Dead Until Dark

apologize for making you worry,” I said after a moment. “I won’t do that again.” I strode away from him, toward the kitchen. He followed behind, or at least I presumed he did. Bill was so quiet you never knew until you looked.
    He leaned against the door frame as I stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, wondering why I’d come in the room, feeling a rising tide of anger. I was getting pissed off all over again. I really wanted to throw something, damage something. This was not the way I’d been brought up, to give way to destructive impulses like that. I contained it, screwing my eyes shut, clenching my fists.
    “I’m gonna dig a hole,” I said, and I marched out the back door. I opened the door to the toolshed, removed the shovel, and stomped to the back of the yard. There was a patch back there where nothing ever grew, I don’t know why. I sunk the shovel in, pushed it with my foot, came up with a hunk of soil. I kept on going. The pile of dirt grew as the hole deepened.
    “I have excellent arm and shoulder muscles,” I said, resting against the shovel and panting.
    Bill was sitting in a lawn chair watching. He didn’t say anything.
    I resumed digging.
    Finally, I had a really nice hole.
    “Were you going to bury anything?” Bill asked, when he could tell I was done.
    “No.” I looked down at the cavity in the ground. “I’m going to plant a tree.”
    “What kind?”
    “A live oak,” I said off the top of my head.
    “Where can you get one?”
    “At the Garden Center. I’ll go sometime this week.”
    “They take a long time to grow.”
    “What difference would that make to you?” I snapped. I put the shovel up in the shed, then leaned against it, suddenly exhausted.
    Bill made as if to pick me up.
    “I am a grown woman ,” I snarled. “I can walk into the house on my own.”
    “Have I done something to you?” Bill asked. There was very little loving in his voice, and I was brought up short. I had indulged myself enough.
    “I apologize,” I said. “Again.”
    “What has made you so angry?”
    I just couldn’t tell him about Arlene.
    “What do you do when you get mad, Bill?”
    “I tear up a tree,” he said. “Sometimes I hurt someone.”
    Digging a hole didn’t seem so bad. It had been sort of constructive. But I was still wired—it was just more of a subdued buzz than a high-frequency whine. I cast around restlessly for something to affect.
    Bill seemed adept at reading the symptoms. “Make love,” he suggested. “Make love with me.”
    “I’m not in the right mood for love.”
    “Let me try to persuade you.”
    It turned out he could.
    At least it wore off the excess energy of anger, but I still had a residue of sadness that sex couldn’t cure. Arlene had hurt my feelings. I stared into space while Bill braided my hair, a pastime that he apparently found soothing.
    Every now and then I felt like I was Bill’s doll.
    “Jason was in the bar tonight,” I said.
    “What did he want?”
    Bill was too clever by far, sometimes, at reading people.
    “He appealed to my mind-reading powers. He wanted me to scan the minds of the men who came into the bar until I found out who the murderer was.”
    “Except for a few dozen flaws, that’s not a bad idea.”
    “You think?”
    “Both your brother and I will be regarded with less suspicion if the murderer is in jail. And you’ll be safe.”
    “That’s true, but I don’t know how to go about it. It would be hard, and painful, and boring, to wade through all that stuff trying to find a little bit of information, a flash of thought.”
    “Not any more painful or hard than being suspected of murder. You’re just accustomed to keeping your gift locked up.”
    “Do you think so?” I began to turn to look at his face, but he held me still so he could finish braiding. I’d never seen keeping out of people’s minds as selfish, but in this case I supposed it was. I would have to invade a lot of privacy. “A detective,” I murmured, trying to see myself in a better light than just nosey.
    “Sookie,” Bill said, and something in his voice made me take notice. “Eric has told me to bring you to Shreveport again.”
    It took me a second to remember who Eric was. “Oh, the big Viking vampire?”
    “The very old vampire,” Bill said precisely.
    “You mean, he ordered you to bring me there?” I didn’t like the sound of this at all. I’d been sitting on the side of the bed, Bill behind me, and now I turned to