chapter twenty-

four

               

                De Castro listened to the regents of his other kingdoms. Among them was Christian Baruch. Red Rita was there and she was not happy about it. Baruch was more than pissed De Castro had offered Eric the regency of Louisiana. “You promised me I would be regent of Louisiana!”

                “Patience, keep up the good work in Oklahoma. I understand the ground has been broken for the new casino?” asked De Castro.

                “Yeah, it was a stroke of genius to have Hot Rain be the paper tiger,” said Baruch. Since Hot Rain was considered Native American before he was considered vampire, he was allowed to slip through a loop hole in the law prohibiting him from operating a casino. Plus with help of a friendly Deadacrat, they were able to get the gaming licenses and everything else. Baruch would be the boss, but Hot Rain was the catalyst.

                “When do you think you will have the facility built?” asked De Castro.

                “Six weeks, two months,” he said. “The hotel will take longer but should be ready by St. Patrick’s Day.” De Castro nodded in approval.

                “Keep it up and very soon you will be in Louisiana. I will have to groom another for the regency. What do we hear of Louisiana?”

                “They seem to be getting back to work. Northman is going to be in New Orleans to try and get some order and make the area earn more, but with your people in place, there should not be very much progress, just as you wanted. That will make my work harder,” said Baruch.

                “You are up to the challenge. You will make us a lot of money,” he said. “Seems our friends in the Take Back the Night movement have gotten a little lazy.”

                “They are going after another business soon, but it got a little hot,” said Baruch. “Fourth of July is coming, Bon Temps has their yearly patriotic parade and the sheriff has given TBN a permit to march. Of course they will be last, but they are ready to march.”

                “Very good,” said De Castro. “This will stir things up. Call our vampires and tell them I want some vampire on human crime in Bon Temp as well.”

                “Do you have a candidate in mind for the human?” asked Baruch.

                “I do,” he said, handing him the folder.

                Sam and Luna drove out to Bill Compton’s house the next morning. Sam went up to the door and unlocked it. Luna was already studying the porch, envisioning the rockers and the swing and couch she wanted to put on the porch. Sam opened the double doors and ushered Luna in.

                “Wow, this not what I expected from a vampire,” said Luna, eyes looking at the walls with their flower wallpaper in its delicate design.

                “What did you expect chere, cobwebs and candelabras and Bela Lugosi at the stairs?” he asked.

                “Sort of,” she said. “The dining room. Bill is using it as his office, but this is nice sized.”

                “It is,” said Sam. “Looks like he did the floors in the downstairs.”

                “Think these are the original floors?” she asked.

                “I would say they are,” said Sam. “And this is the bathroom spa.”

                “Look at that tub,” she said.

                “Four people could bath in that thing,” he said.

                “Why would a vampire put a toilet in?” asked Luna.

                “Human visitors,” said Sam. “But look, no toilet paper.”

                “I suppose they would overlook that detail,” she mused. They walked to the kitchen, passing by a pantry.

                “This must be the pantry Bill was talking about that he said it can be taken down,” said Sam. The kitchen was small and neat and had the look of not being used. “Yeah, we will need some new appliances.”

                “The microwave looks pretty new. And the fridge looks okay,” she said.

                “We can get new things, we have the money,” said Sam. “Now Bill said he was leaving a lot of this furniture.”

                “We can decide what to keep and what to sell later,” she said. She peeked into the little food pantry. “This is a nice size pantry and we have the room for a small deep freeze.”

                “He has the laundry on the big back porch,” said Sam. “It is newly screened in.”

                “Did Bill have a house keeper?” asked Luna.

                “Yeah, one of Maxine Fortenberry’s friends,” said Sam.

                “Think she will keep house for Rachel and Bill?”

                “I don’t know,” said Sam. “But we could hire her for once a week, help with the heavy stuff, laundry, deep cleaning.”

                “I think I can manage,” she said. She headed back out and mounted the stairs. There was another neat bath in more traditional proportions and Bill’s bedroom. It was neat and clean but dark. “Gee there is no light in here.”

                “It is Bill’s light tight room,” said Sam, turning on the overhead lamp. “That would be handy after working all night at Merlotte’s”

                “It would,” she said. “We will try it out.” They looked at the other bedrooms. One was clean but not finished, the rest were dingy, but there were neatly stacked plastic boxes and a couple of elderly trunks and three ash wood rockers. “Think they are whole or are they dry rotted?”

