True Blood Book 12 Chapters 1-4

Chapter 1
It was hot as the six shades of Hell even this late in the evening, and I’d had a
busy day at work. The last thing I wanted to do was to sit in a crowded bar to
watch my cousin get naked. But it was Ladies Only night at Hooligans, we’d
planned this excursion for days, and the bar was full of hooting and hollering
women determined to have a good time.
My very pregnant friend Tara sat to my right, and Holly, who worked
at Sam Merlotte’s bar like me and Kennedy Keyes, sat on my left. Kennedy
and Michele, my brother’s girlfriend, sat on the other side of the table.
“The Sook-ee,” Kennedy called, and grinned at me. Kennedy had been
first runner-up to Miss Louisiana a few years ago, and despite her stint in
prison she’d retained her spectacular looks and grooming, including teeth
that could blind an oncoming bus.
“I’m glad you decided to come, Kennedy,” I said. “Danny doesn’t
mind?” She’d been waffling the very afternoon before. I’d been sure she’d
stay at home.
“Hey, I want to see some cute guys naked, don’t you?” Kennedy said.
I glanced around at the other women. “Unless I missed a page, we all
get to see guys naked, on a regular basis,” I said. Though I hadn’t been trying
to be funny, my friends shrieked with laughter. They were just that giddy.
I’d only spoken the truth: I’d been dating Eric Northman for a while;
Kennedy and Danny Prideaux had gotten pretty intense; Michele and Jason
were practically living together; Tara was married and pregnant, for gosh
sakes; and Holly was engaged to Hoyt Fortenberry, who barely stopped in at
his own apartment any longer.
“You gotta at least be curious,” Michele said, raising her voice to be
heard over the clamor. “Even if you get to see Claude around the house all
the time. With his clothes on, but still …”
“Yeah, when’s his place gonna be ready for him to move back?” Tara
asked. “How long can it take to put in new plumbing?”
Claude’s Monroe house’s plumbing was in fine shape as far as I knew.
The plumbing fiction was simply better than saying, “My cousin’s a fairy,
and he needs the company of other fairies, since he’s in exile. Also, my halffairy
great-uncle Dermot, a carbon copy of my brother, came along for the
heck of it.” The fae, unlike the vampires and the werewolves, wanted to keep
their existence a deep secret.
Also, Michele’s assumption that I’d never seen Claude naked was
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incorrect. Though the spectacularly handsome Claude was my cousin—and I
certainly kept my clothes on around the house—the fairy attitude about
nudity was totally casual. Claude, with his long black hair, brooding face,
and rippling abs, was absolutely mouthwatering … until he opened his
mouth. Dermot lived with me, too, but Dermot was more modest in his
habits …maybe because I’d told him how I felt about bare-assed relatives.
I liked Dermot a lot better than I liked Claude. I had mixed feelings
about Claude. None of those feelings were sexual. I’d very recently and
reluctantly allowed him back into my house after we’d had an argument, in
fact.
“I don’t mind having him and Dermot around the house. They’ve
helped me out a lot,” I said weakly.
“What about Dermot? Does Dermot strip, too?” Kennedy asked
hopefully.
“He does managerial stuff here. Him stripping would be weird for you,
huh, Michele?” I said. Dermot’s a ringer for my brother, who’d been tight
with Michele for a long time—a long time in Jason terms.
“Yeah, I couldn’t watch that,” she said. “Except maybe for comparison
purposes!” We all laughed.
While they continued to talk about men, I looked around the club. I’d
never been in Hooligans when it was this busy, and I’d never been to a
Ladies Only night. There was a lot to think about—the staff, for example.
We’d paid our cover charge to a very buxom young woman with webs
between her fingers. She’d flashed me a smile when she caught me staring,
but my friends hadn’t given her a second glance. After we’d passed through
the inner door, we were ushered to our seats by an elf named Bellenos, whom
I’d last seen offering me the head of my enemy. Literally.
None of my friends seemed to notice anything different about Bellenos,
either—but he didn’t look like a regular man to me. His head of auburn hair
was smooth and peltlike, his far-apart eyes were slanting and dark, his
freckles were larger than human freckles, and the points of his needle-sharp
inch-long teeth gleamed in the dim house lights. When I’d first met Bellenos,
he’d been unable to mask himself as human. Now he could.
“Enjoy, ladies,” Bellenos had told us in his deep voice. “We’ve had this
table reserved for you.” He’d given me a particular smile as he turned to go
back to the entrance.
We were seated right by the stage. A hand-lettered sign in the middle of
the tablecloth read, “Bon Temps Party.”
