Club Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

what are you doing here?”
    “Snuggling.”
    “You son of a bitch! I thought you were Bill! I thought he was back!”
    “Sookie, you need a shower.”
    “What?”
    “Your hair is dirty, and your breath could knock down a horse.”
    “Not that I care what you think,” I said flatly.
    “Go get cleaned up.”
    “Why?”
    “Because we have to talk, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to have a long conversation in bed. Not that I have any objection to being in bed with you”—he pressed himself against me to prove how little he objected—“but I’d enjoy it more if I were with the hygienic Sookie I’ve come to know.”
    Possibly nothing he could have said would have gotten me out of the bed faster than that. The hot shower felt wonderful to my cold body, and my temper took care of warming up my insides. It wasn’t the first time Eric had surprised me in my own home. I was going to have to rescind his invitation to enter. What had stopped me from that drastic step before—what stopped me now—was the idea that if I ever needed help, and he couldn’t enter, I might be dead before I could yell, “Come in!”
    I’d entered the bathroom carrying my jeans and underwear and a red-and-green Christmas sweater with reindeer on it, because that’s what had been at the top of my drawer. You only get a month to wear the darn things, so I make the most of it. I used a blow-dryer on my hair, wishing Bill were there to comb it out for me. He really enjoyed doing that, and I enjoyed letting him. At that mental image, I almost broke down again, but I stood with my head resting against the wall for a long moment while I gathered my resolve. I took a deep breath, turned to the mirror, and slapped on some makeup. My tan wasn’t great this far into the cold season ; but I still had a nice glow, thanks to the tanning bed at Bon Temps Video Rental.
    I’m a summer person. I like the sun, and the short dresses, and the feeling you had many hours of light to do whatever you chose. Even Bill loved the smells of summer; he loved it when he could smell suntan oil and (he told me) the sun itself on my skin.
    But the sweet part of winter was that the nights were much longer—at least, I’d thought so when Bill was around to share those nights with me. I threw my hair-brush across the bathroom. It made a satisfying clatter as it ricocheted into the tub. “You bastard !” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Hearing my voice saying such a thing out loud calmed me down as nothing else could have.
    When I emerged from the bathroom, Eric was completely dressed. He had on a freebie T-shirt from one of the breweries that supplied Fangtasia (“This Blood’s For You,” it read) and blue jeans, and he had thoughtfully made the bed.
    “Can Pam and Chow come in?” he asked.
    I walked through the living room to the front door and opened it. The two vampires were sitting silently on the porch swing. They were in what I thought of as downtime. When vampires don’t have anything in particular to do, they sort of go blank; retreat inside themselves, sitting or standing utterly immobile, eyes open but vacant. It seems to refresh them.
    “Please come in,” I said.
    Pam and Chow entered slowly, looking around them with interest, as if they were on a field trip. Louisiana farmhouse, circa early twenty-first century. The house had belonged to our family since it was built over a hundred and sixty years ago. When my brother, Jason, had struck out on his own, he’d moved into the place my parents had built when they’d married. I’d stayed here, with Gran, in this much-altered, much-renovated house; and she’d left it to me in her will.
    The living room had been the total original house. Other additions, like the modern kitchen and the bathrooms, were relatively new. The next floor, which was much smaller than the ground level, had been added in the early 1900s to accommodate a generation of children who all survived. I rarely went up there