Charlaine Harris: Dead in the Family

“I knew about that,” Alcide said. He hadn’t spoken until now. “I told Basim I would loan him the money.”

“I guess he wanted to earn it himself,” Ham said miserably. (Misery, I learned, was deep purple.) “He thought he’d meet with the fairy again, find out exactly what the fairy wanted him to do, get a body from a mortuary or a drunk’s body from some alley, and plant it on Sookie’s land. That would fulfill the letter of what the fairy wanted. No harm would have been done. But instead, I decided. ” He began sobbing, and his color turned all washed-out gray, the color of faded faith.

“Where were you going to meet him?” I asked. “To get your money? Which you had earned, I’m not saying you didn’t.” I was proud of how fair I was being. Fairness was blue, of course.

“I was going to meet him at the same spot in your woods,” he said. “On the south side by the cemetery. Later tonight.”

“Very good,” I murmured. “Don’t you feel better now?”

“Yes,” he said, without a trace of irony in his voice. “I do feel better, and I’m ready to accept the judgment of the pack.”

“I’m not,” Patricia cried. “I escaped death in the pack war by surrendering. Let me surrender again!” She fell to her knees, like Annabelle. “I beg forgiveness. I’m only guilty of loving the wrong man.” Like Annabelle. Patricia bowed her head, and her dark braid fell over one shoulder. She put her clasped hands to her face. Pretty as a picture.

“You didn’t love me,” Ham said, genuinely shocked. “We screwed . You were upset with Alcide because he didn’t pick you to bed. I was upset with Alcide because he didn’t pick me as his second. That was the sum total of what we had in common!”

“Their colors are certainly getting brighter now ,” I observed. The passion of their mutual accusation was perking up their auras to something combustible. I tried to summarize to myself what I’d learned, but it all came out a jumble. Maybe Jason could help me sort it out later. This shaman stuff was kind of taxing. I felt that soon I would be depleted, as if the end of a race were in sight. “Time to decide,” I said, looking at Alcide, whose brilliant red glow was still steady.

“I think Annabelle should be disciplined but not cast out of the pack,” Alcide said, and there was a chorus of protest.

“Kill her!” said Jannalynn, her fierce little face determined. She was so ready to do the killing. I wondered if Sam really understood what he’d bitten off in going out with such a ferocious thing. He seemed so far away now.

“This is my reasoning,” Alcide said calmly. The room quieted as the pack listened. “According to them,” and he pointed at Ham and Patricia, “Annabelle’s only guilt is a moral one, in sleeping with two men at the same time while telling one of them she was faithful. We don’t know what she told Basim.”

Alcide spoke the truth. at least, the truth as he saw it. I looked at Annabelle and saw her all: the disciplined woman who was in the Air Force, the practical woman who balanced her pack life with the rest of her life, the woman who lost all her practicality and restraint when it came to sex. Annabelle was a rainbow of colors right now, none of them happy except the vibrating white line of relief that Alcide did not plan to kill her.

“As for Ham and Patricia. Ham is the murderer of a pack member. Instead of an open challenge, he took the path of stealth. That would call for severe punishment, maybe death. We should consider that Basim was a traitor—not only a pack member, but a second, who was willing to deal with someone outside the pack, to plot against the pack interests and against the good name of a friend of the pack,” Alcide continued.

“Oh,” I murmured to Jason. “That’s me.”

“And Patricia, who promised to be loyal to this pack, broke her vow,” Alcide said. “So she should be cast out forever.”

“Packmaster, you’re too merciful,” Jannalynn said vehemently. “Ham clearly deserves death for his disloyalty. Ham, at least.”

There was a long silence, broken by a growing buzz of discussion. I looked around the room, seeing the color of thoughtfulness (brown, of course) turning into all kinds of shades as passions rose. Jason put his arms around me from behind. “You need to back out of this,” he whispered, and I could see his words turn pink and curly. He loved me. I put a hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t laugh out loud. We stepped backward; one step, two, three, four, five. Then we were standing in the foyer.

“We need to leave,” Jason said. “If they’re going to kill two good-looking gals like Annabelle and Patricia, I don’t want to be around to see it. If we don’t see anything, we won’t have to testify in court, if it comes to that.”

“They won’t debate long. I think Annabelle will see tomorrow. Alcide will let Jannalynn persuade him to kill Ham and Patricia,” I said. “His colors tell me so.”

Jason gaped at me. “I don’t know what you took or smoked or inhaled upstairs,” he said, “but you need to get out of here now.”

“Okay,” I said, and suddenly I realized I felt pretty damn bad. I made it outside to Alcide’s shrubbery before I threw up. I waited for the second wave to roll over me before I risked getting into Jason’s truck.

“What would Gran say about me leaving before I saw the results of what I’d done?” I asked him sadly. “I left after the Were war when Alcide was celebrating his victory. I don’t know how you panthers celebrate, but believe me, I didn’t want to be around when he fucked one of the Weres. It was bad enough seeing Jannalynn execute the wounded. On the other hand. ” I lost my train of thought in another wave of sickness, though this one wasn’t as violent.

“Gran would say you’re not obliged to watch people kill each other, and you didn’t cause it, they did,” Jason said briskly. I could tell that my brother, though sympathetic, wasn’t thrilled about driving me all the way home with my stomach so jittery.

“Listen, can I just drop you by Eric’s?” he said. “I know he’s gotta have a bathroom or two, and that way my truck can stay clean.”

Under any other circumstances I would have refused, since Eric was in such a charged situation. But I felt shaky, and I was still seeing colors. I chewed two antacids from the glove compartment and rinsed my mouth out repeatedly with some Sprite Jason had in the truck. I had to agree that it would be better if I could spend the night in Shreveport.

“I can come back and get you in the morning,” Jason offered. “Or maybe his day guy can give you a ride to Bon Temps.”

Bobby Burnham would rather transport a flock of turkeys.

While I hesitated, I discovered that now that I wasn’t surrounded by Weres, I felt the misery rolling through the blood bond. It was the strongest, most active emotion I’d felt from Eric in days. The misery began to swell as unhappiness and physical pain overwhelmed him.

Jason opened his mouth to ask questions about what I’d taken before the pack meeting. “Get me to Eric’s,” I said. “Quick, Jason. Something’s wrong.”

“There, too?” he said plaintively, but we roared out of Alcide’s driveway.

I was practically shaking with anxiety when we stopped at the gate so Dan the security guard could give me a look. He hadn’t recognized Jason’s truck.

“I’m here to see Eric, and this is my brother,” I said, trying to act normal.

“Go on through,” Dan said, smiling. “It’s been a while.”

When we pulled into Eric’s driveway, I saw that his garage door was open, though the garage light was off. In fact, the house was in total darkness. Maybe everyone was over at Fangtasia. Nope. I knew Eric was there. I simply knew it.