I reared back to give Errol Clayton a hard stare. “Mr. Clayton, if you’ve come here to make trouble, you can just leave now. We need things to be better, not worse. Sam is a good man. He goes to the Rotary, he puts an ad in the high school yearbook, he sponsors a baseball team at the Boys and Girls Club every spring, and he helps with the Fourth of July fireworks. Plus, he’s a great boss, a veteran, and a tax-paying citizen.”

“Merlotte, you got you a fan club,” Errol Clayton said to Sam, who’d come to stand right behind me.

“I’ve got a friend,” Sam said quietly. “I’m lucky enough to have a lot of friends and a good business. I sure would hate to see that ruined.” I heard an apology in his voice, and I felt his hand pat my shoulder. Feeling much better, I slipped away to do my job, leaving Sam to talk to the newspaperman.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to my boss again before I left to go home. I had to stop at the store because I needed a couple of things—Claude had made inroads into my potato chip stash and my cereal, too—and I wasn’t just imagining that the store was full of people who were busy talking about what had happened at lunchtime at Merlotte’s. There was silence every time I came around a corner, but of course that didn’t make any difference to me. I could tell what people were thinking.

Most of them didn’t share the beliefs of the demonstrators. But the mere fact of the incident had set some of the previously indifferent townspeople to thinking about the issue of the two-natured, and about the legislation that proposed to take away some of their rights.

And some of them were all for it.

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Jason was on time, and I climbed up into his truck. I’d changed into blue jeans and a pale blue thin T-shirt I’d bought at Old Navy. It said PEACE in golden Gothic letters. I hoped I didn’t look like I was hinting. Jason, in an ever-appropriate New Orleans Saints T-shirt, looked ready for anything.

“Hey, Sook!” He was buzzing with happy anticipation. He’d never been to a Were meeting, of course, and he wasn’t aware of how dangerous they could be. Or maybe he was, and that was why he was so excited.

“Jason, I got to tell you a few things about Were gatherings,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, a bit more soberly.