Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [806]
“Ah.” Eric considered this. “Anything else?”
“No,” I said, and got to my feet to leave.
“Barry was angry with you,” he observed.
“Yeah, he was, but he’ll get over it.”
“What’s his problem?”
“He doesn’t think I handled the . . . He doesn’t think we should’ve left. Or . . . I don’t know. He thinks I was unfeeling.”
“I think you did exceptionally well.”
“Well, great!” Then I clamped down on myself. “Sorry,” I said. “I know you meant to compliment me. I’m not feeling all that good about her dying. Or leaving her. Even if it was the practical thing to do.”
“You’re second-guessing yourself.”
“Yes.”
A knock at the door. Since Eric didn’t shift himself, I got up to answer it. I didn’t think it was a sexist thing; it was a status thing. I was definitely the lower dog in the room.
Completely and totally not to my surprise, the knocker was Bill. That just made my day complete. I stood aside to let him enter. Darn if I was going to ask Eric if I should let him in.
Bill looked me up and down, I guess to check that my clothes were in order, then strode by me without a word. I rolled my eyes at his back. Then I had a brilliant idea: instead of turning back into the room for further discussion, I stepped out of the open door and shut it behind me. I marched off quite briskly and grabbed the elevator with hardly any wait. In two minutes, I was unlocking my door.
End of problem.
I felt quite proud of myself.
Carla was in our room, naked again.
“Hi,” I said. “Please put on a robe.”
“Well, hey, if it bothers you,” she said in a fairly relaxed manner, and pulled on a robe. Wow. End of another problem. Direct action, straightforward statements; obviously, those were the keys to improving my life.
“Thanks,” I said. “Not going to the judicial stuff?”
“Human dates aren’t invited,” she said. “It’s Free Time for us. Gervaise and I are going out nightclubbing later. Some really extreme place called Kiss of Pain.”
“You be careful,” I said. “Bad things can happen if there are lots of vamps together and a bleeding human or two.”
“I can handle Gervaise,” Carla said.
“No, you can’t.”
“He’s nuts about me.”
“Until he stops being nuts. Or until a vamp older than Gervaise takes a shine to you, and Gervaise gets all conflicted.”
She looked uncertain for a second, an expression I felt sure Carla didn’t wear too often.
“What about you? I hear you’re tied to Eric now.”
“Only for a while,” I said, and I meant it. “It’ll wear off.”
I will never go anywhere with vampires again, I promised myself. I let the lure of the money and the excitement of the travel pull me in. But I won’t do that again. As God is my witness . . . Then I had to laugh out loud. Scarlett O’Hara, I wasn’t. “I’ll never be hungry again,” I told Carla.
“Why, did you eat a big supper?” she asked, focused on the mirror because she was plucking her eyebrows.
I laughed. And I couldn’t stop.
“What’s up with you?” Carla swung around to eye me with some concern. “You’re not acting like yourself, Sookie.”
“Just had a bad shock,” I said, gasping for breath. “I’ll be okay in a minute.” It was more like ten before I gathered my control back around me. I was due at the judicial meeting, and frankly, I wanted to have something to occupy my mind. I scrubbed my face and put on some makeup, changed into a bronze silk blouse and tobacco-colored pants with a matching cardigan, and put on some brown leather pumps. With my room key in my pocket and a relieved good-bye from Carla, I was off to find the judicial sessions.
16
THE VAMPIRE JODI WAS PRETTY FORMIDABLE. SHE PUT me in mind of Jael, in the Bible. Jael, a determined woman of Israel, put a tent peg through the head of Sisera, an enemy captain, if I was remembering correctly. Sisera had been asleep when Jael did the deed, just as Michael had been when Jodi broke off his fang. Even though Jodi’s name made me snicker, I saw in her a steely