Sookie scrubs and scrubs, the mud of a murder screaming across her brain, trying to get it clean, to wipe away the memory. A tiny girl against tall walls, scrubbing the floor clean: what does it remind you of? All that sex and pain and pleasure, that deep knowing, what have they been hiding from you, further down the road? What did the Buddha say to you? It comes in flashes; Sookie reads her own mind. Adele, Adele, Adele. In a pool of blood she cleaned up just like this, because if the scars don't show you were never hurt, wounded, marked. Touched. She hurls the muddy cloth against the wall and starts to sink. He is dead. Gran is dead. Jason's gone. She is becoming an orphan on the cold kitchen floor, just past dawn.

Not even eight yet and Lettie Mae's awake and well, tossing bottle after bottle into the bin. Food for the demon, sacrifices to him, out with the garbage. Tara comes out wondering what she's up to, the clashing loud sounds, after the night they had; Lettie Mae is beautiful. Like sunshine through the rain; I thought the actress maybe touched the ceiling last week, if not went right over it, but no. Nobody but the most talented could become two such different women. Look at her beautiful face! This is the face that looked down at Tara when she was just little, when the demon was quiet. That's the smile that greets her now. "Good morning, baby! Did I wake you? I'm almost done. Just a couple more loads..." Some of them are half-full; it's the first time Tara's seen anything that way in a while. "Useless to me. Just fuel for demon fire. The bottle kept him alive for forty years. As long as I keep the stuff out of my house, he ain't never coming back."

And if we rule out demons I guess we rule out vampires and werecollies and psychics and then we have no show, so yes, I can believe that the demon was so into gluttony that he would allow bottles half-full to collect in the house. Alcoholics don't, but alcoholics aren't demons, and inside Lettie Mae were both. It's the same reason Eddie's as turned on by the ritual of bloodletting and the angelic beauty of the Reverend Steven Newlin as by the sex itself: no ritual is empty.