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Janice laughed again.

“Who got engaged?” asked her customer, having decided against the recipe.

“Oh, Debbie Pelt? Used to go with my brother?” Janice said.

“I know her,” said the black-haired woman, pleasure in her voice. “She used to date your brother, Alcide? And now she’s marrying someone else?”

“Marrying Charles Clausen,” Janice said, nodding gravely. “You know him?”

“Sure I do! We went to high school together. He’s marrying Debbie Pelt? Well, better him than your brother,” Black Hair said confidentially.

“I’d already figured that out,” Janice said. “You know something I don’t know, though?”

“That Debbie, she’s into some weird stuff,” Black Hair said, raising her eyebrows to mark deep significance.

“Like what?” I asked, hardly breathing as I waited to hear what would come out. Could it be that this woman actually knew about shape-shifting, about werewolves? My eyes met Janice’s and I saw the same apprehension in them.

Janice knew about her brother. She knew about his world.

And she knew I did, too.

“Devil worship, they say,” Black Hair said. “Witchcraft.”

We both gaped at her reflection in the mirror. She had gotten the reaction she’d been looking for. She gave a satisfied nod. Devil worship and witchcraft weren’t synonymous, but I wasn’t going to argue with this woman; this was the wrong time and place.

“Yes, ma’am, that’s what I hear. At every full moon, she and some friends of hers go out in the woods and do stuff. No one seems to know exactly what,” she admitted.

Janice and I exhaled simultaneously.

“Oh, my goodness,” I said weakly.

“Then my brother’s well out of a relationship with her. We don’t hold with such doings,” Janice said righteously.

“Of course not,” I agreed.

We didn’t meet each other’s eyes.

After that little passage, I made motions about leaving, but Janice asked me what I was wearing that night.

“Oh, it’s kind of a champagne color,” I said. “Kind of a shiny beige.”

“Then the red nails won’t do,” Janice said. “Corinne!”

Despite all my protests, I left the shop with bronze finger- and toenails, and Jarvis worked on my hair again. I tried to pay Janice, but the most she would let me do was tip her employees.

“I’ve never been pampered so much in my life,” I told her.

“What do you do, Sookie?” Somehow that hadn’t come up the day before.

“I’m a barmaid,” I said.

“That is a change from Debbie,” Janice said. She looked thoughtful.

“Oh, yeah? What does Debbie do?”

“She’s a legal assistant.”

Debbie definitely had an educational edge. I’d never been able to manage college; financially, it would have been rough, though I could’ve found a way, I guess. But my disability had made it hard enough to get out of high school. A telepathic teenager has an extremely hard time of it, let me tell you. And I had so little control then. Every day had been full of dramas—the dramas of other kids. Trying to concentrate on listening in class, taking tests in a roomful of buzzing brains . . . the only thing I’d ever excelled in was homework.

Janice didn’t seem to be too concerned that I was a barmaid, which was an occupation not guaranteed to impress the families of those you dated.

I had to remind myself all over again that this setup with Alcide was a temporary arrangement he’d never asked for, and that after I’d discovered Bill’s whereabouts—right, Sookie, remember Bill, your boyfriend ?—I’d never see Alcide again. Oh, he might drop into Merlotte’s, if he felt like getting off the interstate on his way from Shreveport to Jackson, but that would be all.

Janice was genuinely hoping I would be a permanent member of her family. That was so nice of her. I liked her a lot. I almost found myself wishing that Alcide really liked me, that there was a real chance of Janice being my sister-in-law.

They say there’s no harm in daydreaming, but there is.

Chapter Seven

ALCIDE WAS WAITING for me when I got back. A pile of wrapped presents on the kitchen counter showed me how he’d spent at least part of his morning. Alcide had been completing his