Dead Until Dark Read Online Free Page A

back in the bar, you were gone with DeeAnne, and since I was fine, it just didn’t seem worth tracking you down. I knew you’d feel obliged to go after him if I told you about the knife,” I added diplomatically. There was a lot more truth in that, since Jason dearly loves a fight.
    “What the hell were you doing out there anyway?” he asked, but he had relaxed, and I knew he was accepting this.
    “Did you know that, in addition to selling drugs, the Rats are vampire Drainers?”
    Now he was fascinated. “No . . . so?”
    “Well, one of my customers last night was a vampire, and they were draining him out in Merlotte’s parking lot! I couldn’t have that.”
    “There’s a vampire here in Bon Temps?”
    “Yep. Even if you don’t want a vampire for your best friend, you can’t let trash like the Rats drain them. It’s not like si-phoning gas out of a car. And they would have left him out in the woods to die.” Though the Rats hadn’t told me their intentions, that was my bet. Even if they’d put him under cover so he could survive the day, a drained vampire took at least twenty years to recover, at least that’s what one had said on Oprah . And that’s if another vampire took care of him.
    “The vampire was in the bar when I was there?” Jason asked, dazzled.
    “Uh-huh. The dark-haired guy sitting with the Rats.”
    Jason grinned at my epithet for the Rattrays. But he hadn’t let go of the night before, yet. “How’d you know he was a vampire?” he asked, but when he looked at me, I could tell he was wishing he had bitten his tongue.
    “I just knew,” I said in my flattest voice.
    “Right.” And we shared a whole unspoken conversation.
    “Homulka doesn’t have a vampire,” Jason said thoughtfully. He tilted his face back to catch the sun, and I knew we were off dangerous ground.
    “True,” I agreed. Homulka was the town Bon Temps loved to hate. We’d been rivals in football, basketball, and historical significance for generations.
    “Neither does Roedale,” Gran said from behind us, and Jason and I both jumped. I give Jason credit, he jumps up and gives Gran a hug everytime he sees her.
    “Gran, you got enough food in the oven for me?”
    “You and two others,” Gran said. Our grandmother smiled up at Jason. She was not blind to his faults (or mine), but she loved him. “I just got a phone call from Everlee Mason. She was telling me you hooked up with DeeAnne last night.”
    “Boy oh boy, can’t do anything in this town without getting caught,” Jason said, but he wasn’t really angry.
    “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. Course, that may be the only way I get greatgrandchildren!”
    Gran had the food ready on the table, so after Jason hung up his hat we sat down and said grace. Then Gran and Jason began gossiping with each other (though they called it “catching up”) about people in our little town and parish. My brother worked for the county, supervising road crews. It seemed to me like Jason’s day consisted of driving around in a county pickup, clocking off work, and then driving around all night in his own pickup. Rene was on one of the work crews Jason oversaw, and they’d been to high school together. They hung around with Hoyt Fortenberry a lot.
    “Sookie, I had to replace the hot water heater in the house,” Jason said suddenly. He lives in my parents’ old house, the one we’d been living in when they died in a flash flood. We lived with Gran after that, but when Jason got through his two years of college and went to work for the county, he moved back into the house, which on paper is half mine.
    “You need any money on that?” I asked.
    “Naw, I got it.”
    We both make salaries, but we also have a little income from a fund established when an oil well was sunk on my parents’