Book Seven 14-16

14
BATANYA KILLED THE ASSASSIN WITH A THROWINGstar. She was facing the
crowd, so she saw the vampire left standing after all the others had prudently hit the floor.
This vampire wasn’t firing the arrows from a bow; he wasthrowing them, which was why
he’d managed to remain inconspicuous. Even in that group, someone carrying in a bow
would have attracted a certain amount of attention.
Only a vampire could throw an arrow and kill someone. Perhaps only a Britlingen could
throw a razor-sharp star in such a way as to decapitate a vampire.
I’ve seen vampires decapitated before, and it’s not as messy as you’d think; not like cutting
off the head of a human. But it’s not pleasant, either, and as I watched the head topple off
the shoulders, I had a moment of knee-knocking nausea from my position on the floor. I
scrambled to my knees to check on Quinn.
“I’m not bad,” he said instantly. “Not bad. It’s in my shoulder, not my heart.” He rolled
over to lie on his back. The Louisiana vamps had all leaped up to the platform to circle the
queen, just a second behind Andre. Once they were sure the threat was over, they clustered
around us.
Cleo threw off her tuxedo jacket and ripped off the pleated white shirt. She folded it into a
pad in movements so fast I could hardly follow them. “Hold this,” she said, pressing it into
my hand and placing my hand close to the wound. “Prepare to press hard.” She didn’t wait
for me to nod. “Hold on,” she said to Quinn. And she put her strong hands on his shoulders
to hold him still while Gervaise pulled the arrow out.
Quinn bellowed, not too surprisingly. The next few minutes were pretty bad. I pressed the
pad against the wound, and while Cleo pulled on the tuxedo jacket over her black lace bra,
she directed Herve, her human squeeze, to donate his shirt, too. I’ve got to say, he whipped
it right off. There was something really shocking about seeing a bare hairy chest in the
middle of all this evening finery. And it was beyond weird that I would note that, after I’d
just seen a guy’s head separated from his body.
I knew Eric was beside me before he spoke, because I felt less terrified. He knelt down to
my level. Quinn was concentrating on not yelling, so his eyes were shut as though he was
unconscious and there was still lots of action going on all around me. But Eric was next to
me, and I felt…not exactly calm, but not as upset. Because he was there.
I just hated that.
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“He’s going to heal,” Eric said. He didn’t sound especially happy about it, but not sad,
either.
“Yes,” I said.
“I know. I didn’t see it coming.”
“Oh, would you have flung yourself in front of me?”
“No,” Eric said simply. “Because it might have hit me in the heart, and I would die. But I
would have dived in and tackled you to take you out of the arrow’s path if there had been
time.”
I couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“I know you may come to hate me because I spared you the bite of Andre,” he said quietly.
“But I really am the lesser of two evils.”
I glanced sideways at him. “I know that,” I said, Quinn’s blood staining my hands as it
soaked through the makeshift pad. “I wouldn’t have rather died than get bit by Andre, but it
was a close thing.”
He laughed, and Quinn’s eyes flickered. “The weretiger is regaining consciousness,” Eric
said. “Do you love him?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Did you love me?”
A team of stretcher bearers came over. Of course, these weren’t regular paramedics.
Regular paramedics wouldn’t have been welcome in the Pyramid of Gizeh. These were
Weres and shifters who worked for the vamps, and their leader, a young woman who
looked like a honey bear, said, “We’ll make sure he gets healed in record time, lady.”
“I’ll check on him later.”
“We’ll take care of him,” she said. “Among us, he’ll do better. It’s a privilege to take care
of Quinn.”
Quinn nodded. “I’m ready to be moved,” he said, but he was clenching the words between
his teeth.
“See you later,” I said, taking his hand in mine. “You’re the bravest of the brave, Quinn.”
“Babe,” he said, biting his lower lip from the pain. “Be careful.”
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“Don’t you be worrying about her,” said a black guy with a short, clipped Afro. “She’s got
guardians.” He gave Eric a cool look. Eric held out his hand and I took it to stand up. My
knees were aching a little after their acquaintance with the hard floor.
As they got him onto the stretcher and lifted him, Quinn seemed to lose consciousness. I
started forward, but the black guy held out his arm. It looked like carved ebony, the muscles
were so defined. “Sister, you just stay here,” he said. “We’re on the job now.”
I watched them carry him off. Once he was out of sight, I looked down at my dress.
Amazingly, it was all right. Not dirty, not bloody, and the wrinkles were at a minimum.
Eric waited.
“Did I love you?” I knew Eric wasn’t going to give up, and I might as well figure out an
answer. “Maybe. Sort of. But I knew all along that whoever was with me, it wasn’t the real
you. And I knew sooner or later you’d remember who you were and what you were.”
“You don’t seem to have yes or no answers about men,” he said.
“You don’t exactly seem to know how you feel about me, either,” I said.
“You’re a mystery,” he said. “Who was your mother, and who was your father? Oh, I
know, you’ll say they raised you from a child and died when you were a little girl. I
remember you telling me the story. But I don’t know if it’s exactly true. If it is, when did
the fairy blood enter your family tree? Did it come in with one of your grandparents? That’s
what I’m supposing.”
“And what business is it of yours?”
“You know it is my business. Now we are tied.”
“Is this going to fade? It will, right? We won’t always be like this?”
“I like being like this. You’ll like it, too,” he said, and he seemed mighty damn sure.
“Who was the vampire who tried to kill us?” I asked, to change the subject. I was hoping
he wasn’t right, and anyway, we’d said everything there was to say on the subject, as far as
I was concerned.
“Let’s go find out,” he said, and took my hand. I trailed along with him, simply because I
wanted to know.
Batanya was standing by the vampire’s body, which had begun the rapid disintegration of
its kind. She’d retrieved her throwing star, and she was polishing it on her pants leg.
“Good throw,” Eric said. “Who was he?”
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She shrugged. “I dunno. The guy with the arrows, was all I know. All I care.”
“He was the only one?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me what he looked like?”
“I was sitting next to him,” said a very small male vampire. He was perhaps five feet tall,
and slim besides. His hair trailed down his back. If he went to jail, he’d have guys knocking
on his cell door within thirty minutes. They’d be sorry, of course, but to the unobservant
eye, he did look like the world’s easiest target. “He was a rough one, and not dressed for the
evening. Khakis and a striped dress shirt…well, you can see.”
Though the body was blackening and flaking away as vamp corpses did, naturally the
clothes were intact.
“Maybe he had a driver’s license?” I suggested. That was almost a given with humans, but
not with vampires. However, it was worth a shot.
Eric squatted and inserted his fingers into the man’s front pocket. Nothing came out, or
from the other front pocket, so without further ado Eric rolled him over. I took a couple of
steps back to avoid the flurry of flakes of ash. There was something in the rear pocket: a
regular wallet. And inside it, sure enough, was a driver’s license.
It had been issued by Illinois. Under blood type was the designation “NA.” Yep, a vamp,
for sure. Reading over Eric’s shoulder, I could see that the vamp’s name had been Kyle
Perkins. Perkins had put “3V” as his age, so he had been a vamp for only three years.
“He must have been an archer before he died,” I said. “Because that’s not a skill you’d pick
up right away, especially that young.”
“I agree,” Eric said. “And in the daytime, I want you to check all the local places you can
practice archery. Throwing arrows is not a skill you can improvise. He trained. The arrow
was specially made. We need to find out what happened to Kyle Perkins, and why this
rogue accepted the job to attend this meeting and kill whomever necessary.”
“So he was a…vampire hit man?”
“Yes, I think so,” Eric said. “Someone is maneuvering us very carefully. Of course, this
Perkins was simply backup in case the trial went wrong. And if it hadn’t been for you, the
trial might well have gone wrong. Someone went to a lot of trouble to play on Henrik
Feith’s fears, and stupid Henrik was about to give that someone up. This Kyle, he was
planted to prevent just that.”
Then the cleanup crew arrived: a group of vampires with a body bag and cleaning supplies.
The human maids would not be asked to mop up Kyle. Luckily, they were all occupied in
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refreshing the vampire rooms, which were off-limits to them during the day.
In very short order, the residue of Kyle Perkins was bagged up and taken away, with one
vampire remaining behind to wield a little handheld vacuum. Let Rhodes CSI try to get
ahold ofthat.
I sensed a lot of movement and looked up to see that the service doors were open and staff
was pouring into the large room to pack away the chairs. In less than fifteen minutes,
Quinn’s judicial paraphernalia was being stored away, his sister directing the work. Then a
band set up on the platform, and the room was cleared for dancing. I’d never seen anything
like it. First a trial, then a few murders, then dancing. Life goes on. Or, in this case, death
continues.
Eric said, “You had better check in with the queen.”
“Oh. Yeah, she might have a few words to say to me.” I glanced around and spotted
Sophie-Anne pretty quickly. She was surrounded by a crowd of people congratulating her
on the favorable verdict. Of course, they would have been just as glad to see her executed,
or whatever would have happened if the Ancient Pythoness had turned thumbs down.
Speaking of the A.P….
“Eric, where’d the old gal go?” I asked.
“The Ancient Pythoness is the original oracle that Alexander consulted,” he said, his voice
quite neutral. “She was considered so revered that even in her old age, she was converted
by the very primitive vampires of her time. And now she has outlasted all of them.”
I didn’t want to think about how she’d fed before the advent of the synthetic blood that had
changed the vampire world. How’d she hobble after her human prey? Maybe they’d
brought people to her, like snake owners bring live mice to their pets?
“To answer your question, I would guess her handmaidens have removed her to her suite.
She is brought out for special occasions.”
“Like the good silver,” I said seriously, and then burst into giggles. To my surprise, Eric
smiled, too, that big smile that made multiple little arcs appear in the corners of his mouth.
We took our places behind the queen. I wasn’t sure she’d even registered my presence, she
was so busy being the belle of the ball. But in a momentary lull in the chitchat, she reached
behind her and took my hand, squeezing it very lightly. “We’ll talk later,” she said, and then
greeted a stout female vampire in a sequined pantsuit. “Maude,” Sophie-Anne said, “how
good to see you. And how are things going in Minnesota?”
Just then a tap on the music stand drew everyone’s attention to the band. It was all
vampire, I noticed with a start. The slick-haired guy at the podium said, “If all you hot
vamps and vampesses are ready to rumble, we’re ready to play! I’m Rick Clark, and this
is…the Dead Man Dance Band!”
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There was a polite smattering of applause.
“Here to open the evening are two of Rhodes’s finest dancers, courtesy of Blue Moon
Productions. Please welcome…Sean and Layla!”
The pair who stepped out into the middle of the dance floor were striking, whether you
were human or vamp. They were both of the cold-blooded variety themselves, though he
was very old and she was freshly turned, I thought. She was one of the most beautiful
women I’d ever seen, and she was wearing a beige lace dress that drifted around her worldclass
legs like snow falling around trees. Her partner was maybe the only vampire I’d ever
seen with freckles, and his dusty red hair was as long as hers.
They only had eyes for each other, and they danced together as if they were gliding
through a dream.
