By now the yard was teeming with law enforcement people, all of whom seemed to be very pumped. Officer-involved shootings are not that ordinary in Bon Temps or in Renard Parish. When the FBI is represented at the scene, the excitement and tension were practically quadrupled.
Several more people asked me if I was all right, but no one seemed to be anxious to tell me what to do or to suggest I remove myself, so I sat in the rickety chair with my hands in my lap. I watched all the activity, and I tried to keep my mind blank. That wasn’t possible.
I was worried about Agent Weiss, and I was still feeling the ebbing power of the huge wave of guilt that had washed over me. I should have been upset that the Fellowship guy was dead, I suppose. But I wasn’t.
After a while, it occurred to me that I was also going to be late for work if this elaborate process didn’t get a move on. I knew that was a trivial consideration, when I was staring at the blood that had soaked into the ground, but I also knew it wouldn’t be trivial to my boss.
I called Sam. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember I had to talk him out of coming to get me. I told Sam there were plenty of people on-site and most of them were armed. After that, I had nothing to do but stare off into the woods. They were a tangle of fallen branches, leaves, and various shades of brown, broken up by little pines of various heights that had volunteered. The bright day made the patterns of shadow and shade fascinating.
As I looked into the depths of the woods, I became aware that something was looking back. Yards back within the tree line, a man was standing; no, not a man—a fairy. I can’t read fairies at all clearly; they’re not as blank as vampires, but they’re the closest I’ve found.
It was easy to read the hostility in his stance, though. This fairy was not on my great-grandfather’s side. This fairy would have been glad to see me lying on the ground bleeding. I sat up straighter, abruptly aware I had no idea whether all the police officers in the world could keep me safe from a fairy. My heart thudded once again with alarm, responding to the adrenaline in a sort of tired way. I wanted to tell someone that I was in danger, but I knew that if I pointed the fairy out to any one of the people present, not only would he fade back into the woods, but I might be endangering the human. I’d done enough of that this day.
As I half rose from the lawn chair with no very good plan in mind, the fairy turned his back on me and vanished.
Can’t I have a moment’s peace? At this thought, I had to bend over and cover my face with my hands because I was laughing, and it wasn’t good laughter. Andy came over and squatted in front of me, tried to look into my face. “Sookie,” he said, and for once his voice was gentle. “Hey, girl, get it together. You got to come talk to Sheriff Dearborn.”
Not only did I talk to Bud Dearborn, I also had to talk to lots of other people. Later, I couldn’t remember any of the conversations I had. I told the truth to whoever asked me questions.
I didn’t mention seeing the fairy in the woods simply because no one asked me, “Did you see anyone else here this afternoon?” When I had a second of not feeling stunned and miserable, I wondered why he’d shown himself, why he’d come. Was he tracking me somehow? Was there some kind of supernatural bug planted on me?
“Sookie,” Bud Dearborn said. I blinked.
“Yessir?” I stood up, and my muscles were trembling.
“You can go now, and we’ll talk to you again later,” he said.
“Thanks,” I told him, hardly aware of what I was saying. I climbed into my car, feeling absolutely numb. I told myself to drive home and put on my waitress outfit and get to work. Hustling drinks would be better than sitting at home recycling the events of the day, if I could manage to stand up that long.
Amelia was at work, so I had the house to myself as I pulled on my working pants and my long-sleeved Merlotte’s T-shirt. I felt cold to the bone and wished for the first time that Sam had thought about stocking a Merlotte’s sweatshirt. My reflection in the bathroom mirror was awful: I was white as a vampire, I had big circles under my eyes, and I guessed I looked exactly like someone who’d seen a lot of people bleeding that day.
The evening felt cold and still as I walked out to my car. Night would fall soon. Since Eric and I had bonded, I’d found myself thinking of him every day as the sky grew dark. Now that we’d slept together, my thoughts had turned into cravings. I tried to stuff him in the back of my mind on the drive to the bar, but he persisted in popping to the fore.
Maybe because the day had been such a nightmare, I discovered I would give my entire savings account to see Ericright now . I trudged toward the employee door, gripping the trowel stuffed in my shoulder bag. I thought I was ready for an attack, but I was so preoccupied I didn’t send out my extra sense to detect another presence, and I didn’t see Antoine in the shadow of the Dumpster until he stepped out to greet me. He was smoking a cigarette.
“Geez Louise, Antoine, you scared me to death.”
“Sorry, Sookie. You planning on doing some planting?” He eyed the trowel I’d whipped out of my bag. “We ain’t too busy this evening. I took me a minute to have a smoke.”
“Everybody calm tonight?” I stuffed the trowel down into my purse without trying to explain. Maybe he would chalk it up to my general strangeness.
“Yeah, no one preaching to us; no one getting killed.” He smiled. “D’Eriq’s full of talk about some guy showing up earlier that D’Eriq thought was a fairy. D’Eriq’s on the simple side, but he can see stuff no one else can. But—fairies?”
“Not fairy like gay, but fairy like Tinker Bell?” I’d thought I didn’t have enough remaining energy to be alarmed. I’d thought wrong. I glanced around the parking lot with considerable alarm.
“Sookie? It’s true?” Antoine was staring at me.
I shrugged weakly. Busted.
“Shit,” Antoine said. “Well, shit. This ain’t the same world I was born into, is it?”
“No, Antoine. It isn’t. If D’Eriq says anything else, please tell me. It’s important.” Could have been my great-grandfather watching over me, or his son Dillon. Or it could have been Mr. Hostile who’d been lurking in the woods. What had set the fae world off? For years, I’d never seen one. Now you couldn’t throw a trowel without hitting a fairy.
Antoine eyed me doubtfully. “Sure, Sookie. You in any trouble I should know about?”
Hip-deep in alligators. “No, no. I’m just trying to avoid a problem,” I said, because I didn’t want Antoine to worry and I especially didn’t want him to share that worry with Sam. Sam was sure to be worried enough.
Of course, Sam had heard several versions of the events at Arlene’s trailer, and I had to give him a quick summary as I got ready to work. He was deeply upset about the intentions of Donny and Whit, and when I told him Donny was dead, he said, “Whit should have got killed, too.”
I wasn’t sure I was hearing him right. But when I looked into Sam’s face, I could see he was really angry, really vengeful. “Sam, I think enough people have died,” I said. “I haven’t exactly forgiven them, and maybe that’s not even something I can do, but I don’t think they were the ones who killed Crystal.”
Sam turned away with a snort and put a bottle of rum away with such force that I thought it might shatter.
Despite a measure of alarm, as it turned out I treasured that evening . . . because nothing happened.
No one suddenly announced that he was a gargoyle and wanted a place at the American table.
No one stomped out in a hissy. No one tried to kill me or warn me or lie to me; no one paid me any special attention at all. I was back to being part of the ambience at Merlotte’s, a situation that used to make me bored. I remembered the evenings before I’d met Bill Compton, when I’d known there were vampires but hadn’t actually met one or seen one in the flesh. I remembered how I’d longed to meet an actual vampire. I’d believed their press, which alleged that they were victims of a virus that left them allergic to various things (sunlight, garlic, food) and only able to survive by ingesting blood.