Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [826]
There was an extra chair, and I collapsed onto it. My legs just wouldn’t hold me. “What does the doctor say?”
“Which one?” Frannie said bleakly.
“Any. All.” I took one of Quinn’s hands. Frannie almost reached out as if she thought I’d hurt him, but then she subsided. I had the hand that was free of tubes, and I held it for a while.
“They can’t believe how much better he is already,” Frannie said just when I’d decided she wasn’t going to answer. “In fact, they think it’s something of a miracle. Now we’re gonna have to pay someone to get his records out of the system.” Her dark-rooted hair was in clumps, and she was still filthy from the blast site.
“Go buy some clothes and come back and have a shower,” I said. “I’ll sit with him.”
“Are you really his girlfriend?”
“Yes, I am.”
“He said you had some conflicts.”
“I do, but not with him.”
“So, okay. I will. You got any money?”
“Not a lot, but here’s what I can spare.”
I handed her seventy-five dollars of Mr. Cataliades’s money.
“Okay, I can stretch it,” she said. “Thanks.” She said it without enthusiasm, but she said it.
I sat in the quiet room and held Quinn’s hand for almost an hour. In that time, his eyes had flickered open once, registered my presence, and closed again. A very faint smile curved his lips for a moment. I knew that while he was sleeping, his body was healing, and when he woke, he might be able to walk again. I would have found it very comforting to climb on that bed and snuggle with Quinn for a while, but it might be bad for him if I did that; I might jostle him or something.
After a while, I began talking to him. I told him why I thought the crude bomb had been left outside the queen’s door, and I told him my theory about the deaths of the three Arkansas vampires. “You gotta agree, it makes sense,” I said, and then I told him what I thought about the death of Henrik Feith and the execution of his murderer. I told him about the dead woman in the shop. I told him about my suspicions about the explosion.
“I’m sorry it was Jake that was in with them,” I told him. “I know you used to like him. But he just couldn’t stand being a vamp. I don’t know if he approached the Fellowship or the Fellowship approached him. They had the guy at the computer, the one who was so rude to me. I think he called a delegate from each party to have them come pick up a suitcase. Some of them were too smart or too lazy to pick them up, and some of them returned the suitcases when no one claimed them. But not me, oh no, I put it in the queen’s effing living room.” I shook my head. “I guess not too many of the staff were in on it, because otherwise Barry or I would’ve picked up on something way before Barry did.”
Then I slept for a few minutes, I think, because Frannie was there when I looked around, and she was eating from a McDonald’s bag. She was clean, and her hair was wet.
“You love him?” she asked, sucking up some Coke through a straw.
“Too soon to tell.”
“I’m going to have to take him home to Memphis,” she said.
“Yeah, I know. I may not get to see him for a while. I’ve got to get home, too, somehow.”
“The Greyhound station is two blocks away.”
I shuddered. A long, long bus ride was not a prospect that I could look forward to.
“Or you could take my car,” Frannie said.
“What?”
“Well, we got here separately. He drove here with all the props and a trailer, and I left out of my mama’s in a hurry in my little sports car. So there are two cars here, and we only need one. I’m going to have to go home with him and stay for a while. You have to get back to work, right?”
“Right.”
“So, drive my car home, and we’ll pick it up