Read Online Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris - Free Book Online Page A

first, he’d been disappointed about that. But he’d gotten over it. He’d been dating a full werepanther named Crystal for several months now. Crystal lived in a tiny community some miles out in the country—and let me tell you, out in the country from Bon Temps, Louisiana, is really out in the country.
    We said a brief prayer and began eating. Jason didn’t dig in with his usual gusto. Since the hamburger tasted good to me, I figured whatever was on his mind was important. I couldn’t read it out of his brain. Since my brother had become a Were, his thoughts had not been as clear to me.
    Mostly, that was a relief.
    After two bites, Jason put down his hamburger, and his body posture changed. He was ready to talk. “I got something I got to tell you,” he said. “Crystal doesn’t want me to tell anyone, but I’m really worried about her. Yesterday, Crystal . . . she had a miscarriage.”
    I shut my eyes for a few seconds. I had about twenty thoughts in that brief time, and I couldn’t complete a one of them. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I hope Crystal’s all right?”
    Jason looked at me over a plate of food he’d completely forgotten. “She won’t go to the doctor.”
    I stared at him blankly. “But she has to,” I said reasonably. “She needs a D & C.” I wasn’t sure what “D & C” stood for, but I knew after you’d miscarried, you went to a hospital and that’s what they did there. My friend and co-worker Arlene had had a D & C after her miscarriage, and she’d told me about it several times. Several times. “They go in and . . .” I began, but Jason cut me off in midstream.
    “Hey, I don’t need to know,” he said, looking very uncomfortable. “I just know that since Crystal’s a werepanther, she didn’t want to go to the hospital. She had to go when she got gored by that razorback, just like Calvin had to go when he got shot, but they both got well so fast that there was some comment in the doctors’ lounge, she heard. So she won’t go now. She’s at my house, but she’s . . . she’s not doing well. She’s getting worse, not better.”
    “Uh-oh,” I said. “So what’s happening?”
    “She’s bleeding too heavy, and her legs don’t work right.” He swallowed. “She can hardly stand up, much less walk.”
    “Have you called Calvin?” I asked. Calvin Norris, Crystal’s uncle, is the leader of the tiny Hotshot panther community.
    “She don’t want me to tell Calvin. She’s scared Calvin’ll kill me for knocking her up. Crystal didn’t want me to tell you, either, but I got to have help.”
    Though her mom wasn’t living, Crystal had female relatives galore in Hotshot. I’d never had a baby, I’d never even been pregnant, and I wasn’t a shifter. Any one of them would know more about the situation than I did. I told Jason this.
    “I don’t want her to sit up long enough to go back to Hotshot, specially in my truck.” My brother looked as stubborn as a mule.
    For an awful minute, I thought that Jason’s big concern was Crystal bleeding on his upholstery. I was about to hop down his throat, when he added, “The shocks need replacing, and I’m scared the bouncing of the truck on that bad road would make Crystal worse.”
    Then her kin could come to Crystal. But I knew before I spoke that Jason would find a reason to veto that, too. He had some kind of plan. “Okay. What can I do?”
    “Didn’t you tell me that time when you got hurt, there was a special kind of doctor the vamps called to look at your back?”
    I didn’t like to think about that night. My back still bore the scars of the attack. The poison on the maenad’s claws had nearly killed me. “Yes,” I said slowly, “Dr. Ludwig.” Doctor to all that was weird and strange, Dr. Ludwig was herself an oddity. She was extremely short—very, very short. And her features were not exactly regular, either. It would come as an extreme surprise to me if Dr. Ludwig were at all human. I’d seen her a