Book Seven 8-10

8
“MY BAGS ARE PACKED…” I SANG.
“Well, I’m not so lonesome I could cry,” Amelia said. She’d kindly agreed to drive me to
the airport, but I should have made her promise to be pleasant that morning, too. She’d
been a little broody the whole time I was putting on my makeup.
“I wish I was going, too,” she said, admitting what had been sticking in her craw. Of
course, I’d known Amelia’s problem before she’d said it out loud. But there wasn’t a thing I
could do.
“It’s not up to me to invite or not invite,” I said. “I’m the hired help.”
“I know,” she said grumpily. “I’ll get the mail, and I’ll water the plants, and I’ll brush Bob.
Hey, I heard that the Bayou State insurance salesman needs a receptionist, since the mom of
the woman who worked for him got evacuated from New Orleans and has to have full-time
care.”
“Oh, do go in to apply for that job,” I said. “You’ll just love it.” My insurance guy was a
wizard who backed up his policies with spells. “You’ll really like Greg Aubert, and he’ll
interest you.” I wanted Amelia’s interview at the insurance agency to be a happy surprise.
Amelia looked at me sideways with a little smile. “Oh, is he cute and single?”
“Nope. But he has other interesting attributes. And remember, you promised Bob you
wouldn’t do guys.”
“Oh, yeah.” Amelia looked gloomy. “Hey, let’s look up your hotel.”
Amelia was teaching me how to use my cousin Hadley’s computer. I’d brought it back with
me from New Orleans, thinking I’d sell it, but Amelia had coaxed me to set it up here at the
house. It looked funny on a desk in the corner of the oldest part of the house, the room now
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used as a living room. Amelia paid for an extra phone line for the Internet, since she needed
it for her laptop upstairs. I was still a nervous novice.
Amelia clicked on Google and typed in “Pyramid of Gizeh hotel.” We stared at the picture
that popped up on the screen. Most of the vampire hotels were in large urban centers, like
Rhodes, and they were also tourist attractions. Often called simply “the Pyramid,” the hotel
was shaped like one, of course, and it was faced with bronze-colored reflective glass. There
was one band of lighter glass around one of the floors close to the base.
“Not exactly…hmmm.” Amelia looked at the building, her head tilted sideways.
“It needs to slant more,” I said, and she nodded.
“You’re right. It’s like they wanted to have a pyramid, but they didn’t really need enough
floors to make it look right. The angle’s not steep enough to make it look really grand.”
“And it’s sitting on a big rectangle.”
“That, too. I expect those are the convention rooms.”
“No parking,” I said, peering at the screen.
“Oh, that’ll be below the building. They can build ’em that way up there.”
“It’s on the lakefront,” I said. “Hey, I get to see Lake Michigan. See, there’s just a little
park between the hotel and the lake.”
“And about six lanes of traffic,” Amelia pointed out.
“Okay, that, too.”
“But it’s close to major shopping,” Amelia said.
“It’s got an all-human floor,” I read. “I’ll bet that’s this floor, the one that’s lighter. I
thought that was just the design, but it’s so humans can go somewhere to have light during
the day. People need that for their well-being.”
“Translation: it’s a law,” Amelia said. “What else is there? Meeting rooms, blah blah blah.
Opaque glass throughout except for the human floor. Exquisitely decorated suites on the
highest levels, blah blah blah. Staff thoroughly trained in vampires’ needs. Does that mean
they’re all willing to be blood donors or fuck buddies?”
Amelia was so cynical. But now that I knew who her father was, that kind of made sense.
“I’d like to see the very top room, the tip of the pyramid,” I said.
“Can’t. It says here that that’s not a real guest floor. It’s actually where all the air
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conditioner stuff is.”
“Well, hell. Time to go,” I said, glancing at my watch.
“Oh, yeah.” Amelia stared gloomily at the screen.
“I’ll only be gone a week,” I said. Amelia was definitely a person who didn’t like to be by
herself. We went downstairs and carried my bags to the car.
“I got the hotel number to call in case of emergency. I got your cell phone number, too.
You pack your charger?” She maneuvered down the long gravel driveway and out onto
Hummingbird Road. We’d go right around Bon Temps to get to the interstate.
“Yeah.” And my toothbrush and toothpaste, my razor, my deodorant, my hair dryer (just in
case), my makeup, all my new clothes and some extras, lots of shoes, a sleeping outfit,
Amelia’s traveling alarm clock, underwear, a little jewelry, an extra purse, and two
paperbacks. “Thanks for loaning me the suitcase.” Amelia had contributed her bright red
roller bag and a matching garment bag, plus a carry-on I’d crammed with a book, a
crossword puzzle compendium, a portable CD player, and a headset, plus a small CD case.
We didn’t talk much on the drive. I was thinking how strange it was going to be, leaving
Amelia alone in my family home. There had been Stackhouses in residence on the site for
over a hundred and seventy years.
Our sporadic conversation died by the time we neared the airport. There didn’t seem to be
anything else to be said. We were right by the main Shreveport terminal, but we were going
to a small private hangar. If Eric hadn’t booked an Anubis charter plane weeks ago, he
would’ve been up a creek, because the summit was definitely taxing Anubis’s capabilities.
All the states involved were sending delegations, and a big hunk of Middle America, from
the Gulf to the Canadian border, was included in the American Central division.
A few months ago, Louisiana would have needed two planes. Now one would suffice,
especially since a few of the party had gone ahead. I’d read the list of missing vampires
after the meeting at Fangtasia, and to my regret, Melanie and Chester had been on it. I’d
met them at the queen’s New Orleans headquarters, and though we hadn’t had time to
become bosom buddies or anything, they’d seemed like good vamps.
There was a guard at the gate in the fence enclosing the hangar, and he checked my
driver’s license and Amelia’s before he let us in. He was a regular human off-duty cop, but
he seemed competent and alert. “Turn to the right, and there’s parking by the door in the
east wall,” he said.
Amelia leaned forward a little as she drove, but the door was easy enough to see, and there
were other cars parked there. It was about ten in the morning, and there was a touch of cool
in the air, just below the surface warmth. It was an early breath of fall. After the hot, hot
summer, it was just blissful. It would be cooler in Rhodes, Pam had said. She’d checked the
temperatures for the coming week on the Internet and called me to tell me to pack a
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sweater. She’d sounded almost excited, which was a big deal for Pam. I’d been getting the
impression that Pam was a wee bit restless, a bit tired of Shreveport and the bar. Maybe it
was just me.
Amelia helped me unload the suitcases. Amelia had had to take a number of spells off the
red Samsonite before she could hand it over to me. I hadn’t asked what would have
happened if she’d forgotten. I pulled up the handle on the rolling bag and slung the carry-on
bag across my shoulder. Amelia took the hanging bag and opened the door.
I’d never been in an airplane hangar before, but it was just like the ones in the movies:
cavernous. There were a few small planes parked inside, but we proceeded as Pam had
instructed to the large opening in the west wall. The Anubis Air jet was parked outside, and
the coffins were being loaded onto the luggage belt by the uniformed Anubis employees.
They all wore black relieved only by a stylized jackal’s head on the chest of the uniform, an
affectation that I found irritating. They glanced at us casually, but no one challenged us or
asked to see identification until we got to the steps leading up to the plane.
Bobby Burnham was standing at the foot of the steps with a clipboard. Of course, since it
was daylight, it was obvious Bobby wasn’t a vamp, but he was nearly pale and stern
enough to be one. I’d never met him before, but I knew who he was, and he certainly
recognized me. I plucked that right from his brain. But his certainty didn’t stop him from
checking my ID against his damn list, and he was giving Amelia the big glare, like she
couldn’t turn him into a toad. (That was what Amelia was thinking.)
“He’d have to croak,” I murmured, and she smiled.
Bobby introduced himself, and when we nodded, he said, “Your name is on the list, Miss
Stackhouse, but Miss Broadway’s isn’t. I’m afraid you’ll have to get your luggage up by
yourself.” Bobby was loving the power.
Amelia was whispering something under her breath, and in a rush Bobby blurted, “I’ll
carry the heavy bag up the stairs, Miss Stackhouse. Can you handle the other bag? If that’s
not something you want to do, I’ll be back down in a minute and take them up for you.”
The astonishment on his face was priceless, but I tried not to enjoy it too much. Amelia was
playing a slightly mean trick.
“Thanks, I can manage,” I reassured him, and took the hanging bag from Amelia while he
bumped up the stairs with the heavier piece of luggage.
“Amelia, you rascal,” I said, but not too angrily.
“Who’s the asshole?” she asked.
“Bobby Burnham. He’s Eric’s daytime guy.” All vamps of a certain rank had one. Bobby
was a recent acquisition of Eric’s.
“What does he do? Dust the coffins?”
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“No, he makes business arrangements, he goes to the bank, he picks up the dry cleaning,
he deals with the state offices that are open only in the day, and so forth.”
“So he’s a gofer.”
“Well, yeah. But he’s an important gofer. He’s Eric’s gofer.”
Bobby was coming back down the steps now, still looking surprised that he’d been polite
and helpful. “Don’t do anything else to him,” I said, knowing that she was considering it.
Amelia’s eyes flashed before she got the sense of what I was saying. “Yeah, petty of me,”
she admitted. “I just hate power-mad jerks.”
“Who doesn’t? Listen, I’ll see you in a week. Thanks for bringing me to the plane.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She gave me a forlorn smile. “You have a good time, and don’t get killed or
bitten or anything.”
Impulsively, I hugged her, and after a second’s surprise, she hugged me back.
“Take good care of Bob,” I said, and up the stairs I went.
I couldn’t help feeling a little anxious, since I was cutting my ties with my familiar life, at
least temporarily. The Anubis Air employee in the cabin said, “Choose your seat, Miss
Stackhouse.” She took the hanging bag from me and put it away. The interior of the aircraft
was not like that of any human plane, or at least that was what the Anubis website had
alleged. The Anubis fleet had been designed and outfitted for the transportation of sleeping
vamps, with human passengers coming in second. There were coffin bays around the wall,
like giant luggage bins, and at the front end of the aircraft there were three rows of seats, on
the right three seats, and on the left two, for people like me…or, at least, people who were
going to be helpful to the vamps at this conference in some capacity. At present, there were
only three other people sitting in the seats. Well, one other human and two part-humans.
“Hi, Mr. Cataliades,” I said, and the round man rose from his seat, beaming.
“Dear Miss Stackhouse,” he said warmly, because that was the way Mr. Cataliades talked,
“I am so very glad to see you again.”
“Pleased to see you, too, Mr. Cataliades.”
His name was pronounced Ka-TAL-ee-ah-deez, and if he had a first name, I didn’t know it.
Sitting next to him was a very young woman with bright red spiked hair: his niece, Diantha.
Diantha wore the strangest ensembles, and tonight she’d topped herself. Maybe five feet
tall, bony thin, Diantha had chosen orange calf-length leggings, blue Crocs, a white ruffled
skirt, and a tie-dyed tank top. She was dazzling to the eye.
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Diantha didn’t believe in breathing while she talked. Now she said, “Goodtoseeya.”
“Right back at ya,” I said, and since she didn’t make any other move, I gave her a nod.
Some supes shake hands, others don’t, so you have to be careful. I turned to the other
passenger. With another human, I thought I was on firmer ground, so I held out my right
hand. As if he’d been offered a dead fish, the man extended his own hand after a
perceptible pause. He pressed my palm in a limp way and withdrew his fingers as if he
could just barely refrain from wiping them on his suit pants.
“Miss Stackhouse, this is Johan Glassport, a specialist in vampire law.”
“Mr. Glassport,” I said politely, struggling not to take offense.
“Johan, this is Sookie Stackhouse, the queen’s telepath,” Mr. Cataliades said in his courtly
way. Mr. Cataliades’s sense of humor was as abundant as his belly. There was a twinkle in
his eye even now. But you had to remember that the part of him that wasn’t human—the
majority of Mr. Cataliades—was a demon. Diantha was half-demon; her uncle even more.
Johan gave me a brief up-and-down scan, almost audibly sniffed, and returned to the book
he had in his lap.
Just then, the Anubis stewardess began giving us the usual spiel, and I buckled myself into
my seat. Soon after that, we were airborne. I didn’t have a twinge of anxiety, because I was
so disgusted by Johan Glassport’s behavior.
I didn’t think I’d ever encountered such in-your-face rudeness. The people of northern
Louisiana may not have much money, and there may be a high teen pregnancy rate and all
kinds of other problems, but by God, we’re polite.
Diantha said, “Johan’sanasshole.”
Johan paid absolutely no attention to this accurate assessment but turned the page of his
book.
“Thanks, dear,” Mr. Cataliades said. “Miss Stackhouse, bring me up to date on your life.”
I moved to sit opposite the trio. “Not much to tell, Mr. Cataliades. I got the check, as I
wrote you. Thanks for tying up all the loose ends on Hadley’s estate, and if you’d
reconsider and send me a bill, I’d be glad to pay it.” Not exactly glad, but relieved of an
obligation.
“No, child. It was the least I could do. The queen was happy to express her thanks in that
way, even though the evening hardly turned out like she’d planned.”
“Of course, none of us imagined it would end that way.” I thought of Wybert’s head flying
through the air surrounded by a mist of blood, and I shuddered.
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“You are the witness,” Johan said unexpectedly. He slipped a bookmark into his book and
closed it. His pale eyes, magnified behind his glasses, were fixed on me. From being dog
poop on his shoe, I had been transformed into something quite interesting and remarkable.
“Yeah. I’m the witness.”
“Then we must talk, now.”
“I’m a little surprised, if you’re representing the queen at this very important trial, that you
haven’t gotten around to talking to me before,” I said in as mild a voice as I could manage.
