Book Eleven Chapters 1-3

Chapter 1

The attic had been kept locked until the day after my grandmother died. I’d found her key and opened it that awful day to look for her wedding dress, having the crazy idea she should be buried in it. I’d taken one step inside and then turned and walked out, leaving the door unsecured behind me. Now, two years later, I pushed that door open again. The hinges creaked as ominously as if it were midnight on Halloween instead of a sunny Wednesday morning in late May. The broad floorboards protested under my feet as I stepped over the threshold. There were dark shapes all around me, and a very faint musty odor—the smell of old things long forgotten.

When the second story had been added to the original Stackhouse home decades before, the new floor had been divided into bedrooms, but perhaps a third of it had been relegated to storage space after the largest generation of Stackhouses had thinned out. Since Jason and I had come to live with my grandparents after our parents had died, the attic door had been kept locked. Gran hadn’t wanted to clean up after us if we decided the attic was a great place to play.
Now I owned the house, and the key was on a ribbon around my neck. There were only three Stackhouse descendants—Jason, me, and my deceased cousin Hadley’s son, a little boy named Hunter.

I waved my hand around in the shadowy gloom to find the hanging chain, grasped it, and pulled. An overhead bulb illuminated decades of family castoffs.

Cousin Claude and Great-Uncle Dermot stepped in behind me. Dermot exhaled so loudly it was almost a snort. Claude looked grim. I was sure he was regretting his offer to help me clean out the attic. But I wasn’t going to let my cousin off the hook, not when there was another able-bodied male available to help. For now, Dermot went where Claude went, so I had two for the price of one. I couldn’t predict how long the situation would hold. I’d suddenly realized that morning that soon it would be too hot to spend time in the upstairs room. The window unit my friend Amelia had installed in one of the bedrooms kept the living spaces tolerable, but of course we’d never wasted money putting one in the attic.

“How shall we go about this?” Dermot asked. He was blond and Claude was dark; they looked like gorgeous bookends. I’d asked Claude once how old he was, to find he had only the vaguest idea. The fae don’t keep track of time the same way we do, but Claude was at least a century older than me. He was a kid compared to Dermot; my great-uncle thought he was seven hundred years my senior. Not a wrinkle, not a gray hair, not a droop anywhere, on either of them.

Since they were much more fairy than me—I was only one-eighth—we all seemed to be about the same age, our late twenties. But that would change in a few years. I would look older than my ancient kin. Though Dermot looked very like my brother, Jason, I’d realized the day before that Jason had crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. Dermot might not ever show even that token of aging.

Pulling myself back into the here and now, I said, “I suggest we carry things down to the living room. It’s so much brighter down there; it’ll be easier to see what’s worth keeping and what isn’t. After we get everything out of the attic, I can clean it up after you two leave for work.” Claude owned a strip club in Monroe and drove over every day, and Dermot went where Claude went. As always . . .

“We’ve got three hours,” Claude said.
“Let’s get to work,” I said, my lips curving upward in a bright and cheerful smile. That’s my fallback expression. About an hour later, I was having second thoughts, but it was too late to back out of the task. (Getting to watch Claude and Dermot shirtless made the work a lot more interesting.) My family has lived in this house since there have been Stackhouses in Renard Parish. And that’s been well over a hundred and fifty years. We’ve saved things.

The living room began to fill up in a hurry. There were boxes of books, trunks full of clothes, furniture, vases. The Stackhouse family had never been rich, and apparently we’d always thought we could find a use for anything, no matter how battered or broken, if we kept it long enough. Even the two fairies wanted to take a break after maneuvering an incredibly heavy wooden desk down the narrow staircase. We all sat on the front porch.

The guys sat on the railing, and I slumped down on the swing.
“We could just pile it all in the yard and burn it,” Claude suggested. He wasn’t joking. Claude’s sense of humor was quirky at best, minuscule the rest of the time.
“No!” I tried not to sound as irritated as I felt. “I know this stuff is not valuable, but if other Stackhouses thought it ought to be stored up there, I at least owe them the courtesy of having a look at all of it.”
“Dearest great-niece,” Dermot said, “I’m afraid Claude has a point. Saying this debris is ‘not valuable’ is being kind.” Once you heard Dermot talk, you knew his resemblance to Jason was strictly superficial. I glowered at the fairies.

“Of course to you two most of this would be trash, but to humans it might have some value,” I said. “I may call the theater group in Shreveport to see if they want any of the clothes or furniture.”
Claude shrugged. “That’ll get rid of some of it,” he said. “But most of the fabric isn’t even good for rags.” We’d put some boxes out on the porch when the living room began to be impassable, and he poked one with his toe. The label said the contents were curtains, but I could only guess what they’d originally looked like.
“You’re right,” I admitted. I pushed with my feet, not too energetically, and swung for a minute. Dermot went in the house and returned with a glass of peach tea with lots of ice in it. He handed it to me silently. I thanked him and stared dismally at all the old things someone had once treasured.
“Okay, we’ll start a burn pile,” I said, bowing to common sense. “Round back, where I usually burn the leaves?”
Dermot and Claude glared at me.
“Okay, right here on the gravel is fine,” I said. The last time my driveway had been graveled, the parking area in front of the house, outlined with landscape timbers, had gotten a fresh load, too. “It’s not like I get a lot of visitors.”

By the time Dermot and Claude knocked off to shower and change for work, the parking area contained a substantial mound of useless items waiting for the torch. Stackhouse wives had stored extra sheets and coverlets, and most of them were in the same ragged condition as the curtains.

To my deeper regret, many of the books were mildewed and mouse-chewed. I sighed and added them to the pile, though the very idea of burning books made me queasy. But broken furniture, rotted umbrellas, spotted place mats, an ancient leather suitcase with big holes in it . . no one would ever need these items again.

The pictures we’d uncovered—framed, in albums, or loose—we placed in a box in the living room. Documents were sorted into another box. I’d found some old dolls, too. I knew from television that people collected dolls, and perhaps these were worth something. There were some old guns, too, and a sword. Where was Antiques Roadshow when you needed it?

Later that evening at Merlotte’s, I told my boss Sam about my day. Sam, a compact man who was actually immensely strong, was dusting the bottles behind the bar. We weren’t very busy that night. In fact, business hadn’t been good for the past few weeks. I didn’t know if the slump was due to the chicken processing plant closing or the fact that some people objected to Sam being a shapeshifter. (The two-natured had tried to emulate the successful transition of the vampires, but it hadn’t gone so well.) And there was a new bar, Vic’s Redneck Roadhouse, about ten miles west off the interstate. I’d heard the Redneck Roadhouse held all kinds of wet T-shirt contests, beer pong tournaments, and a promotion called “Bring in a Bubba Night”—crap like that.

Popular crap. Crap that raked in the customers.

Whatever the reasons, Sam and I had time to talk about attics and antiques.
“There’s a store called Splendide in Shreveport,” Sam said. “Both the owners are appraisers. You could give them a call.”
“How’d you know that?” Okay, maybe that wasn’t so tactful.
“Well, I do know a few things besides tending bar,” Sam said, giving me a sideways look.
I had to refill a pitcher of beer for one of my tables.
When I returned, I said, “Of course you know all kinds of stuff. I just didn’t know you were into
antiques.”
“I’m not. But Jannalynn is. Splendide’s her favorite place to shop.”
I blinked, trying not to look as disconcerted as I felt. Jannalynn Hopper, who’d been dating Sam for a few weeks now, was so ferocious she’d been named the Long Tooth pack enforcer—though she was only twenty-one and about as big as a seventh grader. It was hard to imagine
Jannalynn restoring a vintage picture frame or planning to fit a plantation sideboard into her place in Shreveport. (Come to think of it, I had no ideawhere she lived. Did Jannalynn actually have a house?)

“I sure wouldn’t have guessed that,” I said, making myself smile at Sam. It was my personal opinion that Jannalynn was not good enough for Sam.
Of course, I kept that to myself. Glass houses, stones, right? I was dating a vampire whose kill list would top Jannalynn’s for sure, since Eric was over a thousand years old. In one of those awful moments you have at random, I realized that everyone I’d ever dated—though, granted, that was a short list—was a killer.

And so was I.

I had to shake this off in a hurry, or I’d be in a melancholy funk all evening.
“You have a name and phone number for this shop?” I hoped the antiques dealers would agree to come to Bon Temps. I’d have to rent a U-Haul to get all the attic contents to Shreveport.
“Yeah, I got it in my office,” Sam said. “I was talking to Brenda, the female half of the partnership, about getting Jannalynn something special for her birthday. It’s coming right up. Brenda—Brenda Hesterman—called this morning to tell me she had a few things for me to look at.”
“Maybe we could go see her tomorrow?” I suggested. “I have things piled all over the living room and some out on the front porch, and the good weather won’t last forever.”
“Would Jason want any of it?” Sam asked diffidently. “I’m just saying, family stuff.”
“He got a piecrust table around a month ago,” I said. “But I guess I should ask him.” I thought about it. The house and its contents were mine, since Gran had left it to me. Hmmmm. Well, first things first. “Let’s ask Ms. Hesterman if she’ll come give a look. If there’s pieces that are worth
anything, I can think about it.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “Sounds good. Pick you up tomorrow at ten?” That was a little early for me to be up and dressed since I was working the late shift, but I agreed. Sam sounded pleased.
“You can tell me what you think about whatever Brenda shows me. It’ll be good to have a woman’s opinion.” He ran a hand over his hair, which (as usual) was a mess. A few weeks ago he’d cut it real short, and now it was in an awkward stage of growing back.

Sam’s hair is a pretty color, sort of strawberry blond; but since it’s naturally curly, now that it was growing out it couldn’t seem to pick a direction. I suppressed an urge to whip out a brush and make sense out of it. That was not something an employee should do to her boss’s head.
Kennedy Keyes and Danny Prideaux, who worked for Sam parttime as substitute bartender and bouncer, respectively, came in to climb on two of the empty barstools. Kennedy is beautiful. She was first runner-up to Miss Louisiana a few years ago, and she still looks like a beauty pageant
queen. Her chestnut hair’s all glossy and thick, and the ends wouldn’t dare to split. Her makeup is meticulous. She has manicures and pedicures on a regular basis. She wouldn’t buy a garment at Wal-Mart if her life depended on it.

A few years ago her future, which should have included a country club marriage in the next parish and a big inheritance from her daddy, had been derailed from its path when she’d served time for manslaughter. Along with pretty nearly everyone I knew, I figured her boyfriend had had it coming, after I saw the pictures of her face swelling black-and-blue in
her mug shots. But she’d confessed to shooting him when she called 911, and his family had a little clout, so there was no way Kennedy could walk.

She’d gotten a light sentence and time off for good behavior, since she’d taught deportment and grooming to the other inmates. Eventually, Kennedy had done her time. When she’d gotten out, she’d rented a little apartment in Bon Temps, where she had an aunt, Marcia Albanese. Sam
had offered her a job pretty much right after he met her, and she’d accepted on the spot.

“Hey, man,” Danny said to Sam. “Fix us two mojitos?”
Sam got the mint out of the refrigerator and set to work. I handed him the sliced limes when he was almost through with the drinks.
“What are you all up to tonight?” I asked. “You look mighty pretty, Kennedy.”
“I finally lost ten pounds!” she said, and when Sam deposited her glass in front of her, she lifted it to toast with Danny. “To my former figure! May I be on the road to getting it back!”
Danny shook his head. He said, “Hey! You don’t need to do anything to look beautiful.” I had to turn away so I wouldn’t say, Aw.w.ww. Danny was one tough guy who couldn’t have grown up in a more different environment than Kennedy—the only experience they’d had in common was jail—but boy, he was carrying a big torch for her. I could feel the heat from where I stood. You didn’t have to be telepathic to see Danny’s devotion.

We hadn’t drawn the curtains on the front window yet, and when I realized it was dark outside, I started forward. Though I was looking out from the bright bar to the dark parking lot, there were lights out there, and something was moving . . . moving fast. Toward the bar. I had a slice of a second to think Odd, and then caught the flicker of flame.

“Down!” I yelled, but the word hadn’t even gotten all the way out of my mouth when the window shattered and the bottle with its fiery head landed on a table where no one was sitting, breaking the napkin holder and scattering the salt and pepper shakers. Burning napkins flared out from the point of impact to drift down to the floor and the chairs and the people. The table itself was a mass of fire almost instantly.

Danny moved faster than I’d ever seen a human move. He swept Kennedy off her stool, flipped up the pass-through, and shoved her down behind the bar. There was a brief logjam as Sam, moving even faster, grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall and tried to leap through the pass-through to start spraying.

I felt heat on my thighs and looked down to see that my apron had been ignited by one of the napkins. I’m ashamed to say that I screamed. Sam swiveled around to spray me and then turned back to the flames. The customers were yelling, dodging flames, running into the passage that led past the bathrooms and Sam’s office through to the back parking lot. One of our perpetual customers, Jane Bodehouse, was bleeding heavily, her hand clapped to her lacerated scalp. She’d been sitting by the window, not her usual place at the bar, so I figured she’d been cut by flying glass. Jane staggered and would have fallen if I hadn’t grabbed her arm.

“Go that way,” I yelled in her ear, and shoved her in the right direction. Sam was spraying the biggest flame, aiming at the base of it in the approved manner, but the napkins that had floated away were causing lots of little fires. I grabbed the pitcher of water and the pitcher of tea off the
bar and began methodically tracking the flames on the floor. The pitchers were full, and I managed to be pretty effective.
One of the window curtains was on fire, and I took three steps, aimed carefully, and tossed the remaining tea. The flame didn’t quite die out. I grabbed a glass of water from a table and got much closer to the fire than I wanted to. Flinching the whole time, I poured the liquid down the
steaming curtain. I felt an odd flicker of warmth behind me and smelled something disgusting. A powerful gust of chemicals made a strange sensation against my back. I turned to try to figure out what had happened and saw Sam whirling away with the extinguisher.

I found myself looking through the serving hatch into the kitchen. Antoine, the cook, was shutting down all the appliances. Smart. I could hear the fire engine in the distance, but I was too busy looking for yellow flickers to feel much relief. My eyes, streaming with tears from the smoke and the chemicals, were darting around like pinballs as I tried to spot flames, and I was coughing like crazy. Sam had run to retrieve the second extinguisher from his office, and he returned holding it ready. We rocked from side to side on our feet, ready to leap into action to extinguish the next flicker. Neither of us spotted anything else.

Sam aimed one more blast at the bottle that had caused the fire, and then he put down the extinguisher. He leaned over to plant his hands on his thighs and inhaled raggedly. He began coughing. After a second, he bent down to the bottle.

“Don’t touch it,” I said urgently, and his hand stopped halfway down.
“Of course not,” he said, chiding himself, and he straightened up. “Did you see who threw it?”
“No,” I said. We were the only people left in the bar. I could hear the fire engine getting closer and closer, so I knew we had only a minute more to talk to each other alone. “Coulda been the same people who’ve been demonstrating out in the parking lot. I don’t know that the church members are into firebombs, though.” Not everyone in the area was pleased to know there were such creatures as werewolves and shapeshifters following the Great Reveal, and the Holy Word Tabernacle in Clarice had been sending its members to demonstrate at Merlotte’s from time to time.
“Sookie,” Sam said, “sorry about your hair.”
“What about it?” I said, lifting my hand to my head. The shock was setting in now. I had a hard time making my hand mind my directions.
“The end of your ponytail got singed,” Sam said. And he sat down very suddenly. That seemed like a good idea.
“So that’s what smells so bad,” I said, and collapsed on the floor beside him. We had our backs against the base of the bar, since the stools had gotten scattered in the melee of the rush out the back door. My hair was burned off. I felt tears run down my cheeks. I knew it was stupid, but I couldn’t help it. Sam took my hand and gripped it, and we were still sitting like that when the firefighters rushed in. Even though Merlotte’s is outside the city limits, we got the official town firefighters, not the volunteers.
“I don’t think you need the hose,” Sam called. “I think it’s out.” He was anxious to prevent any more damage to the bar.

Truman La Salle, the fire chief, said, “You two need first aid?” But his eyes were busy, and his words were almost absentminded.
“I’m okay,” I said, after a glance at Sam. “But Jane’s out back with a cut on her head, from the glass. Sam?”
“Maybe my right hand got a little burned,” he said, and his mouth compressed as if he was just now feeling the pain. He released my hand to rub his left over his right, and he definitely winced this time.
“You need to take care of that,” I advised him. “Burns hurt like the devil.”
“Yeah, I’m figuring that out,” he said, his eyes squeezing shut.
Bud Dearborn came in as soon as Truman yelled, “Okay!” The sheriff must have been in bed, because he had a thrown-together look and was minus his hat, a reliable part of his wardrobe. Sheriff Dearborn was probably in his late fifties by now, and he showed every minute of it. He’d
always looked like a Pekinese. Now he looked like a gray one. He spent a few minutes going around the bar, watching where his feet went, almost sniffing the disarray. Finally he was satisfied and came up to stand in front of me.