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“I hope I get to thank Claude real personally,” Kennedy said, with a
sultry leer. She was definitely fighting with Danny; I could tell. Michele
giggled and poked Tara’s shoulder.
Finally, knowing Claude was a perk.
“That redhead who showed us to the table thought you were cute,
Sookie,” Tara said uneasily. I could tell she was thinking of my full-time
boyfriend and vampire husband, Eric Northman. She figured he wouldn’t be
too happy about a stranger ogling me.
“He was just being polite because I’m Claude’s cousin,” I said.
“Like hell! He was looking at you like you were chocolate-chip-cookiedough
ice cream,” she said. “He wanted to eat you up.”
I was pretty sure she was right, but maybe not in the sense she meant;
not that I could read Bellenos’s mind, any more than that of any other
supernatural creature …but elves are what you’d call unrestricted in their
diet. I hoped Claude was keeping a close watch on the mixed bag of fae he’d
accumulated here at Hooligans.
Meanwhile, Tara was complaining that her hair had lost all its body
during her pregnancy, and Kennedy said, “Have a conditioning session at
Death by Fashion in Shreveport. Immanuel’s the best.”
“He cut my hair once,” I said, and they all looked at me in
astonishment. “You remember? When my hair got singed?”
“When the bar was bombed,” Kennedy said. “That was Immanuel?
Wow, Sookie, I didn’t know you knew him.”
“A little,” I said. “I thought about getting some highlights, but he left
town. The shop’s still open.” I shrugged.
“All the big talent leaves the state,” Holly said, and while they talked
that over, I tried to arrange my rump in a comfortable position on the folding
metal chair wedged between Holly and Tara. I carefully bent down to tuck
my purse between my feet.
As I looked around me at all the excited customers, I began to relax.
Surely I could enjoy this a little bit? I’d known the club was full of displaced
fae since my last visit here, after all. I was with my friends, and they were all
ready to have a good time. Surely I could allow myself to have a good time
with them? Claude and Dermot were my kin, and they wouldn’t let anything
bad happen to me. Right? I managed to smile at Bellenos when he came
around to light the candle on our table, and I was laughing at a dirty joke of
Michele’s when a waitress hustled over to take our drink orders. My smile
faded. I remembered her from my previous visit.
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“I’m Gift, and I’ll be your server tonight,” she said, just as perky as you
please. Her hair was a bright blond, and she was very pretty. But since I was
part fae (due to a massive indiscretion of my grandmother’s), I could see past
the blonde’s cute exterior. Her skin wasn’t the honey tan everyone else was
seeing. It was a pale, pale green. Her eyes had no pupils …or perhaps the
pupils and irises were the same black? She fluttered her eyelids at me when
no one else was looking. She might have two. Eyelids, that is. On each eye. I
had time to notice because she bent so close to me.
“Welcome, Sister,” she murmured in my ear, and then straightened to
beam at the others. “What y’all having tonight?” she asked with a perfect
Louisiana accent.
“Well, Gift, I want you to know up front that most of us are in the
serving business, too, so we’re not going to give you a hard time,” Holly said.
Gift twinkled back at her. “I’m so glad to hear that! Not that you gals
look like a hard time, anyway. I love Ladies Only night.”
While my friends ordered their drinks and baskets of fried pickles or
tortilla chips, I glanced around the club to confirm my impression. None of
the servers were human. The only humans here were the customers.
When it was my turn, I told Gift I wanted a Bud Light. She bent closer
again to say, “How’s the vampire cutie, girlfriend?”
“He’s fine,” I said stiffly, though that was far from true.
Gift said, “You’re so cute!” and tapped me on the shoulder as if I’d said
something witty. “Ladies, you doing all right? I’m going to go put your food
orders in and get your drinks.” Her bright head gleamed like a lighthouse as
she maneuvered expertly through the crowd.
“I didn’t know you knew all the staff here. How is Eric? I haven’t seen
him since the fire at Merlotte’s,” Kennedy said. She’d clearly overheard Gift’s
query. “Eric is one fine hunk of man.” She nodded wisely.
There was a chorus of agreement from my friends. Truly, Eric’s
hunkiness was undeniable. The fact that he was dead weighed against him,
especially in Tara’s eyes. She’d met Claude, and she hadn’t picked up on the
fact that there was something different about him; but Eric, who never tried
to pass for human, would always be on her blacklist. Tara had had a bad
experience with a vampire, and it had left an indelible mark on her.
“He has a hard time getting away from Shreveport. He’s pretty busy
with work,” I said. I stopped there. Talking about Eric’s business was always
unwise.
“He’s not mad you’re going to watch another guy take off his clothes?