“The queen had trouble contacting me, and I had to finish with my previous client,” Johan
said. His unlined face didn’t exactly change expression, but it did look a bit tenser.
“Johan was in jail,” Diantha said very clearly and distinctly.
“Oh, my goodness,” I said, truly startled.
Johan said, “Of course, the charges were completely unfounded.”
“Of course, Johan,” Mr. Cataliades said with absolutely no inflection in his voice.
“Ooo,” I said. “What were those charges that were so false?”
Johan looked at me again, this time with less arrogance. “I was accused of striking a
prostitute in Mexico.”
I didn’t know much about law enforcement in Mexico, but it did seem absolutely
incredible to me that an American could get arrested in Mexico for hitting a prostitute, if
that was the only charge. Unless he had a lot of enemies.
“Did you happen to have something in your hand when you struck her?” I asked with a
bright smile.
“I believe Johan had a knife in his hand,” Mr. Cataliades said gravely.
I know my smile vanished right about then. “You were in jail in Mexico for knifing a
woman,” I said. Who was dog poop now?
“A prostitute,” he corrected. “That was the charge, but of course, I was completely
innocent.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Mine is not the case on the table right now, Miss Stackhouse. My job is to defend the
queen against the very serious charges brought against her, and you are an important
witness.”
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“I’m the only witness.”
“Of course—to the actual death.”
“There were several actual deaths.”
“The only death that matters at this summit is the death of Peter Threadgill.”
I sighed at the image of Wybert’s head, and then I said, “Yeah, I was there.”
Johan may have been lower than pond scum, but he knew his stuff. We went through a
long question and answer session that left the lawyer knowing more about what had
happened than I did, and I’d been there. Mr. Cataliades listened with great interest, and now
and then threw in a clarification or explained the layout of the queen’s monastery to the
lawyer.
Diantha listened for a while, sat on the floor and played jacks for half an hour, then
reclined her seat and went to sleep.
The Anubis Airline attendant came through and offered drinks and snacks from time to
time on the three-hour flight north, and after I’d finished my session with the trial lawyer, I
got up to use the bathroom. That was an experience; I’d never been in an airplane bathroom
before. Instead of resuming my seat, I walked down the plane, taking a look at each coffin.
There was a luggage tag on each one, attached to the handles. With us in the plane today
were Eric, Bill, the queen, Andre, and Sigebert. I also found the coffin of Gervaise, who’d
been hosting the queen, and Cleo Babbitt, who was the sheriff of Area Three. The Area Two
sheriff, Arla Yvonne, had been left in charge of the state while the queen was gone.
The queen’s coffin was inlaid with mother-of-pearl designs, but the others were quite plain.
They were all of polished wood: no modern metal for these vamps. I ran my hand over
Eric’s, having creepy mental pictures of him lying inside, quite lifeless.
“Gervaise’s woman drove ahead by night with Rasul to make sure all the queen’s
preparations were in place,” Mr. Cataliades’s voice said from my right shoulder. I jumped
and shrieked, which tickled the queen’s civil lawyer pink. He chuckled and chuckled.
“Smooth move,” I said, and my voice was sour as a squeezed lemon.
“You were wondering where the fifth sheriff was.”
“Yes, but you were maybe a thought or two behind.”
“I’m not telepathic like you, my dear. I was just following your facial expressions and
body language. You counted the coffins and began reading the luggage tags.”
“So the queen is not only the queen, but the sheriff of her own area.”
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“Yes; it eliminates confusion. Not all the rulers follow that pattern, but the queen found it
irksome to constantly consult another vampire when she wanted to do something.”
“Sounds like the queen.” I glanced forward at our companions. Diantha and Johan were
occupied: Diantha with sleep, Johan with his book. I wondered if it was a dissection book,
with diagrams—or perhaps an account of the crimes of Jack the Ripper, with the crime
scene photographs. That seemed about Johan’s speed. “How come the queen has a lawyer
like him?” I asked in as low a voice as I could manage. “He seems really…shoddy.”
“Johan Glassport is a great lawyer, and one who will take cases other lawyers won’t,” said
Mr. Cataliades. “And he is also a murderer. But then, we all are, are we not?” His beady
dark eyes looked directly into mine.
I returned the look for a long moment. “In defense of my own life or the life of someone I
loved, I would kill an attacker,” I said, thinking before every word left my mouth.
“What a diplomatic way to put it, Miss Stackhouse. I can’t say the same for myself. Some
things I have killed, I tore apart for the sheer joy of it.”
Oh,ick. More than I wanted to know.
“Diantha loves to hunt deer, and she has killed people in my defense. And she and her
sister even brought down a rogue vampire or two.”
I reminded myself to treat Diantha with more respect. Killing a vampire was a very
difficult undertaking. And she could play jacks like a fiend.
“And Johan?” I asked.
“Perhaps I’d better leave Johan’s little predilections unspoken for the moment. He won’t
step out of line while he’s with us, after all. Are you pleased with the job Johan is doing,
briefing you?”
“Is that what he’s doing? Well, yes, I guess so. He’s been very thorough, which is what you
want.”
“Indeed.”
“Can you tell me what to expect at the summit? What the queen will want?”
Mr. Cataliades said, “Let’s sit and I’ll try to explain it to you.”
For the next hour, he talked, and I listened and asked questions.
By the time Diantha sat up and yawned, I felt a bit more prepared for all the new things I
faced in the city of Rhodes. Johan Glassport closed his book and looked at us, as if he were
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now ready to talk.
“Mr. Glassport, have you been to Rhodes before?” Mr. Cataliades asked.
“Yes,” the lawyer answered. “I used to practice in Rhodes. Actually, I used to commute
between Rhodes and Chicago; I lived midway between.”
“When did you go to Mexico?” I asked.
“Oh, a year or two ago,” he answered. “I had some disagreements with business associates
here, and it seemed a good time to…”
“Get the heck out of the city?” I supplied helpfully.
“Run like hell?” Diantha suggested.
“Take the money and vanish?” Mr. Cataliades said.
“All of the above,” said Johan Glassport with the faintest trace of a smile.
9
IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON WHEN WE ARRIVED INRhodes. There was an Anubis
truck waiting to onload the coffins and transport them to the Pyramid of Gizeh. I looked out
the limo windows every second of the ride into the city, and despite the overwhelming
presence of the chain stores we also saw in Shreveport, I had no doubt I was in a different
place. Heavy red brick, city traffic, row houses, glimpses of the lake…I was trying to look
in all directions at once. Then we came into view of the hotel; it was amazing. The day
wasn’t sunny enough for the bronze glass to glint, but the Pyramid of Gizeh looked
impressive anyway. Sure enough, there was the park across the six-lane street, which was
seething with traffic, and beyond it the vast lake.
While the Anubis truck pulled around to the back of the Pyramid to discharge its load of
vampires and luggage, the limo swept up to the front of the hotel. As we daytime creatures
scooted out of the car, I didn’t know what to look at first: the broad waters or the
decorations of the structure itself.
The main doors of the Pyramid were manned by a lot of maroon-and-beige uniformed
men, but there were silent guardians, too. There were two elaborate reproductions of
sarcophagi placed in an upright position, one on each side of the main lobby doors. They
were fascinating, and I would have enjoyed the chance to examine both of them, but we
were swept into the building by the staff. One man opened the car door, one examined our
identification to make sure we were registered guests—not human reporters, curiosity
seekers, or assorted fanatics—and another pushed open the door of the hotel to indicate we
should enter.
I’d stayed in a vampire hotel before, so I expected the armed guards and the lack of ground
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floor windows. The Pyramid of Gizeh was making more of an effort to look a bit like a
human hotel than Dallas’s Silent Shore had; though the walls held murals imitating
Egyptian tomb art, the lobby was bright with artificial light and horribly perky with pipedin
music—“The Girl from Ipanema” in a vampire hotel.
The lobby was busier than the Silent Shore’s, too.
There were lots of humans and other creatures striding around purposefully, lots of action
at the check-in desk, and some milling around the hospitality booth put up by the host city’s
vampire nest. I’d gone with Sam to a bar supply convention in Shreveport once when he
was shopping for a new pump system, and I recognized the general setup. Somewhere, I
was sure, there would be a convention hall with booths, and a schedule of panels or
demonstrations.
I hoped there would be a map of the hotel, with all events and locations noted, in our
registration packet. Or were the vampires too snooty for such mundane aids? No, there was
a hotel diagram framed and lit for the perusal of guests and scheduled tours. This hotel was
numbered in reverse order. The top floor, the penthouse, was numbered 1. The bottom,
largest floor—the human floor—was numbered 15. There was a mezzanine between the
human floor and lobby, and there were large convention rooms in the annex to the northern
side of the hotel, the rectangular windowless projection that had looked so odd in the
Internet picture.
I eyed people scurrying through the lobby—maids, bodyguards, valets, bellmen…. Here
we were, all us little human beavers, scurrying around to get things ready for the undead
conventioneers. (Could you call them that, when this was billed as a summit? What was the
difference?) I felt a little sour when I wondered why this was the order of things, when a
few years ago, the vampires were the ones doing the scurrying, and that was back into a
dark corner where they could hide. Maybe that had been the more natural way. I slapped
myself mentally. I might as well go join the Fellowship, if that was how I really felt. I’d
noticed the protesters in the little park across the street from the Pyramid of Gizeh, which
some of the signs referred to as “The Pyramid of Geezers.”
“Where are the coffins?” I asked Mr. Cataliades.
“They’re coming in through a basement entrance,” he said.
There had been a metal detector at the hotel door. I’d tried hard not to look when Johan
Glassport had emptied his pockets. The detector had gone off like a siren when he’d passed
through. “Do the coffins have to go through a metal detector, too?” I asked.
“No. Our vampires have wooden coffins, but the hardware on them is metal, and you can’t
empty the vampires out to search their pockets for other metal objects, so that wouldn’t
make any sense,” Mr. Cataliades answered, for the first time sounding impatient. “Plus,
some vampires have chosen the modern metal caskets.”
“The demonstrators across the street,” I said. “They have me spooked. They’d love to
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sneak in here.”
Mr. Cataliades smiled, a terrifying sight. “No one will get in here, Miss Sookie. There are
other guards that you can’t see.”
While Mr. Cataliades checked us in, I stood to his side and turned to look around at the
other people. They were all dressed very nicely, and they were all talking. About us. I felt
instantly anxious at the looks we were getting from the others, and the buzzing thoughts
from the few live guests and staff reinforced my anxiety. We were the human entourage of
the queen who had been one of the most powerful vampire rulers in America. Now she was
not only weakened economically, but she was going on trial for murdering her husband. I
could see why the other flunkies were interested—Iwould’ve found us interesting—but I
was uncomfortable. All I could think about was how shiny my nose must be, and how much
I wanted to have a few moments alone.
The clerk went over our reservations very slowly and deliberately, as if to keep us on
exhibit in the lobby for as long as possible. Mr. Cataliades dealt with him with his usual
elaborate courtesy, though even that was getting strained after ten minutes.
I’d been standing at a discreet distance during the process, but when I could tell the clerk—
fortyish, recreational drug user, father of three—was just fucking us over to entertain
himself, I took a step closer. I laid a hand on Mr. C’s sleeve to indicate that I wanted to join
in the conversation. He interrupted himself to turn an interested face toward me.
“You give us our keys and tell us where our vamps are, or I’ll tell your boss that you’re the
one selling Pyramid of Gizeh items on eBay. And if you bribe a maid to eventouch the
queen’s panties, much less steal ’em, I’ll sic Diantha on you.” Diantha had just returned
from tracking down a bottle of water. She obligingly revealed her sharp, pointed teeth in a
lethal smile.
The clerk turned white and then red in an interesting display of blood flow patterns. “Yes,
ma’am,” he stammered, and I wondered if he would wet himself. After my little rummage
through his head, I didn’t much care.
In very short order, we all had keys, we had a list of “our” vampires’ resting places, and the
bellman was bringing our luggage in one of those neat carts. That reminded me of
something.
Barry,I said in my head.You here?
Yeah,said a voice that was far from the faltering one it had been the first time I’d heard
it.Sookie Stackhouse?
It’s me. We’re checking in. I’m in 1538. You?
I’m in 1576. How are you doing?
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Good, personally. But Louisiana…we’ve had the hurricane, and we’ve got the trial. I guess
you know all about that?
Yeah. You saw some action.
You could say that,I told him, wondering if my smile was coming across in my head.
Got that loud and clear.
Now I had an inkling of how people must feel when they were faced with me.
I’ll see you later,I told Barry.Hey, what’s your real last name?
You started something when you brought my gift out into the open,he told me.My real
name is Barry Horowitz. Now I just call myself Barry Bellboy. That’s how I’m registered,
if you forget my room number.
Okay. Looking forward to visiting with you.
Same here.
And then Barry and I both turned our attention to other things, and that strange tickling
feeling of mind-to-mind communication was gone.
Barry’s the only other telepath I’ve ever encountered.
Mr. Cataliades had discovered that the humans—well, the non-vampires—in the party had
each been put in a room with another person. Some of the vampires had roommates, too.
He hadn’t been pleased that he himself was sharing a room with Diantha, but the hotel was
extremely crowded, the clerk had said. He may have been lying about a lot of other things,
but that much was clearly true.
I was sharing a room with Gervaise’s squeeze, and as I slid the card into the slot on the
door, I wondered if she’d be in. She was. I’d been expecting a woman like the fangbangers
who hang around at Fangtasia, but Carla Danvers was another kind of creature entirely.