                “Ash wood gets tougher the older they are,” said Sam. “They would be great on the porch.”

                “They would,” said Luna. “Well, paint and spackle, sandpaper, a floor sander some stain and sealer. We could convert this room into a big closet.”

                “We could. We could go to Bossier where that clothing store went belly up and buy some racks,” he said.

                “And then buy some clothes, though I will soon be opting for stretchy pants and big tee shirts soon,” she said.

                “I can’t wait,” he said. “Having my baby…what a wonderful way to say I love you…” Luna elbowed him.

                “We could have a painting party after we get the floors sanded and stained.”

                “Terry might be interested in doing something like that,” said Sam. “So did I do good?”

                “You did good,” said Luna. “Though I never imagined I would be living in a vampire’s house.”

                “Well, it’s a shifter’s house now,” said Sam.

                “Let’s go outside, check the grounds, get a look at the outside,” said Luna. They went down and out and Sam locked the door behind him. They looked all around the house. “The soil isn’t bad, we could put in a garden, have vegetables and herbs and flowers. Get a lawn set and a picnic table.”

                “A jungle gym over there, a sand box for the tyke,” said Sam.

                “A little slice of heaven,” said Luna. “Ewww…you don’t think there are..bodies…buried here…do you?” she whispered.

                “With the cemetery just over there? I think not,” said Sam.

                “Whew, that was close,” she said.

                “Come on you, let’s get to work,” said Sam. “But the good thing is, we have five acres. We don’t have go anywhere to shift.”

                “That is so true,” said Luna.

                Sky was busy at her computer, finishing the last of her lesson plans. Then she finished scanning the articles from the pile of magazines she and Rachel bought and began to write up the accompanying remarks and additional research and complimentary articles. She was well on her way to writing her textbook with the thinking questions, the journal topics and writing assignment options.  She had most of her tests made up and would tweak them as she printed them out for her classes. She then went into her lecture notes and updated the lectures. She had seventy large lectures, and twenty short lectures.

                She was looking at her documents. There was one marked Frequently Asked Questions. She clicked on it. Students asked these random questions about vampires. Some of them dealt with actual relationship problems they were experiencing and she often referred to these questions when she learned something about the vampire world. Several were answered in great detail. She thought it was a shame the vampires had not opened outreach centers for humans. Sky always thought this would have done a lot to help everyone get used to the newest minority. After all, shifters and weres had them. Luna was involved with a local outreach group.

                This was mainly because of the vampires having trouble adjusting to being out of the coffin and changing their view of humans, since humans were officially not considered prey. She made a note to ask about any change of opinion and thought about Bartlett Crowe who was very interested in that sort of thing. That may be something interesting to do. Finally she closed her programs and stood up, stretching. She went to the kitchen area and made a sandwich and made a list of things she would need. Eric was going to New Orleans tonight and he would be home just before dawn. He was likely staying in Shreveport. Of course right now, he was asleep in her bed, on his belly, his back bare, his hair all messy and tangled and sexy. He had told her he loved her. He actually said it. Sky smiled at the memory of his soft deep voice, a little husky with completed sex and emotion.  Now if she could just get him to say it with his shorts on. One step at a time.

 She shook herself from her reveries. Lord, when had she become a blushing schoolgirl? She resolved not to start doodling their names together with little hearts and butterflies like she did with Tommy Esterhaus in high school and sign little notes to him with little x’s and o’s. It would be the vampire of equivalent of ‘How to Lose a Man in Ten Days’. Instead of indulging in such silliness, she made a store order to get stuff to make her pasta salad and ginger pumpkin cookies. Sam was bringing the fried shrimp and chicken and Andy and Halliegh were bringing the iced watermelon. She could not remember everything everyone was bringing, but she was sure Rachel had the list. She was always so organized.

                Sky changed clothes and headed out of the apartment, making sure her door was locked. She stopped downstairs in the shop and asked Rachel if she needed anything. Rachel gave her a short list and asked her to stop at the bakery and pick up her order, she would pay her back.

                The fourth of July, in her new hometown, with her friends and her vampire boyfriend. Sky’s mother and father had been bugging her about meeting the boyfriend she was going around with. She wanted to wait. She knew their reaction would not be supportive. Once out of the shop, she headed out to get in her car, parked by Eric’s corvette, and head out. She didn’t notice Nelson Reynolds parked in the alley, watching her.

