Book Nine 1-3

Chapter 1
“Caucasian vampires should never wear white,” the television announcer intoned. “We’ve been secretly filming Devon Dawn, who’s been a vampire for only a decade, as she gets dressed for a night on the town. Look at that outfit! It’s all wrong for her!”
“What was she thinking?” said an acidic female voice. “Talk about stuck in the nineties! Look at that blouse, if that’s what you call it. Her skin just cries out for contrasting color, and what is she putting on? Ivory! It makes her skin look like a Hefty bag.”
I paused in the act of tying my shoe to watch what happened next as the two vampire fashionistas burst in on the hapless victim—oh, excuse me, the lucky vampire—who was about to get an unsolicited makeover. She’d have the additional pleasure of realizing her friends had turned her in to the fashion police.
“I don’t think this is going to end well,” Octavia Fant said. Though my housemate Amelia Broadway had sort of slid Octavia into my house—based on a casual invitation I’d issued in a weak moment—the arrangement was working out okay.
“Devon Dawn, here’s Bev Leveto from The Best Dressed Vamp , and I’m Todd Seabrook. Your friend Tessa called to tell us you needed fashion help! We’ve been secretly filming you for the past two nights, and—AAACKK!” A white hand flashed at Todd’s throat, which vanished, leaving a gaping reddish hole. The camera lingered, fascinated, as Todd crumpled to the floor, before it rose to follow the fight between Devon Dawn and Bev.
“Gosh,” said Amelia. “Looks like Bev’s gonna win.”
“Better strategic sense,” I said. “Did you notice she let Todd go through the door first?”
“I’ve got her pinned,” Bev said triumphantly on the screen. “Devon Dawn, while Todd recovers his speech, we’re going to go through your closet. A girl who’s going to live for eternity can’t afford to be tacky. Vampires can’t get stuck in their pasts. We’ve got to be fashion forward!”
Devon Dawn whimpered, “But I like my clothes! They’re part of who I am! You’ve broken my arm.”
“It’ll heal. Listen, you don’t want to be known as the little vampire who couldn’t, do you? You don’t want to have your head stuck in the past!”
“Well, I guess not . . .”
“Good! I’ll let you up now. And I can tell from the coughing that Todd’s feeling better.”
I switched off the television and tied my other shoe, shaking my head at America’s new addiction to vampire “reality” shows. I got my red coat out of the closet. The sight of it reminded me that I myself had some absolutely real problems with a vampire; in the two and a half months since the takeover of the Louisiana vampire kingdom by the vampires of Nevada, Eric Northman had been fully occupied with consolidating his position within the new regime and evaluating what was left of the old.
We were way overdue for a chitchat about Eric’s newly recovered memories of our strange and intense time together when he’d temporarily misplaced his memory due to a spell.
“What are you going to do tonight while I’m at work?” I asked Amelia and Octavia, since I didn’t need to go another round of imaginary conversations. I pulled on the coat. Northern Louisiana doesn’t get the horrific temperatures of the real north, but it was in the forties tonight and would be colder when I got off work.
“My niece and her kids are taking me out to dinner,” Octavia said.
Amelia and I gave each other surprised looks while the older woman’s head was bent over the blouse she was mending. It was the first time Octavia had seen her niece since she’d moved from the niece’s house to mine.
“I think Tray and I are coming to the bar tonight,” Amelia said hastily, to cover the little pause.
“So I’ll see you at Merlotte’s.” I’d been a barmaid there for years.
Octavia said, “Oh, I’ve got the wrong color thread,” and went down the hall to her room.
“I guess you aren’t seeing Pam anymore?” I asked Amelia. “You and Tray are getting to be a regular thing.” I tucked my white T-shirt into my black pants more securely. I glanced in the old mirror over the mantel. My hair was pulled up into its usual ponytail for work. I spotted a stray long blond hair against the red of the coat, and I plucked it off.
“Pam was just a wild hair, and I’m sure she felt the same way about me. Ireally like Tray,” Amelia was saying. “He doesn’t seem to care about Daddy’s money, and he’s not worried about me being a witch. And he can rock my world in the bedroom. So we’re getting along great.” Amelia gave me a cat-eating-the-canary grin. She might look like a well-toned soccer mom—short, gleaming hair, beautiful white smile, clear eyes—but she was very interested in sex and (by my standards) diverse in those interests.
“He’s a good guy,” I said. “Have you seen him as a wolf yet?”
“Nope. But I’m looking forward to it.”
I picked up something from Amelia’s transparent head that startled me. “It’s soon? The revelation?”
“Would you not do that?” Amelia was normally matter-of-fact about my mind-reading ability, but not today. “I’ve got to keep other people’s secrets, you know!”
“Sorry,” I said. And I was, but at the same time I was mildly aggrieved. You’d think that I could relax in my own house and loosen the tight wrappings I tried to keep on my ability. After all, I had to struggle every single day at work.
Amelia said instantly, “I’m sorry, too. Listen, I’ve got to go get ready. See you later.” She went lightly up the stairs to the second floor, which had been largely unused until she’d come back from New Orleans with me a few months before. She’d missed Katrina, unlike poor Octavia.
“Good-bye, Octavia. Have a good time!” I called, and went out the back door to my car.
As I steered down the long driveway that led through the woods to Hummingbird Road, I wondered about the chances of Amelia and Tray Dawson sticking together. Tray, a werewolf, worked as a motorcycle repairman and as muscle for hire. Amelia was an up-and-coming witch, and her dad was immensely wealthy, even after Katrina. The hurricane had spared most of the materials at his contracting warehouse and provided him with enough work to last for decades.
According to Amelia’s brain, tonight was the night—not the night Tray asked Amelia to marry him, but the night Tray came out. Tray’s dual nature was a plus to my roommate, who was attracted by the exotic.
I went in the employee entrance and right to Sam’s office. “Hey, boss,” I said when I saw him behind his desk. Sam hated to work on the books, but that was what he was doing.
Maybe it was providing a needed distraction. Sam looked worried. His hair was even more tangled than usual, its strawberry waves standing out in a halo around his narrow face.
“Brace yourself. Tonight’s the night,” he said.
I was so proud he’d told me, and he’d echoed my own thoughts so closely, I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m ready. I’ll be right here.” I dropped my purse in the deep drawer in his desk and went to tie on my apron. I was relieving Holly, but after I’d had a talk with her about the customers at our tables, I said, “You oughta stick around tonight.”