“Hey, girl!” she said, as I entered. “I figured you’d be along soon when they brought your
bags up. I’m Carla, Gerry’s girlfriend.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking hands. Carla was a prom queen. Maybe she hadn’t
been, literally; maybe she hadn’t made homecoming queen, either, but she’d surely been on
the court. Carla had dark brown chin-length hair, and big brown eyes, and teeth that were so
straight and white that they were an advertisement for her orthodontist. Her breasts had
been enhanced, and her ears were pierced, and her belly button, too. She had a tattoo on her
lower back, some black vines in a vee pattern with a couple of roses with green leaves in
the middle. I could see all this because Carla was naked, and she didn’t seem to have the
slightest idea that her nudity was a little on the “too much information” side to suit me.
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“Have you and Gervaise been going together long?” I asked to camouflage how
uncomfortable I was.
“I met Gerry, let’s see, seven months ago. He said it would be better for me to have a
separate room because he might have to have business meetings in his, you know? Plus,
I’m going shopping while I’m here—retail therapy! Big city stores! And I wanted
someplace to store my shopping bags so he won’t ask me how much it all costs.” She gave
me a wink I can only say was roguish.
“Okay,” I said. “Sounds good.” It really didn’t, but Carla’s program was hardly my
business. My suitcase was waiting for me on a stand, so I opened it and started to unpack,
noting that my hanging bag with my good dresses was already in the closet. Carla had left
me exactly half the closet space and drawer space, which was decent. She had brought
about twenty times more clothes than I had, which made her fairness all the more
remarkable.
“Whose girlfriend are you?” Carla asked. She was giving herself a pedicure. When she
drew up one leg, the overhead light winked on something metallic between her legs.
Completely embarrassed, I turned away to straighten my evening dress on the hanger.
“I’m dating Quinn,” I said.
I glanced over my shoulder, keeping my gaze high.
Carla looked blank.
“The weretiger,” I said. “He’s arranging the ceremonies here.”
She looked marginally more responsive.
“Big guy, shaved head,” I said.
Her face brightened. “Oh, yeah, I saw him this morning! He was eating breakfast in the
restaurant when I was checking in.”
“There’s a restaurant?”
“Yeah, sure. Though of course it’s tiny. And there’s room service.”
“You know, in vampire hotels there often isn’t a restaurant,” I said, just to make
conversation. I’d read an article about it inAmerican Vampire .
“Oh. Well, that makes no sense at all.” Carla finished one set of toes and began another.
“Not from a vampire point of view.”
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Carla frowned. “I know they don’t eat. But people do. And this is a people world, right?
That’s like not learning English when you emigrate to America.”
I turned around to check out Carla’s face, make sure she was serious. Yeah, she was.
“Carla,” I said, and then stopped. I didn’t have any idea what to say, how to get across to
Carla that a four-hundred-year-old vamp really didn’t care very much about the eating
arrangements of a twenty-year-old human. But the girl was waiting for me to finish. “Well,
it’s good that there’s a restaurant here,” I said weakly.
She nodded. “Yeah, ’cause I need my coffee in the morning,” she said. “I just can’t get
going without it. Course, when you date a vamp, your morning is liable to begin at three or
four in the afternoon.” She laughed.
“True,” I said. I’d finished unpacking, so I went over to our window and looked out. The
glass was so heavily tinted that it was hard to make out the landscape, but it was seeable. I
wasn’t on the Lake Michigan side of the hotel, which was a pity, but I looked at the
buildings around the west side of the hotel with curiosity. I didn’t see cities that often, and
I’d never seen a northern city. The sky was darkening rapidly, so between that and the
tinted windows I really couldn’t see too much after ten minutes. The vampires would be
awake soon, and my workday would begin.
Though she kept up a sporadic stream of chatter, Carla didn’t ask what my role was at this
summit. She assumed I was there as arm candy. For the moment, that was all right with me.
Sooner or later, she’d find out what my particular talent was, and then she’d be nervous
around me. On the other hand, now she was a littletoo relaxed.
Carla was getting dressed (thank God) in what I thought of as “classy whore.” She was
wearing a glittery green cocktail dress that almost didn’t have a top to it, and fuck-me
shoes, and what amounted to a see-through thong. Well, she had her working clothes, and I
had mine. I wasn’t too pleased with myself for being so judgmental, and maybe I was a
little envious that my working clothes were so conservative.
For tonight, I had chosen a chocolate brown lace handkerchief dress. I put in my big gold
earrings and slid into brown pumps, put on some lipstick, and brushed my hair really well.
Sticking my keycard into my little evening purse, I headed to the front desk to find out
which suite was the queen’s, since Mr. Cataliades had told me to present myself there.
I had hoped to run into Quinn along the way, but I didn’t see hide nor hair of him. What
with me having a roommate, and Quinn being so busy all the time, this summit might not
promise as much fun on the side as I’d hoped.
The desk clerk blanched when he saw me coming, and he looked around to see if Diantha
was with me. While he was scrawling the queen’s room number on a piece of notepaper
with a shaking hand, I looked around me with more attention.
There were security cameras in a few obvious locations, pointed at the front doors and at
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the registration desk. And I thought I could see one at the elevators. There were the usual
armed guards—usual for a vampire hotel, that is. The big selling point for any vampire
hotel was the security and privacy of its guests. Otherwise, vampires could stay more
cheaply and centrally in the special vampire rooms of mainstream hotels. (Even Motel 6
had one vampire room at almost every location.) When I thought about the protesters
outside, I really hoped the security crew here at the Pyramid was on the ball.
I nodded at another human woman as I crossed the lobby to the central bank of elevators.
The rooms got ritzier the higher up you went, I gathered, since there were fewer on the
floor. The queen had one of the fourth floor suites, since she’d booked for this event a long
time ago, before Katrina—and probably while her husband was still alive. There were only
eight doors on her floor, and I didn’t have to see the number to know which room was
Sophie-Anne’s. Sigebert was standing in front of it. Sigebert was a boulder of a man. He
had guarded the queen for hundreds of years, as had Andre. The ancient vampire looked
lonely without his brother, Wybert. Otherwise, he was the same old Anglo-Saxon warrior
he’d been the first time I’d met him—shaggy beard, physique of a wild boar, missing a
tooth or two in crucial places.
Sigebert grinned at me, a terrifying sight. “Miss Sookie,” he said by way of greeting.
“Sigebert,” I said, carefully pronouncing it “See-yabairt.” “Are you doing okay?” I wanted
to convey sympathy without dipping into too-sentimental waters.
“My brother, he died a hero,” Sigebert said proudly. “In battle.”
I thought of saying, “You must miss him so much after a thousand years.” Then I decided
that was exactly like reporters asking the parents of missing children, “How do you feel?”
“He was a great fighter,” I said instead, and that was exactly what Sigebert wanted to hear.
He clapped me on the shoulder, almost knocking me to the ground. Then his look got a
little absent, as if he were listening to an announcement.
I’d suspected that the queen could talk to her “children” telepathically, and when Sigebert
opened the door for me without another word, I knew that was true. I was glad she couldn’t
talk to me. Being able to communicate with Barry was kind of fun, but if we hung out
together all the time I was sure it would get old in a hurry. Plus, Sophie-Anne was a heck of
a lot scarier.
The queen’s suite was lavish. I’d never seen anything like it. The carpet was as thick as a
sheep’s pelt, and it was off-white. The furniture was upholstered in shades of gold and dark
blue. The slanting slab of glass that enclosed the outside wall was opaque. I have to say, the
large wall of darkness made me feel twitchy.
In the midst of this splendor, Sophie-Anne sat curled on a couch. Small and extremely
pale, with her shining brown hair swept up in a chignon, the queen was wearing a
raspberry-colored silk suit with black piping and black alligator heels. Her jewelry was
heavy, gold, and simple.
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Sophie-Anne would have looked more age-appropriate wearing a Gwen Stefani L.A.M.B.
outfit. She’d died as a human when she’d been maybe fifteen or sixteen. In her time, that
would have made her a fully-grown woman and mother. In our time, that made her a mall
rat. To modern eyes, her clothes were too old for her, but it would take an insane person to
tell her so. Sophie-Anne was the world’s most dangerous teenager, and the second most
dangerous had her back. Andre was standing right behind Sophie-Anne, as always. When
he’d given me a thorough look, and the door had closed behind me, he actually sat beside
Sophie-Anne, which was some kind of signal that I was a member of the club, I guess.
Andre and his queen had both been drinking TrueBlood, and they looked rosy as a result—
almost human, in fact.
“How are your accommodations?” Sophie-Anne asked politely.
“Fine. I’m rooming with a…girlfriend of Gervaise’s,” I said.
“WithCarla ? Why?” Her brows rose up like dark birds in a clear sky.
“The hotel’s crowded. It’s no big thing. I figure she’ll be with Gervaise most of the time,
anyway,” I said.
Sophie-Anne said, “What did you think of Johan?”
I could feel my face harden. “I think he belongs in jail.”
“But he will keep me out of it.”
I tried to imagine what a vampire jail would be like, gave up. I couldn’t give her any
positive feedback on Johan, so I just nodded.
“You are still not telling me what you picked up from him.”
“He’s very tense and conflicted.”
“Explain.”
“He’s anxious. He’s scared. He’s fighting different loyalties. He only wants to come out
alive. He doesn’t care for anyone but himself.”
“So how does that make him different from any other human?” Andre commented.
Sophie-Anne responded with a twitch of one side of her mouth. That Andre, what a
comedian.
“Most humans don’t stab women,” I said as quietly and calmly as I could. “Most humans
don’t enjoy that.”
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Sophie-Anne was not completely indifferent to the violent death Johan Glassport had
meted out, but naturally she was a little more concerned with her own legal defense. At
least, that was how I read her, but with vampires, I had to go on subtle body language rather
than the sure knowledge right out of their brains. “He’ll defend me, I’ll pay him, and then
he’s on his own,” she said. “Anything might happen to him then.” She gave me a clear-eyed
look.
Okay, Sophie-Anne, I got the picture.
“Did he question you thoroughly? Did you feel he knew what he was doing?” she asked,
returning to the important stuff.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said promptly. “He did seem to be really competent.”
“Then he’ll be worth the trouble.”
I didn’t even let my eyes flicker.
“Did Cataliades tell you what to expect?”
“Yes, ma’am, he did.”
“Good. As well as your testimony at the trial, I need you to attend every meeting with me
that includes humans.”
This was why she was paying me the big bucks.
“Ah, do you have any schedule of meetings?” I asked. “It’s just, I’d be ready and waiting if
I had any idea when you needed me.”
Before she could answer, there was a knock at the door. Andre rose and moved to answer it
so smoothly and fluidly that you would have sworn he was part cat. His sword was in his
hand, though I hadn’t seen it before. The door opened a bit just as Andre reached it, and I
heard Sigebert’s bass rumble.
After they’d exchanged a few sentences, the door opened wider, and Andre said, “The
King of Texas, my lady.” There was only a hint of pleased surprise in his voice, but it was
the equivalent of Andre doing cartwheels across the carpet. This visit was a show of support
for Sophie-Anne, and all the other vampires would notice.
Stan Davis came in, trailing a group of vamps and humans.
Stan was a nerd’s nerd. He was the kind of guy who you checked out for a pocket
protector. You could see the comb marks in his sandy hair, and his glasses were heavy and
thick. They were also quite unnecessary. I’d never met a vamp who didn’t have excellent
vision and very precise hearing. Stan was wearing a wash ’n’ wear white shirt with a Sears
brand logo and some navy Dockers. And brown leather moccasins. Hoo, boy. He’d been a
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sheriff when I’d met him, and now that he was king, he was maintaining the same low-key
approach.
Behind Stan came his sergeant at arms, Joseph Velasquez. A short, burly Hispanic with
spiky hair, Joseph never seemed to crack a smile. By his side was a red-haired female vamp
named Rachel; I remembered her, too, from my trip to Dallas. Rachel was a savage one,
and she didn’t like cooperating with humans in the least. Trailing the two was Barry the
Bellboy, looking good in designer jeans and a taupe silk T-shirt, a discreet gold chain
around his neck. Barry had matured in an almost scary way since I’d last seen him. He’d
been a handsome, gawky boy of maybe nineteen when I’d first spotted him working as a
bellboy at the Silent Shore Hotel in Dallas. Now Barry had had a manicure, a very good
haircut, and the wary eyes of someone who’d been swimming in the shark pool.
We smiled at each other, and Barry said,Good to see you. Looking pretty, Sookie.
Thanks, and likewise, Barry.
Andre was doing the proper vampire greeting thing, which did not include handshaking.
“Stan, we are pleased to see you. Who have you brought to meet us?”
Stan gallantly bent to kiss Sophie-Anne’s hand. “Most beautiful queen,” he said. “This
vampire is my second, Joseph Velasquez. And this vampire is my nest sister Rachel. This
human is the telepath Barry Bellboy. Indirectly, I have you to thank for him.”
Sophie-Anne actually smiled. She said, “Of course, I am always delighted to do you any
sort of favor in my power, Stan.” She gestured to him to sit opposite her. Rachel and Joseph
took up flanking positions. “It’s so good to see you here in my suite. I had been concerned
that I wouldn’t have any visitors at all.”
(“Since I’m under indictment for killing my husband, and since I’ve also sustained a
staggering economic blow,” was the subtext.)
“I extend my sympathies to you,” Stan said with a completely inflectionless voice. “The
losses in your country have been extreme. If we can help…I know the humans from my
state have helped yours, and it’s only right that the vampires do likewise.”
“Thank you for your kindness,” she said. Sophie-Anne’s pride was hurting in a major way.
She had to struggle to paste that smile back on her face. “I believe you know Andre,” she
continued. “Andre, you now know Joseph. And I believe all of you know our Sookie.”
The phone rang, and since I was closest to it, I answered it.
“Am I speaking to a member of the Queen of Louisiana’s party?” the gruff voice asked.
