"Oh my gosh, how many does that make?"

"This'll be number three," Duff said, shaking his head with a rueful grin. "They gonna have to take out some college loans, do it themselves."

"It'll be fine," I said, which meant almost nothing except that I felt goodwill toward the McClure family.

"Sure thing," he said. "Catch you next time, Sookie. I see Sam's got his fishing pole out. Tell him I said to catch some crappie for me."

When the truck had gone, Sam came out of the trailer and came over to the bar.

"You did that on purpose," I said. "You just don't like Duff."

"Duff's okay," Sam said. "He just talks too much. Always has."

I hesitated a moment. "He says they're stocking TrueBlood at the Hair of the Dog." I was treading on shaky ground.

"Really? That's pretty weird."

I may not be able to read two-natured minds as easily as I can human minds, but I could tell Sam was genuinely surprised. Jannalynn hadn't told him a vampire was coming into her bar, a Were bar. I relaxed. "Come on in and let me show you something," I said. "I've been in there measuring."

"Uh-oh, you want to move the furniture?" Sam was half-smiling as he followed me into the bar.

"No, I want to buy some," I said over my shoulder. "See here?" I paced off a modest area just outside the storeroom. "Look, right here by the back door. This is where we need us some lockers."

"What for?" Sam didn't sound indignant, but like he genuinely wanted to know.

"So we women won't have to put our purses in a drawer in your desk," I said. "So Antoine and D'Eriq can keep a change of clothes here. So each employee will have their own little space to store stuff."

"You think we need this?" Sam looked startled.

"So bad," I said. "Now, I looked in a few catalogs and checked online, and the best price I found ..." We continued talking lockers for a few minutes, Sam protesting at the expense, me giving him all kinds of grief, but in a friendly way.

After a token fuss, Sam agreed. I'd been pretty sure he would.

Then it was thirty minutes till opening time, and Sam went behind the bar to start slicing lemons for the tea. I tied on my apron and began to check the salt and pepper shakers on the tables. Terry had come in very early that morning to clean the bar, and he'd done his usual good job. I straightened a few chairs.

"How long has it been since Terry had a raise?" I asked Sam, since the other waitress hadn't come in yet and Antoine was in the walk-in refrigerator.

"Two years," Sam said. "He's due. But I couldn't go giving raises until things got better. I still think we better wait until we're sure we're level."

I nodded, accepting his judgment. Now that I'd gone over the books, I could see how careful Sam had been in the good times, saving money up for the bad.

India, Sam's newest hire, came in ten minutes early, ready to hustle. I liked her more and more as I worked with her. She was clever at handling difficult customers. Since the only person who came in (when we unlocked the front door at eleven) was our most consistent alcoholic, Jane Bodehouse, India went back to the kitchen to help Antoine, who'd turned on the fryers and heated up the griddle. India was glad to find things to do while she was at work, which was a refreshing change.

Kenya, one of our patrol officers, came and looked around inquiringly. "You need something, Kenya?" I asked. "Kevin's not here." Kevin, another patrolman, was deeply in love with Kenya, and she with him. They ate lunch here at least once or twice a week.

"My sister here? She told me she was going to be working today," Kenya asked.

"Is India your sister?" Kenya was a good ten years older than India, so I hadn't put them together.

"Half sister. Yeah, our mother would get out the map when we were born," Kenya said, kind of daring me to find that amusing. "She named us after places she wanted to go. My big brother's name is Spain. I got a younger one named Cairo."

"She didn't stick to countries."

"No, she threw in a few cities for good measure. She thought the word 'Egypt' was 'too chewy.' That's a direct quote." Kenya was walking as she talked, following my pointed finger in the direction of the kitchen. "Thanks, Sookie."

