I’d finally gotten through to my brother. “Gran told you that?”

“Yes.”

“She never said anything to me.”

“Gran knew it was hard for you, not seeing him again when she could tell you loved him. But she couldn’t let you be alone with him, because she couldn’t be a hundred percent sure girls were all he wanted.”

“I’ve seen him the past couple of years.”

“You have?” This was news to me. It would have been news to Gran, too.

“Sookie, he was an old man. He was so sick. He had prostate trouble, and he was feeble, and he had to use a walker.”

“That probably slowed him down chasing the five-year-olds.”

“Get over it!”

“Right! Like I could!”

We glared at each other over the width of the truck seat.

“So what happened to him?” I asked finally, reluctantly.

“A burglar broke into his house last night.”

“Yeah? And?”

“And broke his neck. Threw him down the stairs.”

“Okay. So I know. Now I’m going home. I gotta shower and get ready for work.”

“That’s all you’re saying?”

“What else is there to say?”

“Don’t want to know about the funeral?”

“No.”

“Don’t want to know about his will?”

“No.”

He threw up his hands. “All right,” he said, as if he’d been arguing a point very hard with me and realized that I was intractable.

“What else? Anything?” I asked.

“No. Just your great-uncle dying. I thought that was enough.”

“Actually, you’re right,” I said, opening the truck door and sliding out. “That was enough.” I raised my cup to him. “Thanks for the coffee, brother.”

IT WASN’T TILL I got to work that it clicked.

I was drying a glass and really not thinking about Uncle Bartlett, and suddenly my fingers lost all strength.

“Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea,” I said, looking down at the broken slivers of glass at my feet. “Bill had him killed.”

I DON’T KNOW why I was so sure I was right; but I was, the minute the idea crossed my mind. Maybe I had heard Bill dialing the phone when I was half-asleep. Maybe the expression on Bill’s face when I’d finished telling him about Uncle Bartlett had rung a silent warning bell.

I wondered if Bill would pay the other vampire in money, or if he’d repay him in kind.

I got through work in a frozen state. I couldn’t talk to anyone about what I was thinking, couldn’t even say I was sick without someone asking me what was wrong. So I didn’t speak at all, I just worked. I tuned out everything except the next order I had to fill. I drove home trying to feel just as frozen, but I had to face facts when I was alone.

I freaked out.

I had known, really I had, that Bill certainly had killed a human or two in his long, long, life. When he’d been a young vampire, when he’d needed lots of blood, before he’d gained control of his needs sufficiently to exist on a gulp here, a mouthful there, without actually killing anyone he drank from . . . he’d told me himself there’d been a death or two along the way. And he’d killed the Rattrays. But they’d have done me in that night in back of Merlotte’s, without a doubt, if Bill hadn’t intervened. I was naturally inclined to excuse him those deaths.

How was the murder of Uncle Bartlett different? He’d harmed me, too, dreadfully, made my already difficult childhood a true nightmare. Hadn’t I been relieved, even pleased, to hear he’d been found dead? Didn’t my horror at Bill’s intervention reek of hypocrisy of the worst sort?

Yes. No?

Tired and incredibly confused, I sat on my front steps and waited in the darkness, my arms wrapped around my knees. The crickets were singing in the tall grass when he came, arriving so quietly and quickly I didn’t hear him. One minute I was alone with the night, and the next, Bill was sitting on the steps beside me.

“What do you want to do tonight, Sookie?” His arm went around me.

“Oh, Bill.” My voice was heavy with despair.

His arm dropped. I didn’t look up at his face, couldn’t have seen it through the darkness, anyway.

“You should not have done it.”

He didn’t bother with denying it at least.

“I am glad he’s dead, Bill. But I can’t . . .”

“Do you think I would ever hurt you, Sookie?” His voice was quiet and rustling, like feet through dry grass.

“No. Oddly enough, I don’t think you would hurt me, even if you were really mad at me.”

“Then . . . ?”

“It’s like dating the Godfather, Bill. I’m scared to