“Yes, you are.”
“One of you needs to come down to the loading bay to get a suitcase that belongs to your
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party. We can’t read the label.”
“Oh…okay.”
“Sooner the better.”
“All right.”
He hung up. Okay, that was a little abrupt.
Since the queen was waiting for me to tell her who had called, I relayed the request, and
she looked equally puzzled for all of a millisecond. “Later,” she said dismissively.
In the meantime, the light eyes of the King of Texas were focused on me like laser beams. I
inclined my head to him, which I hoped was the correct response. It seemed to be adequate.
I would have liked to have had time to go over the protocol with Andre before the queen
began receiving guests, but truthfully, I hadn’t expected there to be any, much less a
powerful guy like Stan Davis. This had to mean something good for the queen, or maybe it
was a subtle vampire insult. I was sure I’d find out.
I felt the tickle of Barry in my mind.She good to work for? Barry asked.
I just help her out from time to time,I said.I still have a day job.
Barry looked at me with surprise.You kidding? You could be raking it in, if you go to a
good state like Ohio or Illinois where there’s real money.
I shrugged.I like where I live, I said.
Then we both became aware that our vampire employers were watching our silent
exchange. Our faces were changing expression, I guess, like faces do during a
conversation…except our conversation had been silent.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I just don’t see people like me very often,
and it’s kind of a treat to talk to another telepath. I beg your pardon, ma’am, sir.”
“I could almost hear it,” Sophie-Anne marveled. “Stan, he has been very useful?” Sophie-
Anne could talk to her own children mentally, but it must be as rare an ability among
vampires as it was among people.
“Very useful,” Stan confirmed. “The day that your Sookie brought him to my attention was
a very good day for me. He knows when the humans are lying; he knows what their ulterior
motives are. It’s wonderful insight.”
I looked at Barry, wondering if he ever thought of himself as a traitor to humankind or just
as a vendor supplying a needed good. He met my eyes, his own face hard. Sure, he was
conflicted about serving a vampire, revealing human secrets to his employer. I struggled
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with that idea myself from time to time.
“Hmmm. Sookie only works for me on occasion.” Sophie-Anne was staring at me, and if I
could characterize her smooth face, I would say she was thoughtful. Andre had something
going on behind his pink-tinged teenage facade, and it was something I had better watch
out for. He wasn’t just thoughtful, he was interested; engaged, for want of a better
description.
“Bill brought her to Dallas,” Stan observed, not quite asking a question.
“He was her protector at the time,” Sophie-Anne said.
A brief silence. Barry leered at me hopefully, and I gave him an in-your-dreams look.
Actually, I felt like hugging him, since that little exchange broke up the silence into
something I could handle.
“Do you really need Barry and me here, since we’re the only humans, and it might not be
so productive if we just sat around and read each other’s minds?”
Joseph Velasquez actually smiled before he could stop himself.
After a silent moment, Sophie-Anne nodded, and then Stan. Queen Sophie and King Stan, I
reminded myself. Barry bowed in a practiced way, and I felt like sticking out my tongue at
him. I did a sort of bob and then scuttled out of the suite. Sigebert eyed us with a
questioning face. “The queen, she not need you?” he asked.
“Not right now,” I said. I tapped a pager that Andre had handed me at the last minute. “The
pager will vibrate if she needs me,” I said.
Sigebert eyed the device mistrustfully. “I think it would be better if you just stayed here,”
he said.
“The queen, she says I can go,” I told him.
And off I went, Barry trailing along behind me. We took the elevator down to the lobby,
where we found a secluded corner where no one could sneak up on us to eavesdrop.
I’d never conversed with someone entirely in my head, and neither had Barry, so we
played around with that for a while. Barry would tell me the story of his life while I tried to
block out all the other brains around me; then I’d try to listen to everyone elseand to Barry.
This was actually a lot of fun.
Barry turned out to be better than I was at picking out who was thinking what in a crowd. I
was a bit better at hearing nuance and detail, not always easy to pick up in thoughts. But we
had some common ground.
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We agreed on who the best broadcasters in the room were; that is, our “hearing” was the
same. He would point at someone (in this case it was my roommate, Carla) and we would
both listen to her thoughts, then rate them on a scale of one to five, five being the loudest,
clearest broadcast. Carla was a three. After that agreement, we rated other people, and we
found ourselves reacting almost as one over that.
Okay, this was interesting.
Let’s try touching,I suggested.
Barry didn’t even leer. He was into this, too. Without further ado, he took my hand, and we
faced in nearly opposite directions.
The voices came in so clearly, it was like having a full-voice conversation with everyone in
the room, all at once. Like pumping up the volume on a DVD, with the treble and bass
perfectly balanced. It was elating and terrifying, all at once. Though I was facing away
from the reception desk, I clearly heard a woman inquiring about the arrival of the
Louisiana vamps. I caught my own image in the brain of the clerk, who was feeling
delighted at doing me a bad turn.
Here comes trouble,Barry warned me.
I swung around to see a vampire advancing on me with not a very pleasant expression on
her face. She had hot hazel eyes and straight light brown hair, and she was lean and mean.
“Finally, one of the Louisiana party. Are the rest of you in hiding? Tell your bitch whore of
a mistress that I’ll nail her hide to the wall! She won’t get away with murdering my king!
I’ll see her staked and exposed to the sun on the roof of this hotel!”
I said the first thing that came into my head, unfortunately. “Save the drama for your
mama,” I told her, just like an eleven-year-old. “And by the way, who the heck are you?”
Of course, this had to be Jennifer Cater. I started to tell her that her king’s character had
been really substandard, but I liked my head right where it sat on my shoulders, and it
wouldn’t take much to tip this gal over the edge.
She gave good glare, I’d say that for her.
“I’ll drain you dry,” she said, harshly. We were attracting a certain amount of attention by
then.
“Ooooo,” I said, exasperated beyond wisdom. “I’m so scared. Wouldn’t the court love to
hear you say that? Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t vampires prevented by—oh, yes—
thelaw from threatening humans with death, or did I just read that wrong?”
“As if I give a snap of my fingers for human law,” Jennifer Cater said, but the fire was
dying down in her eyes as she realized that the whole lobby was listening to our exchange,
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including many humans and possibly some vampires who’d love to see her out of the way.
“Sophie-Anne Leclerq will be tried by the laws of our people,” Jennifer said as a parting
shot. “And she will be found guilty. I’ll hold Arkansas, and I’ll make it great.”
“That’ll be a first,” I said with some justification. Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi
were three poor states huddled together, much to our mutual mortification. We were all
grateful for each other, because we got to take turns being at the bottom of almost every list
in the United States: poverty level, teen pregnancy, cancer death, illiteracy…. We
prettymuch rotated the honors.
Jennifer marched off, not wanting to try a comeback. She was determined, and she was
vicious, but I thought Sophie-Anne could outmaneuver Jennifer any day. If I were a betting
woman, I’d put money on the French nag.
Barry and I gave each other a shrug. Incident over. We joined hands again.
More trouble,Barry said, sounding resigned.
I focused my brain where his was going. I heard a weretiger heading our way in a big, big
hurry.
I dropped Barry’s hand and turned, my arms out already and my whole face smiling.
“Quinn!” I said, and after a moment where he looked very uncertain, Quinn swung me up
in his arms.
I hugged him as hard as I could, and he returned the hug so emphatically that my ribs
creaked. Then he kissed me, and it took all my strength of character to keep the kiss within
social boundaries.
When we parted to breathe, I realized Barry was standing awkwardly a few feet away, not
sure what to do.
“Quinn, this is Barry Bellboy,” I said, trying not to feel embarrassed. “He’s the only other
telepath I know. He works for Stan Davis, the King of Texas.”
Quinn extended a hand to Barry, who I now realized was standing awkwardly for a reason.
We’d transmitted a bit too graphically. I felt a tide of red sweep over my cheeks. The best
thing to do was pretend I hadn’t noticed, of course, and that’s what I did. But I could feel a
little smile twitching the corners of my mouth, and Barry looked more amused than angry.
“Good to meet you, Barry,” Quinn rumbled.
“You’re in charge of the ceremony arrangements?” Barry asked.
“Yep, that’s me.”
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“I’ve heard of you,” Barry said. “The great fighter. You’ve got quite a rep among the
vamps, man.”
I cocked my head. Something I wasn’t getting here. “Great fighter?” I said.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” Quinn said, and his mouth set in a hard line.
Barry looked from me to Quinn. His own face did some hardening, and I was surprised to
see that much toughness in Barry. “He hasn’t told you?” he asked, and then read the answer
right from my head. “Hey, man, that’s not right,” he said to Quinn. “She should know.”
Quinn almost snarled. “I’ll tell her about it soon.”
“Soon?” Quinn’s thoughts were full of turmoil and violence. “Like now?”
But at that moment, a woman strode across the lobby toward us. She was one of the most
frightening women I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen some scary women. She was probably five
foot eight, with inky black curls that hugged her head, and she was holding a helmet under
her arm. It matched her armor. The armor itself, black and lusterless, was very much like a
rather tailored baseball catcher’s outfit: a chest guard, thigh protectors, and shin guards,
with the addition of thick leather braces that strapped around the forearms. She had some
heavy boots on, too, and she carried a sword, a gun, and a small crossbow draped about her
in appropriate holsters.
I could only gape.
“You are the one they call Quinn?” she asked, coming to a halt a yard away. She had a
heavy accent, one I couldn’t trace.
“I am,” Quinn said. I noticed Quinn didn’t seem to be as amazed as I was at the appearance
of this lethal being.
“I’m Batanya. You are in charge of special events. Does that include security? I wish to
discuss my client’s special needs.”
“I thought security was your job,” Quinn said.
Batanya smiled, and it would really make your blood run cold. “Oh, yes, that’s my job. But
guarding him would be easier if—”
“I’m not in charge of security,” he said. “I’m only in charge of the rituals and procedures.”
“All right,” she said, her accent making the casual phrase into something serious. “Then
whom do I talk to?”
“A guy named Todd Donati. His office is in the staff area behind the registration desk. One
of the clerks can show you.”
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“Excuse me,” I said.
“Yes?” She looked down an arrow-straight nose at me. But she didn’t look hostile or
snooty, just worried.
“I’m Sookie Stackhouse,” I said. “Who do you work for, Miss Batanya?”
“The King of Kentucky,” she said. “He has brought us here at great expense. So it’s a pity
there’s nothing I can do to keep him from being killed, as things stand now.”
“What do you mean?” I was considerably startled and alarmed.
The bodyguard looked like she was willing to give me an earful, but we were interrupted.
“Batanya!” A young vampire was hurrying across the lobby, his crew cut and all-black
Goth ensemble looking all the more frivolous when he stood by the formidable woman.
“The master says he needs you by his side.”
“I am coming,” Batanya said. “I know my place. But I had to protest the way the hotel is
making my job much harder than it needs to be.”
“Complain on your own dime,” the youngster said curtly.
Batanya gave him a look I wouldn’t have wanted to have earned. Then she bowed to us,
each in turn. “Miss Stack-house,” she said, extending her hand for me to shake. I hadn’t
realized hands could be characterized as muscular. “Mr. Quinn.” Quinn got the shake, too,
while Barry got a nod, since he hadn’t introduced himself. “I will call this Todd Donati.
Sorry I filled your ears, when this is not your responsibility.”
“Wow,” I said, watching Batanya stride away. She was wearing pants like liquid leather,
and you could see each buttock flex and relax with her movement. It was like an anatomy
lesson. She had muscles in her butt.
“What galaxy did she come from?” Barry asked, sounding dazed.
Quinn said, “Not galaxy. Dimension. She’s a Britlingen.”
We waited for more enlightenment.
“She’s a bodyguard, a super-bodyguard,” he explained. “Britlingens are the best. You have
to be really rich to hire a witch who can bring one over, and the witch has to negotiate the
terms with their guild. When the job’s over, the witch has to send them back. You can’t
leave them here. Their laws are different. Way different.”
“You’re telling me the King of Kentucky paid gobs of money to bring that woman to
this…this dimension?” I’d heard plenty of unbelievable things in the past two years, but
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this topped them all.
“It’s a very extreme action. I wonder what he’s so afraid of. Kentucky isn’t exactly rolling
in money.”
“Maybe he bet on the right horse,” I said, since I had my own royalty to worry about. “And
I need to talk to you.”
“Babe, I gotta get back to work,” Quinn said apologetically. He shot an unfriendly look at
Barry. “I know we need to talk. But I’ve got to line up the jurors for the trial, and I’ve got to
set up a wedding ceremony. Negotiations between the King of Indiana and the King of
Mississippi have been concluded, and they want to tie the knot while everyone’s here.”
“Russell’s getting married?” I smiled. I wondered if he’d be the bride or the groom, or a
little bit of both.
“Yeah, but don’t tell anyone yet. They’re announcing it tonight.”
“So when are we gonna talk?”
“I’ll come to your room when the vamps are in bed for the day. Where are you?”
“I have a roommate.” I gave him the room number anyway.
“If she’s there, we’ll find somewhere else to go,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Listen,
don’t worry; everything’s okay.”
I wondered what I should be worrying about. I wondered where another dimension was,
and how hard it would be to bring over bodyguards from it. I wondered why anyone would
go to the expense. Not that Batanya hadn’t seemed pretty damn effective; but the extreme
effort Kentucky had gone to, that sure seemed to argue extreme fear. Who was after him?
My waist buzzed at me, and I realized I was being summoned back up to the queen’s suite.
Barry’s pager went off, too. We looked at each other.
Back to work,he said, as we went toward the elevator.I’m sorry if I caused trouble between
you and Quinn.
You don’t mean that.