The foreign names were kind of cool. Kenya's mom sounded like fun to me. My mom hadn't been a fun person; but then, she'd had a lot to worry about, after she'd had me. I sighed to myself. I tried not to regret things I couldn't change. I listened to Kenya's voice coming through the serving hatch, brisk and warm and clear, greeting Antoine, telling India that Cairo had fixed India's car and she should come by to pick it up when she got off work. I brightened when my own brother walked in just as Kenya was leaving. Instead of sitting at the bar or taking a table, he came up to me.

"You think I look like a Holland?" I asked him, and Jason gave me one of his blankest stares.

"Naw, you look like a Sookie," he said. "Listen, Sook, I'm gonna do it."

"Gonna do what?"

He looked at me impatiently. I could tell this wasn't how he'd expected the conversation to go. "I'm gonna ask Michele to marry me."

"Oh, that's great!" I said, with genuine enthusiasm. "Really, Jason, I'm happy for you. I sure hope she says yes."

"This time I'm going to do everything right," he said, almost to himself.

His first marriage had been a mistake from the start, and it had ended even worse than it had begun.

"Michele's got a good head on her shoulders," I said.

"She's no kid," he agreed. "In fact, she's a little older than me, but she don't like me to bring that up."

"You won't, then, right? No jokes," I warned him.

He grinned at me. "No jokes. And she's not pregnant, and she's got her own job and her own money." None of these facts had been true of his first wife.

"Go for it, Brother." I gave him a quick hug.

He flashed the grin at me, the one that had hooked scores of women. "I'm asking her today when she gets off work. I was gonna eat lunch here, but I'm too nervous."

"Let me know what she says, Jason. I'll be praying for you." I beamed at his back as he left the bar. He was as happy and nervous as I'd ever seen him.

Merlotte's began to fill up after that, and I was too busy to think much. I love being at work, because I get to be around people and I know what's going on in Bon Temps. On the other hand, most of the time I know too much. It's a feathery balance between listening to people with my ears and not listening to them in my head, and it's not too surprising that I have a big rep for being eccentric. At least most people are too nice to call me Crazy Sookie anymore. I like to think I've proved myself to the community.

Tara came in with her assistant, McKenna, to order an early lunch. Tara looked even bigger with her pregnancy than she had at Hooligans the night before.

Since she'd brought McKenna along, I couldn't ask Tara what I really wanted to know. What had happened when she talked to JB about his second job at Hooligans? Even if he hadn't seen Tara in the crowd, he'd have to know we were going to tell her.

But Tara was thinking about the shop with great determination, and when she wasn't planning to restock the lingerie counter, she was concentrating on the Merlotte's menu-the very limited menu that she knew back and forth-trying to figure out what she could digest, and how many more calories she could ingest, without actually exploding. McKenna's brain wasn't any help; though McKenna loved to know every little snippet of information about Bon Temps happenings, she didn't know about JB's moonlighting. She would have been vastly interested if I'd told her. McKenna would have loved to be a telepath, for about twenty-four hours.

But after she'd heard stuff like I can't take it anymore, I'm going to wait till he's asleep and slash him or I'd like to take her and bend her over the bar and drive my ... Well, after a day or two of that, she wouldn't love it so much.

Tara didn't even go to the ladies' room by herself. She towed McKenna along. I looked questioningly at Tara. She glared at me. Not ready to talk, not yet.

When the lunch rush was over, only two tables remained in use, and they were in India's section. I went back to Sam's office to work on the endless paperwork. Trees had died to make these forms, and that seemed a great pity to me. I tried to fill out anything I could online, though I was very slow at it. Sam came back to his office to retrieve a screwdriver from his desk, so I asked him a question about an employee tax form. He was leaning over me to look at it when Jannalynn walked in.

"Hey, Jannalynn," I said. I didn't even look at her because I'd identified her mental signature before she'd entered, and I was trying real hard to complete the form while Sam's instructions were still fresh in my mind.

"Oh, hey, Jan," Sam said. I could feel his smile in his voice.

Instead of a response, there was an ominous silence.

"What?" I said, filling in one more figure.

