Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

old-fashioned.” And kind of wrong.
    “To me, too. But Tij’s real traditional. She says that when she has the baby, she’ll go into hiding until he’s weaned. Her mom told her that if it’s a boy I might see him as a threat.” I couldn’t read Quinn’s mind over the phone, but he sounded plenty exasperated and not a little resentful.
    As far as I knew—and I’d done a little reading on tigers when I was Quinn’s girlfriend—only males who were not the actual dads were apt to kill tiger cubs. But since this was totally none of my business, I choked back the indignation I felt on Quinn’s behalf. At least, I tried to.
    So she’d used him to get pregnant with a weretiger baby and now she didn’t want to see him anymore?
    I told myself sternly, Not my battle . (Werewolves were much more modern in their thinking. Even werepanthers!)
    Since my silence had lasted too long, I leaped in with both feet.“Well, I’m so happy that you’ll have a cub, since there aren’t many of you-all left. I guess your mama and your sister are excited?”
    “Uh … well, my mom is pretty sick. She brightened up a lot when I told her, but it was just temporary. She’s back in that nursing home. Frannie found a guy, and she took off with him last month. I’m not really sure where she is.”
    “Quinn, that’s so tough. I’m really sorry.”
    “But I’m raining on your birthday, and I didn’t mean to. I really did call you to tell you to have a great day, Sookie. No one deserves it more.” He hesitated, and I could tell there were more words that he wanted to say. “Maybe you could call me sometime?” he asked. “Tell me what you ended up doing to celebrate?”
    I tried to do some concentrated thinking in a very short time, but I just wasn’t up to figuring out all the cracks and crevices in this tentative overture. “Maybe,” I said. “I hope I do something worth talking about. So far, all I’ve done is make my will.”
    There was a long moment of silence. “You’re kidding,” he said.
    “You know I’m not.”
    There was a serious silence.
    “You need me to come?”
    “Oh, gosh, no,” I said, putting a smile in my voice. “I’ve got the house, the car, a little money saved up. It just seemed like time.” I hoped I wasn’t lying. “Well, I gotta go, Quinn. I’m so glad you called. It made the day special for me.” I snapped the phone shut and dropped it into my purse.
    I got in the slightly less-hot car and tried to think of somewhere fun to go, something fun to do. I’d picked up the newspaper and checked my mailbox on my way to town, and hadn’t pulled out anything but my auto insurance bill and a Wal-Mart ad leaflet.
    I decided I was just hungry enough to treat myself to something special. I went to Dairy Queen and got an Oreo Blizzard. I ate it inside since it was way too hot to sit in the car. I said hello to a couple of people and had a brief chat with India, who came in with one of her little nieces in tow.
    My cell phone rang again. Sam. “Sook,” he said, “can you come by the bar? We’re short a case of Heineken and two of Michelob, and I need to know what happened.” He sounded pretty snappish. Damn.
    “It’s my day off.”
    “Hey, you pretty much bought into the business. You gotta pull your share of the weight.”
    I mouthed a very bad word at the phone. “Okay,” I said, sounding just as irritated as I felt. “I’m coming. But I’m not staying.”
    I strode through the employee entrance as if I were on my way into a bullfight ring. The hell we were short three cases of beer. “Sam,” I called, “you in your office?”
    “Yeah, come here,” he called back. “I think I found the problem.”
    I flung open his office door and everybody in the world shrieked in my face. “Oh my God!” I said, shocked to the core.
    After a throbbing moment, I understood that I was having a surprise birthday party.
    JB was there, and Terry and his girlfriend, Jimmie. Sam, Hoyt and Holly, Jason and Michele, Halleigh Bellefleur, Danny and Kennedy. Even Jane Bodehouse.
    “Tara had to stay with the babies,” JB said, handing me a little package.
    Terry said, “We thought about giving you a puppy, but Jimmie said we better check with you first.” Jimmie winked at me over his shoulder.
    Sam held me so tight I thought I’d quit breathing, and I thumped him on his shoulder. “You creep,” I said in his ear. “Missing cases of beer! I like that!”
    “You should have heard your