Sookie 10 Dead in the Family Read Online Free PDF Page A

the two-natured are harder to read than simple basic humans), but I tried hard to stay out of Sam’s thoughts. It’s just rude to rummage around inside the ideas of people you care about. Sam was smiling while he talked, and it was good to see him looking—at least temporarily—carefree.
    “You see Vampire Bill much?” Sam asked when I was helping him close up an hour later.
    “No. I haven’t seen him in a long time,” I said. “I wonder if Bill’s dodging me. I went by his house a couple of times and left him a six-pack of TrueBlood and a thank-you note for all he did when he came to rescue me, but he never called me or came over.”
    “He was in a couple of nights ago when you were off. I think you ought to pay him a visit,” Sam said. “I’m not saying any more.”
     
    MARCH
    THE END OF THE FOURTH WEEK
    On a beautiful night later that week, I was rummaging in my closet
for my biggest flashlight. Sam’s suggestion that I needed to see Bill had been nagging at me, so after I got home from work, I resolved to take a walk across the cemetery to Bill’s house.
    Sweet Home Cemetery is the oldest cemetery in Renard Parish. There isn’t much room left for the dead, so there’s one of those new “burial parks” with flat headstones on the south side of town. I hate it. Even if the ground is uneven and the trees are all grown up and some of the fences around the plots are falling down, to say nothing of the earliest headstones, I love Sweet Home. Jason and I had played there as kids, whenever we could escape Gran’s attention.
    The route through the memorials and trees to Bill’s house was second nature, from the time he’d been my very first boyfriend. The frogs and bugs were just starting up their summer singing. The racket would only build with the hotter weather. I remembered D’Eriq asking me wasn’t I scared, living by a graveyard, and I smiled to myself. I wasn’t afraid of the dead lying in the ground. The walking and talking dead were
much
more dangerous. I’d cut a rose to lay on my grandmother’s grave. I felt sure she knew I was there and thinking of her.
    There was a dim light on at the old Compton house, which had been built about the same time my house had been. I rang the doorbell. Unless Bill was out in the woods roaming around, I was sure he was home since his car was there. But I had to wait some time until the creaking door swung open.
    He switched on the porch light, and I tried not to gasp. He looked awful.
    Bill had gotten infected with silver poisoning during the Fae War, thanks to the silver teeth of Neave. He’d had massive amounts of blood then—and since—from his fellow vampires, but I observed with some unease that his skin was still gray instead of white. His step was faltering, and his head hung a little forward like an old man’s.
    “Sookie, come in,” he said. Even his voice didn’t seem as strong as it had been.
    Though his words were polite, I couldn’t tell how he really felt about my visit. I can’t read vampire minds, one of the reasons I’d initially been so attracted to Bill. You can imagine how intoxicating silence is after nonstop unwanted sharing.
    “Bill,” I said, trying to sound less shocked than I felt. “Are you feeling better? This poison in your system. Is it going away?”
    I could swear he sighed. He gestured me to precede him into the living room. The lamps were off. Bill had lit candles. I counted eight. I wondered what he’d been doing, sitting alone in the flickering light. Listening to music? He loved his CDs, particularly Bach. Feeling distinctly worried, I sat on the couch, while Bill took his favorite chair across the low coffee table. He was as handsome as ever, but his face lacked animation. He was clearly suffering. Now I knew why Sam had wanted me to visit.
    “You are well?” he asked.
    “I’m much better,” I said carefully. He’d seen the worst they’d done to me.
    “The scars, the. mutilation?”
    “The scars are