She looked at me sharply. Holly had recently been letting her hair grow out, so the dyed black ends looked like they’d been dipped in tar. Her natural color, now showing about an inch at the roots, turned out to be a pleasant light brown. She’d colored it for so long that I’d clean forgotten. “This going to be good enough for me to keep Hoyt waiting?” she asked. “Him and Cody get along like a house on fire, but I am Cody’s mama.” Hoyt, my brother Jason’s best buddy, had been co-opted by Holly. Now he washer follower.
“You should stay awhile.” I gave her a significant lift of my eyebrows.
Holly said, “The Weres?” I nodded, and her face brightened with a grin. “Oh, boy! Arlene’s going to have a shit fit.”
Arlene, our coworker and former friend, had become politically sensitized a few months before by one of her string of man friends. Now she was somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun, especially on vampire issues. She’d even joined the Fellowship of the Sun, a church in all but name. She was standing at one of her tables now, having a serious conversation with her man, Whit Spradlin, a FotS official of some sort who had a day job at one of the Shreveport Home Depots. He had a sizeable bald patch and a little paunch, but that didn’t make any never mind to me. His politics did. He had a buddy with him, of course. The FotS people seemed to run in packs—just like another minority group they were about to meet.
My brother, Jason, was at a table, too, with Mel Hart. Mel worked at Bon Temps Auto Parts, and he was about Jason’s age, maybe thirty-one. Slim and hard-bodied, Mel had longish light brown hair, a mustache and beard, and a pleasant face. I’d been seeing Jason with Mel a lot lately. Jason had had to fill the gap Hoyt had left, I assumed. Jason wasn’t happy without a sidekick. Tonight both men had dates. Mel was divorced, but Jason was still nominally married, so he had no business being out in public with another woman. Not that anyone here would blame him. Jason’s wife, Crystal, had been caught cheating with a local guy.
I’d heard Crystal had moved her pregnant self back to the little community of Hotshot to stay with relatives. (She could find a room in any house in Hotshot and be with relatives. It’s that kind of place.) Mel Hart had been born in Hotshot, too, but he was the rare member of the tribe who’d chosen to live elsewhere.
To my surprise Bill, my ex-boyfriend, was sitting with another vampire, named Clancy. Clancy wasn’t my favorite guy regardless of his nonliving status. They both had bottles of TrueBlood on the table in front of them. I didn’t think Clancy had ever dropped in to Merlotte’s for a casual drink before, and certainly never with Bill.
“Hey, guys, need a refill?” I asked, smiling for all I was worth. I’m a little nervous around Bill.
“Please,” Bill said politely, and Clancy shoved his empty bottle toward me.
I stepped behind the bar to get two more TrueBloods out of the refrigerator, and I uncapped them and popped them in the microwave. (Fifteen seconds works best.) I shook the bottles gently and put the warm drinks on the tray with some fresh napkins. Bill’s cold hand touched mine as I placed his drink in front of him.
He said, “If you need any help at your place, please call me.”
I knew he meant it kindly, but it sort of emphasized my current manless status. Bill’s house was right across the cemetery from mine, and the way he roamed around at night, I figured he was well aware I wasn’t entertaining company.
“Thanks, Bill,” I said, making myself smile at him. Clancy just sneered.
Tray and Amelia came in, and after depositing Amelia at a table, Tray went up to the bar, greeting everyone in the place along the way. Sam came out of his office to join the burly man, who was at least five inches taller than my boss and almost twice as big around. They grinned at each other. Bill and Clancy went on alert.
The televisions mounted at intervals around the room cut away from the sports event they’d been showing. A series of beeps alerted the bar patrons to the fact that something was happening on-screen. The bar gradually hushed to a few scattered conversations. “Special Report” flashed on the screen, superimposed on a newscaster with clipped, gelled hair and a sternly serious face. In solemn tones he said, “I’m Matthew Harrow. Tonight we bring you a special report. Like newsrooms all across the country, here in Shreveport we have a visitor in the studio.”
The camera moved away to broaden the picture, and a pretty woman came into view. Her face was slightly familiar. She gave the camera a practiced little wave. She was wearing a sort of muumuu, an odd choice for a television appearance.
“This is Patricia Crimmins, who moved to Shreveport a few weeks ago. Patty—may I call you Patty?”
“Actually, it’s Patricia,” the brunette said. She was one of the members of the pack that had been absorbed by Alcide’s, I remembered. She was pretty as a picture, and the part of her not swathed in the muumuu looked fit and toned. She smiled at Matthew Harrow. “I’m here tonight as the representative of a people who have lived among you for many years. Since the vampires have been so successful out in the open, we’ve decided the time’s come for us to tell you about ourselves. After all, vampires are dead. They’re not even human. But we’re regular people just like you-all, with a difference.” Sam turned the volume up. People in the bar began to swivel in their seats to see what was happening.
The newsman’s smile had gotten as rigid as a smile could be, and he was visibly nervous. “How interesting, Patricia! What—what are you?”
“Thanks for asking, Matthew! I’m a werewolf.” Patricia had her hands clasped around her knee. Her legs were crossed. She looked perky enough to sell used cars. Alcide had made a good choice. Plus, if someone killed her right away, well . . . she was the new girl.
By now Merlotte’s was silent as the word went from table to table. Bill and Clancy had risen to stand by the bar. I realized now that they were there to keep the peace if they were needed; Sam must have asked them to come in. Tray began unbuttoning his shirt. Sam was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, and he pulled it over his head.
“You’re saying you turn into a wolf at the full moon?” Matthew Harrow quavered, trying hard to keep his smile level and his face simply interested. He didn’t succeed very well.
“And at other times,” Patricia explained. “During the full moon, most of us have to turn, but if we’re pure-blooded wereanimals, we can change at other times as well. There are many kinds of wereanimals, but I turn into a wolf. We’re the more numerous of all the two-natured. Now I’m going to show you-all what an amazing process this is. Don’t be scared. I’ll be fine.” She shucked her shoes, but not the muumuu. I suddenly understood she’d worn it so she wouldn’t have to undress on camera. Patricia knelt on the floor, smiled at the camera one last time, and began to contort. The air around her shivered with the magic of it, and everyone in Merlotte’s went “Ooooooo” in unison.
Right after Patricia committed herself to the change on the television screen, Sam and Tray did, too, right then and there. They’d worn underthings they didn’t mind ripping to shreds. Everyone in Merlotte’s was torn between watching the pretty woman change into a creature with long white teeth, and the spectacle of two people they knew doing the same. There were exclamations all over the bar, most of them not repeatable in polite society. Jason’s date, Michele Schubert, actually stood up to get a better view.