“What you been up to now?” he asked.
“Someone threw a firebomb in the window,” I said. “None of my doing.” I was too shocked to sound angry.
“Sam, they aiming for you?” the sheriff asked. He wandered off without waiting for an answer.
Sam got up slowly and turned to reach his left hand to me. I gripped it and he pulled. Since Sam’s much stronger than he looks, I was on my feet in a jiffy. Time stood still for a few minutes. I had to think that I was maybe a bit in shock. As Sheriff Dearborn completed his slow and careful circuit of the bar, he arrived back at Sam and me.

By then we had another sheriff to deal with.

Eric Northman, my boyfriend and the vampire sheriff of Area Five, which included Bon Temps, came through the door so quickly that when Bud and Truman realized he was there, they jumped, and I thought Bud was going to draw his weapon. Eric gripped my shoulders and bent to peer into my face.

“Are you hurt?” he demanded.
It was like his concern gave me permission to drop my bravery. I felt a tear run down my cheek. Just one. “My apron caught fire, but I think my legs are okay,” I said, making a huge effort to sound calm. “I only lost a little hair. So I didn’t come out of it too bad. Bud, Truman, I can’t remember if you’ve met my boyfriend, Eric Northman from Shreveport.” There were several iffy facts in that sentence.
“How’d you know there was trouble here, Mr. Northman?” Truman asked.
“Sookie called me on her cell phone,” Eric said. That was a lie, but I didn’t exactly want to explain our blood bond to our fire chief and our sheriff, and Eric would never volunteer any information to humans.

One of the most wonderful, and the most appalling, things about Eric loving me was that he didn’t give a shit about anyone else. He ignored the damaged bar, Sam’s burns, and the police and firefighters (who were keeping track of him from the corners of their eyes) still inspecting the
building.

Eric circled me to evaluate the hair situation. After a long moment, he said, “I’m going to look at your legs. Then we’ll find a doctor and a beautician.” His voice was absolutely cold and steady, but I knew he was volcanically angry. It rolled through the bond between us, just as my fear and
shock had alerted him to my danger.
“Honey, we have other things to think about,” I said, forcing myself to smile, forcing myself to sound calm. One corner of my brain pictured a pink ambulance screeching to a halt outside to disgorge emergency beauticians with cases of scissors, combs, and hair spray. “Dealing with a little hair damage can wait until tomorrow. It’s a lot more important to find out who did this and why.”

Eric glared at Sam as if the attack were Sam’s responsibility. “Yes, his bar is far more important than your safety and well-being,” he said. Sam looked astonished at this rebuke, and the beginnings of anger flickered across his face.
“If Sam hadn’t been so quick with the fire extinguisher, we’d all have been in bad shape,” I said, keeping up with the calm and the smiling. “In fact, both the bar and the people in it would have been in a lot more trouble.” I was running out of faux serenity, and of course Eric realized it.
“I’m taking you home,” he said.
“Not until I talk to her.” Bud showed considerable courage in asserting himself. Eric was scary enough when he was in a good mood, much less when his fangs ran out as they did now. Strong emotion does that to a vamp.
“Honey,” I said, holding on to my own temper with an effort. I put my arm around Eric’s waist, and tried again. “Honey, Bud and Truman are in charge here, and they have their rules to follow. I’m okay.” Though I was trembling, which of course he could feel.
“You were frightened,” Eric said. I felt his own rage that something had happened to me that he had not been able to prevent. I suppressed a sigh at having to babysit Eric’s emotions when I wanted to be free to have my own nervous breakdown. Vampires are nothing if not possessive when they’ve claimed someone as theirs, but they’re also usually anxious to blend into the human population, not cause any unnecessary waves. This was an overreaction.

Eric was mad, sure, but normally he was also quite pragmatic. He knew I wasn’t seriously hurt. I looked up at him, puzzled. My big Viking hadn’t been himself in a week or two. Something other than the death of his maker was bothering him, but I hadn’t built up enough courage to ask him what was wrong. I’d cut myself some slack. I’d simply wanted to enjoy the peace we’d shared for a few weeks. Maybe that had been a mistake. Something big was pressing on him, and all this anger was a by-product.

“How’d you get here so quick?” Bud asked Eric.
“I flew,” Eric said casually, and Bud and Truman gave each other a wide-eyed look. Eric had had the ability for (give or take) a thousand years, so he disregarded their amazement. He was focused on me, his fangs still out. They couldn’t know that Eric had felt the swell of my terror the minute I’d seen the running figure. I hadn’t had to call him when the incident was over.
“The sooner we get all this settled,” I said, baring my teeth right back at him in a terrible smile, “the sooner we can leave.” I was trying, not so subtly, to send Eric a message. He finally calmed down enough to get my subtext.
“Of course, my darling,” he said. “You’re absolutely right.” But his hand took mine and squeezed too hard, and his eyes were so brilliant they looked like little blue lanterns. Bud and Truman looked mighty relieved. The tension ratcheted down a few notches. Vampires = drama. While Sam was getting his hand treated and Truman was taking pictures of what remained of the bottle, Bud asked me what I’d seen.

“I caught a glimpse of someone out in the parking lot running toward the building, and then the bottle came through the window,” I said. “I don’t know who threw it. After the window broke and the fire spread from all the lit napkins, I didn’t notice anything but the people trying to leave and Sam trying to put it out.”

Bud asked me the same thing several times in several different ways, but I couldn’t help him any more than I already had.

“Why do you think someone would do this to Merlotte’s, to Sam?” Bud asked.
“I don’t understand it,” I said. “You know, we had those demonstrators from the church in the parking lot a few weeks ago. They’ve only come back once since then. I can’t imagine any of them making a—was that a Molotov cocktail?”
“How do you know about those, Sookie?”
“Well, one, I read books. Two, Terry doesn’t talk about the war much, but every now and then he does talk about weapons.”

Terry Bellefleur, Detective Andy Bellefleur’s cousin, was a decorated and damaged Vietnam veteran. He cleaned the bar when everyone was gone and came in occasionally to substitute for Sam. Sometimes he just hung at the bar watching people come in and out. Terry did not have much of a social life. As soon as Bud declared himself satisfied, Eric and I went to my car. He took the keys from my shaking hand. I got in the passenger side. He was right. I shouldn’t drive until I’d recovered from the shock.

Eric had been busy on his cell phone while I was talking to Bud, and I wasn’t totally surprised to see a car parked in front of my house. It was Pam’s, and she had a passenger. Eric pulled around back where I always park, and I scrambled out of the car to hurry through the house to unlock the front door. Eric followed me at a leisurely pace. We hadn’t exchanged a word on the short drive. He was preoccupied and still dealing with his temper. I was shocked by the whole
incident. Now I felt a little more like myself as I went out on the porch to call, “Come in!”

Pam and her passenger got out. He was a young human, maybe twenty-one, and thin to the point of emaciation. His hair was dyed blue and cut in an extremely geometric way, rather as if he’d put a box on his head, knocked it sideways, then trimmed around the edges. What didn’t fit inside the lines had been shaved. It was eye-catching, I’ll say that.

Pam smiled at the expression on my face, which I hastily transformed into something more welcoming. Pam has been a vampire since Victoria was on the English throne, and she’s been Eric’s right hand since he called her in from her wanderings in northern America. He’s her maker.

“Hello,” I said to the young man as he entered the front door. He was extremely nervous. His eyes darted to me, away from me, took in Eric, and then kind of strafed the room to absorb it. A flicker of contempt crossed his clean-shaven face as he took in the cluttered living room, which was never more than homey even when it was clean.

Pam thumped him on the back of his head. “Speak when you’re spoken to, Immanuel!” she growled. She was standing slightly behind him, so he couldn’t see her when she winked at me.
“Hello, ma’am,” he said to me, taking a step forward. His nose twitched.
Pam said, “You smell, Sookie.”
“It was the fire,” I explained.
“You can tell me about it in a moment,” she said, her pale eyebrows shooting up. “Sookie, this man is Immanuel Earnest,” she said. “He cuts hair at Death by Fashion in Shreveport. He’s brother to my lover, Miriam.”
That was a lot of information in three sentences. I scrambled to absorb it. Eric was eyeing Immanuel’s coiffure with fascinated disgust. “This is the one you brought to correct Sookie’s hair?” he said to Pam. His lips were pressed together in a very tight line. I could feel his skepticism pulsing along the line that bound us.
“Miriam says he is the best,” Pam said, shrugging. “I haven’t had a haircut in a hundred fifty years. How would I know?”
“Look at him!”
I began to be a little worried. Even for the circumstances, Eric was in a foul mood. “I like his tattoos,” I said. “The colors are real pretty.”
Aside from his extreme haircut, Immanuel was covered with very sophisticated tattoos. No “MOM” or “BETTY SUE” or naked ladies; elaborate and colorful designs extended from wrists to shoulders. He’d look dressed even when he was naked. The hairdresser had a flat leather case tucked under one of his skinny arms.
“So, you’re going to cut off the bad parts?” I said brightly.
“Of your hair,” he said carefully. (I wasn’t sure I’d needed that particular reassurance.) He glanced at me, then back down at the floor. “Do you have a high stool?”
“Yes, in the kitchen,” I said. When I’d rebuilt my burned-out kitchen, custom had made me buy a high stool like the one my gran had perched on while she talked on the old telephone. The new phone was cordless, and I didn’t need to stay in the kitchen when I used it, but the counter simply hadn’t looked right without a stool beside it.

My three guests trailed behind me, and I dragged the stool into the middle of the floor. There was just enough room for everyone when Pam and Eric sat on the other side of the table. Eric was glowering at Immanuel in an ominous way, and Pam was simply waiting to be entertained by our emotional upheavals.

I clambered up on the stool and made myself sit with a straight back. My legs were smarting, my eyes were prickly, and my throat was scratchy. But I forced myself to smile at the hairstylist. Immanuel was real nervous. You don’t want that in a person with sharp scissors. Immanuel took the elastic band off my ponytail. There was a long silence while he regarded the damage. He wasn’t thinking good thoughts. My vanity got hold of me.

“Is it very bad?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from quavering. Reaction was definitely getting the upper hand, now that I was safe at home.
“I’m going to have to take off about three inches,” he said quietly, as if he were telling me a relative was terminally ill. To my shame, I reacted much the same way as if that had been the news. I could feel tears well up in my eyes, and my lips were quivering.

Ridiculous! I told myself. My eyes slewed left when Immanuel set his leather case on the kitchen table. He unzipped it and took out a comb. There were also several pairs of scissors in special loops and an electric trimmer with its cord neatly coiled. Have hair care, will travel.
Pam was texting with incredible speed. She was smiling as though her message were pretty damn funny. Eric stared at me, thinking many dark thoughts. I couldn’t read ’em, but I could sure tell he was unhappy in a major way.

I sighed and returned my gaze to straight ahead. I loved Eric, but at the moment I wanted him to take his broodiness and shove it. I felt Immanuel’s touch on my hair as he began combing. It felt strange when he reached the end of its length, and a little tug and a funny sound let me know that some of my burned hair had fallen to the floor.

“It’s damaged beyond repair,” Immanuel murmured. “I’ll cut. Then you wash. Then I cut again.”
“You must quit this job,” Eric said abruptly, and Immanuel’s comb stopped moving until he realized Eric was talking to me. I wanted to throw something heavy at my honeybun. And I wanted it to smack him right in his stubborn, handsome head. “We’ll talk later,” I said,
not looking at him.
“What will happen next? You’re too vulnerable!”
“We’ll talk later.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pam look away so Eric wouldn’t see her smirk.
“Doesn’t she need something around her?” Eric snarled at Immanuel. “Covering her clothes?”
“Eric,” I said, “since I’m all smelly and smoky and covered with fire extinguisher stuff, I don’t think keeping my clothes free of burned hair is a big deal.”

Eric didn’t snort, but he came close. However, he did seem to pick up on my feeling that he was being a total pain, and he shut up and got a hold on himself. The relief was tremendous.
Immanuel, whose hands were surprisingly steady for someone cooped up in a kitchen with two vampires (one remarkably irritable) and a charred barmaid, combed until my hair was as smooth as it could be. Then he picked up his scissors. I could feel the hairdresser focusing completely on his task. Immanuel was a champion at concentration, I discovered, since his mind lay open to me. It really didn’t take long. The burned bits drifted to the floor like sad snowflakes.

“You need to go shower now and come back with clean, wet hair,” Immanuel said. “After that, I’ll even it up. Where’s your broom, your dustpan?” I told him where to find them, and then I went into my bedroom, passing through it to my own bathroom. I wondered if Eric would join me, since I knew from past experience that he liked my shower. The way I felt, it would be far better if he stayed in the kitchen. I pulled off my smelly clothes and ran the water as hot as I could stand it. It was a relief to step into the tub and let the heat and wetness flow over me. When the warm water hit my legs, it stung. For a few moments I wasn’t appreciative or happy about anything. I just remembered how scared I’d been. But after I’d dealt with that, I had something on my mind.

The figure I’d spotted running toward the bar, bottle in hand—I couldn’t be completely sure, but I suspected it had not been human.

Chapter 2

I stuffed my grimy, reeking clothes into the hamper in my bathroom. I’d have to presoak them in some Clorox 2 before I even tried to wash them, but of course I couldn’t just toss them out before they were clean and I could assess the damage. I wasn’t feeling too optimistic about the future of the black pants. I hadn’t noticed they were a little scorched until I pulled them down over my tender thighs and found that my skin was pink. Only then did I remember looking down to see my apron on fire. As I examined my legs, I realized it could have been much worse. The sparks had caught my apron, not my pants, and Sam had been very quick with the extinguisher. Now I appreciated his checking the extinguishers every year; I appreciated his going down to the fire station to get them refilled; I appreciated the smoke alarms. I had a flash of what might have been.

Deep breath, I told myself as I patted my legs dry. Deep breath. Think of how good it feels to be clean. It had felt wonderful to wash away the smell, to lather up my hair, to rinse out all the smell along with the shampoo. I couldn’t stop worrying about what I’d seen when I’d looked out Merlotte’s window: a short figure running toward the building, holding something in one hand. I hadn’t been able to tell if the runner was a man or a woman, but one thing I was sure of: The runner was a supe, and I suspected he—or she—was a twoey. This suspicion gained more weight when I added in the speed and agility of the runner and the strength and accuracy of the
throw—the bottle had come at the window harder than a human could have hurled it, with enough velocity to shatter the window.

I couldn’t be 100 percent sure. But vampires don’t like to handle fire. Something about the vampire condition causes them to be extra flammable. It would take a very confident, or very reckless, fanger to use a Molotov cocktail as a weapon. For that reason alone, I was inclined to put my money on the bomber being a twoey—a shapeshifter or were of some variety. Of course, there were other sorts of supernatural creatures like elves and fairies and goblins, and they were all quicker than humans. To my regret, the whole incident had happened too swiftly for me to scope out the bomber’s mind. That would have been decisive, because vampires are a big blank to me, a hole in the aether, and I also can’t read fairies, though they register differently. Some twoeys I can read with fair accuracy, some I can’t, but I see their brains as warm and busy.

Normally, I’m not an indecisive person. But as I patted myself dry and combed through my wet hair (feeling how strange it was that my comb completed its passage much more quickly), I worried about sharing my suspicions with Eric. When a vampire loves you—even when he simply feels proprietary toward you—his notion of protection can be pretty drastic. Eric loved going into battle; often he had to struggle to balance the political savvy of a move with his instinct to leap in with a swinging sword. Though I didn’t think he’d go charging off at the two-natured community, in his present mood it seemed wiser to keep my ideas to myself until I had some evidence one way or another.

I pulled on sleep pants and a Bon Temps Lady Falcons T-shirt. I looked at my bed with longing before I left my room to rejoin the strange crowd in the kitchen. Eric and Pam were drinking some bottled synthetic blood I’d had in the refrigerator, and Immanuel was sipping on a Coke. I was stricken because I hadn’t thought of offering them refreshment, but Pam caught my eye and gave me a level look. She’d taken care of it. I nodded gratefully and told Immanuel, “I’m ready now.” He unfolded his skinny frame from the chair and gestured to the stool.

