically, but he thanked me as a matter of form, and they strode out of the hospital into the blackness. I stepped back a little, though I remained looking out into the parking lot. In a second or two, they reached my car and shone their big flashlights through the windows, checking out the interior. I keep the inside of my car spanky-clean, so they wouldn’t see a thing but bloodstains in the backseat. I noticed that they checked out the front grille, too, and I didn’t blame them one little bit.
    They examined my car over and over, and finally they stood under one of the big lights, making notes on clipboards.
    Not too long after that, the doctor came out to find me. She pulled her mask down and rubbed the back of her neck with a long, thin hand. “Miss Cooper is doing better. She’s stable,” she said.
    I nodded, and then I closed my eyes for a moment with sheer relief. “Thank you,” I croaked.
    “We’re going to airlift her to Schumpert in Shreveport. The helicopter’ll be here any second.”
    I blinked, trying to decide if that were a good thing or a bad thing. No matter what my opinion was, the Were had to go to the best and closest hospital. When she became able to talk, she’d have to tell them something. How could I ensure that her story jibed with mine?
    “Is she conscious?” I asked.
    “Just barely,” the doctor said, almost angrily, as if such injuries were an insult to her personally. “You can speak to her briefly, but I can’t guarantee she’ll remember, or understand. I have to go talk to the cops.” The two officers were striding back into the hospital, I saw from my place at the window.
    “Thank you,” I said, and followed her gesture to her left. I pushed open the door into the grim glaring room where they’d been working on the girl.
    It was a mess. There were a couple of nurses in there even now, chatting about this or that and packing away some of the unused packages of bandages and tubes. A man with a bucket and mop stood waiting in a corner. He would clean the room when the Were—the girl—had been wheeled out to the helicopter. I went to the side of the narrow bed and took her hand.
    I bent down close.
    “Maria-Star, you know my voice?” I asked quietly. Her face was swollen from its impact with the ground, and it was covered with scratches and scrapes. These were the smallest of her injuries, but they looked very painful to me.
    “Yes,” she breathed.
    “I’m the one that found you by the side of the road ,” I said. “On the way to my house, south of Bon Temps. You were lying by the parish road.”
    “Understand,” she murmured.
    “I guess,” I continued carefully, “that someone made you get out of his car, and that someone then hit you with the car. But you know how it is after a trauma, sometimes people don’t remember anything .” One of the nurses turned to me, her face curious. She’d caught the last part of my sentence. “So don’t worry if you don’t remember.”
    “I’ll try,” she said ambiguously, still in