Disclaimer: The SVM/Sookie Stackhouse series belongs to Charlaine Harris; I'm not profiting from this story except by having fun with her hard and talented work.

In the previous chapter…On her day off, Sookie throws herself into normal house chores, determined to gain her footing after the last night's scary encounters with Long Shadow and Diane. Later, she goes out for a drive and winds up at an Amish garden center/farm stand to pick up a cemetery arrangement for Gran's plot. She is surprised to run into Bill's sister, Sarah Norris, who drops this shocking news: Bill's son Tom has left the Amish to live with a woman, and his daughter, Sarah Isabelle, is soon to be married at a very young age because she's pregnant.

Sookie leaves the market, wishing Sarah's family well and promising she'll stop by soon to look at her progress on the quilt. After spending time at Gran's grave, she returns home to find more shocking news: a whole front page devoted to Eric "posing" in various places around the Amish community. The Hexenmeisters have gotten hold of his cardboard cutout figure from Fangtasia and are toting him around town and snapping pictures.

With her pile of worries—how to break the bad news to Bill and how to help keep the Hexenmeisters and vampires out of trouble—Sookie indulges in a big dinner of leftovers from Gran's funeral and winds up with heartburn. She takes a dose of Gran's slippery elm, which has a unique effect on her, giving her an expansive sense of well-being and enabling her to read emotions through colorful hallucinations. When Bill finds her wandering in the orchard, Sookie realizes she loves him, and doesn't want to hurt or lose him. But she knows she must tell him the news. Bill reacts strongly, his family troubles balled up with his own conflicted feelings about becoming a vampire. When they have sex, Sookie feels overwhelmed by Bill's sudden and dramatic distance from her.

But the night isn't over yet. Eric arrives, requesting Sookie's services to come to Fangtasia to discover who has stolen $60,000 from him. She refuses at once, knowing she is being used beyond the scope of her agreement with him, and tells him flat out her suspicions that Long Shadow is the thief. Moreover, she reveals that she wonders whether the Hexenmeisters have been using souped-up slippery elm, perhaps playing with a spell, which may explain their out-of-control behavior. Bill and Eric leave at once, under Bill's suggestion that such slippery elm might be obtained at Laurel Run, the mega smorgasbord/shopping complex.

Chapter 26: Country Herbals

When my eyelids popped open the next morning to another beautiful day, I was filled with such a sense of well-being, the events from the night before kept themselves buried deep for a few glorious moments.

Until I moved.

And then as I began to stretch and test out various body parts, the crazy story of my life started fitting itself in place.

Pounding head. Slippery elm.

Skinned palms. Failed balancing act on the fallen tree.

Miscellaneous cuts and bruises. Fall from an upper branch of home base tree.

Additional cuts and bruises and fang marks. Fervent sex. Remnants of another evening's vampire attack.

I sat up to a world that spun to a rest. Though I appreciated having straight and steady vision, a gnawing in my stomach told me that the ride was over. So very over.

The house sat quiet and empty. Stubborn. I wanted to shake it until it let out a creak or gasp or thunk. Not even the refrigerator hummed. Gran wasn't puttering in the kitchen. The storm windows I'd installed just yesterday muffled the sounds of the outdoors.

And I missed Bill.

It was much worse than I thought I'd expected. Of course I'd known all along that he wouldn't be able to stick around here forever, hiding so near to his living family, staying out of reach of the press. I'd made my choice to take what I could get when I could get it, well aware that it might be out of my reach otherwise. But knowing this point was inevitable, and experiencing it were two different things.

So very different.

I worried terribly for him. Had he and Eric gone to Laurel Run last night? I tried to ease my fears by imagining him safe and sound in his daytime rest and hoped when he rose, he wouldn't do anything foolish, like intervening with his family. That would go over as well as a truckload of SUVs on the Bishop's front lawn.

Don't get me wrong: I had a lot of respect for this tenacious community, which had survived the enormous changes of the past century. I guessed it could handle an Amish-turned-vampire with a heck of a lot more grace than the rest of the world could. But I had to think they wouldn't ever accept Bill as a member again. And as for his family, aside from their shock and pain of seeing what had happened to him, they'd be in danger too. He had to know that. I could only hope his desperation wouldn't lead him to do anything foolish.

