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“Sam,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. I tried to thank him, but the words wouldn’t come. I was lucky to have a friend like Sam, and well I knew it.

“Hush, Sookie,” he said. “Don’t cry. We’ll find out what happened to Jason, and we’ll find a way to restore Eric to his mind.” He rubbed the tears off my cheeks with his thumb.

No one was close enough to hear, but I couldn’t help glancing around to make sure.

“Then,” Sam said, a distinctly grim edge to his voice, “we can get him out of your house and back to Shreveport where he belongs.”

I decided no reply was the best policy.

“What was your word for the day?” he asked, standing back.

I gave him a watery smile. Sam always asked about the daily offering of my Word a Day calendar. “I didn’t check this morning. Yesterday was ‘farrago,’ ” I said.

He raised his brows inquiringly.

“A confused mess,” I said.

“Sookie, we’ll find a way out of this.”

When the searchers divided up into groups, I discovered that Sam was not the only two-natured creature out in Jason’s yard that day. I was astonished to see a contingent from Hotshot. Calvin Norris, his niece Crystal, and a second man who seemed vaguely familiar were standing by themselves. After a moment of stirring the sludge of my memory, I realized that the second man was the one I’d seen emerging from the shed behind the house down from Crystal’s. His thick pale hair triggered the memory, and I was sure of it when I saw the graceful way he moved. Kevin assigned the Reverend Jimmy Fullenwilder to the trio as their armed man. The combination of the three Weres with the reverend would have made me laugh under other circumstances.

Since they lacked a fifth, I joined them.

The three Weres from Hotshot gave me sober nods, Calvin’s golden green eyes fixed on me thoughtfully. “This here’s Felton Norris,” he said, by way of introduction.

I nodded back to Felton, and Jimmy Fullenwilder, a gray-haired man of about sixty, shook hands. “Of course I know Miss Sookie, but the rest of you I’m not sure of. I’m Jimmy Fullenwilder, pastor of Greater Love Baptist,” he said, smiling all around. Calvin absorbed this information with a polite smile, Crystal sneered, and Felton Norris (had they run out of last names in Hotshot?) grew colder. Felton was an odd one, even for an inbred werewolf. His eyes were remarkably dark, set under straight thick brown brows, which contrasted sharply with his pale hair. His face was broad at the eyes, narrowing a little too abruptly to a thin-lipped mouth. Though he was a bulky man, he moved lightly and quietly, and as we began to move out into the woods, I realized that all the Hotshot residents had that in common. In comparison with the Norrises, Jimmy Fullenwilder and I were blundering elephants.

At least the minister carried his 30-30 like he knew how to use it.

Following our instructions, we stood in a row, stretching out our arms at shoulder height so we were fingertip to fingertip. Crystal was on my right, and Calvin was on my left. The other groups did the same. We began the search in the fanlike shape determined by the curve of the pond.

“Remember who’s in your group,” Kevin bellowed. “We don’t want to leave people out here! Now, start.”

We began scanning the ground ahead of us, moving at a steady pace. Jimmy Fullenwilder was a couple of steps ahead, since he was armed. It was apparent right away that there were woodcraft disparities between the Hotshot folks, the reverend, and me. Crystal seemed to flow through the undergrowth, without having to wade through it or push it aside, though I could hear her progress. Jimmy Fullenwilder, an avid hunter, was at home in the woods and an experienced outdoorsman, and I could tell he was getting much more information from his surroundings than I was, but he wasn’t able to move like Calvin and Felton. They glided through the woods like ghosts, making about as much noise.

Once, when I ran into a particularly dense thicket of thorny vines, I felt