Sam was uneasy, too.

"What do you think?" I asked him, and I realized this was the first time I'd spoken to him all evening, other than "Pass the pitcher," or "Give me another margarita."

"I think we've got a mob," he said. "But they'll hardly go over to Monroe now. The vampires'll be up and about until dawn."

"Where is their house, Sam?"

"I understand it's on the outskirts of Monroe on the west side—in other words, closest to us," he told me. "I don't know for sure."

I drove home after closing, half hoping I'd see Bill lurking in my driveway so I could tell him what was afoot.

But I didn't see him, and I wouldn't go to his house. After a long hesitation, I dialed his number, but got only his an­swering machine. I left a message. I had no idea what the three nesting vampires' phone was listed under, if they had a phone at all.

As I pulled off my shoes and removed my jewelry—all silver, take that, Bill!—I remember worrying, but I wasn't worrying enough. I went to bed and quickly to sleep in the bedroom that was now mine. The moonlight streamed in the open shades, making strange shadows on the floor. But I only stared at them for a few minutes. Bill didn't wake me that night, returning my call.

BUT THE PHONE did ring, early in the morning, after daylight.

"What?" I asked, dazed, the receiver pressed to my ear. I peered at the clock. It was seven-thirty.

"They burned the vampires' house," Jason said. "I hope yours wasn't in it."

"What?" I asked again, but my voice was panicked now.

"They burned the vampires' house outside of Monroe. Af­ter sunrise. It's on Callista Street, west of Archer."

I remembered Bill saying he might take Harlen over there. Had he stayed?

"No." I said it definitely.

"Yes."

"I have to go," I said, hanging up the phone.

it Smoldered IN the bright sunlight. Wisps of smoke trailed up into the blue sky. Charred wood looked like alli­gator skin. Fire trucks and law enforcement cars were parked helter-skelter on the lawn of the two-story house. A group of the curious stood behind yellow tape.

The remains of four coffins sat side by side on the scorched grass. There was a body bag, too. I began to walk toward them, but for the longest time they seemed to be no closer; it was like one of those dreams where you can never reach your goal.

Someone grabbed my arm and tried to stop me. I can't remember what I said, but I remember a horrified face. I trudged on through the debris, inhaling the smell of burned things, wet charred things, a smell that wouldn't leave me the rest of my life.

I reached the first coffin and looked in. What was left of the lid was open to the light. The sun was coming up; any moment now it would kiss the dreadful thing resting on soggy, white silk lining.

Was it Bill? There was no way to tell. The corpse was disintegrating bit by bit even as I watched. Tiny fragments flaked off and blew into the breeze, or disappeared in a tinypuff of smoke where the sun's rays began to touch the body.

Each coffin held a similar horror.

Sam was standing by me.

"Can you call this murder, Sam?"

He shook his head. "I just don't know, Sookie. Legally, killing the vampires is murder. But you'd have to prove arson first, though I don't think that'd be very hard." We could both smell gasoline. There were men buzzing around the house, climbing here and there, yelling to each other. It didn't appear to me that these men were conducting any serious crime-scene investigation.

"But this body here, Sookie." Sam pointed to the body bag on the grass. "This was a real human, and they have to inves­tigate. I don't think any member of that mob ever realized there might be a human in there, ever considered anything besides what they did."

"So why are you here, Sam?"

"For you," he said simply.

"I won't know if it's Bill all day, Sam."

"Yes, I know."

"What am I supposed to do all day? How can I wait?"

"Maybe some drugs," he suggested. "What about sleeping pills or something?"

"I don't have anything like that," I said. "I've never had trouble sleeping."

This conversation was getting odder and odder, but I don't think I could have said anything else.

A big man was in front of me, the local law. He was sweating in the morning heat, and he looked like he'd been up for hours. Maybe he'd been on the night shift and had to stay on when the fire started.

When men I knew had started the fire.

"Did you know these people, miss?"

"Yes, I did. I'd met them."

"Can you identify the remains?"

"Who could identify that?" I asked incredulously.

The bodies were almost gone now, featureless and disin­tegrating.

He looked sick. "Yes, ma'am. But the person."

"I'll look," I said before I had time to think. The habit of being helpful was mighty hard to break.

As if he could tell I was about to change my mind, the big man knelt on the singed grass and unzipped the bag. The sooty face inside was that of a girl I'd never met. I thanked God.

"I don't know her," I said, and felt my knees give. Sam caught me before I was on the ground, and I had to lean against him.

"Poor girl," I whispered. "Sam, I don't know what to do." . The law took part of my time that day. They wanted to know everything I knew about the vampires who had owned the house, and I told them, but it didn't amount to much. Malcolm, Diane, Liam. Where they'd come from, their age, why they'd settled in Monroe, who their lawyers were; how would I know anything like that? I'd never even been to their house before.

When my questioner, whoever he was, found out that I'd met them through Bill, he wanted to know where Bill was, how he could contact him.

"He may be right there," I said, pointing to the fourth coffin. "I won't know till dark." My hand rose of its own volition and covered my mouth.

Just then one of the firemen started to laugh, and his com­panion, too. "Southern fried vampires!" the shorter one hooted to the man who was questioning me. "We got us some Southern fried vampires here!"

He didn't think it was so damn funny when I kicked him. Sam pulled me off and the man who'd been questioning me grabbed the fireman I'd attacked. I was screaming like a ban­shee and would have gone for him again if Sam had let go. But he didn't. He dragged me toward my car, his hands just as strong as bands of iron. I had a sudden vision of how ashamed my grandmother would have been to see me screaming at a public servant, to see me physically attack someone. The idea pricked my crazy hostility like a needle puncturing a balloon. I let Sam shove me into the passenger's seat, and when he started the car and began backing away, I let him drive me home while I sat in utter silence. We got to my house all too soon. It was only ten o'clockin the morning. Since it was daylight savings time I had at least ten plus hours to wait.

Sam made some phone calls while I sat on the couch star­ing ahead of me. Five minutes had passed when he came back into the living room.

"Come on, Sookie," he said briskly. "These blinds are filthy."

"What?"

"The blinds. How could you have let them go like this?"

"What?"

"We're going to clean. Get a bucket and some ammonia and some rags. Make some coffee."

Moving slowly and cautiously, afraid I might dry up and blow away like the bodies in the coffins, I did as he bid me.

Sam had the curtains down on the living-room windows by the time I got back with the bucket and rags.

"Where's the washing machine?"

"Back there, off the kitchen," I said, pointing.

Sam went back to the washroom with an armful of cur­tains. Gran had washed those not a month ago, for Bill's visit. I didn't say a word.

I lowered one of the blinds, closed it, and began washing. When the blinds were clean, we polished the windows them­selves. It began raining about the middle of the morning. We couldn't get the outside. Sam got the long-handled dust mop and got the spider webs out of the corners of the high ceiling, and I wiped down the baseboards. He took down the mirror over the mantel, dusted the parts that we couldn't normally reach, and then we cleaned the mirror and rehung it. I cleaned the old marble fireplace till there wasn't a trace of winter's fire left. I got a pretty screen and put it over the fireplace, one painted with magnolia blossoms. I cleaned the television screen and had Sam lift it so I could dust underneath. I put all the movies back in their own boxes and labeled what I'd taped. I took all the cushions off the couch and vacuumed up the debris that had collected beneath them, finding a dollar and five cents in change. I vacuumed the carpet and used the dust mop on the wood floors.