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There was a sudden surge of voices on the porch of the cabin. Someone clearly had been looking out of the window—I had kind of wondered if Eric had made that up—because, though no voices had been raised, the showdown in the clearing had attracted the attention of the revelers inside. While Eric and I had been in the yard, the orgy had progressed. Tom Hardaway was naked, and Jan, too. Eggs Tallie looked drunker.

“You smell like Eric,” Bill repeated, in a hissing voice.

I reared back from him, completely forgetting about Andy and his gun. And I lost my temper.

This is a rare thing, but not as rare as it used to be. It was kind of exhilarating. “Yeah, uh-huh, and I can’t even tell what you smell like! For all I know you’ve been with six women! Hardly fair, is it?”

Bill gaped at me, stunned. Behind me, Eric started laughing. The crowd on the sundeck was silently enthralled. Andy didn’t think we should all be ignoring the man with the gun.

“Stand together in a group,” he bellowed. Andy had had a lot to drink.

Eric shrugged. “Have you ever dealt with vampires, Bellefleur?” he asked.

“No,” Andy said. “But I can shoot you dead. I have silver bullets.”

“That’s—” I started to say, but Bill’s hand covered my mouth. Silver bullets were only definitely fatal to werewolves, but vampires also had a terrible reaction to silver, and a vampire hit in a vital place would certainly suffer.

Eric raised an eyebrow and sauntered over to the orgiasts on the deck. Bill took my hand, and we joined them. For once, I would have loved to know what Bill was thinking.

“Which one of you was it, or was it all of you?” Andy bellowed.

We all kept silent. I was standing by Tara, who was shivering in her red underwear. Tara was scared, no big surprise. I wondered if knowing Andy’s thoughts would help any, and I began to focus on him. Drunks don’t make for good reading, I can tell you, because they only think about stupid stuff, and their ideas are quite unreliable. Their memories are shaky, too. Andy didn’t have too many thoughts at the moment. He didn’t like anyone in the clearing, not even himself, and he was determined to get the truth out of someone.

“Sookie, come here,” he yelled.

“No,” Bill said very definitely.

“I have to have her right here beside me in thirty seconds, or I shoot—her!” Andy said, pointing his gun right at me.

“You will not live thirty seconds after, if you do,” Bill said.

I believed him. Evidently Andy did, too.

“I don’t care,” Andy said. “She’s not much loss to the world.”

Well, that made me mad all over again. My temper had begun to die down, but that made it flare up in a big way.

I yanked free from Bill’s hand and stomped down the steps to the yard. I wasn’t so blind with anger that I ignored the gun, though I was sorely tempted to grab Andy by his balls and squeeze. He’d still shoot me, but he’d hurt, too. However, that was as self-defeating as drinking was. Would the moment of satisfaction be worth it?

“Now, Sookie, you read the minds of those people and you tell me which one did it,” Andy ordered. He gripped the back of my neck with his big hands, like I was an untrained puppy, and swiveled me around to face the deck.

“What the hell do you think I was doing here, you stupid shit? Do you think this is the way I like to spend my time, with assholes like these?”

Andy shook me by my neck. I am very strong, and there was a good chance that I could break free from him and grab the gun, but it was not close enough to a sure thing to make me comfortable. I decided to wait for a minute. Bill was trying to tell me something with his face, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Eric was trying to cop a feel from Tara. Or Eggs. It was hard to tell.

A dog whined at the edge of the woods. I rolled my eyes in that direction, unable to turn my head. Well, great. Just great.

“That’s my collie,” I told Andy. “Dean, remember?” I could have used some human-shaped help, but since Sam had arrived on the scene in his collie persona, he’d have to stay that way or risk exposure.

“Yeah. What’s your dog doing out here?”

“I don’t know.