I finally looked up to see that Jannalynn was in high offensive mode, her eyes round and wide, her nostrils dilated, her whole slim body tense with aggression.

"What?" I asked again, alarmed. "Are we being attacked?"

Sam remained silent. I swung around in the swivel chair to look up at him, and he was in a posture that was tense, too. But his face was one big warning.

"You two want to be alone?" I scrambled to get up and out from between them.

"I would have thought so before I walked in," Jannalynn said, her fists like little hammers.

"What ... wait! You thinking Sam and I are fooling around in the office?" Despite Mustapha's warning, I was genuinely astonished. "Honey, we are filling out tax forms. If you think there's anything sexy about that, you should get a job with the IRS!"

There was a long moment when I wondered if I was going to get my ass kicked, but gradually the suspense ratcheted down. I did notice that Sam didn't say anything, not a word, until Jannalynn's stance had completely relaxed. I took a deep breath.

"Excuse us for a minute, Sookie," Sam said, and I could tell he was really angry.

"Certainly." I was out of that room as fast as a greased pig. I would rather have cleaned the men's room after a Saturday night than have stayed in Sam's office.

India was helping D'Eriq clear off a table. She glanced at me and half smiled. "What lit your tail on fire?" she asked. "Sam's scary girlfriend?"

I nodded. "I'm just going to find something to do out here," I said. This was a very good opportunity to dust the bottles and shelves behind the bar, and I moved them all carefully, cleaning a bit of shelf and moving on to another one.

Though I couldn't help but wonder what was going on in Sam's office, I reminded myself repeatedly that it wasn't my business. I had the bar as clean as a whistle by the time Jannalynn and Sam emerged.

"Sorry," she said to me, with no particular sincerity.

I nodded in acknowledgment.

Jannalynn thought, She'll get Sam if she can.

Oh, please! I thought, She'd be real happy if I died.

And then she left the bar, Sam following her to say good-bye. Or to make sure she actually got in her car. Or both.

By the time he returned, I was so desperate for something to do I was about to start counting the toothpicks in the clear plastic dispenser. "We can get back on that paperwork tomorrow," Sam said in passing, and continued walking. He avoided my eyes. He was surely embarrassed. It's always good to give people time to recover from that, especially guys, so I cut Sam some slack.

A work crew from Norcross came in, their shift over and some celebration in progress. India and I began putting tables together to accommodate all of them. While I worked, I thought about young shifter women. I'd encountered more than one who was very aggressive, but there were very few female packleaders in the United States, especially in the South. An outstanding few of the female Weres I'd met were extremely vicious. I wondered if this exaggerated aggression was due to the established male power structure in the packs.

Jannalynn wasn't psychotic, as the Pelt sisters and Marnie Stonebrook had been; but she was uber-conscious of her own toughness and ability.

I had to abandon theoretical thinking to get the drink orders right for the Norcross men and women. Sam emerged to work behind the bar, India and I began moving at a faster pace, and gradually everything settled back to normal.

Just as I was about to get off work, Michele and Jason came in together. They were holding hands. From Jason's smile, it was easy to see what her answer had been.

"Seems like we're going to be sisters," Michele said in her husky voice, and I gave her a heartfelt hug. I gave Jason an even happier one. I could feel his delight pouring out of his head, and his thoughts weren't so much coherent as a jumble of pleasure.

"Have you two had time to think about when it'll be?"

"Nothing stopping us from having it soon," Jason said. "We've both been married already, and we don't go to church much, so there's no reason to have a church wedding."

I thought that was a pity, but I kept my mouth shut. There was nothing to gain and everything to lose by adding my two cents. They were grown-ups.

"I might need to prepare Cork a little bit," Michele said, smiling. "I don't think he'll kick up a fuss over me remarrying, but I do want to break it to him gentle." Michele still worked for her former father-in-law, who seemed to have more regard for Michele than he had for his lazy son.