Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [795]
Jake’s room was a floor up from mine, and as I raised my hand to knock on the door, I casually scanned inside to count the brains. There was the hole in the air that marked a vampire brain (that’s the best way I can describe it), and a couple of human signatures. But I picked up on a thought that froze my fist before it had a chance to touch the door.
... they should all die, came the faint fragment of thought. Nothing followed it, though—no other thought that clarified or elaborated on that malign idea. So I knocked, and the pattern in the room changed instantly. Jake answered the door. He didn’t look welcoming.
“Hi, Jake,” I said, making my smile as bright and innocent as I could. “How you doing? I came by to check if Quinn was with you.”
“With me?” Jake sounded startled. “Since I turned, I’ve hardly talked to Quinn, Sookie. We just don’t have anything to talk about.” I must have looked disbelieving, because he said in a rush, “Oh, it’s not Quinn; it’s me. I just can’t bridge the chasm between who I was and who I am now. I’m not even sure who I am.” His shoulders slumped.
That sounded honest enough. And I felt a lot of sympathy for him. “Anyway,” Jake said, “I helped carry him to the infirmary, and I bet he’s still there. There’s a shifter called Bettina and a Were called Hondo with him.”
Jake was holding the door shut. He didn’t want me to see his companions. Jake didn’t know that I could tell that he had people in his room.
It wasn’t any of my business, of course. But it was disquieting. Even as I thanked him and turned to leave, I was thinking the situation over. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to cause the troubled Jake any more problems, but if he was somehow involved in the plot that seemed to be snaking through the halls of the Pyramid of Gizeh, I had to find out.
First things first. I went down to my room and called the desk to get directions to the infirmary, and I carefully wrote them on the phone pad. Then I sneaked back up the stairs to stand outside Jake’s door again, but in the time I’d been gone, the party had begun to disperse. I saw two humans from the rear. Strange; I couldn’t be certain, but one of them looked like the surly Joe, the computer-consulting employee from the luggage area. Jake had been meeting with some of the hotel staff in his room. Maybe he still felt more at home with humans than he did with vampires. But surely Weres would have been his choice. . . .
As I stood there in the corridor, feeling sorry for him, Jake’s door opened and he stepped out. I hadn’t checked for blank spots, only live signatures. My bad. Jake looked a bit suspicious when he saw me, and I couldn’t blame him.
“Do you want to go with me?” I asked.
“What?” He looked startled. He hadn’t been a vampire long enough to get the inscrutable face down pat.
“To see Quinn?” I said. “I got directions to the infirmary, and you said you hadn’t talked to him in a while, so I thought you might want to go with me if I’d kind of smooth the way?”
“That’s a nice idea, Sookie,” he said. “I think I’ll pass. The fact is, most shifters don’t want me around anymore. Quinn is better than most, I’m sure, but I make him uneasy. He knows my mom, my dad, my ex-girlfriend; all the people in my former life, the ones who don’t want to hang with me now.”
I said impulsively, “Jake, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry Hadley turned you if you would rather have passed on. She was fond of you, and she didn’t want you to die.”
“But I did die, Sookie,” Jake said. “I’m not the same guy anymore. As you know.” He picked up my arm and looked at the scar on it, the one he’d left with his teeth. “You won’t ever be the same, either,” he said, and he walked away. I’m not sure he knew where he was going, but he just wanted to get away from me.
I watched him until he was out of sight. He didn’t turn to look back at me.
My mood had been fragile anyway,