Drop Dead, Gorgeous.

Disclaimer : Drop Dead, Gorgeous, is a piece of fanfiction modeled from Charlaine's Harris's Southern Vampire Mystery Series with a few liberties taken from TrueBlood, a show based off the same books. All recognizable places and characters belong to C.H. As a reminder, I earn no money from this fanfiction.

Author's Note: Early chapters have a lot of lifting from the book but that will change as things progress. Reviews and Criticism are appreciated. Ideas early enough may affect outcome.

[2]

AFTER WORK THAT NIGHT, I DROVE HOME, WHICH IS ONLY ABOUT FOUR MILES SOUTH FROM THE BAR. Jason (and DeeAnne) had been gone when I got back to work, so I didn't have to break the news that I owed him a chain, immediately at least. I spent the drive thinking about the evening as I returned to my grandmother's house, where I lived. Bill was so different than the vampires at Fangtasia, not tame just, surprising. Longshadow and Pam were so bold, so… vampire. Bill seemed kind of lost. I wondered how old he was.

I wondered how old Pam was. We hadn't done a lot of talking with our time together. I shifted a little with the thought as I passed Tall Pines Cemetery, which lay off the narrow two-lane parish road leading to Gran's. My great-great-great grandfather had started the house, and he'd had ideas about privacy, so to reach it you had to turn off the parish road into the driveway, go through some woods, and then you arrived at the clearing in which the house stood.

Maybe it had been more than privacy they had been after. Maybe they had needed seclusion, like me. When I was young, I had been drawn to a small clearing where the trees didn't seem to grow and the grass stayed short. It was my reprieve from Gran's thoughts (as kind as they were) and all the town that visited to prove their mourning. I would play on my own, imagining fanciful things that kept me entertained – and when I got a little older, I would camp out there on the nights I needed complete privacy. I wondered if any of my great grandparents had done the same.

I parked outside the house and looked up. It was a big old family home, too big for just Gran and me, and sometimes I felt like it was waiting for me to fill it up. I hated to say it'd be waiting a while, but it would be. It had a broad front covered by a screened in porch, and it was painted white, Granny being a traditionalist all the way. I took my shoes off at the door and went through the big living room, strewn with battered furniture arranged to suit us, and down the hall to the first bedroom on the left, the biggest.

Adele Hale Stackhouse, my grandmother, was propped up in her high bed, about a million pillows padding her skinny shoulders. She was wearing a long-sleeved cotton nightgown even in the warmth of this spring night, and her bedside lamp was still on. There was a book propped in her lap.

"Hey." I said, letting my hair down from its ponytail.

"Hi, honey." She closed her book and looked up. My grandmother is very small and very old, but her hair is still thick, and so white it almost has the very faintest of green tinges. She wears it kind of rolled against her neck during the day, but at night it's loose or braided. Tonight it was braided over her shoulder.

"Guess what happened tonight?" I asked her, sitting on the side of her bed.

"What?" Her eyes lit up, "You got a date?" Gran was always hopeful I'd land someone. When I'd first told her I was interested in not only men but women as well, she'd set her hand over mine and patted it and said as long as they worked and treated me with respect, she didn't care who made me happy. I knew she had a long list of preferences for male suitors, but we hadn't ever gotten around to her listing out what a woman I'd be interested in should abide to beyond preferably Christian and not of 'loose morals' (read tramp but she wouldn't to say it). In this town, I'd always thought be lucky to find one my brother hadn't gotten to first.

"No," I said, working to keep a smile on my face. "A vampire came into the bar."

This was just as exciting, "Ooh, was it that vampire from Shreveport? The woman you liked?" Gran had a mind like a trap. I'd told her a little bit about my night with Lafayette and she'd held onto my reaction when I'd talked about Pam keeping me company.

"Oh, no." This was a little disappointing to Gran, but I'd've been surprised if she'd come. I couldn't see her chasing a human. "No, his name was Bill. He just sat and had a glass of red wine. Well, he ordered it. He didn't drink it. I think he just wanted to company."

Gran nodded, thinking to herself, "I wonder where he stays."

"Oh, he wouldn't be likely to tell anyone that."

"No I guess not." She seemed a bit put out, then looked over at me. "Did you like him?"

