True Blood Book Three Chapters 3-5

Chapter Three
When the sun came up, I'd managed a half hour of sleep. I started to rise and make some coffee, but there didn't seem to be much point. I just stayed in bed. The phone rang during the morning, but I didn't pick it up. The doorbell rang, but I didn't answer it.
At some point toward the middle of the afternoon, I realized that there was one thing I had to do, the task Bill had insisted on my accomplishing if he was delayed. This situation exactly fit what he'd told me.
Now I sleep in the largest bedroom, formerly my grandmother's. I wobbled across the hall to my former room. A couple of months before, Bill had taken out the floor of my old closet and made it into a trapdoor. He'd established a lighttight hidey-hole for himself in the crawl space under the house. He'd done a great job.
I made sure I couldn't be seen from the window before I opened the closet door. The floor of the closet was bare of everything but the carpet, which was an extension of the one cut to fit the room. After I'd retracted the flap that covered the closet floor, I ran a pocketknife around the flooring and eventually pried it up. I looked down into the black box below. It was full: Bill's computer, a box of disks, even his monitor and printer.
So Bill had foreseen this might happen, and he'd hidden his work before he'd left. He'd had some faith in me, no matter how faithless he might have been himself. I nodded, and rolled the carpet back into place, fitting it carefully into the corners. On the floor of the closet I put out-of-season things—shoe boxes containing summer shoes, a beach bag filled with big sunbathing towels and one of my many tubes of suntan lotion, and my folding chaise that I used for tanning. I stuck a huge umbrella back in the corner, and decided that the closet looked realistic enough. My sundresses hung from the bar, along with some very lightweight bathrobes and nightgowns. My flare of energy faded as I realized I'd finished the last service Bill had asked of me, and I had no way to let him know I had followed his wishes.
Half of me (pathetically) wanted to let him know I'd kept the faith; half of me wanted to get in the toolshed and sharpen me some stakes.
Too conflicted to form any course of action, I crawled back to my bed and hoisted myself in. Abandoning a lifetime of making the best of things, and being strong and cheerful and practical, I returned to wallowing in my grief and my overwhelming sense of betrayal.
When I woke, it was dark again, and Bill was in bed with me. Oh, thank God! Relief swept over me. Now all would be well. I felt his cool body behind me, and I rolled over, half asleep, and put my arms around him. He eased up my long nylon gown, and his hand stroked my leg. I put my head against his silent chest and nuzzled him. His arms tightened around me, he pressed firmly against me, and I sighed with joy, inserting a hand between us to unfasten his pants. Everything was back to normal.
Except he smelled different.
My eyes flew open, and I pushed back against rock-hard shoulders. I let out a little squeak of horror.
"It's me," said a familiar voice.
"Eric, what are you doing here?"
"Snuggling."
"You son of a bitch! I thought you were Bill! I thought he was back!"
"Sookie, you need a shower."
"What?"
"Your hair is dirty, and your breath could knock down a horse."
"Not that I care what you think," I said flatly.
"Go get cleaned up."
"Why?"
"Because we have to talk, and I'm pretty sure you don't want to have a long conversation in bed. Not that I have any objection to being in bed with you"—he pressed himself against me to prove how little he objected—"but I'd enjoy it more if I were with the hygienic Sookie I've come to know."
Possibly nothing he could have said would have gotten me out of the bed faster than that. The hot shower felt wonderful to my cold body, and my temper took care of warming up my insides. It wasn't the first time Eric had surprised me in my own home. I was going to have to rescind his invitation to enter. What had stopped me from that drastic step before—what stopped me now—
was the idea that if I ever needed help, and he couldn't enter, I might be dead before I could yell, "Come in!"
I'd entered the bathroom carrying my jeans and underwear and a red-and-green Christmas sweater with reindeer on it, because that's what had been at the top of my drawer. You only get a month to wear the darn things, so I make the most of it. I used a blow-dryer on my hair, wishing Bill were there to comb it out for me. He really enjoyed doing that, and I enjoyed letting him. At that mental image, I almost broke down again, but I stood with my head resting against the wall for a long moment while I gathered my resolve. I took a deep breath, turned to the mirror, and slapped on some makeup. My tan wasn't great this far into the cold season; but I still had a nice glow, thanks to the tanning bed at Bon Temps Video Rental.
I'm a summer person. I like the sun, and the short dresses, and the feeling you had many hours of light to do whatever you chose. Even Bill loved the smells of summer; he loved it when he could smell suntan oil and (he told me) the sun itself on my skin.
But the sweet part of winter was that the nights were much longer—at least, I'd thought so when Bill was around to share those nights with me. I threw my hairbrush across the bathroom. It made a satisfying clatter as it ricocheted into the tub. "You bastard!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. Hearing my voice saying such a thing out loud calmed me down as nothing else could have.
When I emerged from the bathroom, Eric was completely dressed. He had on a freebie T-shirt from one of the breweries that supplied Fangtasia ("This Blood's For You," it read) and blue jeans, and he had thoughtfully made the bed.
"Can Pam and Chow come in?" he asked.
I walked through the living room to the front door and opened it. The two vampires were sitting silently on the porch swing. They were in what I thought of as downtime. When vampires don't have anything in particular to do, they sort of go blank; retreat inside themselves, sitting or standing utterly immobile, eyes open but vacant. It seems to refresh them.
"Please come in," I said.
Pam and Chow entered slowly, looking around them with interest, as if they were on a field trip. Louisiana farmhouse, circa early twenty-first century. The house had belonged to our family since it was built over a hundred and sixty years ago. When my brother, Jason, had struck out on his own, he'd moved into the place my parents had built when they'd married. I'd stayed here, with Gran, in this much-altered, much-renovated house; and she'd left it to me in her will.
The living room had been the total original house. Other additions, like the modern kitchen and the bathrooms, were relatively new. The next floor, which was much smaller than the ground
level, had been added in the early 1900s to accommodate a generation of children who all survived. I rarely went up there these days. It was awfully hot upstairs in the summer, even with the window air conditioners.
All my furniture was aged, styleless, and comfortable—absolutely conventional. The living room had couches and chairs and a television and a VCR, and then you passed through a hall that had my large bedroom with its own bath on one side, and a hall bathroom and my former bedroom and some closets—linen, coat—on the other. Through that passage, you were into the kitchen/dining area, which had been added on soon after my grandparents' wedding. After the kitchen, there was a big roofed back porch, which I'd just had screened in. The porch housed a useful old bench, the washer and dryer, and a bunch of shelves.
There was a ceiling fan in every room and a fly swatter, too, hung in a discreet spot on a tiny nail. Gran wouldn't turn on the air conditioner unless she absolutely had to.
Though they didn't venture upstairs, no detail escaped Pam and Chow on the ground floor.
By the time they settled at the old pine table where Stackhouses had eaten for a few generations, I felt like I lived in a museum that had just been cataloged. I opened the refrigerator and got out three bottles of TrueBlood, heated them up in the microwave, gave them a good shake, and plonked them down on the table in front of my guests.
Chow was still practically a stranger to me. He'd been working at Fangtasia only a few months. I assume he'd bought into the bar, as the previous bartender had. Chow had amazing tattoos, the dark blue Asian kind that are so intricate, they are like a set of fancy clothes. These were so different from my attacker's jailhouse decorations that it was hard to believe they were the same art form. I'd been told Chow's were Yakuza tattoos, but I had never had the nerve to ask him, especially since it wasn't exactly my business. However, if these were true Yakuza tats, Chow was not that old for a vampire. I'd looked up the Yakuza, and the tattooing was a (relatively) recent development in that criminal organization's long history. Chow had long black hair (no surprise there), and I'd heard from many sources that he was a tremendous draw at Fangtasia. Most evenings, he worked shirtless. Tonight, as a concession to the cold, he was wearing a zipped red vest.
I couldn't help but wonder if he ever really felt naked; his body was so thoroughly decorated. I wished I could ask him, but of course that was out of the question. He was the only person of Asian descent I had ever met, and no matter how you know individuals don't represent their whole race, you do kind of expect at least some of the generalizations to be valid. Chow did seem to have a strong sense of privacy. But far from being silent and inscrutable, he was chattering away with Pam, though in a language I couldn't understand. And he smiled at me in a disconcerting way. Okay, maybe he was too far from inscrutable. He was probably insulting the hell out of me, and I was too dumb to know it.
Pam was dressed, as always, in sort of middle-class anonymous clothes. This evening it was a pair of winter white knit pants and a blue sweater. Her blond hair was shining, straight and loose, down her back. She looked like Alice in Wonderland with fangs.
"Have you found out anything else about Bill?" I asked, when they'd all had a swallow of their drinks.
Eric said, "A little."
I folded my hands in my lap and waited.
"I know Bill's been kidnapped," he said, and the room swam around my head for a second. I took a deep breath to make it stop.
"Who by?" Grammar was the least of my worries.
"We aren't sure," Chow told me. "The witnesses are not agreeing." His English was accented, but very clear.
"Let me at them," I said. "If they're human, I'll find out."
"If they were under our dominion, that would be the logical thing to do," Eric said agreeably. "But, unfortunately, they're not."
Dominion, my foot. "Please explain." I was sure I was showing extraordinary patience under the circumstances.
"These humans owe allegiance to the king of Mississippi."
I knew my mouth was falling open, but I couldn't seem to stop it. "Excuse me," I said, after a long moment, "but I could have sworn you said … the king? Of Mississippi?"
Eric nodded without a trace of a smile.
I looked down, trying to keep a straight face. Even under the circumstances, it was impossible. I could feel my mouth twitch. "For real?" I asked helplessly. I don't know why it seemed even funnier that Mississippi had a king—after all, Louisiana had a queen—but it did. I reminded myself I wasn't supposed to know about the queen. Check.
The vampires looked at one another. They nodded in unison.
"Are you the king of Louisiana?" I asked Eric, giddy with all my mental effort to keep varying stories straight. I was laughing so hard that it was all I could do to keep upright in the chair. Possibly there was a note of hysteria.
"Oh, no," he said. "I am the sheriff of Area 5."
That really set me off. I had tears running down my face, and Chow was looking uneasy. I got up, made myself some Swiss Miss microwave hot chocolate, and stirred it with a spoon so it would cool off. I was calming down as I performed the little task, and by the time I returned to the table, I was almost sober.
"You never told me all this before," I said, by way of explanation. "You all have divided up America into kingdoms, is that right?"
Pam and Chow looked at Eric with some surprise, but he didn't regard them. "Yes," he said simply. "It has been so since vampires came to America. Of course, over the years the system's changed with the population. There were far fewer vampires in America for the first two hundred years, because the trip over was so perilous. It was hard to work out the length of the voyage with the available blood supply." Which would have been the crew, of course. "And the Louisiana Purchase made a great difference."
Well, of course it would. I stifled another bout of giggles. "And the kingdoms are divided into … ?"
"Areas. Used to be called fiefdoms, until we decided that was too behind the times. A sheriff controls each area. As you know, we live in Area 5 of the kingdom of Louisiana. Stan, whom you visited in Dallas, is sheriff of Area 6 in the kingdom of … in Texas."
I pictured Eric as the sheriff of Nottingham, and when that had lost amusement value, as Wyatt Earp. I was definitely on the light-headed side. I really felt pretty bad physically. I told myself to pack away my reaction to this information, to focus on the immediate problem. "So, Bill was kidnapped in daylight, I take it?"
Multiple nods all around.
"This kidnapping was witnessed by some humans who live in the kingdom of Mississippi." I just loved to say that. "And they're under the control of a vampire king?"
"Russell Edgington. Yes, they live in his kingdom, but a few of them will give me information. For a price."
"This king won't let you question them?"
"We haven't asked him yet. It could be Bill was taken on his orders."
That raised a whole new crop of questions, but I told myself to stay focused. "How can I get to them? Assuming I decide I want to."
"We've thought of a way you may be able to gather information from humans in the area where Bill disappeared," said Eric. "Not just people I have bribed to let me know what's happening there, but all the people that associated with Russell. It's risky. I had to tell you what I have, to make it work. And you may be unwilling. Someone's already tried to get you once. Apparently, whoever has Bill must not have much information about you yet. But soon, Bill will talk. If you're anywhere around when he breaks, they'll have you."
"They won't really need me then," I pointed out. "If he's already broken."
"That's not necessarily true," Pam said. They did some more of the enigmatic-gaze-swapping thing.
"Give me the whole story," I said. I noticed that Chow had finished his blood, so I got up to get him some more.
