From Dead to Worse

green arching stems embroidered on it. It was still pretty, if faded. I concentrated on the pattern of the chair so I wouldn’t show Copley Carmichael how very angry I was.
    “He doesn’t mean anything to me, no matter how interesting he is,” I said in a voice so level you could’ve played pool on it. “Their marriage was over and done. As I’m sure you know, Hadley had another partner at the time she died.” Was murdered. But the government hadn’t gotten around to taking much notice of vampire deaths unless those deaths were caused by humans. Vampires did most of their own self-policing.
    “I’d think you’d want to see the baby, though,” Copley said.
    Thank God I picked this out of Copley’s head a second or two before he actually spoke the words. Even knowing what he was going to say, I felt his oh-so-casual remark hit me like a blow to the stomach. But I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of letting him see that. “My cousin Hadley was wild. She used drugs and people. She wasn’t the most stable person in the world. She was really pretty, and she had a way about her, so she always had admirers.” There, I’d said everything pro and con about my cousin Hadley. And I hadn’t said the word “baby.” What baby?
    “How’d your family feel when she became a vampire?” Cope said.
    Hadley’s change was a matter of public record. “Turned” vampires were supposed to register when they entered their altered state of being. They had to name their maker. It was a kind of governmental vampire birth control. You can bet the Bureau of Vampire Affairs would come down like a ton of bricks on a vampire who made too many other little vampires. Hadley had been turned by Sophie-Anne Leclerq herself.
    Amelia had put her father’s wineglass down within his reach and resumed her seat on the sofa beside me. “Dad, Hadley lived upstairs from me for two years,” she said. “Of course we knew she was a vampire. For goodness sake, I thought you’d want to tell me all the hometown news.”
    God bless Amelia. I was having a hard time holding myself together, and only years of doing that very thing when I telepathically overheard something awful was keeping me glued.
    “I need to check on the food. Excuse me,” I murmured, and rose and left the room. I hoped I didn’t scurry. I tried to walk normally. But once in the kitchen, I kept on going out the back door and across the back porch, out the screen door and into the yard.
    If I thought I’d hear Hadley’s ghostly voice telling me what to do, I was disappointed. Vampires don’t leave ghosts, at least as far as I know. Some vampires believe they don’t possess souls. I don’t know. That’s up to God. And here I was babbling to myself, because I didn’t want to think about Hadley’s baby, about the fact that I hadn’t known about the child.
    Maybe it was just Copley’s way. Maybe he always wanted to demonstrate the extent of his knowledge, as a way of showing his power to the people he dealt with.
    I had to go back in there for Amelia’s sake. I braced myself, put my smile back on—though I knew it was a creepy, nervous smile—and back I went. I perched by Amelia and beamed at both of them. They looked at me expectantly, and I realized a conversational lull had fallen.
    “Oh,” said Cope suddenly. “Amelia, I forgot to tell you. Someone called the house for you last week, someone I didn’t know.”
    “Her name?”
    “Oh, let me think. Mrs. Beech wrote it down. Ophelia? Octavia? Octavia Fant. That was it. Unusual.”
    I thought Amelia was going to faint. She turned a funny color and she braced her hand against the arm of the couch. “You’re sure?” she asked.
    “Yes, I’m sure. I gave her your cell phone number, and I told her you were living in Bon Temps.”
    “Thanks, Dad,” Amelia croaked. “Ah, I’ll bet supper’s done; let me go check.”
    “Didn’t Sookie just look at the food?” He wore the broad tolerant smile a man wears when he thinks women are being silly.
    “Oh, sure, but it’s in the end stage,” I said while Amelia shot out of the room as swiftly as I’d just done. “It would be awful if it burned. Amelia worked so hard.”
    “Do you know this Ms. Fant?” Cope asked.
    “No, I can’t say as I do.”
    “Amelia looked almost scared. No one’s trying to hurt my girl, right?”
    He was a different man when he said that, and one I could almost like. No matter what else he was, Cope didn’t want