I was so proud of Sam. This took a lot of courage, since he had a business that depended to some extent on his likability.
In another minute, it was all over. Sam, a rare pure shapeshifter, turned into his most familiar form, that of a collie. He went to sit in front of me and gave a happy yip. I bent over to pat his head. His tongue lolled out, and he grinned at me. Tray’s animal manifestation was much more dramatic. Huge wolves are not often seen in rural northern Louisiana; let’s face it, they’re scary. People shifted uneasily and might have gotten up to flee from the building if Amelia hadn’t squatted by Tray and put her arm around his neck.
“He knows what you’re saying,” she told the people at the nearest table encouragingly. Amelia had a great smile, big and genuine. “Hey, Tray, take them this coaster.” She handed him one of the bar coasters, and Tray Dawson, one of the most implacable fighters both in and out of his wolf form, trotted over to lay the coaster on the lap of the female customer. She blinked, wavered, and finally came down on the side of laughing.
Sam licked my hand.
“Oh, my lord Jesus,” Arlene exclaimed loudly. Whit Spradlin and his buddy were on their feet. But though a few other patrons looked nervous, none of them had such a violent reaction.
Bill and Clancy watched with expressionless faces. They were obviously ready to handle trouble, but all seemed to be going well at the Great Reveal. The vampires’ Great Revelation night hadn’t gone so smoothly, because it was the first in the series of shocks mainstream society would feel in the years to come. Gradually vampires had come to be a recognized part of America, though their citizenship still had certain limitations.
Sam and Tray wandered among the regulars, allowing themselves to be petted as if they were regular tame animals. While they were doing that, the newscaster on television was visibly trembling as he faced the beautiful white wolf Patricia had become.
“Look, he so scared, he shaking!” D’Eriq, the busboy and kitchen helper, said. He laughed out loud. The drinkers in Merlotte’s relaxed enough to feel superior. After all, they’d handled this with aplomb.
Jason’s new buddy Mel said, “Ain’t nobody got to be scared of a lady that pretty, even if she does shed some,” and the laughter and relaxation in the bar spread. I was relieved, though I thought it was a little ironic that people might not be so quick to laugh if Jason and Mel had changed; they were werepanthers, though Jason couldn’t change completely.
But after the laughter, I felt that everything was going to be all right. Bill and Clancy, after a careful look around, went back to their table.
Whit and Arlene, surrounded by citizens taking a huge chunk of knowledge in their stride, looked stunned. I could hear Arlene being extra confused about how to react. After all, Sam had been our boss for a good many years. Unless she wanted to lose her job, she couldn’t cut up. But I could also read her fear and the mounting anger that followed close behind. Whit had one reaction, always, to anything he didn’t understand. He hated it, and hate is infectious. He looked at his drinking companion, and they exchanged dark looks.
Thoughts were churning around in Arlene’s brain like lottery balls in the popper. It was hard to tell which one would surface first.
“Jesus, strike him dead!” said Arlene, boiling over. The hate ball had landed on top.
A few people said, “Oh, Arlene!” . . . but they were all listening.
“This goes against God and nature,” Arlene said in a loud, angry voice. Her dyed red hair shook with her vehemence. “You-all want your kids around this kind of thing?”
“Our kids have always been around this kind of thing,” Holly said equally loudly. “We just didn’t know it. And they ain’t come to any harm.” She rose to her feet, too.
“God will get us if we don’t strike them down,” Arlene said, pointing to Tray dramatically. By now, her face was almost as red as her hair. Whit was looking at her approvingly. “You don’t understand! We’re all going to hell if we don’t take the world back from them! Look who they got standing there to keep us humans in line!” Her finger swung around to indicate Bill and Clancy, though since they’d resumed their chairs she lost a few points.
I set my tray on the bar and took a step away, my hands clenched in fists. “We all get along here in Bon Temps,” I said, keeping my voice calm and level. “You seem to be the only one upset, Arlene.”
She glared around the bar, trying to catch the eyes of various patrons. She knew every one of them. Arlene was genuinely shocked to realize more people weren’t sharing her reaction. Sam came to sit in front of her. He looked up at her face with his beautiful doggy eyes.
I took another step closer to Whit, just in case. Whit was deciding what to do, considering jumping Sam. But who would join him in beating up a collie? Even Whit could see the absurdity, and that made him hate Sam all the more.
“How could you?” Arlene screamed at Sam. “You been lying to me all these years! I thought you were human, not a damn supe!”
“He is human,” I said. “He’s just got another face, is all.”
“And you,” she said, spitting out the words. “You’re the weirdest, the most inhuman, of them all.”
“Hey, now,” Jason said. He leaped to his feet, and after a moment’s hesitation, Mel joined him. His date looked alarmed, though Jason’s lady friend just smiled. “You leave my sister alone. She babysat your kids and she cleaned your trailer and she put up with your shit for years. What kind of friend are you?”
Jason didn’t look at me. I was frozen in astonishment. This was a very un-Jason gesture. Could he have grown up a little bit?
“The kind that don’t want to hang around with unnatural creatures like your sister,” Arlene said. She tore off her apron, said, “I quit this place!” to the collie, and stomped back to Sam’s office to retrieve her purse. Maybe a fourth of the people in the bar looked alarmed and upset. Half of them were fascinated with the drama. That left a quarter on the fence. Sam whined like a sad dog and put his nose between his paws. After that got a big laugh, the discomfort of the moment passed. I watched Whit and his buddy ease out the front door, and I relaxed when they were gone.
Just on the off chance Whit might be fetching a rifle from his truck, I glanced over at Bill, who glided out the door after him. In a moment he was back, nodding at me to indicate the FotS guys had driven away.
Once the back door thunked closed behind Arlene, the rest of the evening went pretty well. Sam and Tray retired to Sam’s office to change back and get dressed. Sam returned to his place behind the bar afterward as if nothing had happened, and Tray went to sit at the table with Amelia, who kissed him. For a while, people steered a little clear of them, and there were lots of surreptitious glances; but after an hour, the atmosphere of Merlotte’s seemed just about back to normal. I pitched in to serve Arlene’s tables, and I made sure to be especially nice to the people still undecided about the night’s events.
People seemed to drink heartily that night. Maybe they had misgivings about Sam’s other persona, but they didn’t have any problem adding to his profits. Bill caught my eye and raised his hand in good-bye. He and Clancy drifted out of the bar.
