Chapter 1

 

A Mystery Guest

AU.  Sookie/Eric, Pam/Hadley.  Rated M….  Based on the SSN.  What if Pam had turned Hadley instead of Queen Sophie Anne and Bill never existed?  Sookie finds herself learning the ropes of the supernatural world at the hands of her newly turned cousin while trying not to lose herself in the attentions of a certain sexy Viking vampire…

Disclaimer:  Charlaine Harris owns all… I’m just playing in her sandbox.

I was cleaning when I heard the knock.  I was up to my elbows in dishwater, my hair a frizzy blond mess around my face.  I certainly hadn’t been expecting company.

It had been a long, but satisfying day.  It was my day off from Merlotte’s, the bar where I’m a waitress, so I’d started off the morning sunbathing.  It was still early enough in the spring that I got goose pimples from the breeze, but I am an avid tanner.  I don’t consider myself to be vain, but I like to be tan and pretty.  I’m a natural blond, with big blue eyes, so the tan works for me.  And as far as I was concerned, the slight chill was well worth it.  I had slathered on a shiny layer of coconut tanning oil, pulled on my favorite purple bikini from last summer, and stretched out on my old green plastic lounger.  I then proceeded to fall asleep behind a pair of oversized sunglasses, the radio playing cheerful from the porch.

I woke up in time for a late lunch with Gran, then helped her fold the laundry.  My waitress uniforms were neatly tucked away in my drawers, the towels were in the hall closet.  We tackled the living room and downstairs bathroom next (spring cleaning!), and finished around supper time.  Since Gran had a prior arrangement at Maxine Fortenberry’s (they were planning a Descendants of the Glorious Dead bake sale), I offered to do the dishes.

When the knock came, I nearly dropped one of our dinner plates.

My cat Tina meowed loudly at me and I gave a rather hysterical laugh, trying to calm my thudding heart.  Who could possibly be knocking this late?  Gran was out for the night, and I knew for a fact that my brother Jason wouldn’t be stopping by because he was out on a date with Dawn Green, one of the other waitresses from Merlotte’s.  Not that Dawn told me, per se.  I just happened to accidentally hear her thinking about Jason taking off the new bra and panty set she’d gotten at Boscov’s in Shreveport before I managed to shut her out.

I wish I could tell you that that was the first time I’d ever heard someone’s thoughts, or that I was crazy, but it wasn’t and I’m not.  Crazy, I mean, although everybody in the little town where I’m from, Bon Temps, calls me Crazy Sookie.  Nope, I’m sane.  I just have the great misfortune of being a telepath.  It may sound glamorous, being able to listen in on people’s thoughts, but I can tell you it’s just plain awful.  It’s like I’m constantly having two conversations, one in my head, with myself, as I sort through all the mental garbage I “hear” with my little disability, and another verbal one with all the regular folks.  It’s no wonder people think I’m crazy.

I can shield the thoughts somewhat, enough to wait tables and not be hospitalized, but not enough to go to college.  I’m not stupid, but I always had a hard time in school, what with maintaining the two conversations and all.  I love to read though, and am as self educated as I can be.  When they were alive, my parents thought I’d had a learning disability, but after they died in a flash flood when I was seven, I went to live with my Gran.  She believed in my telepathy, and never treated me like I was a monster because of it.  Instead she taught me to be circumspect and to make the best of my simple life.  I worship my Gran, and between her and the old family farmhouse, I am grateful to have a loving home.

Still, there are very few times when I can drop my shields entirely.  Usually only very late at night, after I’ve gotten back from Merlotte’s and Gran has drifted off to sleep, or on the occasional evening where she goes off to meet with one of her clubs.  Tonight was one of those nights, so it was just me and Tina.  My shields were completely dropped and I was enjoying the sounds of the old farmhouse: the creaky old hot water heater, the low strains of the Shreveport rock station, and the gentle hum off Tina’s well-being (No, I can’t hear animals, but I can sort of “sense” them.)

So I should have heard whoever it was before they knocked.  Puzzled, I threw the locks and pulled open the door to my mystery guest.

My nervous hello died on my lips as I opened the back door and saw who was standing there.  I barely felt Tina dart between my legs out onto the dimly lit porch and into the night.  It was a crickets in the dead of night kind of moment when I realized who it was.

My long lost cousin Hadley looked like she was dressed for someone’s funeral, and it only took me a few seconds of staring at her to realize it could have been her own.  Although she had been pale in life, her skin was a luminescent, pearly white now.  She practically glowed, and her mind was just…  not there.  That explained why I hadn’t heard her coming up on the porch.  I sent out a gentle search with my mind, pushing to make sure I hadn’t missed something.  Nope.  All I got was cool silence.

