Book Six Chapter 21-23

Chapter 21
Once he knew what he was doing, Quinn was relentless. Since we couldn't be any more miserable than we already were, he decided we might as well be moving. While I did little more than follow him and stay out of his way, he began to scour the area for smells. Finally he got tired of crouching, and he said, "I'm going to change." He stripped quickly and efficiently, rolling the clothes into a compact (but sopping) bundle and handing them to me to carry. Every conjecture I'd had about Quinn's body was absolutely on target, I was pleased to note. He'd begun taking off his clothes without a single hesitation, but once he noticed I was looking, he held still and let me look. Even in the dark, dripping rain, he was worth it. Quinn's body was a work of art, though a scarred work of art. He was one large block of muscle, from his calves to his neck.
"Do you like what you see?" he asked.
"Oh, boy," I said. "You look better than a Happy Meal to a three-year-old."
Quinn gave me a broad, pleased smile. He bent to crouch on the ground. I knew what was coming. The air around Quinn began to shimmer and tremble, and then within that envelope Quinn began to change. Muscles rippled and flowed and reformed, bones reshaped, fur rolled out of somewhere inside him—though I knew that couldn't be, that was the illusion. The sound was dreadful. It was a kind of gloppy, sticky sound, but with hard notes in it, as if someone were stirring a pot of stiff glue that was full of sticks and rocks.
At the end of it, the tiger stood across from me.
If Quinn had been a gorgeous naked man, he was an equally beautiful tiger. His fur was a deep orange slashed with black stripes, and there were touches of white on his belly and face. His eyes slanted, and they were golden. He was maybe seven feet long and at least three feet tall at the shoulder. I was amazed at how big he was. His paws were fully developed and as big as some dinner plates. His rounded ears were just plain cute. He walked over to me silently, with a grace unusual in such a massive form. He rubbed his huge head against me, almost knocking me down, and he purred. He sounded like a happy Geiger counter.
His dense fur was oily to the touch, so I figured he was pretty well waterproofed. He gave a barking cough, and the swamp went silent. You wouldn't think Louisiana wildlife would recognize the sound of a tiger, right? But it did, and it shut its mouth and hid.
We don't have the same special space requirements with animals that we do with people. I knelt beside the tiger that had been Quinn, in some magical way was still Quinn, and I put my arms around his neck, and I hugged him. It was a little disturbing that he smelled so much like an actual tiger, and I forced my mind around the fact that he was a tiger, that Quinn was inside him. And we set out through the swamp.
It was a little startling to see the tiger mark his new territory—this is not something you expect to see your boyfriend do—but I decided it would just be ridiculous to mind the display. Besides, I had enough to think about, keeping up with the tiger. He was searching for scents, and we covered a lot of ground. I was growing more and more exhausted. My sense of wonder faded, and I was simply wet and chilly, hungry and grumpy. If someone had been thinking right under my feet, I'm not sure my mind would have picked the thoughts up.
Then the tiger froze, nose testing the air. His head moved, ears twitching, to search in a particular direction. He turned to look at me. Though tigers can't smile, I got the definite wave of triumph from the huge cat. The tiger turned his head back to the east, rotated his massive head to look at me, and turned his head to the east again. Follow me, clear as a bell.
"Okay," I said, and put my hand on his shoulder.
Off we went. The trip through the swamp lasted an eternity, though later I estimated that "eternity," in this case, was probably about thirty minutes. Gradually the ground grew firmer, the water scarcer. Now we were in forest, not swamp.
I'd figured we'd gotten close to our abductors' destination when the van had turned off onto the side road. I'd been right. When we came to the edge of the clearing surrounding the little house, we were to the west side of the north-facing house. We could see both front and back yards. The van that had held us captive was parked in the back. In the tiny clearing at the front was a car, some kind of GMC sedan.
The little house itself was like a million other houses in rural America. It was a box of a place: wooden, painted tan, with green shutters on the windows and green uprights to support the roof over the tiny front porch. The two men from the van, Clete and George, were huddled on the concrete square because of that bit of shelter, however inadequate it was.
The matching structure at the rear of the house was a little deck outside the back door, scarcely large enough to hold a gas grill and a mop. It was open to the elements. By the way, the elements were really going to town.
I stowed Quinn's clothes and shoes at the foot of a mimosa tree. The tiger's lips pulled back when he scented Clete. The long teeth were as frightening as a shark's.
The afternoon of rain had lowered the temperature. George and Clete were shivering in the damp cool of the evening. They were both smoking. The two Weres, in human form and smoking, would not have a better sense of smell than regular people. They showed no sign of being aware of Quinn at all. I figured they would react pretty dramatically if they caught the scent of tiger in southern Louisiana.
I worked my way through the trees around the clearing until I was very close to the van. I eased my way around it and crept up to the passenger side. The van was unlocked, and I could see the stun gun. That was my goal. I took a deep breath and opened the door, hoping the light that came on wasn't interesting to anyone who could see out the back window. I grabbed the stun gun from the jumble of stuff between the front seats. I shut the door as quietly as a van door can be shut. Luckily, the rain seemed to muffle the noise. I gave a shaky sigh of relief when nothing happened. Then I duckwalked back into the edge of the woods and knelt by Quinn.
He licked my cheek. I appreciated the affection in the gesture, if not the tiger breath, and I scratched his head.
(Somehow, kissing his fur had no appeal.) That done, I pointed to the left west window, which should belong to a living room. Quinn didn't nod or give me a high five, both of which would have been untigerlike gestures, but I guess I had expected him to give me some kind of green light. He just looked at me.
Picking up my feet carefully, I stepped out into the little open space between the forest and the house, and very carefully I made my way to the lit window.
I didn't want to pop into view like a jack-in-the-box, so I hugged the side of the house and inched sideways until I could peer in at the very corner of the glass. The older Pelts, Barbara and Gordon, were sitting on an "early American" loveseat dating from the sixties, and their body language clearly proclaimed their unhappiness. Their daughter Sandra paced back and forth in front of them, though there wasn't much room for such an exhibition. It was a very small family room, a room that would be comfortable only if you had a family of one. The older Pelts looked as if they were going to a Lands' End photo shoot, while Sandra was more adventurously clad in skintight stretch khakis and a bright striped short-sleeved sweater. Sandra was dressed for trolling for cute guys at the mall, rather than torturing a couple of people. But torturing was what she'd been planning to do. There was a straight-backed chair crammed into the room, too, and it had straps and handcuffs already attached.
On a familiar note, there was a roll of duct tape sitting ready beside it.
I'd been pretty calm until I saw the duct tape.
I didn't know if tigers could count, but I held up three fingers in case Quinn was watching. Moving slowly and carefully, I squatted down and moved south until I was below the second window. I was feeling pretty proud of my sneaking ability, which should have alerted me to potential disaster. Pride goeth before a fall.
Though the window was dark, when I eased up into position, I was looking through the glass right into the eyes of a small swarthy man with a mustache and goatee. He was sitting at a table right by the window, and he'd been holding a cup of coffee in his hand. In his shock, he let it drop to the table and the hot backsplash hit his hands and chest and chin.
He shrieked, though I wasn't sure he was using actual words. I heard a commotion at the front door and in the front room.
Well… eff.
I was around the corner of the house and up the steps to the little deck faster than you could say Jack Robinson. I yanked open the screen door and pushed in the wooden door, and I leaped into the kitchen with the stun gun on. The small guy was still patting at his face with a towel while I zapped him, and he went down like a sack of bricks. Wow!
But the stun gun had to recharge, I discovered, when Sandra Pelt, who'd had the advantage of already being on her feet, charged into the kitchen, teeth bared. The stun gun didn't do a damn thing to her, and she was on me like an—well, like an enraged wolf.
However, she was still in the form of a girl, and I was desperate and desperately angry.
I've seen at least two dozen bar fights, ranging from halfhearted punches to rolling-on-the-ground biting, and I know how to fight. Right now I was willing to do whatever it took. Sandra was mean, but she was lighter and less experienced, and after some wrestling and punching and hair pulling that went by in a flash, I was on top of her and had her pinned to the floor. She snarled and snapped but she couldn't reach my neck, and I was prepared to head-butt her if I had to.
A voice in the background bellowed, "Let me in!" and I assumed it was Quinn behind some door. "Come on now!" I yelled in answer. "I need help!"
She was squirming underneath me, and I dared not let go to shift my grip. "Listen, Sandra," I panted, "hold still, dammit!"
"Fuck you," she said bitterly, and her efforts redoubled.
"This is actually kind of exciting," a familiar voice said, and I glanced up to see Eric looking down at us with wide blue eyes. He looked immaculate: neat as a pin in blue jeans that had a crease and a starched blue-and-white striped dress shirt. His blond hair was shining clean and (here was the most enviable part) dry. I hated his guts. I felt nasty to the nth degree.
"I could use some help here," I snapped, and he said, "Of course, Sookie, though I'm enjoying the wiggling around. Let go of the girl and stand up."
