Dead until Dark

"What?" I asked, dazed, the receiver pressed to my ear. I peered at the clock. It was seven-thirty.

"They burned the vampires' house," Jason said. "I hope yours wasn't in it."

"What?" I asked again, but my voice was panicked now.

"They burned the vampires' house outside of Monroe. Af­ter sunrise. It's on Callista Street, west of Archer."

I remembered Bill saying he might take Harlen over there. Had he stayed?

"No." I said it definitely.

"Yes."

"I have to go," I said, hanging up the phone.

it Smoldered IN the bright sunlight. Wisps of smoke trailed up into the blue sky. Charred wood looked like alli­gator skin. Fire trucks and law enforcement cars were parked helter-skelter on the lawn of the two-story house. A group of the curious stood behind yellow tape.

The remains of four coffins sat side by side on the scorched grass. There was a body bag, too. I began to walk toward them, but for the longest time they seemed to be no closer; it was like one of those dreams where you can never reach your goal.

Someone grabbed my arm and tried to stop me. I can't remember what I said, but I remember a horrified face. I trudged on through the debris, inhaling the smell of burned things, wet charred things, a smell that wouldn't leave me the rest of my life.

I reached the first coffin and looked in. What was left of the lid was open to the light. The sun was coming up; any moment now it would kiss the dreadful thing resting on soggy, white silk lining.

Was it Bill? There was no way to tell. The corpse was disintegrating bit by bit even as I watched. Tiny fragments flaked off and blew into the breeze, or disappeared in a tinypuff of smoke where the sun's rays began to touch the body.

Each coffin held a similar horror.

Sam was standing by me.

"Can you call this murder, Sam?"

He shook his head. "I just don't know, Sookie. Legally, killing the vampires is murder. But you'd have to prove arson first, though I don't think that'd be very hard." We could both smell gasoline. There were men buzzing around the house, climbing here and there, yelling to each other. It didn't appear to me that these men were conducting any serious crime-scene investigation.

"But this body here, Sookie." Sam pointed to the body bag on the grass. "This was a real human, and they have to inves­tigate. I don't think any member of that mob ever realized there might be a human in there, ever considered anything besides what they did."

"So why are you here, Sam?"

"For you," he said simply.

"I won't know if it's Bill all day, Sam."

"Yes, I know."

"What am I supposed to do all day? How can I wait?"

"Maybe some drugs," he suggested. "What about sleeping pills or something?"

"I don't have anything like that," I said. "I've never had trouble sleeping."

This conversation was getting odder and odder, but I don't think I could have said anything else.

A big man was in front of me, the local law. He was sweating in the morning heat, and he looked like he'd been up for hours. Maybe he'd been on the night shift and had to stay on when the fire started.

When men I knew had started the fire.

"Did you know these people, miss?"

"Yes, I did. I'd met them."

"Can you identify the remains?"

"Who could identify that?" I asked incredulously.

The bodies were almost gone now, featureless and disin­tegrating.

He looked sick. "Yes, ma'am. But the person."

"I'll look," I said before I had time to think. The habit of being helpful was mighty hard to break.

As if he could tell I was about to change my mind, the big man knelt on the singed grass and unzipped the bag. The sooty face inside was that of a girl I'd never met. I thanked God.

"I don't know her," I said, and felt my knees give. Sam caught me before I was on the ground, and I had to lean against him.

"Poor girl," I whispered. "Sam, I don't know what to do." . The law took part of my time that day. They wanted to know everything I knew about the vampires who had owned the house, and I told them, but it didn't amount to much. Malcolm, Diane, Liam. Where they'd come from, their age, why they'd settled in Monroe, who their lawyers were; how would I know anything like that? I'd never even been to their house before.

When my questioner, whoever he was, found out that I'd met them through Bill, he wanted to know where Bill was, how he could contact him.

"He may be right there," I said, pointing to the fourth coffin. "I won't know till dark." My hand rose of its own volition and covered my mouth.

Just then one of the firemen started to laugh, and his com­panion, too. "Southern fried vampires!" the shorter one hooted to the man who was questioning me. "We got us some Southern fried vampires here!"