"Sookie?" he said, rather doubtfully.

I smiled at him, not my nervous smile-because I wasn't, for once. Thanks to Bill, I now had a little confidence about my own physical attractiveness. "Hey, I'm your date, remember? I'm acting date-like," I told him.

The thin vampire brought our drinks just then, and I clinked my glass against his bottle. "To our joint venture," I said, and his eyes lit up. We sipped.

I loved champagne cocktails.

"Tell me more about your family," I said, because I enjoyed listening to his nimbly voice. I would have to wait until there were more humans in the bar before I began listening in to others' thoughts.

Alcide obligingly began telling me about how poor his dad had been when he started his surveying business, and how long it had taken for him to prosper. He was just beginning to tell me about his mother when Debbie sashayed up.

It had only been a matter of time.

"Hello, Alcide," she purred. Since he hadn't been able to see her coming, his strong face quivered. "Who's your new friend? Did you borrow her for the evening?"

"Oh, longer than that," I said clearly, and smiled at Debbie, a smile that matched her own for sincerity.

"Really?" If her eyebrows had crawled any higher, they'd have been in heaven.

"Sookie is a good friend," Alcide said impassively.

"Oh?" Debbie doubted his word. "It wasn't too long ago you told me you'd never have another 'friend' if you couldn't have … Well." She smirked.

I covered Alcide's huge hand with my own and gave her a look that implied much.

"Tell me," Debbie said, her lips curling in a skeptical way, "how do you like that birthmark of Alcide's?"

Who could have predicted she was willing to be a bitch so openly? Most women try to hide it, at least from strangers.

It's on my right butt cheek. It's shaped like a rabbit. Well, how nice. Alcide had remembered what I'd said, and he'd thought directly at me.

"I love bunnies," I said, still smiling, my hand drifting down Alcide's back to caress, very lightly, the top of his right buttock.

For a second, I saw sheer rage on Debbie's face. She was so focused, so controlled, that her mind was a lot less opaque than most shifters'. She was thinking about her owl fiance, about how he wasn't as good in the sack as Alcide, but he had a lot of ready cash and he was willing to have children, which Alcide wasn't. And she was stronger than the owl, able to dominate him.

She was no demon (of course, her fiancé would have a really short shelf life if she were) but she was no sweetie, either.

Debbie still could have recovered the situation, but her discovery that I knew Alcide's little secret made her nuts. She made a big mistake.

She raked me over with a glare that would have paralyzed a lion. "Looks like you went to Janice's salon today," she said, taking in the casually tumbled curls, the fingernails. Her own straight black hair had been cut in asymmetrical clumps, tiny locks of different lengths, making her look a little like a dog in a very good show, maybe an Afghan. Her narrow face increased the resemblance. "Janice never sends anyone out looking like they live in this century."

Alcide opened his mouth, rage tensing all his muscles. I laid my hand on his arm.

"What do you think of my hair?" I asked softly, moving my head so it slithered over my bare shoulders. I took his hand and held it gently to the curls falling over my chest. Hey, I was pretty good at this! Sookie the sex kitten.

Alcide caught his breath. His fingers trailed through the length of my hair, and his knuckles brushed my collarbone. "I think it's beautiful," he said, and his voice was both sincere and husky.

I smiled at him.

"I guess instead of borrowing you, he rented you," Debbie said, goaded into irreparable error.

It was a terrible insult, to both of us. It took every bit of resolution I had to hang on to a ladylike self-control. I felt the primitive self, the truer me, swim nearly to the surface. We sat staring at the shifter, and she blanched at our silence. "Okay, I shouldn't have said that," she said nervously. "Just forget it."

Because she was a shifter, she'd beat me in a fair fight. Of course, I had no intention of fighting fair, if it came to that.

I leaned over and touched one red fingertip to her leather pants. "Wearing Cousin Elsie?" I asked.

Unexpectedly, Alcide burst into laughter. I smiled at him as he doubled over, and when I looked up, Debbie was stalking back to her party, who had fallen silent during our exchange.

I reminded myself to skip going to the ladies' room alone this evening.

***

By the time we ordered our second drinks, the place was full. Some Were friends of Alcide's came in, a large group-Weres like to travel in packs, I understand. Shifters, it depended on the animal they most often shifted to. Despite their theoretical versatility, Sam had told me that shape-shifters most often changed to the same animal every time, some creature they had a special affinity for. And they might call themselves by that animal: weredog, or werebat, or weretiger. But never just "Weres"-that term was reserved for the wolves. The true werewolves scorned such variance in form, and they didn't think much of shifters in general. They, the werewolves, considered themselves the cream of the shape-shifting world.

Shifters, on the other hand, Alcide explained, thought of werewolves as the thugs of the supernatural scene. "And you do find a lot of us in the building trades," he said, as if he were trying hard to be fair. "Lots of Weres are mechanics, or brick masons, or plumbers, or cooks."

"Useful occupations," I said.

"Yes," he agreed. "But not exactly white-collar. So though we all cooperate with each other, to some extent, there's a lot of class discrimination."

A small group of Weres in motorcycle gear strode in. They wore the same sort of leather vest with wolf's heads on the back that had been worn by the man who'd attacked me at Merlotte's. I wondered if they'd started searching for their comrade yet. I wondered if they had a clearer idea of who they were looking for, what they'd do if they realized who I was. The four men ordered several pitchers of beer and began talking very secretively, heads close together and chairs pulled right up to the table.

A deejay-he appeared to be a vampire-began to play records at the perfect level; you could be sure what the song was, but you could still talk.

"Let's dance," Alcide suggested.

I hadn't expected that; but it would put me closer to the vampires and their humans, so I accepted. Alcide held my chair for me, and took my hand as we went over to the minuscule dance floor. The vampire changed the music from some heavy metal thing to Sarah McLachlan's "Good Enough," which is slow, but with a beat.

I can't sing, but I can dance; as it happened, Alcide could, too.

The good thing about dancing is that you don't have to talk for a while, if you feel chatted out. The bad thing is it makes you hyperconscious of your partner's body. I had already been uncomfortably aware of Alcide's-excuse me-animal magnetism. Now, so close to him, swaying in rhythm with him, following his every move, I found myself in a kind of trance. When the song was over, we stayed on the little dance floor, and I kept my eyes on the floor. When the next song started up, a faster piece of music-though for the life of me I couldn't have told you what-we began dancing again, and I spun and dipped and moved with the werewolf.

Then the muscular squat man sitting at a bar stool behind us said to his vampire companion, "He hasn't talked yet. And Harvey called today. He said they searched the house and didn't find anything."

"Public place," said his companion, in a sharp voice. The vampire was a very small man-perhaps he'd become a vampire when men were shorter.