Jason tried to get my attention once or twice, and his buddy Mel sent big smiles my way. Mel was taller and thinner than my brother, but they both had that bright, eager look of unthinking men who operate on their instincts. In his favor, Mel didn’t seem to agree with everything Jason said, not the way Hoyt always had. Mel seemed to be an okay guy, at least from our brief acquaintance; that he was one of the few werepanthers who didn’t live in Hotshot was also a fact in his favor, and it may even have been why he and Jason were such big buddies. They were like other werepanthers, but separate, too.
If I ever began speaking to Jason again, I had a question for him. On this major evening for all Weres and shifters, how come he hadn’t taken the chance to grab a little of the spotlight for himself? Jason was very full of his altered status as a werepanther. He’d been bitten, not born. That is, he’d contracted the virus (or whatever it was) by being bitten by another werepanther, rather than being born with the ability to change as Mel had been. Jason’s changed form was manlike, with hair all over and a pantherish face and claws: really scary, he’d told me. But he wasn’t a beautiful animal, and that griped my brother. Mel was a purebred, and he would be gorgeous and frightening when he transformed.
Maybe the werepanthers had been asked to lie low because panthers were simplytoo scary. If something as big and lethal as a panther had appeared in the bar, the reaction of the patrons almost certainly would have been a lot more hysterical. Though wereanimal brains are very difficult to read, I could sense the disappointment the two panthers were sharing. I was sure the decision had been Calvin Norris’s, as the panther leader.Good move, Calvin, I thought.
After I’d helped close down the bar, I gave Sam a hug when I stopped by his office to pick up my purse. He was looking tired but happy.
“You feeling as good as you look?” I asked.
“Yep. My true nature’s out in the open now. It’s liberating. My mom swore she was going to tell my stepdad tonight. I’m waiting to hear from her.”
Right on cue, the phone rang. Sam picked it up, still smiling. “Mom?” he said. Then his face changed as if a hand had wiped off the previous expression. “Don? What have you done?”
I sank into the chair by the desk and waited. Tray had come to have a last word with Sam, and Amelia was with him. They both stood stiffly in the doorway, anxious to hear what had happened.
“Oh, my God,” Sam said. “I’ll come as soon as I can. I’ll get on the road tonight.” He hung up the phone very gently. “Don shot my mom,” he said. “When she changed, he shot her.” I’d never seen Sam look so upset.
“Is she dead?” I asked, fearing the answer.
“No,” he said. “No, but she’s in the hospital with a shattered collarbone and a gunshot wound to her upper left shoulder. He almost killed her. If she hadn’t jumped . . .”
“I’m so sorry,” Amelia said.
“What can I do to help?” I asked.
“Keep the bar open while I’m gone,” he said, shaking off the shock. “Call Terry. Terry and Tray can work out a bartend ing schedule between them. Tray, you know I’ll pay you when I get back. Sookie, the waitress schedule is on the wall behind the bar. Find someone to cover Arlene’s shifts, please.”
“Sure, Sam,” I said. “You need any help packing? Can I gas up your truck or something?”
“Nope, I’m good. You’ve got the key to my trailer, so can you water my plants? I don’t think I’ll be gone but a couple of days, but you never know.”
“Of course, Sam. Don’t worry. Keep us posted.”
We all cleared out so Sam could get over to his trailer to pack. It was in the lot right behind the bar, so at least he could get everything ready in a hurry.
As I drove home, I tried to imagine how Sam’s stepdad had come to do such a thing. Had he been so horrified at the discovery of his wife’s second life that he’d flipped? Had she changed out of his sight and walked up to him and startled him? I simply couldn’t believe you could shoot someone you loved, someone you lived with, just because they had more
to them than you’d thought. Maybe Don had seen her second self as a betrayal. Or maybe it was the fact that she’d concealed it. I could kind of understand his reaction, if I looked at it that way.
People all had secrets, and I was in a position to know most of them. Being a telepath is not any fun. You hear the tawdry, the sad, the disgusting, the petty . . . the things we all want to keep hidden from our fellow humans, so they’ll keep their image of us intact.
The secrets I know least about are my own.
The one I was thinking of tonight was the unusual genetic inheritance my brother and I share, which had come through my father. My father had never known that his mother, Adele, had had a whopper of a secret, one disclosed to me only the past October. My grandmother’s two children—my dad and his sister, Linda—were not the products of her long marriage with my grandfather.
Both had been conceived through her liaison with a half fairy, half human named Fintan. According to Fintan’s father, Niall, the fairy part of my dad’s genetic heritage had been responsible for my mother’s infatuation with him, an infatuation that had excluded her children from all but the fringes of her attention and affection. This genetic legacy hadn’t seemed to change anything for my dad’s sister, Linda; it certainly hadn’t helped her dodge the cancer bullet that had ended her life or kept her husband on-site, much less infatuated. However, Linda’s grandson Hunter was a telepath like me.
I still struggled with parts of this story. I believed the history Niall had related to be true, but I couldn’t understand my grandmother’s desire for children being strong enough to lead her to cheat on my grandfather. That simply didn’t jibe with her character, and I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t read it in her brain during all the years that we’d lived together. She must have thought about the circumstances of her children’s conceptions from time to time. There was just no way she could’ve packed those events away for good in some attic of her mind.
But my grandmother had been dead for over a year now, and I’d never be able to ask her about it. Her husband had passed away years before. Niall had told me that my biological grandfather Fintan, too, was dead and gone. It had crossed my mind to go through my grandmother’s things in search of some clue to her thinking, to her reaction to this extraordinary passage in her life, and then I would think . . .Why bother?
I had to deal with the consequences here and now.
The trace of fairy blood I carried made me more attractive to supes, at least to some vampires. Not all of them could detect the little trace of fairy in my genes, but they tended to at least be interested in me, though occasionally that had negative results. Or maybe this fairy-blood thing was bull, and vampires were interested in any fairly attractive young woman who would treat them with respect and tolerance.
As to the relationship between the telepathy and the fairy blood, who knew? It wasn’t like I had a lot of people to ask or any literature to check, or like I could ask a lab to test for it. Maybe little Hunter and I had both developed the condition through a coincidence—yeah, right. Maybe the trait was genetic but separate from the fairy genes.
Maybe I’d just gotten lucky.
Chapter 2
I went into Merlotte’s early in the morning—for me, that means eight thirty—to check the bar situation, and I remained to cover Arlene’s shift. I’d have to work a double. Thankfully, the lunch crowd was light. I didn’t know if that was a result of Sam’s announcement or just the normal course of things. At least I was able to make a few phone calls while Terry Bellefleur (who made ends meet with several part-time jobs) covered the bar. Terry was in a good mood, or what passed for a good mood for him; he was a Vietnam vet who’d had a very bad war. At heart he was a good guy, and we’d always gotten along. He was really fascinated by the Weres’ revelation; since the war, Terry had done better with animals than people.