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You sure you told him?” Kennedy asked, her smile hard and bright. There
was definitely trouble in Kennedy-and-Danny land. Oh, I didn’t want to
know about it.
“I think Eric is so confident he looks good naked that he doesn’t worry
about me seeing someone else that way,” I said. I’d told Eric I was going to
Hooligans. I hadn’t asked his permission; as Kennedy had said about Danny,
he was not the boss of me. But I had sort of floated the idea by him to see how
he reacted. Things between us hadn’t been comfortable for a few weeks. I
didn’t want to upset our fragile boat—not for such a frivolous reason.
As I’d expected, Eric had not taken our proposed girls’ night out very
seriously. For one thing, he thought modern American attitudes about nudity
were amusing. He’d seen a thousand years of long nights, and he’d lost his
own inhibitions somewhere along the way. I suspected he’d never had that
many.
My honey not only was calm about my viewing other men’s naked
bodies; he wasn’t concerned about our destination. He didn’t seem to
imagine there’d be any danger in the Monroe strip club. Even Pam, his
second-in-command, had only shrugged when Eric had told her what we
human females were going to do for entertainment. “Won’t be any vampires
there,” she’d said, and after a token jab at Eric about my wanting to see other
men in the buff, she’d dismissed the subject.
My cousin Claude had been welcoming all sorts of displaced fae to
Hooligans since the portals to Faery had been shut by my great-grandfather
Niall. He’d shut the portals on an impulse, a sudden reversal of his previous
policy that human and fae should mix freely. Not all the fairies and other fae
living in our world had had time to get on the Faery side before the portals
closed. A very small one, located in the woods behind my house, remained
open a crack. From time to time, news passed through.
When they’d thought they were alone, Claude and my great-uncle
Dermot had come to my house to take comfort in my company because of my
dab of fairy blood. Being in exile was terrible for them. As much as they had
previously enjoyed the human world, they now yearned for home.
Gradually, other fae had begun showing up at Hooligans. Dermot and
Claude, especially Claude, didn’t stay with me as regularly. That solved a lot
of problems for me—Eric couldn’t stay over if the two fairies were in the
house because the smell of fairy is simply intoxicating to vampires—but I did
occasionally miss Great-Uncle Dermot, who’d always been comfortable
company for me.
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As I was thinking of him, I spotted Dermot behind the bar. Though he
was my fairy grandfather’s brother, he looked no older than his late twenties.
“Sookie, there’s your cousin,” Holly said. “I haven’t seen him since
Tara’s shower. Oh my God, he looks so much like Jason!”
“The family resemblance is real strong,” I agreed. I glanced over at
Jason’s girlfriend, who was not any kind of pleased at seeing Dermot. She’d
met Dermot before when he’d been cursed with insanity. Though she knew
he was in his right mind these days, she wasn’t going to warm up to him in
any kind of hurry.
“I never have figured out how you’re kin to them,” Holly said. In Bon
Temps everybody knew who your people were and who you were connected
to.
“Someone was illegitimate,” I said delicately. “Not saying any more. I
didn’t find out until after Gran passed, from some old family papers.”
Holly looked wise, which was kind of a stretch for her.
“Does having an ‘in’ with the management mean we’re going to get a
freebie drink or something?” Kennedy asked. “Maybe a lap dance on the
house?”
“Girl, you don’t want a lap dance from a stripper!” Tara said. “You
don’t know where that thing has been!”
“You’re just all sour-grapey because you don’t have a lap anymore,”
Kennedy muttered, and I gave her a meaningful glare. Tara was supersensitive
about losing her figure.
I said, “Hey, we already got a reserved table right by the stage. Let’s not
push it by asking for anything else.”
Luckily, our drinks arrived then. We tipped Gift lavishly.
“Yum,” Kennedy said after a big sip. “That is one wicked appletini.”
As if that had been a signal, the house lights went down, the stage
lights popped on, music began to play, and Claude came prancing out in
spangled silver tights and boots, and nothing else.
“Good God, Sookie, he looks edible!” Holly said, and her words flew
straight to Claude’s sharp fairy ears. (He’d had the points surgically removed
so he wouldn’t have to expend energy looking human, but the procedure
hadn’t affected his hearing.) Claude looked over at our table, and when he
spotted me, he grinned. He twitched his butt so that his spangles flew out
and caught the light, and the women crammed into the club began clapping,
full of anticipation.
“Ladies,” Claude said into the microphone, “Are you ready to enjoy
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Hooligans? Are you ready to watch some amazing men show you what
they’re made of?” He let his hand stroke his admirable abs and raised one
eyebrow, managing to look incredibly sexy and incredibly suggestive in two
simple moves.