All of these worries rattled around in my head as I pushed out of bed. The more I moved, the more I realized I wasn't in bad shape. Bill's blood must have done some good, though as I dressed, I figured I'd be facing a wardrobe crisis later this morning when I got ready to go to work. Would I wear the collared polo shirt that covered the bite marks on my neck or the long-sleeve boat neck tee that hid the obvious finger-shaped bruises on my arm? And as I was contemplating that decision and using concealer to disguise the scratches on my face, I felt a sudden wave of good fortune to have escaped the past couple nights—Long Shadow's threat and Diane's attack, not to mention my fall out of a tree and rainbow visions in the presence of not one, but two vampires. Though right on its heels, I thought how crazy it was that I'd even been in such predicaments.

On balance, I wasn't sure where that left me on the gratitude scale.

Maybe this was too much thinking for now. I needed to keep moving, like any one of a myriad of Gran's friends who'd had hip replacements: move it or lose it. And on this early morning, the farmer's market topped my list for first time since Gran had died. My plan? To see one loudly-broadcasting ex-Amish man who'd sold Gran and me some powerful slippery elm.

The parking lot was moderately crowded when I arrived. Even the main entrance looked clear—free of Fellowship members, that is. So far, so good. I took the first space I noticed at the front of the building, which meant only a short walk across the graveled lot. I kicked a stone ahead until I lost it under a car. The rest of the way passed in a gray smudge of macadam, stubbed cigarette butts, oil stains, and squashed wads of chewing gum. And then I was looking up and reaching for the handle to the door. It gave way with little heft, like it needed a part tightened.

A gust of air blew over me, and there I stopped short.

The woman on my heels huffed and shoved around me. I stepped aside, overwhelmed by the distinct smell of damp concrete mixed with molasses, cinnamon, and deli meat. Gran could have been next to me right then, her pocketbook clutched close, her list clenched in her other hand, promising waffles and ice cream after our errands. Dammit, I started to tear up.

Later, I told myself. Later when I didn't have to go to work or do any vampire-Amish detective work, I'd stick all my problems in a hat, pick one, and let myself have a good cry about it. I headed straight back to Paul's Country Herbals.

Lucky for me, Amos was on staff this morning. He was busy cleaning, though, and I mean cleaning with a capital "C." He'd taken all the items off one shelf to scrub at a sticky spot. I could see his direction by which of the adjacent shelves were spotless, their bottles and packages lined up meticulously. Behind him, he'd left a trail of clean and order.

I stood there for a moment, observing Amos, looking around the shop, and listening. Aside from his maniacal cleaning, he looked normal, dressed in jeans and a pressed collared shirt. Clean-shaven with trimmed, chestnut-colored hair, he was the spitting image of the boy next door. Make that the Englisher next door. I had to give him credit: his mind was a thing to behold. He'd managed to achieve what few people could—near complete focus on his task at hand.

With a little more scrubbing here…got it! I'll give the whole shelf one more wipe down. What did I do with that dry towel? There. Let's see. Anything expired? December. That one's close. I'll put that up front. Another December. April. April. April. Oops, that's Echinacea. April. April. April. April.

After only a few seconds of listening to Amos, I was ready to climb the walls. And yet, most notable was that underneath it all, sadness clung. Something else too. Something had changed for Amos since the last time I'd been here.

I shuffled my feet so he'd hear me. He looked up in surprise, knew that I looked familiar, and after a few moments, placed me. Of course, I heard this process before he said, "You're Adele's granddaughter."

"Sookie," I said, nodding. In Amos's mind, Adele was the sweet little old lady with heartburn who'd gotten knocked down and trampled by the mule. He thought she'd been treated rudely by the press, though he'd watched one of the viral videos a few times, now replaying by memory. When I saw it in his head, I flinched. Maybe one day I'd get immune to it, but the problem was that everyone remembered a different angle, treating me to a fresh view every time.

"I'm real sorry that happened to her," he said sincerely, his eyes red-rimmed. He'd lost someone too, or had broken up with him or her. He was picturing a blue bicycle with its wire basket, straight handlebars, a broad, padded seat, a bar on the back wheel for fitting a friend, and then…

Judas!

I hadn't known a bicycle could be used like…that.

In all of my years as a telepath, I've seen a lot of the personal sex lives of strangers and mere acquaintances—way more than I'd ever wanted to see—but never this...this…circus act.

