Chapter 7

 Truth and Consciousness

               When full consciousness hit me the next morning, I groaned into my pillow.

Had I really thought Eric Northman was laying the whammy on my Gran?

               Had I really gone on a gravity defying midnight ride with him?

               Had I really almost sucked his troublesome tongue down to my seeking toes?

               Had I really told him it was all Sookie or no way?

Yup, I recalled as I attempted to suffocate my scarlet face in sun-dried linen.  I sure enough had.

               This, I decided as I pouted around my room looking for my slippers, was what happened when desperate virgins allowed themselves to be seduced by bizarrely courteous thousand-year-old sexpots.  I banged my head on the underside of my bed just as I was coming up with that halfway truth.

Real truth be told, it wasn’t Eric I was unsure of.  His thoughts spoke plain enough that he was serious about his intentions.  Nope, I was the jittery one.  I was so used to sorting out my feelings on folks based on what I saw in their heads, that I wasn’t sure I trusted my own judgment where he was concerned.  But I wanted to.

Lordy, how I wanted to.

               “Good morning Sookie!” Gran said cheerily as I slunk into the kitchen.
“Morning, Gran,” I muttered as she poured me a tall glass of pulpy juice.

               “Eric was kind enough to have another batch of flowers sent ‘round.  For me!” she said, lifting a wrinkly hand and pressing it to her flushed cheek.

               And there they were, black-eyed Susan’s arranged pretty as you please in tall, thin candy blue glass with sunlight spilling over their cheerful petals.  Gran had set them in the center of our kitchen table, proudly propping up the little silver note at their base.  It truly was a happy sight, and I found my grouch fading under the sheer joy of her excitement.

               “And then I got a call from Everlee Mason right after they showed up, asking me if I had a secret beau.  Apparently, someone called her up early this morning asking after my favorites!”

               She plucked the card off the table and offered it to me with shining eyes.

“And the loveliest card, too!”

               I took it from her with a nervous smile.

As I opened the silver embossed card, I wondered: Had Gran really been feeling so lonely as all that?  What had Eric Northman’s stranger eyes picked up that mine had missed?

The words inside were even prettier than the flowers.

Adele,

The darkness brightens under your rarest of lights.

               Warmest regards,

               Eric

               I looked up from his loopy cursive, and sure enough, my Gran glowed.

               “So you like him, then?”  I hesitated.  “You don’t think this is all … a little much?”

               “What?  Some flowers?” she scoffed.

“And the cell phone and the job.”  And the melt-your-socks kisses and the wingless flying and the super intense vampire thoughts.

Just call me provincial Sookie.

“The job is a job, and the cell phone is for working it,” she said firmly.

               “Aside from that, it’s plain to see the man wants you.”  I bit my tongue at the word man.  “But it’s also plain that he hits where he aims.”

               I frowned as I handed back the card.

               “What’s that supposed to mean?”

               “It means, girl, that he’s taking time to match what he wants with what you need.”

               “Well doesn’t that just make him the wiliest of them all,” I muttered.

               “That makes him wise,” she corrected, rubbing a wistful, arthritic finger over her card.  “And kind despite all the killing I imagine he’s done over the years.  Most men would’ve hardened up by now.”

               Well his chest sure was hard enough.  I flashed back to the first night I’d seen him, sitting up on his platform in Fangtasia, at how the fluorescent lighting had glinted off those fantasy abs…  Or how it felt being pressed up against them as we dashed across the parking lot…  Or being cradled to them as he flew us to a midnight bayou…

I dropped my chin into my palm and sighed loudly.

               Speaking of wily…  Gran was currently giving me the eye over a fresh cup of coffee.  I lifted it and took several innocent sips before I finally gave her what she wanted.

               “Oh, alright!  I want him, too.”

“And about time,” she sniffed, and I gave her an incredulous look.

               “Are you sure Eric didn’t glamour you?” I drawled, and Gran gave me a pained look.

               “Sookie, really.  He would never do such a thing to me here.”