"As Russell Edgington's people tell it, Betty Jo Pickard, Edgington's second in command, was supposed to begin a flight to St. Louis yesterday. The humans responsible for taking her coffin to the airport took Bill's identical coffin by mistake. When they delivered the coffin to the hangar Anubis Airlines leases, they left it unguarded for perhaps ten minutes while they were filling out paperwork. During that time—they claim—someone wheeled the coffin, which was on a kind of gurney, out of the back of the hangar, loaded it onto a truck, and drove away."
"Someone who could penetrate Anubis security," I said, doubt heavy in my voice. Anubis Airlines had been established to transport vampires safely both day and night, and their guarantee of heavy security to guard the coffins of sleeping vampires was their big calling card. Of course, vampires don't have to sleep in coffins, but it sure is easy to ship them that way. There had been unfortunate "accidents" when vampires had tried to fly Delta. Some fanatic had gotten in the baggage hold and hacked open a couple of coffins with an ax. Northwest had suffered the same problem. Saving money suddenly didn't seem so attractive to the undead, who now flew Anubis almost exclusively.
"I'm thinking that someone could have mingled with Edgington's people, someone the Anubis employees thought was Edgington's, and Edgington's people thought belonged to Anubis. He could have wheeled Bill out as Edgington's people left, and the guards would be none the wiser."
"The Anubis people wouldn't ask to see papers? On a departing coffin?"
"They say they did see papers, Betty Jo Pickard's. She was on her way to Missouri to negotiate a trade agreement with the vampires of St. Louis." I had a blank moment of wondering what on earth the vampires of Mississippi could be trading with the vampires of Missouri, and then I decided I just didn't want to know.
"There was also extra confusion at the time," Pam was saying. "A fire started under the tail of another Anubis plane, and the guards were distracted."
"Oh, accidentally-on-purpose."
"I think so," Chow said.
"So, why would anyone want to snatch Bill?" I asked. I was afraid I knew. I was hoping they'd provide me with something else. Thank God Bill had prepared for this moment.
"Bill's been working on a little special project," Eric said, his eyes on my face. "Do you know anything about that?"
More than I wanted to. Less than I ought to.
"What project?" I said. I've spent my whole life concealing my thoughts, and I called on all my skill now. That life depended on my sincerity.
Eric's gaze flickered over to Pam, to Chow. They both gave some infinitesimal signal. He focused on me again, and said, "That is a little hard to believe, Sookie."
"How come?" I asked, anger in my voice. When in doubt, attack. "When do any of you exactly spill your emotional guts to a human? And Bill is definitely one of you." I infused that with as much rage as I could muster.
They did that eye-flicker thing at one another again.
"You think we'll believe that Bill didn't tell you what he was working on?"
"Yes, I think so. Because he didn't." I had more or less figured it out all by myself anyway.
"Here's what I'm going to do," Eric said finally. He looked at me from across the table, his blue eyes as hard, as marbles and just as warm. No more Mr. Nice Vampire. "I can't tell if you're lying or not, which is remarkable. For your sake, I hope you are telling the truth. I could torture you until you told me the truth, or until I was sure you had been telling me the truth from the beginning."
Oh, brother. I took a deep breath, blew it out, and tried to think of an appropriate prayer. God, don't let me scream too loud seemed kind of weak and negative. Besides, there was no one to hear me besides the vampires, no matter how loudly I shrieked. When the time came, I might as well let it rip.
"But," Eric continued thoughtfully, "that might damage you too badly for the other part of my plan. And really, it doesn't make that much difference if you know what Bill has been doing behind our backs or not."
Behind their backs? Oh, shit. And now I knew whom to blame for my very deep predicament. My own dear love, Bill Compton.
"That got a reaction," Pam observed.
"But not the one I expected," Eric said slowly.
"I'm not too happy about the torture option." I was in so much trouble, I couldn't even begin to add it up, and I was so overloaded with stress that I felt like my head was floating somewhere above my body. "And I miss Bill." Even though at the moment I would gladly kick his ass, I did miss him. And if I could just have ten minutes' conversation with him, how much better prepared I would be to face the coming days. Tears rolled down my face. But there was more they had to tell me; more I had to hear, whether I wanted to or not. "I do expect you to tell me why he lied about this trip, if you know. Pam mentioned bad news."
Eric looked at Pam with no love in his eyes at all.
"She's leaking again," Pam observed, sounding a little uncomfortable. "I think before she goes to Mississippi, she should know the truth. Besides, if she has been keeping secrets for Bill, this will …"
Make her spill the beans? Change her loyalty to Bill? Force her to realize she has to tell us?
It was obvious that Chow and Eric had been all for keeping me in ignorance and that they were acutely unhappy with Pam for hinting to me that, though I supposedly didn't know it, all was not well with Bill and me. But they both eyed Pam intently for a long minute, and then Eric nodded curtly.
"You and Chow wait outside," Eric said to Pam. She gave him a very pointed look, and then they walked out, leaving their drained bottles sitting on the table. Not even a thank-you for the blood. Didn't even rinse the bottles out. My head felt lighter and lighter as I contemplated poor vampire manners. I felt my eyelids flicker, and it occurred to me that I was on the edge of fainting. I am not one of these frail gals who keels over at every little thing, but I felt I was justified right now. Plus, I vaguely realized I hadn't eaten in over twenty-four hours.
"Don't you do it," Eric said. He sounded definite. I tried to concentrate on his voice, and I looked at him.
I nodded to indicate I was doing my best.
He moved over to my side of the table, turned the chair Pam had occupied until it faced me and was very close. He sat and leaned over to me, his big white hand covering both of mine, still folded neatly in my lap. If he closed his hand, he could crush all my fingers. I'd never work as a waitress again.
"I don't enjoy seeing you scared of me," he said, his face too close to mine. I could smell his cologne—Ulysse, I thought. "I have always been very fond of you."
He'd always wanted to have sex with me.
"Plus, I want to fuck you." He grinned, but at this moment it didn't do a thing to me. "When we kiss … it's very exciting." We had kissed in the line of duty, so to speak, and not as recreation. But it had been exciting. How not? He was gorgeous, and he'd had several hundred years to work on his smooching technique.
Eric got closer and closer. I wasn't sure if he was going to bite me or kiss me. His fangs had run out. He was angry, or horny, or hungry, or all three. New vampires tended to lisp while they talked until they got used to their fangs; you couldn't even tell, with Eric. He'd had centuries of perfecting that technique, too.
"Somehow, that torture plan didn't make me feel very sexy," I told him.
"It did something for Chow, though," Eric whispered in my ear.
I wasn't shaking, but I should have been. "Could you cut to the chase here?" I asked. "Are you gonna torture me, or not? Are you my friend, or my enemy? Are you gonna find Bill, or let him rot?"
Eric laughed. It was short and unfunny, but it was better than him getting closer, at least at the moment. "Sookie, you are too much," he said, but not as though he found that particularly endearing. "I'm not going to torture you. For one thing, I would hate to ruin that beautiful skin; one day, I will see all of it."
I just hoped it was still on my body when that happened.
"You won't always be so afraid of me," he said, as if he were absolutely certain of the future. "And you won't always be as devoted to Bill as you are now. There is something I must tell you."
Here came the Big Bad. His cool fingers twined with mine, and without wanting to, I held his hand hard. I couldn't think of a word to say, at least a word that was safe. My eyes fixed on his.
"Bill was summoned to Mississippi," Eric told me, "by a vampire—a female—he'd known many years ago. I don't know if you've realized that vampires almost never mate with other vampires, for any longer than a rare one-night affair. We don't do this because it gives us power over each other forever, the mating and sharing of blood. This vampire …"
"Her name," I said.
"Lorena," he said reluctantly. Or maybe he wanted to tell me all along, and the reluctance was just for show. Who the heck knows, with a vampire.
He waited to see if I would speak, but I did not.
"She was in Mississippi. I am not sure if she regularly lives there, or if she went there to ensnare Bill. She had been living in Seattle for years, I know, because she and Bill lived there together for many years."
I had wondered why he'd picked Seattle as his fictitious destination. He hadn't just plucked it out of the air.
"But whatever her intention in asking him to meet her there … what excuse she gave him for not coming here … maybe he was just being careful of you …"
I wanted to die at that moment. I took a deep breath and looked down at our joined hands. I was too humiliated to look in Eric's eyes.
"He was—he became—instantly enthralled with her, all over again. After a few nights, he called Pam to say that he was coming home early without telling you, so he could arrange your future care before he saw you again."
"Future care?" I sounded like a crow.
"Bill wanted to make a financial arrangement for you."
The shock of it made me blanch. "Pension me off," I said numbly. No matter how well he had meant, Bill could not have offered me any greater offense. When he'd been in my life, it had never
occurred to him to ask me how my finances were faring—though he could hardly wait to help his newly discovered descendants, the Bellefleurs.
But when he was going to be out of my life, and felt guilty for leaving pitiful, pitiable me—then he started worrying.
"He wanted …" Eric began, then stopped and looked closely at my face. "Well, leave that for now. I would not have told you any of this, if Pam hadn't interfered. I would have sent you off in ignorance, because then it wouldn't have been words from my mouth that hurt you so badly. And I would not have had to plead with you, as I'm going to plead."
I made myself listen. I gripped Eric's hand as if it were a lifeline.
"What I'm going to do—and you have to understand, Sookie, my hide depends on this, too …"
I looked him straight in the face, and he saw the rush of my surprise.
"Yes, my job, and maybe my life, too, Sookie—not just yours, and Bill's. I'm sending you a contact tomorrow. He lives in Shreveport, but he has a second apartment in Jackson. He has friends among the supernatural community there, the vampires, shifters, and Weres. Through him you can meet some of them, and their human employees."
I was not completely in my head right now, but I felt like I'd understand all this when I played it back. So I nodded. His fingers stroked mine, over and over.
"This man is a Were," Eric said carelessly, "so he is scum. But he is more reliable than some others, and he owes me a big personal favor."
I absorbed that, nodded again. Eric's long fingers seemed almost warm.
"He'll take you out and about in the vampire community in Jackson, and you can pick brains there among human employees. I know it's a long shot, but if there's something to discover, if Russell Edgington did abduct Bill, you may pick up a hint. The man who tried to abduct you was from Jackson, going by the bills in his car, and he was a Were, as the wolf's head on his vest indicates. I don't know why they came after you. But I suspect it means Bill is alive, and they wanted to grab you to use as leverage over him."
"Then I guess they should have abducted Lorena," I said.
Eric's eyes widened in appreciation.
"Maybe they already have her," he said. "But maybe Bill has realized it is Lorena who betrayed him. He wouldn't have been taken if she hadn't revealed the secret he had told her."
I mulled that over, nodded yet again.
"Another puzzle is why she happened to be there at all," Eric said. "I think I would have known if she'd been a regular member of the Mississippi group. But I'll be thinking about that in my spare time." From his grim face, Eric had already put in considerable brain time on that question. "If this plan doesn't work within about three days, Sookie, we may have to kidnap one of the Mississippi vampires in return. This would almost certainly lead to a war, and a war—even with Mississippi—would be costly in lives and money. And in the end, they would kill Bill anyway."
Okay, the weight of the world was resting on my shoulders. Thanks, Eric. I needed more responsibility and pressure.
"But know this: If they have Bill—if he is still alive—we will get him back. And you will be together again, if that's what you want."
Big if.
"To answer your question: I am your friend, and that will last as long as I can be your friend without jeopardizing my own life. Or the future of my area."
Well, that laid it on the line. I appreciated his honesty. "As long as it's convenient for you, you mean," I said calmly, which was both unfair and inaccurate. However, I thought it was odd that my characterization of his attitude actually seemed to bother him. "Let me ask you something, Eric."
He raised his eyebrows to tell me he was waiting. His hands traveled up and down my arms, absently, as if he wasn't thinking of what he was doing. The movement reminded me of a man warming his hands at a fire.
"If I'm understanding you, Bill was working on a project for the …" I felt a wild bubble of laughter rising, and I ruthlessly suppressed it. "For the queen of Louisiana," I finished. "But you didn't know about it. Is this right?"
Eric stared at me for a long moment, while he thought about what to tell me. "She told me she had work for Bill to do," he said. "But not what it was, or why he had to be the one to do it, or when it would be complete."
That would miff almost any leader, having his underling co-opted like that. Especially if the leader was kept in ignorance. "So, why isn't this queen looking for Bill?" I asked, keeping my voice carefully neutral.
