Club Dead - By Charlaine Harris Page 0,34

Alcide,” she purred. Since he hadn’t been able to see her coming, his strong face quivered. “Who’s your new friend? Did you borrow her for the evening?”

“Oh, longer than that,” I said clearly, and smiled at Debbie, a smile that matched her own for sincerity.

“Really?” If her eyebrows had crawled any higher, they’d have been in heaven.

“Sookie is a good friend,” Alcide said impassively.

“Oh?” Debbie doubted his word. “It wasn’t too long ago you told me you’d never have another ‘friend’ if you couldn’t have . . . Well.” She smirked.

I covered Alcide’s huge hand with my own and gave her a look that implied much.

“Tell me,” Debbie said, her lips curling in a skeptical way, “how do you like that birthmark of Alcide’s?”

Who could have predicted she was willing to be a bitch so openly? Most women try to hide it, at least from strangers.

It’s on my right butt cheek. It’s shaped like a rabbit. Well, how nice. Alcide had remembered what I’d said, and he’d thought directly at me.

“I love bunnies,” I said, still smiling, my hand drifting down Alcide’s back to caress, very lightly, the top of his right buttock.

For a second, I saw sheer rage on Debbie’s face. She was so focused, so controlled, that her mind was a lot less opaque than most shifters’. She was thinking about her owl fiancé, about how he wasn’t as good in the sack as Alcide, but he had a lot of ready cash and he was willing to have children, which Alcide wasn’t. And she was stronger than the owl, able to dominate him.

She was no demon (of course, her fiancé would have a really short shelf life if shewere ) but she was no sweetie, either.

Debbie still could have recovered the situation, but her discovery that I knew Alcide’s little secret made her nuts. She made a big mistake.

She raked me over with a glare that would have paralyzed a lion. “Looks like you went to Janice’s salon today,” she said, taking in the casually tumbled curls, the fingernails. Her own straight black hair had been cut in asymmetrical clumps, tiny locks of different lengths, making her look a little like a dog in a very good show, maybe an Afghan. Her narrow face increased the resemblance. “Janice never sends anyone out looking like they live in this century.”

Alcide opened his mouth, rage tensing all his muscles. I laid my hand on his arm.

“What doyou think of my hair?” I asked softly, moving my head so it slithered over my bare shoulders. I took his hand and held it gently to the curls falling over my chest. Hey, I was pretty good at this! Sookie the sex kitten.

Alcide caught his breath. His fingers trailed through the length of my hair, and his knuckles brushed my collarbone. “I think it’s beautiful,” he said, and his voice was both sincere and husky.

I smiled at him.

“I guess instead of borrowing you, he rented you,” Debbie said, goaded into irreparable error.

It was a terrible insult, to both of us. It took every bit of resolution I had to hang on to a ladylike self-control. I felt the primitive self, the truer me, swim nearly to the surface. We sat staring at the shifter, and she blanched at our silence. “Okay, I shouldn’t have said that,” she said nervously. “Just forget it.”

Because she was a shifter, she’d beat me in a fair fight. Of course, I had no intention of fighting fair, if it came to that.

I leaned over and touched one red fingertip to her leather pants. “Wearing Cousin Elsie?” I asked.

Unexpectedly, Alcide burst into laughter. I smiled at him as he doubled over, and when I looked up, Debbie was stalking back to her party, who had fallen silent during our exchange.

I reminded myself to skip going to the ladies’ room alone this evening.

BY THE TIMEwe ordered our second drinks, the place was full. Some Were friends of Alcide’s came in, a large group—Weres like to travel in packs, I understand. Shifters, it depended on the animal they most often shifted to. Despite their theoretical versatility, Sam had told me that shape-shifters most often changed to the same animal every time, some creature they had a special affinity for. And they might call themselves by that animal: weredog, or werebat, or weretiger. But never just “Weres”—that term was reserved for the wolves. The true werewolves scorned such variance in form, and they didn’t think much of shifters in general. They,