I GOT UP very late the next morning, which was not too surprising. Gran had been asleep when I got home, to my relief, and I was able to climb into my bed without waking her.
I WAS DRINKING a cup of coffee at the kitchen table and Gran was cleaning out the pantry when the phone rang. Gran eased her bottom up onto the stool by the counter, her normal chatting perch, to answer it.
"Hel-lo," she said. For some reason, she always sounded put out, as if a phone call were the last thing on earth she wanted. I knew for a fact that wasn't the case.
"Hey, Everlee. No, sitting here talking to Sookie, she just got up. No, I haven't heard any news today. No, no one called me yet. What? What tornado? Last night was clear. Four Tracks Corner? It did? No! No, it did not! Really? Both of'em? Um, um, um. What did Mike Spencer say?"
Mike Spencer was our parish coroner. I began to have a creepy feeling. I finished my coffee and poured myself another cup. I thought I was going to need it.
Gran hung up a minute later. "Sookie, you are not going to believe what has happened!"
I was willing to bet I would believe it.
"What?" I asked, trying not to look guilty.
"No matter how smooth the weather looked last night, a tornado must have touched down at Four Tracks Corner! It turned over that rent trailer in the clearing there. The couple that was staying in it, they both got killed, trapped under the trailer somehow and crushed to a pulp. Mike says he hasn't seen anything like it."
"Is he sending the bodies for autopsy?"
"Well, I think he has to, though the cause of death seems clear enough, according to Stella. The trailer is over on its side, their car is halfway on top of it, and trees are pulled up in the yard."
"My God," I whispered, thinking of the strength necessary to accomplish the staging of that scene.
"Honey, you didn't tell me if your friend the vampire came in last night?"
I jumped in a guilty way until I realized that in Gran's mind, she'd changed subjects. She'd been asking me if I'd seen Bill every day, and now, at last, I could tell her yes - but not with a light heart.
Predictably, Gran was excited out of her gourd. She fluttered around the kitchen as if Prince Charles were the expected guest.
"Tomorrow night. Now what time's he coming?" she asked.
"After dark. That's as close as I can get."
"We're on daylight saving time, so that'll be pretty late." Gran considered. "Good, we'll have time to eat supper and clear it away beforehand. And we'll have all day tomorrow to clean the house. I haven't cleaned that area rug in a year, I bet!"
"Gran, we're talking about a guy who sleeps in the ground all day," I reminded her. "I don't think he'd ever look at the rug."
"Well, if I'm not doing it for him, then I'm doing it for me, so I can feel proud," Gran said unanswerably. "Besides, young lady, how do you know where he sleeps?"
"Good question, Gran. I don't. But he has to keep out of the light and he has to keep safe, so that's my guess."
Nothing would prevent my grandmother from going into a house-proud frenzy, I realized very shortly. While I was getting ready for work, she went to the grocery and rented a rug cleaner and set to cleaning.
On my way to Merlotte's, I detoured north a bit and drove by the Four Tracks Corner. It was a crossroads as old as human habitation of the area. Now formalized by road signs and pavement, local lore said it was the intersection of two hunting trails. Sooner or later, there would be ranch-style houses and strip malls lining the roads, I guessed, but for now it was woods and the hunting was still good, according to Jason.
Since there was nothing to prevent me, I drove down the rutted path that led to the clearing where the Rattrays' rented trailer had stood. I stopped my car and stared out the windshield, appalled. The trailer, a very small and old one, lay crushed ten feet behind its original location. The Rattrays' dented red car was still resting on one end of the accordian-pleated mobile home. Bushes and debris were littered around the clearing, and the woods behind the trailer showed signs of a great force passing through; branches snapped off, the top of one pine hanging down by a thread of bark. There were clothes up in the branches, and even a roast pan.
I got out slowly and looked around me. The damage was simply incredible, especially since I knew it hadn't been caused by a tornado; Bill the vampire had staged this scene to account for the deaths of the Rattrays.
An old Jeep bumped its way down the ruts to come to a stop by me.
"Well, Sookie Stackhouse!" called Mike Spencer, "What you doing here, girl? Ain't you got work to go to?"
