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“How are you feeling?” he asked, as if I always kissed him hello.

“Better than I thought I would,” I said. “You?”

“A little achy, but I’ll do.”

Holly stuck her head in. “Hey, Sookie, Sam.” She came in to deposit her own purse.

“Holly, I hear you and Hoyt are an item,” I said, and I hoped I looked smiling and pleased.

“Yeah, we’re hitting it off okay,” she said, trying for nonchalance. “He’s really good with Cody, and his family’s real nice.” Despite her aggressively dyed spiky black hair and her heavy makeup, there was something wistful and vulnerable about Holly’s face.

It was easy for me to say, “I hope it works out.” Holly looked very pleased. She knew as well as I did that if she married Hoyt she’d be for all intents and purposes my sister-in-law, since the bond between Jason and Hoyt was so strong.

Then Sam began telling us about a problem he was having with one of his beer distributors, and Holly and I tied on our aprons, and our working day began. I stuck my head through the hatch to wave at the kitchen staff. The current cook at Merlotte’s was an ex-army guy named Carson. Short-order cooks come and go. Carson was one of the better ones. He’d mastered burgers Lafayette right away (hamburgers steeped in a former cook’s special sauce), and he got the chicken strips and fries done exactly right, and he didn’t have tantrums or try to stab the busboy. He showed up on time and left the kitchen clean at the end of his shift, and that was such a huge thing Sam would have forgiven Carson a lot of weirdness.

We were light on customers, so Holly and I were getting the drinks and Sam was on the phone in his office when Tanya Grissom came in the front door. The short, curvy woman looked as pretty and healthy as a milkmaid. Tanya went light on the makeup and heavy on the self-assurance.

“Where’s Sam?” she asked. Her little mouth curved up in a smile. I smiled back just as insincerely. Bitch.

“Office,” I said, as if I always knew exactly where Sam was.

“That woman there,” Holly said, pausing on her way to the serving hatch. “That gal is a deep well.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She’s living out at Hotshot, rooming with some of the women out there,” Holly said. Of all the regular citizens of Bon Temps, Holly was one of the few who knew that there were such creatures as Weres and shifters. I didn’t know if she’d discovered that the residents of Hotshot were werepanthers, but she knew they were inbred and strange, because that was a byword in Renard Parish. And she considered Tanya (a werefox) guilty by association, or at least suspicious by association.

I had a stab of genuine anxiety. I thought, Tanya and Sam could change together. Sam would enjoy that. He could even change into a fox himself, if he wanted to.

It was a huge effort to smile at my customers after I’d had that idea. I was ashamed when I realized I should be happy to see someone interested in Sam, someone who could appreciate his true nature. It didn’t say much for me that I wasn’t happy at all. But she wasn’t good enough for him, and I’d warned him about her.

Tanya returned from the hallway leading to Sam’s office and went out the front door, not looking as confident as she’d gone in. I smiled at her back. Ha! Sam came out to pull beers. He didn’t seem nearly as cheerful.

That wiped the smile off my face. While I served Sheriff Bud Dearborn and Alcee Beck their lunch (Alcee glowering at me all the while), I worried about that. I decided to take a peek in Sam’s head, because I was getting better at aiming my talent in certain ways. It was also easier to block it off and keep it out of my everyday activities now that I’d bonded with Eric, though I hated to admit that. It’s not nice to flit around in someone else’s thoughts, but I’ve always been able to do it, and it was just second nature.

I know that’s a lame excuse. But I was used to knowing, not to wondering. Shifters are harder to read than regular people, and Sam was hard even for a shifter, but I got that he was frustrated, uncertain, and thoughtful.

Then I