"She doesn't know he's gone."
"Why is that?"
"We haven't told her."
Sooner or later he'd quit answering. "Why not?"
"She would punish us."
"Why?" I was beginning to sound like a two-year-old.
"For letting something happen to Bill, when he was doing a special project for her."
"What would that punishment be?"
"Oh, with her it's difficult to tell." He gave a choked laugh. "Something very unpleasant."
Eric was even closer to me, his face almost touching my hair. He was inhaling, very delicately. Vampires rely on smell, and hearing, much more than sight, though their eyesight is extremely accurate. Eric had had my blood, so he could tell more about my emotions than a vampire who hadn't. All bloodsuckers are students of the human emotional system, since the most successful predators know the habits of their prey.
Eric actually rubbed his cheek against mine. He was like a cat in his enjoyment of contact.
"Eric." He'd given me more information than he knew.
"Mmm?"
"Really, what will the queen do to you if you can't produce Bill on the date her project is due?"
My question got the desired result. Eric pulled away from me and looked down at me with eyes bluer than mine and harder than mine and colder than the Arctic waste.
"Sookie, you really don't want to know," he said. "Producing his work would be good enough. Bill's actual presence would be a bonus."
I returned his look with eyes almost as cold as his. "And what will I get in return for doing this for you?" I asked.
Eric managed to look both surprised and pleased. "If Pam hadn't hinted to you about Bill, his safe return would have been enough and you would have jumped at the chance to help," Eric reminded me.
"But now I know about Lorena."
"And knowing, do you agree to do this for us?"
"Yes, on one condition."
Eric looked wary. "What would that be?" he asked.
"If something happens to me, I want you to take her out."
He gaped at me for at least a whole second before he roared with laughter. "I would have to pay a huge fine," he said when he'd quit chortling. "And I'd have to accomplish it first. That's easier said than done. She's three hundred years old."
"You've told me that what will happen to you if all this comes unraveled would be pretty horrible," I reminded him.
"True."
"You've told me you desperately need me to do this for you."
"True."
"That's what I ask in return."
"You might make a decent vampire, Sookie," Eric said finally. "All right. Done. If anything happens to you, she'll never fuck Bill again."
"Oh, it's not just that."
"No?" Eric looked very skeptical, as well he might.
"It's because she betrayed him."
Eric's hard blue eyes met mine. "Tell me this, Sookie: Would you ask this of me if she were a human?" His wide, thin-lipped mouth, most often amused, was in a serious straight line.
"If she were a human, I'd take care of it myself," I said, and stood to show him to the door.
After Eric had driven away, I leaned against the door and laid my cheek against the wood. Did I mean what I'd told him? I'd long wondered if I were really a civilized person, though I kept striving to be one. I knew that at the moment I'd said I would take care of Lorena myself, I had meant it. There was something pretty savage inside me, and I'd always controlled it. My grandmother had not raised me to be a murderess.
As I plodded down the hall to my bedroom, I realized that my temper had been showing more and more lately. Ever since I'd gotten to know the vampires.
I couldn't figure out why that should be. They exerted tremendous control over themselves. Why should mine be slipping?
But that was enough introspection for one night.
I had to think about tomorrow.
Chapter Four
Since it seemed I was going out of town, there was laundry to be done, and stuff in the refrigerator that needed throwing away. I wasn't particularly sleepy after spending so long in bed the preceding day and night, so I got out my suitcase, opened it, and tossed some clothes into the washer out on the freezing back porch. I didn't want to think about my own character any longer. I had plenty of other items to mull over.
Eric had certainly adopted a shotgun approach to bending me to his will. He'd bombarded me with many reasons to do what he wanted: intimidation, threat, seduction, an appeal for Bill's return, an appeal for his (and Pam's, and Chow's) life and/or well-being—to say nothing of my own health. "I might have to torture you, but I want to have sex with you; I need Bill, but I'm furious with him because he deceived me; I have to keep peace with Russell Edgington, but I have to get Bill back from him; Bill is my serf, but he's secretly working more for my boss."
Darn vampires. You can see why I'm glad their glamour doesn't affect me. It's one of the few positives my mind-reading ability has yielded me. Unfortunately, humans with psychic glitches are very attractive to the undead.
I certainly could not have foreseen any of this when I'd become attached to Bill. Bill had become almost as necessary to me as water; and not entirely because of my deep feelings for him, or my physical pleasure in his lovemaking. Bill was the only insurance I had against being annexed by another vampire, against my will.
After I'd run a couple of loads through the washer and dryer and folded the clothes, I felt much more relaxed. I was almost packed, and I'd put in a couple of romances and a mystery in case I got a little time to read. I am self-educated from genre books.
I stretched and yawned. There was a certain peace of mind to be found in having a plan, and my uneasy sleep of the past day and night had not refreshed me as much as I thought. I might be able to fall asleep easily.
Even without help from the vampires, I could maybe find Bill, I thought, as I brushed my teeth and climbed into bed. But breaking him out of whatever prison he was in and making a successful escape, that was another question. And then I'd have to decide what to do about our relationship.
I woke up at about four in the morning with an odd feeling there was an idea just waiting to be acknowledged. I'd had a thought at some point during the night; it was the kind of idea that you just know has been bubbling in your brain, waiting to boil over.
Sure enough, after a minute the idea resurfaced. What if Bill had not been abducted, but had defected? What if he'd become so enamored or addicted to Lorena that he'd decided to leave the Louisiana vampires and join with the Mississippi group? Immediately, I had doubts that that had been Bill's plan; it would be a very elaborate one, with the leakage of informants to Eric concerning Bill's abduction, the confirmed presence of Lorena in Mississippi. Surely there'd be a less dramatic, and simpler, way to arrange his disappearance.
I wondered if Eric, Chow, and Pam were even now searching Bill's house, which lay across the cemetery from mine. They weren't going to find what they were looking for. Maybe they'd come back here. They wouldn't have to get Bill back at all, if they could find the computer files the queen wanted so badly. I fell to sleep out of sheer exhaustion, thinking I heard Chow laugh outside.
Even the knowledge of Bill's betrayal did not stop me from searching for him in my dreams. I must have rolled over three times, reaching out to see if he'd slid into bed with me, as he often did. And every time, the other side of the bed was empty and cold.
However, that was better than finding Eric there instead.
I was up and showering at first light, and I'd made a pot of coffee before the knock at the front door came.
"Who is it?" I stood to one side of the door as I asked.
"Eric sent me," a gruff voice said.
I opened the door and looked up. And looked up some more.
He was huge. His eyes were green. His tousled hair was curly and thick and black as pitch. His brain buzzed and pulsed with energy; kind of a red effect. Werewolf.
"Come on in. You want some coffee?"
Whatever he'd expected, it wasn't what he was seeing. "You bet, chere. You got some eggs? Some sausage?"
"Sure." I led him to the kitchen. "I'm Sookie Stackhouse," I said, over my shoulder. I bent over to get the eggs out of the refrigerator. "You?"
"Alcide," he said, pronouncing it Al-see, with the d barely sounded. "Alcide Herveaux."
He watched me steadily while I lifted out the skillet—my grandmother's old, blackened iron skillet. She'd gotten it when she got married, and fired it, like any woman worth her salt would do. Now it was perfectly seasoned. I turned the gas eye on at the stove. I cooked the sausage first (for the grease), plopped it on a paper towel on a plate and stuck it in the oven to keep warm. After asking Alcide how he wanted the eggs, I scrambled them and cooked them quickly, sliding them onto the warm plate. He opened the right drawer for the silverware on the first try, and poured himself some juice and coffee after I silently pointed out which cabinet contained the cups. He refilled my mug while he was at it.
He ate neatly. And he ate everything.
I plunged my hands into the hot, soapy water to clean the few dishes. I washed the skillet last, dried it, and rubbed some Crisco into the blackness, taking occasional glances at my guest. The kitchen smelled comfortably of breakfast and soapy water. It was a peculiarly peaceful moment.
This was anything but what I had expected when Eric had told me someone who owed him a favor would be my entree into the Mississippi vampire milieu. As I looked out the kitchen window at the cold landscape, I realized that this was how I had envisioned my future; on the few occasions I'd let myself imagine a man sharing my house.
This was the way life was supposed to be, for normal people. It was morning, time to get up and work, time for a woman to cook breakfast for a man, if he had to go out and earn. This big rough man was eating real food. He almost certainly had a pickup truck sitting out in front of my house.
Of course, he was a werewolf. But a Were could live a more close-to-human life than a vampire.
On the other hand, what I didn't know about Weres could fill a book.
He finished, put his plate in the water in the sink, and washed and dried it himself while I wiped the table. It was as smooth as if we'd choreographed it. He disappeared into the bathroom for a minute while I ran over my mental list of things that had to be done before I left. I needed to talk to Sam, that was the main thing. I'd called my brother the night before to tell him I'd be gone for a few days. Liz had been at Jason's, so he hadn't really thought a lot about my departure. He'd agreed to pick up my mail and my papers for me.
Alcide came to sit opposite me at the table. I was trying to think about how we should talk about our joint task; I was trying to anticipate any sore paws I might tread on. Maybe he was worrying about the same things. I can't read the minds of shape-shifters or werewolves with any consistency; they're supernatural creatures. I can reliably interpret moods, and pick up on the
occasional clear idea. So the humans-with-a-difference are much less opaque to me than the vampires. Though I understand there's a contingent of shape-shifters and Weres who wants to change things, the fact of their existence still remains a secret. Until they see how publicity works out for the vampires, the supernaturals of the two-natured variety are ferocious about their privacy.
Werewolves are the tough guys of the shape-shifting world. They're shape-shifters by definition, but they're the only ones who have their own separate society, and they will not allow anyone else to be called "Were" in their hearing. Alcide Herveaux looked plenty tough. He was big as a boulder, with biceps that I could do pull-ups on. He would have to shave a second time if he planned on going out in the evening. He would fit right in on a construction site or a wharf.
He was a proper man.
"How are they forcing you to do this?" I asked.
"They have a marker of my dad's," he said. He put his massive hands on the table and leaned into them. "They own a casino in Shreveport, you know?"
"Sure." It was a popular weekend excursion for people in this area, to go over to Shreveport or up to Tunica (in Mississippi, right below Memphis) and rent a room for a couple of nights, play the slots, see a show or two, eat lots of buffet food.
"My dad got in too deep. He owns a surveying company—I work for him—but he likes to gamble." The green eyes smoldered with rage. "He got in too deep in the casino in Louisiana, so your vamps own his marker, his debt. If they call it in, our company will go under." Werewolves seemed to respect vampires about as much as vampires respect them. "So, to get the marker back, I have to help you hang around with the vamps in Jackson." He leaned back in the chair, looking me in the eyes. "That's not a hard thing, taking a pretty woman to Jackson and out barhopping. Now that I've met you, I'm glad to do it, to get my father out from under the debt. But why the hell you want to do that? You look like a real woman, not one of those sick bitches who get off on hanging around the vamps."
This was a refreshingly direct conversation, after my conference with the vampires. "I only hang around with one vampire, by choice," I said bitterly. "Bill, my—well, I don't know if he's even my boyfriend anymore. It seems the vampires of Jackson may have kidnapped him. Someone tried to grab me last night." I thought it only fair to let him know. "Since the kidnapper didn't seem to know my name, just that I worked at Merlotte's, I'll probably be safe in Jackson if no one figures out I'm the woman who goes with Bill. I have to tell you, the man who tried to grab me was a werewolf. And he had a Hinds County car plate." Jackson was in Hinds County.
"Wearing a gang vest?" Alcide asked. I nodded. Alcide looked thoughtful, which was a good thing. This was not a situation I took lightly, and it was a good sign that he didn't, either. "There's a small gang in Jackson made up of Weres. Some of the bigger shifters hang around the edges of this gang—the panther, the bear. They hire themselves out to the vamps on a pretty regular basis."
"There's one less of them now," I said.
After a moment's digestion of that information, my new companion gave me a long, challenging stare. "So, what good is a little human gal going to do against the vampires of Jackson? You a martial artist? You a great shot? You been in the Army?"
I had to smile. "No. You never heard my name?"
"You're famous?"
"Guess not." I was pleased that he didn't have any preconceptions about me. "I think I'll just let you find out about me."
"Long as you're not gonna turn into a snake." He stood up. "You're not a guy, are you?" That late-breaking thought made his eyes widen.
"No, Alcide. I'm a woman." I tried to say that matter-of-factly, but it was pretty hard.