Strangely, it seemed to be an unpleasant image for Amos; I felt the rush of us both leaving his thoughts in the dirt.

Amos had stopped cleaning and was sorely curious about why I'd come to his shop. Since Gran was dead, he'd ruled out slippery elm, a mistake for sure.

"What can I do for you?" he asked.

"It has to do with my gran, with that slippery elm you sold to her." I figured laying it out there on the table was the best way to go, since if there were any relevant thoughts to be had from Amos, he'd likely think 'em and broadcast 'em.

"Seemed like it did the trick for her, didn't it?" he said. He'd been worried she'd had heart problems, so a very small part of him was glad she hadn't died by heart attack, if she had to go at all, of course.

"Well, that's the thing. I'd say it did more than the trick for her."

"Oh?" he said, perking up with nervousness, along with…excitement? Pride? He'd sworn to himself he wasn't going to mess with the unsupervised experimental magic anymore, but this news that his tricked-out slippery elm had done some good, well…

There was so much in Amos's thoughts, I didn't know where to begin. So I cut to the quick. "I know there's something different about that slippery elm."

More pride and excitement fired through Amos. "I had a hand in that myself." And then he leaned in. "I can tell you're different, or you wouldn't be here asking these kinds of questions about the slippery elm, so I don't mind telling you what type of work I do." Witch, he thought.

Of course the word 'witch' set off an alarm bell, what with the way the vamps had spoken of witches. He was lucky I'd gotten to him before Eric had. Maybe Bill had directed Eric toward Laurel Run for that very reason, a thought I had to set aside for the moment.

"You're a witch," I said outright.

"Hey! How did you know? Are you a witch too?"

"Nope. Not a witch."

He gave my answer the barest consideration, to note I seemed open to such supernatural things, and pictured himself burning something in a small dish. "So, yeah. I don't mind telling you I put an energy boost spell on the slippery elm."

"Energy boost?"

"Just meant as a pick-me-up. Your gran looked tired that day she came in here with her friend, and I had always liked seeing her. She always had something nice to say to me in PA German." Amos was recalling my gran with a big smile on her face. He thought she'd taken a special liking to him, which made him want to take extra good care of her.

I thought bitterly about the effects of Amos's efforts. "It gave her a crazy burst of energy," I retorted. Of course I hadn't meant it as a compliment, but Amos took it as one, with that freshly scrubbed smile on his face again. "She couldn't stop moving until it exhausted her."

Amos's deflation was finally beginning, its slow leak collapsing his smile. "Was it meant to make you see colors too?" I persisted.

"Colors?" Now he looked pale. "Did she see colors?"

"I don't think so, but I did."

He squinted at me. "Say," he said, as something clicked and gears started moving. "What are you?"

"I'm a telepath." I'm not proud I said this with relish.

Amos's eyes widened. He smacked himself on the forehead. "Ach! I shouldn't assume! I shouldn't ever assume," he berated himself, before looking puzzled again. "What else?"

"Isn't that enough?" I said, offended.

"No. I mean…not enough to make you see colors."

I skedaddled from his head.

Nope. I wasn't going to go down that path. Today was not the day to learn anything else strange about myself or dwell on my shortcomings. I was here for another reason. Plus the two of us having shaken each other, it was time to call a truce of sorts.

"I was hoping you could give me advice or information."

"What's that?" Amos jumped in, eager to help.

"You know about the Hexenmeisters and their running around?"

"Oh, ja. Crazy, ain't not?"

I was extra careful about how I phrased my next question, so as not to accuse Amos. At least not directly. "Could you imagine their getting into anything like the slippery elm?"

"Nah," he said right away. "That's a one-of-a-kind…" He trailed off, startled. He'd been about to say how he didn't know any other witches in the area with the same specialty, and how he'd sold the slippery elm to limited customers on a trial basis, when a name popped into his head. Hugo. It shook him as odds and ends assembled themselves in his mind.

He looked at me, knowing I'd heard him. I had to give him credit for understanding my otherness, not something that most humans are capable of doing right off the bat. But then again, it didn't seem like Amos had many boundaries at all. "The poor guy's been back and forth so often. He's in. He's out." There was a pause. "It's not easy, you know, leaving the Amish."

