"You call her up, I'll give a reference," I said.

"It's a deal."

We parted happy, and he loped across the newly neat yard to his shop. I didn't know if Dawson would be to Amelia's taste or not, but I'd do my best to persuade her to give him a chance.

As I drove home, I listened to the car for any strange noise. It purred away.

Amelia and Octavia came in as I was leaving for work.

"How are you feeling?" Amelia said with a knowing air.

"Fine," I said automatically. Then I understood she thought I hadn't come home the night before. She thought I'd been having a good time with someone. "Hey, you remember Tray Dawson, right? You met him at Maria-Star's apartment."

"Sure."

"He's going to call you. Be sweet."

I left her grinning after me as I got into my car.

For once, work was boring and normal. Terry was substituting since Sam hated to work on Sunday afternoons. Merlotte's was having a calm day. We opened late on Sunday and we closed early, so I was ready to start home by seven. No one showed up in the parking lot, and I was able to walk directly to my car without being accosted for a long, weird conversation or being attacked.

The next morning I had errands to run in town. I was short on cash, so I drove to the ATM, waving at Tara Thornton du Rone. Tara smiled and waved back. Marriage was suiting her, and I hoped she and JB were having a happier time of it than my brother and his wife. As I drove away from the bank, to my astonishment I spotted Alcide Herveaux coming out of the offices of Sid Matt Lancaster, an ancient and renowned lawyer. I pulled into Sid Matt's parking lot, and Alcide came over to talk to me.

I should have driven on, hoping he hadn't noticed me.

The conversation was awkward. Alcide had had a lot to deal with, in all fairness. His girlfriend was dead, brutally murdered. Several other members of his pack were also dead. He'd had a huge cover-up to arrange. But he was now the leader of the pack, and he had gotten to celebrate his victory in the traditional way. In hindsight, I suspect he was fairly embarrassed at having sex with a young woman in public, especially so soon after his girlfriend's death. This was quite a bundle of emotions I was reading in his head, and he was flushed when he came to my car window.

"Sookie, I haven't had a chance to thank you for all your help that night. It's lucky for us your boss decided to come with you."

Yeah, since you wouldn't have saved my life and he did, I'm glad, too. "No problem, Alcide," I said, my voice wonderfully even and calm. I was going to have a good day, dammit. "Have things settled down in Shreveport?"

"The police don't seem to have a clue," he said, glancing around to make sure no one else was within hearing distance. "They haven't found the site yet, and there's been a lot of rain. We're hoping sooner rather than later they'll cut back on their investigation."

"You-all still planning the big announcement?"

"It'll have to be soon. The heads of other packs in the area have been in contact with me. We don't have a meeting of all the leaders like the vampires do, mostly because they have one leader for each state and we have a hell of a lot of packleaders. Looks like we'll all elect a representative from the packleaders, one from each state, and those representatives will go to a national meeting."

"That sounds like a step in the right direction."

"Also, we might ask other wereanimals if they want to come in with us. Like, Sam could belong to my pack in an auxiliary way, though he's not a Were. And it would be good if the lone wolves, like Dawson, came to some of the pack parties ... came out howling with us or something."

"Dawson seems to like his life the way it is," I said. "And you'll have to talk to Sam, not me, about whether he wants to associate with you-all formally."

"Sure. You seem to have a lot of influence with him. Just thought I'd mention it."

I didn't see it that way. Sam had a lot of influence over me, but whether I had any over him ... I was dubious. Alcide began making the little shifts in stance that told me as clearly as his brain had that he was about to go his way on whatever business had brought him to Bon Temps.

"Alcide," I said, seized by an impulse, "I do have a question."

He said, "Sure."

"Who's taking care of the Furnan children?"

He looked at me, then away. "Libby's sister. She's got three of her own, but she said she was glad to take them in. There's enough money for their upbringing. When it comes time for them to go to college, we'll see what we can do for the boy."

"For the boy?"

"He's pack."

If I'd had a brick in my hand, I wouldn't have minded using it on Alcide. Good God almighty. I took a deep breath. To give him credit, the sex of the child wasn't the issue at all. It was his pure blood.

"There may be enough insurance money for the girl to go, too," Alcide said, since he was no fool. "The aunt wasn't too clear about that, but she knows we'll help."

"And she knows who ‘we' is?"

He shook his head. "We told her it was a secret society, like the Masons, that Furnan belonged to."

There didn't seem to be anything left to say.

"Good luck," I said. He'd already had a fair share of that, no matter what you thought about the two dead women that had been his girlfriends. After all, he himself had survived to achieve his father's goal.

"Thank you, and thanks again for your part in that luck. You're still a friend of the pack," he said very seriously. His beautiful green eyes lingered on my face. "And you're one of my favorite women in the world," he added unexpectedly.

"That's a real nice compliment, Alcide," I said, and drove away. I was glad I'd talked to him. Alcide had grown up a lot in the past few weeks. All in all, he was changing into a man I admired much more than I had the old one.

I'd never forget the blood and the screaming of the horrific night in the abandoned office park in Shreveport, but I began to feel that some good had come out of it.

When I returned home, I found that Octavia and Amelia were in the front yard, raking. This was a delightful discovery. I hated raking worse than anything in the world, but if I didn't go over the yard once or twice during the fall, the pine needle buildup was dreadful.

I had been thanking people all day long. I parked in the back and came out the front.

"Do you bag these up or burn them?" Amelia called.

"Oh, I burn 'em when there's not a burn ban on," I said. "It's so nice of you both to think of doing this." I wasn't aiming to gush—but having your very least favorite chore done for you was really quite a treat.

"I need the exercise," Octavia said. "We went to the mall in Monroe yesterday, so I did get some walking in."

I thought Amelia treated Octavia more like a grandmother than a teacher.

"Did Tray call?" I asked.

"He sure did." Amelia smiled broadly.

"He thought you were fine-looking."

Octavia laughed. "Amelia, you're a femme fatale."

She looked happy and said, "I think he's an interesting guy."

"A bit older than you," I said, just so she'd know.

Amelia shrugged. "I don't care. I'm ready to date. I think Pam and I are more buddies than honeys. And since I found that litter of kittens, I'm open for guy business."

"You really think Bob made a choice? Wouldn't that have been, like, instinct?" I said.

Just then, the cat in question wandered across the yard, curious to see why we were all standing out in the open when there was a perfectly good couch and a few beds in the house.

Octavia gave a gusty sigh. "Oh, hell," she muttered. She straightened and held her hands out."Potestas mea te in formam veram tuam commutabit natura ips reaffirmet Incantationes praeviae deletae sunt," she said.