A/N: Floored by the response to this story, thanks so much, guys! Making up my own version of the Sookieverse is extra special to me right now because of the true sadness I feel having finished the last book. I feel like I did when I finished the Harry Potter series - satisfied, but slightly dead inside. Good thing we only have a few weeks left until True Blood! Some of you were concerned about Tara getting sucked on, and I can safely say without giving anything away that she was only glamoured. A few of you also wanted to know who my version is based on, and I totally picture the cast of the show in my head when I write. With the exception of Sookie, I think they did an awesome job casting all of the characters. Alexander Skarsgard - um, yes please! Sookie is just someone I've seen in my head since I read the first book, and it's definitely not Anna Paquin. She does a good job, but she's not Sookie to me. Anyhoo, off to Merlotte's...

Chapter Four

Three days went by and I'd managed to deflect five phone calls from Dylan the director, and a few from a very put-out stage director named Jeanette, who I assumed was the grumpy clipboard lady. Gran was screening my calls, only she didn't really know it.

I honestly don't know what I'd been thinking auditioning like that, and the more I thought about it, the more foolish I felt. I don't usually let my emotions get the better of me, and I'm not prone to outbursts unless I'm hopping mad. Going to that audition as moral support for Tara was completely secondary to my own desires, and I was feeling a bit ashamed of that, especially after I told her that I had been offered the leading part.

Tara was still mad, and I didn't blame her one bit, although she tried her best to not let her jealousy show. They asked her to be one of Dracula's wives, which was a very small part, but she'd get to wear some very neat stage make-up and act all sexy and forbidden. She was also going to be helping with the costumes, and when she was done being mad at me, I knew she was going to be very excited about that.

Tuesday was always a very busy lunch day at Merlotte's. By the time four o'clock snuck up on me and the rush died down, I'd barely stopped moving long enough to eat a sandwich and slurp down an iced tea. My feet were cursing the extra shift I was covering for my co-worker Dawn, who'd had some sort of personal emergency. Again. Working a double was never fun, especially on a Tuesday, but I could always use the money. I also hated to see Sam in the lurch, so I was at the top of the call-in-case-of-a-sort-of-emergency list.

I was replenishing the bussing station, when fellow employee Arlene snuck up behind me. She was a good fifteen years older than me and had two kids and three husbands to show for it, but I was often surprised at how well we got along. I babysit for her a lot and had nursed her through the past five bad relationships, while she sort of treated me like another kid and tried setting me up with anyone she wasn't interested in herself. She was a little thing, with a big head of bottle-red hair and a smile for every available man that walked through the door.

"Sookie," she hissed. "Look at that guy just sat down in your section!"

I peeked over the partition just enough to see Eric Northman lounging at one of my tables, taking in the place with a rather amused look on his face. My heart thumped, even as I grumbled, "Oh, great."

"You know him?" she exclaimed, craning over my shoulder to get a better look.

"Sort of."

"Well, I'll take the table for you, if you want."

I smiled sideways. That's Arlene for you, always looking out for ex-husband number four. "No, it's okay, Arlene, I got it."

She gave me a little humpf noise as she went about her business, but was still eyeing me as I smoothed my apron and straightened my pony tail. I smelled like a beer-soaked french fry, but there wasn't much I could do about that. The moment I took a step in his direction, I knew Arlene wasn't the only one watching us. A new face in Merlotte's never went unnoticed, especially one like Eric Northman's.

The only one not staring was Andy Bellefleur. He always did a pretty good job of not caring about the presence of those around him, despite the fact that he was a cop. He was waving me down for the third time, probably because he saw his catfish fritters getting cold in the window. I acknowledged him with a polite nod and a one minute gesture.

As I walked toward his table, Eric looked up at me. In fact, he downright stared. Not in a look-you-up-and-down-and-imagine-you-naked kind of way, which was the way I was used to being looked at in Merlotte's, but in a way that made me want to hold my shoulders a bit higher and wish I had some lip gloss on.

"Miss Stackhouse." His smile was slow, cool.

I bobbed my head and tried not to smile like a lunatic. "Mr. Northman. What brings you to my neck of the woods?"

"You," he replied. "Apparently, you're a hard woman to get a hold of."