Now that was a hard question, I mulled it over. "I don't know. He was… different." If I was honest, it was like speaking with a much older gentlemen in a much younger body, but that wouldn't be nearly so interesting to Gran.

"I'd surely like to have met him." I wasn't surprised Gran said this because she enjoyed new things almost as much as I did. She wasn't one of those reactionaries who'd decided vampires were damned right off the bat. That's what had finely given me the confidence to tell her about myself. I knew Gran loved me despite the telepathy, but I'd been nervous sharing my sexuality. Anyone else her age would have run me right on out. She set her book on the table and made a show of sighing, "But I better go to sleep now. I was just waiting for you to come home before I turned out my light."

I bent over to give Gran a kiss, and said, "Night, night."

I half-closed her door on my way out and heard the click of the lamp as she turned it off. My cat, Tia, came from wherever she'd been sleeping to rub against my legs, and I picked her up and cuddled her for a while before putting her out for the night. I glanced at the clock. It was almost two o'clock, and my bed was calling me.

My room was right across the hall from Gran's. When I first used this room, when my folks had died, Gran had moved my bedroom furniture from their house so I'd feel more homey. As a seven year old, every comfort she had provided meant the world. Now I could appreciate everything she had done for me and Jason even more, and the furniture? Still here. The single bed and vanity in white-painted wood, the small chest of drawers. Every time I started to think of replacing it, I just couldn't. Maybe a day would come that that would change, but not yet.

I slipped out of the shirt and shorts and crawled directly into bed. Since I don't wear makeup, except on special occasions, there wasn't anything to wash off. I turned on my side, like I always do, and relished the silence of the room. Almost everyone's brain is turned off in the wee hours of the night, and the vibrations are gone, the intrusions do not have to be repelled. With such peace, sleep was easy to come by so I fell into the deep sleep of exhaustion. If I'd stayed up, I would have felt the subtle empty spot in the air where a mind should be emitting, but wasn't.

[Break]

BY LUNCHTIME THE NEXT DAY, I WAS IN MY FAVORITE WHITE STRAPLESS TWO PIECE AND GETTNG BROWNER BY THE SECOND ON THE ALUMINUM CHAISE IN THE FRONTYARD. It was a little looser than last summer but I wasn't sure to trust that I had lost anything, or if the fabric had stretched. It was great, until I heard a vehicle coming down the drive, and Jason's black truck pulled up within a foot of my feet.

His frustration was evident in his every move from how he kicked open his door and climbed down – did I mention he has those high tires? – to his stride as he stalked over. He was wearing his usual work clothes, a khaki shirt and pants, and he had his sheathed knife clipped to his belt, like most of the country road workers did. Whatever set him off he must've heard from the work crew.

I put on my dark sunglasses. Better to guard my expression.

"Why didn't you tell me you beat up the Rattrays last night?" He was loud – loud enough I was worried Gran would hear and I told him to quiet down. He threw himself into the other chair beside me, looking around the yard, "Where is Gran?"

Normally, this time of year, she'd be tending to her garden but we'd done the more labor intensive stuff together this morning. "She's hanging out the laundry." Gran would use the dryer in a pinch, but she really liked hanging out the wet clothes in the sun. It did leave a fresh smell that was hard to duplicate. "She's fixing country-fried steak and sweet potatoes and green beans she put up last year, for lunch," I added, knowing that would distract Jason a little bit.

Jason wasn't to be dissuaded apparently, but he did speak lower, "Rene Lenier couldn't wait till I got to work this morning to tell me all about it. He was over at the Rattray's trailer last night to buy him some weed, and Denise drove up like she wanted to kill someone. Rene said he liked to have gotten killed, she was so mad. It took both Rene and Denise to get Mack into the trailer, and then they took him to the hospital in Monroe," Jason glared at me, accusingly.

"Did Rene tell you that Mack came at me with a knife?" I huffed. I knew before he answered that that part had been left out. "No, of course he didn't. Denise and Mack probably didn't tell him the whole reason I defended myself was because they were out there draining that vampire that came in the bar and when I caught them, Mack tried to gut me. When that didn't work, Denise did bout run me over getting' him out of there."