                Rachel had moved from the counter where she had been perched reading the book Harp Powell had written. It was called The Beast of Shreveport: Dark Heart, Cold Heart. There was a picture of Eric standing in front of Fangtasia, likely when he opened the bar. Straight from the files of The Bon Temps Herald  screamed the red letters on the black and white photo on the cover. She moved from the counter because she kept getting mad. She was not sure she liked Eric real well, she knew she didn’t know him real well. But this, she knew was so much lies and innuendo. And what really burned her was it was it published by Night House Publications, a De Castro publishing trademark. A vampire publishing this ilk about another vampire. That was just sick.

“Eric is ruthless,” said a former waitress. “I just know he has killed a whole bunch of people in the bar. And besides, he is always so handsy, wanting you to come across with sex and blood and he doesn’t pay that good either.” Sources also say, the bar has a problem keeping bartenders as they all seem to die, beginning with the death of Long Shadow. Sookie Stackhouse said Eric had him killed for stealing but she suspected it was because he had protested the way his boss treated the girls.

                Bill had told her about the bartenders of Fangtasia. The position was cursed, some of the waitresses believed, and even approached Pam to call in a spiritual worker to bless the bar and drive out the evil spirits. Bill had another opinion of the situation. He said he read a passage in a Stephen King novel that seemed to relate to vampires, though he was speaking of cats. He said something to the effect that cats were gangsters of the animal world, living and dying violently and often just out of the eyesight of humans. He said to substitute cats for vampire and she would have the truth about the power struggles in the vampire world.

                She took a break from the book, it made her sad and mad, and went back out to the shop. Amelia suddenly came to the door heavily laden with candles and boxes of herb packets and teas in aluminum tins.

                “Hey there girl,” said Amelia. “I brought you up the order Octavia finished yesterday and I thought I would stop and place some flowers at Sookie’s memorial.” The witch had been absent from the service. Though she knew Sookie was not dead, she felt sad for her friend’s absence.

                “Well that sure is nice of you. Do you have your invoice?” she asked.

                “Sure,” she said. She pulled it out. “Here you are, man, the vampires are getting rough in New Orleans. I sure wish Eric and Bill could do something about it.”

                “Have patience, I think they are looking into it,” she said. “Let me get my check book and I will write you a check.” She went quickly down the hall and scooted back with her business binder and opened it and wrote her check and slid the invoice in the cover to file it in her expenditures folder. “I have had a lot of casual friends of the fang who are asking for more of that salve Octavia makes. I have twelve tins, but I am going to need more. And I was wondering if she could please make more of that tired blood tea. That seems to be the stuff the vampires want their human companions to drink the most, in the mint and ginger and cinnamon.”

                “They don’t care for the ginseng?” she asked.

                “Bill says it is okay as far as flavor, but he said vampires appreciate the stronger herbs and spices, something about the sense of taste,” said Rachel. “She could always add to it to the teas, I know it is beneficial for the blood and the mood and skin healing if you have an inconsiderate lover who do not heal their vamp stamps.”

                “I’ll tell Octavia,” said Amelia. She was noting everything down on her iPad. “So has Bill started ground breaking on the businesses that burned to the ground?”

                “Yeah, Alcide Herveaux is going to do it when he finishes Jason Stackhouse’s house,” said Rachel. “But Bill has been working most nights at the call center.”

                “Is he hiring humans?” asked Amelia.

                “He is,” said Rachel.
                “I may come up and ask for a job and just hide out here. My dad is driving me insane and I shit you not, the vamps are getting out of control in New Orleans,” said Amelia, dejectedly.

                “My goodness, you should have called Bill,” said Rachel.

                “I know, I just knew he and Eric had enough on their plate and weren’t able to do much about this situation as it is,” said Amelia.

                “Well, give him a call, he will talk to you,” said Rachel. “I know Eric is going to New Orleans to sort of survey the land.”

                “I will,” she said.

                Jason was surprised when he saw Amelia coming over from the cemetery. She stood there and looked at the house. Alcide was standing to one side, at a table looking at the plans and pointing at something on the house.