This time my new hairdresser unfolded a thin, shoulders-only plastic capelet and tied it around my neck. He combed through my hair himself, eyeing it intently. I tried to smile at Eric to show this wasn’t so bad, but my heart wasn’t in it. Pam scowled at her cell phone. A text had displeased her.

Apparently Immanuel had passed the time by combing Pam’s hair. The pale golden mane, straight and fine, was pushed off her face with a blue headband. You just couldn’t get any more Alice-like. She wasn’t wearing a full-skirted blue dress and a white pinafore, but she was wearing pale blue: a sheath dress, perhaps from the sixties, and pumps with three-inch heels. And pearls.

“What’s up, Pam?” I asked, simply because the silence in my kitchen was getting oppressive. “Someone sending you a nasty text?”
“Nothing’s up,” she snarled, and I tried not to flinch. “Absolutely nothing is happening. Victor is still our leader. Our position doesn’t improve. Our requests go unanswered. Where is Felipe? We need him.”

Eric glared at her. Whoa, trouble in paradise. I’d never seen them seriously at odds. Pam was the only “child” of Eric’s I’d ever met. She’d gone off on her own after spending her first few years as a vampire with him. She’d done well, but she’d told me she was glad enough to return to Eric after he’d called her to help him out in Area Five when the former queen had appointed
him to the position of sheriff.

The tense atmosphere was getting to Immanuel, who was wavering in and out of his focus on his job . . . which was cutting my hair.

“Chill out, guys,” I said sharply.
“And what is it with all the crap sitting out in your driveway?” Pam asked, her original British accent peeking through. “To say nothing of your living room and your porch. Are you having a garage sale?” You could tell she was proud of getting her terminology correct.
“Almost finished,” Immanuel muttered, his scissors snicking at a frantic rate in response to the growing tension.
“Pam, that all came out of my attic,” I said, glad to talk about something so mundane and (I hoped) calming. “Claude and Dermot are helping me clean it out. I’m going to go see an antiques dealer with Sam in the morning—well, we were going to go. I don’t know if Sam’ll be able to make it, now.”
“There, see!” Pam said to Eric. “She lives with other men. She goes shopping with other men. What kind of husband are you?”

And Eric launched himself across the table, hands extended toward Pam’s throat. The next second the two were rolling on the floor in a serious attempt to damage each other. I didn’t know if Pam could actually initiate the moves to hurt Eric, since she was his child, but she was defending herself vigorously; there’s a fine line there.

I couldn’t scramble down from the stool fast enough to escape some collateral damage. It seemed inevitable that they would slam into the stool, and of course they did in a second. Over I went to join them on the floor, banging my shoulder against the counter in the process.

Immanuel very intelligently leaped backward, and he didn’t drop his scissors, a blessing to all of us. One of the vampires might have grabbed them as a weapon, or the gleaming scissors might have become embedded in some part of me.

Immanuel’s hand gripped my arm with surprising strength, and he yanked me up and away. We scuttled out of the kitchen and into the living room. We stood, panting, in the middle of the cluttered room, staring down the hall in case the fight followed us. I could hear crashing and banging, and a persistent snarly noise I finally identified as growling.

“Sounds like two pit bulls going at each other,” Immanuel said. He was handling this with amazing calm. I was glad to have some human company.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with them,” I said. “I’ve never seen them act like this.”
“Pam’s frustrated,” he said with a familiarity that surprised me. “She wants to make her own child, but there’s some vampire reason she can’t.”
I couldn’t curb my surprise. “And you know all this—how? I’m sorry, that sounds rude, but I hang around with Pam and Eric a fair bit, and I haven’t
seen you before.”
“Pam’s been dating my sister.” Immanuel didn’t seem offended by my frankness, thank goodness. “My sister Miriam. My mom’s religious,” he explained. “And kind of crazy. The situation is, my sister is sick and getting sicker, and Pam really wants to bring her over before Mir gets any worse. She’ll be skin and bones forever if Pam doesn’t hurry.”
I hardly knew what to say. “What illness does your sister have?” I said.
“She has leukemia,” Immanuel said. Though he maintained his casual facade, I could read the pain underneath, and the fear and worry.
“So that’s how Pam knows you.”
“Yeah. But she was right. I am the best hairstylist in Shreveport.”
“I believe you,” I said. “And I’m sorry about your sister. I don’t guess they told you why Pam wasn’t able to bring Miriam over?”
“Nope, but I don’t think the roadblock is Eric.”
“Probably not.” There was a shriek and a clatter from the kitchen. “I wonder if I ought to intervene.”
“If I were you, I’d leave them to it.”
“I hope they plan on paying to have my kitchen set to rights,” I said, doing my best to sound angry rather than frightened.
“You know, he could order her to be still and she’d have to do it.” Immanuel sounded almost casual.

He was absolutely right. As Eric’s child, Pam had to obey a direct order. But for whatever reasons, Eric wasn’t saying the magic word. In the meantime, my kitchen was getting wiped out. When I realized he could make the whole thing stop at any time he chose, I lost my own temper.
Though Immanuel made an ineffective grab at my arm, I stomped on my bare feet into the hall bathroom, got the handled pitcher Claude used when he cleaned the bathtub, filled it with cold water, and went into the kitchen. (I was walking a little wonky after the fall from the stool, but I
managed.) Eric was on top of Pam, punching away at her. His own face was bloody. Pam’s hands were on his shoulders, keeping him from getting any closer. Maybe she feared he would bite. I stepped into position, estimating trajectory. When I was sure I had it right, I pitched cold water on the battling vampires. I was putting out a different kind of fire, this time
.
Pam shrieked like a teakettle as the cold water drenched her face, and Eric said something that sounded vile in a language I didn’t know. For a split second, I thought they’d both launch themselves at me. Standing with my feet braced, empty pitcher in my hand, I gave them glare for glare. Then I turned on my heel and walked away.

Immanuel was surprised to see me return in one piece. He shook his head. Obviously, he didn’t know whether to admire me or think me an idiot.
“You’re nuts, woman,” he said, “but at least I got your hair looking good. You should come in and get some highlights. I’ll give you a break on the price. I charge more than anybody else in Shreveport.” He added that in a matter-of-fact way.
“Oh. Thanks. I’ll think about it.” Exhausted by my long day and my burst of anger—anger and fear, they wear you out—I perched on an empty corner of my couch and waved Immanuel to my recliner, the only other chair in the room that wasn’t covered with attic fallout.

We were silent, listening for renewed combat in the kitchen. To my relief, the noise didn’t resume. After a few seconds Immanuel said, “I’d leave, if Pam wasn’t my ride.” He looked apologetic.
“No problem,” I answered, stifling a yawn. “I’m just sorry I can’t get into the kitchen. I could offer you more to drink or something to eat if they’d get out of there.”
He shook his head. “The Coke was enough, thanks. I’m not a big eater. What do you think they’re doing? Fucking?”

I hoped I didn’t look as shocked as I felt. It was true that Pam and Eric had been lovers right after he turned her. In fact, she’d told me how much she’d enjoyed that phase of their relationship, though over the decades she’d found she preferred women. So there was that; also, Eric was married to me now, in a sort of nonbinding vampire way, and I was pretty sure that even a vampire-human marriage precluded the having of sex with another partner in the wife’s kitchen? On the other hand . . .

“Pam usually prefers the ladies,” I said, trying to sound more certain than I actually was. When I thought of Eric with someone else, I wanted to rip out all his beautiful blond hair. By the roots. In clumps.
“She’s sort of omnisexual,” Immanuel offered. “My sister and Pam have had another man in the bed with them.”
“Ah, okay.” I held up a hand in a “stop” gesture. Some things I didn’t want to imagine.
“You’re a little prudish for someone who goes with a vampire,” Immanuel observed.
“Yes. Yes, I am.” I’d never applied that adjective to myself, but compared to Immanuel—and Pam—I was definitely straightlaced. I preferred to think of it as having a more evolved sense of privacy.

Finally, Pam and Eric came into the living room, and Immanuel and I sat forward on the edge of our seats, not knowing what to expect. Though the two vampires were expressionless, their defensive body language let me know that they were ashamed of their loss of control. They’d begun healing already, I noticed with some envy. Eric’s hair was disheveled and one shirt sleeve was torn off. Pam’s dress was ripped, and she was carrying her shoes because she’d broken a heel.

Eric opened his mouth to speak, but I jumped in first.
“I don’t know what that was about,” I said, “but I’m too tired to care. You two are liable for anything you broke, and I want you to leave this house right now. I’ll rescind your invitation, if I have to.”
Eric looked rebellious. I was sure he’d planned on spending the night at my place. This night, though, that was not gonna happen. I’d seen headlights coming up the drive, and I was sure Claude and Dermot were here. I couldn’t have fairies and vampires in the same house at
the same time. Both were strong and ferocious, but vampires literally found fairies irresistible, like cats and catnip. I wasn’t up to another struggle.

“Out the front door,” I said, when they didn’t move immediately. “Shoo! Thanks for the haircut, Immanuel. Eric, I appreciate your thinking about my hair care needs.” (I might have said this with more than a touch of sarcasm.) “It would have been nice if you had thought a little longer before you trashed my kitchen.”

Without more ado, Pam beckoned to Immanuel, and they went out the door together, Immanuel looking very faintly amused. Pam gave me a long look as she passed me. I knew it was meant to be significant, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what she was trying to tell me.

Eric said, “I would hold you while you sleep. Were you hurt? I’m sorry.” He seemed oddly nonplussed. At another time I would have accepted this rare apology, but not tonight. “You need to go home now, Eric. We’ll talk when you can control yourself.”
That was a huge rebuke to a vampire, and his back stiffened. For a moment I thought I’d have another fight on my hands. But Eric stepped out the front door, finally. When he was on the porch, he said, “I’ll talk to you soon, my wife.” I shrugged. Whatever. I was too tired and too aggravated to summon up any kind of loving expression.

I think Eric got in the car with Pam and the hairdresser for the drive back to Shreveport. Possibly he was too battered to fly. What the hell was up with Pam and Eric? I tried to tell myself it was not my problem, but I had a sinking feeling that it really, really was. Claude and Dermot came in the back a moment later, ostentatiously sniffing the air.

“The smell of smoke and vampires,” Claude said, with a pronounced rolling of the eyes. “And your kitchen looks like a bear came in search of honey.”
“I don’t know how you stand it,” Dermot said. “They smell bitter and sweet at the same time. I don’t know if I like it or hate it.” He held his hand over his nose dramatically. “And do I detect a trace of burned hair?”
“Fellas, chill,” I said wearily. I gave them the condensed version of the firebombing at Merlotte’s and the fighting in my kitchen. “So just give me a hug and let me go to bed without any more vampire comments,” I said.
“Do you want us to sleep with you, Niece?” Dermot asked, in the flowery way of the old fae, the ones who didn’t spend that much time with humans. The nearness of one fairy to another is both healing and soothing. Even with as little fairy blood as I had, I found the proximity of both
Claude and Dermot comforting. I hadn’t realized that when I’d first met Claude and his sister Claudine, but the longer I’d known them and the more they’d touched me, the better I’d felt when they were near. When my great-grandfather Niall had embraced me, I’d felt sheer love. And no matter what Niall had done, or how dubious his decisions were, I felt that love all over again when I was near him. I had a moment’s regret that I might not never see Niall again, but I just didn’t have any remaining emotional energy.
“Thanks, Dermot. But I think I better fall into bed by myself tonight. You guys sleep well.”
“And you, too, Sookie,” Claude told me. Dermot’s courtesy was rubbing off on my grumpy cousin.

I woke in the morning to the sound of knocking at the door. Rumple-headed and bleary, I dragged myself through the living room and looked through the peephole. Sam. I opened the door and yawned in his face. “Sam, what can I do for you? Come on in.” His glance flickered over the crowded living room, and I could see him struggling with a smile. “Aren’t we still going to Shreveport?” he asked.
“Oh my gosh!” Suddenly I felt more awake. “My last thought when I fell asleep last night was that you wouldn’t be able to go because of the fire at
the bar. You can? You want to?”
“Yep. The fire marshal talked to my insurance company, and they’ve started the paperwork. In the meantime, Danny and I hauled out the burned table and the chairs, Terry’s been working on the floor, and Antoine’s been checking that the kitchen’s in good shape. I’ve already made sure we’ve got more fire extinguishers ready to go.” For a long moment, his smile faltered. “If I have any customers to serve. People aren’t likely to want to come to Merlotte’s if they think they might get incinerated.”

I didn’t exactly blame folks for worrying about that. We hadn’t needed the incident of the night before, not at all. It might hasten the decline of Sam’s business.
“So they need to catch whoever did it,” I said, trying to sound positive. “Then people will know it’s safe to come back, and we’ll be busy again.”
Claude came downstairs then, giving us Surly. “Noisy down here,” he muttered as he passed on his way to the hall bathroom. Even slouching around in rumpled jeans, Claude walked with a grace that drew attention to his beauty. Sam gave an unconscious sigh and shook his head slightly as his eyes followed Claude, gliding down the hall as though he had ball bearings in his hip joints.
“Hey,” I said, after I heard the bathroom door shut. “Sam! He doesn’t have anything on you.”
“Some guys,” Sam began, looking abashed, and then he stopped. “Aw, forget it.”
I couldn’t, of course, not when I could tell directly from Sam’s brain that he was—not exactly envious, but rueful, about Claude’s physical attraction, though Sam knew as well as anyone that Claude was a pain in the butt. I’ve been reading men’s minds for years, and they’re more like women than you would think, really, unless you’re talking trucks. I started to tell Sam that he was plenty attractive, that women in the bar mooned over him more than he thought; but in the end, I kept my mouth shut. I had to let Sam have the privacy of his own thoughts. Because of his shifter nature, most of what was in Sam’s head remained in Sam’s head . . . more or
less. I could get the odd thought, the general mood, but seldom anything more specific.

“Here, I’ll make some coffee,” I said, and when I stepped into the kitchen, Sam close on my heels, I stopped dead. I’d forgotten all about the fight the night before.
“What happened?” Sam said. “Did Claude do this?” He looked around with dismay.
“No, Eric and Pam,” I said. “Oh, zombies.” Sam looked at me oddly, and I laughed and began to pick things up. I was abbreviating one of Pam’s curses, because I wasn’t that horrified.
I couldn’t help reflecting that it would have been really, really nice if Claude and Dermot had straightened the room up before they turned in the night before. Just as lagniappe.
Then again, it wasn’t their kitchen.

I set a chair on its legs, and Sam dragged the table back into position. I got the broom and dustpan, and swept up the salt, pepper, and sugar that crunched under my feet, and made a mental note to go to Wal-Mart to replace my toaster if Eric didn’t send one today. My napkin holder was broken, too, and it had survived the fire of a year and a half ago. I double-sighed.
“At least the table is okay,” I said.
“And only one broken leg on one of the chairs,” Sam said. “Eric going to get this stuff fixed or replaced?”
“I expect he will,” I said, and found that the coffeepot was intact, as were the mugs that had been hanging on a mug tree next to it; no, wait, one of them had broken. Well, five good ones. That was plenty.

I made some coffee. While Sam was carrying the garbage bag outside, I ducked into my room to get ready. I’d showered the evening before, so I only needed to brush my hair and my teeth and pull on some jeans and a “Fight Like a Girl” T-shirt. I didn’t fool with makeup. Sam had seen me under all sorts of conditions.

“How’s the hair?” he asked, when I emerged. Dermot was in the kitchen, too. Apparently, he’d made a quick run into town, since he and Sam were sharing some fresh doughnuts. Judging from the sound of running water, Claude was in the shower. I eyed the bakery box longingly, but I was all too aware that my jeans were feeling tight. I felt like a martyr as I poured a bowl of Special K and sprinkled Equal on the cereal and added some 2 percent milk. When Sam looked as though he wanted to make a comment, I narrowed my eyes at him. He grinned at me, chewing a mouthful of jelly-filled.

