Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris

actually there. But my fae kin were gone now. They’d never come back. I’d left the upstairs windows open for one whole night to dispel the lingering eau de fae, and that was no small step in this heat.
    “Good,” I said briskly. “Any gossip? Any news? Anything interesting happening at your place?” Bill was my nearest neighbor. His house lay right across the cemetery. In that cemetery was his headstone, erected by his family. They’d known Bill’s body wasn’t there (they thought he’d been eaten by a panther), but they’d given him a place of rest. It hadn’t been a panther that had attacked Bill, but something much worse.
    “Thanks for the beautiful roses,” he said. “By the way, I’ve had a visitor.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “Good one? Bad one?”
    He raised an eyebrow. “Depends,” he said.
    “Well, let’s go sit in the living room while you tell me about it,” I said. “Do you want a bottle of blood?”
    He shook his head. “I have an appointment with a donor later.” The Federal Bureau of Vampire Affairs had left that issue up to the individual states. Louisiana had permitted private registries first, but the state donor program was much safer for the donor and the vampire. Bill could get human blood under supervised conditions.
    “How is that? Is it creepy?” I’d wondered if it might be like making a sperm donation: necessary and even admirable, but somewhat awkward.
    “It’s a little . . . peculiar,” Bill admitted. “The element of the hunt, the seduction . . . all gone. But it’s human blood, and that’s still better than the synthetic.”
    “So you have to go to the facility, and then what?”
    “In some states they can come to you, but not in Louisiana. We make an appointment and go in and register. It’s a storefront clinic. In the back there’s a room with a couch. A big couch. And they show in the donor.”
    “You get to pick the donor?”
    “No, Louisiana BVA wants to take the personal element out of it.”
    “So why the couch?”
    “I know, mixed messages. But you know how good a bite can be, and there was going to be more than biting going on, no matter what.”
    “You ever get the same person twice?”
    “Not yet. I’m sure they keep a list, trying to keep the vampires and the humans apart after they’ve met at the bureau.”
    While we talked, Bill had taken a seat on my own couch, and I tucked my legs under me in the big old armchair that had been Gran’s favorite. It was curiously comfortable to have my first real boyfriend as a casual visitor. We’d both been through a few relationships since we’d broken up. Though Bill had told me (often) that he would be very glad to resume our intimacy, tonight that topic was not on his mind. Not that I could read Bill’s thoughts; since vampires are dead, their brains just don’t spark like human brains. But a man’s body language usually lets me know when he’s considering my womanly attributes. It was really great, really comforting, to have a friendship with Bill.
    I had switched on the overhead light, and Bill looked white as a sheet beneath its glare. His glossy dark brown hair looked even darker, his eyes almost black. He was hesitating over his next topic, and I was not as relaxed and comfortable all of a sudden.
    “Karin is in town,” he said, and looked at me solemnly.
    I could tell I was supposed to be smacked in the face with this information, but I was utterly at sea. “Who would that be?”
    “Karin is Eric’s other child,” he said, shocked. “You hadn’t ever heard her name?”
    “Why would I? And why should I be excited that she’s in town?”
    “Karin is called the Slaughterer.”
    “Well, that’s silly. ‘The Slaughterer’ is just . . . cumbersome. ‘Karin the Killer’ would be way better.”
    If Bill had been prone to such gestures, he would have rolled his eyes. “Sookie . . .”
    “Look at what a great fighter Pam is,” I said, diverted. “Eric must really like strong