Most of the time, I ended up looking down at my customers because the chairs were a tad on the small side, but he was so tall that our eyes were nearly level. "How'd you know where I work?" I asked.

He leaned a little loser, like he was about to tell me a secret, and I instinctively did the same. "You may be surprised to learn this, but you are the only Sookie Stackhouse in the whole state of Louisiana."

I tried to disguise a smile but failed. "Well, you found me. And I know why you're here."

"For a drink."

"A drink?" He looked over my shoulder with a nod and eyed the bar. "Okay, what'll you have?"

"What kind of wine do you serve?"

"Nothing fancy," I shrugged. Merlotte's customers weren't big wine drinkers, but when they were, it was only requested in the form of white or red. "I think we just got a case of cabernet."

"That'll do."

"Anything to eat?"

He gave me a smug smile, like he was telling a joke I didn't get. "No, I ate earlier."

"Well, okay. I'll be over in a jiff with your wine."

Just as I turned away from him, he added, "And we'll talk." Andy started waving his arms like he was landing a plane as I considered Eric's request. Well, he hadn't really asked. He gave Andy a quick glance without even moving his head, and the flapping immediately stopped. "You're busy."

I shrugged. "Always am."

Then he did something nearly impossible for me to resist. He settled back into the old vinyl pads of his chair and tented his hands over the table. "I'll wait. And then, we'll talk."

I chewed on my pen for a few seconds, like I was actually only considering it. "Yeah, we'll talk."

I flipped on my heel, only to find Andy staring me down again. He'd actually gotten out of his seat this time, though I noticed he was careful to avoid Eric's gaze. "Damn it, Sookie, I'm on duty here," he growled.

"Alright, hold your water, Andy. They're not gonna swim upstream without you, gosh," I said out the side of my mouth, hoping Andy heard every word.

I was rarely sassy with the customers. However, Andy Bellefleur deserved it every once in a while, and Sam knew it. He was as grumpy as a grandfather croc, but he had a badge and a prestigious name to hide behind. Andy was one of the two detectives that lived in town and he suffered from an inflated case of self-importance. I suppose that for anyone else, being a law enforcement officer earned you a bit of respect, but Andy walked around acting like he deserved it, so he didn't get much from the people from Bon Temps except dirty looks.

I shimmied up to the kitchen window and started loading up a tray with all of my orders that were up. "Can you get Andy some extra roulade sauce, Lafayette?" I asked the cook. "He's buzzing like a hornet's nest out there."

Lafayette rolled his eyes and spooned some special sauce into a tiny plastic cup. The only thing special about it was the Tabasco sauce mixed into the Thousand Island dressing. "Sookie," he asked, slipping the sauce into Andy's basket, but not before he stuck his thumb in it and gave it a lick. "Who is that fine piece of man meat you talkin' to out there?"

"Trouble, if you ask me," I mumbled.

He made a tisking noise as he went back to flipping burgers. "Don't have to tell me twice. That's the kind of trouble I could get behind."

Lafayette was not only black and outspoken, but he was the only openly gay man in Bon Temps. These three things don't mix well in the south. He was one hell of a fry cook, and generally a very sweet person, yet not very of my fellow residents bothered to look past all of the nail polish and hip huggers to see that. If it troubled him in the least, he never let on to it. I knew he had a somewhat shady past, but he came to work on time and made the best chili I'd ever tasted, so the issue was settled for me.

"What's he eatin', 'cept for me in my dreams tonight?" he asked.

I was used to his more colorful moments, but it still made me shake my head when he made that sort of comment. "Nothing, he's just having some wine."

"Well, you tell him to come find Lala if he changes his mind," he said with a wink of his delicatley lined and shadowed eye.

Something made me doubt that Eric Northman played anywhere near the other team, but I smiled anyway. "I'll make sure to mention it."

I delivered all of my orders in a flash, making sure to give Andy his first. I figured I'd already blown my tip, but I might as well not rub salt into the wound. And even though I didn't look directly at Eric, I could feel his gaze following me as I dashed around the room.

