Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris Read Free Book Online

like it was happy to be there. I reached behind me to zip it up. I got the zipper halfway to its destination, but my arms can only bend so far. I stepped out to see if I could detach Tara from her fascinating conversation. A young woman, presumably Rosanne, was standing right outside, waiting for me to emerge. When I saw her, I felt a faint buzz of familiarity. Rosanne was in her late teens, a sturdy kid with her brown hair braided and rolled in a bun. She was wearing a neat pants outfit in French blue and cream. Surely I’d seen her before?
    “I’m so sorry I wasn’t on the floor to help you!” she said. “What can I do for you? You need help with that zipper?” She’d started speaking almost as soon as I’d emerged from the curtain, and it wasn’t until she finished that she took a good look at my face.
    “Oh, shit!” Rosanne said, so sharply that the shop owner turned around to look.
    I gave the elegant Allison an “everything’s all right here” smile, hoping I wasn’t lying.
    “What’s the matter with you?” I whispered to Rosanne. I looked down at myself, searching for something that would explain her alarm. Had I started my period? What? When I didn’t see anything alarming, I looked up at her anxiously, waiting for her to tell me why she was so agitated.
    “It’s you,” she breathed. “You’re the one.”
    “I’m the one what?”
    “The one who has such big magic. The one who raised that twoey from the dead.”
    “Oh.” Revelation. “You’re in the Long Tooth pack, I guess? I thought I’d seen you somewhere before.”
    “I was there,” she said, with an unblinking, unnerving intensity. “At Alcide’s farm.”
    “That was kind of awful, huh?” I said. And it was the last thing I wanted to talk about. Back to the matter at hand. I smiled at Rosanne the werewolf. “Hey, can you zip me up?” I turned my back to her, not without trepidation. In the full-length mirror, I saw her looking at me. It didn’t take a telepath to interpret that expression. She was afraid to touch me.
    The remnants of my good mood crashed and burned.
    When I’d been a child, some people had regarded me with a blend of unease and disgust. Telepathic children can say the worst things at the worst times, and no one likes them for it or forgets that they blurted out something private and secret. Telepathy in a child is nothing short of terrible. Even I, the actual telepath, had felt that way. Some people had been absolutely frightened by my ability, which I hadn’t had the skill to conceal. After I’d gained some control over what I said when I “overheard” something startling or awful from the thoughts of a neighbor, I’d seldom seen that expression. I’d forgotten how painful it could be.
    “You’re scared of me,” I said, stating the obvious because I simply couldn’t think of what else to do. “But you have nothing to fear from me. You’re the one with claws and fangs.”
    “Hush, Allison’ll hear you,” she whispered.
    “You’re still in the closet?”
    “Here at work I am,” she said, her voice deeper and rougher. At least she didn’t look frightened any longer, which had been my goal. “You know how hard it is for two-natured girls, when they start changing? Harder than it is for the boys. One in twenty of us ends up a permanent psycho bitch. But if you can get through your teens, you’re pretty nearly home free, and I’m almost there. Allison is nice, and this is a low-stress place. I’ve worked here every summer. I want to keep this job.” She looked at me pleadingly.
    “Then zip me up, okay? I have no intention of talking about you. I just need a frickin’ dress,” I told her, really exasperated. I wasn’t unsympathetic, but I truly felt I had enough problems at the moment.
    She hesitantly reached up with her left hand to grip the top of the dress, held the zipper with her right, and in a second I was enclosed properly. The bow covered the zipper and was held in place by