"I'm sorry you lost your cousin. Have you been grieving?"

I hadn't seen Hadley in years, and it would have been stranger than I can say to see her after she'd become a vampire. But as a person with very few living relations, I hated to lose even one. "A bit," I said.

"You don't know when you might go?"

"I haven't decided. You remember her lawyer, Mr. Cataliades? He said he'd tell me when the will had gone through probate. He promised to keep the place intact for me, and when the queen's counselor tells you the place'll be intact, you have to believe it'll be untouched. I haven't really been too interested, to tell you the truth."

"I might go with you when you head to New Orleans, if you don't mind having a traveling companion."

"Gee," I said, with just a dash of sarcasm, "Won't Selah mind? Or were you going to bring her, too?" That would make for a merry trip.

"No." And he closed down. You just couldn't get anything out of Bill when he was holding his mouth like that, I knew from experience. Okay, color me confused.

"I'll let you know," I said, trying to figure him out. Though it was painful to be in Bill's company, I trusted him. Bill would never harm me. He wouldn't let anyone else harm me, either. But there's more than one kind of harm.

"Sookie," Father Littrell called, and I hurried away.

I glanced back to catch Bill smiling, a small smile with a lot of satisfaction packed into it. I wasn't sure what it meant, but I liked to see Bill smile. Maybe he was hoping to revive our relationship?

Father Littrell said, "We weren't sure if you wanted to be interrupted or not." I looked down at him, confused.

"We were a tad concerned to see you consorting with the vampire for so long, and so intently," Father Riordan said. "Was the imp of hell trying to bring you under his spell?"

Suddenly his Irish accent wasn't charming at all. I looked at Father Riordan quizzically. "You're joking, right? You know Bill and I dated for a good while. Obviously, you don't know much about imps from hell if you believe Bill's anything like one." I'd seen things much darker than Bill in and about our fair town of Bon Temps. Some of those things had been human. "Father Riordan, I understand my own life. I understand the nature of vampires better than you ever will. Father Littrell," I said, "you want honey mustard or ketchup with your chicken strips?"

Father Littrell chose honey mustard, in a kind of dazed way. I walked away, working to shrug the little incident off, wondering what the two priests would do if they knew what had happened in this bar a couple of months before when the bar's clientele had ganged up to rid me of someone who was trying to kill me.

Since that someone had been a vampire, they'd probably have approved.

Before he left, Father Riordan came over to "have a word" with me. "Sookie, I know you're not real happy with me at the moment, but I need to ask you something on behalf of someone else. If I've made you less inclined to listen by my behavior, please ignore that and give these people the same consideration you would have."

I sighed. At least Father Riordan tried to be a good man. I nodded reluctantly.

"Good girl. A family in Jackson has contacted me…"

All my alarms started going off. Debbie Pelt was from Jackson.

"The Pelt family, I know you've heard of them. They're still searching for news of their daughter, who vanished in January. Debbie, her name was. They called me because their priest knows me, knows I serve the Bon Temps congregation. The Pelts would like to come to see you, Sookie. They want to talk to everyone who saw their daughter the night she vanished, and they feared if they just showed up on your doorstep, you might not see them. They're afraid you're angry because their private detectives have interviewed you, and the police have talked to you, and maybe you might be indignant about all that."

"I don't want to see them," I said. "Father Riordan, I've told everything I know." That was true. I just hadn't told it to the police or the Pelts. "I don't want to talk about Debbie any more." That was also true, very true. "Tell them, with all due respect, there's nothing left to talk about."

"I'll tell them," he said. "But I've got to say, Sookie, I'm disappointed."

"Well, I guess it's been a bad night for me all around," I said. "Losing your good opinion, and all."

He left without another word, which was exactly what I'd wanted.

It was close to closing time the next night when another odd thing happened. Just as Sam gave us the signal to start telling our customers this would be their last drink, someone I thought I'd never see again came into Merlotte's.

He moved quietly for such a large man. He stood just inside the door, looking around for a free table, and I noticed him because of the quick gleam of the dim bar light on his shaven head. He was very tall, and very wide, with a proud nose and big white teeth. He had full lips and an olive complexion, and he was wearing a sort of bronze sports jacket over a black shirt and slacks. Though he would have looked more natural in motorcycle boots, he was wearing polished loafers.

"Quinn," Sam said quietly. His hands became still, though he'd been in the middle of mixing a Tom Collins. "What is he doing here?"

"I didn't know you knew him," I said, feeling my face flush as I realized I'd been thinking about the bald man only the day before. He'd been the one who'd cleaned the blood from my leg with his tongue—an interesting experience.

"Everyone in my world knows Quinn," Sam said, his face neutral. "But I'm surprised you've met him, since you're not a shifter." Unlike Quinn, Sam's not a big man; but he's very strong, as shifters tend to be, and his curly red-gold hair haloes his head in an angelic way.

"I met Quinn at the contest for packmaster," I said. "He was the, ah, emcee." Naturally, Sam and I had talked about the change of leadership in the Shreveport pack. Shreveport isn't too far from Bon Temps, and what the Weres do is pretty important if you're any kind of a shifter.

A true shape-shifter, like Sam, can change into anything, though each shape-shifter has a favorite animal. And to confuse the issue, all those who can change from human form to animal form call themselves shape-shifters, though very few possess Sam's versatility. Shifters who can change to only one animal are were-animals: weretigers (like Quinn), werebears, werewolves. The wolves are the only ones who call themselves simply Weres, and they consider themselves superior in toughness and culture to any of the other shape-shifters.

Weres are also the most numerous subset of shifters, though compared to the total vampire population, there are mighty few of them. There are several reasons for this. The Were birthrate is low, infant mortality is higher than in the general population of humans, and only the first child born of a pure Were couple becomes a full Were. That happens during puberty—as if puberty weren't bad enough already.

Shape-shifters are very secretive. It's a hard habit to break, even around a sympathetic and strange human like me. The shifters have not come into the public view yet, and I'm learning about their world in little increments.

Even Sam has many secrets that I don't know, and I count him as a friend. Sam turns into a collie, and he often visits me in that form. (Sometimes he sleeps on the rug by my bed.)

I'd only seen Quinn in his human form.

I hadn't mentioned Quinn when I told Sam about the fight between Jackson Herveaux and Patrick Furnan for the Shreveport pack leadership. Sam was frowning at me now, displeased that I'd kept it from him, but I hadn't done it purposely. I glanced back at Quinn. He'd lifted his nose a little. He was sampling the air, following a scent. Who was he trailing?