Dead Until Dark

bedroom. My single bed was neatly made up. “You just lie down on top of the bed, and I’ll set the alarm.” I did, while he watched. “Now, get a little sleep. I have one errand to run, and I’ll be right back.” Andy didn’t offer any more resistance, but sat heavily on the bed even as I shut the door.
    The dog had been padding after me while I got Andy situated, and now I said to him, in a quite different tone, “You go get dressed right now !”
    Andy stuck his head out the bedroom door. “Sookie, who are you talking to?”
    “The dog,” I answered instantly. “He always gets his collar, and I put it on every day.”
    “Why do you ever take it off?”
    “It jingles at night, keeps me up. You go to bed, now.”
    “All right.” Looking satisfied at my explanation, Andy shut the door again.
    I retrieved Jason’s clothes from the closet, put them on the couch in front of the dog, and sat with my back turned. But I realized I could see in the mirror over the mantel.
    The air grew hazy around the collie, seemed to hum and vibrate with energy, and then the form began to change within that electric concentration. When the haze cleared, there was Sam kneeling on the floor, buck-naked. Wow, what a bottom. I had to make myself close my eyes, tell myself repeatedly that I had not been unfaithful to Bill. Bill’s butt, I told myself staunchly, was every bit as neat.
    “I’m ready,” Sam’s voice said, so close behind me that I jumped. I stood up quickly and turned to face him, and found his face about six inches from mine.
    “Sookie,” he said hopefully, his hand landing on my shoulder, rubbing and caressing it.
    I was angry because half of me wanted to respond.
    “Listen here, buddy, you could have told me about yourself anytime in the past few years. We’ve known each other what, four years? Or even more! And yet, Sam, despite the fact that I see you almost daily, you wait until Bill is interested in me, before you even . . .” and unable to think how to finish, I threw my hands up in the air.
    Sam drew back, which was a good thing.
    “I didn’t see what was in front of me until I thought it might be taken away,” he said, his voice quiet.
    I had nothing to say to that. “Time to go home,” I told him. “And we better get you there without anyone seeing you. I mean it.”
    This was chancy enough without some mischievous person like Rene seeing Sam in my car in the early morning and drawing wrong conclusions. And passing them on to Bill.
    So off we went, Sam hunched down in the backseat. I pulled cautiously behind Merlotte’s. There was a truck there; black, with pink and aqua flames down the sides. Jason’s.
    “Uh-oh,” I said.
    “What?” Sam’s voice was somewhat muffled by his position.
    “Let me go look,” I said, beginning to be anxious. Why would Jason park over here in the employees’ parking area? And it seemed to me there was a shape in the truck.
    I opened my door. I waited for the sound to alert the figure in the truck. I watched for evidence of movement. When nothing happened, I began to walk across the gravel, as frightened as I’d ever been in the light of day.
    When I got closer to the window, I could see that the figure inside was Jason. He was slumped behind the wheel. I could see that his shirt was stained, that his chin was resting on his chest, that his hands were limp on the seat on either side of him, that the mark on his handsome face was a long red scratch. I could see a videotape resting on the truck dashboard, unlabelled.
    “Sam,” I said, hating the fear in my voice. “Please come here.”
    Quicker than I could believe, Sam was beside me, then reaching past me to unlatch the truck door. Since the truck had apparently been sitting there for several hours—there was dew on its hood—with the windows closed, in the early summer, the smell that rolled out was pretty strong and compounded of at least three elements: blood, sex, and liquor.
    “Call the ambulance!” I said urgently as Sam reached in to feel for Jason’s pulse. Sam looked at me doubtfully. “Are you sure you want to do that?” he asked.
    “Of course! He’s unconscious!”
    “Wait, Sookie. Think about this.”
    And I might have reconsidered in just a minute, but at that moment Arlene pulled up in her beat-up blue Ford, and Sam sighed and went into his trailer to phone.
    I was so naive. That’s what comes of being a law-abiding citizen for nearly every day of my life.
    I rode with