"No, I'd guess it's not." I knew as much from Bill, even though his circumstances were markedly different. Amos had grown up Amish, left at age 18, before he'd been baptized, and had done something different from most folks: he'd never gone back. Though I could tell from his thoughts it hadn't been easy for him, either. Amos's father was a braucher, a faith-healer, who'd been disappointed that he'd had only one child—a boy—because the practice of braucherei, also known as "pow-wowing," typically is passed through the generation between opposite sexes. Amos biggest fault, right off the bat, was that he'd been born a boy.

In any case, Amos hadn't had the inclination to follow in his footsteps, choosing instead something else—a non-Christian-based practice, which was the real kicker to his father. Witchcraft. His story was mind-boggling, the way it passed through his head in such a tidy fashion.

"He bought a lot." Amos was picturing Hugo with the Hexenmeisters, the gang to which he'd belonged and still hung out with when they came around on occasion. "I felt sorry for the guy," he explained. "He'd been shunned and had seemed so down-and-out. I just figured he could use help getting over the hump. But now I'm wondering…"

"You think he's sharing?"

Amos shrugged. He'd been proud of his handiwork, but now he was berating himself for inadvertently becoming a supplier of Amish street drugs.

This was definitely a new twist. Was Hugo stoking the Hexenmeisters? Looking for someone to party with? And struggling to keep friends who might otherwise be inclined to abandon him?

While I worked these thoughts out in my head, Amos grabbed a sheet of paper and a thick, smelly black marker and wrote, "Back in fifteen minutes." Then he crossed out the "fifteen" and replaced it with "thirty." He locked the cash register, pocketed the key, and strode toward the door with the sign and a roll of tape in hand. He had one thought in mind. Hugo.

Amos was picturing Hugo in a workplace setting, standing behind a table.

"Hugo works here?" I asked.

Amos nodded. "When he shows. Selling multi-tool kits. That's how I met him." He patted his own pocket to show he was carrying one of the tools now.

I had little chance to think about Gran as I trotted to keep up with Amos, darting through the crowds, right past the lunch counter at Yoder's. He slowed to wend his way through the permanent mesmerized mass in front of the shammy guy, wearing yet another embroidered NRA shirt, black with gold letters. And then he turned down a side corridor and came to a stop in front of a table advertising Build-a-Tool. Your Tool, Your Way, the sign read.

Amos nodded to the man behind the table, who was in the middle of a demonstration, and then gave a quick nod to me. Hugo. He matched up nearly exactly with the picture of him in Amos's head. I guessed him to be in his early twenties.

Hugo was not an easy read. He held a red, bulky multi-purpose tool for comparison purposes. "Feel this," he said to the lone man standing in front of him. I could tell by how the customer hesitated before reaching out for the knife that he disliked getting snagged by a sales pitch. He was thinking he'd stopped by only to browse, intrigued by the black case with the slots.

"You want that in your pocket?" Hugo asked. "I had one like that one time that tore a hole clean through my pocket after only a few days."

The customer nodded, briefly weighing it in his palm before handing it back. He thought the sausages from the food stand next door smelled extra good. I barely heard him underneath Amos's blaring observation that Hugo was wearing Englisher's clothes today; sometimes Hugo dressed as an Amish man to put on a show and boost sales.

Hugo had opened the knife with its various attachments: bottle opener, screw driver, scissors, file, pointy thing, another pointy thing, saw, pliers, flashlight, magnifying glass, and plenty of other sharp instruments and gadgets I was sure would thrill Jason. With all of those implements extended, Hugo looked like he was holding up a big claw.

"Which of these tools do you think you'd use?" Hugo asked.

The customer didn't know. He looked to be in his late teens, with medium brown wavy hair that had been smashed under a hat, a thin and patchy beard, and a nose and Adam's apple vying for prominence. His disheveled clothes—wrinkled black concert t-shirt and baggy jeans—hung on his thin body. For the sake of being a good sport, he chose the knife, screw driver, and bottle opener.

"All right," Hugo responded. "So we can get you set up with the small interior axle." He reached into the black kit, which intrigued the customer, watching as Hugo assembled a pocket tool in front of him. He added a total of six attachments, including three different screw drivers, and tightened it using a quarter. At one point, another browser poked his head in, saw what Hugo was assembling, and ducked out, complaining to himself that a pocketknife was a pocketknife and just that, with no need for any other gadgets.

"How's that?" Hugo handed him the custom-assembled tool.

The man took hold of it and nodded, liking its shape and smoothness, and most of all, the looks of that kit. "How much?" he asked.