                “Hey Amelia,” said Jason. Michele was with him. She was well on her way and Jason wished she would stay home, but she was going through something called nesting and she assured Jason that if she didn’t get to come around the house, he would find a nutria in his shorts. Jason agreed.

                “Hey Jason, Michele. You look great.”

                “Yeah, I’m about to bust, but I don’t get this little package for a while yet,” said Michele.

                “What brings you to Bon Temp?” asked Jason.

                “Oh, I was dropping some stuff at Whole Body and I thought I would stop and leave some flowers for Sookie,” she said. Jason’s face looked like a storm cloud has passed over it and dampened his spirits. “Sorry I didn’t come to the memorial, but since Tray died, I have been a little shaky about funerals.”

                “Well, it ain’t like she’s really dead,” said Jason.

                “True, but for all intents and purposes, she is,” said Amelia. “I just miss her is all.”

                “Yeah, me too. You want to go see the house?” he asked.

                “Sure,” she said. She followed Jason to the house and they went in. The lay out was just like the old house, but Jason widened the doorways to make it look more like an open floor plan. There were new wood floors in the living and dining room and tile in the kitchen. She checked out the bedrooms and there were three bedrooms two smallish ones and a master with its own bath and a small bath between the bedrooms. She liked the new wood smell of the house. Jason led her upstairs. He had made it all one room, with a deep closet on one end.

                “We thought we would make this a playroom and an office,” said Jason. “Michele likes the internet and she does some craft stuff.”

                “This is wonderful. And you are going to have central air,” said Amelia. Jason was off on a tare, telling her about the choices he had to make between units and then the appliances. He was a hound about that sort of thing. They went down.

                “Hey, you gonna be here for Fourth of July ain’t ya?” he asked.

                “I hadn’t planned on it,” said Amelia.

                “You should stay, stay with me and Michele and go with us on the picnic. Andy and Halliegh and Sam and Luna and Bill and Eric are going be there with their girlfriends,” said Jason.

                “I would like to stay, I sort of have some stuff I could talk to Bill and Eric about,” said the witch. “You sure I would not put you out?”

                “Hell no, come on out, we have plenty of room,” he said.

                “I need to stop at Wal-Mart and pick up a few things, but I would be right out,” she said.

Sky got home just before dark. She dropped off the baked stuff and the other stuff she had picked up for Rachel at her house and then came home and put her things away. She then stretched out on the bed by her sheriff and rubbed his shoulders and back. He had thin almost unnoticeable scars on his back from the years of fighting as a human man. He turned his head to her as he began to wake. She raked her nails over his skin and he groaned a little in a satisfied way but he was still in the grips of his rest. She stroked his tangled hair and looked at his face. When he finally shook off the sleep of the dead, he raised up. “That was a lovely sensation,” he said.

                “What, scratching your back?” she asked. He nodded. He leaned toward her and kissed her.

                “I have to be away tonight, will you be okay?” he asked.

                “I think so,” she said. “I have cookies to bake and noodle salad to make for the festivities tomorrow.”

                “I will be back very late,” he said.

                “Be careful,” she said.

                “I will be,” he said. He kissed her again.

                “Do you want some blood?” she asked.

                “Can you part with some?” he asked.

                “I think so,” she said. “I ate pretty good and had lots of fruit juice to drink.”

                “I may have to take a taste then,” he said, stroking her neck. Then his hand went lower. “We have to hurry.”

                “So how is the book?” said Bill.

                “I’d rather read lady porn,” she said, grumpy. Bill chuckled.

                “Sweetheart, you will hear all sorts of nasty things about my kind in general and me on occasion, if you get mad about it all the time, you will stay that way,” he said.

                “It’s just so stupid,” she said.

                “Yes, it is,” said Bill. “Would you like to go to the call center with me?”

                “No,” she said. “I am making some stuff for the picnic.”

                “Cheer up sweetheart, make nice things and then,” he leaned over and whispered into her ear. She blushed.

                “That has got to be the filthiest thing I have ever heard,” she said. “You are not a gentleman Mr. Compton.”

                “Just be ready when I get home,” he said.

                “I will think about it,” she said. He leaned down and kissed her and headed out to work.

                Eric finally made it to New Orleans and met with the group of New Orleans vampires. They were a very unhappy group. They were pissed off at the king and the Nevada vampires who had set up their version of the mob and were stealing everything hand over fist and drawing more attention than was necessary from the human law enforcement. Even the vampire police working with NO PD were brutal bastards.

