Disclaimer: I own nothing of True Blood.

PROLOGUE

July 2009

The song is by Katy Perry. I know because this time last year I liked her music, and I can still recognize her voice, though this is a new song that I've never heard. My musical tastes have since undergone a change.

The other kids, however, like Katy Perry – or, the girls do, anyway. Layla and Cassie, a pair of bottle-blonde cheerleaders in tiny shorts. They dance around the gravestones, their shadows thrashing and stretching long in the afternoon sunlight as they mouth the words, faces contorting, each desperate to out-silly the other. CJ, sitting at the base of the tree to my right, keeps tugging at his ball cap and calling out comments he thinks are either flirty or clever. Dylan, too – closer to me – has said a couple of things over the music, but just a couple. Mostly he's stayed quiet, glancing my way every few seconds to check if I'm enjoying myself. I feel him do it but never look back at him, not once. I just sip my beer and brush my fingers back and forth over the engraved granite stone beside me.

I find it fascinating, the stone. I didn't pick this piece of the cemetery as a gathering place, no, the others did, I imagine because it's a particularly secluded area – trees all around – and because they think it's funny that this grave is here. This empty, empty grave, designated for a person every one of them has seen walking and talking. Maybe a lot. He's the real man about town these days, as I understand it.

WILLIAM THOMAS COMPTON, is what the stone says. The name, and that he was a beloved husband and father, and a brave soldier, too. It's a fine – what's the word? – epitaph. Outdated, though. Oh, the phrases I could add, and would add, given the chance. King of Louisiana would not make the cut, of course.

Actually, it might. It would probably annoy Eric, at least a little.

I take my hand from the stone and grab my can of beer, which I drain and toss aside before falling onto my back, tangling my fingers in the grass. I have to look past branches and leaves to see the sky. The conflicted sky. It wants to be blue, but oh, it can't seem to shake a stubborn patch of grey clouds, grey clouds that twist towards the sun as if they have a plan to snuff it out once and for all.

I've had two beers since we got here, an hour or so ago. I can feel the alcohol in my blood, feel it seeping into my muscles, nudging away the fears and the desires and the everything else – and there is so much, so much – of my companions, my friends, nudging it all away . . . but just that, just nudging. I've found that having a couple of drinks is more or less the same as taking one of my pills. Well, no – the effect of alcohol doesn't last as long, and alcohol makes me even dumber than the pills do. What I mean by more or less the same is that a couple of drinks and one of my pills both only kind-of help with invading emotions of other people, only protect the feeling part of me in a halfhearted way. The single pill used to do more, but not lately, no . . . because I'm getting more powerful. I'm getting more powerful, and I'm so, so lucky for it.

Whatever. I have a few more hours until sunset. That's plenty of time to have another couple of beers before I cross the short distance to Sookie's house – excuse me, the house that used to be Sookie's – where I can shower off the beer-and-cigarette smell before Dylan takes me back to Jessica and Hoyt's on the back of his four-wheeler. I hate riding the four-wheeler. It's loud, it's bumpy, and I don't trust Dylan. But you have to make do with whatever resources are at your disposal.

The song ends. I don't look, but I hear Layla and Cassie melt over each other.

"Oh my God, I love you so much," says Layla – no, Cassie.

"I love you, too. You're, like, such a dork, though, oh my God."

"I know, right? I'm the biggest dork ever, like, people don't even know . . ."

"I think you're both dorks," CJ says, because he can't stand for a conversation to go on too long without his input, especially not one between Cassie and Layla. He's a muscular, ruddy-looking guy, CJ. I'm told he plays basketball for the junior team at Bon Temps High School – "junior" meaning students in grades six through nine. Or maybe seven through nine, I don't remember. The point is, CJ's an athlete with an okay face and broad shoulders, and these qualities, it seems, are enough to make both Layla and Cassie want him. CJ only wants Cassie, though. She's prettier, more assertive, and I feel CJ's thoughtless, tingling, truly disgusting desire every time she brushes against him. But I also feel his ego expanding every time the girls are together around him, competing for his attention with their blatant methods. CJ's not a total idiot, and he likes being fought over more than he likes Cassie. At least for now.

You notice these things, when you're psychic. Or, you know. When you spend a fair amount of time with a group but barely speak while doing so.

Cassie lowers beside CJ, leaning against his arm as she scrolls through her iPod, connected by a tangled white wire to a small, portable speaker decorated with plastic eyes – googly eyes, they're called. "Sorry, Annie," she says coolly, turning down the song the iPod jumped to on its own. "I know you don't like pop."

