From Dead to Worse

time), I found Sam behind the bar. I gave him a wave as I tied on the white apron I’d pulled from the stack of dozens. I slid my order pad and a pencil into a pocket, looked around to find Arlene, whom I’d be replacing, and scanned the tables in our section.
    My heart sank. No peaceful evening for me. Some asses in Fellowship of the Sun T-shirts were sitting at one of the tables. The Fellowship was a radical organization that believed (a) vampires were sinful by nature, almost demons, and (b) they should be executed. The Fellowship “preachers” wouldn’t say so publicly, but the Fellowship advocated the total eradication of the undead. I’d heard there was even a little primer to advise members of how that could be carried out. After the Rhodes bombing they’d become bolder in their hatred.
    The FotS group was growing as Americans struggled to come to terms with something they couldn’t understand—and as hundreds of vampires streamed into the country that had given them the most favorable reception of all the nations on earth. Since a few heavily Catholic and Muslim countries had adopted a policy of killing vampires on sight, the U.S. had begun accepting vampires as refugees from religious or political persecution, and the backlash against this policy was violent. I’d recently seen a bumper sticker that read, “I’ll say vamps are alive when you pry my cold dead fingers from my ripped-out throat.”
    I regarded the FotS as intolerant and ignorant, and I despised those who belonged to its ranks. But I was used to keeping my mouth shut on the topic at the bar, the same way I was used to avoiding discussions on abortion or gun control or gays in the military.
    Of course, the FotS guys were probably Arlene’s buddies. My weak-minded ex-friend had fallen hook, line, and sinker for the pseudo religion that the FotS propagated.
    Arlene curtly briefed me on the tables as she headed out the back door, her face set hard against me. As I watched her go, I wondered how her kids were. I used to babysit them a lot. They probably hated me now, if they listened to their mother.
    I shook off my melancholy, because Sam didn’t pay me to be moody. I made the rounds of the customers, refreshed drinks, made sure everyone had enough food, brought a clean fork for a woman who’d dropped hers, supplied extra napkins to the table where Catfish Hennessy was eating chicken strips, and exchanged cheerful words with the guys seated at the bar. I treated the FotS table just like I treated everyone else, and they didn’t seem to be paying me any special attention, which was just fine with me. I had every expectation that they’d leave with no trouble ...until Pam walked in.
    Pam is white as a sheet of paper and looks just like Alice in Wonderland would look if she’d grown up to become a vampire. In fact, this evening Pam even had a blue band restraining her straight fair hair, and she was wearing a dress instead of her usual pants set. She was lovely—even if she looked like a vampire cast in an episode of Leave It to Beaver. Her dress had little puff sleeves with white trim, and her collar had white trim, too. The tiny buttons down the front of her bodice were white, to match the polka dots on the skirt. No hose, I noticed, but any hose she bought would look bizarre since the rest of her skin was so pale.
    “Hey, Pam,” I said as she made a beeline for me.
    “Sookie,” she said warmly, and gave me a kiss as light as a snowflake. Her lips felt cool on my cheek.
    “What’s up?” I asked. Pam usually worked at Fangtasia in the evening.
    “I have a date,” she said. “Do you think I look good?” She spun around.
    “Oh, sure,” I said. “You always look good, Pam.” That was only the truth. Though Pam’s clothing choices were often ultra-conservative and strangely dated, that didn’t mean they didn’t become her. She had a kind of sweet-but-lethal charm. “Who’s the lucky guy?”
    She looked as arch as a vampire over two hundred years old can look. “Who says it’s a guy?” she said.
    “Oh, right.” I glanced around. “Who’s the lucky person?”
    Just then my roomie walked in. Amelia was wearing a beautiful pair of black linen pants and heels with an off-white sweater and a pair of amber and tortoiseshell earrings. She looked conservative, too, but in a more modern way. Amelia strode over to us, smiled at Pam, and said, “Had a drink yet?”
    Pam smiled in a way I’d never seen her smile before.