"I was willing to put money on that." He grinned at me. "If you're not some kind of superwoman, what are you going to do when you know where your man is?"
"I'm going to call Eric, the …" Suddenly I realized that telling vampire secrets is a bad idea. "Eric is Bill's boss. He'll decide what to do after that."
Alcide looked skeptical. "I don't trust Eric. I don't trust any of 'em. He'll probably double-cross you."
"How?"
"He might use your man as leverage. He might demand restitution, since they have one of his men. He might use your man's abduction as an excuse to go to war, in which case your man will be executed tout de suite."
I had not thought that far. "Bill knows stuff," I said. "Important stuff."
"Good. That may keep him alive." Then he saw my face, and chagrin ran across his own. "Hey, Sookie, I'm sorry. I don't think before I talk sometimes. We'll get him back, though it makes me
sick to think of a woman like you with one of those bloodsuckers."
This was painful, but oddly refreshing.
"Thanks, I guess," I said, attempting a smile. "What about you? Do you have a plan about how to introduce me to the vampires?"
"Yeah. There's a nightclub in Jackson, close to the capitol. It's for Supes and their dates only. No tourists. The vamps can't make it pay on their own, and it's a convenient meeting place for them, so they let us low-lifes share the fun." He grinned. His teeth were perfect—white and sharp. "It won't be suspicious if I go there. I always drop in when I'm in Jackson. You'll have to go as my date." He looked embarrassed. "Uh, I better tell you, you seem like you're a jeans kind of person like me—but this club, they like you to dress kind of party style." He feared I had no fancy dresses in my closet; I could read that clearly. And he didn't want me to be humiliated by appearing in the wrong clothes. What a man.
"Your girlfriend won't be crazy about this," I said, angling for information out of sheer curiosity.
"She lives in Jackson, as a matter of fact. But we broke up a couple of months ago," he said. "She took up with another shape-shifter. Guy turns into a damn owl."
Was she nuts? Of course, there'd be more to the story. And of course, it fell into the category of "none of your business."
So without comment, I went to my room to pack my two party dresses and their accessories in a hanging bag. Both were purchases from Tara's Togs, managed (and now owned) by my friend Tara Thornton. Tara was real good about calling me when things went on clearance. Bill actually owned the building that housed Tara's Togs, and had told all the businesses housed in there to run a tab for me that he would pay, but I had resisted the temptation. Well, except for replacing clothes that Bill himself had ripped in our more thrilling moments.
I was very proud of both these dresses, since I'd never had anything like them before, and I zipped the bag shut with a smile.
Alcide stuck his head in the bedroom to ask if I was ready. He looked at the cream-and-yellow bed and curtains, and nodded approvingly. "I got to call my boss," I said. "Then we'll be good to go." I perched on the side of the bed and picked up the receiver.
Alcide propped himself against the wall by my closet door while I dialed Sam's personal number. His voice was sleepy when he answered, and I apologized for calling so early. "What's happening, Sookie?" he asked groggily.
"I have to go away for a few days," I said. "I'm sorry for not giving you more notice, but I called Sue Jennings last night to see if she'd work for me. She said yes, so I gave her my hours."
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"I have to go to Mississippi," I said. "Jackson."
"You got someone lined up to pick up your mail?"
"My brother. Thanks for asking."
"Plants to water?"
"None that won't live till I get back."
"Okay. Are you going by yourself?"
"No," I said hesitantly.
"With Bill?"
"No, he, uh, he hasn't shown up."
"Are you in trouble?"
"I'm just fine," I lied.
"Tell him a man's going with you," Alcide rumbled, and I gave him an exasperated look. He was leaning against the wall, and he took up an awful lot of it.
"Someone's there?" Sam's nothing if not quick on the uptake.
"Yes, Alcide Herveaux," I said, figuring it was a smart thing to tell someone who cared about me that I was leaving the area with this guy. First impressions can be absolutely false, and Alcide needed to be aware there was someone who would hold him accountable.
"Aha," Sam said. The name did not seem to be unfamiliar to him. "Let me talk to him."
"Why?" I can take a lot of paternalism, but I was about up to my ears.
"Hand over the damn phone." Sam almost never curses, so I made a face to show what I thought of his demand and gave the phone to Alcide. I stomped out to the living room and looked through the window. Yep. A Dodge Ram, extended cab. I was willing to bet it had everything on it that could be put on.
I'd rolled my suitcase out by its handle, and I'd slung my carrying bag over a chair by the door, so I just had to pull on my heavy jacket. I was glad Alcide had warned me about the dress-up rule for the bar, since it never would have occurred to me to pack anything fancy. Stupid vampires. Stupid dress code.
I was Sullen, with a capital S.
I wandered back down the hall, mentally reviewing the contents of my suitcase, while the two shape-shifters had (presumably) a "man talk." I glanced through the doorway of my bedroom to see that Alcide, with the phone to his ear, was perched on the side of my bed where I'd been sitting. He looked oddly at home there.
I paced restlessly back into the living room and stared out the window some more. Maybe the two were having shape-shifting talk. Though to Alcide, Sam (who generally shifted into a collie, though he was not limited to that form) would rank as a lightweight, at least they were from the same branch of the tree. Sam, on the other hand, would be a little leery of Alcide; werewolves had a bad rep.
Alcide strode down the hall, safety shoes clomping on the hardwood floor. "I promised him I'd take care of you," he said. "Now, we'll just hope that works out." He wasn't smiling.
I had been tuning up to be aggravated, but his last sentence was so realistic that the hot air went out of me as if I'd been punctured. In the complex relationship between vampire, Were, and human, there was a lot of leeway for something to go wrong somewhere. After all, my plan was thin, and the vampires' hold over Alcide was tenuous. Bill might not have been taken unwillingly; he might be happy being held captive by a king, as long as the vampire Lorena was on site. He might be enraged that I had come to find him.
He might be dead.
I locked the door behind me and followed Alcide as he stowed my things in the extended cab of the Ram.
The outside of the big truck gleamed, but inside, it was the littered vehicle of a man who spent his working life on the road; a hard hat, invoices, estimates, business cards, boots, a first-aid kit. At least there wasn't any food trash. As we bumped down my eroded driveway, I picked up a rubber-banded sheaf of brochures whose cover read, "Herveaux and Son, AAA Accurate Surveys." I eased
out the top one and studied it carefully as Alcide drove the short distance to interstate 20 to go east to Monroe, Vicksburg, and then to Jackson.
I discovered that the Herveauxes, father and son, owned a bi-state surveying company, with offices in Jackson, Monroe, Shreveport, and Baton Rouge. The home office, as Alcide had told me, was in Shreveport. There was a photo inside of the two men, and the older Herveaux was just as impressive (in a senior way) as his son.
"Is your dad a werewolf, too?" I asked, after I'd digested the information and realized that the Herveaux family was at least prosperous, and possibly rich. They'd worked hard for it, though; and they'd keep working hard, unless the older Mr. Herveaux could control his gambling.
"Both my parents," Alcide said, after a pause.
"Oh, sorry." I wasn't sure what I was apologizing for, but it was safer than not.
"That's the only way to produce a Were child," he said, after a moment. I couldn't tell if he was explaining to be polite, or because he really thought I should know.
"So how come America's not full of werewolves and shapeshifters?" I asked, after I'd considered his statement.
"Like must marry like to produce another, which is not always doable. And each union only produces one child with the trait. Infant mortality is high."
"So, if you marry another werewolf, one of your kids will be a werebaby?"
"The condition will manifest itself at the onset of, ah, puberty."
"Oh, that's awful. Being a teenager is tough enough."
He smiled, not at me, but at the road. "Yeah, it does complicate things."
"So, your ex-girlfriend … she a shifter?"
"Yeah. I don't normally date shifters, but I guess I thought with her it would be different. Weres and shifters are strongly attracted to each other. Animal magnetism, I guess," Alcide said, as an attempt at humor.
My boss, also a shifter, had been glad to make friends with other shifters in the area. He had been hanging out with a maenad ("dating" would be too sweet a word for their relationship), but she'd moved on. Now, Sam was hoping to find another compatible shifter. He felt more comfortable
with a strange human, like me, or another shifter, than he did with regular women. When he'd told me that, he'd meant it as a compliment, or maybe just as a simple statement; but it had hurt me a little, though my abnormality had been borne in on me since I was very young.
Telepathy doesn't wait for puberty.
"How come?" I asked baldly. "How come you thought it would be different?"
"She told me she was sterile. I found out she was on birth control pills. Big difference. I'm not passing this along. Even a shifter and a werewolf may have a child who has to change at the full moon, though only kids of a pure couple—both Weres or both shifters—can change at will."
Food for thought, there. "So you normally date regular old girls. But doesn't it make it hard to date? Keeping secret such a big, ah, factor, in your life?"
"Yeah," he admitted. "Dating regular girls can be a pain. But I have to date someone." There was an edge of desperation to his rumbly voice.
I gave that a long moment's contemplation, and then I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I was missing Bill in a most elemental and unexpected way. My first clue had been the tug-below-the-waist I'd felt when I'd watched my tape of The Last of the Mohicans the week before and I'd fixated on Daniel Day-Lewis bounding through the forest. If I could appear from behind a tree before he saw Madeleine Stowe …
I was going to have to watch my step.
"So, if you bite someone, they won't turn into a werewolf?" I decided to change the direction of my thoughts. Then I remembered the last time Bill had bitten me, and felt a rush of heat through … oh, hell.
"That's when you get your wolf-man. Like the ones in the movies. They die pretty quick, poor people. And that's not passed along, if they, ah, engender children in their human form. If it's when they're in their altered form, the baby is miscarried."
"How interesting." I could not think of one other thing to say.
"But there's that element of the supernatural, too, just like with vampires," Alcide said, still not looking in my direction. "The tie-in of genetics and the supernatural element, that's what no one seems to understand. We just can't tell the world we exist, like the vampires did. We'd be locked up in zoos, sterilized, ghettoized—because we're sometimes animals. Going public just seems to make the vampires glamorous and rich." He sounded more than a little bitter.
"So how come you're telling me all this, right off the bat? If it's such a big secret?" He had given me more information in ten minutes than I'd had from Bill in months.
"If I'm going to be spending a few days with you, it will make my life a lot easier if you know. I figure you have your own problems, and it seems the vampires have some power over you, too. I don't think you'll tell. And if the worst happens, and I've been utterly wrong about you, I'll ask Eric to pay you a visit and wipe out your memory." He shook his head in baffled irritation. "I don't know why, really. I just feel like I know you."
I couldn't think of a response to that, but I had to speak. Silence would lend too much importance to his last sentence. "I'm sorry the vampires have a hold on your dad. But I have to find Bill. If this is the only way I can do it, this is what I have to do. I at least owe him that much, even if …" My voice trailed off. I didn't want to finish the sentence. All the possible endings were too sad, too final.
He shrugged, a large movement on Alcide Herveaux. "Taking a pretty girl to a bar isn't that big a deal," he reassured me again, trying to bolster my spirits.
In his position, I might not have been so generous. "Is your dad a constant gambler?"
"Only since my mother died," Alcide said, after a long pause.
"I'm sorry." I kept my eyes off his face in case he needed some privacy. "I don't have either of my parents," I offered.
"They been gone long?"
"Since I was seven."
"Who raised you?"
"My grandmother raised me and my brother."
"She still living?"
"No. She died this year. She was murdered."
"Tough." He was matter-of-fact.
"Yeah." I had one more question. "Did both your parents tell you about yourself?"
"No. My grandfather told me when I was about thirteen. He'd noticed the signs. I just don't know how orphaned Weres get through it without guidance."
"That would be really rough."
"We try to keep aware of all the Weres breeding in the area, so no one will go unwarned."
Even a secondhand warning would be better than no warning at all. But still, such a session would be a major trauma in anyone's life.
We stopped in Vicksburg to get gas. I offered to pay for filling the tank, but Alcide told me firmly this could go on his books as a business expense, since he did in fact need to see some customers. He waved off my offer to pump the gas, too. He did accept the cup of coffee I bought him, with as many thanks as if it had been a new suit. It was a cold, bright day, and I took a brisk walk around the travel center to stretch my legs before climbing back into the cab of the truck.
