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She’d opened her mouth to shriek at Terry when she realized she really couldn’t. Terry stared directly at her, daring her to mention the blood. The people around us watched with interest. They knew something was up, but not what, because the whole thing had gone down very quickly. When Terry was sure she wasn’t going to start yelling, he handed me the coat. As I held it so she could slide her arms in, Terry told her, “Don’t you come back here no more.”

If we kept throwing people out at this rate, we wouldn’t have many customers.

“You redneck son of a bitch,” she said. The crowd around us drew in a collective breath. (Terry was almost as unpredictable as a bloodhead.)

“Doesn’t matter to me what you call me,” he said. “I guess an insult from you is no insult at all. You just stay away.” I expelled a long breath of relief.

She shoved her way through the crowd. Everyone in the room marked her progress toward the door, even Mickey the vampire. In fact, he was doing something with a device in his hands. It looked like one of those cell phones that can take a picture. I wondered to whom he was sending it. I wondered if she’d make it home.

Terry pointedly didn’t ask how I’d known the scruffy woman had something illegal in her pockets. That was another weird thing about the people of Bon Temps. The rumors about me had been floating around as long as I could remember, from when I was little and my folks put me through the mental health battery. And yet, despite the evidence at their disposal, almost everyone I knew would much rather regard me as a dim and peculiar young woman than acknowledge my strange ability. Of course, I was careful not to stick it in their faces. And I kept my mouth shut.

Anyway, Terry had his own demons to fight. Terry subsisted on some kind of government pension, and he cleaned Merlotte’s early in the morning, along with a couple of other businesses. He stood in for Sam three or four times a month. The rest of his time was his own, and no one seemed to know what he did with it. Dealing with people exhausted Terry, and nights like tonight were simply not good for him.

It was lucky he wasn’t in Merlotte’s the next night, when all hell broke loose.

2

AT FIRST, I THOUGHT EVERYTHING HAD RETURNED TO normal. The bar seemed a little calmer the next night. Sam was back in place, relaxed and cheerful. Nothing seemed to rile him, and when I told him what had happened with the dealer the night before, he complimented me on my finesse.

Tara didn’t come in, so I couldn’t ask her about Mickey. But was it really any of my business? Probably not my business—but my concern, definitely.

Jeff LaBeff was back and sheepish about getting riled by the college kid the night before. Sam had learned about the incident through a phone call from Terry, and he gave Jeff a word of warning.

Andy Bellefleur, a detective on the Renard parish force and Portia’s brother, came in with the young woman he was dating, Halleigh Robinson. Andy was older than me, and I’m twenty-six. Halleigh was twenty-one—just old enough to be in Merlotte’s. Halleigh taught at the elementary school, she was right out of college, and she was real attractive, with short earlobe-length brown hair and huge brown eyes and a nicely rounded figure. Andy had been dating Halleigh for about two months, and from the little I saw of the couple, they seemed to be progressing in their relationship at a predictable rate.

Andy’s true thoughts were that he liked Halleigh very much (though she was a tad boring), and he was really ready for her to give it up. Halleigh thought Andy was sexy and a real man of the world, and she really loved the newly restored Bellefleur family mansion, but she didn’t believe he’d hang around long after she slept with him. I hate knowing more about relationships than the people in them know—but no matter how battened down I am, I pick up a trickle of stuff.

Claudine came in the bar that night, toward closing time. Claudine is six feet tall, with black hair that ripples down her back and bruised-looking white skin that looks thin and