I said flatly, "No, I'm not."
He eyed me for a long moment. I met his gaze. "Okay," he said slowly. "Then someone owes you, big time."
"That would be closer to the truth," I said, and wondered in turn if I myself was being truthful. "Thanks for getting my mail for me, Big Bro. I need to crawl back in bed."
"No problem. You want to go to the doctor?"
I shook my head. I couldn't face the waiting room.
"Then you let me know if you need me to get you some groceries."
"Thanks," I said again, with more pleasure. "You're a good brother." To our mutual surprise, I stood on tiptoe and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He awkwardly put his arm around me, and I made myself keep the smile on my face, rather than wincing from the pain.
"Get back in bed, Sis," he said, shutting the door behind him carefully. I noticed he stood on the porch for a full minute, surveying all that premium gravel. Then he shook his head and got back into his pickup, always clean and gleaming, the pink and aqua flames startling against the black paint that covered the rest of the truck.
I watched a little television. I tried to eat, but my face hurt too much. I felt lucky when I discovered some yogurt in the refrigerator.
A big pickup pulled up to the front of the house about three o'clock. Alcide got out with my suitcase. He knocked softly.
He might be happier if I didn't answer, but I figured I wasn't in the business of making Alcide Herveaux happy, and I opened the door.
"Oh, Jesus Christ," he said, not irreverently, as he took me in.
"Come in," I said, through jaws that were getting so sore I could barely part them. I knew I'd said I'll call Jason if Alcide came by; but Alcide and I needed to talk.
He came in and stood looking at me. Finally, he put the suitcase back in my room, fixed me a big glass of iced tea with a straw in it, and put it on the table by the couch. My eyes filled with tears. Not everyone would have realized that a hot drink made my swollen face hurt.
"Tell me what happened, chere," he said, sitting on the couch beside me. "Here, put your feet up while you do." He helped me swivel sideways and lay my legs over his lap. I had plenty of pillows propped behind me, and I did feel comfortable, or as comfortable as I was going to feel for a couple of days.
I told him everything.
"So, you think they'll come after me in Shreveport?" he asked. He didn't seem to be blaming me for bringing all this on his head, which frankly I'd half expected.
I shook my head helplessly. "I just don't know. I wish we knew what had really happened. That might get them off our backs."
"Weres are nothing if not loyal," Alcide said.
I took his hand. "I know that."
Alcide's green eyes regarded me steadily.
"Debbie asked me to kill you," he said.
For a moment I felt cold down to my bones. "What did you tell her back?" I asked, through stiff lips.
"I told her she could go fuck herself, excuse my language."
"And how do you feel now?"
"Numb. Isn't that stupid? I'm pulling her out of me by the roots, though. I told you I would. I had to do it. It's like being addicted to crack. She's awful."
I thought of Lorena. "Sometimes," I said, and even to my own ears I sounded sad, "the bitch wins." Lorena was far from dead between Bill and me. Speaking of Debbie raised yet another unpleasant memory. "Hey, you told her we had been to bed together, when you two were fighting!"
He looked profoundly embarrassed, his olive skin flushing. "I'm ashamed of that. I knew she'd been having a good time with her fiance; she bragged about it. I sort of used your name in vain when I was really mad. I apologize."
I could understand that, even though I didn't like it. I raised my eyebrows to indicate that wasn't quite enough.
"Okay, that was really low. A double apology and a promise to never do it again."
I nodded. I would accept that.
"I hated to hustle you all out of the apartment like that, but I didn't want her to see the three of you, in view of conclusions she might have drawn. Debbie can get really mad, and I thought if she saw you in conjunction with the vampires, she might hear a rumor that Russell was missing a prisoner and put two and two together. She might even be mad enough to call Russell."
"So much for loyalty among Weres."
"She's a shifter, not a Were," Alcide said instantly, and a suspicion of mine was confirmed. I was beginning to believe that Alcide, despite his stated conviction that he was determined to kept the Were gene to himself, would never be happy with anyone but another Were. I sighed: I tried to keep it a nice, quiet sigh. I might be wrong, after all.
"Debbie aside," I said, waving my hand to show how completely Debbie was out of our conversational picture, "someone killed Jerry Falcon and put him in your closet. That's caused me-and you-a lot more trouble that the original mission, which was searching for Bill. Who would do something like that? It would have to be someone really malicious."
"Or someone really stupid," Alcide said fairly.
"I know Bill didn't do it, because he was a prisoner. And I'd swear Eric was telling the truth when he said he didn't do it." I hesitated, hating to bring a name back up. "But what about Debbie? She's …" I stopped myself from saying "a real bitch," because only Alcide should call her that. "She was angry with you for having a date," I said mildly. "Maybe she would put Jerry Falcon in your closet to cause you trouble?"
"Debbie's mean and she can cause trouble, but she's never killed anyone," Alcide said. "She doesn't have the, the … grit for it, the sand. The will to kill."
Okay. Just call me Sandy.
Alcide must have read my dismay on my face. "Hey, I'm a Were," he said, shrugging. "I'd do it if I had to. Especially at the right time of the moon."
"So maybe a fellow pack member did him in, for reasons we don't know, and decided to lay the blame on you?" Another possible scenario.
"That doesn't feel right. Another Were would have-well, the body would've looked different." Alcide said, trying to spare my finer feelings. He meant the body would have been ripped to shreds. "And I think I would've smelled another Were on him. Not that I got that close."
We just didn't have any other ideas, though if I'd tape-recorded that conversation and played it back, I would have thought of another possible culprit easily enough.
Alcide said he had to get back to Shreveport, and I lifted my legs for him to rise. He got up, but went down on one knee by the head of the couch to tell me goodbye. I said the polite things, how nice it had been of him to give me a place to stay, how much I'd enjoyed meeting his sister, how much fun it had been to hide a body with him. No, I didn't really say that, but it crossed my mind, as I was being Gran's courteous product.
"I'm glad I met you," he said. He was closer to me than I'd thought, and he gave me a peck on the lips in farewell. But after the peck, which was okay, he returned for a longer good-bye. His lips felt so warm; and after a second, his tongue felt even warmer. His head turned slightly to get a better angle, and then he went at it again. His right hand hovered above me, trying to find a place to settle that wouldn't hurt me. Finally he covered my left hand with his. Oh boy, this was good. But only my mouth and my lower pelvis were happy. The rest of me hurt. His hand slid, in a questioning sort of way, up to my breast, and I gave a sharp gasp.
"Oh, God, I hurt you!" he said. His lips looked very full and red after the long kiss, and his eyes were brilliant.
I felt obliged to apologize. "I'm just so sore," I said.
"What did they do to you?" he asked. "Not just a few slaps across the face?"
He had imagined my swollen face was my most serious problem.
"I wish that had been it," I said, trying to smile.
He truly looked stricken. "And here I am, making a pass at you."