Hugo dodged the question. "You're not just getting one tool with this kit. You're getting a custom-designed instrument. This small axle holds up to six attachments. But every kit comes with three interior axle sizes. The largest axle allows you to carry up to thirteen tools, for those occasions when you think you'll need more."

"Twenty," the customer thought to himself. Twenty dollars would be his limit.

But I could sense his eagerness, and I'm sure Hugo did too. I averted my eyes, uneasy about watching him being worn down. There was a farmer's market bulletin board, layered with postings, next to the door behind Hugo. A color poster promoted Regional Championship Wrestling. One of their wrestlers, minus the crazy eye makeup and cape, looked a lot like Eric. Next to him, arms akimbo, stood a bald man in purple satin pants.

The market's annual fall craft fair was coming up, I noted with interest, and wondered whether Sarah would be here. The Lancaster County Patriots were holding weekly meetings on Wednesdays at 7 PM in the banquet hall. Cabela's, the region's largest single supplier of sporting goods, had a sale last week on wool socks. And the Pennsylvania Firearms Association was urging residents to support Castle Doctrine.

Next to me, two farmers were complaining about price-fixing.

I turned my attention back to Hugo, who had collected fifty-nine ninety-five, plus tax, from his gangly customer. New tool kit in hand, he'd sunk into the crowd.

Hugo looked up at Amos and shrugged, his excitement at snagging a sale waning.

Amos extended a hand. Hugo shook it while casting a quick glance in my direction.

"Hugo, this is Sookie. She's a friend."

Amos was using the word 'friend' not as someone he'd known for a long time, but as a trusted person. I appreciated the nod, but also understood Amos was working out his own guilty conscience.

"Pleased to meet you." I extended my hand.

Hugo hesitated for a moment before shaking it. "You from the Amish too?" He'd gone one step further with his definition of 'friend.'

"No, but I grew up on a farm in Bird-in-Hand." I held onto him for as long as I reasonably could to get a read on him. He seemed only mildly curious and half wary too. I realized Amos and I hadn't come up with any coordinated plan with each other, and now was I questioning the wisdom of just showing up here and saying, "Hey, did you pass out any extra slippery elm?"

Amos took the lead. "Sookie's grandmother used to come by my store. She's the one who…you know…had the accident with the mule."

Hugo studied me for my reaction, and though I hadn't been prepared to be called out like that, my face was schooled in holding steady. My heart did a leap, though.

"I'm sorry," he said on auto-pilot, with little emotion.

"Sookie and her grandmother had trouble with the slippery elm."

He looked at me. "What kind of trouble."

"Along the order of too much energy," I explained, figuring I could skip the rainbow hallucinations.

He had a bit of a smile on his face. "Nah. Didn't give me any trouble. Worked just fine."

"You share with anyone else?" Amos asked.

He shook his head. I couldn't hear what he was thinking.

"I should track them down," Amos added.

"Nah. Like I said."

Still, Amos pushed again. "Not even with the Hexenmeisters?"

Hugo seemed to stop at that, looking at him and then at me quizzically. A flash of something fired in his brain, and then dissipated in a wink. "I ain't running around with the Hexenmeisters no more." He said this with disdain, covering over a background of disconnection. Had he had a falling out with them or was this just about his trouble with the Amish community in general?

"I'd hate to see anyone get hurt," I said.

He laughed somewhat wryly. "I don't think I'd worry."

But I was worried, and at that moment, I wanted to take Hugo by his head to hear what was really going on. I suspected he had a bigger fish to fry and cared very little if anyone else got caught in the kitchen when the oil splattered.

Meanwhile, Amos was shouting in my ear with his thoughts. "You finished here?"

"Do you have a card?" I asked Hugo. When he paused, I added, "My brother would like one of these kits." That was the truth, fair enough, though I wasn't sure I'd give Hugo my business.

He pulled one out of his pocket. Hugo Ayres. Not an Amish name. Had he changed it?

We all said our goodbyes and thank yous, and in the case of Amos and Hugo, a promise to catch up later. I gathered Hugo would be stopping by for more slippery elm.

"Satisfied?" Amos asked me as we walked away.

He sorely wanted me to be. Twisting my head to look over at him, I felt a slight twinge in my neck. All the lingering doubts and questions. And most of all, my worries about Bill.

No. I was anything but satisfied.