The music escalated, and the crowd shrieked. Even the heavily
pregnant Tara joined in the chorus of enthusiasm as a line of men danced out
on the stage behind Claude. One of them was wearing a policeman’s uniform
(if cops ever decided to put glitter on their pants), one was wearing a leather
outfit, one was dressed as an angel—yes, with wings! And the last one in the
row was …
There was a sudden and total silence at our table. All of us sat with our
eyes straight ahead, not daring to steal a look at Tara.
The last stripper was her husband, JB du Rone. He was dressed as a
construction worker. He wore a hard hat, a safety vest, fake blue jeans, and a
heavy tool belt. Instead of wrenches and screwdrivers, the belt loops held
handy items like a cocktail shaker, a pair of furry handcuffs, and a few things
I simply couldn’t identify.
It was painfully obvious that Tara had had no clue.
Of all the “oh shit” moments in my life, this was OSM Number One.
The whole party from Bon Temps sat frozen as Claude introduced the
performers by their stripper names (JB was “Randy”). One of us had to break
the silence. Suddenly, I saw a light at the end of the conversational tunnel.
“Oh, Tara,” I said, as earnestly as anyone ever could speak. “This is so
sweet.”
The other women turned to me simultaneously, their faces desperate
with hope that I might show them how to spackle over this awful moment.
Though I could hear Tara thinking she would like to take JB to the deer
processing plant and tell the butcher to make him into ground meat, I
plunged in.
“You know he’s doing this for you and the babies,” I said, injecting my
voice with every drop of sincerity I could muster. I leaned closer and took her
hand. I wanted to be sure she heard me over the booming music. “You know
he meant the extra money as a big surprise for you.”
“Well,” she said through stiff lips, “I’m plenty surprised.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Kennedy closing her eyes in
gratitude for the cue. I could feel the relief pouring from Holly’s mind.
Michele relaxed visibly. Now that the other women had a path to follow, they
all fell into step. Kennedy told a very credible story about JB’s last visit to
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Merlotte’s, a visit in which he’d told her how worried he was about paying
the medical bills.
“With twins coming, he was scared that might mean more time in the
hospital,” Kennedy said. She was making up most of this, but it sounded
good. During her career as a beauty queen (and before her career as a
convicted felon), Kennedy had mastered sincerity.
Tara finally seemed to relax just a smidgen, but I monitored her
thoughts so we could stay on top of the situation. She didn’t want to draw
any more attention to our table by demanding we all walk out, which had
been her first impulse. When Holly hesitantly mentioned leaving if Tara was
too uncomfortable to stay, Tara fixed us all in turn with a grim stare. “Hell,
no,” she said.
Thank God drink refills came then, and the baskets of food soon after.
We all tried hard to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened,
and we were doing pretty well by the time the music started pumping
“Touch My Nightstick” to announce the arrival of the “policeman.”
The performer was a full-blooded fairy; a little too thin for my taste, but
he was real good-looking. You won’t find an ugly fairy. And he could
actually dance, and he really enjoyed the exercise. Every inch of gradually
revealed flesh was just as toned and tempting as it could be. “Dirk” had a
fantastic sense of rhythm, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. He was
basking in the lust, the excitement of being the focus of attention. Were all the
fae as vain as Claude, as conscious of their own beauty?
“Dirk” gyrated his sexy way around the stage, and a shocking number
of dollar bills were stuffed into the little man-thong that had gradually
become his only garment. It was clear that Dirk was generously endowed by
nature and that he was enjoying the attention. Every now and then someone
bold would give him a little rub, but Dirk would pull back and shake his
finger at the miscreant.
“Eww,” Kennedy said the first time that happened, and I had to echo
her sentiment. But Dirk was tolerant if not encouraging. He gave an
especially generous donor a quick kiss, which made the hollering rise to a
crescendo. I’m good at estimating tips, but I could not even begin to guess
how much Dirk had made by the time he left the stage—especially since he’d
been handing off handfuls of bills to Dermot at intervals. The routine came to
an end perfectly in time with the music, and Dirk took his bow and ran off
the stage.
In a very short time, the stripper pulled on his glittery policeman pants
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(though nothing else) and came out to wander through the crowd, smiling
and nodding as women offered him drinks, phone numbers, and yet more
cash. Dirk took only a sip of the drinks, accepted the phone numbers with a
charming smile, and tucked the money in his waistband until he seemed to
be wearing a green belt.
