"Honey, couldn't you just date a regular human fella?" Arlene asked when she got her voice back.

"A regular human fella didn't ask me out." I could feel the color fix in my cheeks. I stood there with my back straight, feeling defiant and looking it, I'm sure.

"But, sweetie," Charlsie Tooten fluted in her babyish voice, "honey ... Bill's, ah, got that virus."

"I know that," I said, hearing the distinct edge in my voice.

"I thought you were going to say you were dating a black, but you've gone one better, ain't you, girl?" Lafayette said, picking at his fingernail polish.

Sam didn't say anything. He just stood leaning against the bar, and there was a white line around his mouth as if he were biting his cheek inside.

I stared at them all in turn, forcing them to either swallow this or spit it out.

Arlene got through it first. "All right, then. He better treat you good, or we'll get our stakes out!"

They were all able to laugh at that, albeit weakly.

"And you'll save a lot on groceries!" Lafayette pointed out.

But then in one step Sam ruined it all, that tentative ac­ceptance, by suddenly moving to stand beside me and pull the collar of my shirt down.

You could have cut the silence of my friends with a knife. "Oh, shit," Lafayette said, very softly. I looked right into Sam's eyes, thinking I'd never forgive him for doing this to me.

"Don't you touch my clothes," I told him, stepping away from him and pulling the collar back straight. "Don't tend to my personal life."

"I'm scared for you, I'm worried about you," he said, as Arlene and Charlsie hastily found other things to do.

"No you're not, or not entirely. You're mad as hell. Well listen, buddy. You never got in line."

And I stalked away to wipe down the formica on one of the tables. Then I collected all the salt shakers and refilled them. Then I checked the pepper shakers and the bottles of hot peppers on each table and booth, the Tabasco sauce, too. I just kept working and kept my eyes in front of me, and gradually, the atmosphere cooled down.

Sam was back in his office doing paperwork or something, I didn't care what, as long as he kept his opinions to himself. I still felt like he'd ripped the curtain off a private area of my life when he'd exposed my neck, and I hadn't forgiven him. But Arlene and Charlsie had found make-work, as I'd done, and by the time the after-work crowd began trickling in, we were once again fairly comfortable with one another. Arlene came into the women's room with me. "Listen, Sookie, I got to ask. Are vampires all everyone says they are, in the lover department?" I just smiled.

Bill came into the bar that evening, just after dark. I'd worked late since one of the evening waitresses had had car trouble. One minute he wasn't there, and the next minute he was, slowing down so I could see him coming. If Bill had any doubts about making our relationship public, he didn't show them. He lifted my hand and kissed it in a gesture that performed by anyone else would have seemed phony as hell. I felt the touch of his lips on the back of my hand all the way down to my toes, and I knew he could tell that.

"How are you this evening?" he whispered, and I shivered.

"A little ..." I found I couldn't get the words out.

"You can tell me later," he suggested. "When are you through?"

"Just as soon as Susie gets here."

"Come to my house."

"Okay." I smiled up at him, feeling radiant and light­headed.

And Bill smiled back, though since my nearness had af­fected him, his fangs were showing, and maybe to anyone else but me the effect was a little—unsettling.

He bent to kiss me, just a light touch on the cheek, and he turned to leave. But just at that moment, the evening went all to hell.

Malcolm and Diane came in, flinging the door open as if they were making a grand entrance, and of course, they were. I wondered where Liam was. Probably parking the car. It was too much to hope they'd left him at home.

Folks in Bon Temps were getting accustomed to Bill, but the flamboyant Malcolm and the equally flamboyant Diane caused quite a stir. My first thought was that this wasn't going to help people get used to Bill and me.

Malcolm was wearing leather pants and a kind of chain-mail shirt. He looked like something on the cover of a rock album. Diane was wearing a one-piece lime green bodysuit spun out of Lycra or some other very thin, stretchy cloth. I was sure I could count her pubic hairs if I so desired. Blacks didn't come into Merlotte's much, but if any black was ab­solutely safe there, it was Diane. I saw Lafayette goggling through the hatch in open admiration, spiced by a dollop of fear.

The two vampires shrieked with feigned surprise when they saw Bill, like demented drunks. As far as I could tell, Bill was not happy about their presence, but he seemed to handle their invasion calmly, as he did almost everything.

Malcolm kissed Bill on the mouth, and so did Diane. It was hard to tell which greeting was more offensive to the customers in the bar. Bill had better show distaste, and quick, I thought, if he wanted to stay in good with the human in­habitants of Bon Temps.

Bill, who was no fool, took a step back and put his arm around me, dissociating himself from the vampires and align­ing himself with the humans.

"So your little waitress is still alive," Diane said, and her clear voice was audible through the whole bar. "Isn't that amazing."

"Her grandmother was murdered last week," Bill said qui­etly, trying to subdue Diane's desire to make a scene.

Her gorgeous lunatic brown eyes fixed on me, and I felt cold.

"Is that right?" she said and laughed.

That was it. No one would forgive her now. If Bill had been trying to find a way to entrench himself, this would be the scenario I would write. On the other hand, the disgust I could feel massing from the humans in the bar could back­lash and wash over Bill as well as the renegades.

Of course ... to Diane and her friends, Bill was the ren­egade.

"When's someone going to kill you, baby?" She ran a fingernail under my chin, and I knocked her hand away.

She would have been on me if Malcolm hadn't grabbed her hand, lazily, almost effortlessly. But I saw the strain show in the way he was standing.

"Bill," he said conversationally, as if he wasn't exerting every muscle he had to keep Diane still, "I hear this town is losing its unskilled service personnel at a terrible rate. And a little bird in Shreveport tells me you and your friend here were at Fangtasia asking questions about what vampire the murdered fang-bangers might have been with."

"You know that's for us to know, no one else," Malcolm continued, and all of a sudden his face was so serious it was truly terrifying. "Some of us don't want to go to—baseball— games and ..." (here he was searching his memory for some­thing disgustingly human, I could tell) "barbecues! We are Vampire!" He invested the word with majesty, with glamor, and I could tell a lot of the people in the bar were falling under his spell. Malcolm was intelligent enough to want to erase the bad impression he knew Diane had made, all the while showering contempt on those of us it had been made on.

I stomped on his instep with every ounce of weight I could muster. He showed his fangs at me. The people in the bar blinked and shook themselves.

"Why don't you just get outta here, mister," Rene said. He was slouched at the bar with his elbows flanking a beer.

There was moment when things hung in the balance, when the bar could have turned into a bloodbath. None of my fel­low humans seemed to quite comprehend how strong vam­pires were, or how ruthless. Bill had moved in front of me, a fact registered by every citizen in Merlotte's.

"Well, if we're not wanted..." Malcolm said. His thick-muscled masculinity warred with the fluting voice he sud­denly affected. "These good people would like to eat meat, Diane, and do human things. By themselves. Or with our former friend Bill."