Seeing the signs for the battlefield reminded me of one of the most taxing days I'd had as an adult. I found myself telling Alcide about my grandmother's favorite club, the Descendants of the Glorious Dead, and about their field trip to the battlefield two years before. I'd driven one car, Maxine Fortenberry (grandmother of one of my brother Jason's good buddies) another, and we'd toured at length. Each of the Descendants had brought a favorite text covering the siege, and an early stop at the visitors' center had gotten the Descendants all tanked up with maps and memorabilia. Despite the failure of Velda Cannon's Depends, we'd had a great time. We'd read every monument, we'd had a picnic lunch by the restored USS Cairo, and we'd gone home laden with souvenir booty and exhausted. We'd even gone into the Isle of Capri Casino for an hour of amazed staring, and some tentative slot machine feeding. It had been a very happy day for my grandmother, almost as happy a time as the evening she'd inveigled Bill into speaking at the Descendants meeting.
"Why did she want him to do that?" Alcide asked. He was smiling at my description of our supper stop at a Cracker Barrel.
"Bill's a vet," I said. "An Army vet, not an animal-doctor vet."
"So?" After a beat, he said, "You mean your boyfriend is a veteran of the Civil War!"
"Yeah. He was human then. He wasn't brought over until after the war. He had a wife and children." I could hardly keep calling him my boyfriend, since he'd been on the verge of leaving me for someone else.
"Who made him a vampire?" Alcide asked. We were in Jackson now, and he was making his way downtown to the apartment his company maintained.
"I don't know," I said. "He doesn't talk about it."
"That seems a little strange to me."
Actually, it seemed a little strange to me, too; but I figured it was something really personal, and when Bill wanted to tell me about it, he would. The relationship was very strong, I knew, between the older vampire and the one he'd "brought over."
"I guess he really isn't my boyfriend anymore," I admitted. Though "boyfriend" seemed a pretty pale term for what Bill had been to me.
"Oh, yeah?"
I flushed. I shouldn't have said anything. "But I still have to find him."
We were silent for a while after that. The last city I'd visited had been Dallas, and it was easy to see that Jackson was nowhere close to that size. (That was a big plus, as far as I was concerned.) Alcide pointed out the golden figure on the dome of the new capitol, and I admired it appropriately. I thought it was an eagle, but I wasn't sure, and I was a little embarrassed to ask. Did I need glasses? The building we were going to was close to the corner of High and State streets. It was not a new building; the brick had started out a golden tan, and now it was a grimy light brown.
"The apartments here are larger than they are in new buildings," Alcide said. "There's a small guest bedroom. Everything should be all ready for us. We use the apartment cleaning service."
I nodded silently. I could not remember if I'd ever been in an apartment building before. Then I realized I had, of course. There was a two-story U-shaped apartment building in Bon Temps. I had surely visited someone there; in the past seven years, almost every single person in Bon Temps had rented a place in Kingfisher Apartments at some point in his or her dating career.
Alcide's apartment, he told me, was on the top floor, the fifth. You drove in from the street down a ramp to park. There was a guard at the garage entrance, standing in a little booth. Alcide showed him a plastic pass. The heavyset guard, who had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, barely glanced at the card Alcide held out before he pressed a button to raise the barrier. I wasn't too impressed with the security. I felt like I could whip that guy, myself. My brother, Jason, could pound him into the pavement.
We scrambled out of the truck and retrieved our bags from the rudimentary backseat. My hanging bag had fared pretty well. Without asking me, Alcide took my small suitcase. He led the way to a central block in the parking area, and I saw a gleaming elevator door. He punched the button, and
it opened immediately. The elevator creaked its way up after Alcide punched the button marked with a 5. At least the elevator was very clean, and when the door swished open, so were the carpet and the hall beyond.
"They went condo, so we bought the place," Alcide said, as if it was no big deal. Yes, he and his dad had made some money. There were four apartments per floor, Alcide told me.
"Who are your neighbors?"
"Two state senators own 501, and I'm sure they've gone home for the holiday season," he said. "Mrs. Charles Osburgh the Third lives in 502, with her nurse. Mrs. Osburgh was a grand old lady until the past year. I don't think she can walk anymore. Five-oh-three is empty right now, unless the realtor sold it this past two weeks." He unlocked the door to number 504, pushed it open, and gestured for me to enter ahead of him. I entered the silent warmth of the hall, which opened on my left into a kitchen enclosed by counters, not walls, so the eye was unobstructed in sweeping the living room/dining area. There was a door immediately on my right, which probably opened onto a coat closet, and another a little farther down, which led into a small bedroom with a neatly made-up double bed. A door past that revealed a small bathroom with white-and-blue tiles and towels hung just so on the racks.
Across the living room, to my left, was a door that led into a larger bedroom. I peered inside briefly, not wanting to seem overly interested in Alcide's personal space. The bed in that room was a king. I wondered if Alcide and his dad did a lot of entertaining when they visited Jackson.
"The master bedroom has its own bath," Alcide explained. "I'd be glad to let you have the bigger room, but the phone's in there, and I'm expecting some business calls."
"The smaller bedroom is just fine," I said. I peeked around a little more after my bags were stowed in my room.
The apartment was a symphony in beige. Beige carpet, beige furniture. Sort of oriental bamboo-y patterned wallpaper with a beige background. It was very quiet and very clean.
As I hung my dresses in the closet, I wondered how many nights I'd have to go to the club. More than two, and I'd have to do some shopping. But that was impossible, at the least imprudent, on my budget. A familiar worry settled hard on my shoulders.
My grandmother hadn't had much to leave me, God bless her, especially after her funeral expenses. The house had been a wonderful and unexpected gift.
The money she'd used to raise Jason and me, money that had come from an oil well that had petered out, was long gone. The fee I'd gotten paid for moonlighting for the Dallas vampires had
mostly gone to buy the two dresses, pay my property taxes, and have a tree cut down because the previous winter's ice storm had loosened its roots and it had begun to lean too close to the house. A big branch had already fallen, damaging the tin roof a bit. Luckily, Jason and Hoyt Fortenberry had known enough about roofing to repair that for me.
I recalled the roofing truck outside of Belle Rive.
I sat on the bed abruptly. Where had that come from? Was I petty enough to be angry that my boyfriend had been thinking of a dozen different ways to be sure his descendants (the unfriendly and sometimes snooty Bellefleurs) prospered, while I, the love of his afterlife, worried herself to tears about her finances?
You bet, I was petty enough.
I should be ashamed of myself.
But later. My mind was not through toting up grievances.
As long as I was considering money (lack of), I wondered if it had even occurred to Eric when he dispatched me on this mission that since I'd be missing work, I wouldn't get paid. Since I wouldn't get paid, I couldn't pay the electric company, or the cable, or the phone, or my car insurance … though I had a moral obligation to find Bill, no matter what had happened to our relationship, right?
I flopped back on the bed and told myself that this would all work out. I knew, in the back of my mind, that all I had to do was sit down with Bill—assuming I ever got him back—and explain my situation to him, and he'd … he'd do something.
But I couldn't just take money from Bill. Of course, if we were married, it would be okay; husband and wife held all in common. But we couldn't get married. It was illegal.
And he hadn't asked me.
"Sookie?" a voice said from the doorway.
I blinked and sat up. Alcide was lounging against the jamb, his arms crossed over his chest.
"You okay?"
I nodded uncertainly.
"You missing him?"
I was too ashamed to mention my money troubles, and they weren't more important than Bill, of course. To simplify things, I nodded.
He sat beside me and put his arm around me. He was so warm. He smelled like Tide detergent, and Irish Spring soap, and man. I closed my eyes and counted to ten again.
"You miss him," he said, confirming. He reached across his body to take my left hand, and his right arm tightened around me.
You don't know how I miss him, I thought.
Apparently, once you got used to regular and spectacular sex, your body had a mind of its own (so to speak) when it was deprived of that recreation; to say nothing of missing the hugging and cuddling part. My body was begging me to knock Alcide Herveaux back onto the bed so it could have its way with him. Right now.
"I do miss him, no matter what problems we have," I said, and my voice came out tiny and shaky. I wouldn't open my eyes, because if I did, I might see on his face a tiny impulse, some little inclination, and that would be all it would take.
"What time do you think we should go to the club?" I asked, firmly steering in another direction.
He was so warm.
Other direction! "Would you like me to cook supper before we go?" Least I could do. I shot up off the bed like a bottle rocket; turned to face him with the most natural smile I could muster. Get out of close proximity, or jump his bones.
"Oh, let's go to the Mayflower Cafe. It looks like an old diner—it is an old diner—but you'll enjoy it. Everyone goes there—senators and carpenters, all kinds of people. They just serve beer, that okay?" I shrugged and nodded. That was fine with me. "I don't drink much," I told him.
"Me neither," he said. "Maybe because, every so often, my dad tends to drink too much. Then he makes bad decisions." Alcide seemed to regret having told me this. "After the Mayflower, we'll go to the club," Alcide said, much more briskly. "It gets dark real early these days, but the vamps don't show up till they've had some blood, picked up their dates, done some business. We should get there about ten. So we'll go out to eat about eight, if that suits you?"
"Sure, that'll be great." I was at a loss. It was only two in the afternoon. His apartment didn't need cleaning. There was no reason to cook. If I wanted to read, I had romance novels in my suitcase. But in my present condition, it was hardly likely to help my state of … mind.
"Listen, would it be okay if I ran out to visit some clients?" he asked.
"Oh, that would be fine." I thought it would be all to the good if he wasn't in my immediate vicinity. "You go do whatever you need to do. I have books to read, and there's the television." Maybe I could begin the mystery novel.
"If you want to … I don't know … my sister, Janice, owns a beauty shop about four blocks away, in one of the older neighborhoods. She married a local guy. You want to, you could walk over and get the works."
"Oh, I … well, that …" I didn't have the sophistication to think of a smooth and plausible refusal, when the glaring roadblock to such a treat was my lack of money.
Suddenly, comprehension crossed his face. "If you stopped by, it would give Janice the opportunity to look you over. After all, you're supposed to be my girlfriend, and she hated Debbie. She'd really enjoy a visit."
"You're being awful nice," I said, trying not to sound as confused and touched as I felt. "That's not what I expected."
"You're not what I expected, either," he said, and left his sister's shop number by the phone before heading out on his business.
Chapter Five
Janice Herveaux Phillips (married two years, mother of one, I learned quickly) was exactly what I might have expected of a sister of Alcide's. She was tall, attractive, plainspoken, and confident; and she ran her business efficiently.
I seldom went into beauty parlors. My gran had always done her own home perms, and I had never colored my hair or done anything else to it, besides a trim now and then. When I confessed this to Janice, who'd noticed I was looking around me with the curiosity of the ignorant, her broad face split in a grin. "Then you'll need everything," she said with satisfaction.
"No, no, no," I protested anxiously. "Alcide—."
"Called me on his cell phone and made it clear I was to give you the works," Janice said. "And frankly, honey, anyone who helps him recover from that Debbie is my best friend."
I had to smile. "But I'll pay," I told her.
"No, your money's no good here," she said. "Even if you break up with Alcide tomorrow, just getting him through tonight will be worth it."
"Tonight?" I began to have a sinking feeling that once again, I didn't know everything there was to know.
"I happen to know that tonight that bitch is going to announce her engagement at that club they go to," Janice said.
Okay, this time what I didn't know was something pretty major. "She's marrying the—man she took up with after she dumped Alcide?" (I barely stopped myself from saying, "The shapeshifter?")
"Quick work, huh? What could he have that my brother doesn't have?"
"I can't imagine," I said with absolutely sincerity, earning a quick smile from Janice. There was sure to be a flaw in her brother somewhere—maybe Alcide came to the supper table in his underwear, or picked his nose in public.
"Well, if you find out, you let me know. Now, let's get you going." Janice glanced around her in a businesslike way. "Corinne is going to give you your pedicure and manicure, and Jarvis is going to do your hair. You sure have a great head of it," Janice said in a more personal way.
"All mine, all natural," I admitted.
"No color?"
"Nope."
"You're the lucky one," Janice said, shaking her head.
That was a minority opinion.
Janice herself was working on a client whose silver hair and gold jewelry proclaimed she was a woman of privilege, and while this cold-faced lady examined me with indifferent eyes, Janice fired off some instructions to her employees and went back to Ms. Big Bucks.
I had never been so pampered in my life. And everything was new to me. Corinne (manicures and pedicures), who was as plump and juicy as one of the sausages I'd cooked that morning, painted my toenails and fingernails screaming red to match the dress I was going to wear. The only male in the shop, Jarvis, had fingers as light and quick as butterflies. He was thin as a reed and artificially platinum blond. Entertaining me with a stream of chatter, he washed and set my hair and established me under the dryer. I was one chair down from the rich lady, but I got just as much attention. I had a People magazine to read, and Corinne brought me a Coke. It was so nice to have people urging me to relax.