               I gave her a skeptical eye.  At least she hadn’t said he wouldn’t do such a thing to her at all.  But then again, Gran always had been a realist.

               “Seriously, Sookie.  A man like that, a man that’s lived a thousand years, he’s got honor.  Maybe not rules, per say-“ she added at my snort.  “But he sure ‘nough has honor.”

               “Gran, you met him for like an hour.”

               “You live long enough, it doesn’t take but five minutes.”

This was like the tag team of the century, was what it was.  Still, I was feeling more charitable as I watched Gran re-set her note, shifting it this way and that until she got it where she liked it.  All things considered, I had to admit Eric Northman had a way about him.  But was he going to have his way with Sookie Stackhouse?  That was certainly the question of the hour.

I drank my juice, ate a bagel and a plate of eggs Gran had whipped up before I spoke again.

“Gran?”

“Hmm?”

“You think I would be being as difficult if Eric was, um, human?”

“I think,” she said carefully, after a long minute, “you’ve got your reasons for dodging men that ain’t got nothing to do with their teeth and everything to do with their bites.”

I started grinning crazily at that.  My hands started shaking, my heart started to race.  This was as close as we’d gotten in years to talking about We Don’t Speak of Him.

“Gran, we don’t-“

“Yes we do,” she said firmly.  “’Cause there’s been times when I listened to my head when my heart was hollering at me to wise up!  And I think, maybe here’s the real damage.”  My lips jerked as she took my trembling hand and gave it a shaky squeeze.

These words were not easy coming or going.

“Sookie, you have to know…  Bartlett was always so very careful when I was around, so very proper and considerate.  Like them snakes on Discovery Channel with the prettiest stripes.  And all the while hurting my girls…”  She trailed off, and swallowed like she was choking to death.

 “You stopped him Gran,” I said softly, trying to block memories of Uncle Bartlett’s dark thoughts and dirty hands.  “That’s all that matters.”

“I’d like to have killed him,” my sweet old Gran muttered, and I didn’t say anything ‘cause I’d still have liked to.

“But I supposed that wouldn’t have been Christian.”

Did wanting to kill him make me a poor Christian then?  I’ve thought that if I ever have to face violence I won’t just lay down and take it.  But I also know that if I ever again have to face what my Uncle Bartlett did to me, I won’t lay down and take it either.  I guess that makes me a survivalist first, and a Christian second, but I have faith that God is the forgiving sort.

We both took a moment to mourn our losses.

“Now, your Mr. Northman-“

“Really, Gran, he’s not-“

“You think I don’t see that boy’s devilish, hmm?  I’m old, not daft, girl.”  Her eyes gleamed.  “He wears sex like perfume, that one does-“

I made a noise like dying on hearing this.

“-But he’s there to see, ain’t he?  One color, through and through.”

I stared at her with my nervous lips and thought furiously.  What had Eric said the night I had met him?  ‘Judge me by what you see…’  Could it really be that simple?  Was I really gonna make it this complicated?  Where were the words for my nerves?

“Gran…”  I hesitated.  “I feel like he’s gonna swallow me up.  Like even when he’s telling me I’m the one calling the shots, it’s only ‘cause he says so.”

She nodded thoughtfully at that.

“I’d say if Eric’s gonna have a flaw, it’ll be that he forgets you need breathing-“

My eyebrows shot skyward, and she had to purse her lips before finishing.

“-but if that’s hard for you, Sookie, you just remember…  You are a Stackhouse, and ground given is ground earned.”

We both stiffened our spines and solemnly nodded at each other before bursting into smiles.

I got up and scraped my plate into the trash and washed it, then scratched Tina behind her ears.  She purred at me like a steam engine.  I kissed Gran on the cheek and she murmured something insensible over the top of her paperback.  I put on my purple bikini, slathered on coconut oil and lay out on my green plastic lounger.

Just ‘cause I was playing with vamps now was no reason to neglect my tan.