"You went out there trying to stop them, knowing they were drainers?" Jason stared at me. Then after a beat, "Wait, there's a vampire in Bon Temps?" I could see him trying to picture who the Rats had been with last night, but he kept seeing DeeAnne and her smile. The way her shirt billowed open at the collar and..

I snapped my fingers in front of Jason's face bringing him back to present, "Yes, the dark-haired guy. Even if you don't want a vampire for your best friend, I couldn't let trash like the Rats drain him. It's not like siphoning gas out of a car. They would have left him out in the woods to die." Left out in the open like that, Bill would have met the sun for sure. If he somehow had survived, there had been reports that it could take up to twenty years to recover from a full draining, and that was if another vampire took care of them.

"How'd you know he was a vampire?" he asked, but when he looked at me, I could tell he wished he'd bitten his tongue. I gave him a look and he shook his head, glancing down, "Right." Jason had fallen in more with my parents, doubting my ability. He wouldn't ever think or call me crazy, but sometimes it was like it was easier to forget for a bit.

We sat in silence and then Jason said thoughtfully, "Homulka doesn't have a vampire." He tilted his face to catch the sun, and I knew our argument of the night before was over.

"Neither does Roedale," Gran said from behind us, and Jason and I both jumped. To Jason's credit, he jumped up and gives Gran a hug every single time he sees her. I must've been focusing on Jason to the exclusion of everything else not to notice her.

Gran corralled us inside with the promise of plenty of food, while inquiring to Jason's going ons last night, "I just got a phone call from Everlee Mason. She was telling me you hooked up with DeeAnne Last night."

Jason rubbed the back of his neck, "Boy oh boy, can't do anything in this town without getting caught." He wasn't really mad, nor ashamed, but getting asked about your sex life by your grandmother?

"That DeeAnne," Gran said warningly as we all started into the house, "She's been pregnant one time I know of. You just take care she doesn't have one of yours, you'll be paying the rest of your life." Now that thought panicked Jason a bit. Honestly, how he had been dodging that bullet so long, I'm sure he blessed himself every night and prayed twice right before he did anything.

I snorted at the thought. Gran looked at me, teasing, "Course that might be the only way I get great-grandchildren." The jibe stung a bit, I'd admit. Not because I wanted kids in the immediate future, but the older I got the less likely it seemed I'd be having any the old fashion way. I hadn't been looking into them, but I knew Gran's opinion on the fertility clinic they'd put in Shreveport. They were blessings, for married people. Heavy emphasis for married.

Gran and Jason gossiped while we ate, and I enjoyed listening to them, adding here and there. I only participated when Jason took a second to let me know he'd had to replace the water heater at our parent's place. Where I had stayed with Gran, Jason moved out as soon as he turned eighteen and taken up in our folk's home, where we'd grown up until our parents had died in a flash flood. While the place is half mine on paper, it's truly Jason's.

"You need any money on that?" I offered. We both make salaries, but we also have a little income from a fund established when an oil well was sunk on our parent's property. Anytime I did pay for something at the house (which wasn't often) it came out of that.

"Naw, I got it." Jason was rather proud that he was doing well enough to support himself and maintain the place. Unlike me, he had two years of college under his belt, and as soon as he'd gotten his diploma, he'd added to our family album. I'd only seen it when it was still in the fold they presented it in, but I knew exactly where it was in the house whenever he thought of our parents. It was something he knew they'd have loved to have seen.

Jason stopped midway through his discussion of his water heater decision to suddenly ask, "Hey, you remember Maudette Pickens, Sloan?"

"Sure," I said surprised. "We graduated in the same class." She'd also been one of the first girls I'd kissed, after I'd found her wondering what my lips felt like in between freshman and sophomore year in high school. It had been just a wondering for her, but it had cemented a long-time suspicion I had had about myself.

"Somebody killed Maudette in her apartment last night."

I stared, blindsided. Of the things I had expected, that wasn't it.

"When? Gran asked, puzzled that she hadn't heard already.