I had never seen anything like it, and from the rapt attention of the audience, no one else
had, either. As the music drew to a conclusion—and to this day, I can’t remember what they
danced to—Sean flung Layla back over his arm, bent over her, and bit. I was shocked, but
the others seemed to expect it, and it turned them on no little amount. Sophie-Anne
smoldered up at Andre (though she didn’t have far to smolder, since he wasn’t much taller
than she), and Eric looked down at me with that hot light in his eyes that made me wary.
I turned my attention to the dance floor with determination and clapped like a maniac when
the two took their bow and more couples began to join them as the music started up again.
From habit I looked around for Bill, who was nowhere to be seen.
Then Eric said, “Let’s dance,” and I found I couldn’t say no.
We took the floor along with the queen and her potential king, and I saw Russell Edgington
and his husband, Bart, step out to dance, too. They looked almost as enthralled with each
other as the two exhibition dancers.
I can’t sing, but by golly, I can dance. And Eric had had a few ballroom lessons along the
way, some century or other. My hand rested on his back, his on mine, our free hands
clasped, and off we went. I wasn’t sure exactly what the dance was, but he was a strong
leader, so it was easy to follow along. More like the waltz than anything else, I decided.
“Pretty dress,” said the dancer Layla as we swung by them.
“Thank you,” I said, and beamed at her. From someone as lovely as she was, that was a
great compliment. Then her partner leaned over to give her a kiss, and they swirled away
into the crowd.
“Thatis a pretty dress,” Eric said. “And you are a beautiful woman.”
I was oddly embarrassed. I’d gotten compliments before—you can’t be a barmaid and not
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get compliments—but most of them had consisted of (various degrees of drunk) guys
telling me I was really cute—or, in one man’s case, how impressive my “rack” was.
(Somehow, JB du Rone and Hoyt Fortenberry had managed to stomp on that guy’s toes and
spill a drink all over him at the same time, just accidentally.)
“Eric,” I said, but I couldn’t finish the sentence because I couldn’t think of what to say
next. I had to concentrate on the speed with which my feet were moving. We were dancing
so fast I felt like I was flying. Suddenly Eric dropped my hand to grip my waist, and as we
turned, he swung me up, and then I was really flying, with a little help from a Viking. I
laughed like a loon, my hair billowing out around my head, and then he let me go and
caught me, just inches away from the floor, and then he did it again and again, until at last I
was standing on the floor and the music was over.
“Thank you,” I said, knowing I must look like I’d been standing in a high gale. “Excuse
me while I go to the ladies’ room.”
I scooted off through the crowd, trying not to grin like an idiot. I should be with—oh, yeah
—my boyfriend.Instead of dancing with another guy until I felt tingly with happiness. And
it didn’t do any good, excusing myself on account of our blood tie.
Sophie-Anne and Andre had stopped dancing, and they were standing with a group of other
vampires. She couldn’t need me, then, since there were no humans for me to “listen” to. I
spotted Carla dancing with Gervaise, and they seemed happy enough. Carla was getting lots
of admiring looks from other vampires, and that would make Gervaise swell with pride.
Having his fellow vampires craving what he was already getting was sweet.
I knew how Gervaise felt.
I stopped in my tracks.
Had I…I wasn’t really reading his mind, was I? No, I couldn’t. The only times I’d caught a
fragment of vampire thought prior to tonight, that fragment had felt cold and snaky.
But I knew how Gervaise felt, for sure, just as I’d read Henrik’s thoughts. Was it just my
knowledge of men and their reactions or my knowledge of vampires, or could I really
follow vampire emotions better since I’d had Eric’s blood for a third time? Or had my skill,
or my talent, or my curse—whatever I called it—broadened to include vampires since I was
closer to being one myself?
No. No, no, no. I felt like myself. I felt human. I felt warm. I was breathing. I had to use
the bathroom. I was hungry, too. I thought about old Mrs. Bellefleur’s famous chocolate
cake. My mouth watered. Yep, human.
Okay, then, this new affinity for vamps would fade, like my extra strength would fade, in
time. I’d had two drinks from Bill, I thought; maybe more. And three from Eric. And every
time I’d had their blood, two or three months had seen the waning of the strength and acuity
I’d gained from the intake. So that would happen this time, too, right? I shook myself
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briskly. Sure, it would.
Jake Purifoy was leaning against the wall, watching the couples dance. I’d glimpsed him
earlier steering a young vampire woman around the floor, and she’d been laughing. So it
wasn’t all melancholy for Jake, and I was glad.
“Hey,” I said.
“Sookie, that was quite some action at the trial.”
“Yeah, it was scary.”
“Where’d that guy come from?”
“Rogue, I guess. Eric’s got me looking at archery ranges tomorrow to track him down, try
to find out who hired him.”
“Good. That was a close call for you. I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly. “I know you must
have been frightened.”
I’d really been too worried about Quinn to think about the arrow being aimed at me. “I
guess I was. You have a good time, now.”
“Something’s got to make up for not being able to change anymore,” Jake said.
“I didn’t know you’d tried.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Over and over,” he said. We looked at each other for a long, long moment. “Well, I’m off
to find another partner,” he told me, and headed purposefully in the direction of a vampire
who’d come with Stan Davis’s group from Texas. She looked glad to see him coming.
By that time I was ducking into the ladies’ room, which was small, of course; most of the
females at the Pyramid of Gizeh wouldn’t need to use such a facility, except to comb their
hair. There was an attendant, a nicety I’d never seen before though I’d read about it in
books. I was supposed to tip her. I still had my little evening purse with my room key in it,
and I was relieved to recall I’d slipped a few dollars in there, along with some tissues and
breath mints and a tiny brush. I nodded to the attendant, a squatty, dark-skinned woman
with an unhappy face.
I took care of business in the nice clean stall and then emerged to wash my hands and to try
to smooth out my hair. The attendant, wearing a name tag that read “Lena,” turned on the
water for me, which kind of weirded me out. I mean, I can turn a faucet. But I washed my
hands and used the towel she extended to me, figuring this was the routine and I shouldn’t
act ignorant. I dropped two dollars in the tip bowl, and she tried to smile at me, but she
looked too unhappy to manage it. She must be having a bad night.
“Thanks,” I said, and turned to leave. I don’t know why, but I glanced into the mirror on
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the inside of the door before I pulled on the handle. There Lena was, staring a hole into my
back. She’d looked so unhappy because she’d been having to suppress how much she
loathed me.
That’s always a bad feeling, when you know someone hates you; especially when it’s for
no good reason. But her problems were not mine, and if she didn’t want to turn on the
faucet for women who dated vampires, she could find another job. I didn’t want her damn
faucet-turning-on, anyway, by God.
So I forged my way through the crowd, checking with the queen to see if she had any
humans around who needed scanning (no), checking to see if I could find a Were or shifter
to give me an update on Quinn (no).
By a stroke of luck, I did find the weather witch, the male witch I’d spotted earlier. I
confess it made me a little proud to find my conjecture had actually been right. His being
here tonight was his reward for good service, though I couldn’t detect who his patron was.
The weather witch had a drink in his hand and a middle-aged woman on his arm. Mrs.
Witch, I discovered with another quick dip into his mental pool. He was hoping she hadn’t
observed that he was very interested in the beautiful vampire dancer and the pretty blond
human coming toward him, the one who’d looked at him earlier like she knew him. Oh…
that would be me.
I couldn’t pick up his name, which would have greased the skids, and I didn’t know what
to say to him. But this was a person who should be brought to Sophie-Anne’s attention.
Someone had used him against her.
“Hello,” I said, giving them my biggest smile. The wife smiled back, a little cautiously,
because the sedate couple weren’t normally approached by young single women (she’d
glanced at my left hand) during glamorous parties. The weather witch’s smile was more on
the frightened side. “Are you all enjoying the party?” I asked.
“Yes, quite an evening,” the wife said.
“My name is Sookie Stackhouse,” I said, oozing charm.
“Olive Trout,” she replied, and we shook hands. “This is my husband, Julian.” She had no
idea what her husband was.
“Are you all from around here?” I was scanning the crowd as unobtrusively as possible. I
had no idea what to do with them now that I’d found them.
“You haven’t watched our local stations,” Olive said proudly. “Julian is the Channel 7
weatherman.”
“How interesting,” I said, with absolute sincerity. “If you two would just come with me, I
know someone who’d just love to meet you.” As I dragged the two through the crowd, I
began to have second thoughts. What if Sophie-Anne intended retribution? But that
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wouldn’t make sense. The important fact was not that therewas a weather witch; the
important fact was that someone had hired Julian Trout to predict the weather outlook for
Louisiana and had somehow postponed the summit until Katrina had wreaked its havoc.
Julian was bright enough to figure out something was wrong with my enthusiasm, and I
was afraid they’d both balk. I was mighty relieved to spot Gervaise’s blond head. I called
his name in a hearty voice as if I hadn’t talked to him in a coon’s age. By the time I reached
him I was almost out of breath from herding the Trouts with such speed and anxiety.
“Gervaise, Carla,” I said, depositing the Trouts in front of the sheriff as if I’d drug them
out of the water. “This is Olive Trout and her husband, Julian. The queen’s been anxious to
meet someone like Julian. He’sreally into the weather .” Okay, not subtle. But Julian’s face
turned white. Yeah, a little knowledge of wrongdoing definitely present in Julian’s
conscience.
“Honey, are you sick?” Olive asked.
“We need to go home,” he said.
“No, no, no,” Carla said, leaping into the conversation. “Gervaise, honey, you remember
Andre said if we heard of anyone who was really a weather authority, he and the queen
especially wanted to have a word with ’em?” She tucked her arms around the Trouts and
beamed at them. Olive looked uncertain.
“Of course,” said Gervaise, the lightbulb finally switching on above his head. “Thank you,
Sookie. Please, come with us.” And they guided the Trouts away.
I felt a little giddy with the pleasure of having been proved right.
Looking around, I spotted Barry sticking a little plate on an empty tray.
“You wanna dance?” I asked, because the Dead Man Dance Band was playing a great
cover of an old Jennifer Lopez song. Barry looked reluctant, but I pulled him by his hand,
and pretty soon we were shaking our bonbons all over the place and having a great time.
Nothing’s like dancing for relaxing tension and losing yourself, just for a little while. I
wasn’t as good as Shakira at muscle control, but maybe if I practiced once in a while…
“What are you doing?” Eric asked, and he wasn’t being facetious. He was glacial with
disapproval.
“Dancing, why?” I gave a wave to signal Eric to scoot. But Barry had stopped, already, and
given me a little good-bye wave.
“I was having a good time,” I protested.
“You were twitching your assets in front of every male in the room,” he said. “Like a…”
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“You hold up, buddy! You stop right there!” I held up a finger, warning him.
“Take your finger out of my face,” he said.
I inhaled to say something unforgivable, welcoming the tide of anger with actual delight—
I wasnot tied to him at the waist—when a strong, wiry arm clamped around me, and an
unfamiliar Irish-accented voice said, “Dance, darling?” As the red-haired dancer who’d
opened the night’s shindig swung me off in a more sedate but complicated set of steps, I
spotted his partner seizing Eric’s wrist to do the same.