He glanced at me. He had the grace to look ashamed.I guess I don’t. I had a picture built
up of how you and me would be, and Quinn kind of intruded on my fantasy life.
Ah…ah.
Don’t worry—you don’t have to think of something to say. It was one of those fantasies.
Now that I’m really with you, I have to adjust.
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Ah.
But I shouldn’t have let my disappointment make me a jerk.
Ah. Okay. I’m sure Quinn and I can work it out.
So, I kept the fantasy screened from you, huh?
I nodded vigorously.
Well, at least that’s something.
I smiled at him.Everyone’s got to have a fantasy, I told him.My fantasy is finding out
where Kentucky got that money, and who he hired to bring that woman here. Was she not
the scariest thing you’ve ever seen?
No,Barry answered, to my surprise.The scariest thing I’ve ever seen…well, it wasn’t
Batanya. And then he locked the communicating door between our brains and threw away
the key. Sigebert was opening the door into the queen’s suite, and we were back at work.
After Barry and his party left, I kind of waved my hand in the air to let the queen know I
had something to say if she wanted to listen. She and Andre had been discussing Stan’s
motivation in paying the significant visit, and they paused in identical attitudes. It was just
weird. Their heads were cocked at the same angle, and with their extreme pallor and
stillness, it was like being regarded by works of art carved in marble: Nymph and Satyr at
Rest, or something like that.
“You know what Britlingens are?” I asked, stumbling over the unfamiliar word.
The queen nodded. Andre just waited.
“I saw one,” I said, and the queen’s head jerked.
“Who has gone to the expense to hire a Britlingen?” Andre asked.
I told them the whole story.
The queen looked—well, it was hard to say how she looked. Maybe a little worried, maybe
intrigued, since I’d garnered so much news in the lobby.
“I never knew how useful I’d find it, having a human servant,” she said to Andre. “Other
humans will say anything around her, and even the Britlingen spoke freely.”
Andre was perhaps a tad jealous if the look on his face was any indication.
“On the other hand, I can’t do a damn thing about any of this,” I said. “I can just tell you
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what I heard, and it’s hardly classified information.”
“Where did Kentucky get the money?” Andre said.
The queen shook her head, as if to say she hadn’t a clue and really didn’t care that much.
“Did you see Jennifer Cater?” she asked me.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What did she say?” asked Andre.
“She said she’d drink my blood, and she’d see you staked and exposed on the hotel roof.”
There was a moment of utter silence.
Then Sophie-Anne said, “Stupid Jennifer. What’s that phrase Chester used to use? She’s
getting too big for her britches. What to do…? I wonder if she would accept a messenger
from me?”
She and Andre looked at each other steadily, and I decided they were doing a little
telepathic communication of their own.
“I suppose she’s taken the suite Arkansas had reserved,” the queen said to Andre, and he
picked up the in-house phone and called the front desk. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the
king or queen of a state referred to as the state itself, but it seemed a really impersonal way
to refer to your former husband, no matter how violently the marriage had ended.
“Yes,” he said after he’d hung up.
“Maybe we should pay her a visit,” the queen said. She and Andre indulged in some of that
silent to and fro that was their way of conversing. Probably like watching Barry and me, I
figured. “She’ll admit us, I’m sure. There’ll be something she wants to say to me in
person.” The queen picked up the phone, but not as if that was something she did every day.
She dialed the room number with her own fingers, too.
“Jennifer,” she said charmingly. She listened to a torrent of words that I could hear only a
bit. Jennifer didn’t sound any happier than she’d been in the lobby.
“Jennifer, we need to talk.” The queen sounded much more charming and a lot tougher.
There was silence on the other end of the line. “The doors are not closed to discussion or
negotiation, Jennifer,” Sophie-Anne said. “At least, my doors aren’t. What about yours?” I
think Jennifer spoke again. “All right, that’s wonderful, Jennifer. We’ll be down in a minute
or two.” The queen hung up and stood silent for a long moment.
It seemed to me like going to visit Jennifer Cater, when she was bringing a lawsuit against
Sophie-Anne for murdering Peter Threadgill, was a real bad idea. But Andre nodded
approvingly at Sophie-Anne.
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After Sophie-Anne’s conversation with her archenemy, I thought we’d head to the
Arkansas group’s room any second. But maybe the queen wasn’t as confident as she’d
sounded. Instead of starting out briskly for the showdown with Jennifer Cater, Sophie-Anne
dawdled. She gave herself a little extra grooming, changed her shoes, searched around for
her room key, and so on. Then she got a phone call about what room service charges the
humans in her group could put on the room bill. So it was more than fifteen minutes before
we managed to leave the room. Sigebert was coming out of the staircase door, and he fell
into place with Andre at the waiting elevator.
Jennifer Cater and her party were on floor seven. There was no one standing at Jennifer
Cater’s door: I guessed she didn’t rate her own bodyguard. Andre did the knocking honors,
and Sophie-Anne straightened expectantly. Sigebert hung back, giving me an unexpected
smile. I tried not to flinch.
The door swung open. The interior of the suite was dark.
The smell that wafted from the door was unmistakable.
“Well,” said the Queen of Louisiana briskly. “Jennifer’s dead.”
10
“GO SEE,” THE QUEEN TOLD ME.
“What? But all y’all are stronger than I am! And less scared!”
“And we’re the ones she’s suing,” Andre pointed out. “Our smell cannot be in there.
Sigebert, you must go see.”
Sigebert glided into the darkness.
A door across the landing opened, and Batanya stepped out.
“I smell death,” she said. “What’s happened?”
“We came calling,” I said. “But the door was unlocked already. Something’s wrong in
there.”
“You don’t know what?”
“No, Sigebert is exploring,” I explained. “We’re waiting.”
“Let me call my second. I can’t leave Kentucky’s door unguarded.” She turned to call back
into the suite, “Clovache!” At least, I guess that was how it was spelled, it was pronounced
“Kloh-VOSH.”
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A kind of Batanya Junior emerged—same armor, but smaller scale; younger, brown-haired,
less terrifying…but still plenty formidable.
“Scout the place,” Batanya ordered, and without a single question Clovache drew her
sword and eased into the apartment like a dangerous dream.
We all waited, holding our breaths—well, I was, anyway. The vamps didn’t have breath to
hold, and Batanya didn’t seem at all agitated. She had moved to a spot where she could
watch the open door of Jennifer Cater’s place and the closed door of the King of Kentucky.
Her sword was drawn.
The queen’s face looked almost tense, perhaps even excited; that is, slightly less blank than
usual. Sigebert came out and shook his head without a word.
Clovache appeared in the doorway. “All dead,” she reported to Batanya.
Batanya waited.
“By decapitation,” Clovache elaborated. “The woman was, ah”—Clovache appeared to be
counting mentally—“in six pieces.”
“This is bad,” the queen said at the same moment Andre said, “This is good.” They
exchanged exasperated glances.
“Any humans?” I asked, trying to keep my voice small because I didn’t want their
attention, but I did want to know, very badly.
“No, all vampires,” Clovache said after she got a go-ahead nod from Batanya. “I saw three.
They’re flaking off pretty fast.”
“Clovache, go in and call that Todd Donati.” Clovache went silently into the Kentucky
suite and placed a call, which had an electrifying effect. Within five minutes, the area in
front of the elevator was crammed with people of all sorts and descriptions and degrees of
living.
A man wearing a maroon jacket withSecurity on the pocket seemed to be in charge, so he
must be Todd Donati. He was a policeman who’d retired from the force early because of the
big money to be made guarding and aiding the undead. But that didn’t mean he liked them.
Now he was furious that something had happened so early in the summit, something that
would cause him more work than he was able to handle. He had cancer, I heard clearly,
though I wasn’t able to discern what kind. Donati wanted to work as long as he could to
provide for his family after he was gone, and he was resentful of the stress and strain this
investigation would cause, the energy it would drain. But he was doggedly determined to
do his job.
When Donati’s vampire boss, the hotel manager, showed up, I recognized him. Christian
Baruch had been on the cover ofFang (the vamp version ofPeople ) a few months ago.
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Baruch was Swiss born. As a human, he’d designed and managed a bunch of fancy hotels in
Western Europe. When he’d told a vampire in the same line of business that if he was
“brought over” (not only to the vampire life but to America), he could run outstanding and
profitable hotels for a syndicate of vampires, he’d been obliged in both ways.
Now Christian Baruch had eternal life (if he avoided pointy wooden objects), and the
vampire hotel syndicate was raking in the money. But he wasn’t a security guy or a law
enforcement expert, and he wasn’t the police. Sure, he could decorate the hell out of the
hotel and tell the architect how many suites needed a wet bar, but what good would he be in
this situation? His human hireling looked at Baruch sourly. Baruch was wearing a suit that
looked remarkably wonderful, even to inexperienced eyes like mine. I was sure it had been
made for him, and I was sure it had cost a bundle.
I had been pushed back by the crowd until I was pressed against the wall by one of the
suite doors—Kentucky’s, I realized. It hadn’t opened yet. The two Britlingens would have
to guard their charge extra carefully with this mob milling around. The hubbub was
extraordinary. I was next to a woman in a security uniform; it was just like the excop’s, but
she didn’t have to wear a tie.
“Do you think letting all these people into this space is a good idea?” I asked. I didn’t want
to be telling the woman her business, but dang. Didn’t she ever watchCSI ?
Security Woman gave me a dark look. “What areyou doing here?” she asked, as if that
made some big point.
“I’m here because I was with the group that found the bodies.”
“Well, you just need to keep quiet and let us do our work.”
She said this in the snottiest tone possible. “What work would that be? You don’t seem to
be doing anything at all,” I said.
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but shewasn’t doing anything. It seemed to me that
she should be—
And then she grabbed me and slammed me into the wall and handcuffed me.
I gave a kind of yelp of surprise. “That really wasn’t what I meant you to do,” I said with
some difficulty, since my face was mashed against the door of the suite.
There was a large silence from the crowd behind us. “Chief, I got a woman here causing
trouble,” said Security Woman.
Maroon looked awful on her, by the way.
“Landry, what are you doing?” said an overly reasonable male voice. It was the kind of
voice you use with an irrational child.
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“She was telling me what to do,” replied Security Woman, but I could tell her voice was
deflating even as she spoke.
“What was she telling you to do, Landry?”
“She wondered what all the people were doing here, sir.”
“Isn’t that a valid question, Landry?”
“Sir?”
“Don’t you think we should be clearing out some of these people?”
“Yes, sir, but she said she was here because she was in the party that found the bodies.”
“So she shouldn’t leave.”
“Right. Sir.”
“Was she trying to leave?”
“No, sir.”
“But you handcuffed her.”
“Ah.”
“Take the fucking handcuffs off her, Landry.”
“Yes, sir.” Landry was a flat pancake by now, no air left in her at all.
The handcuffs came off, to my relief, and I was able to turn around. I was so angry I could
have decked Landry. But since I would’ve been right back in the handcuffs, I held off.
Sophie-Anne and Andre pushed through the crowd; actually, it just kind of melted in front
of them. Vampires and humans alike were glad to get out of the way of the Queen of
Louisiana and her bodyguard.
Sophie-Anne glanced at my wrists, saw that they really weren’t hurt at all, and correctly
diagnosed the fact that my worst injury was to my pride.
“This is my employee,” Sophie-Anne said quietly, apparently addressing Landry but
making sure everyone there heard her. “An insult or injury to this woman is an insult or
injury to me.”
Landry didn’t know who the hell Sophie-Anne was, but she could tell power when she saw
it, and Andre was just as scary. They were the two most frightening teenagers in the world,
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I do believe.
“Yes, ma’am, Landry will apologize in writing. Now can you tell me what happened here
just now?” Todd Donati asked in a very reasonable voice.
The crowd was silent and waiting. I looked for Batanya and Clovache and saw they were
missing. Suddenly Andre said, “You are the chief of security?” in a rather loud voice, and
as he did, Sophie-Anne leaned very close to me to say, “Don’t mention the Britlingens.”
“Yes, sir.” The policeman ran a hand over his mustache. “I’m Todd Donati, and this is my
boss, Mr. Christian Baruch.”
“I am Andre Paul, and this is my queen, Sophie-Anne Leclerq. This young woman is our
employee Sookie Stackhouse.” Andre waited for the next step.
Christian Baruch ignored me. But he gave Sophie-Anne the look I’d give a roast I was
thinking of buying for Sunday dinner. “Your presence is a great honor to my hotel,” he
murmured in heavily accented English, and I glimpsed the tips of his fangs. He was quite
tall, with a large jaw and dark hair. But his small eyes were arctic gray.
Sophie-Anne took the compliment in stride, though her brows drew together for a second.
Showing fang wasn’t an exactly subtle way of saying, “You shake my world.” No one
spoke. Well, not for a long, awkward second. Then I said, “Are you all going to call the
police, or what?”
“I think we must consider what we have to tell them,” Baruch said, his voice smooth,
sophisticated, and making fun of rural-southern-human me. “Mr. Donati, will you go see
what’s in the suite?”
Todd Donati pushed his way through the crowd with no subtlety at all. Sigebert, who’d
been guarding the open doorway (for lack of anything better to do), stood aside to let the
human enter. The huge bodyguard worked his way over to the queen, looking happier when
he was in proximity to his ruler.
While Donati examined whatever was left in the Arkansas suite, Christian Baruch turned to
address the crowd. “How many of you came down here after you heard something had
happened?”
Maybe fifteen people raised their hands or simply nodded.
“You will please make your way to the Draft of Blood bar on the ground level, where our
bartenders will have something special for all of you.” The fifteen moved out pretty quickly
after that. Baruch knew his thirsty people. Vamps. Whatever.