No doubt about it.  My cousin Hadley was a vampire.

“Oh Hadley,” I whispered, staring into her thickly lashed brown eyes.  I had always been envious of her eye lashes when we were little girls.  And she was still so much the same.  Petite, ethereally thin with long, shiny brown hair running in curls down her back.  I couldn’t tell how far down it went after it disappeared over her shoulders, but I was sure it was longer than I remembered.  Her clothes looked good, too, if a little dark for my tastes.  She was wearing black on black on black: a long velvet skirt with a lace hem and leather corset with a billowy shirt underneath.  The boots she was had on raised her a good three inches over my own five-foot-four frame.  Her face was a little more mature than I recalled; she looked around about my age of 25, which meant she had been turned recently.  Hadley and I were only two years apart.

The only thing that ruined the sophisticated, gothic beauty was the terrified, wounded expression on her face.

“Oh sweetie.  What have you gotten yourself into?”

It wasn’t the fact that Hadley was a vampire that got me.  It was the circumstances under which I had last seen her.  Hadley had disappeared her junior year of high school, had just plain took off from a rehab Gran had paid for.  Nobody had seen her or heard from her since.

“Come in!” I said finally, ashamed that I had gotten so caught up in staring that I forgot my manners.

She hesitated at the doorframe, finally stepping inside and walking like she was tiptoeing over shattered glass.  I took her hands, which were startlingly cool, and led her over to the dining room table.

“Here, come sit down,” I said.  She settled into the old rickety wooden chair and ducked her head down to her chest.  I felt a pang as I recognized the familiar gesture.  She was trying not to cry.

It was my turn now to hesitate.  “Oh Hadley, we were so worried about you, sweetie,” I said gently.

“I wanted to come back for so long,” she sobbed.  I kneeled on the floor at her feet, gathering up her chilly hands again and rubbing them with mine.  Even though I was touching her, I still couldn’t hear her thoughts.  Usually touch acted as a telepathic antenna.

“I just couldn’t bring myself to face you all, not after running away like I did, an’ owing Gran all that money.  I tried so hard, but I just had to go off an’ get myself lost.  An’ then it just felt like it was too late to come back, like you would never forgive me.”

I tried to shush her, but she just shook her head, still not looking at me.

“Oh, I knew it weren’t true, Sook.  But I just hated myself so much.”  She was calming now, and when she raised her head I could see crimson rivers where her tears ran down her face.  I stared in fascination.  Vampires cried tears of blood?  Amazing.  Lord knows I’d watched enough documentaries on vampires after they came out of the coffin four years ago, but I’d somehow managed to miss the glowing skin and bloody tears.  I guess some things they just don’t show on TV.

“Is Gran here?” she asked, looking around longingly, her nostrils flaring as if she were trying to smell her.  Huh.  That was strange.  But then I saw her eyes fill with memories as she glanced into the living room.  Not much had changed since she’d been gone.  The curtains were still the same pale green with white flowers, the fat old tube TV still sat in front of the couch.  The couch still had Gran’s afghan collection covering it.  I wonder how she saw it all with her new eyes.

“No sweetie, she’s not.  She’s off with one of her clubs.”

Hadley laughed, and I was glad to see some happier emotion coming into her face.  I strongly wished I could still read her mind, and had to shake myself at the thought.  This was what I had always wanted!

“Oh, how I’ve missed her.  How’s Jason?”

“Still a hound dog,” I said drily.  “He’s out tonight with Dawn Green.  You remember her from back in high school?”

“Yeah.  We were on the varsity team together at the beginning of my junior year…” she trailed off and began chewing on her bottom lip.

“I’ll tell you what.  I’ll talk to Gran for you, okay?  I’ll tell her that you’d like to come over for dinner sometime this week and that you have some big news.  We’ll break it to her together, a little easy though, okay?  You want me to invite Jason, too?”  Lord only knew how he was going to take this.  Hadley and him hadn’t been exactly close, but then Jason wasn’t really that close with anyone but Hoyt Fortenberry and Rene Lenier.

Hadley thought about it a moment then shook her head.

“No, no, I’d like it just to be us, Gran an’ you an’ me, when I tell her.  I’ll…  I’ll tell him after.”  She seemed to think of something and I saw a steely glint in her eyes.

“I have the money for the rehab,” she said proudly.  “I’m working at a club in Shreveport and making money, so I can pay her back.”

“Sweetie, I’ll tell her, but honestly I think she’ll just be happy to see you.  I know I sure am.”  I squeezed her hands.

