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“No, but something close.” I helped him. “We don’t have much time, Eric,” I said, reaching down, touching him, making him gasp. “Let’s make it good.”

“Kiss me,” he said, and he wasn’t talking about his mouth. “Turn this way,” he whispered. “I want to kiss you, too.”

It didn’t take long, after all, for us to be holding each other, sated and happy.

“What’s happened?” he asked. “I can tell something is frightening you.”

“We have to go to Shreveport now,” I said. “We’re already past the time Pam said on the phone. Tonight’s the night we face off against Hallow and her witches.”

“Then you must stay here,” he said immediately.

“No,” I said gently, putting my hand on his cheek. “No, baby, I have to go with you.” I didn’t tell him Pam thought using me in the battle would be a good idea. I didn’t tell him he was going to be used as a fighting machine. I didn’t tell him I was sure someone was going to die tonight; maybe quite a few someones, human and Were and vampire. It was probably the last time I would use an endearment when I addressed Eric. It was perhaps the last time Eric would wake up in my house. One of us might not survive this night, and if we did, there was no way to know how we’d be changed.

The drive to Shreveport was silent. We’d washed up and dressed without talking much, either. At least seven times, I thought of heading back to Bon Temps, with or without Eric.

But I didn’t.

Eric’s skills did not include map reading, so I had to pull over to check my Shreveport map to plot our course to 714 Parchman, something I hadn’t foreseen before we got to the city. (I’d somehow expected Eric to remember the directions, but of course, he didn’t.)

“Your word of the day was ‘annihilate,’ ” he told me cheerfully.

“Oh. Thanks for checking.” I probably didn’t sound very thankful. “You’re sounding pretty excited about all this.”

“Sookie, there’s nothing like a good fight,” he said defensively.

“That depends on who wins, I would think.”

That kept him quiet for a few minutes, which was fine. I was having trouble negotiating the strange streets in the darkness, with so much on my mind. But we finally got to the right street, and the right house on that street. I had always pictured Pam and Chow living in a mansion, but the vampires had a large ranch-style house in an upper-middle-class suburb. It was a trimmed-lawn, bike-riding, lawn-sprinkling street, from what I could tell.

The light by the driveway was on at 714, and the three-car garage around at the rear was full. I drove up the slope to the concrete apron that was placed for overflow parking. I recognized Alcide’s truck and the compact car that had been parked in Colonel Flood’s carport.

Before we got out of my old car, Eric leaned over to kiss me. We looked at each other, his eyes wide and blue, the whites so white you could hardly look away, his golden hair neatly brushed. He’d tied it back with one of my elastic bands, a bright blue one. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a new flannel shirt.

“We could go back,” he said. In the dome light of the car, his face looked hard as stone. “We could go back to your house. I can stay with you always. We can know each other’s bodies in every way, night after night. I could love you.” His nostrils flared, and he looked suddenly proud. “I could work. You would not be poor. I would help you.”

“Sounds like a marriage,” I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. But my voice was too shaky.

“Yes,” he said.

And he would never be himself again. He would be a false version of Eric, an Eric cheated out of his true life. Providing our relationship (such as it was) lasted, he would stay the same; but I wouldn’t.

Enough with the negative thinking, Sookie, I told myself. I would be a total idiot to pass up living with this gorgeous creature for however long. We actually had a good time together, and I enjoyed Eric’s sense of humor and his company, to say nothing of his lovemaking. Now that he’d lost his memory, he was lots of uncomplicated fun.

And that was the fly in the ointment. We would have a counterfeit relationship,