“Dermot, we’re off to Shreveport in a few minutes. If you need my bathroom . . .” I offered, since Claude was terrible about hogging the one in the hall. I rinsed my bowl in the sink.
“Thanks, Niece,” Dermot said, kissing my hand. “And your hair still looks glorious, though shorter. I think Eric was right to bring someone to cut it last night.”
Sam shook his head as we were getting into his truck. “Sook, that guy treats you like a queen.”
“Which guy do you mean? Eric or Dermot?”
“Not Eric,” Sam said, trying his best to look neutral. “Dermot.”
“Yeah, too bad he’s related! And also, he looks way too much like Jason.”
“That’s no obstacle to a fairy,” Sam said seriously.
“You’ve got to be joking.” I felt serious in a hurry. From Sam’s expression, he wasn’t joking one little bit. “Listen, Sam, Dermot has never even looked at me like I was a woman, and Claude is gay. We’re strictly family.” We’d all slept in the same bed, and there’d never been anything but the comfort of their presence in that, though of course I’d felt a little weird about it the first time. I’d been sure that was just my human hang-up. Due to Sam’s words, now I was second-guessing myself like crazy, wondering if I’d picked up on a vibe. After all, Claude did like to run around nude, and he’d told me he’d actually had sex with a female before. (I figured there’d been another man involved, frankly.)
“And I’m saying again, weird things happen in fae families.” Sam glanced over at me.
“I don’t mean to sound rude, but how would you know?” If Sam had spent a lot of time with fairies, he had kept it a close secret.
“I read up on it after I met your great-grandfather.”
“Read up on it? Where?” It would be great to learn more about my dab of fairy heritage. Dermot and Claude, having decided to live apart from their fairy kin (though I wasn’t sure how voluntary those decisions had been), remained closemouthed about fairy beliefs and customs. Aside from
making derogatory comments from time to time about trolls and sprites, they didn’t talk about their race at all . . . at least, around me.
“Ah . . . the shifters have a library. We have records of our history and what we’ve observed about other supes. Keeping track has helped us survive. There’s always been a place we could go on each continent to read and study about the other races. Now it’s all electronic. I’m sworn not to show it to anyone. If I could, I’d let you read it all.”
“So it’s not okay for me to read it, but it’s okay for you to tell me about it?” I wasn’t trying to be snarky; I was genuinely curious.
“Within limits.” Sam flushed.

I didn’t want to press him. I could tell that Sam had already stretched those limits for me.
We were each preoccupied with our own thoughts for the rest of the drive. While Eric was dead for the day, I felt alone in my skin, and usually I enjoyed that feeling. It wasn’t that being bonded to Eric made me feel I was possessed, or anything like that. It was more like during the dark hours, I could feel his life continuing parallel to mine—I knew he was working or arguing or content or absorbed in what he was doing. A little trickle of awareness, rather than a book of knowledge.

“So, the bomber yesterday,” Sam said abruptly.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think maybe a twoey of some kind, right?”
He nodded without looking at me.
“Not a hate crime,” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.
“Not a human hate crime,” Sam said. “But I’m sure it’s some kind of hatred.”
“Economic?”
“I can’t think of any economic reason,” he said. “I’m insured, but I’m the only beneficiary if the bar burns down. Of course, I’d be out of business for a while, and I’m sure the other bars in the area would take up the slack, but I can’t see that as an incentive. Much of an incentive,” he corrected himself. “Merlotte’s has always been kind of a family bar, not a wild place. Not like Vic’s Redneck Roadhouse,” he added, a little bitterly.
That was true. “Maybe someone doesn’t like you personally, Sam,” I said, though it came out sounding harsher than I’d intended. “I mean,” I added quickly, “maybe someone wants to hurt you through damaging your business. Not you as a shapeshifter, but you as a person.”
“I don’t recall anything that personal,” he said, genuinely bewildered.
“Ah . . . Jannalynn have a vengeful ex, anything like that?”
Sam was startled by the idea. “I really haven’t heard of anyone who resented me dating her,” he said. “And Jannalynn’s more than capable of speaking her mind. It’s not like I could coerce her into going out with me.”