"Only if you're ready for action," I said, my breathing ragged with the effort of holding Sandra down.
"I'm always ready for action," Eric said, with a glowing smile. "Sandra, look at me."
She was too smart for that. Sandra squeezed her eyes shut and fought even harder. In a second, she freed one of her arms and swung it back to get momentum for her punch. But Eric dropped to his knees and caught the hand before it could fly at my head.
"That's enough," he said in an entirely different tone, and her eyes flew open in surprise. Though he still couldn't catch her with his eyes, I figured he had charge of her now. I rolled off the Were to lie on my back in what remained of the floor in the tiny kitchen. Mr. Small and Dark (and Burned and Stunned), who I figured owned this house, was crumpled by the table.
Eric, who was having almost as much trouble with Sandra as I'd had, took up a lot more of the available space. Exasperated with the Were, he adopted a simple solution. He squeezed the fist he'd caught, and she screamed. And shut up—and quit struggling.
"That's just not fair," I said, fighting a wave of weariness and pain.
"All's fair," he said quietly.
I didn't like the sound of that. "What are you talking about?" I asked. He shook his head. I tried again. "Where's Quinn?"
"The tiger has taken care of your two abductors," Eric said, with an unpleasant smile. "Would you like to go see?"
"Not particularly," I said, and closed my eyes again. "I guess they're dead?"
"I'm sure they wish they were," Eric said. "What did you do to the little man on the floor?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," I said.
"Try me."
"I scared him so bad he spilled hot coffee on himself. Then I hit him with a stun gun that I got out of the van."
"Oh." There was a kind of breathy sound, and I opened my eyes to see that Eric was laughing silently.
"The Pelts?" I asked.
"Rasul has them covered," Eric said. "You have another fan, it seems."
"Oh, it's because of the fairy blood," I said irritably. "You know, it's not fair. Human guys don't like me. I know about two hundred of 'em who wouldn't want to date me if I came with a Chevy truck. But because supes are attracted to the fairy smell, I get accused of being a guy magnet. How wrong is that?"
"You have fairy blood," Eric said, as if his own lightbulb had just lit up. "That explains a lot."
That hurt my feelings. "Oh no, you couldn't just like me," I said, tired and hurting beyond coherence. "Oh no, gosh, there has to be a reason. And it's not gonna be my sparkling personality, oh no! It's gonna be my blood, because it's special. Not me, I'm not special…"
And I would have gone on and on, if Quinn hadn't said, "I don't give a damn about fairies, myself." Any available room left in the kitchen vanished.
I scrambled to my feet. "You okay?" I asked in a wobbly voice.
"Yes," he said, in his deepest rumble. He was altogether human again, and altogether naked. I would've hugged him, but I felt a little embarrassed about embracing him in the altogether, in front of Eric.
"I left your clothes out there in the woods," I said. "I'll go get 'em."
"I can."
"No, I know where they are, and I couldn't get any wetter." Besides, I'm not sophisticated enough to be comfortable in a room with a naked guy, an unconscious guy, a real horrible girl, and another guy who's been my lover.
"Fuck you, bitch," the charming Sandra called after me, and shrieked again, as Eric made it clear he didn't care for name calling.
"Right back at you," I muttered, and trudged out into the rain.
Oh, yes, it was still raining.
I was still brooding over the fairy-blood thing as I scooped up the bundle of Quinn's sodden clothes. It would be easy to slide into a depressed trough if I thought the only reason anybody ever liked me was because I had fairy blood. Of course, there was always the odd vampire who had been ordered to seduce me… I was sure the fairy blood had just been a bonus, in that case… no, no, no, wasn't going there.
If I looked at it in a reasonable way, the blood was just as much a part of me as my eye color or the thickness of my hair. It hadn't done a thing for my half-fairy grandmother, assuming the gene had come to me through her and not one of my other grandparents. She'd married a human man who hadn't treated her any differently than he would have if her blood had been plain old grade A human. And she'd been killed by a human who hadn't known anything about her blood other than the color of it. Following the same assumption, fairy blood hadn't made a bit of difference to my father. He'd never in his life encountered a vampire who might be interested in him because of it—or if he had, he'd kept it mighty close. That didn't seem likely. And the fairy blood hadn't saved my father from the flash flood that had washed my parents' truck off the bridge and into the swollen stream. If the blood had come to me through my mother, well, she'd died in the truck, too. And Linda, my mother's sister, had died of cancer in her midforties, no matter what kind of heritage she had.
I didn't believe this wonderful fairy blood had done all that much for me, either. Maybe a few vampires had been a little more interested in me and friendly to me than they would have been otherwise, but I couldn't say that had been much of an advantage.
In fact, many people would say the vampire attention had been a big negative factor in my life. I might be one of those people. Especially since I was standing out here in the pouring rain holding someone else's wet clothes and wondering what the hell to do with them.
Having come full circle, I slogged back to the house. I could hear a lot of moaning coming from the front yard: Clete and George, presumably. I should have gone to check, but I couldn't muster up the energy.
Back in the kitchen, the small dark man was stirring a little, his eyes opening and shutting and his mouth twitching. His hands were tied behind him. Sandra was bound with duct
tape, which cheered me up quite a bit. It seemed a neat piece of poetic justice. She even had a neat rectangle squarely over her mouth, which I presumed was Eric's work. Quinn had found a towel to secure around his waist, so he looked very… preppy.
"Thanks, babe," he said. He took his clothes and began squeezing them out over the sink. I dripped on the floor. "I wonder if there's a dryer?" he asked, and I opened another door to find a little pantry/utility room with shelves on one wall and on the other a water heater and a tiny washer and dryer.
"Pass 'em in here," I called, and Quinn came in with his clothes. "Yours need to go in there, too, babe," he said, and I noticed he sounded as tired as I felt. Changing into and out of tiger form without the full moon, in such a short space of time, must have been very difficult. "Maybe you can find me a towel?" I asked, pulling off the wet pants with great effort. Without a single joke or leer, he went to see what he could find. He returned with some clothes, I assumed from the small man's bedroom: a T-shirt, shorts, socks. "This is the best I could do," he said.
"It's better than I hoped for," I said. After I'd used the towel and I had pulled on the clean, dry clothes, I almost wept with gratitude. I gave Quinn a hug and then went to find out what we were going to do with our hostages.
The Pelts were sitting on the floor, securely handcuffed, in the living room, watched by Rasul. Barbara and Gordon had looked so mild when they'd come to Merlotte's to meet with me in Sam's office. They looked mild no longer. Rage and malice sat oddly on their suburban faces.
Eric brought Sandra in, too, and dumped her by her parents. Eric stood in one doorway, Quinn in another (which a glance told me led into Small and Dark's bedroom). Rasul, gun in hand, relaxed his vigilance a little now that he had such formidable backup. "Where's the little guy?" he asked. "Sookie, I'm glad to see you looking so well, even though your ensemble falls below your usual standards."
The shorts were baggy cargo shorts, the shirt was big, and the white socks were the capper. "You really know how to make a girl feel beautiful, Rasul," I said, scraping together maybe half a smile to offer him. I sat down in the straight-backed chair and I asked Barbara Pelt, "What were you going to do with me?"
"Work on you until you told us the truth, and Sandra was satisfied," she said. "Our family couldn't be at peace until we knew the truth. And the truth lies in you, I just know it."
I was troubled. Well, beyond troubled. Because I didn't know what to say to her just yet, I looked from Eric to Rasul. "Just the two of you?" I asked.
"Any time two vampires can't handle a handful of Weres is the day I become human again," Rasul said, with an expression so snooty I was tempted to laugh. But he'd been exactly right (though of course he'd had a tiger who helped). Quinn was propped in the doorway looking picturesque, though just at the moment his great expanse of smooth skin didn't interest me at all.
"Eric," I said, "what should I do?"
I don't think I'd ever asked Eric for advice before. He was surprised. But the secret wasn't only mine.
After a moment, he nodded.
"I'll tell you what happened to Debbie," I said to the Pelts. I didn't ask Rasul and Quinn to leave the room. I was getting rid of this right now, both the lingering guilt and the hold Eric had on me.
I'd thought about that evening so often that my words came automatically. I didn't cry, because all my tears had been shed months ago, in private.
Once I'd finished the story, the Pelts sat and stared at me, and I stared back.
"That sounds like our Debbie," said Barbara Pelt. "This has the ring of truth."
"She did have a gun," said Gordon Pelt. "I gave it to her for Christmas two years ago." The two Weres looked at each other.
"She was… proactive," Barbara said, after a moment. She turned to Sandra. "Remember when we had to go to court, when she was in high school, because she put super-glue in that cheerleader's hairbrush? The one that was dating her ex-boyfriend? That does sound like Debbie, huh?"
Sandra nodded, but the duct tape wouldn't permit her speech. Sandra had tears rolling down her cheeks.
"You still don't remember where you put her?" Gordon asked Eric.
"I would tell you if I did," Eric said. Not that I care, his tone implied.
