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“Sam’s still not driving, so he can’t come to see you, but he’s thinking about you,” Arlene called. “You gonna be able to work tomorrow night?”

“I’m planning on it.”

“Good. I’m scheduled to be off, Charlsie’s granddaughter’s in the hospital with pneumonia, so she’s gone, and Holly doesn’t always show up when she’s scheduled. Danielle’s going to be out of town. That new girl, Jada—she’s better than Danielle, anyway.”

“You think?”

“Yeah.” Arlene snorted. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Danielle just doesn’t seem to care anymore. People can be wanting drinks and calling to her, and it doesn’t make a smidge of difference to her. She’ll just stand there talking to her boyfriend while people holler at her.”

It was true that Danielle had been less than scrupulous about her work habits since she’d started steady-dating a guy from Arcadia. “You think she’s gonna quit?” I asked, and that opened up another conversational pit we mined for about five minutes, though Arlene had said she was in a hurry. She’d ordered me to eat while the food was good, so I chewed and swallowed while she talked. We didn’t say anything startlingly new or original, but we had a good time. I could tell that Arlene (for once) was just enjoying sitting with me, being idle.

One of the many downsides to telepathy is the fact that you can tell the difference between when someone’s really listening to you, and when you’re talking to just a face instead of a mind.

Andy Bellefleur arrived as Arlene was getting into her car. I was glad I’d stuffed the bag from Wendy’s in a cabinet just to get it out of the way.

“You’re right next to Halleigh,” Andy said—an obvious opening gambit.

“Thanks for leaving my keys with her and getting my car over here,” I said. Andy had his moments.

“She says the guy that brought you home from the hospital was really, ah, interesting.” Andy was obviously fishing. I smiled at Andy. Whatever Halleigh had said had made him curious and maybe a little jealous.

“You could say that,” I agreed.

He waited to see if I’d expound. When I didn’t, he became all business.

“The reason I’m here, I wanted to find out if you remembered any more about yesterday.”

“Andy, I didn’t know anything then, much less now.”

“But you ducked.”

“Oh, Andy,” I said, exasperated, since he knew good and well about my condition, “you don’t have to ask why I ducked.”

He turned red, slowly and unbecomingly. Andy was a fireplug of a man and an intelligent police detective, but he had such ambiguity toward things he knew to be true, even if those things weren’t completely conventional items of common knowledge.

“We’re here all by ourselves,” I pointed out. “And the walls are thick enough that I don’t hear Halleigh moving around.”

“Is there more?” he asked suddenly, his eyes alight with curiosity. “Sookie, is there more?”

I knew exactly what he meant. He would never spell it out, but he wanted to know if there was even more in this world than humans, and vampires, and telepaths. “So much more,” I said, keeping my voice quiet and even. “Another world.”

Andy’s eyes met mine. His suspicions had been confirmed, and he was intrigued. He was right on the edge of asking me about the people who’d been shot—right on the verge of making the leap—but at the last instant, he drew back. “You didn’t see anything or hear anything that would help us? Was there anything different about the night Sam was shot?”

“No,” I said. “Nothing. Why?”

He didn’t answer, but I could read his mind like a book. The bullet from Sam’s leg didn’t match the other recovered bullets.

After he left, I tried to dissect that quick impression I’d gotten, the one that had prompted me to duck. If the parking lot hadn’t been empty, I might not have caught it at all, since the brain that had made it had been at some distance. And what I’d felt had been a tangle of determination, anger, and above all, disgust. The person who’d been shooting had been sure I was loathsome and inhuman. Stupidly enough, my first reaction was hurt—after all, no one likes to be despised. Then I considered the strange fact