“Do you think I’d do that?” he asked.
The question was unexpected. I wriggled in his pinioning embrace to look up at him.
“You’ve taken great care to point out how heartless you are,” I reminded him. “What do you really want me to believe?”
And it was so wonderful not to know. I almost smiled.
“I could have killed them, but I wouldn’t do it here, or now,” Bill said. He had no color in the moonlight except for the dark pools of his eyes and the dark arches of his brows. “This is where I want to stay. I want a home.”
A vampire, yearning for home.
Bill read my face. “Don’t pity me, Sookie. That would be a mistake.” He seemed willing me to stare into his eyes.
“Bill, you can’t glamor me, or whatever you do. You can’t enchant me into pulling my T-shirt down for you to bite me, you can’t convince me you weren’t ever here, you can’t do any of your usual stuff. You have to be regular with me, or just force me.”
“No,” he said, his mouth almost on mine. “I won’t force you.”
I fought the urge to kiss him. But at least I knew it was my very own urge, not a manufactured one.
“So, if it wasn’t you,” I said, struggling to keep on course, “then Maudette and Dawn knew another vampire. Maudette went to the vampire bar in Shreveport. Maybe Dawn did, too. Will you take me there?”
“Why?” he asked, sounding no more than curious.
I just couldn’t explain being in danger to someone who was so used to being beyond it. At least at night. “I’m not sure Andy Bellefleur will go to the trouble,” I lied.
“There are still Bellefleurs here,” he said, and there was something different in his voice. His arms hardened around me to the point of pain.
“Yes,” I said. “Lots of them. Andy is a police detective. His sister, Portia, is a lawyer. His cousin Terry is a veteran and a bartender. He substitutes for Sam. There are lots of others.”
“Bellefleur . . .”
I was getting crushed.
“Bill,” I said, my voice squeaky with panic.
He loosened his grip immediately. “Excuse me,” he said formally.
“I have to go to bed,” I said. “I’m really tired, Bill.”
He set me down on the gravel with scarcely a bump. He looked down at me.
“You told those other vampires that I belonged to you,” I said.
“Yes.”
“What exactly did that mean?”
“That means that if they try to feed on you, I’ll kill them,” he said. “It means you are my human.”
“I have to say I’m glad you did that, but I’m not really sure what being your human entails,” I said cautiously. “And I don’t recall being asked if that was okay with me.”
“Whatever it is, it’s probably better than partying with Malcolm, Liam, and Diane.”
He wasn’t going to answer me directly.
“Are you going to take me to the bar?”
“What’s your next night off?”
“Two nights from now.”
“Then, at sunset. I’ll drive.”
“You have a car?”
“How do you think I get places?” There might have been a smile on his shining face. He turned to melt into the woods. Over his shoulder he said, “Sookie. Do me proud.”
I was left standing with my mouth open.
Do him proud indeed.
Chapter 4
HALF THE PATRONS of Merlotte’s thought Bill had had a hand in the markings on the women’s bodies. The other 50 percent thought that some of the vampires from bigger towns or cities had bitten Maudette and Dawn when they were out barhopping, and they deserved what they got if they wanted to go to bed with vampires. Some thought the girls had been strangled by a vampire, some thought they had just continued their promiscuous ways into disaster.
But everyone who came into Merlotte’s was worried that some other woman would be killed, too. I couldn’t count the times I was told to be careful, told to watch my friend Bill Compton, told to lock my doors and not let anyone in my house. . . . As if those were things I wouldn’t do, normally.
Jason came in for both commiseration and suspicion as a man who’d “dated” both women. He came by the house one day and held forth for a whole hour, while Gran and I tried to encourage him to keep going with his work like an innocent man would. But for the first time in my memory, my handsome brother was really worried. I wasn’t exactly glad he was in trouble, but I wasn’t exactly sorry, either. I know that was small and petty of me.