Living Dead in Dallas

smoothed out, all expression vanishing like wrinkles in a bedspread when you run your hand over it.
    “I don’t remember,” she said finally. So Bill’s ability to recall what he’d seen in minute detail was a personal gift. “I don’t remember seeing Farrell more than a minute or two.”
    “Can you do the same thing to Rachel that you did to the barmaid?” Stan asked.
    “No,” I said immediately, my voice maybe a little tooemphatic. “I can’t read vampire minds at all. Closed books.”
    Bill said, “Can you remember a blond—one of us—who looks about sixteen years old? One with ancient blue tattooing on his arms and torso?”
    “Oh, yes,” red-haired Rachel said instantly. “The tattoos were from the time of the Romans, I think. They were crude but interesting. I wondered about him, because I hadn’t seen him coming here to the house to ask Stan for hunting privileges.”
    So vamps passing through someone else’s territory were required to sign in at the visitors’ center, so to speak. I filed that away for future reference.
    “He was with a human, or at least had some conversation with him,” the red-haired vampire continued. She was wearing blue jeans and a green sweater that looked incredibly hot to me. But vamps don’t worry about the actual temperature. She looked at Stan, then Bill, who made a beckoning gesture to indicate he wanted whatever memories she had. “The human was dark-haired, and had a mustache, if I am recalling him correctly.” She made a gesture with her hands, an open-fingered sweep that seemed to say, “They’re all so much alike!”
    After Rachel left, Bill asked if there was a computer in the house. Stan said there was, and looked at Bill with actual curiosity when Bill asked if he could use it for a moment, apologizing for not having his laptop. Stan nodded. Bill was about to leave the room when he hesitated and looked back at me. “Will you be all right, Sookie?” he asked.
    “Sure.” I tried to sound confident.
    Stan said, “She will be fine. There are more people for her to see.”
    I nodded, and Bill left. I smiled at Stan, which is what I do when I’m strained. It’s not a happy smile, but it’s better than screaming.
    “You and Bill have been together for how long?” Stan asked.
    “For a few months.” The less Stan knew about us, the happier I’d be.
    “You are content with him?”
    “Yes.”
    “You love him?” Stan sounded amused.
    “None of your business,” I said, grinning. “Did you mention there were more people I needed to check?”
    Following the same procedure I had with Bethany, I held a variety of hands and checked a boring bunch of brains. Bethany had definitely been the most observant person in the bar. These people—another barmaid, the human bartender, and a frequent patron (a fangbanger) who’d actually volunteered for this—had dull boring thoughts and limited powers of recollection. I did find out the bartender fenced stolen household goods on the side, and after the guy had left, I recommended to Stan that he get another employee behind the bar, or he’d be sucked into any police investigation. Stan seemed more impressed by this than I hoped he’d be. I didn’t want him to get too enamored of my services.
    Bill returned as I finished up the last bar employee, and he looked just a little pleased, so I concluded he’d been successful. Bill had been spending most of his waking hours on the computer lately, which had not been too popular an idea with me.
    “The tattooed vampire,” Bill said when Stan and I were the only two left in the room, “is named Godric, though for the past century he’s gone by Godfrey. He’s a renouncer.” I don’t know about Stan, but I was impressed. A few minutes on the computer, and Bill had done a neat piece of detective work.
    Stan looked appalled, and I suppose I looked puzzled.
    “He’s allied himself with radical humans. He plans to commit suicide,” Bill told me in a soft voice, since Stanwas wrapped in thought. “This Godfrey plans to meet the sun. His existence has turned sour on him.”
    “So he’s gonna take someone with him?” Godfrey would expose Farrell along with himself?
    “He has betrayed us to the Fellowship,” Stan said.
    Betrayed is a word that packs a lot of melodrama, but I didn’t dream of smirking when Stan said it. I’d heard of the Fellowship, though I’d never met anyone who claimed to actually belong to it. What the Klan was to African