From Dead to Worse

faithful, who’s pledged that publicly, are governed by a whole different set of rules, in my world.
    Not in Crystal’s world, or Dove’s world, apparently.
    Calvin came back down the steps looking years older than he had when he’d bounded up them. He stopped by my car. He wore an expression twin to mine—disillusion, disappointment, disgust. Lots of dis es there.
    “I’ll be in touch,” he said. “We got to have the ceremony now.”
    Crystal came out on the porch wrapped in a leopard-print bathrobe, and rather than endure her speaking to me I started the car and left as quickly as I could. I drove home in a daze. When I came in the back door, Amelia was chopping up something on the old cutting board, the one that had survived the fire with only scorch marks. She turned to speak to me and had opened her mouth when she saw my face. I shook my head at her, warning her not to talk, and I went straight into my room.
    This would have been a good day for me to be living by myself again.
    I sat in my room in the little chair in the corner, the one that had seated so many visitors lately. Bob was curled up in a ball on my bed, a place he was expressly forbidden to sleep. Someone had opened my door during the day. I thought about chewing Amelia out about that, then discarded the idea when I saw a pile of clean and folded underwear lying on top of my dresser.
    “Bob,” I said, and the cat unfolded and leaped to his feet in one fluid movement. He stood on my bed, staring at me with wide golden eyes. “Get the hell out of here,” I said. With immense dignity Bob leaped down from the bed and stalked to the door. I opened it a few inches and he went out, managing to leave the impression that he was doing this of his own free will. I shut the door behind him.
    I love cats. I just wanted to be by myself.
    The phone rang, and I stood up to answer it.
    “Tomorrow night,” Calvin said. “Wear something comfortable. Seven o’clock.” He sounded sad and tired.
    “Okay,” I said, and we both hung up. I sat there a while longer. Whatever this ceremony consisted of, did I have to be a participant? Yeah, I did. Unlike Crystal, I kept my promises. I’d had to stand up for Jason at his wedding, as his closest relative, as a surrogate to take his punishment if he was unfaithful to his new wife. Calvin had stood up for Crystal. And now look what we’d come to.
    I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I knew it was going to be awful. Though the werepanthers understood the necessity for breeding each available pure male panther to each available pure female panther (the only way to produce purebred baby panthers), they also believed once the breeding had been given a chance, any partnerships formed should be monogamous. If you didn’t want to take that vow, you didn’t form a partnership or marry. This was the way they ran their community. Crystal would have absorbed these rules from birth, and Jason had learned them from Calvin before the wedding.
    Jason didn’t call, and I was glad. I wondered what was happening at his house, but only in a dull kind of way. When had Crystal met Dove Beck? Did Dove’s wife know about this? I wasn’t surprised that Crystal had cheated on Jason, but I was a little astonished at her choice.
    I decided that Crystal had wanted to make her betrayal as emphatic as it could possibly be. She was saying, “I’ll have sex with someone else while I’m carrying your child. And he’ll be older than you, and a different race from you, and he’ll even work for you!” Twisting the knife in deeper with every layer. If this was retaliation for the damn cheeseburger, I’d say she’d gotten a steak-size vengeance.
    Because I didn’t want to seem like I was sulking, I came out for supper, which was lowly and comforting tuna noodle casserole with peas and onions. After stacking the dishes for Octavia to take care of, I retreated back to my room. The two witches were practically tiptoeing up and down the hall because they were so anxious not to disturb me, though of course they were dying to ask me what the problem was.
    But they didn’t; God bless them. I really couldn’t have explained. I was too mortified.
    I said about a million prayers before I went to sleep that night, but none of them ended up making me feel any better.
    I went to work the next day because I had to. Staying home wouldn’t have made me feel any better. I was profoundly glad Jason didn’t come into Merlotte’s,