“I’m sorry!” he said, obviously flustered and disturbed by Jason’s anger. He seemed, for a second, to think Jason had been talking about him. When neither of us gave him a guilty reaction, he relaxed. “Excuse me, Sookie. I forgot my manners.” He was carrying an ice bag in his hand, and he was moving a little slowly and painfully.

“I’m sorry you got hurt by Jason’s surprise visitor,” I said. You’re always supposed to put your company at ease. I hadn’t put a whole lot of thought into Mel, but right at that second I realized I would have been happier if Jason’s former BFF, Hoyt, had been here instead of the werepanther. It wasn’t that I disliked Mel, I thought. It was just that I didn’t know him very well, and I didn’t feel an automatic trust in him the way you feel about people from time to time. Mel was different. Even for a werepanther, he was hard to read, but that didn’t mean he was impossible.

After offering Mel something to drink, which was only polite, I asked Jason if he was going to stay the day, run around on my errands with me. I had serious doubts he would say yes. Jason was feeling rejected (by a fairy great-grandfather he’d never met and didn’t want to acknowledge), and that was a state of affairs Jason didn’t handle well.

“I’ll go around with you,” he said, unsmiling and stiff. “First, let me run over to the house and check out my rifle. I’ll need it, and it hasn’t been sighted in a coon’s age. Mel? You coming with me?” Jason simply wanted to be out of my presence to calm down. I could read it as easily as if he’d written it on the grocery list pad by the telephone.

Mel rose to go with Jason.

“Mel, what did you make of Jason’s visitor this morning?” I asked.

“Aside from the fact that he could throw me across the room and looked enough like Jason to make me turn to make sure your brother was coming out of his bedroom? Not much,” Mel said. Mel had managed to dress in his usual khakis and polo shirt, but the blue bruises on his arms kind of ruined his neat appearance. He shrugged on a jacket with great care.

“See you in a while, Sookie. Come around to get me,” Jason said. Of course, he’d want to ride in my car and burn up my gas, since we were running my errands. “In the meantime, you got my cell number.”

“Sure. I’ll see you in an hour or so.”