“I bet that’s why I’ve always liked to work for Sam,” Terry said, and I smiled at him.
“I like to work for him, too,” I said.
While Terry kept the beers coming and kept an eye on Jane Bodehouse, one of our alcoholics, I started phoning to find a replacement barmaid. Amelia had told me she would help a little but only at night, because she now had a temporary day job covering the maternity leave of a clerk at the insurance agency.
First I phoned Charlsie Tooten. Charlsie, though sympathetic, told me she had the full care of her grandson while her daughter worked, so she was too tired to come in. I called another former Merlotte’s employee, but she’d started work at another bar. Holly had said she could double up once but didn’t want to do it more than that because of her little boy. Danielle, the other full-time server, had said the same. (In Danielle’s case she had twice the excuse because she had two children.)
So, finally, with a huge sigh to let Sam’s empty office know how put-upon I was, I called one of my least favorite people—Tanya Grissom, werefox and former saboteur. It took me a while to track her down, but by calling a couple of people out in Hotshot, I was finally able to reach her at Calvin’s house. Tanya had been dating him for a while. I liked the man myself, but when I thought of that cluster of little houses at the ancient crossroads, I shuddered.
“Tanya, how you doing? This is Sookie Stackhouse.”
“Really. Hmmm. Hello.”
I didn’t blame her for being cautious.
“One of Sam’s barmaids quit—you remember Arlene? She freaked about the were thing and walked out. I was wondering if you could take over a couple of her shifts, just for a while.”
“You Sam’s partner now?”
She wasn’t going to make this easy. “No, I’m just doing the looking for him. He got called away on a family emergency.”
“I was probably on the bottom of your list.”
My brief silence spoke for itself.
“I figure we can work together,” I said, because I had to say something.
“I got a day job now, but I can help a couple of evenings until you find someone permanent,” Tanya said. It was hard to read anything from her voice.
“Thanks.” That gave me two temporaries, Amelia and Tanya, and I could take any hours they couldn’t. This wouldn’t be hard on anyone. “Can you come in tomorrow for the evening shift? If you could be here about five, five thirty, one of us can show you the ropes again, and then you’ll be working until the bar closes.”
There was a short silence. “I’ll be there,” Tanya said. “I got some black pants. You got a T-shirt I can wear?”
“Yep. Medium?”
“That’ll do me.”
She hung up.
Well, I could hardly expect to find her happy to hear from me or delighted to oblige since we’d never been fans of each other. In fact, though I didn’t believe she remembered, I’d had her bewitched by Amelia and Amelia’s mentor, Octavia. I still squirmed when I thought of how I’d altered Tanya’s life, but I didn’t think I’d had a lot of choices there. Sometimes you just have to regret things and move on.
Sam called while Terry and I were closing the bar. I was so tired. My head was heavy, and my feet were aching.
“How are things going there?” Sam asked. His voice was rough with exhaustion.
“We’re coping,” I said, trying to sound perky and carefree. “How’s your mom?”
“She’s still alive,” he said. “She’s talking and breathing on her own. The doctor says he thinks she’ll recover just fine. My stepfather is under arrest.”
“What a mess,” I said, genuinely distressed on Sam’s behalf.
“Mom says she should have told him beforehand,” he told me. “She was just scared to.”
“Well . . . rightly so, huh? As it turns out.”
He snorted. “She figures if she’d had a long talk with him, then let him see her change after he’d watched the change on TV, he would’ve been okay.”
I’d been so busy with the bar I hadn’t had a chance to absorb the television reports of the reactions around the world to this second Great Revelation. I wondered how it was going in Montana, Indiana, Florida? I wondered if any of the famous actors in Hollywood had admitted to being werewolves. What if Ryan Seacrest was fuzzy every full moon? Or Jennifer Love Hewitt or Russell Crowe? (Which I thought was more than likely.) That would make a huge difference in public acceptance.
“Have you seen your stepfather or talked to him?”
“No, not yet. I can’t make myself. My brother went by. He said Don started crying. It was bad.”
“Is your sister there?”
“Well, she’s on her way. She had a hard time arranging child care.” He sounded a little hesitant.
“She knew about your mom, right?” I tried to keep the incredulity out of my voice.
“No,” he said. “Real often, were parents don’t tell the kids who aren’t affected. My sibs didn’t know about me, either, since they didn’t know about Mom.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, which stood for a lot of things.
“I wish you were here,” Sam said, taking me by surprise.
“I wish I could be more help,” I said. “If you can think of anything else I can do, you call me at any hour.”
“You’re keeping the business running. That counts for a lot,” he said. “I better go get some sleep.”
“Okay, Sam. Talk to you tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure,” he said. He sounded so worn-out and sad it was hard not to cry.
I felt relieved that I’d put my personal feelings aside to call Tanya, after that conversation. It had been the right thing to do. Sam’s mother being shot for what she was—well, that just put my dislike of Tanya Grissom into perspective.
I fell into bed that night, and I don’t think I even twitched after that.
I’d been sure the warm glow generated by Sam’s call would carry me through the next day, but the morning started badly.
Sam always ordered the supplies and kept up with the inventory, naturally. Also, naturally, he’d forgotten to remind me that he had some cases of beer coming in. I got a phone call from the truck driver, Duff, and I had to leap out of bed and hurry to Merlotte’s. On my way out the door, I glimpsed the blinking light on my answering machine, which I’d been too tired to check the night before. But I didn’t have time to worry about missed messages now. I was simply relieved Duff had thought of calling me when he got no answer at Sam’s.
I opened the back door of Merlotte’s, and Duff wheeled the cases in and put them where they were supposed to go. Somewhat nervously, I signed for Sam. By the time that was done and the truck had pulled out of the parking lot, Sarah Jen, the mail carrier, came by with the bar mail and Sam’s personal mail. I accepted both. Sarah Jen had her talking shoes on. She’d heard (already) that Sam’s mom was in the hospital, but I didn’t feel I had to enlighten her about the circumstances. That was Sam’s business. Sarah Jen also wanted to tell me how she wasn’t astonished at all that Sam was a wereanimal, because she’d always thought there was something strange about him.
“He’s a nice guy,” Sarah Jen admitted. “I’m not saying he’s not. Just . . . something odd there. I wasn’t a bit surprised.”
“Really? He’s sure said such nice things about you,” I said sweetly, looking down so the line would be a throwaway. I could see the delight flooding Sarah Jen’s head as clearly as if she’d drawn me a picture.