"Yes, sir. I knew the Rat - the Rattrays. This is just an awful thing." I thought that was sufficiently ambiguous. I could see now that the sheriff was with Mike.
"An awful thing. Yes, well. I did hear," Sheriff Bud Dearborn said as climbed down out of the Jeep, "that you and Mack and Denise didn't exactly see eye to eye in the parking lot of Merlotte's, last week."
I felt a cold chill somewhere around the region of my liver as the two men ranged themselves in front of me.
Mike Spencer was the funeral director of one of Bon Temps' two funeral homes. As Mike was always quick and definite in pointing out, anyone who wanted could be buried by Spencer and Sons Funeral Home; but only white people seemed to want to. Likewise, only people of color chose to be buried at Sweet Rest. Mike himself was a heavy middle-aged man with hair and mustache the color of weak tea, and a fondness for cowboy boots and string ties that he could not wear when he was on duty at Spencer and Sons. He was wearing them now.
Sheriff Dearborn, who had the reputation of being a good man, was a little older than Mike, but fit and tough from his thick gray hair to his heavy shoes. The sheriff had a mashed-in face and quick brown eyes. He had been a good friend of my father's.
"Yes, sir, we had us a disagreement," I said frankly in my down-homiest voice.
"You want to tell me about it?" The sheriff pulled out a Marlboro and lit it with a plain, metal lighter.
And I made a mistake. I should have just told him. I was supposed to be crazy, and some thought me simple, too. But for the life of me, I could see no reason to explain myself to Bud Dearborn. No reason, except good sense.
"Why?" I asked.
His small brown eyes were suddenly sharp, and the amiable air vanished.
"Sookie," he said, with a world of disappointment in his voice. I didn't believe in it for a minute.
"I didn't do this," I said, waving my hand at the destruction.
"No, you didn't," he agreed. "But just the same, they die the week after they have a fight with someone, I feel I should ask questions."
I was reconsidering staring him down. It would feel good, but I didn't think feeling good was worth it. It was becoming apparent to me that a reputation for simplicity could be handy.
I may be uneducated and unworldly, but I'm not stupid or unread.
"Well, they were hurting my friend," I confessed, hanging my head and eyeing my shoes.
"Would that be this vampire that's living at the old Compton house?" Mike Spencer and Bud Dearborn exchanged glances.
"Yes, sir." I was surprised to hear where Bill was living, but they didn't know that. From years of deliberately not reacting to things I heard that I didn't want to know, I have good facial control. The old Compton house was right across the fields from us, on the same side of the road. Between our houses lay only the woods and the cemetery. How handy for Bill, I thought, and smiled.
"Sookie Stackhouse, your granny is letting you associate with that vampire?" Spencer said unwisely.
"You can sure talk to her about that," I suggested maliciously, hardly able to wait to hear what Gran would say when someone suggested she wasn't taking care of me. "You know, the Rattrays were trying to drain Bill."
"So the vampire was being drained by the Rattrays? And you stopped them?" interrupted the sheriff.
"Yes," I said and tried to look resolute.
"Vampire draining is illegal," he mused.
"Isn't it murder, to kill a vampire that hasn't attacked you?" I asked.
I may have pushed the naivete a little too hard.
"You know damn good and well it is, though I don't agree with that law. It is a law, and I will uphold it," the sheriff said stiffly.
"So the vampire just let them leave, without threatening vengeance? Saying anything like he wished they were dead?" Mike Spencer was being stupid.
"That's right." I smiled at both of them and then looked at my watch. I remembered the blood on its face, my blood, beaten out of me by the Rattrays. I had to look through that blood to read the time.
"Excuse me, I have to get to work," I said. "Good-bye, Mr. Spencer, Sheriff."
"Good-bye, Sookie," Sheriff Dearborn said. He looked like he had more to ask me, but couldn't think of how to put it. I could tell he wasn't totally happy with the look of the scene, and I doubted any tornado had shown up on radar anywhere. Nonetheless, there was the trailer, there was the car, there were the trees, and the Rattrays had been dead under them. What could you decide but that the tornado had killed them? I guessed the bodies had been sent for an autopsy, and I wondered how much could be told by such a procedure under the circumstances.
