Free All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris Page A

healthy shakes, and I clean the equipment and hand out towels. Three days a week, I wear workout clothes and I spot for all the ladies.”
    “That sounds great,” I said, awestruck at the perfection of the job for JB’s limited qualifications. JB was lovely: impressive muscles, handsome face, straight white teeth. He was an ad for physical health. Also, he was naturally good-natured and neat.
    Tara looked at me, expecting her due praise. “Good work,” I told her. We gave each other a high five.
    “Now, Sookie, the only thing that would make life perfect is you calling me some night,” JB said. No one could project a wholesome, simple lust like JB.
    “Thanks so much, JB, but I’m seeing someone now,” I said, not troubling to keep my voice down. After Selah’s little exhibition, I felt the need to brag a little.
    “Oooh, that Quinn?” Tara asked. I may have mentioned him to her once or twice. I nodded, and we did another high five. “Is he in town now?” she asked in a lower voice, and I said, “Left this morning,” just as quietly.
    “I want the Mexican cheeseburger,” JB said.
    “Then I’ll get you one,” I said, and after Tara had ordered, I marched to the kitchen. Not only was I delighted for JB, I was happy that Tara and I seemed to have mended our fences. I had needed a little upswing to my day, and I had gotten it.
    When I reached home with a couple of bags of groceries, Amelia was back and my kitchen sparkled like an exhibit in a Southern Homes show. When she was feeling stressed or bored, Amelia cleaned, which was a fantastic habit to have in a housemate—especially when you’re not used to having one at all. I like a neat house myself, and I get cleaning spurts from time to time, but next to Amelia I was a slob.
    I looked at the clean windows. “Feeling guilty, huh?” I said.
    Amelia’s shoulders slumped. She was sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of one of her weird teas, steam rising from the dark liquid.
    “Yeah,” she said glumly. “I saw the quilt was in the washing machine. I worked on the spot, and it’s hanging out back on the line now.”
    Since I’d noted that when I came in, I just nodded. “Bob retaliated,” I said.
    “Yeah.”
    I started to ask her who she’d stayed with, then realized it was really none of my business. Besides, though I was very tired, Amelia was a broadcaster of the first order, and within seconds I knew she’d stayed with Calvin’s cousin Derrick and the sex hadn’t been good; also, Derrick’s sheets had been very dirty and that had made her nuts. Plus, when Derrick had woken up this morning, he’d indicated that in his mind, a night together made them a couple. Amelia had had a hard time getting Derrick to give her a ride back to the house. He wanted her to stay with him, in Hotshot.
    “Weirded out?” I asked, putting the hamburger meat in the refrigerator drawer. It was my week to cook, and we were going to have hamburger steak, baked potatoes, and green beans.
    Amelia nodded, lifting her mug to take a sip. It was a homemade hangover restorative she’d concocted, and she shuddered as she experimented on herself. “Yeah, I am. Those Hotshot guys are a little strange,” she said.
    “Some of them.” Amelia had adjusted better to my telepathy than anyone I’d ever encountered. Since she was frank and open anyway—sometimes way too much—I guess she never felt she had secrets to hide.
    “What are you gonna do?” I asked. I sat down opposite her.
    “See, it’s not like I’d been dating Bob for a long time,” she said, jumping right into the middle of the conversation without bothering with preliminaries. She knew I understood. “We’d only gotten together that one night. Believe me, it was great. He really got me. That’s why we began, ah, experimenting.”
    I nodded, tried to look understanding. To me, experimenting was, well, licking a place you’d never licked before, or trying a position that gave you a cramp in your