“He’s always been real polite,” she said, suddenly seeing Sam in the light of a most perceptive man. “Well, I better be going. I got to finish the route. If you talk to Sam, tell him I’m thinking of his mom.”
After I carried the mail to Sam’s desk, Amelia called from the insurance agency to tell me that Octavia had called her to ask if either of us could take her to Wal-Mart. Octavia, who’d lost most of her stuff in Katrina, was stuck out at the house without a car.
“You’ll have to take her on your lunch hour,” I said, barely managing not to snap at Amelia. “I got a full plate today. And here comes more trouble,” I said as a car pulled up beside mine in the employee parking lot. “Here’s Eric’s daytime guy, Bobby Burnham.”
“Oh, I meant to tell you. Octavia said Eric tried to call you at home twice. So she finally told Bobby where you were this morning,” Amelia said. “She figured it might be important. Lucky you. Okay, I’ll take care of Octavia. Somehow.”
“Good,” I said, trying not to sound as brusque as I felt. “Talk to you later.”
Bobby Burnham got out of his Impala and strode up to me. His boss, Eric, was bound to me in a complicated relationship that was based not only on our past history but also on the fact that we’d swapped blood several times.
This hadn’t been an informed decision on my part.
Bobby Burnham was an asshole. Maybe Eric had gotten him on sale?
“Miss Stackhouse,” he said, laying the courtliness on thick. “My master asks that you come to Fangtasia tonight for a sit-down with the new king’s lieutenant.”
This was not the summons I’d expected or the kind of conversation I’d foreseen with the vampire sheriff of Area Five. Given the fact that we had some personal issues to discuss, I’d imagined Eric would call me when things had settled down with the new regime, and we’d make some kind of appointment—or date—to talk about the several items on our mutual plate. I wasn’t pleased by this impersonal summons by a flunky.
“You ever hear of a phone?” I said.
“He left you messages last night. He told me to talk to you today, without fail. I’m just following orders.”
“Eric told you to spend your time driving over here and asking me to come to his bar tonight.” Even to my own ears, I sounded unbelieving.
“Yes. He said, ‘Track her down, deliver the message in person, and be polite.’ Here I am. Being polite.”
He was telling me the truth, and it was just killing him. That was almost enough to make me smile. Bobby really didn’t like me. The closest I could come to defining why was that Bobby didn’t think I was worthy of Eric’s notice. He didn’t like my less-than-reverent attitude toward Eric, and he couldn’t understand why Pam, Eric’s right-hand vampire, was fond of me, when she wouldn’t give Bobby the time of day.
There was nothing I could do to change this, even if Bobby’s dislike had worried me . . . and it didn’t. But Eric worried me plenty. I had to talk to him, and I might as well get it over with. It had been late October when I’d last seen him, and it was now mid-January. “It’ll have to be when I get off here. I’m temporarily in charge,” I said, sounding neither pleased nor gracious.
“What time? He wants you there at seven. Victor will be there then.”
Victor Madden was the representative of the new king, Felipe de Castro. It had been a bloody takeover, and Eric was the only sheriff of the old regime still standing. Staying in the good graces of the new regime was important to Eric, obviously. I wasn’t yet sure how much of that was my problem. But I was thumbs-up with Felipe de Castro by a happy accident, and I wanted to keep it that way.
“I might be able to get there by seven,” I said after some inner computation. I tried not to think about how much it would please me to lay eyes on Eric. At least ten times in the past few weeks, I’d caught myself before I’d gotten in my car to drive over to see him. But I’d successfully resisted the impulses, because I’d been able totell that he was struggling to maintain his position under the new king. “I’ve got to brief the new gal. . . . Yeah, seven is just about doable.”
“He’ll be so relieved,” Bobby said, managing to work in a sneer.
Keep it up, asshole,I thought. And possibly the way I was looking at him conveyed that thought, because Bobby said, “Really, he will be,” in as sincere a tone as he could manage.
“Okay, message delivered,” I said. “I got to get back to work.”
“Where’s your boss?”
“He had a family problem in Texas.”
“Oh, I thought maybe the dogcatcher got him.”
What a howl. “Good-bye, Bobby,” I said, and turned my back on him to go in the back door.
“Here,” he said, and I turned around, irritated. “Eric said you would need this.” He handed me a bundle wrapped in black velvet. Vampires couldn’t give you anything in a Wal-Mart bag or wrapped in Hallmark paper, oh, no. Black velvet. The bundle was secured with a gold tasseled cord, like you’d use to tie back a curtain.
Just holding it gave me a bad feeling. “And what would this be?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t tasked with opening it.”
Ihate the word “tasked,” with “gifted” running close behind. “What am I supposed to do with this?” I said.
“Eric said, ‘Tell her to give it to me tonight, in front of Victor.’ ”
Eric did nothing without a reason. “All right,” I said reluctantly. “Consider memessaged .”
I got through the next shift okay. Everyone was pitching in to help, and that was pleasing. The cook had been working hard all day; this was maybe the fifteenth short-order cook we’d had since I’d begun working at Merlotte’s. We’d had every variation on a human being you could imagine: black, white, male, female, old, young, dead (yes, a vampire cook), lycanthropically inclined (a werewolf), and probably one or two I’d completely forgotten. This cook, Antoine Lebrun, was real nice. He’d come to us out of Katrina. He’d outstayed most of the other refugees, who’d moved back to the Gulf Coast or moved on.
Antoine was in his fifties, his curly hair showing a strand or two of gray. He’d worked concessions at the Superdome, he’d told me the day he got hired, and we’d both shuddered. Antoine got along great with D’Eriq, the busboy who doubled as his assistant.
When I went in the kitchen to make sure he had everything he needed, Antoine told me he was really proud to be working for a shapeshifter, and D’Eriq wanted to go over and over his reaction to Sam’s and Tray’s transformations. After he’d left work, D’Eriq had
gotten a phone call from his cousin in Monroe, and now D’Eriq wanted to tell us all about his cousin’s wife being a werewolf.
D’Eriq’s reaction was what I hoped was typical. Two nights before, many people had discovered that someone they knew personally was a were of some kind. Hopefully, if the were had never shown signs of insanity or violence, these people would be willing to accept that shape-changing was an unthreatening addition to their knowledge of the world. It was even exciting.
I hadn’t had time to check reactions around the world, but at least as far as local stuff went, the revelation seemed to be going smoothly. I didn’t get the feeling anyone was going to be firebombing Merlotte’s because of Sam’s dual nature, and I thought Tray’s motorcycle repair business was safe.