"I do like pop," I tell the cheerleader, who happens to be a massive bitch. "It just has to be good pop."

Dylan mimes throwing something at Cassie. "Burn."

I sigh.

"Nah, Annie's too good for this American shit," CJ says as Layla bends over beside him, reaching into our box of beer – her box, technically, albeit a stolen one. She hands a can to CJ, who accepts it without a word, jerking his chin at me in the meantime. "She needs her fancy Swiss music."

"Swedish," I mutter.

"Huh?"

"Swedish music. Not Swiss." It isn't worth pointing out to CJ that I've never specified my musical preferences, European or otherwise, to him or anyone here. "Swiss refers to things from Switzerland. I'm from Sweden. So, Swedish."

CJ cracks open his beer. "'Kay, but it's all Scand'navia, right?"

I close my eyes, regret every choice I've ever made, and roll up along my spine to stand. I turn my back on CJ, on all of them, and walk away as I dip into the pocket of my coat – my black wool coat, a thigh-brushing style Eric bought for me at the beginning of the year, when we were in Italy, before I decided I hated him. Summer in Louisiana gets far too hot for a coat like this, but I like having pockets to hide things in, so I make up for the extra layer with a remarkably slutty ensemble . . . Shorts as tiny as the cheerleaders', a midriff-baring tank top. Of course, I can't do anything to make up for the fact that this coat is too nice, far too nice for this occasion – or, non-occasion.

From my pocket I draw a crushed box of cigarettes. Pall Malls, the kind CJ's dad smokes, the kind CJ steals for himself and his friends. In my case, he gives me entire boxes in exchange for the occasional bottle of very cheap liquor.

Yes, Eric, I stole from you and Pam. But only the cheap stuff. So, you know – no big deal.

He would kill me. For that, for other things. He would absolutely, utterly kill me.

Oh, well.

I lean against a tree a short distance from the others and light a cigarette with a lighter – the kind called Zippo – I found at Sookie's. Or, whatever, that house. Eric's house, which used to be Sookie's. Which would be Sookie's, if she weren't probably dead. Eric doesn't think she's dead, true. But I don't care what Eric thinks. So.

I'm not overly fond of the smell of cigarette smoke, but I like the vibrations it sends through my brain. I take one long drag, then another, and the smoke wraps me up like we're old friends.

I feel Dylan come up behind me, though he doesn't speak right away. "Wanna beer?" He holds it over my shoulder before I can say anything back, so I just take it. I do want one, anyway. I suppose. After my cigarette.

As Dylan inches closer, CJ calls, "Annie, I thought you liked dead people!"and Layla laughs too loud. And Dylan, my knight in shining armor, shoots back that CJ's a dumbass before leaning down to me, licking his lips. He does that too much. It's a bad habit.

"Hey, we could go for a walk, if you want." His breath is hot and full of beer. "If you'd rather. You don't seem to be havin' alotta fun here, so . . ."

I consider this. I don't think I've really done anything, or not done something, Dylan could reasonably interpret as a signal that I'm not having fun. Or, rather, less fun than usual. I'm pretty sure I've been acting the same way I've acted every time I've been out with these kids since the day Dylan came up to me in the Bon Temps grocery store, maybe six weeks ago, while I was waiting for Hoyt to pay for milk. Meaning I've acted bored. Quiet. Bitter. Acted, in other words, exactly how these kids expect me to act. How they want me to act. I am, after all, a freak – the girl who lives with vampires. But I'm a little, pretty freak, nonthreatening enough for my freakiness to be fascinating.

Plus, I have regular access to vast amounts of alcohol. So I'm a valuable friend to have, if you're a teenage delinquent. Or trying to be.

Dylan coughs a little. "Annie?"

I raise the cigarette to my lips. "I don't know what you're talking about, Dylan. I'm having a great time." I draw smoke into my mouth and look out at the cemetery, because it's better than looking at Dylan. It's a nice place, really, this cemetery. Monuments scatter the earth, monuments from all across the past century, some of the older ones wrapped in vines stemming from the plentiful trees. I imagine it's very peaceful here before we show up.

In the corner of my eye, Dylan pounds his fist into his palm, once, twice, thrice. Probably licking his lips all the while. Poor Dylan. He's on the basketball team with CJ but, from what I gather, isn't so highly valued by his peers. It's surprising, I guess. Dylan's tall, he has a good smile, his hair is thick and dark and well-suited for a simple, tousled look. But he doesn't know what to do with himself, Dylan. He wants to be liked, wants it so very much, but doesn't know what for. So he tries everything, jumping from funny to charming to rowdy to tough to solemn. Like a frog, from boiling pot to boiling pot.

