"Do the vampires of Jackson know anything about this plan?"

"No, the gang figured it was their problem. But they also got a lot of other problems, a prisoner escape and so on, and lots of people out sick. So what with one thing and another, they recruited a bunch of us to help."

"What are these men?" Eric asked me.

I closed my eyes and thought carefully. "Nothing," I said. "They're nothing." They weren't shifters, or Weres, or anything. They were hardly human beings, in my opinion, but nobody died and made me God.

"We need to get out of here," Eric said. I agreed heartily. The last thing I wanted to do was spend the night at the police station, and for Eric, that was an impossibility. There wasn't an approved vampire jail cell any closer than Shreveport. Heck, the police station in Bon Temps had just gotten wheelchair accessible.

Eric looked into Sonny's eyes. "We weren't here," he said. "This lady and myself."

"Just the boy," Sonny agreed.

Again, the other robber tried to keep his eyes tight shut, but Eric blew in his face, and just as a dog would, the man opened his eyes and tried to wiggle back. Eric had him in a second, and repeated his procedure.

Then he turned to the clerk and handed him the shotgun. "Yours, I believe," Eric said.

"Thanks," the boy said, his eyes firmly on the barrel of the gun. He aimed at the robbers. "I know you weren't here," he growled, keeping his gaze ahead of him. "And I ain't saying nothing to the police."

Eric put forty dollars on the counter. "For the gas," he explained. "Sookie, let's make tracks."

"A Lincoln with a big hole in the trunk does stand out," the boy called after us.

"He's right." I was buckling up and Eric was accelerating as we heard sirens, pretty close.

"I should have taken the truck," Eric said. He seemed pleased with our adventure, now that it was over.

"How's your face?"

"It's getting better."

The welts were not nearly as noticeable.

"What happened?" I asked, hoping this was not a very touchy subject.

He cast me a sideways glance. Now that we were back on the interstate, we had slowed down to the speed limit, so it wouldn't seem to any of the many police cars converging on the convenience store that we were fleeing.

"While you were tending to your human needs in the bathroom," he said, "I finished putting gas in the tank. I had hung up the pump and was almost at the door when those two got out of the truck and just tossed a net over me. It is very humiliating, that they were able to do that, two fools with a silver net."

"Your mind must have been somewhere else."

"Yes," he said shortly. "It was."

"So then what happened?" I asked, when it seemed he was going to stop there.

"The heavier one hit me with the butt of his gun, and it took me a small time to recover," Eric said.

"I saw the blood."

He touched a place on the back of his head. "Yes, I bled. After getting used to the pain, I snagged a corner of the net on the bumper of their truck and managed to roll out of it. They were inept in that, as well as robbery. If they had tied the net shut with silver chains, the result might have been different."

"So you got free?"

"The head blow was more of a problem than I thought at first," Eric said stiffly. "I ran along the back of the store to the water spigot on the other side. Then I heard someone coming out of the back. When I was recovered, I followed the sounds and found you." After a long moment's silence, Eric asked me what had happened in the store.

"They got me confused with the other woman who went in the store at the same time I went to the ladies' room," I explained. "They didn't seem to be sure I was in the store, and the clerk was telling them that there had been only one woman, and she'd gone. I could tell he had a shotgun in his truck-you know, I heard it in his head-and I went and got it, and I disabled their truck, and I was looking for you because I figured something had happened to you."

"So you planned to save me and the clerk, together?"

"Well … yeah." I couldn't understand the odd tone of his voice. "I didn't feel like I had a whole lot of choices there."

The welts were just pink lines now.

The silence still didn't seem relaxed. We were about forty minutes from home now. I started to let it drop. I didn't.

"You don't seem too happy about something," I said, a definite edge to my voice. My own temper was fraying around the edges. I knew I was heading in the wrong direction conversationally; I knew I should just be content with silence, however brooding and pregnant.

Eric took the exit for Bon Temps and turned south.

Sometimes, instead of going down the road less taken, you just charge right down the beaten path.

"Would there be something wrong with me rescuing the two of you?" We were driving through Bon Temps now. Eric turned east after the buildings along Main gradually thinned and vanished. We passed Merlotte's, still open. We turned south again, on a small parish road. Then we were bumping down my driveway.

Eric pulled over and killed the engine. "Yes," he said. "There is something wrong with that. And why the hell don't you get your driveway fixed?"

The string of tension that had stretched between us popped. I was out of the car in a New York minute, and he was, too. We faced each other across the roof of the Lincoln, though not much of me showed. I charged around it until I was right in front of him.

"Because I can't afford it, that's why! I don't have any money! And you all keep asking me to take time off from my job to do stuff for you! I can't! I can't do it anymore!" I shrieked. "I quit!"

There was a long moment of silence while Eric regarded me. My chest was heaving underneath my stolen jacket. Something felt funny, something was bothering me about the appearance of my house, but I was too het up to examine my worry.

"Bill …" Eric began cautiously, and it set me off like a rocket.

"He's spending all his money on the freaking Bellefleurs," I said, my tone this time low and venomous, but no less sincere. "He never thinks about giving me money. And how could I take it? It would make me a kept woman, and I'm not his whore, I'm his … I used to be his girlfriend."

I took a deep, shuddering breath, dismally aware that I was going to cry. It would be better to get mad again. I tried. "Where do you get off, telling them that I'm your … your lover? Where'd that come from?"

"What happened to the money you earned in Dallas?" Eric asked, taking me completely by surprise.

"I paid my property taxes with it."

"Did you ever think that if you told me where Bill's hiding his computer program, I would give you anything you asked for? Did you not realize that Russell would have paid you handsomely?"

I sucked in my breath, so offended, I hardly knew where to begin.

"I see you didn't think of those things."

"Oh, yeah, I'm just an angel." Actually, none of those things had occurred to me, and I was almost defensive they hadn't. I was shaking with fury, and all my good sense went out the window. I would feel the presence of other brains at work, and the fact that someone was in my place enraged me farther. The rational part of my mind crumpled under the weight of my anger.

"Someone's waiting in my house, Eric." I swung around and stomped over to my porch, finding the key I'd hidden under the rocker my grandmother had loved. Ignoring everything my brain was trying to tell me, ignoring the beginning of a bellow from Eric, I opened the front door and got hit with a ton of bricks.