"Eric should not be agitating you when you've got a lot to handle already," Bill said, finally. Though never known for its expressiveness, Bill's face was what my grandmother would have described as "locked up tighter than a drum."

Eric folded his arms across his chest and looked down at them.

"Bill?" I said.

"Ask him why he came back to Bon Temps, Sookie," Eric said very quietly.

"Well, old Mr. Compton died, and he wanted to reclaim his…" I couldn't even describe the expression on Bill's face. My heart began to beat faster. Dread gathered in a knot in my stomach. "Bill?"

Eric turned to face away from me, but not before I saw a shade of pity cross his face. Nothing could have scared me more. I might not be able to read a vampire's mind, but in this case his body language said it all. Eric was turning away because he didn't want to watch the knife sliding in.

"Sookie, you would find out when you saw the queen… Maybe I could have kept it from you, because you won't understand… but Eric has taken care of that." Bill gave Eric's back a look that could have drilled a hole through Eric's heart. "When your cousin Hadley was becoming the queen's favorite…"

And suddenly I saw it all, knew what he was going to say, and I rose up on the hospital bed with a gasp, one hand to my chest because I felt my heart shattering. But Bill's voice went on, even though I shook my head violently.

"Apparently, Hadley talked about you and your gift a lot, to impress the queen and keep her interest. And the queen knew I was originally from Bon Temps. On some nights, I've wondered if she sent someone to kill the last Compton and hurry things along. But maybe he truly died of old age." Bill was looking down at the floor, didn't see my left hand extended to him in a "stop" motion.

"She ordered me to return to my human home, to put myself in your way, to seduce you if I had to…"

I couldn't breathe. No matter how my right hand pressed to my chest, I couldn't stop the decimation of my heart, the slide of the knife deeper into my flesh.

"She wanted your gift harnessed for her own use," he said, and he opened his mouth to say more. My eyes were so blurred with tears that I couldn't see properly, couldn't see what expression was on his face and didn't care anyway. But I could not cry while he was anywhere near me. I would not.

"Get out," I said, with a terrible effort. Whatever else happened, I could not bear for him to see the pain he had caused.

He tried to look me straight in the eyes, but mine were too full. Whatever he wanted to convey, it was lost on me. "Please let me finish," he said.

"I never want to see you again, ever in my life," I whispered. "Ever."

He didn't speak. His lips moved, as if he were trying to form a word or phrase, but I shook my head. "Get out," I told him, in a voice so choked with hatred and anguish that it didn't sound like my own. Bill turned and walked past the curtain and out of the emergency room. Eric did not turn around to see my face, thank God. He reached back to pat me on the leg before he left, too.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to kill someone with my bare hands.

I had to be by myself. I could not let anyone see me suffer this much. The pain was tied up with a rage so profound that I had never felt its like. I was sick with anger and hurt. The snap of Jake Purifoy's teeth had been nothing compared to this.

I couldn't stay still. With some difficulty, I eased off the bed. My feet were still bare, of course, and I noticed with an odd detached part of my mind that they were extraordinarily dirty. I staggered out of the triage area, spotted the doors to the waiting room, and aimed myself in that direction. Walking was a problem.

A nurse bustled up to me, a clipboard in her hand. "Miss Stackhouse, a doctor's going to be with you in just a minute. I know you've had to wait, and I'm sorry, but…"

I turned to look at her and she flinched, took a step backward. I kept on toward the doors, my steps uncertain but my purpose clear. I wanted out of there. Beyond that, I didn't know. I made it to the doors and pushed and then I was dragging myself through the waiting room thronged with people. I blended in perfectly with the mix of patients and relatives waiting to see a doctor. Some were dirtier and bloodier than I was, and some were older—and some were way younger. I supported myself with a hand against a wall and kept moving to the doors, to the outside.

I made it.

It was much quieter outside, and it was warm. The wind was blowing, just a little. I was barefoot and penniless, standing under the glaring lights of the walk-in doors. I had no idea where I was in relation to the house, and no idea if that was where I was going, but I wasn't in the hospital any more.

A homeless man stepped in front of me. "You got any change, sister?" he asked. "I'm down on my luck, too."

"Do I look like I have anything?" I asked him, in a reasonable voice.

He looked as unnerved as the nurse had. He said, "Sorry," and backed away. I took a step after him.

I screamed, "I HAVE NOTHING!" And then I said, in a perfectly calm voice, "See, I never had anything to start with."

He gibbered and quavered and I ignored him. I began my walk. The ambulance had turned right coming in, so I turned left. I couldn't remember how long the ride had been. I'd been talking to Delagardie. I had been a different person. I walked and I walked. I walked under palm trees, heard the rich rhythm of music, brushed against the peeling shutters of houses set right up to the sidewalk.

On a street with a few bars, a group of young men came out just as I was passing, and one of them grabbed my arm. I turned on him with a scream, and with a galvanic effort I swung him into a wall. He stood there, dazed and rubbing his head, and his friends pulled him away.

"She crazy," one of them said softly. "Leave her be." They wandered off in the other direction.

After a time, I recovered enough to ask myself why I was doing this. But the answer was vague. When I fell on some broken pavement, scraping my knee badly enough to make it bleed, the new physical pain called me back to myself a little bit more.

"Are you doing this so they'll feel sorry they hurt you?" I asked myself out loud. "Oh my God, poor Sookie! She walked out of the hospital all by herself, driven crazy with grief, and she wandered alone through the dangerous streets of the Big Easy because Bill made her so crazy!"

I didn't want my name to cross Bill's lips ever again. When I was a little more myself—just a little—the depth of my reaction began to surprise me. If we'd still been a couple when I learned what I'd learned this evening, I'd have killed him; I knew that with crystal clarity. But the reason I'd had to get away from the hospital was equally clear; I couldn't have stood dealing with anyone in the world just then. I'd been blindsided with the most painful knowledge: the first man to ever say he loved me had never loved me at all.

His passion had been artificial.

His pursuit of me had been choreographed.

I must have seemed so easy to him, so gullible, so ready for the first man who devoted a little time and effort to winning me. Winning me! The very phrase made me hurt worse. He'd never thought of me as a prize.

Until the structure had been torn down in a single moment, I hadn't realized how much of my life in the past year had been built on the false foundation of Bill's love and regard.

"I saved his life," I said, amazed. "I went to Jackson and risked my life for his, because he loved me." One part of my brain knew that wasn't entirely accurate. I'd done it because I had loved him. And I was amazed, at the same moment, to realize that the pull of his maker, Lorena, had been even stronger than the orders of his queen. But I wasn't in the mood to split emotional hairs. When I thought of Lorena, another realization socked me in the stomach. "I killed someone for him," I said, my words floating in the thick dark night. "Oh, my God. I killed someone for him."