“How many of you were not here when the bodies were discovered?” Baruch said after the
first group had left. Everyone raised a hand except the four of us: me, the queen, Andre,
Sigebert.
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“Everyone else may feel free to leave,” Baruch said as civilly as if he was extending a
pleasant invitation. And they did. Landry hesitated and got a look that sent her hurtling
down the stairs.
The area around the central elevator seemed spacious now, since it was so much emptier.
Donati came back out. He didn’t look deeply disturbed or sick, but he did look less
composed.
“There’s only bits of them left now. There’s stuff all over the floor, though; residue, I guess
you’d call it. I think there were three of them. But one of them is in so many pieces, that it
might be two of them.”
“Who’s on the registration?”
Donati referred to a palm-held electronic device. “Jennifer Cater, of Arkansas. This room
was rented to the delegation of Arkansas vampires. The remaining Arkansas vampires.”
The wordremaining possibly got a little extra emphasis. Donati definitely knew the queen’s
history.
Christian Baruch raised a thick, dark brow. “I do know my own people, Donati.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sophie-Anne’s nose might have wrinkled delicately with distaste.His own people, my ass,
that nose said. Baruch was at most four years old, as a vampire.
“Who’s been in to see the bodies?” Baruch asked.
“Neither of us,” Andre said promptly. “We haven’t set foot in the suite.”
“Who did?”
“The door was unlocked, and we smelled death. In view of the situation between my queen
and the vampires of Arkansas, we thought it was unwise to go inside,” Andre said. “We sent
Sigebert, the queen’s guard.”
Andre simply omitted Clovache’s exploration of the suite. So Andre and I did have
something in common: we could skirt the truth with something that wasn’t quite a lie. He’d
done a masterful job.
As the questions continued—mostly unanswered or unanswerable—I found myself
wondering if the queen would still have to go to trial now that her main accuser was dead. I
wondered whom the state of Arkansas belonged to; it was reasonable to assume that the
wedding contract had given the queen some rights regarding Peter Threadgill’s property,
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and I knew Sophie-Anne needed every bit of income she could claim, since Katrina. Would
she still have those rights to Arkansas, since Andre had killed Peter? I hadn’t thought
through how much was hanging over the queen’s head at this summit.
But after I’d finished asking myself all these questions, I realized that the most immediate
issue had yet to be addressed. Who’d killed Jennifer Cater and her companions? (How
many Arkansas vamps could be left, after the battle in New Orleans and today’s slaughter?
Arkansas wasn’t that big a state, and it had very few population centers.)
I was recalled to the here and now when Christian Baruch caught my eyes. “You’re the
human who can read minds,” he said so suddenly that I jerked.
“Yes,” I said, because I was tired of sirring and ma’aming everyone.
“Did you kill Jennifer Cater?”
I didn’t have to fake astonishment. “That’s giving me a lot of credit,” I said. “Thinking I
could have gotten the drop on three vampires. No, I didn’t kill her. She came up to me in
the lobby this evening, talking trash, but that’s the only time I ever even saw her.”
He looked a little taken aback, as if he’d expected another answer or maybe a humbler
attitude.
The queen took a step to stand beside me, and Andre mirrored her, so that I was bracketed
by ancient vampires. What a warm and cozy feeling. But I knew they were reminding the
hotelier that I was their special human and not to be harassed.
At that very opportune moment, a vampire flung open the door from the stairs and hurtled
toward the death suite. But Baruch was just as swift, and he barred the way so that the new
vampire bounced off him and onto the floor. The small vamp was up in a movement so
quick my eyes couldn’t break it down and was making a desperate effort to get Baruch out
of the doorway.
But the newcomer couldn’t, and finally he took a step away from the hotelier. If the
smaller vampire had been human, he’d have been panting, and as it was his body shook
with tremors of delayed action. He had brown hair and a short beard, and he was wearing a
suit, a regular old JCPenney one. He looked like an ordinary guy until you saw his wide
eyes and realized that he was some kind of lunatic.
“Is it true?” he asked, his voice low and intent.
“Jennifer Cater and her companions are dead,” Christian Baruch said, not without
compassion.
The small man howled, literally howled, and the hair on my arms stood up. He sank to his
knees, his body swaying back and forth in a transport of grief.
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“I take it you are one of her party?” the queen said.
“Yes, yes!”
“Then now I am your queen. I offer you a place at my side.”
The howling stopped as if it had been lopped off by a pair of scissors.
“But you had our king killed,” the vampire said.
“I was the spouse of your king, and as such, I’m entitled to inherit his state in the event of
his death,” Sophie-Anne said, her dark eyes looking almost benevolent, almost luminous.
“And he is undoubtedly dead.”
“That’s what the fine print said,” Mr. Cataliades murmured in my ear, and I barely
suppressed a yelp of astonishment. I’d always thought that what people said about big men
moving lightly was total bullshit. Big people move bigly. But Mr. Cataliades walked as
lightly as a butterfly, and I had no idea he was nearby until he spoke to me.
“In the queen’s wedding contract?” I managed to say.
“Yes,” he said. “And Peter’s attorney went over it very thoroughly indeed. The same
applied in the event of Sophie-Anne’s death, too.”
“I guess there were a lot of clauses hanging on that?”
“Oh, just a few. The death had to be witnessed.”
“Oh, gosh. That’s me.”
“Yes, indeed it is. The queen wants you in her sight and under her thumb for a very good
reason.”
“And other conditions?”
“There could be no second-in-command alive to take the state over. In other words, a great
catastrophe had to occur.”
“And now it has.”
“Yes, it seems that it has.” Mr. Cataliades appeared quite pleased about that.
My mind was tumbling around like one of those wire bins they draw bingo numbers from
at the fair.
“My name is Henrik Feith,” the small vamp said. “And there are only five vampires left in
Arkansas. I am the only one here in Rhodes, and I am only alive because I went down to
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complain about the towels in the bathroom.”
I had to slap a hand over my own mouth to keep from laughing, which would have been,
shall we say, inappropriate. Andre’s gaze remained fixed on the man kneeling before us, but
somehow his hand wandered over and gave me a pinch. After that it was easy to not laugh.
In fact, it was hard not to shriek.
“What was wrong with the towels?” Baruch said, completely sidetracked by this slur on his
hotel.
“Jennifer alone used up three,” Henrik began explaining, but this fascinating byway was
cut short when Sophie-Anne said, “Enough. Henrik, you come with us to my suite. Mr.
Baruch, we look forward to receiving updates from you on this situation. Mr. Donati, are
you intending to call the Rhodes police?”
It was polite of her to address Donati as though he actually had a say in what was done.
Donati said, “No, ma’am, this seems like a vampire matter to me. There’s no body to
examine now, there’s no film since there’s no security camera in the suite, and if you’ll look
up…” We all did, of course, to the corner of the hallway. “You’ll notice that someone has
very accurately thrown a piece of gum over the lens of the security camera. Or perhaps, if it
was a vampire, he jumped up and planted the gum on the lens. Of course I’m going to
review the tapes, but as fast as vampires can jump, it may well be impossible to determine
who the individual is. At the moment, there aren’t any vampires on the homicide squad in
the Rhodes police force, so I’m not sure there’s anyone we can call. Most human cops
won’t investigate vampire crime, unless they have a vampire partner to get their backs.”
“I can’t think of anything more we can do here,” Sophie-Anne said, exactly as if she could
not care less. “If you don’t need us any longer, we’ll go to the opening ceremony.” She had
looked at her watch a few times during this conversation. “Master Henrik, if you are up to
it, come with us. If you’re not up to it, which of course we would understand, Sigebert will
take you up to my suite and you may remain there.”
“I would like to go somewhere quiet,” Henrik Feith said. He looked like a beaten puppy.
Sophie-Anne nodded to Sigebert, who didn’t look happy about getting his marching
orders. But he had to obey her, of course, so off he went with the little vampire who was
one-fifth of all that was left of the Arkansas undead.
I had so much to think about that my brain went into a stall. Just when I believed nothing
more could happen, the elevator dinged and the doors swept open to allow Bill to leap out.
He didn’t arrive as dramatically as Henrik, but he made a definite entrance. He stopped
dead and assessed the situation. Seeing we were all standing there calmly, he gathered his
composure around him and said, “I hear there has been trouble?” He addressed this to the
air in between us, so anyone could answer him.
I was tired of trying to think of him as Nameless. Hell, it was Bill. I might hate every
molecule in his body, but he was undeniably there. I wondered if the Weres really managed
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to keep the abjured off their radar, and how they dealt with it. I wasn’t managing very well.
“There is trouble,” the queen said. “Though I don’t understand what your presence will
achieve.”
I’d never seen Bill looking abashed, but he did now. “I apologize, my queen,” he said. “If
you need me for something, I’ll have returned to my booth in the convention hall.”
In icy silence, the elevator doors slid shut, blocking out my first lover’s face and form. It
was possible that Bill was trying to show he cared about me by showing up with such haste
when he was supposed to be doing business for the queen elsewhere. If this demonstration
was supposed to soften my heart, it failed.
“Is there anything I can be doing to help you in your investigation?” Andre asked Donati,
though his words were really aimed at Christian Baruch. “Since the queen is the legal heir
of Arkansas, we stand ready to assist.”
“I would expect nothing less of such a beautiful queen, one also well-known for her
business acumen and tenacity.” Baruch bowed to the queen.
Even Andre blinked at the convoluted compliment, and the queen gave Baruch a narroweyed
look. I kept my gaze fixed on the potted plant, and I kept my face absolutely blank. I
was in danger of snickering. This was brownnosing on a scale I’d never encountered.
There really didn’t seem to be any more to say, and in subdued silence I got on the elevator
with the vampires and Mr. Cataliades, who had remained most remarkably quiet.
Once the doors shut, he said, “My queen, you must marry again immediately.”
Let me tell you, Sophie-Anne and Andre had quite a reaction to this bombshell; their eyes
widened for all of a second.
“Marry anyone: Kentucky, Florida, I would add even Mississippi, if he were not
negotiating with Indiana. But you need an alliance, someone lethal to back you up.
Otherwise jackals like this Baruch will circle around, yipping for your attention.”
“Mississippi’s out of the running, thankfully. I don’t think I could stand all the men. Once
in a while, of course, but not day in, day out, scores of them,” Sophie-Anne said.
It was the most natural and unguarded thing I’d ever heard her say. She almost sounded
human. Andre reached out and punched the button to stop the elevator between floors. “I
wouldn’t advise Kentucky,” he said. “Anyone who needs Britlingens is in enough trouble of
his own.”
“Alabama is lovely,” Sophie-Anne said. “But she enjoys some things in bed that I object
to.”
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I was tired of being in the elevator and also of being regarded as part of the scenery. “May
I ask a question?” I said.
After a moment’s silence, Sophie-Anne nodded.
“How come you get to keep your children with you, and you’ve gone to bed with them,
and most vampires aren’t able to do that? Isn’t it supposed to be a short-term relationship,
sire and child?”
“Most vampire children don’t stay with their makers after a certain time,” Sophie-Anne
agreed. “And there are very few cases of children staying with their maker as long as Andre
and Sigebert have been with me. That closeness is my gift, my talent. Every vampire has a
gift: some can fly, some have special skills with the sword. I can keep my children with me.
We can talk to each other, as you and Barry can. We can love each other physically.”
“If all that’s so, why don’t you just name Andre the King of Arkansas and marry him?”
There was a long, total silence. Sophie-Anne’s lips parted a couple of times as if she was
about to explain to me why that was impossible, but both times she pressed them shut
again. Andre stared at me with such intensity that I expected to see two spots on my face
begin smoking. Mr. Cataliades just looked shocked, as if a monkey had begun to speak to
him in iambic pentameter.
“Yes,” said Sophie-Anne finally. “Why don’t I do that? Have as king and spouse my
dearest friend and lover.” In the blink of an eye, she looked positively radiant. “Andre, the
only drawback is that you will have to spend some time apart from me when you return to
Arkansas to take care of the state’s affairs. My oldest child, are you willing?”
Andre’s face was transformed with love. “For you, anything,” he said.
We had us a Kodak moment going. I actually felt a little choked up.
Andre pressed the button again and down we went.
Though I am not immune to romance—far from it—in my opinion, the queen needed to
focus on finding out who’d killed Jennifer Cater and the remaining Arkansas vampires. She
needed to be grilling Towel Guy, the surviving vampire—Henrik Whatever. She didn’t need
to be trailing around meeting and greeting. But Sophie-Anne didn’t ask me what I thought,
and I’d volunteered enough of my ideas for the day.
The lobby was thronged. Plunged into such a crowd, my brain would normally be going
into overload unless I was very careful indeed. But when the majority of the beings with
brains were vampires, I got a lobby full of nothing, just a few flutters from the human
flunky brains. Watching all the movement and not hearing much was strange, like watching
birds’ wings beating and yet not hearing the movement. I was definitely working now, so I
sharpened up and scanned the individuals who had circulating blood and beating hearts.
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One male witch, one female. One lover/blood donor—in other words, a fangbanger, but a
high-class one. When I tracked him down visually, I saw a very handsome young man
wearing everything designer down to his tighty whities, and proud of it. Standing beside the
King of Texas was Barry the Bellboy: he was doing his job as I was doing mine. I tracked a
few hotel employees going about their business. People aren’t always thinking about
interesting stuff like, “Tonight I’m in on a plot to assassinate the hotel manager,” or
something like that, even if theyare. They’re thinking stuff like, “The room on eleven needs
soap, the room on eight has a heater that won’t work, the room service cart on four needs to
be moved…”
Then I happened upon a whore. Now,she was interesting. Most of the whores I knew were
of the amateur variety, but this woman was a thorough professional. I was curious enough
to make eye contact. She was fairly attractive in the face department, but would never have
been a candidate for Miss America or even homecoming queen—definitely not the girl next
door, unless you lived in a red-light district. Her platinum hair was in a tousled, bedtime
hairdo, and she had rather narrow brown eyes, an allover tan, enhanced breasts, big
earrings, stiletto heels, bright lipstick, a dress that was mostly red spangles—you couldn’t
say she didn’t advertise. She was accompanying a man who’d been made vamp when he
was in his forties. She held on to his arm as if she couldn’t walk without help, and I
wondered if the stiletto heels were responsible for that, or if she held on because he liked it.