"You guys hired the two kids who attacked us in Shreveport," Quinn said.
"Sandra did," Gordon admitted. "We didn't know about it until Sandra had already bitten them. She'd promised them…" He shook his head. "She'd sent them to Shreveport on her errand, but they would have returned home to collect their reward. Our Jackson pack would have killed them. Mississippi doesn't permit bitten Weres. They kill them on sight. The boys would have named Sandra as their maker. The pack would have abjured her. Barbara's dabbled with witchcraft, but nothing of the level that would have sealed the boys' mouths. We hired an out-of-state Were to track them when we found out. He couldn't stop them, couldn't prevent their arrest, so he had to be arrested and go into the jail system with them, to take care of the problem." He looked up at us, shook his head sternly. "He bribed Cal Myers to put him in the cell with them. Of course, we punished Sandra for that."
"Oh, did you take away her cell phone for a week?" If I sounded sarcastic, I thought I had a right to be. Even cooperative, the Pelts were pretty horrible. "We were both hurt," I said, nodding toward Quinn, "and those two kids are dead now. Because of Sandra."
"She's our daughter," Barbara said. "And she believed she was avenging her murdered sister."
"And then you hired all the Weres that were in the second van, and the two Weres lying out in the front yard. Are they going to die, Quinn?"
"If the Pelts don't take them to a Were doctor, they may. And they sure can't go to any human hospital."
Quinn's claws would have left distinctive marks.
"Will you do that?" I asked skeptically. "Take Clete and George to a Were doctor?"
The Pelts looked at each other and shrugged. "We figured you were going to kill us," Gordon said. "Are you going to let us walk away? With what assurances?"
I'd never met anyone quite like the Pelts before, and it was easier and easier to see where Debbie had gotten her charming personality, adopted or not.
"With assurances that I never hear of this again," I said. "Neither I nor Eric."
Quinn and Rasul had been listening silently.
"Sookie is a friend of the Shreveport pack," Quinn said. "They are very upset she was attacked, in their own city, and now we know you're responsible for that attack."
"We heard she was no favorite of the new packleader." Barbara's voice held a trace of contempt. She was reverting to her own personality, since she no longer feared her own death. I liked them better when they were scared.
"He may not be packleader for long," Quinn said, his voice a quiet threat. "Even if he stays in office, he can't rescind the pack's protection, since it was guaranteed by the previous packleader. The honor of the pack would be destroyed."
"We'll make reparations to the Shreveport pack," Gordon said wearily.
"Did you send Tanya to Bon Temps?" I asked.
Barbara looked proud of herself. "Yes, I did that. You know our Debbie was adopted? She was a werefox."
I nodded. Eric looked quizzical; I didn't think he'd met Tanya.
"Tanya is a member of Debbie's birth family, and she wanted to do something to help. She thought if she went to Bon Temps and began working with you, you might let something spill. She said you were too suspicious to warm up to her offer of friendship. I think she might stay in Bon Temps. I understand finding the bar owner so attractive was an unexpected bonus."
It was kind of gratifying to discover Tanya was as untrustworthy as I'd suspected. I wondered if I had the right to tell Sam this whole story, by way of warning. I'd have to think about that later.
"And the man who owns this house?" I could hear him groaning and moaning from the kitchen.
"He's a former high school buddy of Debbie's," Gordon said. "We asked him if we could borrow his house for the afternoon. And we paid him. He won't talk after we leave."
"What about Gladiola?" I asked. I remembered the two burning body sections on my driveway. I remembered Mr. Cataliades's face, and Diantha's grief.
They all three stared at me blankly. "Gladiola? The flower?" Barbara said, looking genuinely puzzled. "It's not even the right season for glads, now."
That was a dead end.
"Do you agree we're square on this?" I asked baldly. "I've hurt you, you've hurt me. Even?"
Sandra shook her head from side to side, but her parents ignored her. Thank God for duct tape. Gordon and Barbara nodded at each other.
Gordon said, "You killed Debbie, but we do believe that you killed her in self-defense. And our living daughter took extreme and unlawful methods to attack you… It goes against my grain to say this, but I think we have to agree to leave you alone, after this day."
Sandra made a lot of weird noises.
"With these stipulations." Gordon's face suddenly looked hard as a rock. The yuppie man took a backseat to the Were. "You won't come after Sandra. And you stay out of Mississippi."
"Done," I said instantly. "Can you control Sandra enough to make her keep to this agreement?" It was a rude but valid question. Sandra had enough balls for an army, and I doubted very much if the Pelts had ever really had control over either of their daughters.
"Sandra," Gordon said to his daughter. Her eyes blazed at him from her forcibly mute face. "Sandra, this is law. We are giving our word to this woman, and our word is binding on you. If you defy me, I'll challenge you at the next full moon. I'll take you down in front of the pack."
Both mother and daughter looked shocked, Sandra more so than her mother. Sandra's eyes narrowed, and after a long moment, she nodded.
I hoped Gordon lived a long time and enjoyed good health while he lived. If he grew ill, or if he died, Sandra wouldn't feel bound by this agreement, I felt pretty darn sure. But as I walked out of the little house in the swamp, I thought I had a reasonable chance of not seeing the Pelts again in my life, and that was absolutely okay with me.
* * * * *
Chapter 22
Amelia was rummaging through her walk-in closet. It was just after dark the next day. Suddenly the hangers quit sliding across the rack at the very back of the closet.
"I think I have one," she called, sounding surprised. I waited for her to emerge, sitting on the edge of her bed. I'd had at least ten hours' sleep, I'd had a careful shower, I'd had some first aid, and I felt a hundred times better. Amelia was glowing with pride and happiness. Not only had Bob the Mormony witch been wonderful in bed, they'd been up in time to watch Quinn's and my abduction, and to have the brilliant idea of calling the vampire queen's mansion instead of the regular police. I hadn't told her yet that Quinn and I had made our own call, because I didn't know which one had been more effective, and I enjoyed seeing Amelia so happy.
I hadn't wanted to go to the queen's shindig at all until after my trip to the bank with Mr. Cataliades. After I'd returned to Hadley's apartment, I'd resumed packing my cousin's stuff and heard a strange noise when I'd put the coffee into a box. Now if I wanted to avert disaster, I had to go to the queen's spring party, the supernatural event of the year. I'd tried getting in touch with Andre at the queen's headquarters, but a voice had told me he was not to be disturbed. I wondered who was answering the phones at Vampire Central that day. Could it be one of Peter Threadgill's vamps?
"Yes, I do!" Amelia exclaimed. "Ah, it's kind of daring. I was the bridesmaid at an extreme wedding." She emerged from the closet with her hair disheveled, her eyes lit with triumph. She rotated the hanger so I could get the full effect. She'd had to pin the dress to the hanger because there was so little to hang.
"Yikes," I said, uneasily. Made mostly of lime-green chiffon, it was cut in a deep V almost down to the waist. A single narrow strap ran around the neck.
"It was a movie star wedding," Amelia said, looking as if she had a lot of memories of the service. Since the dress was also backless, I was wondering how those Hollywood women kept their boobs covered. Double-sided tape? Some kind of glue? As I hadn't seen Claudine since she vanished from the courtyard before the ectoplasmic reconstruction, I had to assume she'd gone back to her job and her life in Monroe. I could have used her special services just about now. There had to be a fairy spell that would make your dress stay still.
"At least you don't need a special bra to wear under it," Amelia said helpfully. That was true; it wasn't possible to wear a bra at all. "And I've got the shoes, if you can wear a seven."
"That's a big help," I said, trying to sound pleased and grateful. "I don't suppose you can do hair?"
"Nah," Amelia said. She waved a hand at her own short 'do. "I wash it, brush it, and that's that. But I can call Bob." Her eyes glowed happily. "He's a hairdresser."
I tried not to look too astonished. At a funeral home? I thought, but I was smart enough to keep that to myself. Bob just looked no way like any hairdresser I'd ever seen.
After a couple of hours, I was more or less into the dress, and fully made up.
Bob had done a good job with my hair, though he'd reminded me several times to keep very still, in a way that had made me a little nervous.
And Quinn had shown up on time in his car. When Eric and Rasul had dropped me off at about two in the morning, Quinn had just gotten in his car and driven away to wherever he was staying, though he'd put a light kiss on my forehead before I started up the stairs. Amelia had come out of her apartment, all happy I was safely back, and I'd had to return a call from Mr. Cataliades, who wondered if I was quite all right, and who wanted me to go to the bank with him to finalize Hadley's financial affairs. Since I'd missed my chance to go with Everett, I'd been grateful.
But when I'd returned to Hadley's apartment after the bank trip, I'd found a message on Hadley's answering machine telling me that the queen expected to see me at the party at the old monastery tonight. "I don't want you to leave the city without seeing me again," the queen's human secretary had quoted her as saying, before informing me that the dress code was formal. After my discovery, when I realized I'd have to attend the party, I'd gone down the stairs to Amelia's in a panic.