I had a hard time repressing a snort of laughter. “Just trying to think of all possibilities,” I said apologetically.
“That’s okay,” he said. He shrugged. “Bottom line is, I can’t remember when I’ve made anyone really mad.”
I couldn’t remember any such incident myself, and I’d known Sam for years.
Pretty soon we were pulling up to the antiques shop, which was located in a former paint store in a down-sliding older business street in
Shreveport.
The big front windows were sparkling clean, and the pieces that had been positioned there were beautiful. The largest was what my grandmother
had called a hunt sideboard. It was heavy and ornate and just about as tall as my chest. The other window featured a collection of jardinières, or
vases, I wasn’t sure which to call them. The one in the center, positioned to show that it was the cream of the crop, was sea green and blue and had
cherubs stuck on it. I thought it was hideous, but it definitely had style.
Sam and I looked at the display for a moment in thoughtful silence before we went in. A bell—a real bell, not an electronic chime—jangled as we
pushed open the door. A woman sitting on a stool behind a counter to the right looked up. She pushed her glasses up on her nose.
“Nice to see you again, Mr. Merlotte,” she said, smiling with just the right intensity. I remember you, I’m glad you came back, but I’m not
personally interested in you as a man. She was good.
“Thanks, Ms. Hesterman,” Sam said. “This is my friend, Sookie Stackhouse.”
“Welcome to Splendide,” Ms. Hesterman said. “Please call me Brenda. What can I do for you today?”
“We’ve got two errands,” Sam said. “I’m here to look at the pieces you called me about. . . .”
“And I’ve just cleaned out my attic and I have some things I wondered if you could take a look at,” I said. “I need to get rid of some of the odds and
ends I brought down. I don’t want to put it all back.” I smiled, to show general goodwill.
“So you’ve had a family place a long time?” she asked, encouraging me to give her a clue about what sort of possessions my family might have
accumulated.
“We’ve lived in the same house for about a hundred and seventy years,” I told her, and she brightened. “But it’s an old farm, not a mansion. Might
be some things you’d be interested in, though.”
“I’d love to come take a look,” she said, though clearly “love” was overstating it a little. “We’ll set up a time as soon as I help Sam pick out a gift for
Jannalynn. She’s so modern, who would have thought she’d be interested in antiques? She’s such a little cutie!”
I had a hard time keeping my mouth from dropping open. Did we know the same Jannalynn Hopper?
Sam poked me in the ribs when Brenda turned her back to fetch a ring of small keys. He made a significant face, and I smoothed out my
expression and batted my eyelashes at him. He looked away, but not before I caught a reluctant grin.
“Sam, I’ve put together some things Jannalynn might like,” Brenda said, and led us over to a display case, keys jingling in her hand. The case was
full of little things, pretty things. I couldn’t identify most of them. I leaned over the glass top to look down.
“What are those?” I pointed at some lethal sharp-pointed objects with ornate heads. I wondered if you could kill a vampire with one
“Hat pins and stickpins, for scarves and cravats.”
There were also earrings and rings and brooches, plus enamel boxes, beaded boxes, painted boxes. All these little containers were carefully
arranged. Were they snuffboxes? I read the price tag discreetly peeking out from under a tortoiseshell and silver oval box, and had to clamp my lips
together to restrain my gasp.
While I was still wondering about the items I was examining, Brenda and Sam were comparing the merits of art deco pearl earrings versus a
Victorian pressed-glass hair receiver with an enameled brass lid. Whatever the hell that was.
“What do you think, Sookie?” he asked, looking from one item to another.
I examined the art deco earrings, pearl drops dangling from a rose gold setting. The hair receiver was pretty, too, though I couldn’t imagine what it
was for or what Jannalynn would do with it. Did anyone need to receive hair anymore?
“She’ll wear the earrings to show them off,” I said. “It’s harder to brag about getting a hair receiver.” Brenda gave me a veiled look, and I
understood from her thoughts that this opinion branded me as a philistine. So be it.
“The hair receiver’s older,” Sam said, wavering.
“But less personal. Unless you’re Victorian.”
While Sam compared the two smaller items to the beauties of a seventy-year-old New Bedford police badge, I wandered around the store,
looking at the furniture. I discovered I was not an antiques appreciator. This was just one more flaw in my mundane character, I decided. Or maybe
it was because I was surrounded by antiques all the day long? Nothing in my house was new except the kitchen, and that only because the old one
had been destroyed by fire. I’d still be using Gran’s ancient refrigerator if the flames hadn’t eaten it up. (That refrigerator was one antique I didn’t
miss, for sure.)
I slid open a long, narrow drawer on what the tag described as a “map chest.” There was a sliver of paper left in it.
“Look at that,” Brenda Hesterman’s voice said from behind me. “I’d thought I’d gotten that thoroughly clean. Let that be a lesson, Miss
Stackhouse. Before we come to look at your things, be sure to go through them and remove all papers and other objects. You don’t want to sell us
something you didn’t intend to part with.”
I turned around to see that Sam was holding a wrapped package. While I’d been lost in exploration, he’d made his purchase (the earrings, to my
relief; the hair receiver was back in its spot in the case).
“She’ll love the earrings. They’re beautiful,” I said honestly, and for a second Sam’s thoughts got snarled, almost . . . purple. Strange, that I would
think of colors. Lingering effect of the shaman drug I’d taken for the Weres? I hoped to hell not.
“I’ll be sure to look over everything real carefully, Brenda,” I said to the antiques dealer.
We made an appointment for two days later. She assured me that she could find my isolated house with her GPS, and I warned her about the
long driveway through the woods, which had led several visitors to believe they’d become lost. “I don’t know if I’ll come, or my partner, Donald,”
Brenda said. “Maybe both of us.”
“I’ll be glad to see you,” I said. “If you run into any trouble or need to change the date, please let me know.”
“Do you really think she’ll like them?” Sam asked when we were in the truck and buckled up. We’d reverted to the topic of Jannalynn.
“Sure,” I said, surprised. “Why wouldn’t she?”
“I can’t shake the feeling I’m on the wrong track with Jannalynn,” Sam said. “You want to stop and get something to eat at the Ruby Tuesday’s on
Youree?”
“Sure,” I said. “Sam, why do you think that?”
“She likes me,” he said. “I mean, I can tell. But she’s always thinking about the pack.”
“You think maybe she’s more focused on Alcide than on you?” That was what I was getting from Sam’s head. Maybe I was being too blunt,
though. Sam flushed.
“Yeah, maybe,” he admitted.
“She’s a great enforcer, and she was real excited to get the job,” I said. I wondered if that had come out neutral enough.
“She was,” he said.
“You seem to like strong women.”
He smiled. “I do like strong women, and I’m not afraid of the different ones. Run-of-the-mill just doesn’t cut it with me.”
I smiled back at him. “I can tell. I don’t know what to say about Jannalynn, Sam. She’d be an idiot not to appreciate you. Single, self-supporting,
good looking? And you don’t even pick your teeth at the table! What’s not to love?” I took a deep breath, because I was about to change the subject
and I didn’t want to offend my boss. “Hey, Sam, about that website you visit? You think you could find out about why I’m feeling more fairy after
hanging out with my fairy relatives? I mean, I couldn’t actually be changing into more of a fairy, right?”
“I’ll see what I can find,” Sam said, after a fraught moment. “But let’s try asking your bunk buddies. They ought to cough up any information that
would help you. Or I could beat it out of them.”
He was serious.
“They’ll tell me.” I sounded more sure of that than I felt.
“Where are they now?” he asked.
“By this time, they’ve gone to the club,” I said, after a glance at my watch. “They get all their business done before the club opens.”
“Then that’s where we’ll go,” Sam said. “Kennedy was opening for me today, and you’re not on until tonight, right?”
“Right,” I said, discarding my plans for the afternoon, which hadn’t been very urgent to start with. If we ate lunch at Ruby Tuesday’s, we couldn’t
reach Monroe until one thirty, but I could make it home in time to change for work. After I’d ordered, I excused myself. While I was in the ladies’
room, my cell phone rang. I don’t answer my phone while I’m in a bathroom. I wouldn’t like to be talking to someone and hear a toilet flush, right?
Since the restaurant was noisy, I stepped outside to return the call after a wave at Sam. The number seemed faintly familiar.
“Hey, Sookie,” said Remy Savoy. “How you doing?”
“Good. How’s my favorite little boy?” Remy had been married to my cousin Hadley, and they’d had a son, Hunter, who would be starting
kindergarten in the fall. After Katrina, Remy and Hunter had moved to the little town of Red Ditch, where Remy had gotten a job working at a
lumberyard through the good services of a cousin.
“He’s doing good. He’s trying hard to follow your rules. I wonder if I could ask a favor?”
“Let’s hear it,” I said.
“I’ve started dating a lady here name of Erin. We were thinking about going to the bass fishing tournament outside Baton Rouge this weekend.
We, ah, we were kind of hoping you could keep Hunter? He gets bored if I fish more than an hour.”
Hmmm. Remy moved pretty fast. Kristen hadn’t been too long ago, and she’d already been replaced. I could kind of see it. Remy was not badlooking,
he was a skilled carpenter, and he had only one child—plus, Hunter’s mom was dead, so there weren’t any custody issues. Not too shabby
a prospect in the town of Red Ditch. “Remy, I’m on the road right now,” I said. “Let me call you back in a little while. I gotta check my work schedule.”
“Great, thanks a lot, Sookie. Talk to you later.”
I went back inside to find that our food had been served.
“That was Hunter’s dad calling,” I told my boss after the server left. “Remy’s got a new girlfriend, and he wanted to know if I could keep Hunter this
weekend.”
I got the impression that Sam believed Remy was trying to take advantage of me—but Sam also felt he could hardly tell me what to do about it. “If
I remember the schedule right, you’re working this Saturday night,” he pointed out.
And Saturday night was when I made my biggest tips.
I nodded, both to Sam and myself. While we ate, we talked about Terry’s negotiations with a breeder of Catahoulas in Ruston. Terry’s Annie had
gotten out of her pen last time she’d been in heat. This time, Terry had a more planned pregnancy in mind, and the talks between the two men had
nearly reached prenup status. A question rose to my mind, and I wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it to Sam. My curiosity got the better of me.
“You remember Bob the cat?” I asked.
“Sure. That guy Amelia turned into a cat by accident? Her friend Octavia turned him back.”
“Yeah. Well, the thing is, while he was a cat, he was black and white. He was a really cute cat. But Amelia found a female cat in the woods with a
litter, and there were some black-and-white kittens among ’em, so she got—okay, I know this is weird—she got pissed off at Bob because she
thought he’d, you know, become a dad. Sort of.”
“So your question is, is that a common thing?” Sam looked disgusted. “Naw, Sookie. We can’t do that, and we don’t want to. None of the twonatured.
Even if there were a sexual encounter, there wouldn’t be a pregnancy. I think Amelia was accusing Bob falsely. On the other hand, he isn’t
—wasn’t—really two-natured. He was completely transformed by magic.” Sam shrugged. He looked very embarrassed.
“Sorry,” I said, feeling mortified. “That was tacky of me.”
“It’s a natural thing to wonder about, I guess,” Sam said dubiously. “But when I’m in my other skin, I’m not out making puppies.”
Now I was horribly embarrassed. “Please, accept my apology,” I said.
He relaxed when he saw how uncomfortable I was. He patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.” Then he asked me what plans I had for
the attic now that I’d emptied it, and we talked of trivial things until we were back to feeling okay with each other.
I called Remy back when we were on the interstate. “Remy, this weekend won’t work for me. Sorry!” I explained that I had to work.
“Don’t worry about it,” Remy said. He sounded calm about my refusal. “It was just a thought. Listen, here’s the thing. I hate to ask for another favor.
But Hunter has to visit the kindergarten next week, just a thing the school does every year so the kids will have a mental picture of the place they’re
going in the fall. They tour the classrooms, meet the teachers, and see the lunchroom and the bathrooms. Hunter asked me if you could go with us.”
My mouth fell open. I was glad Remy couldn’t see me. “This is during the day, I’m assuming,” I said. “What day of the week?”
“Next Tuesday, two o’clock.”
Unless I was on for the lunch shift, I could do it. “Again, let me check my work schedule, but I think that’s going to be doable,” I said. “I’ll call you
back tonight.” I snapped my phone shut and told Sam about Remy’s second request.
“Seems like he waited to ask you the more important thing second, so you’d be more likely to come,” Sam asked.
I laughed. “I didn’t think of that until you said it. My brain is wired in a straighter line than that. But now that it’s crossed my mind, that seems . . . not
unlikely.” I shrugged. “It’s not like I object, exactly. I want Hunter to be happy. And I’ve spent time with him, though not as much as I should have.”
Hunter and I were alike in a hidden way; we were both telepathic. But that was our secret because I feared Hunter might be in danger if his ability
was known. It sure hadn’t improved my life any.
“So why are you worried? Because I can tell you are,” Sam said.
“Just . . . it’ll look funny. People in Red Ditch will think Remy and I are dating. That I’m sort of—close to being Hunter’s mom. And Remy just told
me he’s seeing a woman named Erin, and she may not like it. . . .” My voice trailed off. This visit seemed like a mildly bad idea. But if it would make
Hunter happy, I supposed I ought to do it.
“You have that sucked-in feeling?” Sam’s smile was wry. It was our day to talk about awkward things.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I do. When I got involved in Hunter’s life, I didn’t ever imagine he’d really depend on me for anything. I guess I’ve never been
around kids that much. Remy’s got a great-aunt and great-uncle in Red Ditch. That’s why he moved there after Katrina. They had an empty rental
house. But the aunt and uncle are too old to want to keep a kid Hunter’s age for more than an hour or two, and the one cousin is too busy to be
much help.”
“Hunter a good kid?”
“Yes, I think he is.” I smiled. “You know what’s weird? When Hunter stayed with me, he and Claude got along great. That was a big surprise.”
Sam glanced over at me. “But you wouldn’t want to leave him with Claude for hours, would you?”
After a moment’s thought, I said, “No.”
Sam nodded, as if I’d confirmed something he’d been wondering about. “Cause after all, Claude’s a fairy?” He put enough question into his voice
to ensure that I knew he was genuinely asking me.
The words sounded very unpleasant said out loud. But they were the truth. “Yes, because Claude’s a fairy. But not because he’s a different race
from us.” I struggled with how to express what I wanted to say. “Fairies, they love kids. But they don’t have the same frame of reference as most
humans. Fairies’ll do what they think will make the child happy, or will benefit the child, rather than what a Christian adult would do.” It made me feel
small and provincial to admit all this, but those were my true feelings. I felt like adding a series of disclaimers—Not that I think I’m such a great
Christian, far from it. Not that non-Christians are bad people. Not that I think Claude would hurt Hunter. But Sam and I had known each other long
enough that I was sure he’d understand all that.
“I’m glad we’re on the same page,” Sam said, and I felt relieved. But I was far from comfortable. We might be on the same page, but I wasn’t
happy about reading it.
Spring was verging on summer, and the day was beautiful. I tried to enjoy it all the way east to Monroe, but my success was limited.
My cousin Claude owned Hooligans, a strip club off the interstate outside Monroe. On five nights a week, it featured the conventional
entertainment offered at strip clubs. The club was closed on Mondays. But Thursday night was Ladies Only, and that was when Claude stripped. Of
course, he wasn’t the only male who performed. At least three other male strippers came in on a rotating basis pretty regularly, and there was
usually a guest stripper, too. There was a male strip circuit, my cousin had told me.
“You ever come here to watch him?” Sam asked as we pulled up to the back door.
He was not the first person to ask me that. I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me, that I hadn’t felt the need to rush over to
Monroe to watch guys take off their clothes.
“No. I’ve seen Claude naked. I’ve never come over to watch him do his thing professionally. I hear he’s good.”
“He’s naked? At your house?”
“Modesty is not one of Claude’s priorities,” I said.
Sam looked both displeased and startled, despite his own earlier warning about the fae not thinking kin were off-limits sexually. “What about
Dermot?” he said.
“Dermot? I don’t think he strips,” I said, confused.
“I mean, he doesn’t go around the house naked, does he?”
“No,” I said. “That seems to be a Claude thing. It would be really icky if Dermot did that, since he looks so much like Jason.”
“That’s just not right,” Sam muttered. “Claude needs to keep his pants on.”
“I dealt with it,” I said, the edge in my voice reminding Sam that the situation was not his to worry about.
It was a weekday, so the place didn’t open until four in the afternoon. I hadn’t ever been to Hooligans before, but it looked like any other small
club; set apart in a fair-sized parking lot, electric-blue siding, a jazzy shocking-pink sign. Places for selling alcohol or flesh always look a little sad in
the daytime, don’t they? The only other business close to Hooligans, now that I was looking, was a liquor store.
Claude had told me what to do in case I ever dropped in. The secret signal was knocking four times, keeping the raps evenly spaced. After that
was done, I gazed out across the fields. The sun beat down on the parking lot with just a hint of the heat to come. Sam shifted uneasily from foot to
foot. After a few seconds, the door opened.
I smiled and said hello automatically, and began to step into the hall. It was a shock to realize the doorman wasn’t human. I froze.
I’d assumed that Claude and Dermot were the only fairies left in modern-day America since my great-grandfather had pulled all the fairies into
their own dimension, or world, or whatever they called it, and closed the door. Though I’d also known that Niall and Claude communicated at least
occasionally, because Niall had sent me a letter via Claude’s hands. But I’d deliberately refrained from asking a lot of questions. My experiences
with my fairy kin, with all the fae, had been both delightful and horrible . . . but toward the end, those experiences had come down far heavier on the
horrible side of the scale.
The doorman was just as startled to see me as I was to see him. He wasn’t a fairy—but he was fae. I’d met fairies who’d filed their teeth to look
the way this creature’s did naturally: an inch long, pointed, curved slightly inward. The doorman’s ears weren’t pointed, but I didn’t think it was
surgical alteration that had made them flatter and rounder than human ears. The alien effect was lessened by his thick, fine hair, which was a rich
auburn color and lay smooth, about three inches long, all over his head. The effect was not that of a hairstyle, but of an animal’s coat.
“What are you?” we asked each other simultaneously.
It would have been funny . . . in another universe.
“What’s happening?” Sam said behind me, and I jumped. I stepped all the way inside the club with Sam right on my heels, and the heavy metal
door clanged shut behind us. After the dazzling sunlight, the long fluorescent bulbs that lit the hall looked doubly bleak.
“I’m Sookie,” I said, to break the awkward silence.
“What are you?” the creature asked again. We were still standing awkwardly in the narrow hallway.
Dermot’s head popped out of a doorway. “Hey, Sookie,” he said. “I see you’ve met Bellenos.” He stepped out into the hall and took in my
expression. “Haven’t you ever seen an elf before?”
“I haven’t, thanks for asking,” muttered Sam. Since he was much more knowledgeable about the supe world than I was, I realized that elves must
be pretty rare.
I had a lot of questions about Bellenos’s presence, but I wasn’t sure if I had any right to ask them, especially after my faux pas with Sam. “Sorry,
Bellenos. I did meet a half elf once with teeth like yours. Mostly, though, I know fairies who file their teeth to look that way. Pleased to meet you,” I
said with a huge effort. “This is my friend Sam.”
Sam shook hands with Bellenos. The two were much the same height and build, but I noticed that Bellenos’s slanted eyes were dark brown,
matching the freckles on his milky skin. Those eyes were curiously far apart, or perhaps his face was broader across the cheekbones than normal?
The elf smiled at Sam, and I caught a glimpse of the teeth again. I shuddered and looked away.
Through an open door I glimpsed a large dressing room. There was a long counter running along one wall, which was lined with a brightly lit
mirror. The counter was strewn with cosmetics, makeup brushes, blow-dryers, hair curlers and hair straighteners, bits of costume, razors, a
magazine or two, wigs, cell phones . . . the assorted debris of people whose jobs depended on their appearance. Some high stools were set
haphazardly around the room, and there were tote bags and shoes everywhere.
From farther down the hall Dermot called, “Come into the office.”
We went down the hall and crowded into a small room. Somewhat to my disappointment, the exotic and gorgeous Claude had a completely
