Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

the woman said.
    I was even sorrier I’d come back to the house.
    Call me ungracious, but I wasn’t going to ask them in. They hadn’t called ahead, they had no reason to talk to me, and above all else— I had been down this road before with the Pelts.
    “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. “But I’m not sure why you’ve come here.”
    “You talked to our girl before she died,” Oscar Rowe said. “We just wanted to know what was on her mind.”
    Though they didn’t realize it, they’d come to the right place to find out. Knowing what was on people’s minds was my specialty. But I wasn’t getting good brain readings from either of them. Instead of grief and regret, I was getting avid curiosity … an emotion more suited to people who slow down to goggle at road accidents than to grieving parents.
    I turned slightly to look at their companion. “And you, Mr. Powell? What’s your role here?” I’d been aware of his intense observation.
    “I’m thinking of doing a book about Kym’s life,” Harp Powell said. “And her death.”
    I could add that up in my head: lurid past, pretty girl, died outside a vampire’s house during a party with interesting guests. It wouldn’t be a biography of the desperate, emotionally disturbed Kym I’d met so briefly. Harp Powell was thinking of writing a true-crimenovel with pictures in the middle: Kym as a cute youngster, Kym in high school, Kym as a stripper, and maybe Kym as a corpse. Bringing the Rowes with him was a smart move. Who could turn down distraught parents? But I knew Georgene and Oscar weren’t anywhere close to devastated. The Rowes were more curious than bereaved.
    “How long had it been since you saw her?” I asked Kym’s mother.
    “Well, she was a grown-up girl. She left home after she graduated from high school,” Georgene said reasonably. She had stepped toward the house as if she were waiting for me to open the back door. She dropped her cigarette on the gravel and ground it out with her platform sandal.
    “So, five years? Six?” I crossed my arms over my chest and looked at each of them in turn.
    “It had been a while,” conceded Oscar Rowe. “Kym had her own living to make; we couldn’t support her. She had to get out and hustle like the rest of us.” He gave me a look that was supposed to say he knew I’d had to get out and hustle, too—we were all working people, here. All in the same boat.
    “I don’t have anything to say about your daughter. I didn’t even talk to her directly. I saw her for maybe five minutes.”
    “Is it true your boyfriend was taking blood from her?” Harp Powell asked.
    “You can ask him that. But you’ll have to go after dark, and he may not be too glad to see you.” I smiled.
    “Is it true that you live here with two male strippers?” Powell persisted. “Kym was a stripper,” he added, as if that would somehow soften me up.
    “Who I live with is none of your business. You can leave now,” I said, still smiling, I hoped very unpleasantly. “Or I’ll call the sheriff, and he’ll be here pretty quick.” With that, I went inside and shut andlocked the door. No point in standing out there listening to questions I wouldn’t answer.
    The light on my phone was blinking. I turned the sound very low and pressed the button to play it. “Sister,” said Bellenos, “no one here will admit to giving any blood to the girl who was killed, or giving blood to anyone at all. Either there’s another fairy somewhere, or someone here is lying. I don’t like either prospect.” I hit the Delete button.
    I heard knocking at the back door, and I moved to where I couldn’t be seen.
    Harp Powell knocked a few more times and slid his card under the porch door, but I didn’t answer.
    They drove off after a couple of minutes. Though I was relieved to watch them go, the encounter left me depressed and shaken. Seen from the outside, did my life truly seem so tawdry?
    I lived with one male stripper. I did date a vampire. He had taken blood from Kym Rowe, right in front of me.
    Maybe Harp Powell had just wanted answers to his sensational questions. Maybe he would have reported my answers in a fair and balanced way. Maybe he had just been trying to get a rise out of me. And maybe I was feeling extra fragile. But his strategy worked, though not until too late to directly benefit him. I felt bad about myself. I felt like talking to someone about how my life looked—as opposed to how it felt to be inside it,