“Just follow while you calm down, girl. I’m Sean.”
“Sookie.”
“Pleased to meet you, young woman. You’re a fine dancer.”
“Thank you. That’s a high compliment, coming from you. I really enjoyed your routine
earlier.” I could feel the rush of anger draining away.
“It’s my partner,” he said, smiling. It didn’t look easy for him, that smile, but it
transformed him from a thin-faced freckled man with a blade of a nose to a man with
sexiness to spare. “My Layla is a dream to dance with.”
“She’s very beautiful.”
“Oh, yes, inside and out.”
“How long have you been partners?”
“In dancing, two years. In life, over a year.”
“From your accent, I guess you came here in a roundabout way.” I glimpsed Eric and the
beautiful Layla. Layla had an easy smile on her lips, and she was talking to Eric, who was
still looking sort of grim. But not angry.
“You could say so,” he agreed. “Of course, I’m from Ireland, but I’ve been over here
for…” His brow furrowed in thought, and it was like watching marble ripple. “Been here
for a hundred years, anyway. From time to time, we think about moving back to Tennessee,
where Layla’s from, but we haven’t made up our minds.”
This was a lot of conversation from a quiet-looking guy. “You’re just getting tired of living
in the city?”
“Too much anti-vampire stuff going around lately. The Fellowship of the Sun, the Take the
Night from the Dead movement: we seem to breed ’em here.”
“The Fellowship is everywhere,” I said. The very name made me feel gloomy. “And
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what’ll happen when they get to hear about Weres?”
“Aye. And I think that’ll be soon. I keep hearing from Weres that it’s just around the
corner.”
You’d think, that out of all the supes I knew, one of them would let me know what was up.
Sooner or later the Weres and the shifters would have to let the world in on their big secret,
or they’d get outed by the vampires, either intentionally or unintentionally.
“There might even be a civil war,” Sean said, and I forced my mind back to the topic at
hand.
“Between the Fellowship and the supes?”
He nodded. “I’m thinking that could happen.”
“What would you do in that case?”
“I’ve been through a few wars, and I don’t want to go through another one,” he said
promptly. “Layla hasn’t seen the Old World, and she would enjoy it, so we’d go to England.
We could dance there, or we could just find a place to hide out.”
As interesting as this was, it wasn’t getting me any closer to solving the numerous
problems facing me right at the moment, which I could count off on my fingers. Who had
paid Julian Trout? Who had planted the Dr Pepper bomb? Who had killed the rest of the
Arkansas vampires? Was it the same person who’d had Henrik killed, the employer of the
rogue vamp?
“What was the result?” I said out loud, to the red-haired vamp’s confusion.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Just talking to myself. It’s been a pleasure to dance with you. Excuse me; I have to go
find a friend.”
Sean danced me to the edge of the crowd, and we parted ways. He was already looking for
his mate. Vampire couples didn’t stay together for long, as a rule. Even the hundred-year
marriages of kings and queens required only a once-a-year nuptial visit. I hoped Sean and
Layla would prove to be the exception.
I decided I should check on Quinn. That might be a lengthy process, since I had no idea
where the Weres had taken him. I was so confused by the effect Eric was having on me, all
mixed up with the beginnings of affection for Quinn. But I knew whom I was beholden to.
Quinn had saved my life tonight. I started my search by calling his room but got no answer.
If I was a Were, where would I take a wounded tiger? Well, nowhere public, because Weres
were secretive. They wouldn’t want the hotel staff to catch a word or a phrase that would
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tip them off to the existence of the other supes. So they’d take Quinn to a private room,
right? So, who had a private room and was sympathetic to the Weres?
Jake Purifoy, of course—former Were, current vamp. Quinn could be there—or he could
be down in the hotel garage somewhere, or in the security chief ’s room, or in the infirmary,
if there was such a thing. I had to start somewhere. I inquired at the front desk, where the
clerk didn’t seem to have any problem releasing the room number to me, though it’s true
Jake and I were flagged as being members of the same party. The clerk was not the one
who’d been so rude when we’d checked in. She thought my dress was very pretty, and she
wanted one just like it.
Jake’s room was a floor up from mine, and as I raised my hand to knock on the door, I
casually scanned inside to count the brains. There was the hole in the air that marked a
vampire brain (that’s the best way I can describe it), and a couple of human signatures. But
I picked up on a thought that froze my fist before it had a chance to touch the door.
…they should all die,came the faint fragment of thought. Nothing followed it, though—no
other thought that clarified or elaborated on that malign idea. So I knocked, and the pattern
in the room changed instantly. Jake answered the door. He didn’t look welcoming.
“Hi, Jake,” I said, making my smile as bright and innocent as I could. “How you doing? I
came by to check if Quinn was with you.”
“With me?” Jake sounded startled. “Since I turned, I’ve hardly talked to Quinn, Sookie. We
just don’t have anything to talk about.” I must have looked disbelieving, because he said in
a rush, “Oh, it’s not Quinn; it’s me. I just can’t bridge the chasm between who I was and
who I am now. I’m not even sure who I am.” His shoulders slumped.
That sounded honest enough. And I felt a lot of sympathy for him. “Anyway,” Jake said, “I
helped carry him to the infirmary, and I bet he’s still there. There’s a shifter called Bettina
and a Were called Hondo with him.”
Jake was holding the door shut. He didn’t want me to see his companions. Jake didn’t
know that I could tell that he had people in his room.
It wasn’t any of my business, of course. But it was disquieting. Even as I thanked him and
turned to leave, I was thinking the situation over. The last thing in the world I wanted to do
was to cause the troubled Jake any more problems, but if he was somehow involved in the
plot that seemed to be snaking through the halls of the Pyramid of Gizeh, I had to find out.
First things first. I went down to my room and called the desk to get directions to the
infirmary, and I carefully wrote them on the phone pad. Then I sneaked back up the stairs to
stand outside Jake’s door again, but in the time I’d been gone, the party had begun to
disperse. I saw two humans from the rear. Strange; I couldn’t be certain, but one of them
looked like the surly Joe, the computer-consulting employee from the luggage area. Jake
had been meeting with some of the hotel staff in his room. Maybe he still felt more at home
with humans than he did with vampires. But surely Weres would have been his choice….
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As I stood there in the corridor, feeling sorry for him, Jake’s door opened and he stepped
out. I hadn’t checked for blank spots, only live signatures. My bad. Jake looked a bit
suspicious when he saw me, and I couldn’t blame him.
“Do you want to go with me?” I asked.
“What?” He looked startled. He hadn’t been a vampire long enough to get the inscrutable
face down pat.
“To see Quinn?” I said. “I got directions to the infirmary, and you said you hadn’t talked to
him in a while, so I thought you might want to go with me if I’d kind of smooth the way?”
“That’s a nice idea, Sookie,” he said. “I think I’ll pass. The fact is, most shifters don’t want
me around anymore. Quinn is better than most, I’m sure, but I make him uneasy. He knows
my mom, my dad, my ex-girlfriend; all the people in my former life, the ones who don’t
want to hang with me now.”
I said impulsively, “Jake, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry Hadley turned you if you would rather
have passed on. She was fond of you, and she didn’t want you to die.”
“But I did die, Sookie,” Jake said. “I’m not the same guy anymore. As you know.” He
picked up my arm and looked at the scar on it, the one he’d left with his teeth. “You won’t
ever be the same, either,” he said, and he walked away. I’m not sure he knew where he was
going, but he just wanted to get away from me.
I watched him until he was out of sight. He didn’t turn to look back at me.
My mood had been fragile anyway, and that encounter pretty much started it on the
downslope. I trudged to the elevators, determined to find the damn infirmary. The queen
hadn’t buzzed me, so presumably she was hobnobbing with other vampires, trying to find
out who had hired the weather witch, and generally reveling in her relief. No more trial, a
clear inheritance, the chance to put her beloved Andre in power. Things were coming up
roses for the Queen of Louisiana, and I tried not to be bitter. Or did I have a right to be?
Hmmm, let’s see. I’d helped stop the trial, though I hadn’t counted on it stopping as finally
and completely as it had for, say, the hapless Henrik. Since she’d been found innocent,
she’d get the inheritance as promised in her marriage contract. And who’d had the idea
about Andre? And I’d been proved right about the witch. Okay, maybe I could be a little
bitter at my own unbenevolent fortune. Plus, sooner or later I’d have to choose between
Quinn and Eric, through no fault of my own. I’d stood holding a bomb for a very long time.
The Ancient Pythoness was not a member of my fan club, and she was an object of
reverence to most of the vampires. I’d almost been killed with an arrow.
Well, I’d had worse nights.
I found the infirmary, which was easier to locate than I’d thought, because the door was
open and I could hear a familiar laugh coming from the room. I stepped in to find that
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Quinn was talking to the honey bear–looking woman, who must be Bettina, and the black
guy, who must be Hondo. Also, to my astonishment, Clovache was there. Her armor was
not off, but she managed to give the impression of a guy who’d loosened his tie.
“Sookie,” said Quinn. He smiled at me, but the two shape-changers didn’t. I was definitely
an unwelcome visitor.
But I hadn’t come to see them. I’d come to see the man who’d saved my life. I walked over
to him, letting him watch me, giving him a little smile. I sat on the plastic chair by the bed
and took his hand.
“Tell me how you’re feeling,” I said.
“Like I had a real close shave,” he said. “But I’m gonna be fine.”
“Could you all excuse us a moment, please?” I was at my most polite as I met the eyes of
the three others in the room.
Clovache said, “Back to guarding Kentucky,” and took off. She might have winked at me
before she vanished. Bettina looked a bit disgruntled, as if she’d been student teaching on
her own and now the teacher had returned and snatched back her authority.
Hondo gave me a dark look that held more than a hint of threat. “You treat my man right,”
he said. “Don’t give him no hard time.”
“Never,” I said. He couldn’t think of a way to stay, since Quinn apparently wanted to talk
to me, so he left.
“My fan base just gets bigger and bigger,” I said, watching them go. I got up and shut the
door behind them. Unless a vampire, or Barry, stood outside the door, we were reasonably
private.
“Is this where you dump me for the vampire?” Quinn asked. All trace of good humor had
vanished from his face, and he was holding very still.
“No. This is where I tell you what happened, and you listen, and then we talk.” I said this
as if I was sure he’d go along with it, but that was far from the case, and my heart was
thudding in my throat as I waited for his reply. Finally he nodded, and I closed my eyes in
relief, clutching his left hand in both of mine. “Okay,” I said, bracing myself, and then I
was off and running with my narrative, hoping that he would see that Eric really was the
lesser of two evils.
Quinn didn’t pull his hand away, but he didn’t hold mine, either. “You’re bound to Eric,”
he said.
“Yes.”
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“You’ve exchanged blood with him at least three times.”
“Yes.”
“You know he can turn you whenever he feels like it?”
“Any of us could be turned whenever the vampires feel like it, Quinn. Even you. It might
take two of them to hold you down and one to take all your blood and give you his, but it
still could happen.”