The human mind is an amazing thing. Sheriff Dearborn must have known that vampires are very strong. But he just couldn't imagine how strong one could be: strong enough to turn over a trailor, crush it. It was even hard for me to comprehend, and I knew good and well that no tornado had touched down at Four Corners.
The whole bar was humming with the news of the deaths. Maudette's murder had taken a backseat to Denise and Mack's demises. I caught Sam eyeing me a couple of times, and I thought about the night before and wondered how much he knew. But I was scared to ask in case he hadn't seen anything. I knew there were things that had happened the night before that I hadn't yet explained to my own satisfaction, but I was so grateful to be alive that I put off thinking of them.
I'd never smiled so hard while I toted drinks, I'd never made change so briskly, I'd never gotten orders so exactly. Even ol' bushy-haired Rene didn't slow me down, though he insisted on dragging me into his long-winded conversations every time I came near the table he was sharing with Hoyt and a couple of other cronies.
Rene played the role of crazy Cajun some of the time, though any Cajun accent he might assume was faked. His folks had let their heritage fade. Every woman he'd married had been hard-living and wild. His brief hitch with Arlene had been when she was young and childless, and she'd told me that from time to time she'd done things then that curled her hair to think about now. She'd grown up since then, but Rene hadn't. Arlene was sure fond of him, to my amazement.
Everyone in the bar was excited that night because of the unusual happenings in Bon Temps. A woman had been murdered, and it was a mystery; usually murders in Bon Temps are easily solved. And a couple had died violently by a freak of nature. I attributed what happened next to that excitement. This is a neighborhood bar, with a few out of towners who pass through on a regular basis, and I've never had much problem with unwanted attention. But that night one of the men at a table next to Rene and Hoyt's, a heavy blond man with a broad, red face, slid his hand up the leg of my shorts when I was bringing their beer.
That doesn't fly at Merlotte's.
I thought of bringing the tray down on his head when I felt the hand removed. I felt someone standing right behind me. I turned my head and saw Rene, who had left his chair without my even realizing it. I followed his arm down and saw that his hand was gripping the blond's and squeezing. The blond's red face was turning a mottled mixture.
"Hey, man, let go!" the blond protested. "I didn't mean nothing."
"You don't touch anyone who works here. That's the rule." Rene might be short and slim, but anyone there would have put his money on our local boy over the beefier visitor.
"Okay, okay."
"Apologize to the lady."
"To Crazy Sookie?" His voice was incredulous. He must have been here before.
Rene's hand must have tightened. I saw tears spring into the blond's eyes.
"I'm sorry, Sookie, okay?"
I nodded as regally as I could. Rene let go of the man's hand abruptly and jerked his thumb to tell the guy to take a hike. The blond lost no time throwing himself out the door. His companion followed.
"Rene, you should have let me handle that myself," I said to him very quietly when it seemed the patrons had resumed their conversations. We'd given the gossip mill enough grist for at least a couple of days. "But I appreciate you standing up for me."
"I don't want no one messing with Arlene's friend," Rene said matter-of-factly. "Merlotte's is a nice place, we all want to keep it nice.'Sides, sometimes you remind me of Cindy, you know?"
Cindy was Rene's sister. She'd moved to Baton Rouge a year or two ago. Cindy was blond and blue-eyed: beyond that I couldn't think of a similarity. But it didn't seem polite to say so. "You see Cindy much?" I asked. Hoyt and the other man at the table were exchanging Shreveport Captains scores and statistics.
"Every so now and then," Rene said, shaking his head as if to say he'd like it to be more often. "She works in a hospital cafeteria."
I patted him on the shoulder. "I gotta go work."
When I reached the bar to get my next order, Sam raised his eyebrows at me. I widened my eyes to show how amazed I was at Rene's intervention, and Sam shrugged slightly, as if to say there was no accounting for human behavior.
But when I went behind the bar to get some more napkins, I noticed he'd pulled out the baseball bat he kept below the till for emergencies.
G RAN KEPT ME busy all the next day. She dusted and vacuumed and mopped, and I scrubbed the bathrooms - did vampires even need to use the bathroom? I wondered, as I chugged the toilet brush around the bowl. Gran had me vacuum the cat hair off the sofa. I emptied all the trash cans. I polished all the tables. I wiped down the washer and the dryer, for goodness's sake.
