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5

I WAS WALKING IN MY SLEEP. IT WAS A GOOD THING I knew every inch of Merlotte’s like I knew my own house, or I’d have bumped into every table and chair. I yawned widely as I took Selah Pumphrey’s order. Ordinarily Selah irritated the hell out of me. She’d been dating Nameless Ex-Lover for several weeks—well, months now. No matter how invisible Ex had become, she’d never be my favorite person.

“Not getting enough rest, Sookie?” she asked, her voice sharp.

“Excuse me,” I apologized. “I guess not. I was at my brother’s wedding last night. What kind of dressing did you want on that salad?”

“Ranch.” Selah’s big dark eyes were examining me like she was thinking of etching my portrait. She really wanted to know all about Jason’s wedding, but asking me would be like surrendering ground to the enemy. Silly Selah.

Come to think of it, what was Selah doing here? She’d never come in without Bill. She lived in Clarice. Not that Clarice was far; you could get there in fifteen or twenty minutes. But why would a real estate saleswoman from Clarice be . . . oh. She must be showing a house here. Yes, the brain was moving slowly today.

“Okeydokey. Coming right up,” I said, and turned to go.

“Listen,” Selah said. “Let me be frank.”

Oh, boy. In my experience, that meant, “Let me be openly mean.”

I swung around, trying to look anything but massively irritated, which was what I actually was. This was not the day to screw with me. Among my many worries, Amelia hadn’t come home the night before, and when I’d gone upstairs to look for Bob, I’d found that he’d thrown up in the middle of Amelia’s bed . . . which would have been okay by me, but it had been covered with my great-grandmother’s quilt. It had fallen to me to clean up the mess and get the quilt to soaking in the washing machine. Quinn had left early that morning, and I was simply sad about that. And then there was Jason’s marriage, which had such potential to be a disaster.

I could think of a few more items to add to the list (down to the dripping tap in my kitchen), but you get that my day was not a happy one.

“I’m here working, Selah. I’m not here to have any personal chitchats with you.”

She ignored that.

“I know you’re going on a trip with Bill,” she said. “You’re trying to steal him back from me. How long have you been scheming about this?”

I know my mouth was hanging open, because I just hadn’t gotten enough warning that was coming. My telepathy was affected when I was tired—just as my reaction time and thought processes were—and I was heavily shielded when I worked, as a matter of course. So I hadn’t picked up on Selah’s thoughts. A flash of rage passed through me, lifting my palm and raising it to slap the shit out of her. But a warm, hard hand took mine, gripped it, brought it down to my side. Sam was there, and I hadn’t even seen him coming. I was missing everything today.

“Miss Pumphrey, you’ll have to get your lunch somewhere else,” Sam said quietly. Of course, everyone was watching. I could feel all the brains go on alert for fresh gossip as eyes drank in every nuance of the scene. I could feel my face redden.

“I have the right to eat here,” Selah said, her voice loud and arrogant. That was a huge mistake. In an instant, the sympathies of the spectators switched to me. I could feel the wave of it wash over me. I widened my eyes and looked sad like one of those abnormally big-eyed kids in the awful waif paintings. Looking pathetic was no big stretch. Sam put an arm around me as though I were a wounded child and looked at Selah with nothing on his face but a grave disappointment in her behavior.

“I have the right to tell you to go,” he said. “I can’t have you insulting my staff.”

Selah was never likely to be rude to Arlene or Holly or Danielle. She hardly knew they existed, because she wasn’t the kind of woman who really looked at a server. It had always stuck in her craw that Bill had dated me before he’d met her. (“Dated,” in Selah’s book, being a euphemism for “had enthusiastic and frequent