“It wouldn’t take that long if he made up his mind, now that you two have swapped so
often. And this is Andre’s fault.”
“There’s nothing I can do about that now. I wish there were. I wish I could cut Eric out of
my life. But I can’t.”
“Unless he gets staked,” Quinn said.
I felt a pang in my heart that almost had me clapping a hand to my chest.
“You don’t want that to happen.” Quinn’s mouth was compressed in a hard line.
“No, of course not!”
“You care about him.”
Oh,crap. “Quinn, you know Eric and I were together for a while, but he had amnesia and
he doesn’t remember it. I mean, he knows it’s a fact, but he doesn’t remember it at all.”
“If anyone besides you told me that story, you know what I’d think.”
“Quinn. I’m not anybody else.”
“Babe, I don’t know what to say. I care about you, and I love spending time with you. I
love going to bed with you. I like eating at the table with you. I like cooking together. I like
almost everything about you, including your gift. But I’m not good at sharing.”
“I don’t go with two guys at the same time.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, I’m going with you, unless you tell me different.”
“What will you do when Mr. Big and Blond tells you to hop in bed with him?”
“I’ll tell him I’m spoken for…if you’re going to speak.”
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Quinn shifted restlessly on the narrow bed. “I’m healing, but I’m hurting,” he admitted. He
looked very tired.
“I wouldn’t trouble you with all this if it didn’t seem pretty important to me,” I said. “I’m
trying to be honest with you. Absolutely honest. You took the arrow for me, and it’s the
least I can do in return.”
“I know that. Sookie, I’m a man who almost always knows his own mind, but I have to tell
you…I don’t know what to say. I thought we were just about ideal for each other until this.”
Quinn’s eyes blazed in his face suddenly. “If he died, we’d have no problems.”
“If you killed him, I’d have a problem,” I said. I couldn’t get any plainer than that.
Quinn closed his eyes. “We have to think about this again when I’m all healed and you’ve
had sleep and time to relax,” he said. “You gotta meet Frannie, too. I’m so…” To my
horror, I thought Quinn was going to choke up. If he cried, I would, too, and the last thing I
needed was tears. I leaned over so far I thought I was going to fall on top of him, and I
kissed him, just a quick pressure of my mouth on his. But then he held my shoulder and
pulled me back to him, and there was much more to explore, his warmth and intensity…but
then his gasp drew us out of the moment. He was trying not to grimace with pain.
“Oh! I’m sorry.”
“Don’t ever apologize for a kiss like that,” he said. And he didn’t look teary anymore. “We
definitely have something going on, Sookie. I don’t want Andre’s vampire crap to ruin it.”
“Me, either,” I said. I didn’t want to give Quinn up, not the least because of our sizzling
chemistry. Andre terrified me, and who knew what his intentions were? I certainly didn’t. I
suspected Eric didn’t know, either, but he was never averse to power.
I said good-bye to Quinn, a reluctant good-bye, and began finding my way back to the
dance. I felt obliged to check in with the queen to make sure she didn’t need me, but I was
exhausted, and I needed to get out of my dress and collapse on my bed.
Clovache was leaning against a wall in the corridor ahead, and I had the impression she
was waiting for me. The younger Britlingen was less statuesque than Batanya, and while
Batanya looked like a striking hawk with dark curls, Clovache was lighter altogether, with
feathery ash-brown hair that needed a good stylist and big green eyes with high, arched
brows.
“He seems like a good man,” she said in her harsh accent, and I got the strong feeling that
Clovache was not a subtle woman.
“He seems that way to me, too.”
“While a vampire, by definition, is twisty and deceptive.”
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“By definition? You mean, without exception?”
“I do.”
I kept silent as we walked. I was too tired to figure out the warrior’s purpose in telling me
this. I decided to ask. “What’s up, Clovache? What’s the point?”
“Did you wonder why we were here, guarding the King of Kentucky? Why he had decided
to pay our truly astronomical fees?”
“Yes, I did, but I figured it wasn’t my business.”
“It’s very much your business.”
“Then tell me. I’m not up to guessing.”
“Isaiah caught a Fellowship spy in his entourage a month ago.”
I stopped dead, and Clovache did, too. I processed her words. “That’s really bad,” I said,
knowing the words were inadequate.
“Bad for the spy, of course. But she gave up some information before she went to the vale
of shadows.”
“Wow, that’s a pretty way to put it.”
“It’s a load of crap. She died, and itwasn’t pretty. Isaiah is an old-fashioned guy. Modern
on the surface, a traditional vampire underneath. He had a wonderful time with the poor
bitch before she gave it up.”
“You think you can trust what she said?”
“Good point. I’d confess to anything if I thought it would spare me some of the things his
cronies did to her.”
I wasn’t sure that was true. Clovache was made of pretty stern stuff.
“But I think she told him the truth. Her story was, a splinter group in the Fellowship got
wind of this summit and decided it would be a golden opportunity to come out in the open
with their fight against the vampires. Not simply protests and sermons against the vamps,
but out-and-out warfare. This isn’t the main body of the Fellowship…the leaders are always
careful to say, ‘Oh, gosh, no, we don’t condone violence against anyone. We’re only
cautioning people to be aware that if they consort with vampires, they’re consorting with
the devil.’”
“You know a lot about things in this world,” I said.
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“Yes,” she agreed. “I do a lot of research before we take a job.”
I wanted to ask her what her world was like, how she got from one to the other, how much
she charged, if all the warriors on (in?) her world were women or could the guys kick butt,
too; and if so, what they looked like in the wonderful pants. But this wasn’t the time or the
place.
“So, what’s the bottom line on this?” I asked.
“I think maybe the Fellowship is trying to mount some major offensive here.”
“The bomb in the soda can?”
“Actually, that baffles me. But it was outside Louisiana’s room, and the Fellowship has to
know by now that their operative didn’t succeed, if it was their work.”
“And there are also the three murdered vampires in the Arkansas suite,” I pointed out.
“Like I say, baffled,” Clovache said.
“Would they have killed Jennifer Cater and the others?”
“Certainly, if they had a chance. But to tip their hand in such a small way when according
to the spy they have planned something really big—that seems very unlikely. Also, how
could a human get into the suite and kill three vampires?”
“So, what was the result of the Dr Pepper bomb?” I asked, trying hard to figure out the
thinking behind it. We’d resumed walking, and now we were right outside the ceremonies
room. I could hear the orchestra.
“Well, it gave you a few new white hairs,” Clovache said, smiling.
“I can’t think that was the goal,” I said. “I’m not that egocentric.”
Clovache had made up her mind. “You’re right,” she said, “because the Fellowship
wouldn’t have planted it. They wouldn’t want to draw attention to their larger plan with the
little bomb.”
“So it was there for some other purpose.”
“And what was that purpose?”
“The end result of the bomb, if it had gone off, would have been that the queen got a big
scare,” I said slowly.
Clovache looked startled. “Not killed?”
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“She wasn’t even in the room.”
“It should have gone off earlier than it did,” Clovache said.
“How do you know that?”
“Security guy. Donati. That’s what the police told him. Donati sees us as fellow
professionals.” Clovache grinned. “He likes women in armor.”
“Hey, who doesn’t?” I grinned back.
“And it was a weak bomb, if any bomb can be called weak. I’m not saying there wouldn’t
have been damage. There would have. Maybe even someone killed, like you could have
been. But the episode seems to be ineffective and ill-planned.”
“Unless it was designed only to scare. Designed to be spotted. Designed to be disarmed.”
Clovache shrugged.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “If not the Fellowship, who? What does the Fellowship plan to
do? Charge the lobby armed with sharpened baseball bats?”
“The security here is not so good,” Clovache said.
“Yeah, I know. When I was down in the basement, getting a suitcase for the queen, the
guards were pretty lazy, and I don’t think the employees are searched as they come in,
either. And they got a lot of suitcases mixed up.”
“And the vampires hired these people. Unbelievable. On one level vampires realize they’re
not immortal. They can be killed. On another, they’ve survived for so long, it makes them
feel omnipotent.” Clovache shrugged. “Well, back to duty.” We’d reached the ballroom.
The Dead Man Dance Band was still playing.
The queen was standing very close to Andre, who no longer stood behind her but to her
side. I knew this was significant, but it wasn’t plain enough to cause Kentucky to give up
hope. Christian Baruch was also in close attendance. If he’d had a tail, it would have been
wagging, he was so anxious to please Sophie-Anne. I glanced around the room at the other
kings and queens, recognizable by their entourages. I hadn’t seen them in a room all
together before, and I counted. There were only four queens. The other twelve rulers were
males. Of the four queens, Minnesota appeared to be mated with the King of Wisconsin.
Ohio had his arm around Iowa, so they were a couple. Besides Alabama, the only unmated
queen was Sophie-Anne.
Though many vampires tend to be elastic about the gender of their sexual partner, or at
least tolerant of those who prefer something different, some of them definitely aren’t. No
wonder Sophie-Anne was shining so brightly, even from under the lifted cloud of Peter
Threadgill’s death. Vampires didn’t seem to be afraid of merry widows.
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Alabama’s boy toy scuttled his fingers up her bare back, and she shrieked in pretended fear.
“You know I hate spiders,” she said playfully, looking almost human, clutching him close
to her. Though he’d played at frightening her, she clung closer.
Wait,I thought.Wait just a minute. But the idea wouldn’t form.
Sophie-Anne noticed me lurking, and she beckoned. “I think most of the humans are gone
for the night,” she said.
A glance around the room told me that was true. “What did you think of Julian Trout?” I
asked, to allay my fear that she’d do something awful to him.
“I think he doesn’t understand what he did,” Sophie-Anne said. “At least to some extent.
But he and I will come to an understanding.” She smiled. “He and his wife are quite all
right. I don’t need you anymore tonight. Go amuse yourself,” she said, and it didn’t sound
condescending. Sophie-Anne really wanted me to have a good time, though, granted, she
wasn’t too particular about how I did it.
“Thanks,” I said, and then recalled that I’d better dress that up a bit. “Thank you, ma’am,
and you have a good night. See you tomorrow evening.”
I was glad to get out of there. With the room chock full o’ vampires, the glances I was
getting were a little on the pointy-toothed side. Individual bloodsuckers had an easier time
of it sticking to the artificial blood than a group did. Something about the memory of the
good ole days just made them want something warm from the source, rather than a liquid
created in a lab and heated up in a microwave. Right on schedule, the crowd of Willing
Donors returned through a back door and lined up, more or less, against the back wall. In
very short order, they were all occupied, and (I suppose) happy.
After Bill had taken my blood during lovemaking, he’d told me blood from the neck of a
human—after a diet of TrueBlood, say—was like going to Ruth’s Chris Steak House after
many meals at McDonald’s. I saw Gervaise nuzzling Carla off in a corner, and I wondered
if she needed help; but when I saw her face, I decided not.
Carla didn’t come in that night, either, and without the distraction of Quinn, I was kind of
sorry. I had too much to think about. It seemed that trouble was looking for me in the
corridors of the Pyramid of Gizeh, and no matter which turn I took, it was going to find me.
