The Sookie Stackhouse Companion

good little speech. I hoped the next time Sam felt down about being different, he would remember his brother’s words. I wouldn’t forget them myself.
    I went to the guest room to put on my makeup. I’d dashed out of the house in such a hurry that morning, I’d left out several important steps in my daily routine. I wasn’t an essential part of the rehearsal (or the wedding), but the family clearly expected me to go with them.
    I tried to think of some tangible help I could provide—besides looking at dead animals and/or threatening a neighbor who already hated the family. (In retrospect, that hadn’t been a smart thing.) When Sam knocked on the door thirty minutes later, I let him in. I’d pulled on the yellow and gray skirt outfit with matching yellow sandals. The top zipped up the back, and I turned around so Sam could finish zipping for me. I didn’t have the flexibility in my arms that I’d had before . . . Oh, the hell with it. Not today.
    Sam zipped me up as though this were our routine. He was wearing a dress shirt and khakis, and his loafers were shined. He’d brushed his hair neatly back. I admired the new look, but I found myself missing the long tangle of hair he’d had before.
    “Listen, I did something I shouldn’t have done,” I said when I was zipped. I picked up my brush and began untangling my hair, which was very long now.
    “If you’re about to tell me what you said to Collins, I heard. So did Mom. Shifters have real sharp hearing, you know . . . and the windows were open.”
    I could feel my cheeks turn red. “Sorry,” I said.
    “I would have gone in and hit him,” Sam said, and that was so close to what I’d been thinking that I jumped.
    “I almost did,” I confessed.
    “Sook,” he said seriously, “I appreciate your caring about my family so much.”
    “But it’s not my family or my business, and I should back off and let you handle it? I know,” I said, turning away and brushing my hair forcefully.
    “I was going to say I’m glad I brought you.” Pause. “Jannalynn’s got her good points, or I wouldn’t be going out with her—but she has no restraint, and she’d have gone batshit crazy this morning. The good thing about Jannalynn is that she’s fully into her animal nature, and the bad thing is, it seems like she likes it more .”
    Without revealing how close I had come to going batshit crazy myself, I turned to face him, brush in hand. “I get what you’re saying. Eric loves being a vampire. He loves it more than anything.” Maybe more than he loves me, I thought, surprising myself. “You remember that black Focus we thought might be following us? Well, it was Quinn. Trish and Togo are his local contacts. He came here to talk to me.”
    Sam said, “Didn’t you tell me that Eric had banned Quinn from Area Five?”
    “Yeah, but he found out I was coming here from some kind of website. Isn’t that crazy? Quinn flew from wherever he was working, and he got Togo and Trish to pick him up at the airport and bring him here.”
    “You and he . . .”
    “Yeah, we had a thing, but I kind of told him to take a hike—I didn’t put it that mean—because his family is . . . well, complicated. His mom’s not really sane, and his little sister is a real piece of work, though I guess I never really had a chance to get to know her. I didn’t break up with him well,” I admitted. “He wants to have some kind of conversation about it. I sure don’t need that, though I guess I owe him. I just don’t understand how my being here got on the Internet.”
    Sam looked embarrassed. “That might be my fault,” he said. “We keep track of each other now, all of us who change. Since the announcement, we never know what people are going to do. Humans don’t always react in predictable ways. You know that better than anyone.”
    “So you put it on the Web that you and I were coming here to this wedding?”
    “No! No! But I did mention it when I was talking to Travis.” Travis, a trucker who was a Were not affiliated with a pack, stopped in at Merlotte’s about once every two weeks.
    “But why would you have mentioned me?”
    Sam closed his eyes briefly. “You’re kind of famous in the supe community, Sookie.”
    “What?” This made no sense at all.
    “You’re unique. Weres like something different as much as anyone else. You’re a friend of the Shreveport pack. You’ve done a lot for twoeys.”
    “Okay, several thoughts. I haven’t seen a computer