Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

the possibilities in his future with her. Would I want to stay with someone on those terms?
    A lot of bad things could happen today, but I was going to keep my fingers crossed that they wouldn’t. I just wanted one happy day.
    As I was getting up from the dressing table, I had second thoughts about leaving the cluviel dor in my pocket. Was it really safe to carry such an irreplaceable object around with me? Apparently all the fae collected at Hooligans could tell there was something special about me despite my minimal dash of fairy blood. That special thing must be my proximity to, or ownership of, the cluviel dor. I shouldn’t underestimate how much they’d want it if they knew I had it, not with theirterrible desire to be back in the world they loved. I hesitated, pondered again replacing it in the drawer.
    But then I thought, Unloaded gun . And I popped it from my pocket into my purse, which latched shut and was therefore more secure.
    I heard a car pull up outside. I looked out the living room windows to see that my caller was Detective Cara Ambroselli. I shrugged. I wasn’t going to let anything bother me today.
    She came in with a sidekick, a young guy whose name I couldn’t remember. He had short brown hair, brown eyes, undistinguished clothes, and he wasn’t tall or very thin or very muscular or very anything. Even his thoughts were fairly neutral. He was nuts about Ambroselli, that was something about him I could empathize with. And Ambroselli simply thought of him as her adjutant.
    “This is Jay Osborn,” Detective Ambroselli said. “You’re all dressed up today.”
    “I have an appointment this morning,” I said. “I can only give you a few minutes.” I waved my hand at the couch, and I sat opposite them.
    Osborn was looking around the room, recognizing the age of the house, of its furnishings. Ambroselli was concentrating on me.
    “T-Rex is quite a fan of yours,” she said.
    It was lucky I’d been warned ahead of time. “That’s pretty weird,” I said. “I just met him the night Kym Rowe got killed. And I have a boyfriend.” Theoretically.
    “He’s called me to see if I’d give up your phone number.”
    “I guess that says it all, that he doesn’t have it.” I shrugged.
    Then we went over the evening at Eric’s again, from beginning to end. But just when I thought we’d wound up, Ambroselli decided to throw in one last question.
    “Were you late that night because you wanted to make a big entrance?”
    I blinked. “Huh?”
    “Coming in late to get T-Rex’s attention?” She was asking questions at random. She didn’t believe this.
    “If I’d wanted to get his attention, I guess I would have come earlier to spend as much time with him as I could,” I said. “The ladies he was with were good-looking women, and I don’t know why he’d be specially interested in me.”
    “Maybe your vampire boyfriend wanted T-Rex to be his friend. Couldn’t hurt to have a popular guy like a wrestler on your side, in public opinion.”
    “I don’t think I’m the strongest bribe Eric could come up with,” I said. I laughed.
    Ambroselli was at an impasse in the case. She was hoping that by going from witness to witness and scattering half-truths and asking questions she might stir up some fact that she could use. Though I could sort of sympathize with her, she was wasting my time.
    “T-Rex hasn’t called me, and I don’t expect him to,” I said, after a moment. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to leave myself.”
    Ambroselli and Osborn stood and slowly took their departure, trying to look as though they’d learned something significant.
    When I got to Bon Temps, I dropped by to pick up my dishes from Tara’s house. The twins were asleep. Tara was slumped on the couch, almost dozing herself. I was glad I’d knocked very quietly. I think she would have thrown the pans at my head if I’d woken up Sara and Rob.
    “Where’s JB?” I whispered.
    “He went to get some more diapers,” she whispered back.
    “How’s the breastfeeding going?”
    “I feel like Elsie the cow,” she said. “I don’t know why I even button my blouse.”
    “Is it hard? To get them to nurse?”
    “About as hard as getting a vampire to bite you,” she said.
    I grinned. It was nice to hear that Tara could joke about something that had once made her crazy.
    “By the way,” Tara said as I turned to go, “Is there something weird going on at Hooligans?”
    “What do you mean?” I jerked around,