Sam was behind the bar when I made it over there to get the wine. Wearing his standard black Merlotte's tee shirt and perfectly broken-in pair of jeans, the sour look plastered on his face was a surprise. Sam was rarely not in a good mood when he was tending to his bar. His wiry body was tensed into a pensive stance and he looked like he was about to jump right over the bar.

"Glass of that new cabernet , please," I said as I traded my serving tray for a drink tray at the bussing station.

He did as I asked, but he wasn't too happy about it. "That for him?" he grumbled, his chin flying in the direction of my hotly debated guest.

The flash from his mind hit me hard and quick, but the word I got was unmistakable. Vampire.

The cocktail napkin I was holding hung in midair over the tray as I stared at him, though Sam seemed to be staring right through me. "You know him?" I asked. "The vampire?"

Sam's eyes flicked back to me like they were spring loaded. "The what?"

"Eric Northman?"

"You know him?" he demanded, his voice lowered to a quiet hiss. His eyes narrowed in a way I'd never seen before.

I regretted letting on to seeing into his head. I'd never come right out said, Hey, Sam, I can read your thoughts. And Sam had never come right and said, I know, you crazy freak. He wasn't stupid though and people around here gossiped like it was an Olympic sport. There was a certain amount of respect between us though - Sam knew exactly what I was, and in exchange, I stayed out of his thoughts, jumbled and snarled as they were. But judging from the look he was flashing across the room, I realized that maybe I wasn't the one he was mad at.

"That's the guy playing Dracula." I knew I didn't have to explain any further. "How do you know him?"

He looked at me for a few seconds, the distaste obvious on his normally genial face. "He owns a few clubs in Shreveport."

"Oh."

"He's really playing Dracula?"

"Yeah, I guess," I shrugged.

He rolled his eyes as he not-so-gently uncorked a bottle of wine. "You gotta be fucking me."

My eyebrows flew up on my forehead, but I didn't skip a beat as I took out a red wine glass and placed it in front of him. As a rule, Sam never had anything unkind to say about anyone. The drunks or rowdies got thrown out with a firm hand but never an insult. Even on the few occasions that I'd seen him in a bad mood over the years I'd known him, he kept it to himself. It was one of the reasons why working for him had become so easy for me - he wasn't judgmental and he very rarely had dark thoughts.

At that moment, the amount of anger flowing from him scared me. I never thought Sam was capable of feeling that much anger. I must've had a shocked look on my face because when Sam looked up and caught my gaze, his cheeks immediately flamed red. He turned away from me and flung the corkscrew somewhere out of sight.

If Sam Merlotte doesn't like you, that doesn't say much about you.

"He givin' you a hard time?" he asked suddenly.

"No, he's just sittin' there, Sam."

"But he's here to see you?"

I shifted on my feet, giving a little shrug. "Yeah, I suppose so. I can handle myself just fine."

He gave his head a quick shake, sending his bristly auburn hair flying. "Just get him outta here, and call me if you need me."

If Sam felt so strongly about this guy, that was good enough for me. I'd just apologize for wasting his time at the audition and avoid that side of the room until he left. Yes, he was amazingly tall and beautiful, and his voice made parts of my body quiver that I never knew existed, and his mind was quiet as a church on a Monday morning...but I had made it this far in life not giving into temptation or curiosity. (And look where that had gotten me. Right.)

As I set it down the napkin and glass in front of him, I smiled and took a step back, meaning to make a quick exit. "There you go," I announced.

"We seem to have an audience," Eric said.

I did a quick turnaround. Arlene, Lafayette, and Sam - along with everyone on the bar - were all stopped mid-action and staring right at us. Even Andy was watching as he shoveled fritters and roulade into his mouth. I sent a steely glare over my shoulder and they all quickly went about their business, everyone except Sam. He stood at the bar, drying a beer stein and trying his best to look menacing.

"Sorry, we don't get new people in here all that often," I said apologetically, but he looked amused, not offended. My crazy smile was in full effect because I just couldn't look away from him. He was dressed more casually this time, in a pair of jeans and green tee-shirt that fit snuggly across his chest under a beat-up black leather jacket. Epitome of Cool Guy.

"So, you know Sam?"

"Merlotte?" he asked, looking over my shoulder with an untroubled glance. "Our paths have crossed a few times. He doesn't like me very much."