I was feeling kind of roasted under the dryer when the timer dinged. Jarvis got me out from under it and set me back in his chair. After consulting with Janice, he whipped his preheated curling iron from a sort of holster mounted on the wall, and painstakingly arranged my hair in loose curls trailing down my back. I looked spectacular. Looking spectacular makes you happy. This was the best I'd felt since Bill had left.
Janice came over to talk every moment she was able. I caught myself forgetting that I wasn't Alcide's real girlfriend, with a real chance of becoming Janice's sister-in-law. This kind of acceptance didn't come my way too often.
I was wishing I could repay her kindness in some way, when a chance presented itself. Jarvis's station mirrored Janice's, so my back was to Janice's customer's back. Left on my own while Jarvis went to get a bottle of the conditioner he thought I should try, I watched (in the mirror) Janice take off her earrings and put them in a little china dish. I might never have observed what happened next if I hadn't picked up a clear covetous thought from the rich lady's head, which was, simply, "Aha!" Janice walked away to get another towel, and in the clear reflection, I watched the silver-haired customer deftly sweep up the earrings and stuff them into her jacket pocket, while Janice's back was turned.
By the time I was finished, I'd figured out what to do. I was just waiting to say good-bye to Jarvis, who'd had to go to the telephone; I knew he was talking to his mother, from the pictures I got from his head. So I slid out of my vinyl chair and walked over to the rich woman, who was writing a check for Janice.
"'Scuse me," I said, smiling brilliantly. Janice looked a little startled, and the elegant woman looked snooty. This was a client who spent a lot of money here, and Janice wouldn't want to lose her. "You got a smear of hair gel on your jacket. If you'll please just slide out of it for a second, I'll get it right off."
She could hardly refuse. I grasped the jacket shoulders and gently tugged, and she automatically helped me slide the green-and-red plaid jacket down her arms. I carried it behind the screen that concealed the hair-washing area, and wiped at a perfectly clean area just for verisimilitude (a great word from my Word of the Day calendar). Of course, I also extracted the earrings and put them in my own pocket.
"There you are, good as new!" I beamed at her and helped her into the jacket.
"Thanks, Sookie," Janice said, too brightly. She suspected something was amiss.
"You're welcome!" I smiled steadily.
"Yes, of course," said the elegant woman, somewhat confusedly. "Well, I'll see you next week, Janice."
She clicked on her high heels all the way out the door, not looking back. When she was out of sight, I reached in my pocket and held out my hand to Janice. She opened her hand under mine, and I dropped the earrings into her palm.
"Good God almighty," Janice said, suddenly looking about five years older. "I forgot and left something where she could reach it."
"She does this all the time?"
"Yeah. That's why we're about the fifth beauty salon she's patronized in the past ten years. The others put up with it for a while, but eventually she did that one thing too many. She's so rich, and so educated, and she was brought up right. I don't know why she does stuff like this."
We shrugged at each other, the vagaries of the white-collar well-to-do beyond our comprehension. It was a moment of perfect understanding. "I hope you don't lose her as a customer. I tried to be tactful," I said.
"And I really appreciate that. But I would have hated losing those earrings more than losing her as a client. My husband gave them to me. They tend to pinch after a while, and I didn't even think when I pulled them off."
I'd been thanked more than enough. I pulled on my own coat. "I better be off," I said. "I've really enjoyed the wonderful treat."
"Thank my brother," Janice said, her broad smile restored. "And, after all, you just paid for it." She held up the earrings.
I was smiling, too, as I left the warmth and camaraderie of the salon, but that didn't last too long. The thermometer had dropped and the sky was getting darker by the minute. I walked the distance back to the apartment building very briskly. After a chilly ride on a creaky elevator, I was glad to use the key Alcide had given me and step into the warmth. I switched on a lamp and turned on the television for a little company, and I huddled on the couch and thought about the pleasures of the afternoon. Once I'd thawed out, I realized Alcide must have turned down the thermostat. Though pleasant compared to the out-of-doors, the apartment was definitely on the cool side.
The sound of the key in the door roused me out of my reverie, and Alcide came in with a clipboard full of paperwork. He looked tired and preoccupied, but his face relaxed when he saw me waiting.
"Janice called me to tell me you'd come by," he said. His voice warmed up as he spoke. "She wanted me to say thank you again."
I shrugged. "I appreciate my hair and my new nails," I said. "I've never done that before."
"You've never been to a beauty shop before?"
"My grandmother went every now and then. I had my ends trimmed, once."
He looked as stunned as if I'd confessed I'd never seen a flush toilet.
To cover my embarrassment, I fanned my nails out for his admiration. I hadn't wanted very long ones, and these were the shortest ones Corinne could in all conscience manage, she had told me. "My toenails match," I told my host.
"Let's see," he said.
I untied my sneakers and pulled off my socks. I held out my feet. "Aren't they pretty?" I asked.
He was looking at me kind of funny. "They look great," he said quietly.
I glanced at the clock on top of the television. "I guess I better go get ready," I said, trying to figure out how to take a bath without affecting my hair and nails. I thought of Janice's news about Debbie. "You're really ready to dress up tonight, right?"
"Sure," he said gamely.
"'Cause I'm going all out."
That interested him. "That would mean … ?"
"Wait and see." This was a nice guy, with a nice family, doing me a heavy-duty favor. Okay, he'd been coerced into it. But he was being extremely gracious to me, under any circumstances.
***
I rolled out of my room an hour later. Alcide was standing in the kitchen, pouring himself a Coke. It ran over the edge of the glass while he took me in.
That was a real compliment.
While Alcide mopped up the counter with a paper towel, he kept darting glances at me. I turned around slowly.
I was wearing red—screaming red, fire engine red. I was going to freeze most of the evening, because my dress didn't have any shoulders, though it did have long sleeves that you slid on separately. It zipped up the back. It flared below the hips, what there was below the hips. My grandmother would have flung herself across the doorsill to keep me from going out the door in this dress. I loved it. I had got it on extreme sale at Tara's Togs; I suspected Tara had kind of put it aside for me. Acting on a huge and unwise impulse, I'd bought the shoes and lipstick to go with it. And now the nails, thanks to Janice! I had a gray-and-black fringed silk shawl to wrap around myself, and a little bitty bag that matched my shoes. The bag was beaded.
"Turn around again," Alcide suggested a little hoarsely. He himself was wearing a conventional black suit with a white shirt and a green patterned tie that matched his eyes. Nothing, apparently, could tame his hair. Maybe he should have gone to Janice's beauty shop instead of me. He looked handsome and rough, though "attractive" might be a more accurate word than "handsome."
I rotated slowly. I wasn't confident enough to keep my eyebrows from arching in a silent question as I completed my turn.
"You look mouthwatering," he said sincerely. I released a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.
"Thanks," I said, trying not to beam like an idiot.
I had a trying time getting into Alcide's truck, what with the shortness of the dress and the highness of the heels, but with Alcide giving me a tactical boost, I managed.
Our destination was a small place on the corner of Capitol and Roach. It wasn't impressive from the outside, but the Mayflower Cafe was as interesting as Alcide had predicted. Some of the people at the tables scattered on the black-and-white tile floor were dressed to the nines, like Alcide and me. Some of them were wearing flannel and denim. Some had brought their own wine or liquor. I was glad we weren't drinking; Alcide had one beer, and that was it. I had iced tea. The food was really good, but not fancy. Dinner was long, drawn-out, and interesting. Lots of people knew Alcide, and they came by the table to say hello to him and to find out who I was. Some of these visitors were involved in the state government, some were in the building trade like Alcide, and some appeared to be friends of Alcide's dad's.
A few of them were not law-abiding men at all; even though I've always lived in Bon Temps, I know hoods when I see the product of their brains. I'm not saying they were thinking about bumping off anyone, or bribing senators, or anything specific like that. Their thoughts were greedy—greedy of money, greedy of me, and in one case, greedy of Alcide (to which he was completely oblivious, I could tell).
But most of all, these men—all of them—were greedy for power. I guess in a state capital, that lust for power was inevitable, even in as poverty-plagued a state as Mississippi.
The women with the greediest men were almost all extremely well groomed and very expensively dressed. For this one evening, I could match them, and I held my head up. One of them thought I looked like a high-priced whore, but I decided that was a compliment, at least for tonight. At least she thought I was expensive. One woman, a banker, knew Debbie the-former-girlfriend, and she examined me from head to toe, thinking Debbie would want a detailed description.
None of these people, of course, knew one thing about me. It was wonderful to be among people who had no idea of my background and upbringing, my occupation or my abilities. Determined to enjoy the feeling, I concentrated on not speaking unless I was spoken to, not spilling any food on my beautiful dress, and minding my manners, both table and social. While I was enjoying myself, I figured it would be a pity if I caused Alcide any embarrassment, since I was entering his life so briefly.
Alcide snatched the bill before I could reach it, and scowled at me when I opened my mouth to protest. I finally gave a little bob of my head. After that silent struggle, I was glad to observe that Alcide was a generous tipper. That raised him in my estimation. To tell the truth, he was entirely too high in my estimation already. I was on the alert to pick out something negative about the
man. When we got back in Alcide's pickup—this time he gave me even more help when he boosted me up to the seat, and I was pretty confident he enjoyed the procedure—we were both quiet and thoughtful.
"You didn't talk much at supper," he said. "You didn't have a good time?"
"Oh, sure, I did. I just didn't think it was a real good time to start broadcasting any opinions."
"What did you think of Jake O'Malley?" O'Malley, a man in his early sixties with thick steel-colored eyebrows, had stood talking to Alcide for at least five minutes, all the while stealing little sideways glances at my boobs.
"I think he's planning on screwing you six ways from Sunday."
It was lucky we hadn't pulled away from the curb yet. Alcide switched on the overhead light and looked at me. His face was grim. "What are you talking about?" he asked.
"He's going to underbid you on the next job, because he's bribed one of the women in your office—Thomasina something?—to let him know what you all's bid is. And then—"
"What?"
I was glad the heater was running full blast. When werewolves got mad, you could feel it in the air around you. I had so hoped I wouldn't have to explain myself to Alcide. It had been so neat, being unknown.
"You are … what?" he asked, to make sure I understood him.
"Telepath," I said, kind of mumbling.
A long silence fell, while Alcide digested this.
"Did you hear anything good?" he asked, finally.
"Sure. Mrs. O'Malley wants to jump your bones," I told him, smiling brightly. I had to remind myself not to pull at my hair.
"That's good?"
"Comparatively," I said. "Better to be screwed physically than financially." Mrs. O'Malley was at least twenty years younger than Mr. O'Malley, and she was the most groomed person I'd ever seen. I was betting she brushed her eyebrows a hundred strokes a night.
He shook his head. I had no clear picture of what he was thinking. "What about me, you read me?"
Aha. "Shape-shifters are not so easy," I said. "I can't pick out a clear line of thought, more a general mood, intentions, sort of. I guess if you thought directly at me, I'd get it. You want to try? Think something at me."
The dishes I use at the apartment have a border of yellow roses.
"I wouldn't call them roses," I said doubtfully. "More like zinnias, if you ask me."
I could feel his withdrawal, his wariness. I sighed. Same old, same old. It sort of hurt, since I liked him. "But just to pick your own thoughts out of your head, that's a murky area," I said. "I can't consistently do that, with Weres and shifters." (A few Supes were fairly easy to read, but I saw no need to bring that up at this point in time.)
"Thank God."
"Oh?" I said archly, in an attempt to lighten the mood. "What are you afraid I'll read?"
Alcide actually grinned at me before he turned off the dome light and we pulled out of our parking space. "Never mind," he said, almost absently. "Never mind. So what you're going to be doing tonight is reading minds, to try to pick up clues about your vampire's whereabouts?"
"That's right. I can't read vampires; they don't seem to put out any brainwaves. That's just how I put it. I don't know how I do this, or if there's a scientific way to phrase it." I wasn't exactly lying: Undead minds really were unreadable—except for a little split second's glimpse every now and then (which hardly counted, and no one could know about). If vampires thought I could read their minds, not even Bill could save me. If he would.
Every time I forgot for a second that our relationship had radically changed, it hurt all over again to be reminded.
"So what's your plan?"
"I'm aiming for humans dating or serving local vampires. Humans were the actual abductors. He was snatched in daytime. At least, that's what they told Eric."
