Charlaine Harris: Dead in the Family

On that sunny morning in the middle of April, I was sitting on my front porch with my second cup of coffee and a magazine, still wearing my sleep pants and my Superwoman T-shirt, when the Shreveport packleader called me on my cell phone.

“Huh,” I said, when I recognized the number. I flipped the phone open. “Hello,” I said cautiously.

“Sookie,” said Alcide Herveaux. I hadn’t seen Alcide in months. Alcide had ascended to the position of packleader the year before in a single evening of mayhem. “How are you?”

“Right as rain,” I said, nearly meaning it. “Happy as a clam. Fit as a fiddle.” I watched a rabbit hop across the clover and grass twenty feet away. Spring.

“You’re still dating Eric? He the reason for the good mood?”

Everyone wanted to know. “I’m still dating Eric. That sure helps keep me happy.” Actually, as Eric kept telling me, “dating” was a misleading term. Though I didn’t think of myself as married since I’d simply handed him a ceremonial knife (Eric had used my ignorance as part of his master strategy), the vampires did. A vampire-human marriage isn’t exactly like a “love, honor, and obey” human pairing, but Eric had expected the marriage would earn me some perks in the vampire world. Since then, things had gone pretty well, vampire-wise. Aside from the huge glitch of Victor not letting Eric come to my aid when I was dying, that is—Victor, who really needed to die.

I turned my thoughts away from this dark direction with the determination of long practice. See? That was better. Now I was hopping out of bed every day with (almost) my old vigor. I’d even gone to church the past Sunday. Positive! “What’s happening, Alcide?” I asked.

“I got a favor to ask,” Alcide said, not entirely to my surprise.

“What can I do for you?”

“Can we use your land for our full-moon run tomorrow night?”

I made myself pause to think about his request rather than automatically saying yes. I’m learning through experience. I had the open land the Weres needed; that wasn’t the issue. I still own twenty-odd acres around my house, though my grandmother had sold off most of the original farm when she was faced with the financial burden of raising my brother and me. Though Sweet Home Cemetery took a chunk out of the land between my place and Bill’s, there’d be enough room—especially if Bill didn’t mind allowing access to his land as well. I remembered the pack had been here once before.

I turned the idea around to look at it from all angles. I couldn’t see any obvious downside. “You’re welcome to come,” I said. “I think you should check with Bill Compton, too.” Bill hadn’t responded to any of my little gestures of concern.

Vampires and werewolves are not inclined to be buddies, but Alcide is a practical man. “I’ll call Bill tonight, then,” he said. “You got his number?”

I gave it to him. “Why are you-all not going to your place, Alcide?” I asked, out of sheer curiosity. He’d told me in casual conversation that the Long Tooth pack celebrated the full moon at the Herveaux farm south of Shreveport. Most of the Herveaux land was left in timber for the pack hunts.

“Ham called today to tell me there’s a small party of oneys camping by the stream.” “Oneys,” the one-natured, is what the two-natured Weres call regular humans. I knew Hamilton Bond by sight. His farm was adjacent to the Herveaux place, and Ham farmed a few acres for Alcide. The Bond family had belonged to the Long Tooth pack as long as the Herveauxes.

“Did they have your permission to camp there?” I asked.

“They told Ham my dad always gave them permission to fish there in the spring, so they didn’t think to ask me. It might be true. I don’t remember them, though.”

“Even if they’re telling the truth, that’s pretty rude. They should have called you,” I said. “They should have asked you if it was convenient for you. You want me to talk to them? I can find out if they’re lying.” Jackson Herveaux, Alcide’s late dad, hadn’t seemed like the kind of man who’d casually allow people to use his land on a regular basis.

“No thanks, Sookie. I hate to ask you for another favor. You’re a friend of the pack. We’re supposed to watch out for you, not you for us.”

“Don’t worry about it. Y’all can come out here. And if you want me to shake hands with these supposed buddies of your dad’s, I can do that.” I was curious about their appearance on the Herveaux farm so close to the full moon. Curious and suspicious.

Alcide told me he’d think about the fishermen situation, and thanked me about six times for saying yes.

“No big deal,” I said, and hoped I was telling the truth. Eventually, Alcide felt he’d thanked me enough, and we hung up.

I went inside with my coffee cup. I didn’t know I was smiling until I looked in the living room mirror. I admitted to myself I was looking forward to the wolves’ arrival. It would be pleasant to feel I wasn’t alone in the middle of the woods. Pathetic, huh?

Though our few evenings together were good, Eric was still spending a lot of time on vampire business. I was getting a little tired of it. Well, not a little. If you’re the boss, you should be able to get some time off, right? That’s one of the perks of being a boss.

But something was up with the vampires; I was unhappily familiar with the signs. By now, the new regime should have been firmly in place, and Eric should have thoroughly established his new role in the scheme of things. Victor Madden should have been fully occupied down in New Orleans with the running of the kingdom, since he was Felipe’s representative in Louisiana. Eric should have been left to run Area Five in his own efficient way.

But Eric’s blue eyes got all glittery and steely when Victor’s name came up. Mine probably did, too. As things stood now, Victor had power over Eric, and there wasn’t much we could do about that.

I’d asked Eric if he thought Victor might claim dissatisfaction with Eric’s performance in Area Five, a terrifying possibility.

“I’m keeping paperwork to prove differently,” Eric said. “And I’m keeping it in several places.” The lives of all Eric’s people, and maybe my life, depended on Eric planting his feet firmly in the new regime. I knew so much rested on Eric’s making his position impregnable, and I knew I shouldn’t whine. It’s not always easy to make yourself feel the way you ought to feel.

All in all, some howling around the house would be a nice change. At least it would be something new and different.

When I went to work that day, I told Sam about Alcide’s phone call. True shapeshifters are rare. Since there aren’t any others in this area, Sam occasionally spends time with others who have two forms. “Hey, why don’t you come out to the house, too?” I suggested. “You could turn into a wolf, right, since you’re a pure shifter? And then you’d blend right in.”

Sam leaned back in his old swivel chair, glad to have an excuse to stop filling in forms. Sam, who is thirty, is three years older than me.

“I’ve been dating someone in the pack, so it might be fun,” he said, considering the idea. But he shook his head after a moment. “That would be like going to an NAACP meeting in blackface. Being an imitation in front of the real thing. That’s why I’ve never gone out with the panthers, though Calvin’s told me I’d be welcome.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling embarrassed. “I didn’t think of that. I’m sorry.” I did wonder who he was dating, but there again, not my business.

“Ah, don’t worry about it.”

“I’ve known you for years, and I should know more about you,” I said. “Your culture, that is.”