Шарлин Харрис - Dead Reckoning

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.

My three guests trailed behind me, and I dragged the stool into the middle of the floor. There was just enough room for everyone when Pam and Eric sat on the other side of the table. Eric was glowering at Immanuel in an ominous way, and Pam was simply waiting to be entertained by our emotional upheavals.

I clambered up on the stool and made myself sit with a straight back. My legs were smarting, my eyes were prickly, and my throat was scratchy. But I forced myself to smile at the hairstylist. Immanuel was real nervous. You don’t want that in a person with sharp scissors.

Immanuel took the elastic band off my ponytail. There was a long silence while he regarded the damage. He wasn’t thinking good thoughts. My vanity got hold of me. “Is it very bad?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from quavering. Reaction was definitely getting the upper hand, now that I was safe at home.

“I’m going to have to take off about three inches,” he said quietly, as if he were telling me a relative was terminally ill.

To my shame, I reacted much the same way as if that had been the news. I could feel tears well up in my eyes, and my lips were quivering. Ridiculous! I told myself. My eyes slewed left when Immanuel set his leather case on the kitchen table. He unzipped it and took out a comb. There were also several pairs of scissors in special loops and an electric trimmer with its cord neatly coiled. Have hair care, will travel.

Pam was texting with incredible speed. She was smiling as though her message were pretty damn funny. Eric stared at me, thinking many dark thoughts. I couldn’t read ’em, but I could sure tell he was unhappy in a major way.

I sighed and returned my gaze to straight ahead. I loved Eric, but at the moment I wanted him to take his broodiness and shove it. I felt Immanuel’s touch on my hair as he began combing. It felt strange when he reached the end of its length, and a little tug and a funny sound let me know that some of my burned hair had fallen to the floor.

“It’s damaged beyond repair,” Immanuel murmured. “I’ll cut. Then you wash. Then I cut again.”

“You must quit this job,” Eric said abruptly, and Immanuel’s comb stopped moving until he realized Eric was talking to me.

I wanted to throw something heavy at my honeybun. And I wanted it to smack him right in his stubborn, handsome head. “We’ll talk later,” I said, not looking at him.

“What will happen next? You’re too vulnerable!”

“We’ll talk later .”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pam look away so Eric wouldn’t see her smirk.

“Doesn’t she need something around her?” Eric snarled at Immanuel. “Covering her clothes?”

“Eric,” I said, “since I’m all smelly and smoky and covered with fire extinguisher stuff, I don’t think keeping my clothes free of burned hair is a big deal.”

Eric didn’t snort, but he came close. However, he did seem to pick up on my feeling that he was being a total pain, and he shut up and got a hold on himself.

The relief was tremendous.

Immanuel, whose hands were surprisingly steady for someone cooped up in a kitchen with two vampires (one remarkably irritable) and a charred barmaid, combed until my hair was as smooth as it could be. Then he picked up his scissors. I could feel the hairdresser focusing completely on his task. Immanuel was a champion at concentration, I discovered, since his mind lay open to me.

It really didn’t take long. The burned bits drifted to the floor like sad snowflakes.

“You need to go shower now and come back with clean, wet hair,” Immanuel said. “After that, I’ll even it up. Where’s your broom, your dustpan?”

I told him where to find them, and then I went into my bedroom, passing through it to my own bathroom. I wondered if Eric would join me, since I knew from past experience that he liked my shower. The way I felt, it would be far better if he stayed in the kitchen.

I pulled off my smelly clothes and ran the water as hot as I could stand it. It was a relief to step into the tub and let the heat and wetness flow over me. When the warm water hit my legs, it stung. For a few moments I wasn’t appreciative or happy about anything. I just remembered how scared I’d been. But after I’d dealt with that, I had something on my mind.

The figure I’d spotted running toward the bar, bottle in hand — I couldn’t be completely sure, but I suspected it had not been human.

I stuffed my grimy, reeking clothes into the hamper in my bathroom. I’d have to presoak them in some Clorox 2 before I even tried to wash them, but of course I couldn’t just toss them out before they were clean and I could assess the damage. I wasn’t feeling too optimistic about the future of the black pants. I hadn’t noticed they were a little scorched until I pulled them down over my tender thighs and found that my skin was pink. Only then did I remember looking down to see my apron on fire.

As I examined my legs, I realized it could have been much worse. The sparks had caught my apron, not my pants, and Sam had been very quick with the extinguisher. Now I appreciated his checking the extinguishers every year; I appreciated his going down to the fire station to get them refilled; I appreciated the smoke alarms. I had a flash of what might have been.

Deep breath, I told myself as I patted my legs dry. Deep breath. Think of how good it feels to be clean. It had felt wonderful to wash away the smell, to lather up my hair, to rinse out all the smell along with the shampoo.

I couldn’t stop worrying about what I’d seen when I’d looked out Merlotte’s window: a short figure running toward the building, holding something in one hand. I hadn’t been able to tell if the runner was a man or a woman, but one thing I was sure of: The runner was a supe, and I suspected he — or she — was a twoey. This suspicion gained more weight when I added in the speed and agility of the runner and the strength and accuracy of the throw — the bottle had come at the window harder than a human could have hurled it, with enough velocity to shatter the window.

I couldn’t be 100 percent sure. But vampires don’t like to handle fire. Something about the vampire condition causes them to be extra flammable. It would take a very confident, or very reckless, fanger to use a Molotov cocktail as a weapon.

For that reason alone, I was inclined to put my money on the bomber being a twoey — a shapeshifter or were of some variety. Of course, there were other sorts of supernatural creatures like elves and fairies and goblins, and they were all quicker than humans. To my regret, the whole incident had happened too swiftly for me to scope out the bomber’s mind. That would have been decisive, because vampires are a big blank to me, a hole in the aether, and I also can’t read fairies, though they register differently. Some twoeys I can read with fair accuracy, some I can’t, but I see their brains as warm and busy.