Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

didn’t even know it was present, how much more would they want to touch it if they could? What would they do if I wouldn’t give it up?
    After I’d started Bellenos’s clothes on the cold cycle, I remained on the back porch looking out through the screen door at the night. Thebugs were in full symphony. It was almost noisy enough to be annoying. I was glad all over again for the blessed invention of air-conditioning, even if the house was cooled by window units instead of central heat and air. I could close and lock my windows at night and keep the drone of the insects at bay … and feel safe against the appearance of other things. One of those other things was strolling out of the trees right now.
    “Hey, Bill,” I said quietly.
    “Sookie.” He moved closer. Even when I knew he was there, I couldn’t hear him. Vampires can be so quiet.
    “I guess you heard my visitor?” I said.
    “Yes. Found what was left of the deer. Elf?”
    “Bellenos. You’ve met him.”
    “The guy who took the heads? Yeah. Dermot is home?”
    “He’s here.”
    “You really shouldn’t be alone with Bellenos.” Bill, a serious guy, sounded very grim indeed when he said this.
    “I don’t intend to be. Dermot will take him back to Monroe, either tonight or tomorrow morning. Eric call you tonight?”
    “Yeah. I’m going to Shreveport in an hour. I’m meeting Heidi there.” He hesitated for a moment. “I understand she still has a living relative.”
    “Her son in Nevada. He’s a drug addict, I believe.”
    “To have living flesh of your flesh. It must be a very strange feeling to be able to talk to your immediate kin. This age of vampires is so much different from that when I was turned. I can hardly believe that I now know my great-great-great-grandchildren.”
    Bill’s maker had ordered him out of Bon Temps and even out of the state for a long time, so he wouldn’t be recognized by his wife and children or his local acquaintances. That was the old way.
    I noted the wistfulness in his voice. “I don’t think it’s been very healthy for Heidi to keep in touch with her son,” I said. “She’s younger than he is, now, and …” Then I shut up. The rest of the sad story was Heidi’s to tell.
    “Several days ago, Danny Prideaux came to me to ask if he can be my daytime man,” Bill said suddenly, and after a moment I understood that Bill was thinking of human connections.
    So that was Danny’s big secret. “Huh. He already has a part-time job at the lumberyard.”
    “With two jobs, he thinks he can ask his young woman to marry him.”
    “Oh, wow! Danny’s gonna ask Kennedy to marry him? That’s wonderful. You know who he’s dating? Kennedy, who works behind the bar at Merlotte’s?”
    “The one who killed her boyfriend.” Bill seemed displeased by this bit of information.
    “Bill, the guy was beating her. And she served her jail time. Not that you have any room to talk. You hired him?”
    Bill looked a little abashed. “I agreed to a trial period. I don’t have enough work for a full-time person, but it would be very pleasant to have a part-time helper. I wouldn’t have to ask you for help all the time, which I’m sure is inconvenient for you.”
    “I haven’t minded making the occasional phone call,” I said. “But I know you’d like to have someone you don’t have to keep thanking. I wish Danny’d tell Kennedy what he’s up to. Not knowing is making her have all kinds of bad thoughts about him.”
    “If they’re going to have a real relationship, she has to learn to trust him.” Bill gave me an enigmatic look and melted back into the trees.
    “I trust people when they’ve proved they’re trustworthy,” I muttered,and went back in the house. The kitchen was empty. Sounded like Bellenos and Dermot had gone upstairs to watch television; I caught the faint sound of a laugh track. I climbed halfway up the stairs, intending to suggest that Bellenos move his own clothes from the washer to the dryer, but I paused when I heard them talking during a commercial break.
    “It’s called Two and a Half Men ,” Dermot was telling his guest.
    “I understand,” Bellenos said. “Because the two brothers are grown, and the son isn’t.”
    “I think so,” Dermot said. “Don’t you think the son is useless?”
    “The half? Yes. At home, we’d eat him,” Bellenos said.
    I turned right around, sure I could put the clothes into the dryer myself. “Sookie, did you need us?” Dermot called.