Dead as a Doornail (Sookie Stackhouse #5)(29)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"Who’s it with? I’ll call right now." Catfish was so anxious to stop me laughing, he was ready to make clown faces and bark if I asked him to.

"Greg Aubert," I said.

The whole night suddenly rose up and whalloped me one. My house had burned, at least partially. I’d had more than one prowler. I had a vampire in residence for whom daytime cover had to be provided. My car was gone. There was a dead man named Jeff Marriot in my yard, and he’d set fire to my house and car out of sheer prejudice. I was overwhelmed.

"Jason isn’t at home," Catfish said from a distance. "I tried him. He’d want her to come over to his house."

"She and Charles – that is, Charles and I will take her over to my house," Bill said. He seemed to be equally far away.

"I don’t know about that," Bud Dearborn said doubtfully. "Sookie, is that okay with you?"

I could barely make my mind shuffle through a few options. I couldn’t call Tara because Mickey was there. Arlene’s trailer was as crowded as it needed to be already.

"Yes, that would be all right," I said, and my voice sounded remote and empty, even to my own ears.

"All right, long’s we know where to reach you."

"I called Greg, Sookie, and left a message on his office answering machine. You better call him yourself in the morning," Catfish said.

"Fine," I said.

And all the firefighters shuffled by, and they all told me how sorry they were. I knew every one of them: friends of my father’s, friends of Jason’s, regulars at the bar, high school acquaintances.

"You all did the best you could," I said over and over. "Thanks for saving most of it."

And the ambulance came to cart away the arsonist.

By then, Andy had found a gasoline can in the bushes, and the corpse’s hands reeked of gasoline, Dr. Tonnesen said.

I could hardly believe that a stranger had decided I should lose my home and my life because of my dating preference. Thinking at that moment of how close I’d come to death, I didn’t feel it was unjust that he’d lost his own life in the process. I admitted to myself that I thought Charles had done a good thing. I might owe my life to Sam’s insistence that the vampire be billeted at my house. If Sam had been there at the moment, I would have given him a very enthusiastic thank-you.

Finally Bill and Charles and I started over to Bill’s house. Catfish had advised me not to go back into my house until the morning, and then only after the insurance agent and the arson investigator had checked it over. Dr. Tonnesen had told me that if I felt wheezy, to come in to her office in the morning. She’d said some other stuff, but I hadn’t quite absorbed it.

It was dark in the woods, of course, and by then it was maybe five in the morning. After a few paces into the trees, Bill picked me up and carried me. I didn’t protest, because I was so tired I’d been wondering how I was going to manage stumbling through the cemetery.

He put me down when we reached his house. "Can you make it up the stairs?" he asked.

"I’ll take you," offered Charles.

"No, I can do it," I said, and started up before they could say anything more. To tell the truth, I was not so sure I could, but slowly I made my way up to the bedroom I’d used when Bill had been my boyfriend. He had a snug light-tight place somewhere on the ground floor of the house, but I’d never asked him exactly where. (I had a pretty good idea it was in the space the builders had lopped off the kitchen to create the hot tub/plant room.) Though the water table is too high in Louisiana for houses to have basements, I was almost as sure there was another dark hole concealed somewhere. He had room for Charles without them bunking together, anyway – not that that was too high on my list of concerns. One of my nightgowns still lay in the drawer in the old-fashioned bedroom, and there was still a toothbrush of mine in the hall bathroom. Bill hadn’t put my things in the trash; he’d left them, like he’d expected me to return.

Or maybe he just hadn’t had much reason to go upstairs since we’d broken up.

Promising myself a long shower in the morning, I took off my smelly, stained pajamas and ruined socks. I washed my face and pulled on the clean nightgown before I crawled in the high bed, using the antique stool still positioned where I’d left it. As the incidents of the day and night buzzed in my head like bees, I thanked God for the fact that my life had been spared, and that was all I had time to say to Him before sleep swallowed me up.

I slept only three hours. Then worry woke me up. I was up in plenty of time to meet Greg Aubert, the insurance agent. I dressed in a pair of Bill’s jeans and a shirt of his. They’d been left outside my door, along with heavy socks. His shoes were out of the question, but to my delight I found an old pair of rubber-soled slippers I’d left at the very back of the closet. Bill still had some coffee and a coffeemaker in his kitchen from our courtship, and I was grateful to have a mug to carry with me as I made my way carefully across the cemetery and through the belt of woods surrounding what was left of my house.

Greg was pulling into the front yard as I stepped from the trees. He got out of his truck, scanned my oddly fitting ensemble, and politely ignored it. He and I stood side by side, regarding the old house. Greg had sandy hair and rimless glasses, and he was an elder in the Presbyterian Church. I’d always liked him, at least in part because whenever I’d taken my grandmother by to pay her premiums, he’d come out of his office to shake her hand and make her feel like a valued client. His business acumen was matched only by his luck. People had said for years that his personal good fortune extended to his policyholders, though of course they said this in a joking kind of way.

"If only I could have foreseen this," Greg said. "Sookie, I am so sorry this happened."

"What do you mean, Greg?"

"Oh, I’m just… I wish I’d thought of you needing more coverage," he said absently. He began walking around to the back of the house, and I trailed behind him. Curious, I began to listen in to his head, and I was startled out of my gloom by what I heard there.

"So casting spells to back up your insurance really works?" I asked.

He yelped. There’s no other word for it. "It’s true about you," he gasped. "I – I don’t – it’s just…" He stood outside my blackened kitchen and gaped at me.

"It’s okay," I said reassuringly. "You can pretend I don’t know if it’ll help you feel better."

"My wife would just die if she knew," he said soberly. "And the kids, too. I just want them kept separate from this part of my life. My mother was… she was…"

"A witch?" I supplied helpfully.