The dress caused another kind of panic. I was better-endowed than Amelia, though a bit shorter, and I had to stand really straight.
"The suspense is killing me," said Quinn, eyeing my chest. He looked wonderful in a tux. My wrist bandages stuck out against my tan like strange bracelets; in fact, one of them was acutely uncomfortable, and I was anxious to take it off. But the wrist would have to stay covered a while, though the bite on my left arm could remain uncovered. Maybe the suspense about my boobs would distract party-goers from the fact that my face was swollen and discolored on one side.
Quinn, of course, looked as though nothing had ever happened to him. Not only did he have the quick-healing flesh of most shape-shifters, but a man's tux covers up a lot of injuries.
"Don't you make me feel any more self-conscious than I already do," I said. "For about a dime, I'd go crawl back into bed and sleep for a week."
"I'm up for that, though I'd reduce the sleep time," Quinn said sincerely. "But for our peace of mind, I think we better do this first. By the way, my suspense was about the trip to the bank, not your dress. I figure, with your dress, it's a win-win situation. If you stay in it, good. If you don't, even better."
I looked away, trying to control an involuntary smile. "The trip to the bank." That seemed like a safe topic. "Well, her bank account didn't have a lot in it, which I figured would be the case. Hadley didn't have much sense about money. Hadley didn't have much sense, period. But the safe-deposit box…"
The safe-deposit box had held Hadley's birth certificate, a marriage license, and a divorce decree dated more than three years ago—both naming the same man, I was glad to see—and a laminated copy of my aunt's obituary. Hadley had known when her mother had died, and she'd cared enough to keep the clipping. There were pictures from our shared childhood, too: my mother and her sister; my mother and Jason, me, and Hadley; my grandmother and her husband. There was a pretty necklace with sapphires and diamonds (which Mr. Cataliades had said the queen had given to Hadley), and a pair of matching earrings. There were a couple more things that I wanted to think about.
But the queen's bracelet was not there. That was why Mr. Cataliades had wanted to accompany me, I think; he half expected the bracelet would be there, and he seemed quite anxious when I held the lockbox out to him so he could see its contents for himself.
"I finished packing the kitchen stuff this afternoon after Cataliades took me back to Hadley's apartment," I said to Quinn, and watched his reaction. I would never again take the disinterestedness of my companions for granted. I found myself fairly convinced Quinn had not been helping me pack the day before in order to search for something, after I saw that his reaction was perfectly calm.
"That's good," he said. "Sorry I didn't make it over to help you today. I was closing out Jake's dealings with Special Events. I had to call my partners, let them know. I had to call Jake's girlfriend. He wasn't steady enough to be around her, if she even wants to see him again. She's not a vamp lover, to put it mildly."
At the moment, I wasn't either. I couldn't fathom the true reason the queen wanted me at the party, but I had found another reason to see her. Quinn smiled at me, and I smiled back at him, hoping that some good would come out of this evening. I had to admit to myself that I was a bit curious about seeing the queen's party barn, so to speak—and I was also kind of glad to dress up and be pretty after all the swamp slogging.
As we drove, I almost opened a conversation with Quinn at least three times—but on every occasion, when it got to the point, I kept my mouth shut.
"We're getting close," he told me when we'd reached one of the oldest neighborhoods in New Orleans, the Garden District. The houses, set in beautiful grounds, would cost many times what even the Bellefleur mansion would fetch. In the middle of these marvelous homes, we came to a high wall that extended for a whole block. This was the renovated monastery that the queen used for entertaining.
There might be other gates at the back of the property, but tonight all the traffic was moving through the main front entrance. It was heavily protected with the most efficient guards of all: vampires. I wondered if Sophie-Anne Leclerq was paranoid, or wise, or simply did not feel loved (or safe) in her adopted city. I was sure the queen also had the regular security provisions—cameras, infrared motion detectors, razor wire, maybe even guard dogs. There was security out the ying-yang here, where the elite vampires occasionally partied with the elite humans. Tonight the party was supes only, the first large party the newlyweds had given since they'd become a couple.
Three of the queen's vampires were at the gate, along with three of the Arkansas vampires. Peter Threadgill's vampires all wore a uniform, though I suspected the king called it livery. The Arkansas bloodsuckers, male and female, were wearing white suits with blue shirts and red vests. I didn't know if the king was ultrapatriotic or if the colors had been chosen because they were in the Arkansas state flag as well as the U.S. flag. Whichever, the suits were beyond tacky and into some fashion hall of shame, all on their own. And Threadgill had been dressed so conservatively! Was this some tradition I'd never heard of? Gosh, even I knew better than that, tastewise, and I bought most of my clothes at Wal-Mart.
Quinn had the queen's card to show to the guards at the gate, but still they called up to the main house. Quinn looked uneasy, and I hoped he was as concerned as I was about the extreme security and the fact that Threadgills vampires had worked so hard to distinguish themselves from the queen's adherents. I was thinking hard about the queen's need to offer the king's vamps a reason she would go upstairs with me at Hadley's. I thought of the anxiety she displayed when she asked about the bracelet. I thought of the
presence of both camps of vampires at the main gate. Neither monarch trusted the spouse to provide protection.
It seemed like a long time before we were given leave to pass through. Quinn was as quiet as I while we waited.
The grounds seemed to be beautifully landscaped and kept, and they were certainly well lit.
"Quinn, this is just wrong," I said. "What's going on here? Do you think they'd let us leave?" Unfortunately, it seemed as though all my suspicions were true.
Quinn didn't look any happier than I was. "They won't let us out," he said. "We have to go on now." I clutched my little evening bag closer to me, wishing there was something more lethal in it than a few small items like a compact and a lipstick, and a tampon. Quinn drove us carefully up the winding drive to the front of the monastery.
"What did you do today, besides work on your outfit?" Quinn asked.
"I made a lot of phone calls," I said. "And one of them paid off."
"Calls? Where to?"
"Gas stations, all along the route from New Orleans to Bon Temps."
He turned to stare at me, but I pointed just in time for Quinn to apply the brakes.
A lion strolled across the drive.
"Okay, what's that? Animal? Or shifter?" I was edgier by the minute.
"Animal," Quinn said.
Scratch the idea of dogs roaming the enclosure. I hoped the wall was high enough to keep the lion in.
We parked in front of the former monastery, which was a very large two-story building. It hadn't been built for beauty, but for utility, so it was a largely featureless structure. There was one small door in the middle of the façade, and small windows placed regularly. Again, fairly easy to defend.
Outside the small door stood six more vampires, three in fancy but unmatching clothes—surely Louisiana bloodsuckers—and three more from Arkansas, in their glaringly garish outfits.
"That's just butt-ugly," I said.
"But easy to see, even in the dark," Quinn said, looking as if he were thinking deep, significant thoughts.
"Duh," I said. "Isn't that the point? So they'll instantly… oh." I mulled it over. "Yeah," I said. "No one would wear anything close to that, on purpose or by accident. Under any circumstances. Unless it was really important to be instantly identifiable."
Quinn said, "It's possible that Peter Threadgill is not devoted to Sophie-Anne."
I gave a squawk of laughter just as two Louisiana vampires opened our car doors in a move so coordinated it must have been rehearsed. Melanie, the guard vampire I'd met at the queen's downtown headquarters, took my hand to help me from the car, and she smiled at me. She looked a lot better out of the overwhelming SWAT gear. She was wearing a pretty yellow dress with low heels. Now that she wasn't wearing a helmet, I could see her hair was short, intensely curly, and light brown.
She took a deep, dramatic breath as I passed, and then made an ecstatic face. "Oh, the odor of the fairy!" she exclaimed. "It makes my heart sing!"
I swatted at her playfully. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. Vampires, as a whole, are not noted for their sense of humor.
"Cute dress," Rasul said. "Kind of on the daring side, huh?"
Chester said, "Can't be too daring for me. You look really tasty."
I thought it couldn't be a coincidence that the three vampires I'd met at the queen's headquarters were the three vampires on door duty tonight. I couldn't figure out what that could mean, though. The three Arkansas vampires were silent, regarding the to-and-fro between us with cold eyes. They were not in the same relaxed and smiling mood as their fellows.
Something definitely off-kilter here. But with the acute vampire hearing all around, there wasn't anything to say about it.
Quinn took my arm. We walked into a long hall that seemed to run nearly the length of the building. A Thread-gill vampire was standing at the door of a room that seemed to serve as a reception area.
"Would you like to check your bag?" she asked, obviously put out at being relegated to a hat-check girl.
"No, thanks," I said, and thought she was going to pull it out from under my arm.
"May I search it?" she asked. "We screen for weapons."
I stared at her, always a risky thing to do to a vampire. "Of course not. I have no weapons."
"Sookie," Quinn said, trying not to sound alarmed. "You have to let her look in your purse. It's procedure."
I glared at him. "You could have told me," I said sharply.