An hour or so later, when I was heavy eyed and hot skinned, I folded up my chair and set it neatly back in the shed.  I went into through the kitchen and found a note on the counter from Gran saying she’d run to the store.  And on the table next to the black-eyed Susan’s, the promised Fed-Ex delivery.

Except there were two packages.  One was a sturdy, mid-sized box with what I figured was my cell phone.  The other was a flat, thin envelope that felt like it was filled with bubble wrap.  Curious, I opened it first, unwrapping until I reached a folded note and a suspiciously shaped piece of red tissue paper.

“You better have not, Eric Northman,” I muttered as I picked up the note and unfolded it.  His familiar script, (and just when had that happened?) was simple and to the point.

Which is to say pointing towards complicated.

               Miss Stackhouse,

               A shoe of little consequence and great intent.

               Yours,

               Eric Northman

               Nervous, I pulled at the edges of the tissue paper, nearly jumping when a thin gold chain spilled out.  I lifted it delicately, watching with wide-eyes as the links swayed, as the baby charm glinted brilliantly in the morning sunlight.  At the very end was surely the tinniest, tiniest, gold horseshoe ever crafted by the hands of man.

               Why, I believe I’ll take epic seductions for a thousand, Alex.

               And suddenly, I was laughing.  I bent over with it, chest heaving, eyes watering, heart pumping.  I pressed my forehead to the cool surface of the table, and I laughed, and laughed, and laughed, cradling that little charm to my chest.  And when the laughter gave way to tears, I prayed.

               I prayed God forgive my Uncle Bartlett where I could not.  I prayed Maudette had found her way safely home, and that my brother Jason would settle on some nice girl.  I prayed thanks for Hadley’s safe return, and for Gran’s happy flowers.  I prayed thanks for my new job and the chance to use my strange gift, and for the better insurance it offered.  I prayed thanks for my strong-willed Viking suitor, for even having a suitor at all.

Lastly, I prayed for the courage to keep up.

               After my cry out session, I put on my horseshoe and unwrapped my new cell phone.

I was relieved to find that Eric had settled on a flip phone for me, rather than one of the BlackBerry things.  It was a shiny, cherry red, and very thin.  I flipped it open and was pleased to discover Hadley’s number listed right under home.  And of course, there was Eric Northman.  I scrolled to his name and smiled down at it with a little smile even I wasn’t too sure of.  After that, I plugged in the phone to charge and hit the shower.

As I dressed, I decided to give my brain a rest on the Eric Northman front, but my fingers wouldn’t stop brushing the chain under my work shirt.

I got to work 15 minutes early and was well into my prep when Sam found me.

               “Hey there, Sook,” he said, real cautious like.

               “Hi there, Sam,” I said cheerfully.

               “I wanted to apologize for yesterday.”

               I kept stirring the sweet tea with a steady hand as I replied.

               “Are you sure about that, Sam?  ‘Cause even if I could get out, I wouldn’t.”

               He started to say something and I shook my head.

“My family’s involved,” I said quietly, and he scowled.

“Jason can handle his own sh….stuff,” he finished lamely when I gave a little scowl of my own.

“This ain’t got nothing to do with Jason.”  And I sure wasn’t bringing up Hadley’s name until she decided that was the thing to do.

“Then who?  Not your Gran.”  He looked gobsmacked by that possibility, and it was all I could do not to laugh in his face.  If he only knew how happily Gran had been cavorting with a certain Viking vampire the night before…

“Gran’s on the outfield on this one, but-“ I said when I saw his relief.  “-She is in the field.”

Sam’s face went desperate at that.

 “I’m sorry if that makes you unhappy, Sam,” I said as kindly as I could.  “But some things just can’t be undone.”

He looked like I’d just knifed him in his unmentionables.  His eyes were as wide as I’d ever seen him, and the air around him seemed to shimmer with intensity.  I didn’t know whether to take a step forward, or a step back.

“Sam…” I started, but he shook his head.

“You go on now, Sook,” he growled.  “I’ll think on it,” he added when I hesitated, and I gave him an uncertain nod.