15
I’D FINALLY GONE TO BED AT FOUR IN THE MORNING,and I woke at noon. That
eight hours wasn’t a good eight hours. I kept starting half awake, and I couldn’t regulate my
temperature, which might have had something to do with the blood exchange…or not. I had
bad dreams, too, and twice I thought I heard Carla entering the room, only to open my eyes
enough to see she wasn’t there. The weird light that entered through the heavily colored
glass of the human-only floor was not like real daylight, not at all. It was throwing me off.
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I felt a tad bit better after a long shower, and I lifted the phone to call room service to get
something to eat. Then I decided to go down to the little restaurant. I wanted to see other
humans.
There were a few there; not my roommate, but a human playmate or two, and Barry. He
gestured to the empty chair at his table, and I dropped into it, looking around for the waiter
to signal for coffee. It came right away, and I shuddered with pleasure at the first sip. After
I’d finished the first cup, I said—in my way—How are you today? Were you up all night?
No, Stan went to bed early with his new girlfriend, so I wasn’t needed. They’re still in the
honeymoon stage. I went to the dance for a while, then I hung out with the makeup girl the
Queen of Iowa brought with her.He waggled his eyebrows to tell me that the makeup girl
was hot.
So, what’s your program for today?
Did you get one of these slid under your door?Barry pushed a stapled sheaf of papers
across the table to me just as the waiter brought my English muffin and eggs.
Yeah, I stuffed it in my purse.Wow, I could talk to Barry while I ate, the neatest answer to
talking with your mouth full I could ever devise.
Take a look.
While Barry cut open a biscuit to slather it with butter, I scanned the pages. An agenda for
the night, which was very helpful. Sophie-Anne’s trial had been the most serious case that
had to be adjudicated, the only one involving royalty. But there were a couple of others.
The first session was set for 8:00, and it was a dispute over a personal injury. A Wisconsin
vampire named Jodi (which seemed unlikely in and of itself ) was being sued by an Illinois
vampire named Michael. Michael alleged that Jodi had waited until he had dozed off for the
day and then broken off one of his canines. With pliers.
Wow. That sounds…interesting.I raised my eyebrows.How come the sheriffs aren’t
handling this? Vampires really didn’t like airing their dirty laundry.
“Interstate,” Barry said succinctly. The waiter had just brought a whole pot of coffee, so
Barry topped off my cup and filled his own.
I flipped over a page. The next case involved a Kansas City, Missouri, vampire named
Cindy Lou Suskin, who’d turned a child. Cindy Lou claimed that the child was dying of a
blood disorder anyway, and she’d always wanted a child; so now she had a perpetual
vampire preteen. Furthermore, the boy had been turned with his parents’ consent, gotten in
writing. Kate Book, the Kansas City, Kansas, lawyer appointed by the state to supervise the
child’s welfare, was complaining that now the child refused to see his human parents or to
have any interaction with them, which was contrary to the agreement between the parents
and Cindy Lou.
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Sounded like something on daytime television.Judge Judy , anyone?
So, tonight is court cases,I summarized after scanning the remaining sheets. “I guess we’re
needed?”
“Yes, I guess so. There’ll be human witnesses for the second case. Stan wants me to be
there, and I’m betting your queen will want you there, too. Her subject Bill is one of the
appointed judges. Only kings and queens can judge other kings and queens, but for cases
involving lesser vampires, the judges are picked from a pool. Bill’s name came out of the
hat.”
“Oh, goody.”
You got a history with him?
Yeah. But I think he’d probably be a good judge.I wasn’t sure why I believed this; after all,
Bill had shown he was capable of great deception. But I thought he would try to be fair and
dispassionate.
I had noticed that the “court” cases would take up the hours between eight and eleven.
After that, midnight to four a.m. was blocked out as “Commerce.” Barry and I looked at
each other and shrugged.
“Swap meet?” I suggested. “Flea market?”
Barry had no idea.
The fourth night of the conference was the last, and the first half of it was marked “Free
Time for Everyone in Rhodes.” Some of the suggested activities: seeing the Blue Moon
dancers again, or their more explicit division, Black Moon. The difference wasn’t spelled
out, but I got the definite idea that the Black Moon employees did much more sexually
oriented performances. Different dance teams from the studio were listed as appearing at
different venues. The visiting vampires were also advised to visit the zoo, which would be
open at night by special arrangement, or the city museum, ditto. Or they could visit a club
“for the particular enjoyment of those who enjoy their pleasures on the darker side.” It was
called Kiss of Pain.Remind me to walk down the other side of the street from that one, I
told Barry.
You never enjoy a little bite?Barry touched his tongue to his own blunt canines so I
couldn’t miss the implication.
There’s lots of pleasure in that,I said, because I could hardly deny it.But I think this place
probably goes a little beyond a nip in the neck. Are you busy right now? Because I have to
do some legwork for Eric, and I could use some help.
“Sure,” Barry said. “What’s up?”
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“We need to find archery places,” I said.
“This was left for you at the desk, miss,” said our waiter, who dropped a manila envelope
on the table and retreated as if he suspected we had rabies. Evidently our silent exchanges
had freaked someone out.
I opened the envelope to find a picture of Kyle Perkins inside. There was a note paperclipped
to it in Bill’s familiar cramped handwriting. “Sookie: Eric says you need this to do
some detective work, and that this picture is necessary. Please be cautious. William
Compton.” And just when I was thinking about asking the waiter for a phone book, I saw
there was a second sheet. Bill had searched the Internet and made a list of all the archery
practice places in the city. There were only four. I tried not to be impressed by Bill’s
thoughtfulness and assistance. I’d done with being impressed by Bill.
I called the hotel garage to get one of the cars brought by the Arkansas contingent. The
queen had assumed ownership of them, and Eric had offered me one of them.
Barry had run up to his room to get a jacket, and I was standing by the front door, waiting
for the car to be brought around and wondering how much I should tip the valet when I
spotted Todd Donati. He came over to me, walking slowly and somehow heavily, though he
was a thin man. He looked bad today, the scalp exposed by his receding hairline gray and
damp looking, even his mustache sagging.
He stood facing me for a moment, not speaking. I thought he was gathering his courage, or
his hopelessness. If ever I saw death riding on a man’s shoulder, it was on Todd Donati’s.
“My boss is trying to interest your boss in hooking up,” he said abruptly. If I’d imagined
how he’d open our conversation, it had never included that line.
“Yeah, now that she’s a widow, she’s attracting quite a lot of interest,” I said.
“He’s an old-fashioned guy in a lot of ways,” Todd Donati said. “Comes from an old
family, doesn’t like modern thinking.”
“Um-hum,” I said, trying to sound neutral but encouraging.
“He don’t believe in women making up their own minds, being able to fend for
themselves,” the security chief said.
I couldn’t look like I understood what Donati was talking about, because I sure didn’t.
“Even vampire women,” he said, and looked at me squarely and directly.
“Okay,” I said.
“Think about it,” Donati said. “Get your queen to ask him where the security tape is that
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shows that area in front of her room.”
“I will,” I said, having no idea why I was agreeing. Then the ailing man spun on his heel
and walked away with an air of having discharged his duty.
Then the car came around, Barry hurried out of the elevator and came over to join me, and
any thinking I might have done about the encounter faded in my fear of driving in the city. I
don’t think Eric ever considered how hard it would be for me to drive in Rhodes, because
he just didn’t think about stuff like that. If I hadn’t had Barry with me, it would have been
nearly impossible. I could cope with the driving, or I could look at the map the parking
attendant loaned us, but not both.
I didn’t do too bad, though the traffic was heavy and the weather was cold and raining. I
hadn’t been out of the hotel since we’d arrived, and it was kind of refreshing to see the
outside world. Also, this was probably the only glimpse of the rest of the city I would get. I
did as much looking as I could. Who knew if I’d ever come back? And this was so far
north.
Barry plotted our course, and we began our archery tour of Rhodes.
We started with the farthest business, called Straight Arrow. It was a long, narrow place on
a very busy avenue. It was gleaming, well-lit—and had qualified instructors behind the
counter who were heavily armed. I knew this, because a big sign said so. The men there
were not impressed by Barry’s southern accent. They thought it made him sound stupid.
Though when I talked, they thought I was cute. Okay, how insulting is that? The subtext,
which I read very clearly from their minds, was: women sound stupid anyway, so a
southern accent just enhances that adorable dimness. Men are supposed to sound crisp and
direct, so southern men sound stupid and weak.
Anyway, aside from their built-in prejudices, these men were not helpful. They’d never
seen Kyle Perkins at any of their night classes, and they didn’t think he’d ever rented time
to practice at their place.
Barry was fuming at the disrespect he’d endured, and he didn’t even want to go in the
second place. I trotted in by myself with the picture, and the one guy at work at the second
archery supply store, which had no range, said, “No,” immediately. He didn’t discuss the
picture, ask me why I wanted to know about Kyle Perkins, or wish me a nice day. He didn’t
have a sign to tell me how formidable he was. I figured he just ruded people to death.
The third place, housed in a building that I thought might at one time have been a bowling
alley, had a few cars in the parking lot and a heavy opaque door.STOP AND BE
IDENTIFIED a sign said. Barry and I could read it from the car. It seemed a little ominous.
“I’m tired of being in the car anyway,” he said gallantly, and got out with me. We stood
where we could be seen, and I alerted Barry when I spotted the camera above our heads.
Barry and I both looked as pleasant as we could. (In Barry’s case, that was pretty pleasant.
He just had a way about him.) After a few seconds, we heard a loud click, and the door
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unlocked. I glanced at Barry, and he pulled open the heavy door while I stepped inside the
room and to one side so he could enter, too.
We were faced with a long counter extending the length of the opposite wall. There was a
woman about my age behind the counter, with coppery hair and skin, the product of an
interesting racial blend. She’d dyed her eyebrows black, which added a touch of the bizarre
to the whole uni-color effect.
She looked us over just as carefully in person as she had over the camera, and I could read
the thought that she was much happier to see Barry than she was to see me. I told Barry,You
better take this one.
Yeah, I’m getting the idea,he answered, and while I laid Kyle’s picture on the counter, he
said, “Could you tell us if this guy ever came in here to buy arrows or to practice?”
She didn’t even ask why we wanted to know. She bent over to look at the picture, maybe a
little farther than necessary to give Barry the benefit of her neckline. She scanned Kyle’s
picture and immediately made a face. “Yeah, he came in here right after dark yesterday,”
she said. “We’d never had a vampire customer, and I didn’t really want to serve him, but
what are you gonna do? He had the money, and the law says we can’t discriminate.” She
was a woman who was ready and willing to discriminate, no doubt about it.
“Was anyone with him?” Barry asked.
“Oh, let me think.” She posed, her head thrown back, for Barry’s benefit.She didn’t think
his southern accent sounded stupid. She thought it was adorable and sexy. “I just can’t
remember. Listen, I’ll tell ya what I’ll do. I’ll get the security tape for last night; we’ve still
got it. And I’ll let you have a look at it, okay?”
“Can we do that right now?” I asked, smiling sweetly.