The door guard, who was a svelte young vamp with a figure that challenged the cut of the white pants, seized my purse with an air of triumph. She turned it out over a tray, and its few contents clattered to the metal surface: a compact, a lipstick, a tiny tube of glue, a handkerchief, a ten-dollar bill, and a tampon in a rigid plastic applicator, completely covered in plastic wrap.
Quinn was not unsophisticated enough to turn red, but he did glance discreetly away. The vampire, who had died long before women carried such items in their purses, asked me its purpose and nodded when I explained. She repacked my little evening bag and handed it to me, indicating with a hand gesture that we should proceed down the hall. She'd turned to the people who'd come in behind us, a Were couple in their sixties, before we'd even exited the room.
"What are you up to?" Quinn asked, in the quietest possible voice, as we moved along the corridor.
"Do we have to pass through any more security?" I asked, in a voice just as hushed.
"I don't know. I don't see any up ahead."
"I have to do something," I said. "Excuse me, while I find the nearest ladies' room." I tried to tell him, with my eyes, and with the pressure of my hand on his arm, that in a few minutes everything would be all right, and I sincerely hoped that was the truth. Quinn was clearly not happy with me, but he waited outside the ladies' room (God knows what that had been when the building was a monastery) while I ducked into one of the stalls and made a few adjustments. When I came out, I'd tossed the tampon container into the little bin in the stall, and one of my wrists had been rebandaged. My purse was a little heavier.
The door at the end of the corridor led into the very large room that had been the monks' refectory. Though the room was still walled with stone and large pillars supported the roof, three on the left and three on the right, the rest of the decor was considerably different now. The middle of the room was cleared for dancing, and the floor was wooden. There was a dais for musicians close to the refreshments table, and another dais at the opposite end of the room for the royalty.
Around the sides of the room were chairs in conversational groupings. The whole room was decorated in white and blue, the colors of Louisiana. One of the walls had murals depicting scenes from around the state: a swamp scene, which made me shudder; a Bourbon Street montage; a field being plowed and lumber being cut; and a fisherman hoisting up a net in the Gulf Coast. These were all scenes featuring humans, I thought, and wondered what the thinking was behind that. Then I turned to look at the wall surrounding the doorway I'd just entered, and I saw the vampire side of Louisiana life: a group of happy vampires with fiddles under their chins, playing away; a vampire police officer patrolling the French Quarter; a vampire guide leading tourists through one of the Cities of the Dead. No vamps snacking on humans, no vamps drinking anything, I noticed. This was a statement in public relations. I wondered if it really fooled anyone. All you had to do was sit down at a supper table with vampires, and you'd be reminded how different they were, all right.
Well, this wasn't what I'd come to do. I looked around for the queen, and I finally saw her standing by her husband. She was wearing a long-sleeved orange silk dress, and she looked fabulous. Long sleeves maybe seemed a little strange in the warm evening, but vampires didn't notice such things. Peter Threadgill was wearing a tux, and he looked equally impressive. Jade Flower was standing behind him, sword strapped to her back even though she was wearing a red sequined dress (in which, by the way, she looked awful). Andre, also fully armed, was at his station behind the queen. Sigebert and Wybert couldn't be far off. I spotted them on either side of a door that I assumed led to the queen's private apartments. The two vampires looked acutely uncomfortable in their tuxes; it was like watching bears who'd been made to wear shoes.
Bill was in the room. I caught a glimpse of him in the far corner, in the opposite direction from the queen, and I shivered with loathing.
"You have too many secrets," Quinn complained, following the direction of my gaze.
"I'll be glad to tell you a few of 'em, real soon," I promised, and we joined the tail end of the reception line. "When we reach the royals, you go ahead of me. While I'm talking to
the queen, you distract the king, okay? Then I will tell you everything."
We reached to Mr. Cataliades first. I guess he was sort of the queen's secretary of state. Or maybe attorney general would be more appropriate?
"Good to see you again, Mr. Cataliades," I said, in my most correct social tone. "I've got a surprise for you," I added.
"You may have to save it," he said with a kind of stiff cordiality. "The queen is about to have the first dance with her new king. And we're all so looking forward to seeing the present the king gave her."
I glanced around but I didn't see Diantha. "How's your niece?" I asked.
"My surviving niece," he said grimly, "is at home with her mother."
"That's too bad," I said. "She should be here this evening."
He stared at me. Then he looked interested.
"Indeed," he said.
"I heard that someone from here stopped to get gas a week ago Wednesday, on her way to Bon Temps," I said. "Someone with a long sword. Here, let me tuck this in your pocket. I don't need it any more." When I stepped away from him and faced the queen, I had one hand over my injured wrist. The bandage had vanished.
I held out my right hand, and the queen was forced to take it in her own. I had counted on obliging the queen to follow the human custom of shaking hands, and I was mighty relieved when she did. Quinn had passed from the queen to the king, and he said, "Your Majesty, I'm sure you remember me. I was the event coordinator at your wedding. Did the flowers turn out like you wanted?"
Somewhat startled, Peter Threadgill turned his large eyes on Quinn, and Jade Flower kept her eyes on what her king did.
Trying very hard to keep my movements swift but not jerky, I pressed my left hand and what was in it onto the queen's wrist. She didn't flinch, but I think she thought about it. She glanced down at her wrist to see what I'd put on it, and her eyes closed in relief.
"Yes, my dear, our visit was lovely," she said, at random. "Andre enjoyed it very much, as did I." She glanced back over her shoulder, and Andre picked up his cue, and inclined his head to me, in tribute to my supposed talents in the sack. I was so glad to get the ordeal
over with that I smiled at him radiantly, and he looked a shade amused. The queen raised her arm slightly to beckon him closer, and her sleeve rode up. Suddenly Andre was smiling as broadly as I was.
Jade Flower was distracted by Andre's movement forward, and her eyes followed his. They widened, and she was very much not smiling. In fact, she was enraged. Mr. Cataliades was looking at the sword on Jade Flower's back with a completely blank face.
Then Quinn was dismissed by the king and it was my turn to pay homage to Peter Threadgill, King of Arkansas.
"I hear that you had an adventure in the swamps yesterday," he said, his voice cool and indifferent.
"Yes, sir. But it all worked out okay, I think," I said.
"Good of you to come," he said. "Now that you have wrapped up your cousin's estate, I am sure you will be returning to your home?"
"Oh, yes, quick as can be," I said. It was the absolute truth. I would go home providing I could just survive this evening, though at the moment the chances weren't looking too good. I had counted, as well as I was able in a throng like this. There were at least twenty vampires in the room wearing the bright Arkansas outfit, and perhaps the same number of the queen's homies.
I moved away, and the Were couple that had entered after Quinn and me took my place. I thought he was the lieutenant governor of Louisiana, and I hoped he had good life insurance.
"What?" Quinn demanded.
I led him over to a place against the wall, and gently maneuvered him until his back was against it. I had to face away from any lip-readers in the room.
"Did you know the queen's bracelet was missing?" I asked.
He shook his head. "One of the diamond bracelets the king gave her as a wedding present?" he asked, his head ducked to baffle any watchers.
"Yes, missing," I said. "Since Hadley died."
"If the king knew the bracelet was missing, and if he could force the queen to acknowledge that she'd given it to a lover, then he would have grounds for divorce."
"What would he get then?"
"What wouldn't he get! It was a vampire hierarchal marriage, and you don't get any more binding than that. I think the wedding contract was thirty pages."
I understood much better now.
A beautifully dressed vampire woman wearing a gray-green gown strewn with gleaming silver flowers raised her arm to get the attention of the crowd. Gradually the assembled people fell silent.
"Sophie-Anne and Peter welcome you to their first joint entertainment," the vamp said, and her voice was so musical and mellow that you wanted to listen to her for hours. They should get her to do the Oscars. Or the Miss America pageant. "Sophie-Anne and Peter invite all of you to have a wonderful evening of dancing, eating, and drinking. To open the dancing, our host and hostess will waltz."
Despite his glitzy surface, I thought Peter might be more comfortable doing a square dance, but with a wife like Sophie-Anne, it was waltz or nothing. He advanced on his wife, his arms at the ready to receive her, and in his carrying vampire voice he said, "Darling, show them the bracelets."
Sophie-Anne swept the crowd with a smile and raised her own arms to make the sleeves slide back, and a matching bracelet on each wrist shone at the guests, the two huge diamonds winking and blinking in the chandelier lights.
For a moment Peter Threadgill was absolutely still, as if someone had zapped him with a freeze gun. He altered his stance as he moved forward, after that, and took one of her hands in both of his. He stared down at one bracelet, then released her hand to take the other. That bracelet, too, passed his silent test.
"Wonderful," he said, and if it was through his fangs you'd only think they'd extended because he was horny for his beautiful wife. "You're wearing both of them."
"Of course," Sophie-Anne said. "My darling." Her smile was just as sincere as his.