                “My business is being forced to pay tribute money every night at closing. If we don’t they threaten my dancers, send day walkers to interrupt our shipments so we run out of alcohol and blood. They harass our dancers and they come in and fight with humans. I have been shut down for being a nuisance more than once this month,” said Herodotus.

                “I am not even running a bar, and I have these Victor Madden devotees on my back. I mean, I run a movie and music shop, vampires come all over to get music from their times or famous out of print films someone may remember. I sell tee shirts and other crap for the tourists. I cater to vampires and humans, I don’t discriminate. But those thugs come in, they push around the customers and show fang at humans, sniffed up one little shy goth girl who dropped hundreds of dollars with me for this stuff and she ran screamed and ran into the night, she will never be back here again,” said a nerdy little vampire called Dru Harden. He loved movies and music, mostly rock and roll but he carved a niche providing favorite music to vampires in all genres and eras.

                “I heard you were taking control of the state, is that true?” asked  Carlos, the manager of a tapas restaurant  which served not only humans but vampires as well.

                “I am just traveling around the state and looking into problem areas. Since Madden is gone, I have simply done my duty as ranking elder vampire and stepped into the breach. I don’t know if I can do anything but make some subtle suggestions and ask for patience,” said Eric.

                “Look, I am going to lose my business. I had a good thing going. A little restaurant, some humans, some vampires, some shifters and weres, coming in to eat and drink or hook up or both. Now I am getting squeezed,” he said. Eric nodded.

“Will you stay in New Orleans?”

                “Yeah, but I will need a job,” he said. “At this rate, I will lose my place.”

                “Things are coming together that will actually finish this, one way or the other, but I need to know what your troubles are. I need to know about crime and deaths in your area, Take Back the Night activity, blood dealing. You don’t have to give me this information now. Just take note of it and have it ready when I ask about it.”

                “What are you up to?” asked Salome.

                “Nothing as of yet,” he said. “How much contact do you have with the local weres and shifters?”

                “Besides letting them drink in our establishments and gamble, nothing,” said Salome.

                “Make contact with the packs, find out if they have complaints against our kind, see what else they know,” said Eric.

                “You getting in bed with wolves Eric?” asked Herodotus.

                “We can’t afford not to cooperate, not anymore,” he said. “There are things that will be happening, things I can’t tell you now, but you will learn of around Samhain. Once that happens, I will need everyone to have things together, all the records, all the evidences, everything. I need you to be ready.”

                “How do you know one of us won’t betray you, to cull favor with De Castro, get a reward?” asked Dru.

                “Because you know he will fuck you over, simple as that. You could tell him everything and you would likely die before you could back out of the room,” said Eric. “Anything else I should know?”

                “No, but I got a question,” said Carlos. “What if we have trouble, can we do something about it?”

                “No, not yet, we can’t draw too much attention to ourselves right now, but I promise you, you will have your chance,” said Eric. “Now, have any of you been in contact with Deadacrats?”

                “I have spoken to someone, not a New Orleans citizen. From the state house. There is word the Governor of this state is a Deadacrat,” said Salome.

                “The usual agenda?” asked Eric.

                “Yeah, apparently,” said Salome. “But he was trying to get my support because my Seven Veils is very lucrative. He makes many promises to me personally, but he does not say he will help our kind. He is of the opinion every vampire for himself. I hear through my contacts in the statehouse he is in the hip pocket of our king, taking junkets to Vegas, women, gambling.”

                “Interesting,” said Eric. “Any chance I might get to see this politician?”

                “He won’t see anyone til after the election. He wants to make sure he gets one more term before he puts his puppet in the office and the rumor is, his choice is going to be made vampire before he takes office. He runs on a family values ticket in public, but he is a whore for our kind, strung out on vampire sex and blood,” said Salome.

                “Do you have evidence?” he asked.

                “Yes, pictorial evidence. I can send it to you. Do what you want with it,” she said.

                “I am grateful,” said Eric.

                “I have known you a long time, Eric, of course I will help you,” she said.

                As Eric was about to leave, Salome sidled up to him. “You never come to the Seven Veils anymore.”

                “I am sorry, but I have been busy. The last six or seven months has been difficult,” he said.