Tanya was twenty minutes early, which raised her up in my estimation, and I gave her a genuine smile. After we ran over a few of the basics like hours, pay, and Sam’s house rules, I said, “You like being out there in Hotshot?”
“Yeah, I do,” she said, sounding a little surprised. “The families out in Hotshot, they really get along well. If something goes wrong, they have a meeting and discuss it. Those that don’t like the life, they leave, like Mel Hart did.” Almost everyone in Hotshot was either a Hart or a Norris.
“He’s really taken up with my brother lately,” I said, because I was a little curious about Jason’s new friend.
“Yeah, that’s what I hear. Everyone’s glad he’s found someone to hang with after being on his own so long.”
“Why didn’t he fit in out there?” I asked directly.
Tanya said, “I understand Mel doesn’t like to share, like you have to if you live in a little community like that. He’s real . . . ‘What’s mine is mine.’ ” She shrugged. “At least, that’s what they say.”
“Jason’s like that, too,” I said. I couldn’t read Tanya’s mind too clearly because of her double nature, but I could read the mood and intent of it, and I understood the other panthers worried about Mel Hart.
They were concerned about Mel making it in the big world of Bon Temps, I guessed. Hotshot was its own little universe.
I was feeling a bit lighter of heart by the time I’d finished briefing Tanya (who had definitely had experience) and hung up my apron. I gathered my purse and Bobby Burnham’s bundle, and I hurried out the employee door to drive to Shreveport.
I started to listen to the news as I drove, but I was tired of grim reality. Instead, I listened to a Mariah Carey CD, and I felt the better for it. I can’t sing worth a damn, but I love to belt out the lyrics to a song when I’m driving. The tensions of the day began to drain away, replaced by an optimistic mood.
Sam would come back, his mother having recovered, and her husband having made amends and having pledged he’d love her forever. The world would oooh and aaah about werewolves and other shifters for a while, then all would be normal again.
Isn’t it always a bad idea, thinking things like that?
Chapter 3
The closer I got to the vampire bar, the more my pulse picked up; this was the downside to the blood bond I had with Eric Northman. I knew I was going to see him, and I was simply happy about it. I should have been worried, I should have been apprehensive about what he wanted, I should have asked a million questions about the velvet-wrapped bundle, but I just drove with a smile on my face.
Though I couldn’t help how I felt, I could control my actions. Out of sheer perversity, since no one had told me to come around to the employees’ entrance, I entered through the main door. It was a busy night at Fangtasia, and there was a crowd waiting on benches inside the first set of doors. Pam was at the hostess podium. She smiled at me broadly, showing a little fang. (The crowd was delighted.)
I’d known Pam for a while now, and she was as close to a friend as I had among the vampires. Tonight the blond vampire was wearing the obligatory filmy black dress, and she’d camped it up with a long, sheer black veil. Her fingernails were polished scarlet.
“My friend,” Pam said, and came out from behind the podium to hug me. I was surprised but pleased and gladly hugged her back. She’d spritzed on a little perfume to eclipse the faint, rather dry smell of vampire. “Have you got it?” she whispered in my ear.
“Oh, the bundle? It’s in my purse.” I lifted my big brown shoulder bag by its straps.
Pam gave me a look I couldn’t interpret through the veil. It appeared to be an expression that compounded exasperation and affection. “You didn’t even look inside?”
“I haven’t had time,” I said. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been curious. I simply hadn’t had the leisure to think about it. “Sam had to leave because his mom got shot by his stepdad, and I’ve been managing the bar.”
Pam gave me a long look of appraisal. “Go back to Eric’s office and hand him the bundle,” she said. “Leave it wrapped. No matter who’s there. And don’t handle it like it was a garden tool he left outside, either.”
I gave her the look right back. “What am I doing, Pam?” I asked, jumping on the cautious train way too late.
“You’re protecting your own skin,” Pam said. “Never doubt it. Now go.” She gave me a get-along pat on the back and turned to answer a tourist’s question about how often vampires needed to get their teeth cleaned.
“Would you like to come very close and look at mine?” Pam asked in a sultry voice, and the woman shrieked with delighted fear. That was why the humans came to vampire bars, and vampire comedy clubs, and vampire dry cleaners, and vampire casinos . . . to flirt with danger.
Every now and then, flirtation became the real thing.
I made my way between the tables and across the dance floor to the rear of the bar. Felicia, the bartender, looked unhappy when she saw me. She found something to do that involved crouching down out of my sight. I had an unfortunate history with the bartenders of Fangtasia.
There were a few vampires seated throughout the bar area, strewn among the gawking tourists, the costumed vampire wannabes, and the humans who had business dealings with the vamps. Over in the little souvenir shop, one of the New Orleans vampire refugees from Katrina was selling a Fangtasia T-shirt to a pair of giggling girls.
Tiny Thalia, paler than bleached cotton and with a profile from an ancient coin, was sitting by herself at a small table. Thalia was actually tracked by fans who had devoted a website to her, though she would not have cared if they’d all burst into flames. A drunken serviceman from Barksdale Air Force Base knelt before her as I watched, and as Thalia turned her dark eyes on him, his prearranged speech died in his throat. Turning rather pale himself, the strapping young man backed away from the vampire half his size, and though his friends jeered as he returned to his table, I knew he wouldn’t approach her again.
After this little slice of bar life, I was glad to knock on Eric’s door. I heard his voice inside, telling me to come in. I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. “Hi, Eric,” I said, and was almost rendered mute by the surge of happiness that swept through me whenever I saw him. His long blond hair was braided tonight, and he was wearing his favorite jeans-and-a-tee combo. The T-shirt tonight was bright green, making him look whiter than ever.
The wave of delight wasn’t necessarily related to Eric’s gorgeousness or the fact that we’d bumped pelvises, though. The blood bond was responsible. Maybe. I had to fight the feeling. For sure.
Victor Madden, representative of the new king, Felipe de Castro, stood and inclined his curly dark head. Victor, short and compact, was always polite and always well-dressed. This evening he was especially resplendent in an olive suit and brown striped tie. I smiled at him and was just about to tell him I was glad to see him again when I noticed that Eric was eyeing me expectantly. Oh, right.
I shucked off my coat and extracted the velvet bundle from my purse. I dropped the purse and coat in an empty chair, and walked over to Eric’s desk with the bundle extended in both hands. This was making as much of the moment as I could, short of getting on my knees and crawling over to him, which I would do when hell froze over.
I laid the bundle in front of him, inclined my own head in what I hoped was a ceremonious manner, and sat down in the other guest chair.