And away they danced, though something about the way he swung her let me know the king was letting his temper get the better of him. He'd had a big plan, and now I'd spoiled it… but thankfully, he didn't know my part. He just knew that somehow Sophie-Anne had managed to retrieve her bracelet and save her face, and he had nothing to justify whatever he'd plotted to do. He would have to back down. After this, he'd probably think of another way to subvert his queen, but at least I'd be out of the fray.
Quinn and I retreated to the refreshments table, located to the south side of the large room, beside one of the thick pillars. Servers were there with carving knives to shave off ham or roast beef. There were yeasty rolls to pile the meat on. It smelled wonderful, but I was too nervous to think of eating. Quinn got me a cup of ginger ale from the bar.
I stared at the dancing couple and waited for the ceiling to fall in.
"Don't they look lovely together?" a well-dressed gray-haired woman said. I realized she was the one who'd come in after me.
"Yes, they do," I agreed.
"I'm Genevieve Thrash," she said. "This is my husband, David."
"Pleased to meet you," I said. "I'm Sookie Stackhouse, and this is my friend, John Quinn." Quinn looked surprised. I wondered if that was actually his first name.
The two men, tiger and Were, shook hands while Genevieve and I watched the couple dance a bit longer.
"Your dress is so pretty," Genevieve said, giving every indication she was speaking sincerely. "It takes a young body to show off a gown like that."
"I appreciate your saying so," I said. "I'm showing a bit more of that body than I'm comfortable with, so you've made me feel better."
"I know your date appreciates it," she said. "And so does that young man over there." She nodded her head subtly, and I glanced in the direction she was indicating. Bill. He looked very good in his tuxedo, but even being in the same room made something within me twist with pain.
"I believe your husband is the lieutenant governor?" I said.
"You're absolutely correct."
"And how do you like being Mrs. Lieutenant?" I asked.
She told some amusing stories about people she'd met while she followed David's political career. "And what does your young man do?" she asked, with that eager interest that must have helped her husband up that ladder.
"He's an events coordinator," I said, after a moment's hesitation.
"How interesting," Genevieve said. "And yourself, you have a job?"
"Oh, yes ma'am," I said. "I'm a barmaid."
That was a bit startling to the politician's wife, but she grinned at me. "You're the first I've ever met," she said cheerfully.
"You're the first Mrs. Lieutenant Governor I've ever met," I said. Damn, now that I'd met her and liked her, I felt responsible for her. Quinn and David were just chatting away, and I think fishing was their topic.
"Mrs. Thrash," I said, "I know you're a Were and that means you're tough as tough can be, but I'm going to give you a piece of advice."
She looked at me quizzically.
"This advice is pure gold," I said.
Her eyebrows flew up. "Okay," she said, slowly. "I'm listening."
"Something very bad is going to happen here in the next hour or so. It's going to be so bad that it might get a lot of people killed. Now you can stay and have a good time until it happens, and then you'll wonder why you didn't listen to me, or you can leave now after acting like you've been taken ill, and you can save yourself a lot of unhappiness."
Her gaze was intent. I could hear her wondering whether to take me seriously. I didn't seem like a weirdo or a crazy person. I seemed like a normal, attractive, young woman with a heck of a handsome date.
"Are you threatening me?" she asked.
"No, ma'am. I'm trying to save your ass."
"We'll get one dance in first," Genevieve Thrash said, making up her mind. "David, honey, let's take a spin around the dance floor and then make our excuses. I've got the worst headache you ever felt." David obligingly broke off his conversation with Quinn to take his wife to the clear space and begin waltzing along with the royal vampire couple, who looked relieved to have company.
I was beginning to relax my posture again, but a glance from Quinn reminded me to stand very straight. "I love the dress," he said. "Shall we dance?"
"You can waltz?" I hoped my jaw hadn't dropped too far.
"Yep," he said. He didn't ask if I could, though as a matter of fact I'd been watching the queen's steps intently. I can dance—can't sing, but I love a dance floor. I'd never waltzed, but I figured I could do it.
It was wonderful to have Quinn's arm around me, to be moving so gracefully around the floor. For a moment, I just forgot everything and enjoyed looking up at him, feeling the way a girl feels when she's dancing with a guy she expects she'll make love with, sooner or later. Quinn's fingers touching my bare back just made me tingle.
"Sooner or later," he said, "we're gonna be in a room with a bed, no phones, and a door that will lock."
I smiled up at him and spied the Thrashes easing out of the door. I hoped their car had been brought around. And that was the last normal thought I had for some time.
A head flew past Quinn's shoulder. It was moving too fast for me to pin down whose head it was, but it looked familiar. A spray of blood created a ruddy cloud in the head's wake.
I made a sound. It wasn't a scream or a gasp; more like "Eeeeep."
Quinn stopped dead, though the music didn't for a long moment. He looked in all directions, trying to analyze what was happening and how we could survive it. I'd thought one dance would be okay, but we should have gone with the Were couple. Quinn began pulling me over to the side of the ballroom, and he said, "Backs against the wall." We'd know from which direction the danger was coming: good thinking. But someone cannoned into us and Quinn's hold on my hand was broken.
There was a lot of screaming and a lot of movement. The screaming was all from the Weres and other supes who'd been invited to the party, and the movement was mostly from the vampires, who were looking for their allies amid the chaos. This was where the horrible outfits worn by the king's followers came into their own. It was instantly easy to see who belonged to the king. Of course, that made them an easy target, too, if you didn't happen to like the king and his minions.
A thin black vampire with dreadlocks had whipped a sword with a curved blade out of nowhere, apparently. The blade was bloody, and I thought Dreadlocks was the head-lopper. He was wearing the awful suit, so he was someone I wanted to dodge. If I had any allies here, it wasn't anyone working for Peter Threadgill. I'd gotten behind one of the pillars holding up the ceiling of the west end of the refectory, and I was trying to figure out the safest way from the room when my foot bumped something that shifted. I looked
down to see the head. It belonged to Wybert. I wondered for a fraction of a second if it would move or speak, but decapitation is pretty final, no matter what species you are.
"Oh," I moaned, and decided I'd better get a good hold on myself, or I was gonna look just like Wybert, at least in one important respect.
Fighting had broken out throughout the room. I hadn't seen the precipitating incident, but on some pretext the black vampire had attacked Wybert and cut off his head. Since Wybert was one of the queen's bodyguards and Dreadlocks was one of Peter's attendants, the beheading was a pretty decisive act.
The queen and Andre were standing back to back in the middle of the floor. Andre was holding a gun in one hand and a long knife in the other, and the queen had acquired a carving knife from the buffet. There was a circle of white coats surrounding them, and when one fell, another would take its place. This was like Custer's last stand, with the queen standing in for Custer. Sigebert was equally besieged on the bandstand, and the orchestra, part Were or shifter and part vampire, had separated into its various components. Some were joining in the combat, while others were trying to flee. Those who were doing their best to get the hell out of there were clogging the door leading to the long corridor. The effect was a logjam.
The king was under attack from my three friends Rasul, Chester, and Melanie. I was sure I'd find Jade Flower at his back, but she was having her own problems, I was glad to see. Mr. Cataliades was doing his best to—well, it looked like he was just trying to touch her. She was parrying his attempts with her whacking big sword, the sword that had sliced Gladiola in two, but neither of them looked like they were giving up any time soon.
Just then I was knocked flat to the floor, losing my breath for a minute. I struck out, only to have my hand trapped. I was smushed under a big body. "I've got you," Eric said.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Protecting you," he said. He was smiling with the joy of battle, and his blue eyes were glittering like sapphires. Eric loved a brawl.
"I don't see anybody coming after me," I said. "It seems to me like the queen needs you more than I do. But I appreciate it."
Carried away on a wave of excitement, Eric kissed me long and hard and then scooped up Wybert's head. "Bowling for vampires," he said happily, and flung the disgusting object at the black vampire with an accuracy and force that knocked the sword out of the vampire's hand. Eric was on it with a great leap, and the sword swung on its owner with deadly
force. With a war cry that had not been heard in a thousand years, Eric attacked the circle around the queen and Andre with a savagery and abandon that was almost beautiful in its way.
A shifter trying to find another way out of the room knocked against me with enough force to dislodge me from behind my comparatively secure position. Suddenly, there were too many people between me and the pillar, and the way back was blocked. Damn! I could see the door Wybert and his brother had been guarding. The door was across the room, but it was the only empty passage. Any way out of this room was a good way. I began sidling around the walls to reach it, so I wouldn't have to cross the dangerous open spaces.
One of the whitecoats leaped in front of me.
"We're supposed to find you!" he bellowed. He was a young vampire; there were clues, even at such a moment. This vamp had known the amenities of modern life. He had all the signs—superstraight teeth that had known braces, a husky build from modern nutrition, and he was big-boned and tall.
"Look!" I said, and pulled one side of my bodice away. He did, God bless him, and I kicked him in the balls so hard I thought they'd come out through his mouth. That's gonna get a man on the floor, no matter what their nature is. This vampire was no exception. I hurried around him and reached the east wall, the one with the door.
