Eric glared at Sam as if the attack were Sam’s responsibility. “Yes, his bar is far more important than your safety and well-being,” he said. Sam looked astonished at this rebuke, and the beginnings of anger flickered across his face.
“If Sam hadn’t been so quick with the fire extinguisher, we’d all have been in bad shape,” I said, keeping up with the calm and the smiling. “In fact, both the bar and the people in it would have been in a lot more trouble.” I was running out of faux serenity, and of course Eric realized it.
“I’m taking you home,” he said.
“Not until I talk to her.” Bud showed considerable courage in asserting himself. Eric was scary enough when he was in a good mood, much less when his fangs ran out as they did now. Strong emotion does that to a vamp.
“Honey,” I said, holding on to my own temper with an effort. I put my arm around Eric’s waist, and tried again. “Honey, Bud and Truman are in charge here, and they have their rules to follow. I’m okay.” Though I was trembling, which of course he could feel.
“You were frightened,” Eric said. I felt his own rage that something had happened to me that he had not been able to prevent. I suppressed a sigh at having to babysit Eric’s emotions when I wanted to be free to have my own nervous breakdown. Vampires are nothing if not possessive when they’ve claimed someone as theirs, but they’re also usually anxious to blend into the human population, not cause any unnecessary waves. This was an overreaction.
Eric was mad, sure, but normally he was also quite pragmatic. He knew I wasn’t seriously hurt. I looked up at him, puzzled. My big Viking hadn’t been himself in a week or two. Something other than the death of his maker was bothering him, but I hadn’t built up enough courage to ask him what was wrong. I’d cut myself some slack. I’d simply wanted to enjoy the peace we’d shared for a few weeks.
Maybe that had been a mistake. Something big was pressing on him, and all this anger was a by-product.
“How’d you get here so quick?” Bud asked Eric.
“I flew,” Eric said casually, and Bud and Truman gave each other a wide-eyed look. Eric had had the ability for (give or take) a thousand years, so he disregarded their amazement. He was focused on me, his fangs still out.
They couldn’t know that Eric had felt the swell of my terror the minute I’d seen the running figure. I hadn’t had to call him when the incident was over. “The sooner we get all this settled,” I said, baring my teeth right back at him in a terrible smile, “the sooner we can leave.” I was trying, not so subtly, to send Eric a message. He finally calmed down enough to get my subtext.
“Of course, my darling,” he said. “You’re absolutely right.” But his hand took mine and squeezed too hard, and his eyes were so brilliant they looked like little blue lanterns.
Bud and Truman looked mighty relieved. The tension ratcheted down a few notches. Vampires = drama.
While Sam was getting his hand treated and Truman was taking pictures of what remained of the bottle, Bud asked me what I’d seen.
“I caught a glimpse of someone out in the parking lot running toward the building, and then the bottle came through the window,” I said. “I don’t know who threw it. After the window broke and the fire spread from all the lit napkins, I didn’t notice anything but the people trying to leave and Sam trying to put it out.”
Bud asked me the same thing several times in several different ways, but I couldn’t help him any more than I already had.
“Why do you think someone would do this to Merlotte’s, to Sam?” Bud asked.
“I don’t understand it,” I said. “You know, we had those demonstrators from the church in the parking lot a few weeks ago. They’ve only come back once since then. I can’t imagine any of them making a — was that a Molotov cocktail?”
“How do you know about those, Sookie?”
“Well, one, I read books. Two, Terry doesn’t talk about the war much, but every now and then he does talk about weapons.” Terry Bellefleur, Detective Andy Bellefleur’s cousin, was a decorated and damaged Vietnam veteran. He cleaned the bar when everyone was gone and came in occasionally to substitute for Sam. Sometimes he just hung at the bar watching people come in and out. Terry did not have much of a social life.
As soon as Bud declared himself satisfied, Eric and I went to my car. He took the keys from my shaking hand. I got in the passenger side. He was right. I shouldn’t drive until I’d recovered from the shock.
Eric had been busy on his cell phone while I was talking to Bud, and I wasn’t totally surprised to see a car parked in front of my house. It was Pam’s, and she had a passenger.
Eric pulled around back where I always park, and I scrambled out of the car to hurry through the house to unlock the front door. Eric followed me at a leisurely pace. We hadn’t exchanged a word on the short drive. He was preoccupied and still dealing with his temper. I was shocked by the whole incident. Now I felt a little more like myself as I went out on the porch to call, “Come in!”
Pam and her passenger got out. He was a young human, maybe twenty-one, and thin to the point of emaciation. His hair was dyed blue and cut in an extremely geometric way, rather as if he’d put a box on his head, knocked it sideways, then trimmed around the edges. What didn’t fit inside the lines had been shaved.
It was eye-catching, I’ll say that.
Pam smiled at the expression on my face, which I hastily transformed into something more welcoming. Pam has been a vampire since Victoria was on the English throne, and she’s been Eric’s right hand since he called her in from her wanderings in northern America. He’s her maker.
“Hello,” I said to the young man as he entered the front door. He was extremely nervous. His eyes darted to me, away from me, took in Eric, and then kind of strafed the room to absorb it. A flicker of contempt crossed his clean-shaven face as he took in the cluttered living room, which was never more than homey even when it was clean.
Pam thumped him on the back of his head. “Speak when you’re spoken to, Immanuel!” she growled. She was standing slightly behind him, so he couldn’t see her when she winked at me.
“Hello, ma’am,” he said to me, taking a step forward. His nose twitched.
Pam said, “You smell, Sookie.”
“It was the fire,” I explained.
“You can tell me about it in a moment,” she said, her pale eyebrows shooting up. “Sookie, this man is Immanuel Earnest,” she said. “He cuts hair at Death by Fashion in Shreveport. He’s brother to my lover, Miriam.”
That was a lot of information in three sentences. I scrambled to absorb it.
Eric was eyeing Immanuel’s coiffure with fascinated disgust. “This is the one you brought to correct Sookie’s hair?” he said to Pam. His lips were pressed together in a very tight line. I could feel his skepticism pulsing along the line that bound us.
“Miriam says he is the best,” Pam said, shrugging. “I haven’t had a haircut in a hundred fifty years. How would I know?”
“Look at him!”
I began to be a little worried. Even for the circumstances, Eric was in a foul mood. “I like his tattoos,” I said. “The colors are real pretty.”
Aside from his extreme haircut, Immanuel was covered with very sophisticated tattoos. No “MOM” or “BETTY SUE” or naked ladies; elaborate and colorful designs extended from wrists to shoulders. He’d look dressed even when he was naked. The hairdresser had a flat leather case tucked under one of his skinny arms.
“So, you’re going to cut off the bad parts?” I said brightly.
“Of your hair,” he said carefully. (I wasn’t sure I’d needed that particular reassurance.) He glanced at me, then back down at the floor. “Do you have a high stool?”
“Yes, in the kitchen,” I said. When I’d rebuilt my burned-out kitchen, custom had made me buy a high stool like the one my gran had perched on while she talked on the old telephone. The new phone was cordless, and I didn’t need to stay in the kitchen when I used it, but the counter simply hadn’t looked right without a stool beside it.