“Well, I can’t leave the counter right now. There’s no one else here to watch the store if I
have to go to the back. But if you’ll come to look tonight after my replacement gets here”—
she cast a very pointed glance at Barry, to make sure I realized I need not come—“I’ll let
you have a peek.”
“What time?” Barry said, rather reluctantly.
“Shall we say seven? I get off right after that.”
Barry didn’t touch the hint, but he agreed to be back at seven.
“Thanks, Barry,” I said as we buckled up again. “You’re really helping me out.” I called
the hotel and left a message for the queen and Andre, explaining where I was and what I
was doing, so they wouldn’t get mad when I wasn’t at their disposal the moment they
woke, which should be very soon. After all, I was following Eric’s orders.
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“You gotta come in with me,” Barry said. “I’m not seeing that woman by myself. She’ll eat
me alive. That was the War of Northern Aggression, for sure.”
“Okay. I’ll stay out in the car, and you can yell to me from your head if she climbs on top
of you.”
“It’s a deal.”
To fill the time, we had a cup of coffee and some cake at a bakery. It was great. My
grandmother had always believed that northern women couldn’t cook. It was delightful to
find out exactly how untrue that conviction had been. My appetite was also delightful. It
was a continuing relief to find that I was just as hungry as I normally was. Nothing vampy
about me, no sir!
After we filled up the tank and checked our route back to the Pyramid, it was finally time
to return to the archery range to talk to Copper. The sky was full dark, and the city glowed
with light. I felt sort of urban and glamorous, driving around such a large and famous city.
And I’d been given a task and performed it successfully. No country mouse, me.
My feeling of happiness and superiority didn’t last long.
Our first clue that all was not well at the Monteagle Archery Company was the heavy
metal door hanging askew.
“Shit,” said Barry, which summed up my feelings in a nutshell.
We got out—very reluctantly—and, with many glances from side to side, we went up to
the door to examine it.
“Blown or ripped?” I said.
Barry knelt on the gravel to have a closer look.
“I’m no 007,” he said, “but I think this was ripped off.”
I looked at the door doubtfully. But when I bent over to look more closely, I saw the
twisted metal of the hinges. Chalk one up for Barry.
“Okay,” I said.Here’s the part where we actually have to go in.
Barry’s jaw tightened.Yeah, he said, but he didn’t sound too sure. Barry was definitely not
into violence or confrontations. Barry was into money, and he had the best-paying
employer. Right now, he was wondering if any amount of money would be enough to
compensate for this, and he was thinking if he weren’t with a woman, he’d just get in the
car and drive away.
Sometimes male pride can be a good thing. I sure didn’t want to do this by myself.
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I shoved the door, which responded in a spectacular way by falling off its hinges and
crashing to the gravel.
“Hi, we’re here,” Barry said weakly. “Anyone who didn’t know before…”
After the noise had stopped and nothing had leaped out of the building to eat us, Barry and
I straightened up from our instinctive crouching positions. I took a deep breath. This was
my task, since this had been my errand. I stepped into the stream of light coming from the
empty doorway. I took one big step forward over the threshold of the building. A quick scan
hadn’t given me a brain signal, so I pretty much figured what I was going to find.
Oh, yeah, Copper was dead. She was on top of the counter, laid out in a sprawl of limbs,
her head canting off to one side. There was a knife protruding from her chest. Someone had
been sick about a yard to the left of my foot—not blood—so there’d been at least one
human on-site. I heard Barry step into the building and pause, just as I had.
I’d noted two doors from the room on our earlier visit. There was a door to the right,
outside the counter, that would admit customers to the range. There was a door behind the
counter that would allow employees to duck back for breaks and to attend customers in the
range area. I was sure the tape we’d come to watch had been back there, because that would
be the natural place for the security equipment. Whether it was still back there, that was the
big question.
I wanted to turn around and leave without a backward glance, and I was scared out of my
mind, but she’d died because of that tape, I figured, and it seemed like I’d be discarding her
unwilling sacrifice if I discarded the tape. That didn’t really make much sense, but that was
how I felt.
I’m not finding anyone else in the area,Barry told me.
Me, either,I said, after I’d performed my second, more thorough, scan.
Barry, of course, knew exactly what I planned to do, and he said,Do you want me to come
with you?
No, I want you to wait outside. I’ll call you if I need you.In truth, it would have been nice
to have him closer, but it smelled too bad in the room for anyone to stand around for more
than a minute, and our minute was up.
Without protesting, Barry went back outside, and I crept down the counter to a clear area.
It felt indescribably creepy to scramble over, avoiding Copper’s body. I was glad her
sightless eyes were not aimed in my direction as I used a tissue to wipe the area my hands
had gripped.
On the employee side of the counter, there was evidence of a considerable struggle. She’d
fought hard. There were smears of blood here and there, and paperwork had gotten knocked
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to the floor. There was a panic button clearly visible, below the top of the counter, but I
guess she hadn’t had time to punch it.
The lights were on in the office behind the counter, too, as I could see through the partially
open door. I pushed it with my foot, and it swung away from me with a little creak. Again,
nothing leaped out at me. I took a deep breath and stepped through.
The room was a combination security room/office/break-room. There were counters built
around the walls with rolling chairs pulled up to them, and there were computers and a
microwave and a little refrigerator: the usual stuff. And there were the security tapes,
heaped in a pile on the floor and smoldering. All the other smells in the outer room had
been so bad we simply hadn’t gotten around to this one. There was another door leading
out; I didn’t go check to see where it led to, because there was a body blocking it. It was a
man’s body, and it was lying facedown, which was a blessing. I didn’t need to go over to
check to see if he was dead. He was surely dead. Copper’s replacement, I assumed.
“Well, crap,” I said out loud. And then I thought,Thank God I can get the hell out of here.
One thing about the security tapes having been burned: any record of our earlier visit was
gone, too.
On my way, I pressed the panic button with my elbow. I hoped it was ringing somewhere
at a police station, and that they’d get here soon.
Barry was waiting for me outside, as I’d been 99 percent sure he would be. Though I
confess I wouldn’t have been completely surprised if he’d left. “Let’s book! I set off the
alarm,” I said, and we jumped into the car and got the hell out of there.
I was driving, because Barry was looking green. We had to pull over once (and in Rhodes
traffic that wasn’t easy) for him to be sick. I didn’t blame him one little bit. What we’d seen
was awful. But I’ve been blessed with a strong stomach, and I’d seen worse.
We got back to the hotel in time for the judicial session. Barry looked at me with gaping
astonishment when I commented that I’d better get ready for it. He hadn’t had an inkling
what I’d been thinking, so I knew he was really feeling bad.
“How can you think of going?” he said. “We have to tell someone what happened.”
“I called the police, or at least a security company who’ll report it,” I said. “What else can
we do?” We were in the elevator rising from the parking garage to the lobby.
“We have to talk to them.”
“Why?” The doors opened and we stepped out into the hotel lobby.
“To tell them.”
“What?”
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“That someone tried to kill you last night here by…okay, throwing an arrow at you.” He
fell silent.
“Right. See?” I was getting his thoughts now, and he’d come to the correct conclusion.
“Would it help solve her murder? Probably not, because the guy is dead and the tapes are
destroyed. And they’d come here asking questions of the master vampires of a third of the
United States. Who would thank me for that? No one, that’s who.”
“We can’t stand by and do nothing.”
“This isn’t perfect. I know that. But it’s realistic. And practical.”
“Oh, so now you’repractical ?” Barry was getting shrieky.
“And you’re yelling at my—at Sookie,” said Eric, earning another shriek (this one
wordless) from Barry. By that time, Barry didn’t care if he ever saw me again in his life.
Though I didn’t feel quite that drastic, I didn’t think we were going to become pen pals,
either.
If Eric didn’t know how to pick a term for what I was to him, I was equally stumped. “Do
you need something?” I asked him in a voice that warned him I wasn’t in the mood for any
double entendres.
“What did you find out today?” he asked, all business, and the starch ran out of me in a
stream.
“You go on,” I told Barry, who didn’t need telling twice.
Eric looked around for a safe place to talk, didn’t see one. The lobby was busy with
vampires who were going to the judicial proceedings, or chatting, or flirting. “Come,” he
said, not as rudely as it sounds, and we went to the elevators and up to his room. Eric was
on the ninth floor, which covered a much larger area than the queen’s. There were twenty
rooms on nine, at least. There was a lot more traffic, too; we passed quite a few vamps on
the way to Eric’s room, which he told me he was sharing with Pam.
I was a little curious about seeing a regular vampire room, since I’d seen only the living
room of the queen’s suite. I was disappointed to find that aside from the traveling coffins, it
looked quite ordinary. Of course, that was kind of a big “aside.” Pam’s and Eric’s coffins
were resting on fancy trestles covered with fake hieroglyphics in gilt on black-painted
wood, which gave them a neat atmospheric touch. There were two double beds, too, and a
very compact bathroom. Both towels were hung up, which I could see because the door was
open. Eric had never hung up his towels when he lived with me, so I was willing to bet that
Pam had folded them and hung them on the rack. It seemed oddly domestic. Pam had
probably picked up for Eric for over a century. Good God. I hadn’t even managed two
weeks.
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What with the coffins and the beds, the room was a bit crowded, and I wondered what the
lower echelon vamps had to put up with, say, on floor twelve. Could you arrange coffins in
a bunk configuration? But I was just waffling, trying not to think about being alone with
Eric. We sat down, Eric on one bed and I on another, and he leaned forward. “Tell me,” he
said.
“Well, it’s not good,” I said, just to put him on the right track.
His face darkened, the blond brows drawing in to meet, his mouth turning down.
“We did find an archery range that Kyle Perkins visited. You were right about that. Barry
went with me to be nice, and I really appreciated it,” I said, getting my opening credits in.
“To condense the whole afternoon, we found the right range at our third stop, and the gal
behind the counter said we could look at the security tape from the night Kyle visited. I
thought we might see someone we knew coming in with him. But she wanted us to come
back at the end of her shift, seven o’clock.” I paused to take a deep breath. Eric’s face
didn’t change at all. “We came back at the appointed time, and she was dead, murdered, in
the store. I went past her to look in the office, and the tapes had been burned.”
“Killed how?”
“She’d been stabbed, and the knife was left in her chest, and the killer or someone with
him had thrown up food. Also, a guy who worked at the store was killed, but I didn’t check
him out to see how.”
“Ah.” Eric considered this. “Anything else?”
“No,” I said, and got to my feet to leave.
“Barry was angry with you,” he observed.
“Yeah, he was, but he’ll get over it.”
“What’s his problem?”
“He doesn’t think I handled the…He doesn’t think we should’ve left. Or…I don’t know.
He thinks I was unfeeling.”
“I think you did exceptionally well.”
“Well,great !” Then I clamped down on myself. “Sorry,” I said. “I know you meant to
compliment me. I’m not feeling all that good about her dying. Or leaving her. Even if it was
the practical thing to do.”
“You’re second-guessing yourself.”
“Yes.”