When Gran urged me to get in the shower and change my clothes, I realized that she regarded Bill the vampire as my date. That made me feel a little odd. One, Gran was so desperate for me to have a social life that even a vampire was eligible for my attention; two, that I had some feelings that backed up that idea; three, that Bill might accurately read all this; four, could vampires even do it like humans?
I showered and put on my makeup and wore a dress, since I knew Gran would have a fit if I didn't. It was a little blue cotton-knit dress with tiny daisies all over it, and it was tighter than Gran liked and shorter than Jason deemed proper in his sister. I'd heard that the first time I'd worn it. I put my little yellow ball earrings in and wore my hair pulled up and back with a yellow banana clip holding it loosely.
Gran gave me one odd look, which I was at a loss to interpret. I could have found out easily enough by listening in, but that was a terrible thing to do to the person you lived with, so I was careful not to. She herself was wearing a skirt and blouse that she often wore to the Descendants of the Glorious Dead meetings, not quite good enough for church, but not plain enough for everyday wear.
I was sweeping the front porch, which we'd forgotten, when he came. He made a vampire entrance; one minute he wasn't there, and the next he was, standing at the bottom of the steps and looking up at me.
I grinned. "Didn't scare me," I said.
He looked a little embarrassed. "It's just a habit," he said, "appearing like that. I don't make much noise."
I opened the door. "Come on in," I invited, and he came up the steps, looking around.
"I remember this," he said. "It wasn't so big, though."
"You remember this house? Gran's gonna love it." I preceded him into the living room, calling Gran as I went.
She came into the living room very much on her dignity, and I realized for the first time she'd taken great pains with her thick white hair, which was smooth and orderly for a change, wrapped around her head in a complicated coil. She had on lipstick, too.
Bill proved as adept at social tactics as my grandmother. They greeted, thanked each other, complimented, and finally Bill ended up sitting on the couch and, after carrying out a tray with three glasses of peach tea, my Gran sat in the easy chair, making it clear I was to perch by Bill. There was no way to get out of this without being even more obvious, so I sat by him, but scooted forward to the edge, as if I might hop up at any moment to get him a refill on his, the ritual glass of iced tea.
He politely touched his lips to the edge of the glass and then set it down. Gran and I took big nervous swallows of ours.
Gran picked an unfortunate opening topic. She said, "I guess you heard about the strange tornado."
"Tell me," Bill said, his cool voice as smooth as silk. I didn't dare look at him, but sat with my hands folded and my eyes fixed to them.
So Gran told him about the freak tornado and the deaths of the Rats. She told him the whole thing seemed pretty awful, but cut-and-dried, and at that I thought Bill relaxed just a millimeter.
"I went by yesterday on my way to work," I said, without raising my gaze. "By the trailer."
"Did you find it looked as you expected?" Bill asked, only curiosity in his voice.
"No," I said. "It wasn't anything I could have expected. I was really ... amazed."
"Sookie, you've seen tornado damage before," Gran said, surprised.
I changed the subject. "Bill, where'd you get your shirt? It looks nice." He was wearing khaki Dockers and a green-and-brown striped golfing shirt, polished loafers, and thin, brown socks.
"Dillard's," he said, and I tried to imagine him at the mall in Monroe, perhaps, other people turning to look at this exotic creature with his glowing skin and beautiful eyes. Where would he get the money to pay with? How did he wash his clothes? Did he go into his coffin naked? Did he have a car or did he just float wherever he wanted to go?
Gran was pleased with the normality of Bill's shopping habits. It gave me another pang of pain, observing how glad she was to see my supposed suitor in her living room, even if (according to popular literature) he was a victim of a virus that made him seem dead.
Gran plunged into questioning Bill. He answered her with courtesy and apparent goodwill. Okay, he was a polite dead man.
"And your people were from this area?" Gran inquired.
"My father's people were Comptons, my mother's people Loudermilks," Bill said readily. He seemed quite relaxed.
"There are lots of Loudermilks left," Gran said happily. "But I'm afraid old Mr. Jessie Compton died last year."
