"Didn't even have the decency to ask me himself," Sookie mutters, and Bill puts a fourth spin on the phrase: "You are mine. He didn't need to ask your permission." Sookie hisses that Eric can't check her out like a library book, and Bill regretfully informs her that yes, he can. "Eric is Sheriff of Area 5... It's a position of great power among our kind. We do not want to anger him. As long as the requests are reasonable, we should accede to his wishes." These are the deals that we make, too. She sniffs her roses and rolls his eyes and is adorable; Bill is pleased until she tosses them onto the carseat and snarls her way out of the car. She looks amazing, she's total fangbait again: white, soft dress and sweater, those amazing breasts once again on display. Smart girl.

"I had this crazy dream this morning. We were sitting, eating breakfast, and all of a sudden the sunlight set you on fire." We will never sleep beside each other, we will never have breakfast together, because we are a family and because you do not eat, and because breakfast happens across the meridian. He knows what she means, all of it, and fidgets with his keys. "It wouldn't happen quite that way." She looks at him; the coldness of this, the way he's a man and a beast and a dead thing, all at once. "The sunlight would severely weaken me. And eventually, of course, I would die. But I wouldn't burst into flames." Is that good enough? "Not right away, at least." She rolls her eyes at another crack in the foundation. The one man in all creation that she could be with.

Tara creeps toward the hedge-witch's bus. The nature is so loud out here, a thousand creatures chirping and buzzing and hissing and sliding and fucking and eating and dying in the night. It's deafening past the crossroads. Standing at the door, listening to the world, she hears a crack and turns: Miss Jeanette, beautiful and crooked, smiling at her proudly. "I knew you'd come. Let's go inside."

The guy at the nudist -- sorry, "naturist" -- colony outside Beaumont goes all the way back to the Sixties looking for the Merlottes, but there's nothing. Andy, disappointed, says goodbye, and because it's Texas the guy invites him to their monthly naked barbecue. Andy hangs up without giving what you would call a firm RSVP one way or the other.