I had maybe a yard to go when someone grabbed my foot, and down I went. I slipped in a pool of blood and landed on my knees in it. It was vamp blood, I could tell by the color.
"Bitch," said Jade Flower. "Whore." I didn't think I'd ever heard her talk before. I could have done without it now. She began dragging me, hand over hand, toward her extended fangs. She wasn't getting up to kill me, because one of her legs was missing. I almost threw up but became more concerned with getting away than with ralphing. My hands scrabbled at the smooth wood floor, and my knees tried to get purchase so I could pull away from the vampire. I didn't know if Jade Flower would die of this terrible wound or not. Vampires could survive so many things that would kill a human, which of course was a big part of the attraction… Snap to, Sookie! I told myself fiercely.
The shock must be getting to me.
I threw out my hand and managed to get a grip on the door frame. I pulled and pulled, but I couldn't break free from Jade Flower's hold, and her fingers were digging into the flesh of my ankle. Soon she would snap the bones, and then I wouldn't be able to walk.
With my free foot I kicked the little Asian woman in the face. I did it again and again. Her nose was bleeding, and her lips were, too, but she would not let go. I don't think she even felt it.
Then Bill jumped on her back, landing with enough force to break her spine, and her hold on my ankle relaxed. I scrambled away while he raised a carving knife very like the one the queen had had. He sank it into Jade Flower's neck, over and over, and then her head was off and he was looking at me.
He didn't speak, just gave me that long, dark look. Then he was up and gone, and I had to get the hell out of there.
The queen's apartments were dark. That wasn't good. Beyond where the light penetrated from the ballroom, who knew what could be lurking?
There just had to be an outside door through here. The queen wouldn't leave herself bottled up. She'd have a way to get outside. And if I was remembering the orientation of the building, I needed to walk straight ahead to reach the correct wall.
I gathered myself and decided I'd just stride right on through. No more of this skulking around the wall. The hell with it.
And to my surprise, it worked, up to a point. I went through one room—a sitting room, I figured—before I ended up in what must have been the queen's bedroom. A whisper of movement in the room retriggered my fear switch, and I fumbled along the wall for the light. When I flipped it, I found I was in the room with Peter Threadgill. He was facing Andre. A bed was between them, and on the bed was the queen, who had been badly wounded. Andre didn't have his sword, but then neither did Peter Threadgill. Andre did have a gun, and when I turned on the light, he shot the king right in the face. Twice.
There was a door beyond the body of Peter Threadgill. It had to lead to the grounds. I began to sidle around the room, my back pressed against the wall. No one paid a bit of attention to me.
"Andre, if you kill him," the queen said quite calmly, "I'll have to pay a huge fine." She had a hand pressed to her side, and her beautiful orange dress was dark and wet with her blood.
"But wouldn't it be worth it, lady?"
There was a thoughtful silence on the queen's part, while I unlocked about six locks.
"On the whole, yes," Sophie-Anne said. "After all, money isn't everything."
"Oh, good" Andre said happily, and raised the gun. He had a stake in the other hand, I saw. I didn't stick around to see how Andre did the deed.
I set off across the lawn in my green evening shoes. Amazingly, the evening shoes were still intact. In fact, they were in better shape than my ankle, which Jade Flower had hurt pretty badly. I was limping by the time I'd taken ten steps. "Watch out for the lion," called the queen, and I looked behind me to see that Andre was carrying her out of the building. I wondered whose side the lion was on.
Then the big cat appeared right in front of me. One minute my escape route was clear, and the next it was filled by a lion. The outside security lights were off, and in the moonlight the beast looked so beautiful and so deadly that fear pulled the air right out of my lungs.
The lion made a low, guttural sound.
"Go away," I said. I had absolutely nothing to fight a lion with, and I was at the end of my rope. "Go away!" I yelled. "Get out of here!"
And it slunk into the bushes.
I don't think that is typical lion behavior. Maybe it smelled the tiger coming, because a second or two later, Quinn appeared, moving like a huge silent dream across the grass. Quinn rubbed his big head against me, and we went over to the wall together. Andre laid down his queen and leaped up on top with grace and ease. For his queen, he pulled apart the razor wire with hands just barely cushioned with his torn coat. Then down he came and carefully lifted Sophie-Anne. He gathered himself and cleared the wall in a bound.
"Well, I can't do that," I said, and even to my own ears, I sounded grumpy. "Can I stand on your back? I'll take my heels off." Quinn snugged up to the wall, and I ran my arm through the sandal straps. I didn't want to hurt the tiger by putting a lot of weight on his back, but I also wanted to get out of there more than I've wanted anything, just about. So, trying to think light thoughts, I balanced on the tiger's back and managed to pull myself, finally, to the top of the wall. I looked down, and it seemed like a very long way to the sidewalk.
After all I'd faced this evening, it seemed stupid to balk at falling a few feet. But I sat on the wall, telling myself I was an idiot, for several long moments. Then I managed to flip over onto my stomach, let myself down as far as I could reach, and said out loud, "One, two, three!" Then I fell.
For a couple of minutes I just lay there, stunned at how the evening had turned out.
Here I was, lying on a sidewalk in historical New Orleans, with my boobs hanging out of my dress, my hair coming down, my sandals on my arm, and a large tiger licking my face. Quinn had bounded over with relative ease.
"Do you think it would be better to walk back as a tiger, or as a large naked man?" I asked the tiger. "Because either way, you might attract some attention. I think you stand a better chance of getting shot if you're a tiger, myself."
"That will not be necessary," said a voice, and Andre loomed above me. "I am here with the queen in her car, and we will take you where you need to go."
"That's mighty nice of you," I said, as Quinn began to change back.
"Her Majesty feels that she owes you," Andre said.
"I don't see it that way," I said. Why was I being so frank, now? Couldn't I just keep my mouth shut? "After all, if I hadn't found the bracelet and given it back, the king would have…"
"Started the war tonight anyway," Andre said, helping me to my feet. He reached out and quite impersonally pushed my right breast under the scanty lime-green fabric. "He would have accused the queen of breaking her side of the contract, which held that all gifts must be held in honor as tokens of the marriage. He would have brought suit against the queen, and she would have lost almost everything and been dishonored. He was ready to go either way, but when the queen was wearing the second bracelet, he had to go with violence. Ra Shawn set it off by beheading Wybert for bumping against him." Ra Shawn had been Dreadlock's name, I assumed.
I wasn't sure I got all that, but I was equally sure Quinn could explain it to me at a time when I had more brain cells to spare for the information.
"He was so disappointed when he saw she had the bracelet! And it was the right one!" Andre said merrily. He was turning into a babbling brook, that Andre. He helped me into the car. "Where was it?" asked the queen, who was stretched across one of the seats. Her bleeding had stopped, and only the way she was holding her lips indicated what pain she was in.
"It was in the can of coffee that looked sealed," I said. "Hadley was real good with arts and crafts, and she'd opened the can real carefully, popped the bracelet inside, and resealed it with a glue gun." There was a lot more to explain, about Mr. Cataliades and Gladiola and Jade Flower, but I was too tired to volunteer information.
"How'd you get it past the search?" the queen asked. "I'm sure the searchers were checking for it."
"I had the bracelet part on under my bandage," I said. "The diamond stood out too far, though, so I had to prize it out. I put it in a tampon holder. The vampire who did the searching didn't think of pulling out the tampon, and she didn't really know how it was supposed to look, since she hadn't had a period in centuries."
"But it was put together," the queen said.
"Oh, I went into the ladies room after I'd had my purse searched. I had a little tube of superglue in my purse, too."
The queen didn't seem to know what to say. "Thank you," she told me, after a long pause. Quinn had climbed into the back with us, quite bare, and I leaned against him. Andre got into the driver's seat, and we glided off.
He dropped us off in the courtyard. Amelia was sitting on the pavement in her lawn chair, a glass of wine in her hand.
When we emerged, she set the glass down very carefully on the ground and then looked us over from head to toe.
"Okay, don't know how to react," she said, finally. The big car glided out of the courtyard as Andre took the queen to some safe hideaway. I didn't ask, because I didn't want to know.
"I'll tell you tomorrow," I said. "The moving truck will be here tomorrow afternoon, and the queen promised me people to load it and drive it. I have to get back to Bon Temps."
The prospect of going home seemed so sweet I could taste it on my tongue.
"So you got lots to do at home?" Amelia asked, as Quinn and I began going up the stairs. I guessed Quinn could sleep in the same bed. We were both too tired to plunge into anything; tonight was not the night to begin a relationship, if I hadn't already begun one. Maybe I had.
"Well, I have a lot of weddings to go to," I said. "I have to get back to work, too."
"Got an empty guest bedroom?"
I stopped about halfway up the stairs. "I might. Would you be needing one?"
It was hard to tell in the poor light, but Amelia might be looking embarrassed. "I tried something new with Bob," she said. "And it didn't exactly work out right."
"Where is he?" I asked. "In the hospital?"
"No, right there," she said. She was pointing at a garden gnome.