"I know," Bill said easily. "That's why I came back. The land reverted to me, and since things have changed in our culture toward people of my particular persuasion, I decided to claim it."
"Did you know the Stackhouses? Sookie says you have a long history." I thought Gran had put it well. I smiled at my hands.
"I remember Jonas Stackhouse," Bill said, to Gran's delight. "My folks were here when Bon Temps was just a hole in the road at the edge of the frontier. Jonas Stackhouse moved here with his wife and his four children when I was a young man of sixteen. Isn't this the house he built, at least in part?"
I noticed that when Bill was thinking of the past, his voice took on a different cadence and vocabulary. I wondered how many changes in slang and tone his English had taken on through the past century.
Of course, Gran was in genealogical hog heaven. She wanted to know all about Jonas, her husband's great-great-great-great-grandfather. "Did he own slaves?" she asked.
"Ma'am, if I remember correctly, he had a house slave and a yard slave. The house slave was a woman of middle age and the yard slave a very big young man, very strong, named Minas. But the Stackhouses mostly worked their own fields, as did my folks."
"Oh, that is exactly the kind of 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 time without speaking. I opened my mind, let my guards down completely, relaxed. His silence washed over me. I stood, closed my eyes, breathed out the relief that was too profound for words.
"Are you happy now?" he asked, just as if he could tell.
"Yes," I breathed. At that moment I felt that no matter what this creature beside me had done, this peace was priceless after a lifetime of the yammering of other minds inside my own.
"You feel good to me, too," he said, surprising me.
"How so?" I asked, dreamy and slow.
"No fear, no hurry, no condemnation. I don't have to use my glamor to make you hold still, to have a conversation with you."
"Glamor?"
"Like hypnotism," he explained. "All vampires use it, to some extent or another. Because to feed, until the new synthetic blood was developed, we had to persuade people we were harmless ... or assure them they hadn't seen us at all ... or delude them into thinking they'd seen something else."
"Does it work on me?"
"Of course," he said, sounding shocked.
"Okay, do it."
"Look at me."
"It's dark."
"No matter. Look at my face." And he stepped in front of me, his hands resting lightly on my shoulders, and looked down at me. I could see the faint shine of his skin and eyes, and I peered up at him, wondering if I'd begin to squawk like a chicken or take my clothes off.
But what happened was ... nothing. I felt only the nearly druglike relaxation of being with him.
"Can you feel my influence?" he asked. He sounded a little breathless.
"Not a bit, I'm sorry," I said humbly. "I just see you glow."
"You can see that?" I'd surprised him again.
"Sure. Can't everyone?"
"No. This is strange, Sookie."
"If you say so. Can I see you levitate?"
"Right here?" Bill sounded amused.
"Sure, why not? Unless there's a reason?"
"No, none at all." And he let go of my arms and began to rise.
I breathed a sigh of pure rapture. He floated up in the dark, gleaming like white marble in the moonlight. When he was about two feet off the ground, he began hovering. I thought he was smiling down at me.
"Can all of you do that?" I asked.
"Can you sing?"
"Nope, can't carry a tune."
"Well, we can't all do the same things, either." Bill came down slowly and landed on the ground without a thump. "Most humans are squeamish about vampires. You don't seem to be," he commented.
I shrugged. Who was I to be squeamish about something out of the ordinary? He seemed to understand because, after a pause, during which we'd resumed walking, Bill said, "Has it always been hard for you?"
"Yes, always." I couldn't say otherwise, though I didn't want to whine. "When I was very small, that was worst, because I didn't know how to put up my guard, and I heard thoughts I wasn't supposed to hear, of course, and I repeated them like a child will. My parents didn't know what to do about me. It embarrassed my father, in particular. My mother finally took me to a child psychologist, who knew exactly what I was, but she just couldn't accept it and kept trying to tell my folks I was reading their body language and was very observant, so I had good reason to imagine I heard people's thoughts. Of course, she couldn't admit I was literally hearing people's thoughts because that just didn't fit into her world.