"Not particularly, no."

"He thinks I bite virgins in the pale moonlight."

A glass broke, and I heard Sam curse. All I could do was smile, because if I turned around to look at Sam, I would've blasted him. Eric sipped his wine and arched an eyebrow. His eyes practically glittered under the light of the hanging lamp over our heads. And he still seemed very pale to me. I assumed it was the lighting that had given him that strange gleam, but he almost seemed to shine, like the way skim milk looks blue in the fridge. How he managed to make it work, especially with that mop of sleek platinum hair, was beyond me.

I slipped the little tray under my arm. This was point when I'd usually be on my way, but Sam's hostility and Eric's nonchalant attitude left me feeling curious. "Why are you here, really?" I asked.

"Reconnaissance."

"Ah. So, you're the big guns," I said.

"It would seem so."

"Who sent you? Dylan?" Dylan's last message on my answering machine this morning could officially be classified as frantic.

"No one sent me," he replied. "I was concerned."

"Concerned, why?"

"That something had happened to you."

"Why would you think something like that?" And why would he care anyway?

"Most actresses would rather sign themselves out of the emergency room and walk on crutches before they'd miss their first rehearsal."

Oh, he was being sarcastic, and I think he'd just poked at me. I sighed, shifting on my feet. "Well, I'm fine, as you can see." He silently looked back at me with those challenging eyes and upturned mouth, like he was just waiting for my next snarky comeback. "Look, I don't even know why I auditioned, and I am certainly not an actress. Isn't there someone else that wants the part?"

"Thirty-seven someones, to be exact. Thirty-seven terrible actresses who would be thrilled to play your part."

I rolled my eyes; flattery rarely got people anywhere with me, because I always knew if they had an ulterior motive. But all I got from Eric Northman was an empty head and an unblinking stare.

"I think we both know something...interesting happened the other night," he said.

"Interesting? I don't know what to call it." I closed my eyes for a second and let out a quick breath. I was usually pretty fast with the witty comebacks, but this guy was scrambling my brain waves or something. He adjusted in his seat and I got a whiff of his scent, that combination of aromas that hit my nose and sent a signal right to my girly nerve endings. Kiss him, date him, make cookies for him...

"You want to do this." He wasn't cocky when he said this, but like he was simply stating a fact. "Why do you say no?"

"I work nights, a lot." That was true.

"We'll work around it," he said with a shrug of his enormous shoulder.

"But my friend, Tara -"

"Thornton," he finished. "Yes, she's quite enjoying her role. We rehearsed yesterday, and then she measured my inseam with great vigor."

The image of Tara kneeling between Eric's mountainous legs with a measuring tape was enough to make a tiny smile inch up on my face. It hurt my feelings a little that she went without even talking to me about it, but that was very selfish and I tried to put it aside. Besides, I had a much bigger problem to face. How was I supposed to concentrate enough to do this play thing when I could barely look at him without blushing? And how was I possibly going to get him to understand that without outing me as one of the X-Men?

"It's just that I have a hard time concentrating around a lot of people."

"You're doing fine right now," he said.

"That's 'cause I'm trying real hard right now, and I know all these folks."

"Life hands you opportunity sometimes, Miss Stackhouse."

I sighed, "Not in Bon Temps."

I think he was beginning to get the hint about how stubborn I am. No point in arguing with a mule, Gran would always say to me. He hesitated for a good, long while, and I leaned back on my heels, waiting for his next nugget of wisdom, but then he shocked me by taking out his wallet and placing a twenty on the table, like he was getting ready to leave.

"Then stay in Bon Temps."

He pushed his way past me without actually touching me. He was going to leave, and this flustered me and hurt my feelings and irritated me all at the same time.

"Hey - you..." I was stuttering like a fool, panicking at the thought of him walking away from me. "You can't just come in here and-"

He spun around so fast, it was quicker than a blink, and the words got stuck in my throat. "There's something inside of you that you're not aware of. You are wasting yourself here, with these people."

These people were all blatantly staring, slack-jawed.

"I don't know how to be that person," I whispered, though there wasn't really a point. The jukebox had not been reloaded and every glass and utensil was frozen in place.