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A knock at the door. Since Eric didn’t shift himself, I got up to answer it. I didn’t think it
was a sexist thing; it was a status thing. I was definitely the lower dog in the room.
Completely and totally not to my surprise, the knocker was Bill. That just made my day
complete. I stood aside to let him enter. Darn if I was going to ask Eric if I should let him
in.
Bill looked me up and down, I guess to check that my clothes were in order, then strode by
me without a word. I rolled my eyes at his back. Then I had a brilliant idea: instead of
turning back into the room for further discussion, I stepped out of the open door and shut it
behind me. I marched off quite briskly and grabbed the elevator with hardly any wait. In
two minutes, I was unlocking my door.
End of problem.
I felt quite proud of myself.
Carla was in our room, naked again.
“Hi,” I said. “Please put on a robe.”
“Well, hey, if it bothers you,” she said in a fairly relaxed manner, and pulled on a robe.
Wow. End of another problem. Direct action, straightforward statements; obviously, those
were the keys to improving my life.
“Thanks,” I said. “Not going to the judicial stuff?”
“Human dates aren’t invited,” she said. “It’s Free Time for us. Gervaise and I are going out
nightclubbing later. Some really extreme place called Kiss of Pain.”
“You be careful,” I said. “Bad things can happen if there are lots of vamps together and a
bleeding human or two.”
“I can handle Gervaise,” Carla said.
“No, you can’t.”
“He’s nuts about me.”
“Until he stops being nuts. Or until a vamp older than Gervaise takes a shine to you, and
Gervaise gets all conflicted.”
She looked uncertain for a second, an expression I felt sure Carla didn’t wear too often.
“What about you? I hear you’re tied to Eric now.”
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“Only for a while,” I said, and I meant it. “It’ll wear off.”
I will never go anywhere with vampires again,I promised myself.I let the lure of the money
and the excitement of the travel pull me in. But I won’t do that again. As God is my
witness… Then I had to laugh out loud. Scarlett O’Hara, I wasn’t. “I’ll never be hungry
again,” I told Carla.
“Why, did you eat a big supper?” she asked, focused on the mirror because she was
plucking her eyebrows.
I laughed. And I couldn’t stop.
“What’s up with you?” Carla swung around to eye me with some concern. “You’re not
acting like yourself, Sookie.”
“Just had a bad shock,” I said, gasping for breath. “I’ll be okay in a minute.” It was more
like ten before I gathered my control back around me. I was due at the judicial meeting, and
frankly, I wanted to have something to occupy my mind. I scrubbed my face and put on
some makeup, changed into a bronze silk blouse and tobacco-colored pants with a matching
cardigan, and put on some brown leather pumps. With my room key in my pocket and a
relieved good-bye from Carla, I was off to find the judicial sessions.
16
THE VAMPIRE JODI WAS PRETTY FORMIDABLE. SHE PUTme in mind of Jael, in
the Bible. Jael, a determined woman of Israel, put a tent peg through the head of Sisera, an
enemy captain, if I was remembering correctly. Sisera had been asleep when Jael did the
deed, just as Michael had been when Jodi broke off his fang. Even though Jodi’s name
made me snicker, I saw in her a steely strength and resolve, and I was immediately on her
side. I hoped the panel of judges could see past the vampire Michael’s whining about his
damn tooth.
This wasn’t set up like the previous evening, though the session took place in the same
room. The panel of judges, I guess you’d call them, were on the stage and seated at a long
table facing the audience. There were three of them, all from different states: two men and a
woman. One of the males was Bill, who was looking (as always) calm and collected. I
didn’t know the other guy, a blond. The female was a tiny, pretty vamp with the straightest
back and longest rippling black hair I ever saw. I heard Bill address her as “Dahlia.” Her
round little face whipped back and forth as she listened to the testimony of first Jodi, then
Michael, just as if she was watching a tennis match. Centered on the white tablecloth before
the judges was a stake, which I guess was the vampire symbol of justice.
The two complaining vampires were not represented by lawyers. They said their piece, and
then the judges got to ask questions before they decided the verdict by a majority vote. It
was simple in form, if not in fact.
“You were torturing a human woman?” Dahlia asked Michael.
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“Yes,” he said without blinking an eye. I glanced around. I was the only human in the
audience. No wonder there was a certain simplicity to the proceedings. The vampires
weren’t trying to dress it up for a warm-blooded audience. They were behaving as they
would if they were by themselves. I was sitting by those of my party who’d attended—
Rasul, Gervaise, Cleo—and maybe their closeness masked my scent, or maybe one tame
human didn’t count.
“She’d offended me, and I enjoy sex that way, so I abducted her and had a little fun,”
Michael said. “Then Jodi goes all ballistic on me and breaks my fang. See?” He opened
wide enough to show the judges the fang’s stump. (I wondered if he’d gone by the booth
that was still set up out in the vendors’ area, the one that had such amazing artificial fangs.)
Michael had the face of an angel, and he didn’t get that what he’d done was wrong. He had
wanted to do it, so he did it. Not all people who’ve been brought over to be vampires are
mentally stable to start with, and some of them are utterly conscienceless after decades, or
even centuries, of disposing of humans as they damn well please. And yet, they enjoy the
openness of the new order, getting to stride around being themselves, with the right not to
be staked. They don’t want to pay for that privilege by adhering to the rules of common
decency.
I thought breaking off one fang was a very light punishment. I couldn’t believe he’d had
the gall to bring a case against anyone. Apparently, neither did Jodi, who was on her feet
and going for him again. Maybe she meant to snap off his other fang. This was way better
thanThe Peoples’ Court orJudge Judy .
The blond judge tackled her. He was much larger than Jodi, and she seemed to accept that
she wasn’t going to heave him off. I noticed Bill had moved his chair back so he could leap
up if further developments required quick action.
The tiny Dahlia said, “Why did you take such exception to Michael’s actions, Jodi?”
“The woman was the sister of one of my employees,” Jodi said, her voice shaking with
anger. “She was under my protection. And stupid Michael will cause all of us to be hunted
again if he continues his ways. He can’t be corrected. Nothing stops him, not even losing
the fang. I warned him three times to stay away, but the young woman spoke back to him
when he propositioned her yet again on the street, and his pride was more important than
his intelligence or discretion.”
“Is this true?” the little vamp asked Michael.
“She insulted me, Dahlia,” he said smoothly. “A human publicly insulted me.”
“This one’s easy,” said Dahlia. “Do you both agree?” The blond male restraining Jodi
nodded, and so did Bill, who was still perched on the edge of his chair to Dahlia’s right.
“Michael, you will bring retribution on us by your unwise actions and your inability to
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control your impulses,” Dahlia said. “You have ignored warnings, and you ignored the fact
that the young woman was under the protection of another vampire.”
“You can’t mean this! Where is your pride?” Michael was yelling and on his feet.
Two men stepped forward out of the shadows at the back of the stage. They were both
vampires, of course, and they were both good-sized men. They held Michael, who put up
quite a fight. I was a little shocked by the noise and the violence, but in a minute they’d
take Michael off to some vampire prison, and the calm proceedings would continue.
To my absolute astonishment, Dahlia nodded to the vamp sitting on Jodi, who got up and
assisted her to rise. Jodi, smiling broadly, was across the stage in one leap, like a panther.
She grabbed up the stake lying on the judges’ table, and with one powerful swing of her
lean arm, she buried the stake in Michael’s chest.
I was the only one who was shocked, and I clapped both hands over my mouth to keep
from squeaking.
Michael looked at her with utter rage, and he even kept struggling, I suppose to free his
arms so he could pull the stake out, but in a few seconds it was all over. The two vamps
holding the new corpse hauled it off, and Jodi stepped off the stage, still beaming.
“Next case,” called Dahlia.
The next was the one about the vampire kid, and there were humans involved in this one. I
felt less conspicuous when they came in: the hangdog parents with their vampire
representative (was it possible that humans couldn’t testify before this court?) and the
“mother” with her “child.”
This was a longer, sadder case, because the parents’ suffering over the loss of their son—
who was still walking and talking, but not to them—was nearly palpable. I wasn’t the only
one who cried, “For shame!” when Cindy Lou revealed the parents were giving her
monthly payments for the boy’s upkeep. The vampire Kate argued for the parents
ferociously, and it was clear she thought Cindy Lou was a trailer-trash vampire and a bad
mother, but the three judges—different ones this time, and I didn’t know any of them—
abided by the written contract the parents had signed and refused to give the boy a new
guardian. However, they ruled, the contract had to be equally enforced on the parents’
behalf, and the boy was required to spend time with his biological parents as long as they
chose to enforce the right.
The head judge, a hawk-faced guy with dark, liquid eyes, called the boy up to stand before
them. “You owe these people respect and obedience, and you signed this contract, too,” he
said. “You may be a minor in human law, but to us, you are as responsible as…Cindy Lou.”
Boy, it just killed him, having to admit there was a vampire named Cindy Lou. “If you try
to terrorize your human parents, or coerce them, or drink their blood, we will amputate your
hand. And when it grows back, we’ll amputate it again.”
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The boy could hardly be whiter than he was, and his human mother fainted. But he’d been
so cocky, so sure of himself, and so dismissive of his poor parents, I thought the strong
warning was necessary. I caught myself nodding.
Oh, yeah, this was fair, to threaten a kid with having his hand amputated.
But if you’d seen this kid, you might have agreed. And Cindy Lou was no prize; whoever
had turned her must have been mentally and morally deficient.
I hadn’t been needed after all. I was wondering about the rest of the evening when the
queen came through the double doors at the end of the room, Sigebert and Andre in close
attendance. She was wearing a sapphire blue silk pantsuit with a beautiful diamond
necklace and small diamond earrings. She looked classy, absolutely smooth, sleek, and
perfect. Andre made a beeline to me.
“I know,” he said, “that is, Sophie-Anne tells me that I have done wrong to you. I’m not
sorry, because I will do anything for her. Others don’t mean anything to me. But I do regret
that I have not been able to refrain from causing something that distresses you.”
If that was an apology, it was the most half-assed one I’d ever received in my life. It left
almost everything to be desired. All I could do was say, “I hear you.” It was the most I’d
ever get.
By then, Sophie-Anne was standing in front of me. I did my head-bob thing. “I will need
you with me during the next few hours,” she said, and I said, “Sure.” She glanced up and
down my clothes, as if wishing I had dressed up a little more, but no one had warned me
that a part of the night marked off for Commerce meant fancy clothes were appropriate.
Mr. Cataliades steamed up to me, wearing a beautiful suit and a dark red-and-gold silk tie,
and he said, “Good to see you, my dear. Let me brief you on the next item on the schedule.”
I spread my hands to show I was ready. “Where’s Diantha?” I asked.
“She is working something out with the hotel,” Cataliades said. He frowned. “It’s most
peculiar. There was an extra coffin downstairs, apparently.”
“How could that be?” Coffins belonged to somebody. It’s not like a vampire was going to
be traveling with a spare, like you had to have a dress coffin and an everyday coffin. “Why
did they call you?”
“It had one of our tags on it,” he said.