"And I did poorly in school because it was so hard for me to concentrate when so few others were. But when there was testing, I would test very high because the other kids were concentrating on their own papers ... that gave me a little leeway. Sometimes my folks thought I was lazy for not doing well on everyday work. Sometimes the teachers thought I had a learning disability; oh, you wouldn't believe the theories. I must have had my eyes and ears tested every two months, seemed like, and brain scans ... gosh. My poor folks paid through the nose. But they never could accept the simple truth. At least outwardly, you know?"
"But they knew inside."
"Yes. Once, when my dad was trying to decide whether to back a man who wanted to open an auto parts store, he asked me to sit with him when the man came to the house. After the man left, my dad took me outside and looked away and said, ¡®Sookie, is he telling the truth?' It was the strangest moment."
"How old were you?"
"I must've been less than seven'cause they died when I was in the second grade."
"How?"
"Flash flood. Caught them on the bridge west of here."
Bill didn't comment. Of course, he'd seen deaths piled upon deaths.
"Was the man lying?" he asked after a few seconds had gone by.
"Oh, yes. He planned to take Daddy's money and run."
"You have a gift."
"Gift. Right." I could feel the corners of my mouth pull down.
"It makes you different from other humans."
"You're telling me." We walked for a moment in silence. "So you don't consider yourself human at all?"
"I haven't for a long time."
"Do you really believe you've lost your soul?" That was what the Catholic Church was preaching about vampires.
"I have no way of knowing," Bill said, almost casually. It was apparent that he'd brooded over it so often it was quite a commonplace thought to him. "Personally, I think not. There is something in me that isn't cruel, not murderous, even after all these years. Though I can be both."
"It's not your fault you were infected with a virus."
Bill snorted, even managing to sound elegant doing that. "There have been theories as long as there have been vampires. Maybe that one is true." Then he looked as if he was sorry he'd said that. "If what makes a vampire is a virus," he went on in a more offhand manner, "it's a selective one."
"How do you become a vampire?" I'd read all kinds of stuff, but this would be straight from the horse's mouth.
"I would have to drain you, at one sitting or over two or three days, to the point of your death, then give you my blood. You would lie like a corpse for about forty-eight hours, sometimes as long as three days, then rise and walk at night. And you would be hungry."
The way he said "hungry" made me shiver.
"No other way?"
"Other vampires have told me humans they habitually bite, day after day, can become vampires quite unexpectedly. But that requires consecutive, deep, feedings. Others, under the same conditions, merely become anemic. Then again, when people are near to death for some other reason, a car accident or a drug overdose, perhaps, the process can go ... badly wrong."
I was getting the creepies. "Time to change the subject. What do you plan on doing with the Compton land?"
"I plan on living there, as long as I can. I'm tired of drifting from city to city. I grew up in the country. Now that I have a legal right to exist, and I can go to Monroe or Shreveport or New Orleans for synthetic blood or prostitutes who specialize in our kind, I want to stay here. At least see if it's possible. I've been roaming for decades."
"What kind of shape is the house in?"
"Pretty bad," he admitted. "I've been trying to clean it out. That I can do at night. But I need workmen to get some repairs done. I'm not bad at carpentry, but I don't know a thing about electricity."
Of course, he wouldn't.
"It seems to me the house may need rewiring," Bill continued, sounding for all the world like any other anxious homeowner.
"Do you have a phone?"
"Sure," he said, surprised.
"So what's the problem with the workmen?"
"It's hard to get in touch with them at night, hard to get them to meet with me so I can explain what needs doing. They're scared, or they think it's a prank call." Frustration was evident in Bill's voice, though his face was turned away from me.
I laughed. "If you want, I'll call them," I offered. "They know me. Even though everyone thinks I'm crazy, they know I'm honest."
"That would be a great favor," Bill said, after some hesitation. "They could work during the day, after I'd met with them to discuss the job and the cost."
"What an inconvenience, not being able to get out in the day," I said thoughtlessly. I'd never really considered it before.
Bill's voice was dry. "It certainly is."
"And having to hide your resting place," I blundered on.
When I felt the quality of Bill's silence, I apologized.
"I'm sorry," I said. If it hadn't been so dark, he would have seen me turn red.
"A vampire's daytime resting place is his most closely guarded secret," Bill said stiffly.