Okay, I'd yucked myself out. I was a human woman. I tried to be a good woman. I had to find Quinn because I had committed myself to him . . . sort of.

No, no quibbling!

"What are you thinking about, Sookie?" Eric asked out of the darkness. "Your face has had thoughts rippling across it too fast to follow."

The fact that he could see me—not only in the dark, but while he was supposed to be watching the road—was exasperating and scary. And proof of his superiority, my inner cave-woman said.

"Eric, just get me home. I'm in emotional overload."

He didn't speak again. Maybe he was being wise, or maybe the healing was painful.

"We need to talk about this again," he said when he pulled into my driveway. He parked in front of the house, turned to me as much as he could in the little car. "Sookie, I'm hurting.... Can I ..." He leaned over, brushed his fingers over my neck.

At the very idea, my body betrayed me. A throbbing started down low, and that was just wrong. A person shouldn't get excited at the idea of being bitten. That's bad, right? I clenched my fists so tightly my fingernails made my palms hurt.

Now that I could see him better, now that the interior of the car was illuminated with the harsh glare of the security light, I realized that Eric was even paler than usual. As I watched, the bullet began exiting the wound, and he leaned back against his seat, his eyes shut. Millimeter by millimeter, the bullet was extruded until it dropped into my waiting hand. I remembered Eric getting me to suck out a bullet in his arm. Ha! What a fraud he'd been. The bullet would've come out on its own. My indignation made me feel more like myself.

"I think you can make it home," I said, though I felt an almost irresistible urge to lean over to him and offer my neck or my wrist. I gritted my teeth and got out of the car. "You can stop at Merlotte's and get bottled blood if you really need some."

"You're hard-hearted," Eric said, but he didn't sound truly angry or affronted.

"I am," I said, and I smiled at him. "You be careful, you hear?"

"Of course," he said. "And I'm not stopping for any policemen."

I made myself march into the house without looking back. When I was inside the front door and had shut it firmly behind me, I felt an immediate relief. Thank goodness. I'd wondered if I was going to turn around at every step I took away from him. This blood tie thing was really irritating. If I wasn't careful and vigilant, I was going to do something I'd regret.

"I am woman, hear me roar," I said.

"Gosh, what prompted that?" Amelia asked, and I jumped. She was coming down the hall from the kitchen in her nightgown and matching robe, peach with cream-colored lace trim. Everything of Amelia's was nice. She'd never sneer at anyone else's shopping habits, but she'd never wear anything from Wal-Mart, either.

"I've had a trying evening," I said. I looked down at myself. Only a little blood on the blue silk T-shirt. I'd have to soak it. "How have things gone here?"

"Octavia called me," Amelia said, and though she was trying to keep her voice steady, I could feel the anxiety coming off her in waves.

"Your mentor." I wasn't at my brightest.

"Yep, the one and only." She bent down to pick up Bob, who always seemed to be around if Amelia was upset. She held him to her chest and buried her face in his fur. "She had heard, of course. Even after Katrina and all the changes it made in her life, she has to bring upthe mistake." (That was what Amelia called it—the mistake.)

"I wonder what Bob calls it," I said.

Amelia looked over Bob's head at me, and I knew instantly I'd said a tactless thing. "Sorry," I said. "I wasn't thinking. But maybe it's not too realistic to think you can get out of this without being called to account, huh?"

"You're right," she said. She didn't seem too happy about my rightness, but at least she said it. "I did wrong. I attempted something I shouldn't have, and Bob paid the price."

Wow, when Amelia decided to confess, she went whole hog.

"I'm going to have to take my licks," she said. "Maybe they'll take away my magic practice for a year. Maybe longer."

"Oh. That seems harsh," I said. In my fantasy, her mentor just scolded Amelia in front of a room full of magicians and sorcerers and witches or what-have-you, and then they transformed Bob back. He promptly forgave Amelia and told her he loved her. Since he forgave her, the rest of the assemblage did, too, and Amelia and Bob came back to my house and lived here together ... for a good long while. (I wasn't too specific about that part.)

"That's the mildest punishment possible," Amelia said.

"Oh."

"You don't want to know the other possible sentences." She was right. I didn't. "Well, what mysterious errand did Eric take you on?" Amelia asked.

Amelia couldn't have tipped off anyone to our destination or route; she hadn't known where we were going. "Oh, ah, he just wanted to take me to a new restaurant in Shreveport. It had a French name. It was pretty nice."

"So, this was like a date?" I could tell she was wondering what place Quinn played in my relationship with Eric.

"Oh, no, not a date," I said, sounding unconvincing even to myself. "No guy-girl action going on. Just, you know, hanging out." Kissing. Getting shot.

"He sure is handsome," Amelia said.

"Yeah, no doubt about it. I've met some toothsome guys. Remember Claude?" I'd shown Amelia the poster that had arrived in the mail two weeks before, a blowup of the romance novel cover for which Claude had posed. She'd been impressed— what woman wouldn't be?

"Ah, I went to watch Claude strip last week." Amelia couldn't meet my eyes.

"And you didn't take me!" Claude was a very disagreeable person, especially when contrasted with his sister, Claudine, but he was beyond gorgeous. He was in the Brad Pitt stratosphere of male beauty. Of course, he was gay. Wouldn't you know it? "You went while I was at work?"

"I thought you wouldn't approve of my going," she said, ducking her head. "I mean, since you're friends with his sister. I went with Tara. JB was working. Are you mad?"

"Nah. I don't care." My friend Tara owned a dress shop, and her new husband, JB, worked at a women's exercise center. "I would like to see Claude trying to act like he was enjoying himself."

"I think he was having a good time," she said. "There's no one Claude loves better than Claude, right? So all these women looking at him and admiring him ... He's not into women, but he's sure into being admired."

"True. Let's go see him together sometime."

"Okay," she said, and I could tell she was quite cheerful again. "Now, tell me what you ordered at this new fancy restaurant." So I told her. But all the while I was wishing I didn't have to keep silent about my great-grandfather. I wanted so badly to tell Amelia about Niall: how he looked, what he'd said, that I had a whole history I hadn't known. And it would take me a while to process what my grandmother had endured, to alter my picture of her in light of the facts I'd learned. And I had to rethink my unpleasant memories of my mother, too. She'd fallen for my dad like a ton of bricks, and she'd had his kids because she loved him ... only to find that she didn't want to share him with them, especially with me, another female. At least, this was my new insight.

"There was more stuff," I said, a yawn splitting my jaw in two. It was very late. "But I've got to get to bed. I get any phone calls or anything?"

"That Were from Shreveport called. He wanted to talk to you, and I told him you were out for the evening and he should call you on your cell. He asked if he could meet up with you, but I said I didn't know where you were."

"Alcide," I said. "I wonder what he wanted." I figured I'd call him tomorrow.