prosaic office—cramped, cluttered, and windowless. Claude had a secretary, a woman dressed in a JCPenney women’s business suit. She could
not have looked more incongruous in a strip club. Dermot, who was evidently the master of ceremonies today, said, “Nella Jean, this is our dear
cousin Sookie.”
Nella Jean was dark and round, and her bitter-chocolate eyes were almost a match for Bellenos’s, though her teeth were reassuringly normal. Her
little cubbyhole was right next door to Claude’s office; in fact, I conjectured that it had been converted from a storage closet. After a disparaging
look at Sam and me, Nella Jean seemed more than ready to retreat to her own space. She shut her office door with an air of finality, as if she knew
we were going to do something unsavory and she wanted nothing to do with us.
Bellenos shut Claude’s office door, too, closing us in a room that would have been crowded with two of us, much less five. I could hear music
coming from the club proper (or rather, the club improper), and I wondered what was happening out there. Did strippers rehearse? What did they
make of Bellenos?
“Why the surprise visit?” Claude asked. “Not that I’m not delighted to see you.”
He wasn’t delighted to see me at all, though he’d invited me to drop by Hooligans more than once. It was clear from his sulky mouth that he’d
never believed I’d come to see him at the club unless he was onstage stripping. Of course, Claude’s sure everyone in the world wants to see him
take off his clothes, I thought. Did he just not enjoy visitors, or was there something he didn’t want me to know?
“You need to tell us why Sookie’s feeling more and more fae,” Sam said abruptly.
The three fae males turned to look at Sam simultaneously.
Claude said, “Why do we need to tell her that? And why are you concerning yourself with our family affairs?”
“Because Sookie wants to know why, and she’s my friend,” Sam said. His face was hard, his voice very level. “You should be educating her about
her mixed blood instead of living in her house and leeching off her.”
I didn’t know where to look. I hadn’t known Sam was so opposed to my cousin and my great-uncle staying with me, and he really didn’t need to
give his opinion. And Claude and Dermot weren’t leeching off me; they bought groceries, too, and they cleaned up after themselves very carefully.
Sometimes. It was true that my water bill had jumped (and I had said something to Claude about that), but nothing else had cost me money.
“In fact,” Sam said, when they continued to glare at him in silence, “you’re staying with her to make sure she’ll be more fae, right? You’re
encouraging that part of her to strengthen. I don’t know how you’re doing that, but I know you are. My question is: Are you doing this just for the
warmth of it, the companionship, or do you have a plan in mind for Sookie? Some kind of secret fairy plot?”
The last words were more like an ominous rumble than Sam’s normal voice.
“Claude’s my cousin and Dermot’s my great-uncle,” I said automatically. “They wouldn’t try to . . .” And I let the thought trail off dismally. If I’d
learned anything over the past few years, it was not to make stupid assumptions. The idea that family would not harm you was a stupid assumption
of the first order.
“Come see the rest of the club,” Claude said suddenly. Before we could think about it, he’d hustled us out of the office and down the hall. He
swung open the door to the club proper, and Sam and I went into it.
I guess all clubs and bars look basically the same—tables and chairs, some attempt at decor or theme, an actual bar, a stage with stripper poles,
and some kind of booth for sound. In those respects, Hooligans was no different.
But all the creatures that turned to the door when we entered . . . all of them were fae. It came to me slowly and inevitably as I looked from face to
face. No matter how human they looked (and most of them could “pass”), each one had a trace of fae blood of one kind or another. A beautiful
female with flame red hair was part elf. She’d had her teeth filed down. A long, slim male was something I’d never encountered before.
“Welcome, Sister,” said a short blond . . . something. I couldn’t even be sure of the gender. “Have you come to join us here?”
I struggled to answer. “I hadn’t planned on it,” I said. I stepped back into the hall and let the door shut after me. I gripped Claude’s arm. “What the
hell is going on here?” When he didn’t answer, I turned to my great-uncle. “Dermot?”
“Sookie, our dearest,” Dermot said, after a moment’s silence. “Tonight when we come home we’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“What about him?” I said, nodding at Bellenos.
“He won’t be with us,” Claude said. “Bellenos sleeps here, as our night watchman.”
You only needed a night watchman if you were afraid of an attack.
More trouble.
I could hardly stand the prospect of it.
Chapter 3
Okay, I’ve been stupid in the past. Not consistently stupid, but occasionally stupid. And I’ve made mistakes. You bet, I’ve made mistakes.
But during the ride back to Bon Temps, with my best guy friend driving and giving me the silence I needed, I thought hard. I felt a tear trickle from
each eye. I looked away and blotted my face with a tissue from my purse, not wanting Sam to offer sympathy.
When I’d composed myself, I said, “I’ve been a fool.”
To his credit, Sam looked startled. “What are you thinking of?” he said, so he wouldn’t say, “Which time?”
“Do you think people really change, Sam?”
He took a moment to line up his thoughts. “That’s a pretty big question, Sookie. People can turn themselves around to some extent, sure. Addicts
can be strong enough to stop using whatever they’re addicted to. People can go to therapy and learn how to manage behavior that’s been out of
control. But that’s an external . . . system. A learned management technique imposed on the natural order of things, on what the person really is—an
addict. Does that make sense?”
I nodded.
“So, on the whole,” he continued, “I’d have to say no, people don’t change, but they can learn to behave differently. I want to believe otherwise. If
you have an argument that says I’m wrong, I’d be glad to hear it.” We turned down my driveway and began to go through the woods.
“Children change as they grow up and adapt to society and their own circumstances,” I said. “Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad. And I
think if you love someone, you make an effort to suppress habits of yours that displease them, right? But those habits or inclinations are still there.
Sam, you’re right. Those are other cases of people imposing a learned reaction over the original.”
He gave me worried eyes as we pulled up behind the house. “Sookie, what’s wrong?”
I shook my head. “I’m such an idiot,” I told him. I couldn’t look him square in the face. I scrambled out of the truck. “Are you taking the whole day
off, or will I see you at the bar later?”
“I’m taking the whole day off. Listen, do you need me to stick around? I’m not real sure what you’re worried about, but you know we can talk about
it. I have no idea what is going on at Hooligans, but until the fairies feel like telling us . . . I’m here if you need me.”
He was sincere in his offer, but I also knew he wanted to get home, call Jannalynn, make plans for the night so he could give her the gift he’d gone
to such trouble to select. “No, I’m good,” I said reassuringly, smiling up at him. “I’ve got a million things to do before I come to work, and a lot to think
about.” To put it mildly.
“Thanks for going to Shreveport with me, Sookie,” Sam said. “But I guess I was wrong about getting your kinfolk to talk to you. Let me know if they
don’t come through tonight.” I waved good-bye as he backed up to drive back to Hummingbird Road to return to his double-wide, situated right
behind Merlotte’s. Sam never completely got away from work—but on the other hand, it was a real short commute.
As I unlocked the back door, I was already making plans.
I felt like having a shower—no, a bath. It was actually delightful to be alone, to have Claude and Dermot out of the house. I was full of new
suspicion, but that was a sadly familiar feeling. I thought about calling Amelia, my witch friend who had returned to New Orleans to her rebuilt home
and her reestablished job, to ask her advice about several things. In the end I didn’t pick up the phone. I would have to explain so much. The
prospect made my brain feel tired, and that was no way to start a conversation. An e-mail might be better. I could set everything down that way.
I filled the tub with bath oils, and I climbed into the hot water in a gingerly way, baring my teeth as I sank down. The front of my thighs still stung a
bit. I shaved my legs and underarms. Grooming always makes you feel better. After I’d climbed out, the bath oil making me as slippery as a
wrestler, I painted my toenails and brushed out my hair, startled all over again by how short it seemed. It was still past my shoulder blades, I
reassured myself.
All buffed and polished, I put on my Merlotte’s outfit, sorry to cover up my toenails with socks and sneakers. I was trying not to think, and I was
doing a pretty good job of it.
I had about thirty minutes to spare, so I turned on the TV and clicked on my DVR button to view yesterday’s Jeopardy! We’d started turning the
bar TV to it every day, because the bar patrons got some enjoyment out of guessing the answers. Jane Bodehouse, our longestlasting alcoholic,
turned out to be an expert on old movies, and Terry Bellefleur surely knew his sports trivia. I could answer most of the questions about writers, since
I read a lot, and Sam was pretty reliable on American history after 1900. I wasn’t always at the bar when it was on, so I’d started recording it every
day. I liked the happy world of Jeopardy! I liked getting the Daily Double, which I did today. When the show was finished, it was time to leave.
I enjoyed driving to work for the evening shift when it was still light outside. I turned up the radio and sang “Crazy” right along with Gnarls Barkley. I
could identify.
Jason passed me driving in the opposite direction, maybe on his way to his girlfriend’s house. Michele Schubert was still hanging in the
relationship. Since Jason was finally growing up, she might make something permanent with him . . . if she wanted to. Michele’s strongest suit was
that she wasn’t enthralled by Jason’s (apparently) powerful bedroom mojo. If she was mooning over him and jealous of his attention, she was
keeping it perfectly concealed. My hat was off to her. I waved at my brother, and he smiled back. He looked happy and unconflicted. I envied that
from the bottom of my heart. There were big plusses to the way Jason approached life.
The crowd at Merlotte’s was thin again. No surprise there; a firebombing is pretty bad publicity. What if Merlotte’s couldn’t survive? What if Vic’s
Redneck Roadhouse kept stealing customers? People liked Merlotte’s because it was relatively quiet, because it was relaxed, because the food
was good (if limited) and the drinks were generous. Sam had always been a popular guy until the wereanimals had made their own announcement.
People who had handled the vampires with cautious acceptance seemed to regard twoeys as the straws that had broken the camel’s back, so to
speak.
I went into the storeroom to grab a clean apron and then into Sam’s office to stuff my purse into the deep drawer of his desk. It sure would be nice
to have a little locker. I could keep my purse in it and a change of clothes for nights when minor disasters struck, like spilled beer or a squirt of
mustard.
I was taking over from Holly, who would marry Jason’s best friend Hoyt in October. This would be Holly’s second wedding, Hoyt’s first. They’d
decided to go all out and have a church ceremony and a reception in the church hall afterward. I knew more about it than I wanted to know. Though
the wedding wasn’t for months, Holly had already begun obsessing about details. Since her first wedding had been a justice-of-the-peace visit, this
was (theoretically) her last chance to live the dream. I could imagine my grandmother’s opinion about Holly’s white wedding dress, since Holly had a
little boy in school—but hey, whatever made the bride happy. White used to symbolize the virgin purity of the wearer. Now it just meant the bride had
acquired an expensive and unusable dress to hang in her closet after the big day.
I waved at Holly to attract her attention. She was talking to the new Calgary Baptist preacher, Brother Carson. He came in from time to time but
never ordered alcohol. Holly ended her conversation and strode over to tell me what was happening at our tables, which wasn’t much. I shuddered
when I looked at the scorched mark in the middle of the floor. One less table to serve.
“Hey, Sookie,” Holly said, pausing on her way to the back to fetch her purse. “You’ll be at the wedding, right?”
“Sure, wouldn’t miss it.”
“Would you mind serving the punch?”
This was an honor—not as big an honor as being a bridesmaid, but still significant. I’d never expected such a thing. “I’d be glad to,” I said,
smiling. “Let’s talk again closer to time.”
Holly looked pleased. “Okay, good. Well, let’s hope business picks up here so we still have a job come September.”
“Oh, you know we’ll be okay,” I said, but I was far from convinced that was so.
I stayed up waiting for Dermot and Claude for half an hour after I got home that night, but they didn’t show, and I didn’t feel like calling them. Their
promised talk with me, the talk that was supposed to fill me in on my fairy heritage, would not take place tonight. Though I’d wanted to hear some
answers, I found I was just as glad. The day had been too full. I told myself I was pissed off, and I tried to listen for the fairies to come in, but I didn’t
lie awake more than five minutes.
When I emerged the next morning a little after nine, I didn’t see any of the usual signs that indicated my houseguests had returned. The hall
bathroom looked exactly as it had the day before, there weren’t any dishes by the kitchen sink, and none of the lights had been left on. I went out on
the enclosed back porch. Nope, no car.
Maybe they’d been too tired to make the drive back to Bon Temps, or maybe they’d both gotten lucky. When Claude had come to live with me,
he’d told me that if he made a conquest, he’d spend the night at his house in Monroe with the lucky guy. I’d assumed Dermot would do the same—
though come to think of it, I’d never seen Dermot with anyone, man or woman. I’d also assumed that Dermot would choose women over men,
simply because he looked like Jason, who was all about the ladies. Assumptions. Dumb.
I fixed myself some eggs and toast and fruit, and read a library copy of one of Nora Roberts’s books while I ate. I felt more like my former self than
I had in weeks. Except for the visit to Hooligans, I’d had a nice time the day before, and the guys weren’t trailing in and out of the kitchen,
complaining about me being low on whole-wheat bread or hot water (Claude) or offering me flowery pleasantries when all I wanted to do was read
(Dermot). Nice to discover that I could still enjoy being alone.
Singing to myself, I showered and made myself up . . . and by that time I had to leave for work again for the early shift. I glanced into the living
room, tired of it looking like a junk store. I reminded myself that tomorrow the antiques dealers were supposed to come.
The bar was a little busier than it had been the night before, which made me even more cheerful. A little to my surprise, Kennedy was behind the
bar. She looked as polished and perfect as the beauty queen she’d been, though she was wearing tight jeans and a white-and-gray-striped tank.
We were quite the well-groomed women today.
“Where’s Sam?” I asked. “I thought he would be working.”
“He called me this morning, said he was still over in Shreveport,” Kennedy said, giving me a sideways look. “I guess Jannalynn’s birthday went
real well. I need as many hours as I can get, so I was glad to roll out of bed and get my hiney over here.”
“How’s your mamma and your daddy?” I asked. “Have they visited lately?”
Kennedy smiled bitterly. “They’re just rolling along, Sookie. They still wish I was Little Miss Beauty Pageant and taught Sunday school, but they
did send me a good check when I got out of prison. I’m lucky to have ’em.”
Her hands stilled in the middle of drying a glass. “I been wondering,” she said, and paused. I waited. I knew what was coming. “I was wondering if
it was a member of Casey’s family who bombed the bar,” she said, very quietly. “When I shot Casey, I was just saving my own life. I didn’t think
about his family, or my family, or anything but living.”
Kennedy had never talked about it before, which I could understand completely. “Who would be thinking about anything else but surviving,
Kennedy?” I said, quietly but with intensity. I wanted her to feel my absolute sincerity. “No one in her right mind would have done any different. I don’t
think God would ever want you to let yourself be beaten to death.” Though I was not at all sure what God would want. I probably meant, I think it
would have been dumb as hell to let yourself be killed.
“I wouldn’t have gotten off so light if those other women hadn’t come forward,” Kennedy said. “His family, I guess they know he really did hit
women . . . but I wonder if they still blame me. If maybe they knew I’d be in the bar, and they decided to kill me here.”
“Are any of his family two-natured?” I asked.
Kennedy looked shocked. “Oh my gosh, no! They’re Baptists!”
I tried not to smile, but I couldn’t help it. After a second, Kennedy started laughing at herself. “Seriously,” she said, “I don’t think so. You think
whoever threw that bomb was a Were?”
“Or some other kind of two-natured. Yeah, I think so, but don’t tell this around anywhere. Sam’s already feeling the backlash enough as it is.”
Kennedy nodded in complete agreement, a customer called me to bring him a bottle of hot sauce, and I had new food for thought.
The server replacing me called in to say her car had a flat tire, and I stayed at Merlotte’s two extra hours. Kennedy, who’d be there until closing,
gave me a hard time about being indispensible, until I swatted her with a towel. Kennedy perked up quite a bit when Danny came in. He’d obviously
gone home after work to shower and shave again, and he looked at Kennedy as if his world were now complete when he climbed onto the barstool.
What he said was, “Give me a beer and be quick about it, woman.”
“You want me to pour that beer on your head, Danny?”
“Don’t make no difference to me how I get it.” And they grinned at each other.
Just after dark, my cell phone vibrated in my apron pocket. As soon as I could, I stepped into Sam’s office. I’d gotten a text from Eric. “See U
later,” it said. And that was all. But I had a genuine smile on my face the rest of the evening, and when I drove home, I felt happy all over to see Eric
sitting on my front porch, whether he’d wrecked my kitchen or not. And he had a new toaster with him, a red bow stuck to the box.
“To what do I owe the honor?” I asked tartly. It didn’t do to let Eric know I’d been anticipating his visit. Of course, he probably had an idea that was
so, through our blood bond.
“We haven’t had any fun lately,” he said. He handed over the toaster.
“Between me putting out a fire and you attacking Pam? Yeah, I’d say that was a fair statement. Thanks for the replacement toaster, though I
wouldn’t classify that as fun. What do you have in mind?”
“Later, of course, I have spectacular sex in mind,” he said, standing up and walking over to me. “I’ve thought of a position we haven’t tried yet.”
I’m not as flexible as Eric, and the last time we’d tried something real adventurous, I’d had a sore hip for three days. But I was willing to
experiment. “What do you have in mind before the spectacular sex?” I asked.
“We have to visit a new dance club,” he said, but I caught the shade of worry in his voice. “That’s what they’re calling it, to try to bring in the young
people who look pretty. Like you.”
“Where is this dance club?” Since I’d been on my feet for hours, this plan was not the most tempting. But it had been a long time since we’d had
fun as a couple—in public.
“It’s between here and Shreveport,” Eric said, and hesitated. “Victor just opened it.”
“Oh. Is it smart for you to go there?” I said, dismayed. Eric’s program had zero appeal now.
Victor and Eric were engaged in a silent struggle. Victor Madden was the Louisiana proxy for Felipe, King of Nevada, Arkansas, and Louisiana.
Felipe was based in Las Vegas, and we wondered (Eric and Pam and I) if he’d given Victor this large bone simply to get the ambitious Victor out
of Felipe’s richest territory. In my heart of hearts, I wanted Victor to die. Victor had sent his two most trusted minions, Bruno and Corinna, to kill Pam
and me, simply in order to weaken Eric, whom Felipe had retained since he was the most productive sheriff in the state.
Pam and I had turned the tables. Bruno and Corinna were piles of dust by the interstate, and no one could prove we’d done it.
Victor had put out the word that he was offering a high bounty for anyone who could give him some information on his minions’ whereabouts, but
no one had come forward. Only Pam, Eric, and I knew what had happened. Victor could hardly accuse us outright, since that would be admitting
that he’d sent them to kill us. Kind of a Mexican standoff.
Next time, Victor might send someone more cautious and careful. Bruno and Corinna had been overconfident.
“It’s not smart to go to this club, but we don’t have a choice,” Eric said. “Victor has ordered me to make an appearance with my wife. He’ll think
I’m afraid of him if I don’t bring you.”
I thought this through while I was searching my closet, trying to think of anything I owned that would look good at a trendy dance club. Eric was
lying on my bed, his hands behind his head. “There’s something in my car, I forgot,” he said suddenly, and was a blur going out the door. He was
back in seconds, carrying a garment on a hanger enveloped in a clear plastic bag.
“What?” I said. “It’s not my birthday.”
“Can’t a vampire give his lover a present?”
I had to smile back at him. “Well, yes he can,” I said. I love presents. The toaster had been reparation. This was a surprise. I carefully removed the
plastic bag. The garment on the hanger was a dress. Probably.
“This is—is this the whole thing?” I asked, holding it up. There was a black U-shaped neckband—a large U, both front and back—and the rest
was bronze and shiny and pleated, like many broad bronze ribbons sewn together. Well, not so many. The saleswoman had left the price tag on. I
