I felt oddly deflated at this easy—easy to me, that is— removal of a real thorn in my side. I found myself wishing we could abduct Sandra Pelt and reprogram her, too. I didn't think she'd be as easy to convert. There had been some big pathology going on in the Pelt family.

The witches were happy. Calvin was pleased. I was relieved. Calvin told Tanya he was going to take her back to Hotshot. The somewhat-puzzled Tanya made her departure with a lot more dignity than her entrance. She didn't understand why she'd been in my house and she didn't seem to remember what the witches had done. But she also didn't seem upset about that confusion in her memory.

The best of all possible worlds.

Maybe Jason and Crystal could work things out now that Tanya's pernicious influence was gone. After all, Crystal had really wanted to marry Jason, and she had seemed genuinely pleased that she was pregnant again. Why she was so discontented now . . . I simply didn't get it.

I could add her to the long list of people I didn't understand.

While the witches cleaned up the living room with the windows open—though it was a chilly night, I wanted to get rid of the lingering smell of the herbs—I sprawled on my bed with a book. I found I wasn't focused enough to read. Finally, I decided to go outside, and I threw on a hoody and called to Amelia to let her know. I sat in one of the wooden chairs Amelia and I had bought at Wal-Mart at end-of-summer clearance-sale prices, and I admired the matching table with its umbrella all over again. I reminded myself to take the umbrella down and cover the furniture for the winter. Then I leaned back and let go of my thoughts.

For a while it was nice to simply be outside, smelling the trees and the ground, hearing a whip-poor-will give its enigmatic call from the surrounding woods. The security light made me feel safe, though I knew that was an illusion. If there's light, you can just see what's coming for you a little more clearly.

Bill stepped out of the woods and strolled silently over to the yard set. He sat in one of the other chairs.

We didn't speak for several moments. I didn't feel the surge of anguish I'd felt over the past few months when he was around. He barely disturbed the fall night with his presence, he was so much a part of it.

"Selah has moved to Little Rock," he said.

"How come?"

"She got a position with a large firm," he said. "It was what she told me she wanted. They specialize in vampire properties."

"She hooked on vamps?"

"I believe so. Not my doing."

"Weren't you her first?" Maybe I sounded a little bitter. He'd been my first, in every way.

"Don't," he said, and turned his face toward me. It was radiantly pale. "No," he said finally. "I was not her first. And I always knew it was the vampire in me that attracted her, not the person who was a vampire."

I understood what he was saying. When I'd learned he'd been ordered to ingratiate himself with me, I'd felt it was the telepath in me that had gotten his attention, not the woman who was the telepath. "What goes around, comes around," I said.

"I never cared about her," he said. "Or very little." He shrugged. "There've been so many like her."

"I'm not sure how you think this is going to make me feel."

"I'm only telling you the truth. There has been only one you." And then he got up and walked back into the woods, human slow, letting me watch him leave.

Apparently Bill was conducting a kind of stealth campaign to win back my regard. I wondered if he dreamed I could love him again. I still felt pain when I thought of the night I'd learned the truth. I figured my regard would be the outer limits of what he could hope to earn. Trust, love? I couldn't see that happening.

I sat outside for a few more minutes, thinking about the evening I'd just had. One enemy agent down. The enemy herself to go. Then I thought of the police search for the missing people, all Weres, in Shreveport. I wondered when they'd give up.

Surely I wouldn't have to deal with Were politics again any time soon; the survivors would be absorbed in setting their house in order.

I hoped Alcide was enjoying being the leader, and I wondered if he'd succeeded in creating yet another little purebred Were the night of the takeover. I wondered who had taken the Furnan children.

As long as I was speculating, I wondered where Felipe de Castro had established his headquarters in Louisiana or if he'd stayed in Vegas. I wondered if anyone had told Bubba that Louisiana was under a new regime, and I wondered if I'd ever see him again. He had one of the most famous faces in the world, but his head had been sadly addled by being brought over at the last possible second by a vampire working in the morgue in Memphis. Bubba had not weathered Katrina well; he'd gotten cut off from the other New Orleans vampires and had had to subsist on rats and small animals (left-behind pet cats, I suspected) until he'd been rescued one night by a search party of Baton Rouge vamps. The last I'd heard, they'd had to send him out of state for rest and recuperation. Maybe he'd wind up in Vegas. He'd always done well in Vegas, when he was alive.

Suddenly, I realized I was stiff with sitting so long, and the night had grown uncomfortably cold. My jacket wasn't doing the job. It was time to go inside and go to bed. The rest of the house was dark, and I figured Octavia and Amelia were exhausted by their witch work.

I heaved myself up from the chair, let the umbrella down, and opened the toolshed door, leaning the umbrella against a bench where the man I'd thought was my grandfather had made repairs. I shut the toolshed door, feeling I was shutting summer inside.

Chapter 18

After a quiet and peaceful Monday off, I went in Tuesday to work the lunch shift. When I'd left home, Amelia had been painting a chest of drawers she'd found at the local junk store. Octavia had been trimming the dead heads off the roses. She'd said they needed pruning back for the winter, and I'd told her to have at it. My grandmother had been the rose person in our household, and she hadn't let me lay a finger on them unless they needed spraying for aphids. That had been one of my jobs.

Jason came into Merlotte's for lunch with a bunch of his coworkers. They put two tables together and formed a cluster of happy men. Cooler weather and no big storms made for happy parish road crews. Jason seemed almost overly animated, his brain a jumble of leaping thoughts. Maybe having the pernicious influence of Tanya erased had already made a difference. But I made a real effort to stay out of his head, because after all, he was my brother.

When I carried a big tray of Cokes and tea over to the table, Jason said, "Crystal says hey."

"How's she feeling today?" I asked, to show proper concern, and Jason made a circle of his forefinger and thumb. I served the last mug of tea, careful to put it down evenly so it wouldn't spill, and I asked Dove Beck, a cousin of Alcee's, if he wanted any extra lemon.

"No, thanks," he said politely. Dove, who'd gotten married the day after graduation, was a whole different kettle of fish from Alcee. At thirty, he was younger, and as far as I could tell—and I could tell pretty far—he didn't have that inner core of anger that the detective did. I'd gone to school with one of Dove's sisters.

"How's Angela?" I asked him, and he smiled.

"She married Maurice Kershaw," he said. "They got a little boy, cutest kid in the world. Angela's a new woman—she don't smoke or drink, and she's in church when the doors open."

"I'm glad to hear that. Tell her I asked," I said, and began taking orders. I heard Jason telling his buddies about a fence he was going to build, but I didn't have time to pay attention.