"Tell me you're joking," I said.
"I'm joking," she said. "This is Bob." She picked up a big black cat with a white chest that had been curled up in an empty planter. I hadn't even noticed him. "Isn't he cute?"
"Sure, bring him along," I said. "I've always been fond of cats."
"Babe," said Quinn, "I'm glad to hear you say that. I was too tired to completely change."
For the first time, I really looked at Quinn.
Now he had a tail.
"You're definitely sleeping on the floor," I said.
"Ah, babe."
"I mean it. Tomorrow you'll be able to be all human, right?"
"Sure. I've changed too many times lately. I just need some rest."
Amelia was looking at the tail with wide eyes. "See you tomorrow, Sookie," she said. "We'll have us a little road trip. And then I'll get to stay with you for a while!"
"We'll have such fun," I said wearily, trudging up the rest of the stairs and feeling profoundly glad I'd stuck my door key in my underwear. Quinn was too tired to watch me retrieve it. I let the remnants of the dress fall back into place while I unlocked the door. "Such fun."
Later, after I'd showered and while Quinn was in the bathroom himself, I heard a tentative knock on the door. I was decent enough in my sleep pants and tank top. Though I wanted to ignore it more than anything, I opened the door.
Bill was looking pretty good for someone who'd fought in a war. The tuxedo would never be functional again, but he wasn't bleeding, and whatever cuts he might have sustained had already healed over.
"I have to talk to you," he said, and his voice was so quiet and limp that I took a step out of the apartment. I sat down on the gallery floor, and he sat with me.
"You have to let me say this, just once," he said. "I loved you. I love you."
I raised a hand to protest, and he said, "No, let me finish. She sent me there, true. But when I met you—after I came to know you—I really… loved you."
How long after he'd taken me to bed had this supposed love come about? How could I possibly believe him, since he'd lied so convincingly from the very moment I'd met him—playing disinterested because he could read my fascination with the first vampire I'd ever met?
"I risked my life for you," I said, the words coming out in a halting sequence. "I gave Eric power over me forever, for your sake, when I took his blood. I killed someone for you. This is not something I take for granted, even if you do… even if that's everyday existence for you. It's not, for me. I don't know if I can ever not hate you."
I got up, slowly and painfully, and to my relief he didn't make the mistake of trying to help me. "You probably saved my life tonight," I said, looking down at him. "And I thank you for that. But don't come into Merlotte's any more, don't hang around in my woods, and don't do anything else for me. I don't want to see you again."
"I love you," he said stubbornly, as if that fact were so amazing and such an undeniable truth that I should believe him. Well, I had, and look at where it had gotten me.
"Those words are not a magical formula," I said. "They're not going to open my heart to you."
Bill was over a hundred and thirty years old, but at that moment I felt I could match him. I dragged myself inside, shut the door behind me and locked it, and made myself go down the hall to the bedroom.
Quinn was drying himself off, and he turned around to show me his muscular derriere. "Fur-free," he said. "Can I share the bed?"
"Yes," I said, and crawled in. He got in the other side, and he was asleep in thirty seconds. After a minute or two, I slid over in the bed and put my head on his chest.
I listened to his heartbeat.
* * * * *
Chapter 23
"What was the deal with Jade Flower?" Amelia asked the next day. Everett was driving the U-Haul, and Amelia and I were following in her little car. Quinn had left the next morning by the time I'd gotten up, leaving me a note telling me he was going to call me after he'd hired someone to take Jake Purifoy's place and after his next job, which was in Huntsville, Alabama—a Rite of Ascension, he said, though I had no idea what that was. He ended the note with a very personal comment about the lime-green dress, which I won't repeat here.
Amelia had her bags packed by the time I'd dressed, and Everett was directing two husky men in loading up the boxes I wanted to take back to Bon Temps. When he returned, he would take the furniture I didn't want to Goodwill. I'd offered it to him, but he'd looked at the fake antiques and politely said they weren't his style. I'd tossed my own stuff in Amelia's trunk, and off we'd driven. Bob the cat was in his own cage on the backseat. It was lined with towels and also held a food and water bowl, which was kind of messy. Bob's litter box was on the floorboard.
"My mentor found out what I'd done," Amelia said gloomily. "She's very, very unhappy with me."
I wasn't surprised, but it didn't seem tactful to say so, when Amelia had been such a help to me.
"He is missing his life now," I pointed out, as mildly as I could manage.
"Well, true, but he's having a hell of an experience," Amelia said, in the voice of someone determined to look on the bright side. "I'll make it up to him. Somehow."
I wasn't sure this was something you could "make up" to someone. "I'll bet you can get him back to himself soon," I said, trying to sound confident. "There are some really nice witches in Shreveport who might help." If Amelia could conquer her prejudice against Wiccans.
"Great," the witch said, looking more cheerful. "In the meantime, what the hell happened last night? Tell me in detail."
I figured it was all over the supernatural community today, so I might as well spill the beans. I told Amelia the whole story.
"So how did Cataliades know Jade Flower had killed Gladiola?" Amelia asked.
"Um, I told him," I said, my voice small.
"How'd you know?"
"When the Pelts told me they hadn't hired anyone to watch the house, I figured the murderer was someone sent by Peter Threadgill to delay my getting the message from Cataliades. Peter Threadgill knew all along that the queen had lost the bracelet to Hadley. Maybe he had spies among the queen's own people, or maybe one of her dumber followers, like Wybert, let it slip. It wouldn't be hard to watch the movements of the two goblin girls the queen used as messengers. When one of them came to deliver the queen's message to me, Jade Flower followed her and killed her. The wound was pretty drastic, and after I saw Jade Flower's sword and watched her whip it out so fast I couldn't see it move, I figured she was a likely candidate for the designated killer. Plus, the queen had said if Andre was in New Orleans, everyone had to assume she was, too… so the reverse had to be true, right? If the king was in New Orleans, everyone would assume Jade Flower was, too. But she was outside my house, in the woods." I shuddered all over at the memory. "I found out for sure after calling a lot of gas stations. I talked to a guy who definitely remembered Jade Flower."
"So why did Hadley steal the bracelet?"
"Jealousy, I guess, and the desire to put the queen in a bad spot. I don't think Hadley understood the implications of what she'd done, and by the time she did, it was too late. The king had laid his plans. Jade Flower watched Hadley for a while, snatched the opportunity to take Jake Purifoy and kill him. They hoped it would be blamed on Hadley. Anything that would discredit Hadley would discredit the queen. They had no way of knowing she would turn him."
"What will happen to Jake now?" Amelia looked troubled. "I liked him. He was a nice guy."
"He still may be. He's just a vampire nice guy."
"I'm not sure there's such a thing," my companion said quietly.
"Some days, I'm not sure either." We rode for a while in silence.
"Well, tell me about Bon Temps," Amelia said, to get us out of our conversational doldrums.
I began to tell her about the town, and the bar where I worked, and the wedding shower I'd been invited to attend, and all the upcoming weddings.
"Sounds pretty good," Amelia said. "Hey, I know I kind of asked myself along. Do you mind, I mean, really?"
"No," I said, with a speed that surprised even me. "No, it'll be nice to have company… for a while," I added cautiously. "What will you do about your house in New Orleans while you're gone?"
"Everett said he wouldn't mind living in the upper apartment, because his mom was getting kind of hard to take. Since he's got such a good job with Cataliades, he can afford it. He'll watch my plants and stuff until I get back. He can always e-mail me." Amelia had a laptop in her trunk, so for the first time there'd be a computer in the Stackhouse home. There was a pause, and then she said, her voice tentative, "How are you feeling now? I mean, with the ex and all?"
I considered. "I have a big hole in my heart," I said. "But it'll close over."
"I don't want to sound all Dr. Phil," she said. "But don't let the scab seal the pain in, okay?"
"That's good advice," I said. "I hope I can manage it."
I'd been gone a few days, and they'd been eventful ones. As we drew closer to Bon Temps, I wondered if Tanya had succeeded in getting Sam to ask her out. I wondered if I'd have to tell Sam about Tanya's role as spy. Eric didn't have to be confused about me any more, since our big secret was out. He didn't have a hold on me. Would the Pelts stick to their word? Maybe Bill would go on a long trip. Maybe a stake would accidentally fall on his chest while he was gone.
I hadn't heard from Jason while I was in New Orleans. I wondered if he was still planning on getting married. I hoped Crystal had recovered. I wondered if Dr. Ludwig accepted insurance payments. And the Bellefleur double wedding should be an interesting event, even if I was working while I was there.
I took a deep breath. My life was not so bad, I told myself, and I began to believe that was true. I had a new boyfriend, maybe; I had a new friend, surely; and I had events to look forward to. This was all good, and I should be grateful.
So what if I was obliged to attend a vampire conference as part of the queen's entourage? Wed stay in a fancy hotel, dress up a lot, attend long boring meetings, if everything other people had told me about conferences was true.
Gosh, how bad could that be?
Better not to think about it.