tried not to look, failed, and felt my mouth fall open after I’d absorbed it. I could buy six or maybe ten pieces at Wal-Mart, or three at Dillard’s, for the
price of this dress.
“You will look wonderful,” Eric said. He grinned fangily. “Everyone will envy me.”
Who wouldn’t feel good, hearing that?
I emerged from the bathroom to find that my new buddy Immanuel was back. He’d set up a hair and makeup station on my dressing table. It felt
very odd to see yet another man in my bedroom. Immanuel seemed to be in a much happier mood tonight. Even his odd haircut looked perkier.
While Eric watched as closely as if he suspected Immanuel of being an assassin, the skinny hairdresser poofed me and curled me and made me
up. Since Tara and I had been little girls, I hadn’t had such a fun time in front of a mirror. When Immanuel was through, I looked . . . glossy and
confident.
“Thank you,” I said, wondering where the real Sookie had gone.
“You’re welcome,” Immanuel said seriously. “You’ve got great skin. I like working on you.”
No one had ever said that to me, and all I could come up with in response was, “Please leave a card.” He fished one out and propped it against a
china lady my grandmother had loved. The juxtaposition left me feeling a little sad. I’d come down a long road since her death.
“How’s your sister?” I asked, since I was thinking of sad things.
“She had a good day today,” Immanuel said. “Thanks for asking.” Though he didn’t look at Eric while he said this, I saw Eric glance away, his jaw
tight. Irritated.
Immanuel departed after packing up all his paraphernalia, and I found a strapless bra and a thong—which I hated, but who wants a pantyline
under a dress like that?—and began to assemble myself. Luckily, I had good black heels. I knew strappy sandals would suit the dress better, but the
heels would have to do.
Eric had really paid attention as I got dressed. “So smooth,” he said, running his hand up my leg.
“Hey, you keep doing that, we won’t get to the club, and all this preparation will have gone to waste.” Call me pathetic, but I actually did want
someone else besides Eric to see the total effect of the new dress and the new hair and the good makeup.
“Not entirely to waste,” he said, but he changed into his own party clothes. I braided his hair so it would look neat and tied the end with a black
ribbon. Eric looked like a buccaneer out on the town.
We should have been happy, excited about our date, looking forward to dancing together at the club. I couldn’t know what Eric was thinking as we
walked out to his car, but I knew he wasn’t happy with what we were doing and where we were going.
That made two of us.
I decided to ease into a back-and-forth with a little light conversation.
“How are the new vamps working out?” I said.
“They come in when they’re supposed to and put in their bar time,” he said unenthusiastically. Three vampires who’d ended up in Eric’s area after
Katrina had asked Eric for permission to stay in Area Five, though they wanted to nest in Minden, not Shreveport itself.
“What’s wrong with them?” I said. “You don’t seem very excited about the addition to your ranks.” I slid into my seat. Eric walked around the car.
“Palomino does well enough,” he admitted grudgingly as he got in on the driver’s side. “But Rubio is stupid, and Parker is weak.”
I didn’t know the three well enough to debate that. Palomino, who went by one name, was an attractive young vampire with freaky coloring—her
skin was a natural tan tone, while her hair was pale blond. Rubio Hermosa was handsome, but—I had to agree with Eric—he was dim and never
had much to say for himself. Parker was as nerdy in death as he had been in life, and though he’d improved the Fangtasia computer systems, he
seemed scared of his own shadow.
“You want to talk to me about the argument between you and Pam?” I asked once I’d buckled up. Instead of his Corvette, Eric had brought
Fangtasia’s Lincoln Town Car. It was incredibly comfortable, and given the way he drove when he was in the Vette, I was always glad when we had
an evening out in the Lincoln.
“No,” said Eric. He was instantly brooding and emanating worry.
I waited for him to elaborate.
I waited some more.
“All right,” I said, trying hard to regain my sense of pleasure in being out on a date with a gorgeous man. “Okeydokey. Have it your way. But I think
the sex will be a few degrees less spectacular if I’m worried about you and Pam.”
That bit of levity earned me a dark look.
“I know that Pam wants to make another vampire,” I said. “I understand there’s a time element involved.”
“Immanuel shouldn’t have talked,” Eric said.
“It was nice to have someone actually share information with me, information directly pertaining to people I care about.” Did I have to draw a
picture?
“Sookie, Victor has said I can’t give permission for Pam to make a child.” Eric’s jaw snapped shut like a steel trap.
Oh. “Kings have control over reproduction, I guess,” I said cautiously.
“Yes. Absolute control. But you understand that Pam is giving me hell about this, and so is Victor.”
“Victor isn’t a king, really, is he? Maybe if you went directly to Felipe?”
“Every time I bypass Victor, he finds a way to punish me.”
There was no point in talking about it. Eric was being pulled in two different directions as it was.
So on the way to Victor’s club, which Eric said was called Vampire’s Kiss, we talked about the visit of the antiques dealers the next day. There
were lots of things I would have liked to discuss, but in view of Eric’s overwhelmingly difficult position, I didn’t want to bring up my own problems.
Plus, I still had the feeling that I didn’t know everything there was to know about Eric’s situation.
“Eric,” I said, and knew I was speaking too abruptly and with too much intensity. “You don’t tell me everything about your business, am I right?”
“You’re right,” he said, without missing a beat. “But that’s for many reasons, Sookie. Most important is that some of it you could only worry about,
and the rest of it might put you in danger. Knowledge isn’t always power.” I pressed my lips together and refused to look at him. Childish, I know, but
I didn’t completely believe him.
After a moment of silence, he added, “There’s also the fact that I’m not used to sharing my daily concerns with a human, and it’s hard to break the
habit after a thousand years.”
Right. And none of those secrets involved my future. Right. Evidently, Eric read my stony self-possession as grudging acceptance, because he
decided our tense moment was over.
“But you tell me everything, my lover, don’t you?” he asked teasingly.
I glared at him and didn’t answer.
That wasn’t what Eric had expected. “You don’t?” he asked, and I couldn’t figure out everything that was in his voice. Disappointment, concern, a
touch of anger . . . and a dash of excitement. That was a lot to pack into a couple of words, but I swear it was all there. “That’s an unexpected twist,”
he murmured. “And yet, we say we love each other.”
“We say we do.” I agreed. “And I do love you, but I’m beginning to see that being in love doesn’t mean sharing as much as I thought we would.”
He had nothing to say to that.
We passed Vic’s Redneck Roadhouse on the way to the new dance club, and even from the interstate I could see that the parking lot was
packed. “Crap,” I said. “There sits all of Merlotte’s business. What do they have that we haven’t got?”
“Entertainment. The novelty of being the new place. Waitresses in hot pants and halter tops,” Eric began.
“Oh, stop,” I said, disgusted. “What with the trouble about Sam being a shapeshifter and all the other stuff, I don’t know how much longer
Merlotte’s can hold out.”
There was a surge of pleasure from Eric. “Oh, then you would have no job,” he said, with faux sympathy. “You could work for me at Fangtasia.”
“No thank you.” I said it immediately. “I would hate to see the fangbangers come in night after night, always wanting what they shouldn’t have. It’s
just sad and bad.”
Eric glanced over at me, not at all happy with my quick response. “That’s how I make my money, Sookie, on the perverse dreams and fantasies
of humans. Most of those humans are tourists who visit Fangtasia once or twice and then go back to Minden or Emerson and tell their neighbors
about their walk on the wild side. Or they’re people from the Air Force base who like to show how tough they are by drinking at a vampire bar.”
“I understand that. And I know if fangbangers don’t come to Fangtasia, they’ll go somewhere else they can hang around with vampires. But I don’t
think I’d like the ambience on a day-to-day basis.” I was kind of proud of myself for working in “ambience.”
“What would you do, then? If Merlotte’s closed?”
That was a good question, and one I was going to have to consider seriously. I said, “I’d try to get another waitressing job, maybe at the Crawdad
Diner. The tips wouldn’t be as good as at a bar, but the aggravation would be less. And maybe I’d try to take some online classes and get some
kind of degree. That would be nice, to have more education.”
There was a moment’s silence. “You didn’t mention contacting your great-grandfather,” Eric said. “He could make sure you never wanted for
anything.”
“I’m not sure I could,” I said, surprised. “Contact him, that is. I guess Claude would know how. In fact, I’m sure he would. But Niall made it pretty
clear he thought staying in touch wouldn’t be a good idea.” It was my turn to think for a second. “Eric, do you think Claude has an ulterior motive for
coming to live with me?”
“Of course he does; Dermot, too,” Eric said, without missing a beat. “I only wonder that you need to ask.”
Not for the first time, I felt inadequate for the task of coping with my life. I fought a wave of self-pity, of bitterness, while I forced myself to examine
Eric’s words. I’d suspected as much, of course, and that was why I’d asked Sam if people really changed. Claude had always been the master of
selfishness, the duke of disinterest. Why would he change? Oh, sure, he missed being around other fairies, especially now that his sisters were
dead. But why would he come live with someone who had as little fairy blood as I did (especially when I’d been indirectly responsible for Claudine’s
death) unless he had something else on his mind?
Dermot’s motivation was just as opaque. It would be easy to assume Dermot’s character was like Jason’s because they looked so much alike,
but I had learned (from bitter experience) what happened when I made assumptions. Dermot had been under a spell for a long time, a spell that had
rendered him crazed, but even through the mental haze of the magic worked on him, Dermot had tried to do the right thing. At least, that was what
he’d told me, and I had a little evidence that that was true.
I was still brooding over my gullibility when we took an exit ramp in the middle of nowhere. You could see the shine of the lights of Vampire’s Kiss,
which of course was the point.
“Aren’t you afraid that people who would have driven on into Shreveport to go to Fangtasia are just going to pull off when they see this club?” I
said.
“Yes.”
I’d asked a dumb question, so I gave him some slack for being short with me. Eric must have been brooding over his financial downturn ever
since Victor had bought the building. But I wasn’t prepared to give Eric any more free passes. We were a couple, and he should either share his life
completely with me or let me worry about my own concerns. It wasn’t easy, being yoked to Eric. I glanced over at him, realizing how stupid that
would sound to one of the Fangtasia fangbangers. Eric was certainly one of the handsomest males I’d ever seen. He was strong, intelligent, and
fantastic in bed.
Right now, there lay a frosty silence between that strong, intelligent, lusty man and me, and that silence lasted until we parked. It was hard to find a
spot, which made Eric even more pissed off. That wasn’t hard to tell.
Since Eric had been summoned, it would have been polite to have reserved him a parking spot by the front door . . . or given him the green light
to come in by the back entrance. There was also the unavoidable lesson in pictures that Vampire’s Kiss was so busy it was hard to find a parking
spot.
Ouch.
I struggled to push aside my own worries. I needed to concentrate on the troubles we were about to face. Victor didn’t like or trust Eric, and the
feeling was mutual. Since Victor had been put in charge of Louisiana, Eric’s position as the only holdover from the Sophie-Anne era had become
increasingly precarious. I was pretty sure I’d gotten to continue my life unmolested only because Eric had hoodwinked me into marrying him in the
eyes of the vampires.
Eric, his mouth pressed into a thin line, came around to open my door. I could tell he was using the maneuver as a way to scan the parking lot for
danger. He stood in such a way that his body was between me and the club, and as I swung my legs out of the Town Car, he asked, “Who’s in the
parking lot, lover?”
I stood, slowly and carefully, my eyes closed to concentrate. I put my hand over his where it rested on the door frame. In the warm night, with a light
wind gently riffling my hair, I sent my extra sense out. “A couple having sex in a car two rows away,” I whispered. “A man throwing up behind the
black pickup on the other side of the parking lot. Two couples just pulling in, in an Escalade. One vampire by the door to the club. Another vampire
closing fast.”
When vamps go on alert, there’s no mistaking it. Eric’s fangs ran out, his body tensed, and he whirled to look outward.
Pam said, “Master.” She stepped out of the shadow of a big SUV. Eric relaxed; and so, gradually, did I. Whatever had made the two fight at my
house, it had been put aside for the evening.
“I came ahead as you bid me,” she murmured, the night wind picking up her voice and tossing it. Her face looked oddly dark.
“Pam, step into the light,” I said.
She did, though certainly she was not obliged to obey me.
The darkness under Pam’s white skin was the result of a beating. Vampires don’t bruise exactly like we do, and they heal quickly—but when
they’ve been hit hard, you can tell it for a little while. “What happened to you?” Eric asked. His voice was completely empty, which I knew was an
awfully bad thing.
“I told the door guards that I needed to come in to make sure Victor knew you were arriving. An excuse to make sure that the interior was secure.”
“They prevented you.”
“Yes.”
A little breeze had sprung up, dancing the night air across the smelly parking lot. The breeze picked up my hair and blew it around my face. Eric
had his tied at the nape of his neck, but Pam reached up to hold hers back. Eric had wished Victor dead for months, and I was sorry to say I felt the
same. It wasn’t only Eric’s worry and anger that I was channeling; I myself understood how much better life would be for us if Victor was gone.
I’d come so far from what I’d been. At moments like this I was both sad and relieved that I could think about Victor’s death not only without qualms,
but with positive zeal. My determination to survive, and to ensure the survival of those I loved, was stronger than the religion I’d always held so dear.
“We have to go in, or they’ll send someone after us,” Eric said finally, and we walked to the main door in silence. All we needed was a badass
theme song playing in the background: something ominous and cool, with a lot of drums, to indicate “The Visiting Vampires and Their Human
Sidekick Walk into a Trap.” However, the club’s music was out of synch with our little drama—“Hips Don’t Lie” was not exactly badass music.
We passed a bearded man hosing down the gravel close to the door. I could still spot dark patches of blood. Pam snorted. “Not mine,” she
muttered.
The vampire on duty at the door was a sturdy brunette wearing a studded leather collar and a leather bustier, with a tutu (I swear to God) and
motorcycle boots. Only the frilly skirt looked out of character.
“Sheriff Eric,” she said in heavily accented English. “I am Ana Lyudmila. I welcome you to Vampire’s Kiss.” She didn’t even glance at Pam, much
less me. I pretty much expected her to ignore me, but her disregard of Pam was an insult, especially since Pam had already had an encounter with
the club personnel. This behavior was the kind of trigger that could send Pam over the edge, which I figured might be the plan. If Pam went ballistic,
the new vamps would have a legitimate reason to kill her. The target on Eric’s back would assume large proportions.
Naturally, I wouldn’t even be a factor in their thinking, because they couldn’t imagine what a human could do against their vampire strength and
speed. And since I wasn’t Superwoman, they might be right. I wasn’t sure how many of the vampires knew I wasn’t wholly human, or how much
they’d care even if they knew I was a fraction fairy. It wasn’t like I’d ever exhibited any fairy powers. My value lay in my telepathic talent and my
connection to Niall. Since Niall had left this world for the world of the fae, I had expected that value to decrease accordingly. But Niall might choose
to return to the human world any moment, and I was Eric’s wife by vampire rite. So Niall would side with Eric in an open conflict. At least that was my
best bet. With fairies, who knew? It was time to assert myself.
I laid my hand on Pam’s shoulder and patted her. It was like patting a rock. I smiled at Ana Lyudmila. “Hi,” I said, perky as a cheerleader on
uppers. “I’m Sookie. I’m married to Eric. I guess you didn’t know that? And this is Pam, Eric’s child and his strong right arm. I guess you didn’t know
that, either? Cause otherwise, not greeting us appropriately is just plain rude.” I beamed at her.
Looking as though I were forcing her to swallow a live frog, Ana Lyudmila said, “Welcome, human wife of Eric and revered fighter Pam. I
apologize for failing to offer you a suitable greeting.”
Pam was staring at Ana Lyudmila as if she were wondering how long it would take to pull Ana’s eyelashes out one by one. I bumped Pam’s
shoulder with my fist, buddy-buddy. “We’re cool, Ana Lyudmila,” I said. “It’s all good here.” Pam switched her stare to me, and it was all I could do
not to flinch. To add to the tension, Eric was doing a good imitation of a big white rock. I gave him a very laden look.
Ana Lyudmila couldn’t have beaten Pam up. She didn’t have the juice. Besides, she looked okay, and I was completely sure that if someone had
laid a hand on Pam, that vampire would show the aftereffect.
After a second, Eric said, “I think your master is waiting for us.” His tone was one of gentle chiding. He made sure his massive self-control was
evident.
If Ana Lyudmila could have blushed, I think she would have. “Yes, of course,” she said. “Luis! Antonio!” Two young men, dark-headed and brawny,
materialized out of the crowd. They were wearing leather shorts and boots. Period. Okay, a different look for Vampire’s Kiss workers. I’d assumed
Ana Lyudmila was following her own fashion genie, but apparently all the vamps on duty had to wear sort of caveman􀀁􀀁sex slave outfits. At least, I
assumed that was the look they were going for.
Luis, the taller of the two, said, “Follow us, please,” in accented English. His nipples were pierced, which was something I’d never seen before,
and naturally I found myself wanting to take a closer look. But in my book, it was basically bad taste to stare at someone’s assets, no matter how
much on display they were.
Antonio couldn’t hide the fact that Pam had made an impression on him, but that wouldn’t stop him from killing us if Victor ordered him to do so.
We followed the bondage Bobbsey Twins across the crowded dance floor. Those leather shorts were an adventure from behind, let me tell you.
And the pictures of Elvis decorating the walls were an education, too. It wasn’t often you ran into a bondage/Elvis/ whorehouse-themed vampire
club.
Pam was admiring the decor, too, but not with her normal sardonic amusement. There seemed to be a lot going on in Pam’s head.
“How are your three friends?” she asked Antonio. “The ones who prevented me from entering.”
He smiled in a tight sort of way, and I had the feeling the injured vampires hadn’t been his favorites. “They’re taking blood from donors in the
back,” he said. “I think Pearl’s arm has healed.”
As he preceded me through the noisy room, Eric was evaluating the club in a series of casual glances. It was important to him that he seem at
ease, as if he were quite sure that his boss meant him no harm. I could tell that through our bond. Since no one cared about me, I was free to look
where I wished . . . though I hoped I was doing it with a suitably careless air.
There were at least twenty bloodsuckers in Vampire’s Kiss, more than Eric ever had in Fangtasia at one time. There were also a lot of humans. I
didn’t know what the capacity of the building was, but I was pretty sure it had been exceeded. Eric reached behind him, and I took his cool hand. He
tugged me forward, wrapped his left arm around my shoulders, and Pam closed in from the rear. We were at DEFCON Four, Orange Alert, or
whatever came right before the blowup. The tension vibrated through Eric like a plucked guitar string.
And then we spotted its source.
Victor was sitting at the back in a kind of corral for VIPs. It was lined with a huge, square red velvet banquette, before which was centered the
usual low table. It was littered with little evening purses and half-empty drinks and dollar bills. Victor was definitely the centerpiece of the grouping,
his arms around the young man and woman flanking him. The tableau was a poster of what conservative humans feared most: the corrupt vampire
seducing the youth of America, inducting them into orgies of bisexuality and bloodsucking. I looked from one breather to the other. Though one was
male and one female, they were otherwise startlingly the same. Dipping into their heads, I quickly learned both were using drugs, both were over
twenty-one, and both were experienced sexually. I felt a little sad for them, but I knew I couldn’t be responsible. Though they had yet to realize it, they
were only props for Victor. Their position suited their vanity.
There was another human in the corral, a young woman seated by herself. She was wearing a white dress with a full skirt, and her brown eyes
fixed on Pam with desperation. The woman was clearly horrified at the company she was keeping. A minute before I would have bet that Pam
couldn’t get any more angry or miserable than she’d been, but I would have been wrong.
“Miriam,” Pam whispered.
Oh, Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea. This was the woman Pam wanted to turn, the woman she wanted to become her child. Miriam had to be
