Read Dead as a Doornail for Free Online

while, and so much . . . so many odd things have been happening at the bar lately. . . . Our substitute bartender, he just can’t handle it for more than a couple of nights. Terry’s kind of damaged.”
    “So what’s Sam’s request?”
    “Sam wants to borrow a bartender from you until his leg heals.”
    “Why’s he making this request of me, instead of the packmaster of Shreveport?” Shifters seldom got organized, but the city werewolves had. Eric was right: It would have been far more logical for Sam to make the request of Colonel Flood.
    I looked down at my hands wrapped around the ginger ale glass. “Someone’s gunning for the shifters and Weres inBon Temps,” I said. I kept my voice very low. I knew he would hear me through the music and the talk of the bar.
    Just then a man lurched up to the booth, a young serviceman from Barksdale Air Force Base, which is a part of the Shreveport area. (I pigeonholed him instantly from his haircut, fitness, and his running buddies, who were more or less clones.) He rocked on his heels for a long moment, looking from me to Eric.
    “Hey, you,” the young man said to me, poking my shoulder. I looked up at him, resigned to the inevitable. Some people court their own disaster, especially when they drink. This young man, with his buzz haircut and sturdy build, was far from home and determined to prove himself.
    There’s not much I dislike more than being addressed as “Hey, you” and being poked with a finger. But I tried to present a pleasant face to the young man. He had a round face and round dark eyes, a small mouth and thick brown brows. He was wearing a clean knit shirt and pressed khakis. He was also primed for a confrontation.
    “I don’t believe I know you,” I said gently, trying to defuse the situation.
    “You shouldn’t be sitting with a vamp,” he said. “Human girls shouldn’t go with dead guys.”
    How often had I heard that? I’d gotten an earful of this kind of crap when I’d been dating Bill Compton.
    “You should go back over there to your friends, Dave. You don’t want your mama to get a phone call about you being killed in a bar fight in Louisiana. Especially not in a vampire bar, right?”
    “How’d you know my name?” he asked slowly.
    “Doesn’t make any difference, does it?”
    From the corner of my eye, I could see that Eric was shaking his head. Mild deflection was not his way of dealing with intrusion.
    Abruptly, Dave began to simmer down.
    “How’d you know about me?” he asked in a calmer voice.
    “I have x-ray vision,” I said solemnly. “I can read your driver’s license in your pants.”
    He began to smile. “Hey, can you see other stuff through my pants?”
    I smiled back at him. “You’re a lucky man, Dave,” I said ambiguously. “Now, I’m actually here to talk business with this guy, so if you’d excuse us . . .”
    “Okay. Sorry, I . . .”
    “No problem at all,” I assured him. He went back to his friends, walking cocky. I was sure he’d give them a highly embellished account of the conversation.
    Though everyone in the bar had tried to pretend they weren’t watching the incident, which had so much potential for some juicy violence, they had to scramble to look busy when Eric’s eyes swept the surrounding tables.
    “You were starting to tell me something when we were so rudely interrupted,” he said. Without my asking, a barmaid came up and deposited a fresh drink in front of me, whisking my old glass away. Anyone sitting with Eric got the deluxe treatment.
    “Yes. Sam isn’t the only shape-shifter who’s been shot in Bon Temps lately. Calvin Norris was shot in the chest a few days ago. He’s a werepanther. And Heather Kinman was shot before that. Heather was just nineteen, a werefox.”
    Eric said, “I still don’t see why this is interesting.”
    “Eric, she was killed.”
    He still looked inquiring.
    I clenched my teeth together so I wouldn’t try to tell him what a nice girl