"I should have asked you about this earlier," he said, mostly to himself. "Just in case I hear something the regular way—through my ears—maybe you should tell me the circumstances."
As we drove by what Alcide said was the old train station, I gave him a quick summary. I caught a glimpse of a street sign reading "Amite" as we pulled up to an awning that stretched over a deserted length of sidewalk in the outskirts of downtown Jackson. The area directly under the awning was lit with a brilliant and cold light. Somehow that length of sidewalk seemed creepily ominous, especially since the rest of the street was dark. Uneasiness crawled down my back. I felt a deep reluctance to stop at that bit of sidewalk.
It was a stupid feeling, I told myself. It was just a stretch of cement. No beasts were in sight. After the businesses closed at five, downtown Jackson was not exactly teeming, even under ordinary circumstances. I was willing to bet that most of the sidewalks in the whole state of Mississippi were bare on this cold December night.
But there was something ominous in the air, a watchfulness laced with a charge of malice. The eyes observing us were invisible; but they were observing us, nonetheless. When Alcide climbed out of the truck and came around to help me down, I noticed that he left the keys in the ignition. I swung my legs outward and put my hands on his shoulders, my long silk stole wound firmly around me and trailing behind, fringe trembling in a gust of chilled air. I pushed off as he lifted, and then I was on the sidewalk.
The truck drove away.
I looked at Alcide sideways, to see if this was startling to him, but he looked quite matter-of-fact. "Vehicles parked in front would attract attention from the general public," he told me, his voice hushed in the vast silence of that coldly lit bit of pavement.
"They can come in? Regular people?" I asked, nodding toward the single metal door. It looked as uninviting as a door can look. There was no name anywhere on it, or on the building, for that matter. No Christmas decorations, either. (Of course, vampires don't observe holidays, except for Halloween. It's the ancient festival of Samhain dressed up in trappings that the vamps find delightful. So Halloween's a great favorite, and it's celebrated worldwide in the vamp community.)
"Sure, if they want to pay a twenty-dollar cover charge to drink the worst drinks in five states. Served by the rudest waiters. Very slowly."
I tried to smother my smile. This was not a smiley kind of place. "And if they stick that out?"
"There's no floor show, no one speaks to them, and if they last much longer, they find themselves out on the sidewalk getting into their car with no memory of how they got there."
He grasped the handle of the door and pulled it open. The dread that soaked the air did not seem to affect Alcide.
We stepped into a tiny hall that was blocked by another door after about four feet. There, again, I knew we were being watched, though I couldn't see a camera or a peephole anywhere.
"What's the name of this place?" I whispered.
"The vamp that owns it calls it Josephine's," he said, just as quietly. "But Weres call it Club Dead."
I thought about laughing, but the inner door opened just then.
The doorman was a goblin.
I had never seen one before, but the word "goblin" popped into my mind as if I had a supernatural dictionary printed on the inside of my eyeballs. He was very short and very cranky-looking, with a knobby face and broad hands. His eyes were full of fire and malignance. He glared up at us as if customers were the last things he needed.
Why any ordinary person would walk into Josephine's after the cumulative effect of the haunted sidewalk, the vanishing vehicle, and the goblin at the door … well, some people are just born asking to be killed, I guess.
"Mr. Herveaux," the goblin said slowly, in a deep, growly voice. "Good to have you back. Your companion is … ?"
"Miss Stackhouse," Alcide said. "Sookie, this is Mr. Hob." The goblin examined me with glowing eyes. He looked faintly troubled, as if he couldn't quite fit me into a slot; but after a second, he stood aside to let us pass.
Josephine's was not very crowded. Of course, it was somewhat early for its patrons. After the eerie build-up, the large room looked almost disappointingly like any other bar. The serving area itself was in the middle of the room, a large square bar with a lift-up panel for the staff to go to and fro. I wondered if the owner had been watching reruns of Cheers. The glasses hung down, suspended on racks, and there were artificial plants and low music and dim lighting. There were polished bar stools set evenly all around the square. To the left of the bar was a small dance floor, and even farther left was a tiny stage for a band or a disc jockey. On the other three sides of the square were the usual small tables, about half of which were in use.
Then I spotted the list of ambiguous rules on the wall, rules designed to be understood by the regular habitues, but not by the occasional tourist. "No Changing on the Premises," one said sternly. (Weres and shifters could not switch from animal to human when they were at the bar; well, I could understand that.) "No Biting of Any Kind," said another. "No Live Snacks," read a third. Ick.
The vampires were scattered throughout the bar, some with others of their own kind, some with humans. There was a raucous party of shifters in the southeast corner, where several tables had been drawn together to accommodate the size of the party. The center of this group appeared to be a tall young woman with gleaming short black hair, an athletic build, and a long, narrow face. She was draped over a square man of her own age, which I guessed to be about twenty-eight. He had round eyes and a flat nose and the softest looking hair I'd ever seen—it was almost baby fine, and so light a blond, it was nearly white. I wondered if this were the engagement party, and I wondered if Alcide had known it was to take place. His attention was definitely focused on that group.
Naturally, I immediately checked out what the other women in the bar were wearing. The female vampires and the women with male vampires were dressed about at my level. The shifter females tended to dress down a bit more. The black-haired woman I'd pegged for Debbie was wearing a gold silk blouse and skintight brown leather pants, with boots. She laughed at some comment of the blond man's, and I felt Alcide's arm grow rigid under my fingers. Yep, this must be the ex-girlfriend, Debbie. Her good time had certainly escalated since she'd glimpsed Alcide's entrance.
Phony bitch, I decided in the time it takes to snap your fingers, and I made up my mind to behave accordingly. The goblin Hob led the way to an empty table within view of the happy party, and held out a chair for me. I nodded to him politely, and unwound my wrap, folding it and tossing it onto an empty chair. Alcide sat in the chair to my right, so he could put his back to the corner where the shifters were having such a raucous good time.
A bone-thin vampire came to take our order. Alcide asked my pleasure with an inclination of his head. "A champagne cocktail," I said, having no idea what one tasted like. I'd never gone to the trouble to mix myself one at Merlotte's, but now that I was in someone else's bar, I thought I'd give it a shot. Alcide ordered a Heineken. Debbie was casting many glances our way, so I leaned forward and smoothed back a lock of Alcide's curly black hair. He looked surprised, though of course Debbie couldn't see that.
"Sookie?" he said, rather doubtfully.
I smiled at him, not my nervous smile—because I wasn't, for once. Thanks to Bill, I now had a little confidence about my own physical attractiveness. "Hey, I'm your date, remember? I'm acting date-like," I told him.
The thin vampire brought our drinks just then, and I clinked my glass against his bottle. "To our joint venture," I said, and his eyes lit up. We sipped.
I loved champagne cocktails.
"Tell me more about your family," I said, because I enjoyed listening to his nimbly voice. I would have to wait until there were more humans in the bar before I began listening in to others' thoughts.
Alcide obligingly began telling me about how poor his dad had been when he started his surveying business, and how long it had taken for him to prosper. He was just beginning to tell me about his mother when Debbie sashayed up.
It had only been a matter of time.
"Hello, Alcide," she purred. Since he hadn't been able to see her coming, his strong face quivered. "Who's your new friend? Did you borrow her for the evening?"
"Oh, longer than that," I said clearly, and smiled at Debbie, a smile that matched her own for sincerity.
"Really?" If her eyebrows had crawled any higher, they'd have been in heaven.
"Sookie is a good friend," Alcide said impassively.
"Oh?" Debbie doubted his word. "It wasn't too long ago you told me you'd never have another 'friend' if you couldn't have … Well." She smirked.
I covered Alcide's huge hand with my own and gave her a look that implied much.
"Tell me," Debbie said, her lips curling in a skeptical way, "how do you like that birthmark of Alcide's?"
Who could have predicted she was willing to be a bitch so openly? Most women try to hide it, at least from strangers.
It's on my right butt cheek. It's shaped like a rabbit. Well, how nice. Alcide had remembered what I'd said, and he'd thought directly at me.
"I love bunnies," I said, still smiling, my hand drifting down Alcide's back to caress, very lightly, the top of his right buttock.
For a second, I saw sheer rage on Debbie's face. She was so focused, so controlled, that her mind was a lot less opaque than most shifters'. She was thinking about her owl fiance, about how he wasn't as good in the sack as Alcide, but he had a lot of ready cash and he was willing to have children, which Alcide wasn't. And she was stronger than the owl, able to dominate him.
She was no demon (of course, her fiancé would have a really short shelf life if she were) but she was no sweetie, either.
Debbie still could have recovered the situation, but her discovery that I knew Alcide's little secret made her nuts. She made a big mistake.
She raked me over with a glare that would have paralyzed a lion. "Looks like you went to Janice's salon today," she said, taking in the casually tumbled curls, the fingernails. Her own straight black hair had been cut in asymmetrical clumps, tiny locks of different lengths, making her look a little like a dog in a very good show, maybe an Afghan. Her narrow face increased the resemblance. "Janice never sends anyone out looking like they live in this century."
Alcide opened his mouth, rage tensing all his muscles. I laid my hand on his arm.
"What do you think of my hair?" I asked softly, moving my head so it slithered over my bare shoulders. I took his hand and held it gently to the curls falling over my chest. Hey, I was pretty good at this! Sookie the sex kitten.
Alcide caught his breath. His fingers trailed through the length of my hair, and his knuckles brushed my collarbone. "I think it's beautiful," he said, and his voice was both sincere and husky.
I smiled at him.
"I guess instead of borrowing you, he rented you," Debbie said, goaded into irreparable error.
It was a terrible insult, to both of us. It took every bit of resolution I had to hang on to a ladylike self-control. I felt the primitive self, the truer me, swim nearly to the surface. We sat staring at the shifter, and she blanched at our silence. "Okay, I shouldn't have said that," she said nervously. "Just forget it."
Because she was a shifter, she'd beat me in a fair fight. Of course, I had no intention of fighting fair, if it came to that.
I leaned over and touched one red fingertip to her leather pants. "Wearing Cousin Elsie?" I asked.
Unexpectedly, Alcide burst into laughter. I smiled at him as he doubled over, and when I looked up, Debbie was stalking back to her party, who had fallen silent during our exchange.
I reminded myself to skip going to the ladies' room alone this evening.
***
By the time we ordered our second drinks, the place was full. Some Were friends of Alcide's came in, a large group—Weres like to travel in packs, I understand. Shifters, it depended on the animal they most often shifted to. Despite their theoretical versatility, Sam had told me that shape-shifters most often changed to the same animal every time, some creature they had a special affinity for. And they might call themselves by that animal: weredog, or werebat, or weretiger. But never just "Weres"—that term was reserved for the wolves. The true werewolves scorned such variance in form, and they didn't think much of shifters in general. They, the werewolves, considered themselves the cream of the shape-shifting world.
Shifters, on the other hand, Alcide explained, thought of werewolves as the thugs of the supernatural scene. "And you do find a lot of us in the building trades," he said, as if he were trying hard to be fair. "Lots of Weres are mechanics, or brick masons, or plumbers, or cooks."
"Useful occupations," I said.
"Yes," he agreed. "But not exactly white-collar. So though we all cooperate with each other, to some extent, there's a lot of class discrimination."
A small group of Weres in motorcycle gear strode in. They wore the same sort of leather vest with wolf's heads on the back that had been worn by the man who'd attacked me at Merlotte's. I wondered if they'd started searching for their comrade yet. I wondered if they had a clearer idea of who they were looking for, what they'd do if they realized who I was. The four men ordered several pitchers of beer and began talking very secretively, heads close together and chairs pulled right up to the table.
A deejay—he appeared to be a vampire—began to play records at the perfect level; you could be sure what the song was, but you could still talk.
"Let's dance," Alcide suggested.
I hadn't expected that; but it would put me closer to the vampires and their humans, so I accepted. Alcide held my chair for me, and took my hand as we went over to the minuscule dance floor. The vampire changed the music from some heavy metal thing to Sarah McLachlan's "Good Enough," which is slow, but with a beat.
I can't sing, but I can dance; as it happened, Alcide could, too.
The good thing about dancing is that you don't have to talk for a while, if you feel chatted out. The bad thing is it makes you hyperconscious of your partner's body. I had already been uncomfortably aware of Alcide's—excuse me—animal magnetism. Now, so close to him, swaying in rhythm with him, following his every move, I found myself in a kind of trance. When the song was over, we stayed on the little dance floor, and I kept my eyes on the floor. When the next song started up, a
faster piece of music—though for the life of me I couldn't have told you what—we began dancing again, and I spun and dipped and moved with the werewolf.