"Have you even tried? Have you ever tried to be anyone other than this?" His eyes were flashing and he had a wonderful determination on his face, a lightness. When I didn't reply, he added, "You don't strike me as the type to underestimate yourself."

"I'm not," I said quickly.

"Then do it." He smiled then, in a devilish sort of way that screamed innuendo, and his voice dropped a little. "Aren't you just a little curious, Sookie?"

He said my name and it sounded like a sigh, a word whispered on my pillow. "About what?"

"That...click. That moment on the stage when you were Mina. I saw it in your eyes."

I chewed the inside of my lip while I stared at him and contemplated the situation. I couldn't just put aside Sam's opinion. I wasn't in the habit of letting other people dictate my decisions, but Sam had a gut feeling about Eric Northman. His thoughts had become crystal clear to me in that moment.

I looked to my left and saw Sam plainly watching us. Not bothering with the glass anymore, he just stood there with arms crossed over his chest. I got hit with a wave of pure and unfiltered jealousy. If his mind had been a color, it would've been red, and maybe a little green. I'd always thought that Sam might have feelings for me, but this pretty much confirmed it in aces.

I looked back to Eric and heard nothing. Not a word, a feeling, a color, or a single sound. He raised that curious eyebrow again as I tried to penetrate his head, but there was nothing there except for a delightful hush. Standing in front of this man, this puzzle of a man that I wanted nothing more than to solve, all I could think of were the endless possibilities before me.

Finally, I smiled. "You're pretty used to getting what you want, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am." He returned my smile with a large grin, not apologizing in the least for the cockiness written all over his face. It was quickly gone and replaced by his usual expression of nonchalance.

"Alright. I'm in."

I got home a little after eleven that night. Gran was waiting up, as usual, propped up in her giant bed with a Danielle Steele book. She was under her quilt, wearing a bathrobe over one of her ancient white nightgowns.

I knocked on the doorframe. "Gran, I'm home."

"Hi, honey. How was work tonight?"

"Okay," I said as I pulled my ponytail out and rubbed my scalp a bit. I'd already decided to spare her the details of the rest of my evening with Sam. After Eric left, Sam not only ignored me, but he locked himself in his office until closing, forcing us to make our own drinks and only serve at the tables. This got my co-workers, and the local alcoholics, pretty peeved at yours truly. By the time the place was closed up for the night, I just grabbed my purse and slipped out the backdoor.

"You make good tips?" she asked.

"Some," I shrugged. Weekdays were never good tipping days, mostly because people didn't get very drunk during the week, and the ones that did weren't gonna leave you a tip anyway. "Hey, you know that play I tried out for with Tara last week?"

"Sure."

"Well, I got in."

"Oh, that's wonderful, sweetheart." The smile stretched across her whole face. Of course, she'd be over the moon happy that I was simply getting out of the house.

"I got the lead."

"...What?"

"The part I got - it's the biggest part for a woman. It's actually the biggest part in the whole show, I think."

She looked astonished, even as she tried to keep the smile on her face. "Oh my, Sookie."

I rolled my eyes and sat down on the edge of her bed, letting out a heaving sigh that sounded like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. "Trust me, I know. You think I can do it?"

"What I think doesn't matter, dear."

"I know, but I'm asking."

She neatly folded her page over and placed the book on the nightstand next to her alarm clock and her glass of water. She now had her business cap on. "You say yes yet?"

"Only sort of. Haven't truly made up my mind."

"Well," she said, carefully choosing her words. "I don't think it would be easy for you, but nothing worth doing ever is." I nodded, easily giving in to her generic Gran advice. "I also think that once you put your mind to doing something, you don't give up until the job is done."

I nodded again and chewed on the corner of my finger for a second. That one I also had to give in to, because it was a nice way of saying that I was stubborn, which I am.

"Now, the question is, have you put your mind to this yet?"

There was a knock on the front door and I didn't have the chance to answer.

Gran looked sharply at her clock. "Now who'd that be knocking so late?" she asked.

"I'll go find out," I said.

I was surprised to see Bill Compton's face when I took a peek through the lace shade, but I smiled none the less. "Hey, Bill. It's sorta late for a visit."