I was so interested in her—she was projecting her sexuality so strongly, she was so very
much a prostitute—that I slipped through the crowd to track her more closely. Absorbed in
my goal, I didn’t think about her noticing me, but she seemed to feel my eyes on her and
she looked over her shoulder to watch me approach. The man she was with was talking to
another vampire, and she didn’t have to kowtow to him just for the moment, so she had
time to eye me with sharp suspicion. I stood a few feet away to listen to her, out of sheer illbred
curiosity.
Freaky girl, not one of us, does she want him? She can have him; I can’t stand that thing he
does with his tongue, and after he does me he’ll want me to do him and that other guy—
geez, do I have some spare batteries? Maybe she could go away and stop staring?
“Sure, sorry,” I said, ashamed of myself, and plunged back into the crowd. Next I went
over the servers hired by the hotel, who were busy circulating through the crowd with trays
of glasses filled with blood and a few actual drinks for the humans scattered around. The
servers were all preoccupied with dodging the milling crowd, not spilling, sore backs and
tender feet, things like that. Barry and I exchanged nods, and I caught a trailing thought that
had Quinn’s name embedded, so I followed that trail until I found it led to an employee of
E(E)E. I knew this because she was wearing the company T-shirt. This gal was a young
woman with a very short haircut and very long legs. She was talking to one of the servers,
and it was definitely a one-sided conversation. In a crowd that was noticeably dressed up,
this woman’s jeans and sneakers stood out.
“—and a case of iced soft drinks,” she was saying. “A tray of sandwiches, and some chips.
Okay? In the ballroom, within an hour.” She swung around abruptly and came face-to-face
with me. She scanned me up and down and was little impressed.
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“You dating one of the vamps, blondie?” she asked. Her voice was harsh to my ears, a
northeastern clipped accent.
“No, I’m dating Quinn,” I said. “Blondie, yourself.” Though at least I was naturally blond.
Well,assisted natural. This gal’s hair looked like straw…if straw had dark roots.
She didn’t like that at all, though I wasn’t sure which part of it displeased her most. “He
didn’t say he had a new woman,” she said, and of course she said it in the most insulting
way possible.
I felt free to dip into her skull, and I found there a deep affection for Quinn. She didn’t
think any other women were worthy of him. She thought I was a slow southern girl who hid
behind men.
Since this was based on our conversation of less than sixty seconds, I could excuse her for
being wrong. I could excuse her for loving Quinn. I couldn’t forgive her overwhelming
contempt.
“Quinn doesn’t have to tell you his personal information,” I said. What I really wanted was
to ask her where Quinn was now, but that would definitely hand the advantage to her, so I
was going to keep that question to myself. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work,
and I assume you do, too.”
Her dark eyes flashed at me, and she strode off. She was at least four inches taller than me,
and very slim. She hadn’t bothered with a bra, and she had little plum-like boobs that
jiggled in an eye-catching way. This was a gal who’d always want to be on top. I wasn’t the
only one who watched her cross the room. Barry had jettisoned his fantasy about me for a
brand-new one.
I returned to the queen’s side because she and Andre were moving into the convention hall
from the lobby. The wide double doors were propped open by a really beautiful pair of urns
that held huge arrangements of dried grasses.
Barry said, “Have you ever been to a real convention, a normal one?”
“No,” I said, trying to keep my scan of the surrounding crowd up. I wondered how Secret
Service agents coped. “Well, I went to one with Sam, a bartending supplies convention, but
just for a couple of hours.”
“Everyone wore a badge, right?”
“If you can call a thing on a lanyard around your neck a badge, yeah.”
“That’s so workers at the door can be sure you’ve paid your admittance, and so that
unauthorized people won’t come in.”
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“Yeah, so?”
Barry went silent.So, you see anyone with a badge? You see anyone checking?
No one but us. And what do we know? The whore might be an undercover spy for the
northeastern vampires. Or something worse,I added more soberly.
They’re used to being the strongest and scariest,Barry said.They might fear each other, but
they don’t seriously fear humans, not when they’re together.
I took his point. The Britlingen had already aroused my concern, and now I was even more
worried.
Then I looked back at the doors to the hotel. They were guarded, now that it was dark, by
armed vampires instead of armed humans. The front desk, too, was staffed with vampires
wearing the hotel uniform, and those vampires were scanning each and every person who
walked in the doors. This building was not as laxly protected as it might seem. I relaxed
and decided to check out the booths in the convention hall.
There was one for prosthetic fangs that you could have implanted; they came in natural
ivory, silver, or gold, and the really expensive ones retracted by means of a tiny motor when
your tongue pressed a tiny button in your mouth. “Undetectable from the real thing,” an
elderly man was assuring a vampire with a long beard and braided hair. “And sharp, oh
goodness, yes!” I couldn’t figure out who would want a pair. A vamp with a broken tooth?
A vamp wannabe who wanted to pretend? A human looking for a little role-playing?
The next booth sold CDs of music from various historical eras, likeRussian Folk Songs of
the Eighteenth Century orItalian Chamber Music, the Early Years. It was doing a brisk
business. People always like the music of their prime, even if that prime was centuries past.
The next booth was Bill’s, and it had a large sign arching over the temporary “walls” of the
enclosure.VAMPIRE IDENTIFICATION , it said simply.TRACK DOWN ANY
VAMPIRE, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME. ALL YOU NEED IS A COMPUTER-SMART
MINION, said a smaller sign. Bill was talking to a female vamp who was extending her
credit card to him, and Pam was popping a CD case into a little bag. Pam caught my eye
and winked. She was wearing a campy harem outfit, which I would have supposed she’d
refuse to do. But Pam was actually smiling. Maybe she was enjoying the break in her
routine.HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRESS PRESENTS: SANGUINARY SOUP FOR THE
SOUL was the sign over the next booth, at which sat a bored and lonely vampire with a
stack of books in front of her.
The next exhibit took up several spaces and needed no explanation. “You should definitely
upgrade,” an earnest salesman was telling a black vampire whose hair was braided and tied
with a thousand colored strings. She listened intently, eyeing one of the sample miniature
coffins open in front of her. “Certainly, wood’s biodegradable and it’s traditional, but who
needs that? Your coffin is your home; that’s what my daddy always said.”
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There were others, including one for Extreme(ly Elegant) Events. That one was a large
table with several price brochures and photo albums lying open to tempt the passersby. I
was ready to check it out when I noticed that the booth was being “manned” by Miss
Snooty Long-Legs. I didn’t want to talk to her again, so I sauntered on, though I never lost
sight of the queen. One of the human waiters was admiring Sophie-Anne’s ass, but I figured
that wasn’t punishable by death, so I let it go.
By that time the queen and Andre had met with the sheriffs Gervaise and Cleo Babbitt. The
broad-faced Gervaise was a small man, perhaps five foot six. He appeared to be about
thirty-five, though you could easily add a hundred years to that and be closer to his true
age. Gervaise had borne the burden of Sophie-Anne’s maintenance and amusement for the
past few weeks, and the wear and tear was showing. I’d heard he’d been renowned for his
sophisticated clothing and debonair style. The only time I’d seen him before, his light hair
had been combed as smooth as glass on his sleek round head. Now it was definitely
disheveled. His beautiful suit needed to go to the cleaner, and his wing tips needed
polishing. Cleo was a husky woman with broad shoulders and coal black hair, a wide face
with a full-lipped mouth. Cleo was modern enough to want to use her last name; she’d been
a vampire for only fifty years.
“Where is Eric?” Andre asked the other sheriffs.
Cleo laughed, the kind of deep-throated laugh that made men look. “He got conscripted,”
she said. “The priest didn’t show up, and Eric’s taken a course, so he’s going to officiate.”
Andre smiled. “That’ll be something to watch. What’s the occasion?”
“It’ll be announced in a second,” Gervaise said.
I wondered what church would have Eric as a priest. The Church of High Profits? I drifted
over to Bill’s booth and attracted Pam’s attention.
“Eric’s a priest?” I murmured
“Church of the Loving Spirit,” she told me, bagging three copies of the CD and handing
them to a fangbanger sent by his master to pick them up. “He got his certificate from the
online course, with Bobby Burnham’s help. He can perform marriage services.”
A waiter somehow outmaneuvered all the guests around the queen and approached her with
a tray full of wineglasses brimming with blood. In the blink of an eye Andre was between
the waiter and the queen, and in the blink of another eye, the waiter swiveled and walked in
another direction.
I tried to look in the waiter’s mind but found it perfectly blank. Andre had grabbed control
of the guy’s will and sent him on his way. I hoped the waiter was okay. I followed his
progress to a humble door set in a corner until I was sure that he was going back to the
kitchen. Okay, incident averted.
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There was a ripple in the currents of the display hall, and I turned to see what was
happening. The King of Mississippi and the King of Indiana had come in together hand in
hand, which seemed to be a public signal that they’d concluded their marriage negotiations.
Russell Edgington was a slight, attractive vampire who liked other men—exclusively and
extensively. He could be good company, and he was a good fighter, too. I liked him. I was a
little anxious about seeing Russell, since a few months before I’d left a body in his pool. I
tried to look on the bright side. The body was a vampire’s, so it should have disintegrated
before the pool covering had been removed in the spring.
Russell and Indiana stopped in front of Bill’s booth. Indiana, incidentally, was a big bulllike
guy with brown curly hair and a face I thought of as no-nonsense.
I drifted closer, because this could be trouble.
“Bill, you look good,” Russell said. “My staff tells me you had a hard time at my place.
You seem to have recovered nicely. I’m not sure how you got free, but I’m glad.” If Russell
was pausing for a reaction, he didn’t get one. Bill’s face was just as impassive as if Russell
had been commenting on the weather, not Bill’s torture. “Lorena was your sire, so I
couldn’t interfere,” Russell said, his voice just as calm as Bill’s face. “And here you are,
selling your own little computer thing that Lorena was trying so hard to get from you. As
the Bard said, ‘All’s well that ends well.’”
Russell had been too verbose, which was the only indication that the king was anxious
about Bill’s reaction. And sure enough, Bill’s voice was like cold silk running over glass.
But all he said was, “Think nothing of it, Russell. Congratulations are in order, I
understand.”
Russell smiled up at his groom.
“Yes, Mississippi and I are tying the knot,” the King of Indiana said. He had a deep voice.
He would look at home beating up some welsher in an alley or sitting in a bar with sawdust
on the floor. But Russell did everything but blush.
Maybe this was a love match.
Then Russell spotted me. “Bart, you have to meet this young woman,” he said
immediately. I about had a panic attack, but there was no way out of the situation without
simply turning tail and running. Russell pulled his intended over to me by their linked
hands. “This young woman was staked while she was in Jackson. Some of those Fellowship
thugs were in a bar, and one of them stabbed her.”
Bart looked almost startled. “You survived, obviously,” he said. “But how?”
“Mr. Edgington here got me some help,” I said. “In fact, he saved my life.”
Russell tried to look modest, and he almost succeeded. The vampire was trying to look
good in front of his intended, such a human reaction that I could scarcely believe it.
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“However, I believe you took something with you when you left,” Russell said severely,
shaking a finger at me.
I tried to glean something from his face that would tell me which way to jump with my
answer. I’d taken a blanket, sure enough, and some loose clothes the young men in
Russell’s harem had left lying around. And I’d taken Bill, who’d been a prisoner in one of
the outbuildings. Probably Russell was referring to Bill, huh?
“Yessir, but I left something behind in return,” I said, since I couldn’t stand this verbal cat
and mouse. All right, already! I’d rescued Bill and killed the vampire Lorena, though that
had been more or less by accident. And I’d dumped her evil ass in the pool.
“I did think there was some sludge at the bottom when we got the pool ready for the
summer,” Russell said, and his bitter chocolate eyes examined me thoughtfully. “What an
enterprising young woman you are, Miss…”
“Stackhouse. Sookie Stackhouse.”
“Yes, I remember now. Weren’t you at Club Dead with Alcide Herveaux? He’s a Were,
honey,” Russell said to Bart.
“Yessir,” I said, wishing he hadn’t remembered that little detail.
“Didn’t I hear Herveaux’s father was campaigning for packleader in Shreveport?”
“That’s right. But he…ah, he didn’t get it.”
“So that was the day Papa Herveaux died?”
“It was,” I said. Bart was listening intently, his hand running up and down Russell’s coat
sleeve all the while. It was a lusty little gesture.
Quinn appeared at my side just then and put his arm around me, and Russell’s eyes
widened. “Gentlemen,” Quinn said to Indiana and Mississippi, “I believe we have your
wedding ready and waiting.”
The two kings smiled at each other. “No cold feet?” Bart asked Russell.
“Not if you keep them warm,” Russell said with a smile that would have melted an
iceberg. “Besides, our lawyers would kill us if we reneged on those contracts.”
They both nodded at Quinn, who loped to the dais at one end of the exhibit hall. He stood
at the highest level and stretched out his arms. There was a microphone up there, and his
deep voice boomed out over the crowd. “Your attention, ladies and gentlemen, kings and
commoners, vampires and humans! You are all requested and invited to attend the union of
Russell Edgington, King of Mississippi, and Bartlett Crowe, King of Indiana, in the Ritual
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Room. The ceremony will begin in ten minutes. The Ritual Room is through the double
doors in the east wall of the hall.” Quinn pointed regally at the double doors.
