Faintly cheesy? Yes. Gulp inducing? Oh, you betcha. I could practically feel my blood heat up. I was sorry I’d opened it right before I climbed in the bed. It definitely took me a long time to drift off to sleep.

It felt funny not to hear Octavia buzzing around the house when I woke up the next morning. She’d vanished from my life as quickly as she’d entered it. I hoped that in some of their time together, Octavia and Amelia had discussed Amelia’s status with what remained of her New Orleans coven. It was hard to believe Amelia could turn a young man into a cat (during the course of some very adventurous sex), I thought, as I watched my roommate hurry out the back door to get to the insurance office. Amelia, dressed in navy pants and a tan and navy sweater, looked like she was ready to sell Girl Scout cookies. When the door slammed behind her, I drew a long breath. I was alone in the house for the first morning in ages.

The solitude didn’t last long. I was drinking a second cup of coffee and eating a toasted biscuit when Andy Bellefleur and Special Agent Lattesta came to the front door. I hastily pulled on some jeans and a T-shirt to answer the door.

“Andy, Special Agent Lattesta,” I said. “Come on in.” I led the way back to the kitchen. I wasn’t going to let them keep me away from my coffeepot. “Do you want a cup?” I asked them, but they both shook their heads.

“Sookie,” Andy said, his face serious, “we’re here about Crystal.”

“Sure.” I bit off some biscuit, chewed, and swallowed. I wondered if Lattesta was on a diet or something. He followed my every move. I dipped into his brain. He wasn’t happy that I wasn’t wearing a bra, because my boobs distracted him. He was thinking I was a bit too curvy for his taste. He was thinking he’d better not think about me that way anymore. He was missing his wife. “I figured that would take priority over the other thing,” I said, forcing my attention back to Andy.

I couldn’t tell how much Andy knew—how much Lattesta had shared—about what had happened in Rhodes, but Andy nodded. “We think,” he said, after glancing from me to Lattesta, “that Crystal died three nights ago, sometime between one a.m. and three or four a.m.”

“Sure,” I said again.

“You knew that?” Lattesta went practically on point, like a bird dog.

“It stands to reason. There’s always someone around the bar until one or two, and then normally Terry comes in to clean the floors sometime between six and eight a.m. Terry wasn’t coming so early that day because he’d been tending bar and needed to sleep late, but most people wouldn’t think of that, right?”

“Right,” Andy said after an appreciable pause.

“So,” I said, my point made, and poured myself some more coffee.

“How well do you know Tray Dawson?” Andy asked.

That was a loaded question. The accurate answer was, “Not as well as you think.” I’d once been caught in an alley with Tray Dawson and he’d been naked, but it wasn’t what people thought. (I’d been aware they’d thought quite a bit.) “He’s been dating Amelia,” I said, which was pretty safe to say. “She’s my roommate,” I reminded Lattesta, who was looking a little blank. “You met her two days ago. She’s at work right now. And of course, Tray’s a werewolf.”

Lattesta blinked. It would take a while for him to get used to people saying that with straight faces. Andy’s own expression didn’t change.

“Right,” Andy said. “Was Amelia out with Tray the night Crystal died?”

“I don’t remember. Ask her.”

“We will. Has Tray ever said anything to you about your sister-in-law?”

“I don’t recall anything. Of course, they knew each other, at least a little bit, since they were both wereanimals.”

“How long have you known about . . . werewolves? And the other wereanimals?” Andy asked, as though he just couldn’t help himself.

“Oh, for a while,” I said. “Sam first, and then others.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone?” Andy asked incredulously.

“Of course not,” I said. “People think I’m weird enough as it is. Besides, it wasn’t my secret to tell.” It was my turn to give him a look. “Andy, you knew, too.” After that night in the alley when we’d been attacked by a were-hater, Andy had at least heard Tray in his animal form and then seen him as a naked human. Any basic connect-the-dots would draw a picture of a werewolf.

Andy looked down at the notepad he’d taken out of his pocket. He didn’t write anything down. He took a deep breath. “So that time I saw Tray in the alley, he had just changed back? I’m kind of glad. I never figured you for the kind of woman who’d have sex in public places with someone she scarcely knew.” (That surprised me; I’d always thought Andy believed just about anything bad about me.) “What about that blood-hound that was with you?”

“That was Sam,” I said, rising to rinse out my coffee cup.

“But at the bar he changed into a collie.”

“Collies are cute,” I said. “He figured more people would relate. It’s his usual form.”

Lattesta’s eyes were bugging out. He was one tightly wound guy. “Let’s get back on topic,” he said.

“Your brother’s alibi seems to be true,” Andy said. “We’ve talked to Jason two or three times, and we’ve talked to Michele twice, and she’s adamant that she was with him the whole time. She told us everything that happened that night in detail.” Andy half smiled. “Too much detail.”

That was Michele. She was forthright and downright. Her mom was the same way. I’d gone to vacation Bible school one summer when Mrs. Schubert was teaching my age group. “Tell the truth and shame the devil,” she’d advised us. Michele had taken that adage to heart, though maybe not in the way her mother had intended it.

“I’m glad you believe her,” I said.

“We also talked to Calvin.” Andy leaned on his elbows. “He gave us the background on Dove and Crystal. According to him, Jason knew all about their affair.”

“He did.” I shut my mouth tight. I wasn’t going to talk about that incident if I could help it.

“And we talked to Dove.”

“Of course.”

“Dove Beck,” Lattesta said, reading from his own notes. “He’s twenty-six, married, two kids.”

Since I knew all that, I had nothing to say.

“His cousin Alcee insisted on being there when we talked to him,” Lattesta said. “Dove says he was home all that night, and his wife corroborates that.”

“I don’t think Dove did it,” I said, and they both looked surprised.

“But you gave us the lead that she and Dove had had an affair,” Andy said.

I flushed with mortification. “I’m sorry I did. I hated it when everyone looked at Jason like they were sure he’d done it, when I knew he hadn’t. I don’t think Dove murdered Crystal. I don’t think he cared enough about her to do that to her.”

“But maybe she ruined his marriage.”

“Still, he wouldn’t do that. Dove would be mad at himself, not at her. And she was pregnant. Dove wouldn’t kill a pregnant woman.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Because I can read his mind and see his innocence, I thought. But the vampires and Weres had come out, not me. I was hardly a supernatural creature. I was just a variation on human. “I don’t think that’s in Dove,” I said. “I don’t see it.”

“And we’re supposed to accept that as proof?” Lattesta said.

“I don’t care what you do with it,” I said, stopping short of offering a suggestion as to exactly what he might try. “You asked me; I answered you.”

“So you do think this was a hate crime?”

It was my turn to look down at the table. I didn’t have a notepad to scribble on, but I wanted to consider what I was about to say. “Yes,” I told them finally. “I think it was a hate crime. But I don’t know if it was personal hate, because Crystal was a slut . . . or racial hate, because she was a werepanther.” I shrugged. “If I hear anything, I’ll tell you. I want this solved.”

“Hear anything? In the bar?” Lattesta’s expression was avid. Finally, a human man saw me as intensely valuable. Just my luck he was happily married and thought I was a freak.