Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [221]
“Portia,” Bill said, “look at me.”
She glanced up at him, then away. “I’m sorry I led you on like that,” she said rapidly. She was ashamed to apologize to a vampire, you could tell. “I was just trying to get one of the people who came here to invite me, so I could find out for myself what was going on.”
“Sookie did that for you,” Bill said mildly.
Portia’s gaze darted over to me. “I hope it wasn’t too awful, Sookie,” she said, surprising me.
“It was really horrible,” I said. Portia cringed. “But it’s over.”
“Thank you for helping Andy,” Portia said bravely.
“I wasn’t helping Andy. I was helping Lafayette,” I snapped.
She took a deep breath. “Of course,” she said, with some dignity. “He was your coworker.”
“He was my friend,” I corrected.
Her back straightened. “Your friend,” she said.
The fire was catching in the cabin now, and soon there would be police and firefighters. It was definitely time to leave.
I noticed neither Eric nor Bill offered to remove any memories from Andy.
“You better get out of here,” I said to him. “You better go back to your house, with Portia, and tell your grandmama to swear you were there all night.”
Without a word, brother and sister piled into Portia’s Audi and left. Eric folded himself into the Corvette for the drive back to Shreveport, and Bill and I went through the woods to Bill’s car, concealed in the trees across the road. He carried me, as he enjoyed doing. I have to say, I enjoyed it, too, on occasion. This was definitely one of the occasions.
It wasn’t far from dawn. One of the longest nights of my life was about to come to a close. I lay back against the seat of the car, tired beyond reckoning.
“Where did Callisto go?” I asked Bill.
“I have no idea. She moves from place to place. Not too many maenads survived the loss of the god, and the ones that did find woods, and roam them. They move before their presence is discovered. They’re crafty like that. They love war and its madness. You’ll never find them far from a battlefield. I think they’d all move to the Middle East if there were more woods.”
“Callisto was here because . . . ?”
“Just passing through. She stayed maybe two months, now she’ll work her way . . . who knows? To the Ever-glades, or up the river to the Ozarks.”
“I can’t understand Sam, ah, palling around with her.”
“That’s what you call it? Is that what we do, pal around?”
I reached over and poked him in the arm, which was like pressing on wood. “You,” I said.
“Maybe he just wanted to walk on the wild side,” Bill said. “After all, it’s hard for Sam to find someone who can accept his true nature.” Bill paused significantly.
“Well, that can be hard to do,” I said. I recalled Bill coming back in the mansion in Dallas, all rosy, and I gulped. “But people in love are hard to pry apart.” I thought of how I’d felt when I’d heard he’d been seeing Portia, and I thought of how I’d reacted when I’d seen him at the football game. I stretched my hand over to rest on his thigh and I gave it a gentle squeeze.
With his eyes on the road, he smiled. His fangs ran out a little.
“Did you get everything settled with the shapeshifters in Dallas?” I asked after a moment.
“I settled it in an hour, or rather Stan did. He offered them his ranch for the nights of the full moon, for the next four months.”
“Oh, that was nice of him.”
“Well, it doesn’t cost him anything exactly. And he doesn’t hunt, so the deer need culling anyway, as he pointed out.”
“Oh,” I said in acknowledgment, and then after a second, “ooooh.”
“They hunt.”
“Right. Gotcha.”
When we got back to my house, it didn’t lack much till dawn. Eric would just make it to Shreveport, I figured. While Bill showered, I ate some peanut butter and jelly, since I hadn’t had anything for more hours than I could add up. Then I went and brushed my teeth.
At least he didn’t have to rush off. Bill had spent several nights the month before creating