thing my little group would love to hear! Did Sookie tell you . . .” Gran and Bill, after much polite do-si-doing, set a date for Bill to address a night meeting of the Descendants.
“And now, if you’ll excuse Sookie and me, maybe we’ll take a walk. It’s a lovely night.” Slowly, so I could see it coming, he reached over and took my hand, rising and pulling me to my feet, too. His hand was cold and hard and smooth. Bill wasn’t quite asking Gran’s permission, but not quite not, either.
“Oh, you two go on,” my grandmother said, fluttering with happiness. “I have so many things to look up. You’ll have to tell me all the local names you remember from when you were . . .” and here Gran ran down, not wanting to say something wounding.
“Resident here in Bon Temps,” I supplied helpfully.
“Of course,” the vampire said, and I could tell from the compression of his lips that he was trying not to smile.
Somehow we were at the door, and I knew that Bill had lifted me and moved me quickly. I smiled, genuinely. I like the unexpected.
“We’ll be back in a while,” I said to Gran. I didn’t think she’d noticed my odd transition, since she was gathering up our tea glasses.
“Oh, you two don’t hurry on my account,” she said. “I’ll be just fine.”
Outside, the frogs and toads and bugs were singing their nightly rural opera. Bill kept my hand as we strolled out into the yard, full of the smell of new-mown grass and budding things. My cat, Tina, came out of the shadows and asked to be tickled, and I bent over and scratched her head. To my surprise, the cat rubbed against Bill’s legs, an activity he did nothing to discourage.
“You like this animal?” he asked, his voice neutral.
“It’s my cat,” I said. “Her name is Tina, and I like her a lot.”
Without comment, Bill stood still, waiting until Tina went on her way into the darkness outside the porch light.
“Would you like to sit in the swing or the lawn chairs, or would you like to walk?” I asked, since I felt I was now the hostess.
“Oh, let’s walk for a while. I need to stretch my legs.”
Somehow this statement unsettled me a little, but I began moving down the long driveway in the direction of the two-lane parish road that ran in front of both our homes.
“Did the trailer upset you?”
I tried to think how to put it.
“I feel very . . . hmmm. Fragile. When I think about the trailer.”
“You knew I was strong.”
I tilted my head from side to side, considering. “Yes, but I didn’t realize the full extent of your strength,” I told him. “Or your imagination.”
“Over the years, we get good at hiding what we’ve done.”
“So. I guess you’ve killed a bunch of people.”
“Some.” Deal with it, his voice implied.
I clasped both hands behind my back. “Were you hungrier right after you became a vampire? How did that happen?”
He hadn’t expected that. He looked at me. I could feel his eyes on me even though we were now in the dark. The woods were close around us. Our feet crunched on the gravel.
“As to how I became a vampire, that’s too long a story for now,” he said. “But yes, when I was younger—a few times—I killed by accident. I was never sure when I’d get to eat again, you understand? We were always hunted, naturally, and there was no such thing as artificial blood. And there were not as many people then. But I had been a good man when I was alive—I mean, before I caught the virus. So I tried to be civilized about it, select bad people as my victims, never feed on children. I managed never to kill a child, at least. It’s so different now. I can go to the all-night clinic in any city and get some synthetic blood, though it’s disgusting. Or I can pay a whore and get enough blood to keep going for a couple of days. Or I can glamor someone, so they’ll let me bite them for love and then forget all about it. And I don’t need so much now.”
“Or you can meet a girl who gets head injuries,” I said.
“Oh, you were the dessert. The Rattrays were the meal.”
Deal with it.
“Whoa,” I said, feeling breathless. “Give me a minute.”
And he did. Not one man in a million would have allowed me that