I’d had time to appreciate his outfit while he spoke. He was wearing full trousers that
gathered at the waist and the ankle. They were deep scarlet. He had cinched the trousers
with a wide gold belt like a prizefighter’s, and he was wearing black leather boots with the
trouser legs tucked in. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. He looked like a genie who’d just popped
out of a really big bottle.
“This is your new man?” Russell said. “Quinn?”
I nodded, and he looked impressed.
“I know you got things on your mind right now,” I said impulsively. “I know you’re about
to get married. But I just want to say I hope that we’re even-steven, right? You’re not mad
at me, or holding a grudge at me, or anything?”
Bart was accepting the congratulations of assorted vampires, and Russell glanced his way.
Then he did me the courtesy of concentrating on me, though I knew he had to turn away
and enjoy his evening in a very short time, which was only right.
“I hold no grudge against you,” he said. “Fortunately, I have a sense of humor, and
fortunately, I didn’t like Lorena worth a damn. I lent her the room in the stable because I’d
known her for a century or two, but she always was a bitch.”
“Then let me ask you, since you’re not mad at me,” I said. “Why does everyone seem so in
awe of Quinn?”
“You really don’t know, and you’ve got the tiger by his tail?” Russell looked happily
intrigued. “I don’t have time to tell you the whole story, because I want to be with my
husband-to-be, but I’ll tell you what, Miss Sookie, your man has made a lot of people a lot
of money.”
“Thanks,” I said, a bit bewildered, “and best wishes to you and, ah, Mr. Crowe. I hope
you’ll be very happy together.” Since shaking hands was not a vampire custom, I bowed
and tried to sort of back away quickly while we were still on such good terms with each
other.
Rasul popped up at my elbow. He smiled when I jumped. Those vamps. Gotta love their
sense of humor.
I’d only seen Rasul in SWAT gear, and he’d looked good in that. Tonight he was wearing
another uniform, but it was also pretty military looking, in a kind of Cossack way. He wore
a long-sleeved tunic and tailored pants in a deep plum with black trim and bright brass
buttons. Rasul was deeply brown, quite naturally, and had the large, dark liquid eyes and
black hair of someone from the Middle East.
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“I knew you were supposed to be here, so it’s nice to run into you,” I said.
“She sent Carla and me ahead of time,” he said lightly in his exotic accent. “You are
looking lovelier than ever, Sookie. How are you enjoying the summit?”
I ignored his pleasantries. “What’s with the uniform?”
“If you mean, whose uniform is it, it’s the new house uniform of our queen,” he said. “We
wear this instead of the armor when we’re not out on the streets. Nice, huh?”
“Oh, you’re stylin’,” I said, and he laughed.
“Are you going to the ceremony?” he said.
“Yeah, sure. I’ve never seen a vampire wedding. Listen, Rasul, I’m sorry about Chester
and Melanie.” They’d been on guard duty with Rasul in New Orleans.
For a second, all the humor left the vampire’s face. “Yes,” he said after a moment of stiff
silence. “Instead of my comrades, now I have the Formerly Furred.” Jake Purifoy was
approaching us, and he was wearing the same uniform as Rasul. He looked lonely. He
hadn’t been a vampire long enough to maintain the calm face that seemed to be second
nature to the undead.
“Hi, Jake,” I said.
“Hi, Sookie,” he said, sounding forlorn and hopeful.
Rasul bowed to both of us and set off in another direction. I was stuck with Jake. This was
too much like grade school for my taste. Jake was the kid who’d come to school wearing
the wrong clothes and packing a weird lunch. Being a combo vamp-Were had ruined his
chances with either crowd. It was like trying to be a Goth jock.
“Have you had a chance to talk to Quinn yet?” I asked for lack of anything better to say.
Jake had been Quinn’s employee before his change had effectively put him out of a job.
“I said hello in passing,” Jake said. “It’s just not fair.”
“What?”
“That he should be accepted no matter what he’s done, and I should be ostracized.”
I knew whatostracized meant, because it had been on my Word of the Day calendar. But
my brain was just snagging on that word because the bigger meaning of Jake’s comment
was affecting my equilibrium. “No matter what he’s done?” I asked. “What would that
mean?”
“Well, of course, you know about Quinn,” Jake said, and I thought I might jump on his
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back and beat him around the head with something heavy.
“The wedding begins!” came Quinn’s magnified voice, and the crowd began streaming
into the double doors he’d indicated earlier. Jake and I streamed right along with them.
Quinn’s bouncy-boobed assistant was standing just inside the doors, passing out little net
bags of potpourri. Some were tied with blue and gold ribbon, some with blue and red.
“Why the different colors?” the whore asked Quinn’s assistant. I appreciated her asking,
because it meant I didn’t have to.
“Red and blue from the Mississippi flag, blue and gold from the Indiana,” the woman said
with an automatic smile. She still had it pasted on her face when she handed me a red-andblue
tied bag, though it faded in an almost comical way when she realized who I was.
Jake and I worked our way to a good spot a bit to the right of center. The stage was bare
except for a few props, and there were no chairs. They weren’t expecting this to take very
long, apparently. “Answer me,” I hissed. “About Quinn.”
“After the wedding,” he said, trying not to smile. It had been a few months since Jake had
had the upper hand on anyone, and he couldn’t hide the fact that he was enjoying it. He
glanced behind us, and his eyes widened. I looked in that direction to see that the opposite
end of the room was set up as a buffet, though the main feature of the buffet was not food
but blood. To my disgust, there were about twenty men and women standing in a line
beside the synthetic blood fountain, and they all had name tags that read simply, “Willing
Donor.” I about gagged. Could that be legal? But they were all free and unrestrained and
could walk out if they chose, and most of them looked pretty eager to begin their donation.
I did a quick scan of their brains. Yep, willing.
I turned to the platform, only eighteen inches high, which Mississippi and Indiana had just
mounted. They’d put on elaborate costumes, which I remembered seeing before in a photo
album at the shop of a photographer who specialized in recording supernatural rituals. At
least these were easy to put on. Russell was wearing a sort of heavy brocade, open-fronted
robe that fit over his regular clothes. It was a splendid garment of gleaming gold cloth
worked in a pattern of blue and scarlet. Bart, King of Indiana, was wearing a similar robe in
a copper brown color, embroidered with a design in green and gold.
“Their formal robes,” Rasul murmured. Once again, he’d drifted to my side without me
noticing. I jumped and saw a little smile twitch the corners of his generous mouth. To my
left, Jake sidled a little closer to me, as if he were trying to hide from Rasul by concealing
himself behind my body.
But I was more interested in this ceremony than I was in vampire one-upmanship. A giant
ankh was the prop at the center of the group onstage. Off to one side, there was a table
bearing two thick sheaves of paper with two plumed pens arranged between them. A female
vampire was standing behind the table, and she was wearing a business suit with a kneelength
skirt. Mr. Cataliades stood behind her, looking benevolent, his hands clasping each
other across his belly.
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Standing on the opposite side of the stage from the table, Quinn, my honey (whose
background I was determined to learn pretty shortly), was still in his Aladdin’s genie outfit.
He waited until the crowd’s murmur died to nothing and then he made a great gesture to
stage right. A figure came up the steps and onto the platform. He was wearing a cloak of
black velvet, and it was hooded. The hood was drawn well forward. The ankh symbol was
embroidered in gold on the shoulders of the cloak. The figure took its position between
Mississippi and Indiana, its back to the ankh, and raised its arms.
“The ceremony begins,” Quinn said. “Let all be silent and witness this joining.”
When someone tells a vampire to be quiet, you can be sure the silence is absolute.
Vampires don’t have to fidget, sigh, sneeze, cough, or blow their nose like people do. I felt
noisy just breathing.
The cloaked figure’s hood fell back. I sighed. Eric. His wheat-colored hair looked beautiful
against the black of the cloak, and his face was solemn and commanding, which was what
you want in an officiant.
“We are here to witness the joining of two kings,” he said, and every word carried to the
corners of the room. “Russell and Bart have agreed, both verbally and by written covenant,
to ally their states for a hundred years. For a hundred years, they may not marry any other.
They may not form an alliance with any other, unless that alliance is mutually agreed and
witnessed. Each must pay the other a conjugal visit at least once a year. The welfare of
Russell’s kingdom shall come second only to his own in Bart’s sight, and the welfare of
Bart’s kingdom shall come second only to his own in Russell’s sight. Russell Edgington,
King of Mississippi, do you agree to this covenant?”
“Yes, I do,” Russell said clearly. He held out his hand to Bart.
“Bartlett Crowe, King of Indiana, do you agree to this covenant?”
“I do,” Bart said, and took Russell’s hand. Awwww.
Then Quinn stepped forward and knelt, holding a goblet under the joined hands, and Eric
whipped out a knife and cut the two wrists with two movements too quick to separate.
Oh,ick. As the two kings bled into the chalice, I chided myself. I might have known that a
vampire ceremony would include a blood exchange.
Sure enough, when the wounds closed, Russell took a sip from the chalice, and then
handed it to Bart, who drained it dry. Then they kissed, Bart holding the smaller man
tenderly. And then they kissed some more. Evidently the mingled blood was a real turn-on.
I caught Jake’s eye.Get a room , he mouthed, and I looked down to hide my smile.
Finally, the two kings moved on to the next step, a ceremonious signing of the contract
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they’d agreed upon. The business-suit woman turned out to be a vampire lawyer from
Illinois, since a lawyer from another state had to draw up the contract. Mr. Cataliades had
been a neutral lawyer, too, and he signed the documents after the kings and the vampire
lawyer.
Eric stood in his black-and-gold glory while all this was done, and once the pens were back
on their elaborate stands, he said, “The marriage is sacred for one hundred years!” and a
cheer went up. Vampires aren’t big on cheering, either, so it was mostly the humans and the
other supes in the crowd who did the hurrahing, but the vampires all made an appreciative
murmur—not as good, but the best they could do, I guess.
I sure wanted to find out more about how Eric had qualified as a priest, or whatever they
called the officiant, but first I was going to make Jake tell me about Quinn. He was trying
to wriggle away in the crowd, but I caught up with him pretty quick. He wasn’t a good
enough vampire yet to get away from me.
“Spill,” I said, and he tried to act like he didn’t know what I was talking about, but he saw
from my face I wasn’t buying it.
So, while the crowd eddied around us, trying not to speed toward the open bar, I waited for
Quinn’s story.
“I can’t believe he hasn’t told you this himself,” Jake said, and I was tempted to slap him
upside the head.
I glared at him to let him know I waswaiting.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I heard all this when I was still a Were. Quinn is like a rock star in
the shifter world, you know. He’s one of the last weretigers, and he’s one of the most
ferocious.”
I nodded. So far, that paralleled my knowledge of Quinn.
“Quinn’s mom was captured one full moon when she changed. A bunch of hunters were
out camping, set up a trap because they wanted a bear for their illegal dogfights. Something
new to bet on, you know? A pack of dogs versus a bear. This was somewhere in Colorado,
and snow was on the ground. His mom was out on her own, and somehow she fell into the
trap, didn’t sense it.”
“Where was his dad?”
“He had died when Quinn was little. Quinn was about fifteen when this happened.”
I had a feeling worse was coming, and I was right.
“He changed, of course, the same night, soon as he found she was missing. He tracked
them to the camp. His mom had turned back into a woman under the stress of the capture,
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and one of them was raping her.” Jake took a deep breath. “Quinn killed them all.”
I looked down at the floor. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“The campsite had to be cleaned up. There wasn’t a pack around to step in—course, tigers
don’t hang in packs—and his mother was hurt bad and in shock, so Quinn went to the local
vampire nest. They agreed to do the job, if he’d be indebted to them for three years.” Jake
shrugged. “He agreed.”
“What exactly did he agree to do?” I asked.
“To fight in the pits for them. For three years or until he died, whichever came first.”
I began to feel cold fingers moving up my spine, and this time it wasn’t creepy Andre…it
was just fear. “The pits?” I said, but if he hadn’t had vampire hearing, he wouldn’t have
been able to make my words out.
“There’s a lot of bets placed on pit fighting,” Jake said. “It’s like the dogfights the hunters
wanted the bear for. Humans aren’t the only ones who like to watch animals kill each other.
Some vamps love it. So do some other supes.”
My lips curled in disgust. I felt almost nauseated.
Jake was looking at me, troubled by my reaction, but also giving me time to understand the
sad story was not at an end. “Obviously Quinn survived his three years,” Jake said. “He’s
one of the few who’ve lived that long.” He looked at me sideways. “He kept winning and
winning. He was one of the most savage fighters anyone’s ever seen. He fought bears,
lions, you name it.”
“Aren’t they all really rare?” I asked.
“Yeah, they are, but I guess even rare Were creatures need money,” Jake said with a toss of
his head. “And you can make big bucks pit fighting, when you’ve earned enough to bet on
yourself.”
“Why did he stop?” I asked. I regretted more than I could say that I had been curious about
Quinn. I should have waited until he volunteered all this. He would have, I hoped. Jake
caught a human servant walking by and snagged a glass of synthetic blood off the tray. He
drained it in one gulp.
“His three years ended, and he had to take care of his sister.”
“Sister?”
“Yeah, his mom got pregnant that night, and the result was the dyed blonde who gave us
the potpourri bags at the door. Frannie gets into trouble from time to time, and Quinn’s
mother can’t handle her, so she sends her to stay with Quinn for a while. Frannie turned up
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here last night.”
I’d had as much as I could stomach. I turned in one quick movement and walked away
from Jake. And to his credit, he didn’t try to stop me.