                “So I have heard. I hated Freyda; she was always trying to play upmanship with me, but hell she is out in the middle of nowhere. Can you not tell me what is going to happen?”

                “No, not yet, the only thing I can tell you is it won’t be pretty,” he said.

                “It never is,” said Salome. “After this, I may retire, spend some time being a maker, make a few children, see to their training. The last child was 200 years ago. I am feeling maternal.”

                “You are an excellent maker,” said Eric.

                “I hear your Pam is becoming a maker,” said Salome.

                “She is, she has found a worthy candidate for the Kiss and she has been given approval,” said Eric.

                “And you Eric?” she asked.

                “Me?” he asked.

                “Yes, I heard your human companion, the one who had a friend my Mickey was abusing, has met the true death,” she said.

                “She has,” said Eric.

                “If you need comforting, you know my door is always open to you,” she said. “We once had lovely times.”

                “That we did, Salome,” he said. “I am in a state of flux, a little too distracted right now to give you my undivided attention.” Eric did not want to tell the vampire he was with someone already. Some vampires were more predatory than others.

                “I understand. By the way, I read that nasty book written about you. If you like, I would happily eat him,” said Salome.

                “Don’t concern yourself, he is not worth your notice,” said Eric.

                “Have you claimed Ocella’s fortune yet?” she asked.

                “No, I was under the impression I had no legacy from him,” he said.

                “Go and see De Castro’s lawyer, Hugo Ayres. He has the will, he had an estate. It belongs to you,” said Salome.

                “Hugo Ayres, I thought he was out of the country?” asked Eric. “After that trouble with Isabel Beaumont, I thought he would never come back here.”

                “Contact Ayres, get what is yours, it is sizable,” said Salome.

                “I will,” he said.

                “I should have forced my brother to give you to me when you were fledgling, he treated you poorly, kept you far longer than was appropriate,” said Salome.

                “I learned many things from him,” said Eric. “He gave me the second life.”

                “That he did, Eric,” said Salome. “Consider me your mother, and if there is anything I can do for my son, come to me and I will do my best to help you.”

                “Thank you Salome,” he said. He kissed her hand and bowed out to her.

                When Bill left, Rachel went to the phone and called her mother and father. Richard and Celeste Westnight were lovely people with liberal leanings. He was a lawyer and Celeste taught school in the local Catholic School. Since she was a teacher, Rachel went free but Celeste still paid the tuition so another child could attend a better school.

                They were a little shocked when Rachel decided to take her grandmother’s sizable legacy and return to Bon Temps where Richard had been raised and she had been born to start of all things and health food store and have yoga and tai chi.  He had tried to tell her there would be no market for that sort of thing. Bon Temps and the surrounding areas were not that sophisticated, they would not buy her herbals and teas and take her yoga classes. He was pleasantly surprised when she did very well.

                She had bought a house and the business and had done a lot of the work herself. Rachel was a firm believer in sweat equity. Richard  and Celeste were proud of her. From her mother she inherited her love of books, from her father she inherited his resolve to justice. That was why she began to think about how to offer services to vampires.

                It was actually Bill that inspired her. He spoke at an SBA meeting and he urged human retailers to do things to offer services to his kind. He spoke of personal frustration at being unable to patronize establishments because they did not offer nighttime hours or even serve or sell the synthetic blood. Rachel and Sally brainstormed and came up with a few ideas and Rachel took an ad out in the local and state papers for a vampire masseuse and an acupuncturist. Ming and Ling, twins from China, had been servants of the Dowager Empress of China. They had documentation in both an ancient Chinese scroll and modern English and they were happy to accept the going rate of pay. Rachel never batted an eye when she advertised special night hours for massage, acupuncture, Tai Chi, yoga, and TM. Vampires slowly began to register for services for not only themselves but their humans.

               

                She dialed the number and sat down in her comfy little overstuffed chair. “Hello?”

                “Hey dad,” she said.

                “Rachel darling,” he said. “We just received a letter from you, I didn’t think we would get a phone call so soon.”

                “Is mom busy? I would love it if she would get on the other line and chat with me,” she said.

                “Let me get her, just wait right there,” he said. She could hear him calling her mother’s name and the clatter of the extension being picked up and the sound of the floorboards creaking under her dad’s feet as he returned. Bill’s blood had heightened her senses. As she told Bill one night, she could hear a gnat fart.