"I know and I apologize," he said with a slight inclination of his head. "I only just got in and I wanted to catch you before you retired for the night."

"Well, you got me. What's up?"

He held out a cream colored envelope to me and I immediately recognized the big, bubbly handwriting. "This was delivered to my house today. It looks like a personal letter and I was worried that it might be timely."

I took a step out onto the porch and took the letter, flipping it over to examine it. No return address. "Thanks, Bill. It's from my cousin. We haven't heard from her in a long time."

"I hope she is well."

"I hope so too." The last we'd heard from Hadley, she'd asked Gran for some cash and then skipped town. She left a husband and a little tiny son behind and I had to admit that I didn't have much respect left for the girl, but family is family, and that was something I didn't have a lot of.

I looked at the postmark and made a humpf sound. "New Orleans," I sighed. "Don't suppose any good can come from that."

"Depends on what kind of person you are, I suppose," Bill said.

"Then it's no good at all, I'm afraid." I noticed at that second that it was addressed to me alone. The one and only letter we'd received from Hadley had been shortly after she left and had been addressed to both Gran and I. "I really appreciate you bringing this over."

I took a step back to the door and he advanced a step. "Sookie, I was wondering -" and he suddenly seemed nervous, "If I might call on you some time."

"Call on me?" I couldn't help but smile. I knew what it meant, but it was such an old fashioned thing to say. My grandfather probably said that to Gran when they first started dating.

"Yes, I thought we could take a walk again."

I might not have much of a social life, but I knew it when I was being asked out on a date. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't noticed how handsome Bill was. He was a little shorter than I preferred, but he had very striking features and thick, glossy hair. He also had a lovely set of pearly whites, which let's face it, isn't something you always get to see in Bon Temps. His sideburns were a little long, but they actually set off his chin very nicely.

He was also looking into my eyes and not at my chest. Bonus points.

This was the point in the conversation that I usually took a quick mental dive into the guy's head. Still a blank. No, not a blank, more like empty space. I impulsively grabbed his hands and closed my eyes to listen harder. Nothing.

He was staring at me when I opened my eyes, not rudely, but just with a sort of perplexed look. "What are you doing?"

I smiled and felt a little foolish, though it was certainly not the first time I'd ever done that to someone. "Remind me to tell you sometime," I replied.

I heard Gran on the stairs. She came as far as the second landing, sort of leaning down to get a better look with her robe wrapped around her middle like a cocoon. She was a proper lady after all. "Who is it, Sookie dear?"

"It's Mr. Compton, Gran. He got a letter from Hadley delivered to his house by accident."

"Oh!" Etiquette be damned, she trooped down the remaining stairs and took the letter. "Thank you so much, Mr. Compton."

"My pleasure, Miss Adele. I apologize if I woke you."

"Nonsense," she huffed. "I'm not that old. Besides, we need more gracious men in this world." She took a second to read the front of the envelope and her eyebrows fell together. She didn't say anything, but I knew in an instant what her mind was spinning, no telepathic help on that one.

Maybe it was the way that Bill and I were both looking at her, or maybe she was just miffed about the letter, but she quickly excused herself and went back upstairs.

I turned back to Bill and he smiled rather shyly, bobbing up and down on his heels a few times, and I realized I'd left a question hanging in the air.

"Yes." It came out before I even thought about it.

"Yes?"

"Yes, I'll go on a walk with you, but I do work most nights."

"Oh, of course," he said with an eager nod. He was beaming but I could tell he was trying to play it cool. "And I have business in New Orleans several times a week."

And then there was that weird allergic to the sun thing. "You can't go out during the daytime at all?"

"Only when it's very overcast."

"You must pray for rain like a farmer," I scoffed, but then regretted the words when I saw his jaw flex and his eyes shift to his feet. "Sorry, that was rude."

"It's fine," he said after a second. "I've lived with this affliction for a long, long time. I've gotten pretty used to it."

"Well, we'll just figure it out I guess." That was when I remembered that my schedule was about to get a whole lot more complicated. "Oh, shoot, I guess I'll have rehearsals to go to now." He looked curious, waiting for an explanation. "I'm in a play. In Shreveport."

