Dead Until Dark

“Do . . . ?”
    “Get—” and I stopped, trying to think of a pleasant way to put it. I’d seen more crudity this evening than I’d seen in my lifetime, and I didn’t want to add to it. “An erection,” I said, avoiding his eyes.
    “You know better now.” He sounded like he was trying not to be amused. “We can have sex, but we can’t make children or have them. Doesn’t it make you feel better, that Diane can’t have a baby?”
    My fuses blew. I opened my eyes and looked at him steadily. “Don’t—you—laugh—at—me.”
    “Oh, Sookie,” he said, and his hand rose to touch my cheek.
    I dodged his hand and struggled to my feet. He didn’t help me, which was a good thing, but he sat on the floor watching me with a still, unreadable face. Bill’s fangs had retracted, but I knew he was still suffering from hunger. Too bad.
    My purse was on the floor by the front door. I wasn’t walking very steadily, but I was walking. I pulled the list of electricians out of a pocket and lay it on a table.
    “I have to go.”
    He was in front of me suddenly. He’d done one of those vampire things again. “Can I kiss you good-bye?” he asked, his hands down at his sides, making it so obvious he wouldn’t touch me until I said green light.
    “No,” I said vehemently. “I can’t stand it after them.”
    “I’ll come see you.”
    “Yes. Maybe.”
    He reached past me to open the door, but I thought he was reaching for me, and I flinched.
    I spun on my heel and almost ran to my car, tears blurring my vision again. I was glad the drive home was so short.

Chapter   3
    T HE PHONE WAS RINGING. I PULLED MY PILLOW OVER MY head. Surely Gran would get it? As the irritating noise persisted, I realized Gran must be gone shopping or outside working in the yard. I began squirming to the bed table, not happy but resigned. With the headache and regrets of someone who has a terrible hangover (though mine was emotional rather than alcohol induced), I stretched out a shaky hand and grabbed the receiver.
    “Yes?” I asked. It didn’t come out quite right. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hello?”
    “Sookie?”
    “Um-hum. Sam?”
    “Yeah. Listen, cher , do me a favor?”
    “What?” I was due to work today anyway, and I didn’t want to hold down Dawn’s shift and mine, too.
    “Go by Dawn’s place, and see what she’s up to, would you? She won’t answer her phone, and she hasn’t come in. The delivery truck just pulled up, and I got to tell these guys where to put stuff.”
    “Now? You want me to go now?” My old bed had never held on to me harder.
    “Could you?” For the first time, he seemed to grasp my unusual mood. I had never refused Sam anything.
    “I guess so,” I said, feeling tired all over again at the very idea. I wasn’t too crazy about Dawn, and she wasn’t too crazy about me. She was convinced I’d read her mind and told Jason something she’d been thinking about him, which had caused him to break up with her. If I took that kind of interest in Jason’s romances, I’d never have time to eat or sleep.
    I showered and pulled on my work clothes, moving sluggishly. All my bounce had gone flat, like soda with the top left off. I ate cereal and brushed my teeth and told Gran where I was going when I tracked her down; she’d been outside planting petunias in a tub by the back door. She didn’t seem to understand exactly what I meant, but smiled and waved anyway. Gran was getting a little more deaf every week, but I realized that was no great wonder since she was seventy-eight. It was marvelous that she was so strong and healthy, and her brain was sound as a bell.
    As I went on my unwelcome errand, I thought about how hard it must have been for Gran to raise two more children after she’d already raised her own. My father, her son, had died when I was seven and Jason ten. When I’d been twenty-three, Gran’s daughter, my Aunt Linda, had died of uterine cancer. Aunt Linda’s girl, Hadley, had vanished into the same subculture that had spawned the Rattrays even before Aunt Linda had passed away, and to this day we didn’t know if Hadley realized her mother was dead. That was a lot of grief to get through, yet Gran had always been strong for us.
    I peered through my windshield at the three small duplexes on one side of Berry Street, a run-down block or two that ran behind the oldest part of downtown Bon Temps. Dawn lived in one of them. I spotted her car, a green compact, in the