The night took off fast enough after that.  The bar crowd was still heavy after Maudette’s death, and I ran my feet near to blisters trying to keep up.  Rumors were flying, thoughts were whizzing, drinks were disappearing.  As I was coming up to the bar for a refill I ended up on the bottom side of a conversation Dawn was having with one of our regulars, DeeAnn.

“…And personally, I just don’t know how someone so boring got to die so interesting like.”

“You hush now!” DeeAnn said while she tried to smother her own giggles.  “Just hush!”

I lifted my eyes off the rum and coke Sam was traying up from me, and I could see the quiet acknowledgement for what I was about to do.  He gave a nod as he fitted a lime slice on my glass, and I nodded back.  We may not be eye to eye on the vampire issue, but here everything was perfectly clear.  I turned slow motion on my heel and tapped Dawn on her slender shoulder.

“What?” she drawled in irritation when she came round to face me, but I kept my smile firmly in place.  Anyone looking at us would see nothing but a happy chat.

“Dawn Green,” I said very, very quietly.  My tone was as ominous as grave dirt.

“You best be keeping such poisonous thoughts where they belong before Maudette ain’t the only one experiencing something so interesting like.”

Dawn’s eyes went comically wide, and her lower lip quivered.  We’d been working together long enough now that she believed I was… something.  Most days she figured I was psychic, and for tonight that was just fine.  I kept eyeballing her until she nodded, then turned back to my drink and quick footed it off to my table.

               I made a lap on my other tables, dropped off two sweet teas and a basket of French fried pickles to Andy Bellefluer, who was thinking murder in person was a whole lot nastier than what they showed on TV.  I gave Denise and Mack Ratray a stack of napkins, and when Mack starting thinking about doing unseemly things to my naked backside, I couldn’t help but imagine Eric putting the smack down on him.  I guess my smile must have shown some of my viciousness, ‘cause Mack gave me a funny look and Denise kept glaring even as I was turning away.

               I kept it up for another hour before I just couldn’t take it anymore.  I made sure my tables were settled and happy, then snuck off to the bathroom to dial a certain high-handed Viking.  Arlene was already there having her ‘I just can’t take this night anymore’ smoke, and I gave her shoulder a commiserating bump before I locked myself in the stall.

               Once inside, I propped myself up on the toilet and scrolled to Eric’s number, sneaking peeks at Arlene puffing away at the sink the whole while.  I felt like I was committing grand larceny or something.  I’d only had a cell phone for a day and it was already corrupting me.

Eric answered after the second ring in a voice so sensual I nearly dropped my new phone in the toilet bowl.

They really ought to warn folks about that.

“I am here.”

“Look, I’ve never even ridden a horse-”

               “I see you received your phone.”

               “Yeah, I did-“

“No troubles setting it up?”

“No, I’m figuring it out fine, but-“

“I had some concerns, given your old fashioned ways.”

I yanked the pretty red phone away from my head and glared at it for all I was worth.  I took a few crucial seconds to reign my temper in, deep breaths and the like, before I set it back to my ear.

“Thank you, Eric,” I said, speaking in deliberately reasonable tones.  “But I just can’t keep taking stuff from you.”

               “I think we proved last night it is to be a mutual affair,” he said just as reasonably.

               “Eric, I’ve known you three whole days!”

               “A spectacularly short time,” he purred, and I banged my head into the stall door.

               “Sookie?” I heard a cautious voice say.  “That you in there?”

               I yanked the phone from my head and shoved it to my shoulder.

               “I’m fine, Arlene.  Just sorting some stuff out.”

               “Alright, then.  You just take your time.  Want me to check your tables for ya?”

               “Sure thing, that’d be great.  I should be finished up in just a few.”

               I put the phone back to my ear with some relief.

               “Eric?”  The phone was dead silent.

               “Eric!” I hissed.

               “You are ashamed of me,” he said finally, sounding a strange blend of sad, shocked and pissed.

               “It’s not that!  It’s just…” I trailed off, for the life of me incapable of sorting out the words even in my own head.