"They just found her this very morning in her bedroom. Her boss tried to call her to find out why she hadn't shown up for work yesterday and today and got no answer, so he rode over and got the manager up, and they unlocked the place." Jason was speaking matter of factly, and I was thinking of how nervous Maudette had been when I'd asked her what she was thinking of like I didn't already know. "You know she had the apartment across from DeeAnne's?" Bon Temps had only the one bona fide apartment complex, a three-building, two story U-shaped grouping, so we knew exactly where he meant.

"She got killed there?" I felt ill. Maudette hadn't been what you'd call beautiful; she had a heavy jaw and a square bottom, and husky shoulders. Her best feature was her pretty black hair and sprinkle of freckles over her nose. She'd never been ambitious and people mistook her for not being very bright, but she had been nice, at least when she was younger.

Gran was asking about her working at the Grabbit Kwik, a gas station/convenience store. Jason agreed she'd been there about a year but as far as they could tell nothing had started there.

"How was it done?" I asked. I hoped it had been quick. Gran waited with that squinched give-it-to-me-quick look with which nice people ask for bad news. Did I have the same face?

"She had some vampire bites on her – uh – inner thighs," my brother said and looked down at his plate. "But that wasn't what killed her. She was strangled. DeeAnne told me Maudette liked to go to that vampire bar in Shreveport when she had a couple of days off, so she might've been a fangbanger. Maybe that's where she got the bites. Might not have been Sloan's vampire."

"What's that?" Gran asked at the strange term. She must have missed Sally Jessy the day the phenomenon was explored. The term was crude, and while likely accurate as anything else, I didn't like it applied to Maudette.

I explained it, as Jason squirmed a bit, "Men and women that hang around with vampires and enjoy being bitten. Vampire groupies."

"But a bite didn't kill Maudette." Gran wanted to be sure she had it straight.

"Nope, strangling." Jason had begun finishing his lunch.

It occurred to Gran and I that murder in Bon Temps would be a big investigation and after talking it through with Jason for a few minutes, he might need to be concerned. "Well, you see Maudette in the store all the time when you get your gas, you so-to-speak date her, then she winds up dead in an apartment you're familiar with," I summarized.

"I aint the only one who fills the bill. Plenty of other guys get their gas there, and all of them know Maudette."

"Yeah, but in what sense?" Said Gran bluntly. "She wasn't a prostitute, was she? So she will have talked about who she saw."

"She just liked to have a good time, she wasn't a pro." It was good of Jason to defend Maudette, considering what I knew of his selfish character. I began to think a little better of my big brother, "She was kinda lonely, I guess," he added.

Jason looked at both of us, then, and saw we were surprised and touched. Quickly he changed the subject to the first solacious thing he could think of, "Speaking of prostitutes," he said hastily, "there's one in Monroe specializes in vampires. She keeps a guy standing by with a stake in case one gets carried away. She drinks synthetic blood to keep her blood supply up."

I latched onto the change. "I wonder how much she charges?" I ventured.

[Break]

IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, GRAN'S MIND WAS STILL RUNNING ON VAMPIRES, AND SHE CAME TO MY ROOM LATER WHILE I WAS PUTTING ON MY WAR PAINT. I felt a little down after dredging up the past in the face of Maudette's death, and the makeup would help put a front between me and the world.

"How old do you reckon the vampire is, the one you saved?"

"I have no idea, Gran." I could see her in my peripheral as I put on my mascara, trying to hold still so as not to stab myself in the eye.

"Do you suppose… he might remember the War?"

I didn't need to ask which war. After all, Gran was a charter member of the Descendants of the Glorious Dead. I was surprised she hadn't asked before, about the vampires I had met through Lafayette. Then again, a woman wouldn't have had much part in the War itself. "Could be," I said.

It was obvious what she was going to ask, before she did so. She was quietly hopeful, "You think he might come to talk to us about it. We could have a special meeting." She was thinking about an evening meeting since the Descendants normally met at noon at the library.

"I'll ask him the next time he comes in," I promised. I didn't know if he would return, given his initial reception, but I couldn't see the harm in asking.

"At least, he could come talk to me and maybe I could tape his recollections?" I could hear her mind clicking as she considered what a coup that would be for her. Most importantly though, she wanted to be sure that she got the information. It had been one of the club's goals since The Revelation.

I pulled my hair up and pulled a light jacket on over my warm weather outfit, "We'll see." I kissed her on the cheek as I headed out.