Then the muscular squat man sitting at a bar stool behind us said to his vampire companion, "He hasn't talked yet. And Harvey called today. He said they searched the house and didn't find anything."
"Public place," said his companion, in a sharp voice. The vampire was a very small man—perhaps he'd become a vampire when men were shorter.
I knew they were talking about Bill, because the human was thinking of Bill when he said, "He hasn't talked." And the human was an exceptional broadcaster, both sound and visuals coming through clearly.
When Alcide tried to lead me away from their orbit, I resisted his lead. Looking up into his surprised face, I cut my eyes toward the couple. Comprehension filtered into his eyes, but he didn't look happy.
Dancing and trying to read another person's mind at the same time is not something I'd recommend. I was straining mentally, and my heart was pounding with shock at the glimpse of Bill's image. Luckily, Alcide excused himself to go to the men's room just then, parking me on a stool at the bar right by the vampire. I tried to keep looking around at different dancers, at the deejay, at anything but the man to the vampire's left, the man whose mind I was trying to pick through.
He was thinking about what he'd done during the day; he'd been trying to keep someone awake, someone who really needed to sleep—a vampire. Bill.
Keeping a vampire awake during the day was the worst kind of torture. It was difficult to do, too. The compulsion to sleep when the sun came up was imperative, and the sleep itself was like death.
Somehow, it had never crossed my mind—I guess since I'm an American—that the vampires who had snatched Bill might be resorting to evil means to get him to talk. If they wanted the information, naturally they weren't just going to wait around until Bill felt like telling them. Stupid me—dumb, dumb, dumb. Even knowing Bill had betrayed me, even knowing he had thought of leaving me for his vampire lover, I was struck deep with pain for him.
Engrossed in my unhappy thoughts, I didn't recognize trouble when it was standing right beside me. Until it grabbed me by the arm.
One of the Were gang members, a big dark-haired man, very heavy and very smelly, had grabbed hold of my arm. He was getting his greasy fingerprints all over my beautiful red sleeves, and I tried to pull away from him.
"Come to our table and let us get to know you, sweet thing," he said, grinning at me. He had a couple of earrings in one ear. I wondered what happened to them during the full moon. But almost immediately, I realized I had more serious problems to solve. The expression on his face was too frank; men just didn't look at women that way unless those women were standing on a street corner in hot pants and a bra: in other words, he thought I was a sure thing.
"No, thank you," I said politely. I had a weary, wary feeling that this wasn't going to be the end of it, but I might as well try. I'd had plenty of experience at Merlotte's with pushy guys, but I always had backup at Merlotte's. Sam wouldn't tolerate the servers being pawed or insulted.
"Sure, darlin'. You want to come see us," he said insistently.
For the first time in my life, I wished Bubba were with me.
I was getting far too used to people who bothered me meeting a bad end. And maybe I was getting too accustomed to having some of my problems solved by others.
I thought of scaring the Were by reading his mind. It would have been an easy read—he was wide open, for a Were. But not only were his thoughts boring and unsurprising (lust, aggression), if his gang was charged with searching for the girlfriend of Bill the vampire, and they knew she was a barmaid and a telepath, and they found a telepath, well …
"No, I don't want to come sit with you," I said definitely. "Leave me alone." I slid off the stool so I wouldn't be trapped in one position.
"You don't have no man here. We're real men, honey." With his free hand, he cupped himself. Oh, charming. That really made me horny. "We'll keep you happy."
"You couldn't make me happy if you were Santa Claus," I said, stomping on his instep with all my strength. If he hadn't been wearing motorcycle boots, it might have been effective. As it was, I came close to breaking the heel of my shoe. I was mentally cursing my false nails because they made it hard to form a fist. I was going to hit him in the nose with my free hand; a blow to the nose really hurts badly. He'd have to let go.
He snarled at me, really snarled, when my heel hit his instep, but he didn't loosen his grip. His free hand seized my bare shoulder, and his fingers dug in.
I'd been trying to be quiet, hoping to resolve this without hubbub, but I was past that point right now. "Let go!" I yelled, as I made a heroic attempt to knee him in the balls. His thighs were heavy and his stance narrow, so I couldn't get a good shot. But I did make him flinch, and though his nails gouged my shoulder, he let go.
Part of this was due to the fact that Alcide had a hold on the scruff of his neck. And Mr. Hob stepped in, just as the other gang members surged around the bar to come to the aid of their buddy. The goblin who'd ushered us into the club doubled as the bouncer, it happened. Though he looked like a very small man on the outside, he wrapped his arms around the biker's waist and lifted him with ease. The biker began shrieking, and the smell of burned flesh began to circulate in the bar. The rail-thin bartender switched on a heavy-duty exhaust fan, which helped a lot, but we could hear the screams of the biker all the way down a narrow dark hall I hadn't noticed before. It must lead to the rear exit of the building. Then there was a big clang, a yell, and the same clang sounding again. Clearly, the back door of the bar had been opened and the offender tossed outside.
Alcide swung around to face the biker's friends, while I stood shaking with reaction behind him. I was bleeding from the imprints of the biker's fingernails in the flesh of my shoulder. I needed some Neosporin, which was what my grandmother had put on every injury when I'd objected to Campho-Phenique. But any little first-aid concerns were going to have to wait: It looked as though we faced another fight. I glanced around for a weapon, and saw the bartender had gotten a baseball bat out and laid it on the bar. She was keeping a wary eye on the situation. I seized the bat and went to stand beside Alcide. I swung the bat into position and waited for the next move. As my brother, Jason, had taught me—based on his many fights in bars, I'm afraid—I picked out one man in particular, pictured myself swinging the bat and bringing it to strike on his knee, which was more accessible to me than his head. That would bring him down, sure enough.
Then someone stepped into the no-man's-land between Alcide and me and the Weres. It was the small vampire, the one who'd been talking with the human whose mind had been such a source of unpleasant information.
Maybe five feet five with his shoes on, he was also slight of build. When he'd died, he'd been in his early twenties, I guessed. Clean-shaven and very pale, he had eyes the color of bitter chocolate, a jarring contrast with his red hair.
"Miss, I apologize for this unpleasantness," he said, his voice soft and his accent heavily Southern. I hadn't heard an accent that thick since my great-grandmother had died twenty years ago.
"I'm sorry the peace of the bar has been disturbed," I said, summoning up as much dignity as I could while gripping a baseball bat. I'd instinctively kicked off my heels so I could fight. I straightened up from my fighting stance, and inclined my head to him, acknowledging his authority.
"You men should leave now," the little man said, turning to the group of Weres, "after apologizing to this lady and her escort."
They milled around uneasily, but none wanted to be the first to back down. One of them who was apparently younger and dumber than the others, was a blond with a heavy beard and a bandanna around his head in a particularly stupid-looking style. He had the fire of battle in his eyes; his pride couldn't handle the whole situation. The biker telegraphed his move before he'd even begun it, and quick as lightning I held out the bat to the vampire, who snatched it in a move so fast, I couldn't even glimpse it. He used it to break the werewolf's leg.
The bar was absolutely silent as the screaming biker was carried out by his friends. The Weres chorused, "Sorry, sorry," as they lifted the blond and removed him from of the bar.
Then the music started again, the small vampire returned the bat to the bartender, Alcide began checking me over for damage, and I began shaking.
"I'm fine," I said, pretty much just wanting everyone to look somewhere else.
"But you're bleeding, my dear," said the vampire.
It was true; my shoulder was trailing blood from the biker's fingernails. I knew etiquette. I leaned toward the vampire, offering him the blood.
"Thank you," he said instantly, and his tongue flicked out. I knew I would heal better and quicker with his saliva anyway, so I held quite still, though to tell the truth, it was like letting someone feel me up in public. Despite my discomfort, I smiled, though I know it can't have been a comfortable smile. Alcide held my hand, which was reassuring.
"Sorry I didn't come out quicker," he said.
"Not something you can predict." Lick, lick, lick. Oh, come on, I had to have stopped bleeding by now.
The vampire straightened, ran his tongue over his lips, and smiled at me. "That was quite an experience. May I introduce myself? I'm Russell Edgington."
Russell Edgington, the king of Mississippi; from the reaction of the bikers, I had suspected as much. "Pleased to meet you," I said politely, wondering if I should curtsey. But he hadn't introduced himself by his title. "I'm Sookie Stackhouse, and this is my friend Alcide Herveaux."
"I've known the Herveaux family for years," the king of Mississippi said. "Good to see you, Alcide. How's that father of yours?" We might have been standing in the Sunday sunlight outside the First Presbyterian Church, rather than in a vampire bar at midnight.
"Fine, thank you," Alcide said, somewhat stiffly. "We're sorry there was trouble."
"Not your fault," the vampire said graciously. "Men sometimes have to leave their ladies alone, and ladies are not responsible for the bad manners of fools." Edgington actually bowed to me. I had no idea what to do in response, but an even deeper head-inclination seemed safe. "You're like a rose blooming in an untended garden, my dear."
And you're full of bull hockey. "Thank you, Mr. Edgington," I said, casting my eyes down lest he read the skepticism in them. Maybe I should have called him "Your Highness"? "Alcide, I'm afraid I need to call it a night," I said, trying to sound soft and gentle and shaken. It was a little too easy.
"Of course, darlin'," he said instantly. "Let me get your wrap and purse." He began making his way to our table immediately, God bless him.
"Now, Miss Stackhouse, we want you to come back tomorrow night," Russell Edgington said. His human friend stood behind Edgington, his hands resting on Edgington's shoulders. The small vampire reached up and patted one of those hands. "We don't want you scared off by the bad manners of one individual."
"Thanks, I'll mention that to Alcide," I said, not letting any enthusiasm leak into my voice. I hoped I appeared subservient to Alcide without being spineless. Spineless people didn't last long around vampires. Russell Edgington believed he was projecting the appearance of an old-style Southern gentleman, and if that was his thing, I might as well feed it.
Alcide returned, and his face was grim. "I'm afraid your wrap had an accident," he said, and I realized he was furious. "Debbie, I guess."
My beautiful silk shawl had a big hole burned in it. I tried to keep my face impassive, but I didn't manage very well. Tears actually welled up in my eyes, I suppose because the incident with the biker had shaken me already.
Edgington, of course, was soaking this all in.
"Better the shawl than me," I said, attempting a shrug. I made the corners of my mouth turn up. At least my little purse appeared intact, though I hadn't had any more in it than a compact and a lipstick, and enough cash to pay for supper. To my intense embarrassment, Alcide shrugged out of his suit coat and held it for me to slide into. I began to protest, but the look on his face said he wasn't going to take no for an answer.
"Good night, Miss Stackhouse," the vampire said. "Herveaux, see you tomorrow night? Does your business keep you in Jackson?"
"Yes, it does," Alcide said pleasantly. "It was good to talk to you, Russell."
***
The truck was outside the club when we emerged. The sidewalk seemed no less full of menace than it had when we arrived. I wondered how all these effects were achieved, but I was too depressed to question my escort.
"You shouldn't have given me your coat, you must be freezing," I said, after we'd driven a couple of blocks.
"I have on more clothes than you," Alcide said.
He wasn't shivering like I was, even without his coat. I huddled in it, enjoying the silk lining, and the warmth, and his smell.
"I should never have left you by yourself with those jerks in the club."
"Everyone has to go to the bathroom," I said mildly.
"I should have asked someone else to sit with you."
"I'm a big girl. I don't need a perpetual guard. I handle little incidents like that all the time at the bar." If I sounded weary of it, I was. You just don't get to see the best side of men when you're a barmaid; even at a place like Merlotte's, where the owner watches out for his servers and almost all the clientele is local.
"Then you shouldn't be working there." Alcide sounded very definite.
"Okay, marry me and take me away from all this," I said, deadpan, and got a frightened look in return. I grinned at him. "I have to make my living, Alcide. And mostly, I like my job."
He looked unconvinced and thoughtful. It was time to change the subject.
"They've got Bill," I said.
"You know for sure."
"Yeah."
"Why? What does he know that Edgington would want to know so badly, badly enough to risk a war?"
"I can't tell you."
"But you do know?"
To tell him would be to say I trusted him. I was in the same kind of danger as Bill if it was known that I knew what he knew. And I'd break a lot faster.
"Yes," I said. "I know."