His face went slack. "Shreveport."

"Yeah, at the community playhouse. Tara's in it too."

"What play are you performing?"

I couldn't help but roll my eyes and smile indulgently. "Dracula. I'm playing Mina."

A pause. "That's quite a part."

"So I'm finding out," I said. "I'm nervous as all get-out. I just agreed to do the part tonight, so I haven't really gone over much of the script yet."

Just then Gran called down for me - her way of giving me a get out of jail free card. "Be up in a sec, Gran!" I called out, and when I turned back to face Bill, I caught him smelling my hair. Now, I get that sniffing a girl is one of those weird things that guys do and us girls are supposed to just ignore it, but when I say Bill smelled me, I could hear him suck in the air through his nose like a bloodhound. It was just plain weird, and I smelled like burger grease and Budweiser on top of it.

Our faces were very close together as he lifted his head. He stared at me and I gazed into his deep, dark brown eyes. They were so dark, like they were completely dilated and his irises were gone. "Sookie, listen carefully." His voice was different suddenly, deep and dramatic sounding. "Do you know anyone else in Shreveport?"

My eyes narrowed with suspicion. "A few I guess."

"Someone came to see you tonight. Was it at Merlotte's?"

But I never told Bill I worked at Merlotte's.

He gently took me by the shoulders and pulled me closer to him. I guess I let him because I was so shocked at his sudden strange change of behavior, I wanted to know what the hell he was doing. He was staring so deeply into my eyes that I had to blink and look away, but he ducked his gaze down and caught my line of sight again.

His fingers squeezed harder. "Sookie, tell me who came to see you tonight."

I pulled his hands off my shoulders, with some grunting effort, and stepped back through the threshold. "I don't think that's any of your damn business."

The look of shock on his face was almost comical. He was flabbergasted, like I was supposed to respond in some other way to his big powerful man routine. For a second, I thought he was going to come into the house and I scurried back a few more steps, but then he backed off and stared down at his trusty brown loafers again.

"I apologize," he grumbled.

"Yeah, well..."

"Sookie..."

"Goodnight, Bill." When I closed the door and locked it, he stood there for a few seconds, then he seemed to disappear off the porch. Had he jumped off the side, for Pete's sake? That situation had gone from good to bad very quickly, and I wouldn't be going on a walk with Bill Compton any time soon.

After that, there wasn't anything left to do except turn off the lights and head upstairs. Gran's door was already closed but her light was still on - a sure sign that she was not in the mood for talking about the possibilities of her other granddaughter's life.

It was a difficult topic for Gran. Even though we both agreed that Hadley was an adult and she made her own decisions, Gran had always feared for the outcome of her life. After Hadley's mother, my Aunt Linda, passed away from cancer, Gran was left with three grandkids to love and be responsible for. Jason and I, well, she'd done right by us. But Hadley was different, always had been. Hailey only came by when she needed cash or someplace to crash after another fight with her father.

The letter was resting on a throw pillow on my bed. I wanted nothing more than to take a shower and slip into my nightclothes, but I needed to know. Without even taking off my shoes, I sat down on the edge of my bed and ripped it open.

It was written on elegant, thick stationary and reminded me nothing of my cousin. There was a monogram written in ornate silver letters in the bottom right corner - SAL. Hadley's writing was messy and rushed.

There are things happening that I can't control and I'm sorry. If I explained, it'd make things worse. Don't trust anyone, no one is what they seem. Take care of yourself and tell Gran I'm sorry.

That was it. I flipped over the paper but the back was blank. No signature, no date. Why had Hadley gone out of her way to send a cryptic letter with four sentences that made no sense? She seemed scared, that was obvious. It didn't tell me much, but it left me with a lot to think about.

First item on the list - Bill Compton. Second item on the list - Eric Northman. In the span of one evening, I'd had strange conversations with the only two people I'd ever met that I couldn't read. And I'd gotten a letter warning me not to trust anyone.

Have I mentioned that I'm not a big believer in coincidences?

Hmm, seems like a mystery, which we all know Sookie can't ignore.Remember to review please! Feed my sad, sad addiction. I love to hear to hear from you and I try to answer all of them. Next chapter, someone new comes to visit...