                “We are here Rachel, is everything okay?” asked Celeste.

                “Yeah, I just wanted to talk to you about something, something wonderful,” she said. “And I hope you think it is wonderful too.”

                “Is it about that Bill?” asked her dad. It was the way he referred to every man she ever had in her life. That Sonny, that Jimmy, that Michael, that Freddy.

                “Yes dad,” she said. “It is about that Bill. Mom, dad, he has asked me to get married. Now, we aren’t in a hurry, but we wanted to tell you we are engaged.”

                “Well that’s wonderful honey,” said her mother. Rachel could already hear the gears turning in her head about wedding plans and the reception and the dress.

                “But, we have to tell you something, we wanted you to know before you met him,” said Rachel.

                “Well, hon, what’s the matter with him? He got a third eye or something?” asked Richard.

                “Bill is a vampire,” she said, blurting it out. “I fell in love with a vampire.”

                “Well…Rachel…how did you…that is, what were the circumstances you met him?” asked Celeste.

                “He owns several businesses and he is a member of the chamber of commerce and the Small Business Association. He came into my shop and made my acquaintance and we just, fell in love,” she said.

                “How old is this Bill?” asked her father.

                “Well, this a bonus for you, he is a veteran, dad, of the civil war,” she said.

                “Isn’t he a little old?” asked her dad.

                “Well, he was 30 when he was made, but no, I don’t think he is too old,” said Rachel. “He is a real southern gentleman. He was raised around here in Bon Temps.”

                “Is he a widower?” asked her mother.

                “Yes, he was made a vampire against his will and he had to leave home with his maker, and his wife just stayed here and raised his kids. He has living great great great grandchildren. Well, I think I got enough greats in there. I want you and dad to meet him,” she said.

                “I think we ought to,” said Richard.

                “Are you disappointed dad?” she asked.

                “No, I am not disappointed,” he said. “I just want to make sure he will treat you right.”

                “He does dad,” she said. “He is so good to me.”

                “Well, honey, why would he want to marry you if you are human and will get old and all that?” asked her mom.

                “We have talked about that mom. You remember Sherrylynne, the one who died of cancer?” she asked.

                “Well yes,” said Celeste.

                “Don’t you think Ronna and Steve would have rather have their daughter with them and vampire than dead and gone?” she said.

                “So, you are going to go vampire?” asked her mother.

                “Not anytime soon, mom, but we know it is an option,” said Rachel. “We don’t have to think about that right now, not for a long while, I just want you to meet him. I know you guys would like him.”

                “Don’t worry Rach, we will give him a chance. You know we don’t judge just based on minority status. You guys come for Thanksgiving. We will make your room light tight and I’ll go out and get you some of that blood they like,” said Richard.

                “I will talk to Bill about it and call you back. You guys are wonderful, I can’t wait for Bill to meet you guys,” she said.

                “Take care darling,” said Celeste.

                “Night mom, night dad,” she said.

                The next morning, Sky came by with rich coffee and beignets and they went to her little postage stamp sized back yard and had their breakfast. “It is going to be hotter than blue blazes today.”

                “Yeah, I chose a gauzy blouse and tank top and denim shorts and red sandals for the park. Do you have your stuff packed?” asked Rachel.

                “Oh yes,” said Sky.”But when the boys wake up and join us, we can always lean against them and cool off.”

                “That is terrible,” said Rachel. “Though I do admit to doing that at his house, since he doesn’t have conditioned air there.”

                “True, it is a symbiotic relationship. We will be their little hot bottle warmers in the winter,” said Sky. “Well, do we take my car or your car?”

                “We can take my car,” she said. “I am bringing some old sheets to spread out on the tables. Andy said he would have the place reserved. I hope they bring Caroline Compton, I know Bill would love to see her.”

                “Poor Eric, he is so old none of his people are alive,” said Sky.

                “Bill said he felt really lucky to have human relatives,” she said. “Come on in and I will get dressed and load my car then we can load your car. Is the sheriff asleep at your house?”

                “No, he had to go to New Orleans last night and he said he would be racing the dawn,” said Sky. “He called and left me a message he was home.”

                “I am glad he has gotten a hold on his feelings,” said Rachel.

                “I am too,” said Sky.