Dead to the World

kitchen, as he’d dropped in a time or two when my Gran was alive, and he’d visited on other occasions.
    As I hung up our coats, I said, “That was a disaster.”
    Sam didn’t disagree.
    “Not only did we not find Jason, which I truly never expected we would, but the guys from Hotshot almost got outed, and Crystal got hurt. I don’t know why they thought they should be there anyway, frankly.” I know it wasn’t nice of me to say that, but I was with Sam, who’d seen enough of my bad side to be under no illusions.
    “I talked to them before you got there. Calvin wanted to show he was willing to court you, in a Hotshot kind of way,” Sam said, his voice quiet and even. “Felton is their best tracker, so he made Felton come, and Crystal just wanted to find Jason.”
    Instantly I felt ashamed of myself. “I’m sorry,” I said, holding my head in my hands and dropping into a chair. “I’m sorry.”
    Sam knelt in front of me and put his hands on my knees. “You’re entitled to be cranky,” he said.
    I bent over him and kissed the top of his head. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” I said, without any thought at all.
    He looked up at me, and there was a long, odd moment, when the light in the room seemed to dance and shiver. “You’d call Arlene,” he said with a smile. “She’d come over with the kids, and she’d try to spike your coffee, and she’d tell you about Tack’s angled dick, and she’d get you to laughing, and you’d feel better.”
    I blessed him for letting the moment pass. “You know, that kind of makes me curious, that bit about Tack, but it probably falls into the category of ‘too much information,’ ” I said.
    “I thought so, too, but that didn’t prevent me from hearing it when she was telling Charlsie Tooten.”
    I poured us each a cup of coffee and put the half-empty sugar bowl within Sam’s reach, along with a spoon. I glanced over at the kitchen counter to see how full the clear sugar canister was, and I noticed that the message light on the answering machine was blinking. I only had to get up and take a step to press the button. The message had been recorded at 5:01 A.M. Oh. I’d turned the phone ringer off when I’d gone to bed exhausted. Almost invariably my messages were real mundane—Arlene asking me if I’d heard a piece of gossip, Tara passing the time of day during a slow hour at the store—but this one was a real doozy.
    Pam’s clear voice said, “Tonight we attack the witch and her coven. The Weres have persuaded the local Wiccans to join us. We need you to bring Eric. He can fight, even if he doesn’t know who he is. He will be useless to us if we can’t break the spell, anyway.” That Pam, ever practical. She was willing to use Eric for cannon fodder, since we might not be able to restore him to full Eric leadership mode. After a little pause, she continued, “The Weres of Shreveport are allying with vampires in battle. You can watch history being made, my telepathic friend.”
    The sound of the phone being put back in the cradle. The click that heralded the next message, which came in two minutes after the first.
    “Thinking of that,” Pam said, as if she’d never hung up, “there is the idea that your unusual ability can help us in our fight, and we want to explore that. Isn’t that the right buzzword now? Explore? So get here as close to first dark as possible.” She hung up again.
    Click. “ ‘Here’ is 714 Parchman Avenue,” Pam said. Hung up.
    “How can I do that, with Jason still missing?” I asked, when it became clear Pam hadn’t called again.
    “You’re going to sleep now,” Sam said. “Come on.” He pulled me to my feet, led me to my room. “You’re going to take off your boots and jeans, crawl back in the bed, and take a long nap. When you get up, you’ll feel better. You leave Pam’s number so I can reach you. Tell the cops to call the bar if they learn anything, and I’ll phone you if I hear from Bud Dearborn.”
    “So you think I should do this?” I was bewildered.
    “No, I’d give anything if you wouldn’t. But I think you have to. It’s not my fight; I wasn’t invited.” Sam gave me a kiss on the forehead and left to go back to Merlotte’s.
    His attitude was kind of interesting, after all the vampire insistence (both Bill’s and Eric’s) that I was a possession to be guarded. I felt pretty empowered and gung-ho for about thirty seconds, until I remembered my New Year’s