"Charlaine Harris - Sookie Stackhouse 04 - Dead to the World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harris Charlaine)

a temper, maybe even a bad temper, once it gets provoked. But I'm not vindictive.

Arlene has often told me I am too nice for my own good, though I assure her I am not. (Tara
never says that; maybe she knows me better?) I realized glumly that, sometime during this hectic evening,

Arlene would hear about Bill's departure. Sure enough, within twenty minutes of Chuck and Terrell's

gibing, she made her way through the crowd to pat me on the back. "You didn't need that cold bastard

anyway," she said. "What did he ever do for you?"

I nodded weakly at her to show how much I appreciated her support. But then a table called for

two whiskey sours, two beers, and a gin and tonic, and I had to hustle, which was actually a welcome

distraction. When I dropped off their drinks, I asked myself the same question. What had Bill done for

me?

I delivered pitchers of beer to two tables before I could add it all up.

He'd introduced me to sex, which I really enjoyed. Introduced me to a lot of other vampires,

which I didn't. Saved my life, though when you thought about it, it wouldn't have been in danger if I hadn't

been dating him in the first place. But I'd saved his back once or twice, so that debt was canceled. He'd

called me "sweetheart," and at the time he'd meant it.

"Nothing," I muttered, as I mopped up a spilled pina colada and handed one of our last clean bar

towels to the woman who'd knocked it over, since a lot of it was still in her skirt. "He didn't do a thing for

me." She smiled and nodded, obviously thinking I was commiserating with her. The place was too noisy

to hear anything anyway, which was lucky for me.

But I'd be glad when Bill got back. After all, he was my nearest neighbor. The community's older

cemetery separated our properties, which lay along a parish road south of Bon Temps. I was out there all

by myself, without Bill.

"Peru, I hear," my brother Jason, said. He had his arm around his girl of the evening, a short, thin,

dark twenty-one-year-old from somewhere way out in the sticks. (I'd carded her.) I gave her a close

look. Jason didn't know it, but she was a shape-shifter of some kind. They're easy to spot. She was an