“What has our fair-haired friend brought you, Eric?” Victor asked in the cheerful voice that he affected most of the time. Maybe he was actually that happy, or maybe his mama had taught him (a few centuries ago) that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.
With a certain sense of theater, Eric untied the golden cord and silently unfolded the velvet. Sparkling like a jewel on the dark material was the ceremonial knife I’d last seen in the city of Rhodes. Eric had used it when he officiated at the marriage of two vampire kings, and he’d used it to nick himself later when he’d taken blood from me and given me blood in return: the final exchange, the one that (from my point of view) had caused all the trouble. Now Eric lifted the shining blade to his lips and kissed it.
After Victor recognized the knife, there was no trace of a smile remaining on his face. He and Eric regarded each other steadily.
“Very interesting,” Victor said finally.
Once again, I had that feeling of drowning when I hadn’t even known I was in the pool. I started to speak, but I could feel Eric’s will pressing on me, urging me to be silent. In vampire matters, it was smart to take Eric’s advice.
“Then I’ll take the tiger’s request off the table,” Victor said. “My master was unhappy about the tiger wanting to leave, anyway. And of course, I’ll inform my master about your prior claim. We acknowledge your formal attachment to this one.”
From the inclination of Victor’s head in my direction, I knew I was “this one.” And I knew only one male weretiger. “What are you talking about?” I asked bluntly.
“Quinn requested a private meeting with you,” Victor said. “But he can’t come back to Eric’s area without Eric’s permission now. It’s one of the terms we negotiated when we . . . when Eric became our new associate.”
That was a nice way to say, When we killed all the other vampires in Louisiana except for Eric and his followers. When you saved our king from death .
I wished I had a moment to think, far away from this room where two vampires were staring at me.
“Does this new rule apply only to Quinn or to all wereanimals who want to come into Louisiana? How could you boss the weres? And when did you put that rule into effect?” I said to Eric, trying to buy some time while I collected myself. I wanted Victor to explain the last part of his little speech, too, that bit about the formal attachment, but I decided to tackle one question at a time.
“Three weeks ago,” Eric said, answering the last question first. His face was calm; his voice was uninflected. “And the ‘new rule’ applies only to wereanimals who are associated with us in a business way.” Quinn worked for E(E)E, which I suspected was at least partially vampire owned, since Quinn’s job was not putting on the weddings and bar mitzvahs the company’s human branch dealt with. Quinn’s job was staging supernatural events. “The tiger got his dismissal from you. I heard it from his own lips. Why should he return?” Eric shrugged.
At least he didn’t try to sugarcoat it by saying, “I thought he might bother you” or “I did it for your own good.” No matter how bonded we were—and I was actually struggling against the temptation to smile at him—I felt the hair on the back of my neck rising at Eric managing my life like this.
“Now that you and Eric are openly pledged,” Victor said in a silky voice, “you certainly won’t want to see Quinn, and I’ll tell him so.”
“We’re what ?” I glared at Eric, who was looking at me with an expression I can only describe as bland.
“The knife,” Victor said, sounding even happier. “That’s its significance. It’s a ritual knife handed down over the centuries and used in important ceremonies and sacrifices. It’s not the only one of its kind, of course, but it’s rare. Now it’s only used in marriage rituals. I’m not sure how Eric came to have possession of it, but its presentation from you to Eric, and his acceptance, can only mean that you and Eric are pledged to each other.”
“Let’s all step back and take a deep breath,” I said, though I was the only person in the room who was breathing. I held up my hand as though they’d been advancing on me and my “halt” gesture would stop them. “Eric?” I tried to pack everything into my voice, but one word can’t carry that much baggage.
“This is for your protection, dear heart,” he said. He was trying to be serene so that some of that serenity would run through our bond and drown my agitation.
But a few gallons of serenity wouldn’t calm me down. “This is so high-handed,” I said in a choked voice. “This is sheer gall. How could you do this without talking to me about it? How could you think I would let you commit me to something without talking about it first? We haven’t even seen each other in months.”
“I’ve been a little busy here. I’d hoped your sense of self-preservation would kick in,” Eric said, which was honest, if not tactful. “Can you doubt that I want what’s best for you?”
“I don’t doubt that you want what you think is best for me,” I said. “And I don’t doubt that that marches right along with what you think is good for you .”
Victor laughed. “She knows you well, Eric,” he said, and we both glared at him. “Ooops,” he said, and pretended to zip his mouth shut.
“Eric, I’m going home. We’ll talk about this soon, but I don’t know when. I’m running the bar while Sam’s gone. There’s trouble in his family.”
“But Clancy said the announcement went well in Bon Temps.”
“Yes, it did, but at Sam’s own family home in Texas, it didn’t go so well.”
Eric looked disgusted. “I did my best to help. I sent at least one of my people around to every public venue. I went to watch Alcide himself shift at the Shamrock Casino.”
“That went okay?” I asked, temporarily sidetracked.
“Yes, only a few drunkards acted up. They were quelled quite easily. One woman even offered herself to Alcide in his wolf form.”
“Ewww,” I said, and got up, grabbing my purse. He’d distracted me long enough.
Eric rose and vaulted over the desk in a movement that was as startling as it was impressive. Suddenly he was right in front of me, and his arms went around me, and he held me to him. It took everything I had to keep my back stiff, to keep from relaxing
against him. It’s hard to explain how the bond made me feel. No matter how furious I got with Eric, I was happier when I was with him. It wasn’t that I yearned for him uncontrollably when we were separated; it was just that I was aware of him. All the time. I wondered if it was the same for him.
“Tomorrow night?” he said, releasing me.
“If I can get away. We have a lot to talk about.” I gave Victor a stiff nod, and I left. I glanced back once to see the knife shining against the black velvet as it lay on Eric’s desk.
I knew how Eric had gotten the knife. He’d simply kept it rather than returning it to Quinn, who’d been in charge of the wedding ritual between two vampires, a ceremony I’d witnessed in Rhodes. Eric, who was some kind of mail-order priest, had officiated at the service, and afterward, he’d evidently kept the knife just on the chance it would come in handy. How he’d retrieved it from the wreck of the hotel, I didn’t know. Maybe he’d gone back during the night, after the daytime explosion. Maybe he’d sent Pam. But he’d gotten it, and now he’d used it to pledge me to him.
And thanks to my own dazed affection . . . or warmth . . . or infatuation . . . for the Viking vampire, I had done exactly what he’d asked without consulting my common sense.
I didn’t know who I was angrier with—myself, or Eric.