the sickest woman I’d ever seen who wasn’t in a hospital. But her light brown hair was puffed out in a party style, and she’d been made up, though
the cosmetics stood out on a face so pale even her lips looked white.
Eric’s face didn’t show anything, but I could feel him scrambling, struggling to keep his face still and his thoughts clear.
Several points to Victor for an amazing ambush.
Luis and Antonio, having delivered us, positioned themselves at the opening to the VIP corral. I didn’t know if they were there to keep us in or to
keep other people out. We were further protected by stand-up cardboard figures of Elvis, at least life-size. I wasn’t impressed. I’d met the real thing.
Victor greeted us with a wonderful smile, white and toothy, as brilliant as a game show host’s. “Eric, how good to see you in my new enterprise!
Do you like the decor?” He made his hand flow to indicate the whole crowded club. Though Victor was not a tall man, he was clearly the king of the
castle, and he was devouring every minute of it. He leaned forward to pick up his drink from the low table.
Even the glass was dramatic—dark, smoky, fluted. It fit in with the “decor” that made Victor so proud. I would have called it (if I ever got a chance
to describe it to someone else, which at this point seemed pretty unlikely) early bordello: lots of dark wood, flocked wallpaper, leather, and red
velvet. It looked heavy and florid to me; possibly I was prejudiced. The people gyrating on the dance floor seemed to be enjoying Vampire’s Kiss no
matter how it was decorated. The band was a vampire band, so they were great. They’d play a current song, then they’d do a more bluesy rock
number. Since the band members could have played with Robert Johnson and Memphis Minnie, they’d had several decades to practice.
“I’m amazed,” Eric said in a completely uninflected voice.
“Pardon my bad manners! Please have a seat,” Victor said. “My companions are . . . Your name, sweetness?” he asked the girl.
“I’m Mindy Simpson,” she said with a coquettish smile. “This is my husband, Mark Simpson.”
Eric acknowledged them with a flick of the eye. Pam and I hadn’t even entered into the conversational game yet, so we didn’t have to respond.
Victor didn’t introduce the pale young woman. He was clearly saving the best for last.
“I see you have your dear wife with you,” Victor said as we newcomers moved to sit on the long banquette to Victor’s right. It wasn’t as
comfortable as I’d hoped it would be, and the depth of the seat didn’t agree with the length of my legs. The life-size cutout of Elvis to my right was
wearing the famous white jumpsuit. Classy.
“Yeah, I’m here,” I said dismally.
“And your famous second, Pam Ravenscroft,” Victor continued, as if he were identifying us for a hidden microphone.
I squeezed Eric’s hand. He couldn’t read my mind, which (just at this moment) I felt was a pity. There was a lot going on here we didn’t know
about. In vampire eyes, as Eric’s human wife I pretty much ranked as his number one designated concubine. The “wife” title gave me status and
protection, theoretically rendering me untouchable by other vampires and their servants. I wasn’t exactly proud of being a second-class citizen, but
once I’d understood why Eric had tricked me into the relationship, I’d gradually reconciled myself to the title. Now it was time to offer Eric a little
support in return.
“How long has Vampire’s Kiss been open?” I beamed at the loathsome Victor. I’d had years of experience in looking happy when I wasn’t, and I
was the queen of chitchat.
“You didn’t see all my advance publicity? Only three weeks, but so far it’s been quite the success,” Victor said, his eyes barely brushing me. He
was not interested in me as a person, not at all. He wasn’t even interested in me sexually. Believe me, I know the signs. He was far more interested
in me as a creature whose death would wound Eric. In other words, my absence would be more effective than my presence.
Since he was deigning to talk to me, I thought I’d take advantage of it.
“Do you spend a lot of time here? I’m surprised they don’t need you in New Orleans more often.” Snap! I waited for his answer, smiling steadily.
“Sophie-Anne saw fit to remain permanently based in New Orleans, but I see my rule as more of a floating government,” Victor said genially. “I
like to keep a firm hand on all that goes on in Louisiana, especially since I find I am simply a regent, holding the state for Felipe, my dear king.” His
grin became positively ferocious.
“My felicitations on becoming regent,” Eric said, as though nothing could be more desirable.
There was a lot of pretending going on in this building. So many undercurrents, you could drown in them, and we just might.
“You’re very welcome,” Victor said savagely. “Yes, Felipe has decreed I should style myself ‘regent.’ It’s so unusual for a king to have amassed as
many territories as Felipe has, and he’s taken his time deciding what to do. He has decided to keep all the titles for himself.”
“And will you be regent of Arkansas, too?” Pam asked. At the sound of Pam’s voice, Miriam Earnest began to cry. She was managing to be as
quiet about it as a woman can be, but no weeping is silent. Pam did not look in Miriam’s direction.
“No,” Victor said, biting out the word. “Red Rita has been given that honor.”
I didn’t have any idea who Red Rita might be, but both Eric and Pam seemed impressed. “She’s a great fighter,” Eric told me. “A strong vampire.
She’s a good choice to rebuild Arkansas.”
Great, maybe we could go live there.
Though I couldn’t read vampire minds, I didn’t have to. All you had to do was watch Victor’s face to understand that Victor had wanted—yearned
for—the title of king, that he had hoped to rule both of Felipe’s new territories. His disappointment had made him angry, and he was focusing that
anger on Eric, the biggest target within his reach. Provoking Eric and intruding on his territory would not be enough for Victor.
And that was why Miriam was sitting in the club tonight. I tried to get inside her head. When I carefully felt around the edges, I met with a sort of
white fog. She was drugged, though I didn’t know what sort of drug she’d taken or whether she’d been willing or coerced.
“Yes, of course,” Victor said, and I pulled myself back into the here and now with a jerk. While I’d zoned out in Miriam’s head, the vampires had
stayed on the topic of Red Rita. “While she’s settling in next door, I thought it would be appropriate to build up the area of Louisiana that abuts her
territory. I opened the human place, and this one.” Victor was practically purring.
“You own Vic’s Redneck Roadhouse,” I said numbly. Of course! I should have known. Was Victor compiling reasons for me to want him dead?
Naturally, economics should have nothing to do with life and death, but all too often the two were definitely linked.
“Yes,” Victor said, grinning at me. He was just as merry as a department store Santa. “You’ve been by?” He replaced his glass on the table.
“Nope, too busy,” I said.
“But I heard business at Merlotte’s has fallen off?” Victor tried a look of faux concern on for size, discarded it. “If you need a job, Sookie, I’ll put in
a good word with my manager at the Redneck Roadhouse . . . unless you’d prefer to work here? Wouldn’t that be fun!”
I had to take a deep breath. There was a long moment’s silence. For that moment, everything hung in the balance.
With an amazing control, Eric spackled his rage away behind a wall, at least temporarily. He said, “Sookie is well suited where she works now,
Victor. If she were not, she would come to live with me and perhaps work at Fangtasia. She is a modern American woman and used to supporting
herself.” Eric said this as if he were proud of my independence, though I knew that wasn’t the case. He really couldn’t understand why I persisted in
keeping my job. “While I’m discussing my female associates, Pam tells me that you disciplined her. It’s not customary to discipline a sheriff’s
second. Surely that should be left for her master to do.” Eric allowed his voice to have a slight edge.
“You weren’t here,” Victor protested smoothly. “And she showed my doormen great disrespect by insisting she should come inside before you
did for a security check, as if we would permit anything in our club to threaten our most powerful sheriff.”
“Did you have business you wanted to discuss?” Eric said. “Not that it isn’t wonderful seeing what you’ve done here. However . . .” He let his voice
trail off, as if he were simply too polite to say, “I have better fish to fry.”
“Of course, thanks for reminding me,” Victor said. He leaned forward to pick up the smoky gray stemmed glass, refilled by a server so that it was
brimming with dark red liquid. “I’m sorry, I haven’t offered you a drink yet. Some blood for you, Eric, Pam?”
Pam had taken advantage of their conversation to glance at Miriam, who looked as though she were going to keel over any second . . . and
maybe not get up again. Pam pulled her eyes away from the young woman and concentrated on Victor. She shook her head mutely.
“Thank you for the offer, Victor,” Eric began, “but . . .”
“I know you’ll raise a glass with me. The law prevents me from offering you a drink from Mindy or Mark since they’re not registered donors, and
I’m all about being law-abiding.” He smiled at Mindy and Mark, who grinned back. Idiots. “Sookie, what will you have?”
Eric and Pam were obliged to accept the offer of synthetic blood, but because I was only a human, I was allowed to insist I wasn’t thirsty. If he’d
offered me country-fried steak and fried green tomatoes, I would’ve said I wasn’t hungry.
Luis beckoned to one of the servers, and the man vanished to reappear with some TrueBlood. The bottles were on a large tray, along with the
dark, fancy stemware matching Victor’s. “I’m sure the bottles don’t appeal to your aesthetic sense,” Victor said. “They offend me.”
Like all the servers, the man who brought the drinks was human, a handsome guy in a leather loincloth (even smaller than Luis’s leather shorts)
and high boots. A sort of rosette pinned to his loincloth read “Colton.” His eyes were a startling gray. When he placed the tray on the table and
unloaded it, he was thinking about someone named Chic, or Chico . . . and when he met my eyes directly, he thought, Fairy blood on the glasses.
Don’t let your vamps drink.
I looked at him for a long moment. He knew about me. Now I knew something about him. He’d heard about my ability, common knowledge in the
supernatural community, and he’d believed in it.
Colton cast his eyes down.
Eric twisted the cap to unseal the bottle, lifted it to pour the contents into the glass.
NO, I said to him. We couldn’t communicate telepathically, but I sent a wave of negativity, and I prayed he’d pick up on it.
“I have nothing against American packaging, as you do,” Eric said smoothly, raising the bottle directly to his lips. Pam followed suit.
A flicker of vexation crossed Victor’s face so quickly I might have imagined it if I hadn’t been watching him so intently. The gray-eyed server
backed away.
“Have you seen your great-grandfather recently, Sookie?” Victor said, as if he were saying, “Gotcha!”
There was no point pretending ignorance about my fairy connection.
“Not in the past couple of weeks,” I said cautiously.
“But you have two of your kind living in your house.”
This was not classified information, and I was pretty sure Eric’s new vampire Heidi had told Victor. Heidi really didn’t have a choice, which was
the downside to having living human relatives whom you still loved. “Yes, my cousin and my great-uncle are staying with me for a while.” I was proud
that I managed to sound almost bored.
“I wondered if you might be able to give me some insight into the state of fairy politics,” Victor said smoothly. Mindy Simpson, tired of
conversations that didn’t include her, began pouting. She was unwise.
“Not me. I stay away from politics,” I told Victor.
“Truly? Even after your ordeal?”
“Yep, even after my ordeal,” I said flatly. I really, really wanted to talk about my abduction and mutilation. Great party conversation. “I’m just not a
political animal.”
“But an animal,” Victor said smoothly.
There was a moment’s frozen silence. However, I was determined that if Eric died trying to kill this vampire, it wasn’t going to be for an insult to
me.
“That’s me,” I said, returning his smile with interest. “Hot-blooded, breathing. I could even lactate. The whole mammal package.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed. Maybe I’d gone too far.
“Did we have anything further to discuss, Regent?” Pam asked, rightly guessing Eric was too angry to speak. “I’ll be glad to stay as late as you
want, or as long as my words please you, but I am due to work at Fangtasia tonight, and my master Eric has a meeting to attend. And apparently
my friend Miriam is the worse for wear tonight, and I’ll take her home with me to sleep it off.”
Victor looked at the pallid woman as if he were only just now noticing her. “Oh, do you know her?” he asked negligently. “Yes, I believe someone
mentioned that. Eric, is this the woman you told me Pam wanted to bring over? I’m so sorry I had to say no, since by my reckoning she may not
have too long to live.”
Pam didn’t move. She didn’t even twitch.
“You may go,” Victor said, overdoing the offhanded air. “Since I’ve given you the news about my regency, and you’ve seen my beautiful club. Oh,
I’m thinking of opening a tattoo establishment and maybe a lawyer’s office, though my man for that post has to study modern law. He received his
law degree in Paris in the eighteen hundreds.” Victor’s indulgent smile faded completely. “You know that as regent, I have the right to open a
business in anyone’s sheriffdom? All the money from the new clubs will come directly to me. I hope your revenues don’t suffer too much, Eric.”
“Not at all,” Eric said. (I didn’t think that actually had any meaning.) “We’re all a part of your turf, Master.” If his voice had been laundry, it would
have flapped in the wind, it was so dry and empty.
We rose, more or less as one, and dipped our heads to Victor. He waved a dismissive hand at us and bent to kiss Mindy Simpson. Mark
huddled closer on the vampire’s other side to nuzzle Victor’s shoulder. Pam went over to Miriam Earnest and bent over the girl to put her arm
around her and help her to rise. Once on her feet and supported by Pam, Miriam focused on making it out the door. Her mind might be clouded, but
her eyes were screaming.
We left the club in grim silence (at least as far as our own conversation went; the music just never let up), escorted by Luis and Antonio. The
brothers bypassed sturdy Ana Lyudmila to follow us out into the parking lot, which surprised me.
When we had filed through the first row of cars, Eric turned to face them. Not coincidentally, the bulk of an Escalade blocked the view between
Ana Lyudmila and our little party. “Do you two have something to say to me?” he asked very softly. As if she suddenly understood she was out of
Vampire’s Kiss, Miriam gasped and began crying, and Pam took her in her arms.
“It wasn’t our idea, sheriff,” said Antonio, the shorter of the two. His oiled abs gleamed under the parking lot lights.
Luis said, “We’re loyal to Felipe, our true king, but Victor is not easy to serve. It was a bad night for us when we were dispatched to Louisiana to
serve him. Now that Bruno and Corinna have disappeared, he hasn’t found anyone to take their places. No strong lieutenant. He’s traveling
constantly, trying to keep his eye on every corner of Louisiana.” Luis shook his head. “We’re badly overextended. He needs to settle in New
Orleans, building back up the vampire structure there. We don’t need to be trailing around in leather scarcely covering our asses, draining the
income from your club. Halving the available income is not good economics, and the startup costs were steep.”
“If you’re trying to lure me into betraying my new master, you’ve picked the wrong vampire,” Eric said, and I tried not to let my mouth hang open.
I’d thought it was Christmas in June when Luis and Antonio revealed their discontent, but obviously I hadn’t been thinking deviously enough . . .
again.
Pam said, “Leather shorts are attractive compared to the black synthetics I have to wear.” She was holding up Miriam, but she didn’t look at her
or refer to her, as if she wanted everyone else to forget the girl was there.
Her costume complaint was not out of character, but it was irrelevant. Pam had always been nothing if not on task. Antonio gave her a look of
disillusioned disgust. “You were supposed to be so fierce,” he muttered. He looked at Eric. “And you were supposed to be so bold.” He and Luis
turned and strode back into the club.
After that, Pam and Eric began to move with speed, as if we had a deadline to get off the property.
Pam simply picked up Miriam and hurried to Eric’s car. He opened the back door, and she got her girlfriend in and slid in after her. Seeing that
haste was the order of the night, I climbed into the front passenger seat and buckled up in silence. I looked back to see that Miriam had passed out
the minute she realized she was safe.
As the car left the parking lot, Pam began sniggering and Eric grinned broadly. I was too startled to ask them what was funny.
“Victor just can’t restrain himself,” Pam said. “Making the show of my poor Miriam.”
“And then the priceless offer from the leather twins!”
“Did you see Antonio’s face?” Pam demanded. “Honestly, I haven’t had so much fun since I flashed my fangs at that old woman who complained
about the color I painted my house!”
“That’ll give them something to think about,” Eric said. He glanced over at me, his fangs glistening. “That was a good moment. I can’t believe he
thought we’d fall for that.”
“What if Antonio and Luis were sincere?” I asked. “What if Victor had taken Miriam’s blood or brought her over himself?” I twisted in my seat to
look back at Pam.
She was looking at me almost with pity, as if I were a hopeless romantic. “He couldn’t,” she said. “He had her in a public place, she has lots of
human relatives, and he has to know I’d kill him if he did that.”
“Not if you were dead first,” I said. Eric and Pam didn’t seem to have my own respect for Victor’s lethal tactics. They seemed almost insanely
cocky. “And why are you both so sure that Antonio and Luis were making all that up just to see how you’d react?”
“If they meant what they said, they’ll approach us again,” Eric said bluntly. “They have no other recourse, if they’ve tried Felipe and he’s turned
them down. I suspect he has. Tell me, lover, what was the problem with the drinks?”
“The problem was that he’d rubbed the inside of the glasses with fairy blood,” I said. “The human server, the guy with the gray eyes, gave me the
tip-off.”
And the smiles vanished as if they’d been turned off with a switch. I had a moment of unpleasant satisfaction.
Pure fairy blood is intoxicating to vampires. There’s no telling what Pam or Eric would have done if they’d drunk from those glasses. And they’d
have gulped it down as quickly as they could because the smell is just as entrancing as the actual substance.
As poisoning attempts went, this one was subtle.
“I don’t think that amount could have caused us to behave in an uncontrollable way,” Pam said. But she didn’t sound so confident.
Eric raised his blond eyebrows. “It was a cautious experiment,” he said thoughtfully. “We might have attacked anyone in the club, or we might
have gone for Sookie, since she has that interesting streak of fairy. We would have made public fools of ourselves, in any case. We might have
been arrested. It was an excellent thing that you stopped us, Sookie.”
“I have my uses,” I said, suppressing the jolt of fear that the idea of Eric and Pam going fairy-struck on me evinced.
“And you’re Eric’s wife,” Pam observed quietly.
Eric glared at her in the rearview mirror.
The silence that fell was so thick I wished I’d had a knife. This Pam-and-Eric secret quarrel was both upsetting and frustrating. And that was the
understatement of the year.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” I asked, frightened of the answer. But anything was better than not knowing.
“Eric got a letter—” Pam began, and before I could register that he’d moved, Eric had whipped around, reached over the seat, and seized her
throat. Since he was still driving, I squawked in terror.
“Eyes ahead, Eric! Not with the fighting again,” I said. “Look, just go on and tell me!”
With his right hand, Eric was still holding Pam in a grip that would have choked her if she’d been a breather. He was steering with his left hand,
and we coasted to a stop on the side of the road. I couldn’t see any oncoming traffic, and there were no lights behind us, either. I didn’t know if the
isolation made me feel good or bad. Eric looked back at his child, and his eyes were so bright they were practically throwing sparks. He said,
“Pam, don’t speak. That’s an order. Sookie, leave this be.”
I could have said several things. I could have said, “I’m not your vassal, and I’ll say what I want to say,” or I could have said, “Fuck you, let me out,”
and called my brother to come get me.
But I sat in silence.
I am ashamed to say that at that moment I was scared of Eric, this desperate and determined vampire who was attacking his best friend
because he didn’t want me to know . . . something. Through the tie I felt with him, I got a confused bundle of negative emotions: fear, anger, grim
resolve, frustration.
“Take me home,” I said.
In an eerie echo, the limp Miriam whispered, “Take me home. . . .”
After a long moment, Eric let go of Pam, who collapsed in the backseat like a sack of rice. She hunched over Miriam protectively. In a frozen
silence, Eric took me back to my house. There was no further mention of the sex we’d been scheduled to have after this “fun” evening. At that point, I
would rather have had sex with Luis and Antonio. Or Pam. I said good-bye to Pam and Miriam, got out, and walked into my house without a
backward glance.
I guess Eric and Pam and Miriam drove back to Shreveport together, and I guess at some point he permitted Pam to speak again, but I don’t
know.
I couldn’t sleep after I’d washed my face and hung up the pretty dress. I hoped I’d get to wear it on a happier evening, sometime in the future. I’d
looked too good to be this miserable. I wondered if Eric would have handled the evening with such sangfroid if it had been me Victor had captured
and drugged and put out there on that banquette for the entire world to gape at.
And there was another thing troubling me. Here’s what I would have asked Eric if he hadn’t been playing dictator. I would have said, “Where did
Victor get the fairy blood?”
That’s what I would have asked.