"So, have we talked our way around in circles?" I asked.

Bill seemed to be considering. "Yes," he confirmed, a tinge of regret in his voice. "You don't like associating with vampires other than myself, and I have told you we have no choice."

"How about this Desiree thing?"

"He had someone drop her off on my doorstep, hoping I would be pleased he'd sent me a pretty gift. Also, it would test my devotion to you if I drank from her. Perhaps he poisoned her blood somehow, and her blood would have weakened me. Maybe she would just have been a crack in my armor." He shrugged. "Did you think I had a date?"

"Yes." I felt my face harden, thinking about Bill walking in with the girl.

"You weren't at home. I had to come find you." His tone wasn't accusatory, but it wasn't happy, either.

"I was trying to help Jason out by listening. And I was still upset from last night."

"Are we all right now?"

"No, but we're as all right as we can get," I said. "I guess no matter who I cared for, it wouldn't always go smooth. But I hadn't counted on obstacles this drastic. There's no way you can ever outrank Eric, I guess, since age is the criterion?"

"No," said Bill. "Not outrank..." and he suddenly looked thoughtful. "Though there may be something I can do along those lines. I don't want to—it goes against my nature—but we would be more secure." I let him think.

"Yes," he concluded, ending his long brood. He didn't offer to explain, and I didn't ask.

"I love you," he said, as if that was the bottom line to whatever course of action he was considering. His face loomed over me, luminous and beautiful in the half-darkness. "I feel the same about you," I said, and put my hands against his chest so he wouldn't tempt me. "But we have too much against us right now. If we can pry Eric off our backs, that would help. And another thing, we have to stop this murder investigation. That would be a second big piece of trouble off our backs. This murderer has the deaths of your friends to answer for, and the deaths of Maudette and Dawn to answer for." I paused, took a deep breath. "And the death of my grandmother." I blinked back tears. I'd gotten adjusted to Gran not being in the house when I came home, and I was getting used to not talking to her and sharing my day with her, but every now and then I had a stab of grief so acute it robbed me of breath.

"Why do you think the same killer is responsible for the Monroe vampires being burned?"

"I think it was the murderer who planted this idea, this vigilante thing, in the men in the bar that night. I think it was the murderer who went from group to group, egging the guys on. I've lived here all my life, and I've never seen people around here act that way. There's got to be a reason they did this time."

"He agitated them? Fomented the burning?"

"Yes."

"Listening hasn't turned up anything?"

"No," I admitted glumly. "But that's not to say tomorrow will be the same."

"You're an optimist, Sookie."

"Yes, I am. I have to be." I patted his cheek, thinking how my optimism had been justified since he had entered my life.

"You keep on listening, since you think it may be fruitful," he said. "I'll work on something else, for now. I'll see you tomorrow evening at your place, okay? I may... no, let me explain then."

"All right." I was curious, but Bill obviously wasn't ready to talk.

On my way home, following the taillights of Bill's car as far as my driveway, I thought of how much more frightening the past few weeks would have been if I hadn't had the security of Bill's presence. As I went cautiously down the driveway, I found myself wishing Bill hadn't felt he had to go home to make some necessary phone calls. The few nights we'd spent apart, I wouldn't say I'd been exactly writhing with fear, but I'd been very jumpy and anxious. At the house by myself, I spent lots of time going from locked window to locked door, and I wasn't used to living that way. I felt disheartened at the thought of the night ahead.

Before I got out of my car, I scanned the yard, glad I'd remembered to turn on the security lights before I left for the bar. Nothing was moving. Usually Tina came running when I'd been gone, anxious to get in the house for some cat kibble, but tonight she must be hunting in the woods.

I separated my house key from the bunch on my key ring. I dashed from the car to the front door, inserted and twisted the key in record time, and slammed and locked the door behind me. This was no way to live, I thought, shaking my head in dismay; and just as I completed that idea, something hit the front door with a thud. I shrieked before I could stop myself.

I ran for the portable phone by the couch. I punched in Bill's number as I went around the room pulling down the shades. What if the line was busy? He'd said he was going home to use the phone!

But I caught him just as he walked in the door. He sounded breathless as he picked up the receiver. "Yes?" he said. He always sounded suspicious. "Bill," I gasped, "there's someone outside!" He crashed the phone down. A vampire of action. He was there in two minutes. Looking out into the yard from a slightly lifted blind, I glimpsed him coming into the yard from the woods, moving with a speed and silence a human could never equal. The relief of seeing him was over­whelming. For a second I felt ashamed at calling Bill to rescue me: I should have handled the situation myself. Then I thought, Why? When you know a practically invincible being who professes to adore you, someone so hard to kill it's next to impossible, someone preternaturally strong, that's who you're gonna call.

Bill investigated the yard and the woods, moving with a sure, silent grace. Finally he came lightly up the steps. He bent over something on the front porch. The angle was too acute, and I couldn't tell what it was. When he straightened, he had something in his hands, and he looked absolutely ... expressionless. This was very bad.

I went reluctantly to the front door and unlocked it I pushed out the screen door.

Bill was holding the body of my cat.

"Tina?" I said, hearing my voice quaver and not caring at all. "Is she dead?"

Bill nodded, one little jerk of his head.

"What—how?"

"Strangled, I think."

I could feel my face crumple. Bill had to stand there hold­ing the corpse while I cried my eyes out.

"I never got that live oak," I said, having calmed a little. I didn't sound very steady. "We can put her in that hole." So around to the backyard we went, poor Bill holding Tina, trying to look comfortable about it, and me trying not to dissolve again. Bill knelt and lay the little bundle of black fur at the bottom of my excavation. I fetched the shovel and began to fill it in, but the sight of the first dirt hitting Tina's fur undid me all over again. Silently, Bill took the shovel from my hands. I turned my back, and he finished the awful job.

"Come inside," he said gently when it was finished.

We went in the house, having to walk around to the front because I hadn't yet unlocked the back.

Bill patted me and comforted me, though I knew he hadn't ever been crazy about Tina. "God bless you, Bill," I whis­pered. I tightened my arms around him ferociously, in a sud­den convulsion of fear that he, too, would be taken from me. When I'd gotten the sobs reduced to hiccups, I looked up, hoping I hadn't made him uncomfortable with my flood of emotion.

Bill was furious. He was staring at the wall over my shoul­der, and his eyes were glowing. He was the most frightening thing I'd ever seen in my life.

"Did you find anything out in the yard?" I asked.

"No. I found traces of his presence. Some footprints, a lingering scent. Nothing you could bring into court as proof," he went on, reading my mind.

"Would you mind staying here until you have to go to ... get away from the sun?"