Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [729]
Amelia clomped back into the room, began making herself some more tea. She was going to float away.
Claudine ignored her. “I’m going to worry,” she said simply. “There is trouble coming, my dear friend, and it will fall right on your head.”
“But you don’t know how or when?”
She shook her head. “No, I just know it’s coming.”
“Look into my eyes,” muttered Amelia. “I see a tall, dark man . . .”
“Shut up,” I told her.
She turned her back to us, made a big fuss out of pinching the dead leaves off some of her plants.
Claudine left soon after. For the remainder of her visit, she didn’t recover her normal happy demeanor. She never said another word about my departure.
6
ON THE SECOND MORNING AFTER JASON’S WEDDING, I was feeling much more myself. Having a mission helped. I needed to be at Tara’s Togs right after it opened at ten. I had to pick out the clothes Eric said I needed for the summit. I wasn’t due at Merlotte’s until five thirty or so that night, so I had that pleasant feeling of the whole day stretching ahead of me.
“Hey, girl!” Tara said, coming from the back of the shop to greet me. Her part-time assistant, McKenna, glanced at me and resumed moving clothes around. I assumed she was putting misplaced items back into their correct positions; clothing store employees seem to spend a lot of time doing that. McKenna didn’t speak, and unless I was much mistaken, she was trying to avoid talking to me at all. That hurt, since I’d gone to see her in the hospital when she’d had her appendix out two weeks ago, and I’d taken her a little present, too.
“Mr. Northman’s business associate Bobby Burnham called down here to say you needed some clothes for a trip?” Tara said. I nodded, trying to look matter of fact. “Would casual clothes be what you needed? Or suits, something of a business nature?” She gave me an utterly false bright smile, and I knew she was angry with me because she was scared for me. “McKenna, you can take that mail to the post office,” Tara told McKenna with an edge to her voice. McKenna scuttled out the back door, the mail stuffed under her arm like a riding crop.
“Tara,” I said, “it’s not what you think.”
“Sookie, it’s none of my business,” she said, trying hard to sound neutral.
“I think it is,” I said. “You’re my friend, and I don’t want you thinking I’m just going traveling with a bunch of vampires for fun.”
“Then why are you going?” Tara’s face dropped all the false cheer. She was deadly serious.
“I’m getting paid to go with a few of the Louisiana vamps to a big meeting. I’ll act as their, like, human Geiger counter. I’ll tell them if a human’s trying to bullshit them, and I’ll know what the other vamps’ humans are thinking. It’s just for this one time.” I couldn’t explain more fully. Tara had been into the world of the vampires more heavily than she needed to be, and she’d almost gotten killed. She wanted nothing more to do with it, and I couldn’t blame her. But she still couldn’t tell me what to do. I’d gone through my own soul searching over this issue, even before Claudine’s lecture, and I wasn’t going to permit anyone else to second-guess me once I’d made up my mind. Getting the clothes was okay. Working for the vamps was okay . . . as long as I didn’t turn humans over to get killed.
“We’ve been friends for a coon’s age,” Tara said quietly. “Through thick and thin. I love you, Sookie, I always will; but this is a real thin time.” Tara had had so much disappointment and worry in her life that she simply wasn’t willing to undertake any more. So she was cutting me loose, and she thought she would call JB that night and renew their carnal acquaintance, and she would do that almost in memory of me.
It was a strange way to write my premature epitaph.
“I need an evening dress, a cocktail-type dress, and some nice day clothes,” I said, checking my list quite unnecessarily. I wasn’t going to fool with Tara anymore. I was going to have fun, no