               “It’s just what?”  His voice had gone dead flat, and I was suddenly very grateful I was not this creature’s enemy.

“I am not man enough for you?”  My temper flared at that.

               “Do not put words in my mouth, Eric Northman!”

               When he didn’t come up with a sexual twist, I knew I was in trouble.

               “Oh, God, Eric, please.”  I leaned my head against the cool metal of the bathroom stall.

               “You have to understand I’ve never had any of this.  I don’t know what to take, what to resist.”  I hesitated.  “What to share.”

               He was silent a very long time.  So long in fact, and so quietly what with the vamps-not-breathing thing, I thought he might have hung up.

               “Eric?” I said timidly, and to my relief he finally spoke.

               “Do you wear it?”  He might have been talking about the weather, but if I hadn’t been I got the feeling we’d have been in for a killer’s storm.

               Little consequence my lily white bum.

               “Of course,” I scolded, fingering the bumps of the little gold chain tucked under my shirt.

               “Of course,” he repeated back with such derision that I rolled my eyes.

               “Eric, I’m nervous, not disinterested.  I told you last night, I just need some time, okay?”

               I waited my own kind of breathless while he mulled this over.  When he spoke again, it was with considerably more warmth.

               “Even among my kind, I am very old, Sookie Stackhouse.  If you require this of me, I can be patient.”

I felt a wave of relief.

               “But-“

I felt a wave of dread.

               “-I will not be a bathroom stall secret,” he said firmly.

               My eyes closed in prayer.  It seemed I was doing a whole lot of praying since I’d met the vamps.

               “Really,” I said weakly.  “How good is y’all’s hearing?”

               There was the briefest of hesitations.

“You should tell the woman Arlene the smoking is not appropriate given her condition.”

               My jaw dropped.  Arlene smoking on her breaks in the bathroom was kind of an open secret, but as far as I knew from my accidental mind reading, even she wasn’t sure on the pregnancy yet.

               “So what, you heard her smoking and-“

               “-Three heartbeats,” he finished smoothly.

               “So she’s having twins?” I squeaked.

               “No,” he said with great humor.  “One of them was distinctively yours.”

               I had to think about this a minute.

               “You know, it’s kinda crazy how you can be so creepy and so charming both at once.”

               “And it is frustrating how you can be so intoxicating and so obstinate both at once.”

               “But I’m yours for the frustrating,” I said without conscious thought.

               There was a moment of dead silence while we both processed what I’d just said.

               And then…

               “Are you?” he asked softly, in that voice of his that always means so much more than what you’re hearing.

My mouth fell open.  I tried for words, closed it again, took a deep breath and nodded to myself.

               Yes, I really was, I realized, as he waited patiently for my response.  I really wanted to share myself with this strange creature and his thoughtful, risqué wit: the Gran charmer, the 1000 year old vampire in flip flops, the BlackBerry toting Viking, the dead sexy sheriff, the lusty-mouthed Sookie Stackhouse fan.  I wanted to see his world, and I wanted to show him mine.

               And on the acceptance of it, some long starved part of me sat up and cried.

“As you are mine,” I softly replied.

               “Well, then, my Sookie,” he said in a most reasonable voice that did nothing to hide his wicked smile.  “Perhaps you can tell me what you have on under your Merlotte’s outfit.”

My face instantly went hot.

               “Really, Eric,” I whispered.  I could hear his office chair creak as he tilted back.  “I’m at work.”

               “No?  Perhaps we should start with me.  I’m wearing-“

I heard the distinctive clatter of belt buckle, and he got no further.  I immediately yanked the phone off my head and hit the end call button.  I stared down at it in exasperation, swearing I could hear his laughter coming all the way from Shreveport.  Really, what was the man thinking?

After a minute or two I shook my head and stuffed the phone back into my apron.  I did a glance over in the mirror, adjusted my ponytail, and lifted my horseshoe charm outside my shirt.  I took a second to center it on my collar, taking in my glowing reflection with a wry smile.

Then I dashed out on blissful feet to my abandoned tables.