It's pathetic.

And now, now this pathetic boy is taking my free hand, which is the hand farthest from him, meaning his arm stretches across my torso in the process. He clenches my fingers as if trying to shape them into something, and his hand, oh, his hand is so damp. I can't get used to damp hands, human hands – at least not on other people. Mine is the only human body I've had extensive contact with in years, so I'm used to my own sweaty palms, but someone else's? That's an entirely different thing.

"Hey, let's go for a walk," Dylan murmurs in a low tone I'm sure he learned from a movie. "Just you'n me. We could, like, sit and talk somewhere."

And I could jam my tongue into your mouth again, I imagine him saying. And maybe you'll even, you know, like it this time?

And who knows? Maybe I would.

But I doubt it.

I twist my hand free, open my mouth to brush him off, and . . . that's when a beat starts up behind me, a beat I know well. I turn my ear towards the speaker to make sure I'm hearing correctly, then murmur, "That's more like it," as Layla tells Cassie this song is like, a million years old, and Cassie says she knows, right?, but it's still good, swear to God . . .

"Oh, yeah." Dylan nods. "Yeah, this song's great . . ." His eyes creep downwards, then, because I've started swaying with the music, and I guess he likes how that looks. My twelfth year has given my body a bit of curve – made my hips wider than my waist, at least, made my chest merit an A-cup bra. But that's not a lot, I know. And my coat is currently hiding most of me anyway. But I guess the tank top and shorts show Dylan enough, because he keeps watching me move. And me, I let him watch, let him get whatever he gets from whatever he sees, while the song sweeps through the graveyard and Michael Jackson starts to sing.

"As he came into the window/Was a sound of a crescendo . . ."

And that voice, so familiar to me these days, reaches into my mind and opens a box and releases a second voice, this one familiar, too – more familiar than it should be, really, since Jack and I only spoke a few times. But his words spring easily from my memory, quick and quiet and almost (ironically) alive in their own right, and I close my eyes and sway and sway and listen.

Michael Jackson – you ever listen to Michael Jackson? Put him on the list. As a matter of fact, put him at the top. For cultural relevance alone, he should be at the top.

"He came into her apartment/He left the bloodstains on the carpet . . ."

Goddamn, that bastard could put on a show. The kind of show that just . . . took you. Made you something else for a while, whatever he wanted you to be. And you didn't care, you didn't even notice, because you didn't exist anymore, not so long as he was on the stage. Now that, darlin', is a fucking artist.

"She ran underneath the table/He could see she was unable . . ."

CJ says something, Oh, shit, maybe, and God, I wish he would shut up for once.

"So she ran into the bedroom/She was struck down, it was her doom . . ."

Dylan grabs my arm, and I tense and open my eyes and start to yank myself away – but then his emotion rolls over me, shortly followed by the emotions of Cassie and Layla and CJ, but it's all one emotion, really, one mutual reaction: Panic, all-consuming, thought-scattering panic, and the moment unfolds so fast that I can't say why I end up looking to my left – if Dylan was doing so and I followed suit, if I sensed the threat myself, if I just moved and it happened to be in that direction – but I do end up looking to my left, and I see two men coming towards us, clad in identical khaki uniforms, badges on their chests and scowls on their faces.

It's worth noting that I recognize one of these men.

I've just dropped the cigarette when CJ yells, "Fuck – Run!" and here's the thing: I'm smarter than CJ, smarter than all of these kids, significantly so, and I should know better than they do. And yet – and yet – as the men approach and Dylan yanks my elbow, my body reacts. I have no other explanation, nothing like an excuse. My body just reacts.

Which is how I end up being chased through a Bon Temps cemetery by Jason Stackhouse as Michael Jackson provides the background music. The song – "Smooth Criminal," for the record – reaches me and plucks strings in my brain even as I flee the scene, flee from the stone with the name of a monarch and the stolen box of beer and the googly-eyed speaker from which the song blares, flee from a couple of backwoods cops, flee from the threat of Eric's wrath as I've never seen it before, never felt it before, I just flee, flee, flee.

As if it could possibly be enough.

"Annie, are you okay? So, Annie are you okay?

Are you okay, Annie?

Annie, are you okay? So, Annie are you okay?

Are you okay, Annie?"