And I meant it.  Regardless if Hadley was a vampire now, she was still Hadley, albeit paler and a little longer in the tooth.  This was still the girl I’d swapped Barbies with, who sneaked me moon pies from the kitchen when Gran wasn’t looking, who’d helped me play pranks on my hound dog of a brother Jason.  No matter what had happened in the past, she was family, she was blood, and I loved her.

“I know,” she said, “but I want to.  I know she’ll just forgive me, like she always does, but I wanna earn it, Sook.  I need to earn it.”

Hadley sat tall and proper in the Gran’s old kitchen chair, the blood dried to dark red streaks on her cheeks.  She looked resolute.  There was a new, quiet strength to her that impressed me.  It had been so many years since I had seen Hadley, and I wasn’t just talking about physically.  Maybe becoming a vampire had actually been good for her.  There would be no going back to drugs this time around; it wasn’t even a possibility any more.  Maybe knowing that had given her a sense of peace.  I sure hoped so.

“I have to go to work now, but will you come see me at tomorrow night?” she asked quietly.

I could tell she expected me to say no.  Truth be told, with my little disability, I had never been real eager to leave the relative mental security of Bon Temps.  New, crowded places made me nervous, and made it harder to shut out people’s thoughts.  But…  I wanted to see if Hadley was the only vampire exception to my abilities.  Wouldn’t it be amazing if all of them were silent?  A whole new world would be open to me.

“Fangtasia?” I asked carefully, naming the vampire bar in Shreveport some of my Merlotte’s co-workers frequented.

“Yes.  I work there.”  She hesitated again.  “My… maker is a manager there.  Her name is Pam.”

I may not have been able to read Hadley’s mind, but we had been close once, before the cruelties of high school and drugs separated us.  When she said Pam, her voice was full of soft wonder.  I studied her closely and thought hard, a nervous smile pulling at my lips.  In high school, Hadley had always liked guys, usually big, rough neck types with calloused hands that liked to work hard and party harder, so I was a little surprised.  But years of listening in on people’s brains and watching their expressions had taught me a lot about such things.  Good grief, this must be what regular folks had to deal with all the time.  Honestly, it was a little unnerving.  I felt like I’d had one of my senses cut off.  Still, I felt my excitement growing as I wondered if all vampires were dead zones for me, pardon the pun.  I forced myself to focus on Hadley.

“So, this Pam, she treats you good?” I said finally.  “’Cause vampire or not, I’m not above knocking together some fanged skulls.”  That got a laugh.  Good.

“Oh no, Sookie.  She’s wonderful.”

Yup, I decided.  My cousin was involved with this woman, intimately.  Did that bother me?  I gave it about as much thought as I give anything else sexual, which is to acknowledge it and then shove it out of my head.  It’s not that I’m not interested in sex.  It’s just never really been a possibility.  I can’t even handle going on dates with men, let alone getting naked with them while listening to all the thoughts rumbling around in their brains.  I’d pretty much accepted that I would die a spinster virgin in a house full of cats.  Maybe Jason would have some kids so at least I’d get to be Aunt Sookie.  It didn’t look like Hadley was going to give me the chance now, but I immediately reprimanded myself for such thoughts.

“Ok, then.  I guess I’ll have to come stop by Fangtasia and meet this Pam for myself.  I work lunch tomorrow, so it won’t be a problem.”

She had brightened up when I said yes.  I mean literally.  Her skin throbbed with a soft, gentle white glow that I took to mean happiness and/or excitement.

“Oh, thank you, Sookie!”

She jumped up from the chair in a movement that was too fast for my eyes to follow, picking me easily up into a hug.  I was astounded by her strength.  Not that I’m overweight, per se, but I’m a curvaceous size 10, and Hadley had been a size 4 the last time I’d checked.  She looked even thinner now.  When she set me down, I rubbed briskly at the skin where her fingers had held me.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she said cheerfully.  “There’s so much for us to talk about, and Pam will just love to meet you!”

“Sure thing, Hadley.  Nine o’clock okay?”

“Perfect!  I have to work, but Pam already knows I was coming to talk to you.  She won’t mind, and Eric…”  She paused, giving me the once over, then grinned.

“Eric loves the ladies, so I’m sure he won’t mind either.  Why don’t I just meet you outside the club at nine?”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said, grinning at her.  Her excitement was contagious, and I was eager in my own right.  This had been a night of revelations of all sorts.

Hadley bent slightly and brushed my cheek with her cool lips, then was out the door in a flash.  I looked out after her, searching for a car, but if she’d driven one, I couldn’t see or hear it.  I stood there for a long time, staring out into the night, trying to catch a glimpse or two of the stars through the tall willows that surrounded the house.

When I finally shut the door, I leaned against it for awhile, thoughts whirling.

“Well,” I said to the empty kitchen air.

“I guess I better go figure out what to wear.”