“But all of our vamps are accounted for, right?” I felt a tingle of anxiety in my chest. Just
then, I saw the usual waiters moving among the crowd, and I saw one spot me and turn
away. Then he saw Barry, who’d come in with the King of Texas. The waiter turned away
yet again.
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I actually started to call to a nearby vampire to hold the guy so I could have a look into his
head, and then I realized I was acting as high-handed as the vampires themselves. The
waiter vanished, and I hadn’t had a close look at him, so I wasn’t sure I could even identify
him in a crowd of other servers in the same outfit. Mr. Cataliades was talking, but I held up
a hand. “Hold it for a sec,” I murmured. The waiter’s quick turn had reminded me of
something, something else that had seemed odd.
“Please pay attention, Miss Stackhouse,” the lawyer said, and I had to stow the thread of
thought away. “Here’s what you need to do. The queen will be negotiating for a few favors
she needs to help rebuild her state. Just do what you do best to discover if everyone dealing
with her is honorable.”
This was not a very specific guideline. “Do my best,” I said. “But I think you should go
find Diantha, Mr. C. I think there’s something really strange and wrong about this extra
coffin they’re talking about. There was that extra suitcase, too,” I said. “I carried it up to the
queen’s suite.”
Mr. Cataliades looked at me blankly. I could see that he considered the small problem of
extra items turning up in a hotel to be a small one and below his concern. “Did Eric tell you
about the murdered woman?” I asked, and his attention sharpened.
“I haven’t seen Master Eric this evening,” he said. “I’ll be sure to track him down.”
“Something’s up; I just don’t know what,” I muttered more or less to myself, and then I
turned away to catch up with Sophie-Anne.
Commerce was conducted in a sort of bazaar style. Sophie-Anne positioned herself by the
table where Bill was sitting, back at work selling the computer program. Pam was helping
him, but she was in her regular clothes, and I was glad the harem costume was getting a
rest. I wondered what the procedure was, but I adopted a wait-and-see attitude, and I found
out soon enough. The first to approach Sophie-Anne was the big blond vampire who’d
served as a judge earlier. “Dear madam,” he said, kissing her hand. “I am charmed to see
you, as always, and devastated by the destruction of your beautiful city.”
“A small portion of my beautiful city,” Sophie-Anne said with the sweetest of smiles.
“I am in despair at the thought of the straits you must be in,” he continued after a brief
pause to register her correction. “You, the ruler of such a profitable and prestigious
kingdom…now brought so low. I hope to be able to assist you in my humble fashion.”
“And what form would that assistance take?” Sophie-Anne inquired.
After much palaver, it turned out that Mr. Flowery was willing to bring a gazillion board
feet of lumber to New Orleans if Sophie-Anne would give him 2 percent of her next five
years’ revenue. His accountant was with him. I looked into his eyes with great curiosity. I
stepped back, and Andre slithered to my side. I turned so that no one could read my lips.
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“Quality of the lumber,” I said as quietly as a hummingbird’s wings.
That took forever to hammer out, and it was boring, boring, boring. Some of the wannabe
providers didn’t have humans with them, and I was no help with those; but most of them
did. Sometimes the human had paid the vampire a substantial sum to “sponsor” him, so he
could just be in the hall and pitch his woo in a one-on-one setting. By the time vendor
number eight simpered to a stop in front of the queen, I was unable to suppress my yawns.
I’d noticed Bill was doing a landmark business selling copies of his vampire database. For a
reserved kind of guy, he did a good job of explaining and promoting his product,
considering some of the vampires were very mistrustful of computers. If I heard about the
“Yearly Update Package” one more time, I was gonna puke. There were lots of humans
clustering around Bill, because they were more computer savvy than the vamps as a whole.
While they were absorbed, I tried to get a scan in here and there, but they were just thinking
megahertz and RAM and hard drives—stuff like that.
I didn’t see Quinn. Since he was a wereanimal, I figured he’d be completely over his
wound of the night before. I could only take his absence as a signal. I was heart-heavy and
weary.
The queen invited Dahlia, the little, pretty vampire who’d been so direct in her judgment,
up to her suite for a drink. Dahlia accepted regally, and our whole party moved up to the
suite. Christian Baruch tagged along; he’d been hovering around Sophie-Anne all evening.
His courtship of Sophie-Anne was heavy-handed, to say the least. I thought again of the
boy toy I’d watched the previous evening, tickling the back of his ladylove in imitation of a
spider, because he knew she was frightened of them, and how he’d gotten her to snuggle
closer to him. I felt a lightbulb come on over my head and wondered if it was visible to
anyone else.
My opinion of the hotelier plummeted. If he thought such a strategy would work on
Sophie-Anne, he had a lot of thinking to do.
I didn’t see Jake Purifoy anywhere around, and I wondered what Andre had him doing.
Something innocuous probably, like checking to make sure all the cars were gassed up. He
wasn’t really trusted to handle anything more taxing, at least not yet. Jake’s youth and his
Were heritage counted against him, and he’d have to bust his tail to earn points. But Jake
didn’t have that fire in him. He was looking to the past, to his life as a Were. He had a
backlog of bitterness.
Sophie’s suite had been cleaned; all the vampire suites had to be cleaned at night, of
course, while the vamps were out of them. Christian Baruch started telling us about the
extra help he’d had to take on to cope with the summit crowd and how nervous some of
them were about cleaning rooms occupied by vampires. I could tell Sophie-Anne was not
impressed by Baruch’s assumption of superiority. He was so much younger than her, he
must seem like a swaggering teenager to the centuries-old queen.
Jake came in just then, and after paying his respects to the queen and meeting Dahlia, he
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came to sit by me. I was slumping in an uncomfortable straight chair, and he pulled a
matching one over.
“What’s up, Jake?”
“Not much. I’ve been getting the queen and Andre tickets to a show for tomorrow night.
It’s an all-vampire production ofHello, Dolly! ”
I tried to imagine that, found I couldn’t. “What are you going to be doing? It’s marked as
free time on the schedule.”
“I don’t know,” he said, a curiously remote tone in his voice. “My life has changed so
much I just can’t predict what will happen. Are you going out tomorrow in the day, Sookie?
Shopping, maybe? There are some wonderful stores on Widewater Drive. That’s down by
the lake.”
Even I had heard of Widewater Drive, and I said, “I guess it’s possible. I’m not much of a
shopper.”
“You really should go. There’re some great shoe stores, and a big Macy’s—you’d love
Macy’s. Make a day of it. Get away from this place while you can.”
“I’ll sure think about it,” I said, a little puzzled. “Um, have you seen Quinn today?”
“Glimpsed him. And I talked to Frannie for a minute. They’ve been busy getting props
ready for the closing ceremonies.”
“Oh,” I said. Right. Sure. That took loads of time.
“Call him, ask him to take you out tomorrow,” Jake said.
I tried to picture me asking Quinn to take me shopping. Well, it wasn’t totally out of the
question, but it wasn’t likely, either. I shrugged. “Maybe I’ll get out some.”
He looked pleased.
“Sookie, you can go,” Andre said. I was so tired I hadn’t even noticed him glide up.
“Okay. Good night, you two,” I said, and stood to stretch. I noticed the blue suitcase was
still where I’d dropped it two nights ago. “Oh, Jake, you need to take that suitcase back
down to the basement. They called me and told me to bring it up here, but no one’s claimed
it.”
“I’ll ask around,” he said vaguely, and took off for his own room. Andre’s attention had
already returned to the queen, who was laughing at the description of some wedding Dahlia
had attended.
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“Andre,” I said in a very low voice, “I gotta tell you, I think Mr. Baruch had something to
do with that bomb outside the queen’s door.”
Andre looked as if someone had stuck a nail up his fundament. “What?”
“I’m thinking that he wanted Sophie-Anne scared,” I said. “I’m thinking that he thought
she’d be vulnerable and need a strong male protector if she felt threatened.”
Andre was not Mr. Expressive, but I saw incredulity, disgust, and belief cross his face in
quick order.
“And I’m also thinking maybe he told Henrik Feith that Sophie-Anne was going to kill
him. Because he’s the hotel owner, right? And he’d have a key to get into the queen’s room,
where we thought Henrik was safe, right? So Henrik would continue the queen’s trial,
because he’d been persuaded she would do him in. Again, Christian Baruch would be there,
to be her big savior. Maybe he had Henrik killed, after he’d set him up, so he could do a
tah-dahreveal and dazzle Sophie-Anne with his wonderful care of her.”
Andre had the strangest expression on his face, as if he was having trouble following me.
“Is there proof?” he asked.
“Not a smidge. But when I talked to Mr. Donati in the lobby this morning, he hinted that
there was a security tape I might want to watch.”
“Go see,” Andre said.
“If I go ask for it, he’ll get fired. You need to get the queen to ask Mr. Baruch point-blank
if she can see the security tape for the lobby outside during the time the bomb was planted.
Gum on the camera or not, that tape will show something.”
“Leave first, so he won’t connect you to this.” In fact, the hotelier had been absorbed in the
queen and her conversation, or his vampire hearing would have tipped him off that we were
talking about him.
Though I was exhausted, I had the gratifying feeling that I was earning the money they
were paying me for this trip. And it was a load off my mind to feel that the Dr Pepper thing
was solved. Christian Baruch would not be doing any more bomb planting now that the
queen was on to him. The threat the splinter group of the Fellowship posed…well, I’d only
heard of that from hearsay, and I didn’t have any evidence of what form it would take.
Despite the death of the woman at the archery place, I felt more relaxed than I had since I’d
walked into the Pyramid of Gizeh, because I was inclined to attribute the killer archer to
Baruch, too. Maybe when he saw that Henrik would actually take Arkansas from the queen,
he’d gotten greedy and had the assassin take out Henrik, so the queen would get everything.
There was something confusing and wrong about that scenario, but I was too tired to think
it through, and I was content to let the whole tangled web lie until I was rested.
I crossed the little lobby to the elevator and pressed the button. When the doors dinged
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open, Bill stepped out, his hands full of order forms.
“You did well this evening,” I said, too tired to hate him. I nodded at the forms.
“Yes, we’ll all make a lot of money from this,” he said, but he didn’t sound particularly
excited.
I waited for him to step out of my way, but he didn’t do that, either.
“I would give it all away if I could erase what happened between us,” he said. “Not the
times we spent loving each other, but…”
“The times you spent lying to me? The times you pretended you could hardly wait to date
me when it turns out you were under order to? Those times?”
“Yes,” he said, and his deep brown eyes didn’t waver. “Those times.”
“You hurt me too much. That’s not ever gonna happen.”
“Do you love any man? Quinn? Eric? That moron JB?”
“You don’t have the right to ask me that,” I said. “You don’t have any rights at all where
I’m concerned.”
JB? Where’d that come from? I’d always been fond of the guy, and he was lovely, but his
conversation was about as stimulating as a stump’s. I was shaking my head as I rode down
in the elevator to the human floor.
Carla was out, as usual, and since it was five in the morning the chances seemed good that
she’d stay out. I put on my pink pajamas and put my slippers beside the bed so I wouldn’t
have to grope around for them in the darkened room in case Carla came in before I awoke.