Though this kind of entertainment wasn’t something I’d want to
experience on a regular basis, I honestly couldn’t see the harm. Women were
getting to shout and scream and get rowdy in a controlled environment. They
were obviously having a great time. Even if some of these women were
enthralled enough to come every week (a lot of brains were telling me a lot of
things), well, it was only one night. The ladies weren’t aware they were
cheering for elves and fairies, true; but I was sure they were happier not
knowing that (besides JB’s) the flesh and skill they were so admiring wasn’t
human.
The other performers were more of the same. The angel, “Gabriel,” was
anything but angelic, and fluttering white feathers drifted through the air as
he apparently divested himself of his wings (I was sure they were still there
but invisible), and nearly every other stitch he’d worn, to “Your Heavenly
Body.” Like the policeman, he was in wonderful shape and apparently well
endowed. He was also shaved smooth as a baby’s bottom, though it was hard
to think of him in the same sentence as the word “baby.” Women grabbed for
the floating feathers and the creature who’d worn them.
When Gabriel came out into the audience—wings again apparent,
sporting only a white monokini—Kennedy seized him when he happened by
our table. Kennedy was losing what few inhibitions she had as her drinks
kept vanishing. The angel gazed at Kennedy with glowing golden eyes—at
least, that was what I saw. Kennedy gave him her business card and a
lopsided leer, running her palm down his abs. As he turned away from her, I
gently inserted a five-dollar bill in his fingers, taking Kennedy’s card away as
I did so. The golden eyes met mine.
“Sister,” he said. Even through the noise of the next performer’s
entrance, I could hear his voice.
He smiled and drifted away, to my great relief. I hastily concealed
Kennedy’s card in my purse. I gave a mental eye-roll at the concept of a parttime
bartender having a business card; that was so Kennedy.
Tara had at least not been having a horrible time during the evening,
but as the moment approached when JB would certainly be taking the stage,
the tension inevitably ratcheted up at our table. From the moment he leaped
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to center stage and began dancing to “Nail-Gun Ned,” it was obvious that he
didn’t know his wife was in the audience. (JB’s mind is like an open book
with maybe two words per page.) His dance routine was surprisingly
polished. I sure hadn’t known how flexible JB could be. We Bon Temps ladies
tried hard not to let our eyes meet.
“Randy” was simply having a great time. By the time he stripped down
to his man-thong, everyone—almost everyone—was sharing his elation, as
the number of bills he collected bore witness. I could read directly from JB’s
head that this adulation was feeding a great need. His wife, tired and
pregnant, no longer glowed with pleasure every time she saw him naked. JB
was so used to receiving approval that he craved it—however he could get it.
Tara had muttered something and left the table just as her husband
came on, so he didn’t see her when he danced across the stage close to us.
The moment he was near enough to realize who we were, a shade of concern
passed over his handsome face. He was entertainer enough to keep on going,
to my relief. I actually felt a bit proud of JB. Even in the arctic airconditioning,
he was sweating with his gyrations. He was vigorous, athletic,
and sexy. We all watched anxiously to make sure he was getting just as many
tips as the other performers, though we felt a bit delicate about contributing
ourselves.
After JB left the stage, Tara returned to the table. She sat down and
looked at us with the strangest expression on her face. “I was watching from
the back of the room,” she admitted, as we all waited in suspense. “He did
pretty good.”
We exhaled, practically in unison.
“Honey, he was really, really good,” Kennedy said, nodding
emphatically enough to make her chestnut hair swing back and forth.
“You’re a lucky woman,” Michele chimed in. “And your babies are
going to be so gorgeous and coordinated.”
We didn’t know how much was too much to say, and we were all
relieved when a loud chorus of “Born to Ride Rough” announced the
performance of the guy in leather. He was at least part demon, of a stock I
hadn’t encountered before; his skin was reddish, which my companions
interpreted as Native American. (It didn’t look anything like that to my eyes,
but I wasn’t going to say any different.) He did have black, straight hair and
dark eyes, and he knew how to shake his tomahawk. His nipples were
pierced, which was not my special turn-on, but it was a popular touch with
many members of the audience.
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I clapped and I smiled, but in truth I was beginning to feel a little bored.
Though Eric had I had not been on the same emotional wavelength lately, we
had been operating very well with regard to sex (don’t ask me how this could
be so). I began to think I was spoiled. There was no such thing as boring sex
with Eric.
I wondered if he’d dance for me, if I asked him nicely. I was having a
very pleasant fantasy about that when Claude reemerged on the stage, still in
his spangled tights and boots.
Claude was completely confident that the whole room could hardly
wait to see more of him, and that kind of confidence pays off. He was also
incredibly limber and flexible.
“Oh my God!” Michele said, her husky voice almost breaking. “Well!
He hardly needs a partner, does he?”
“Wow.” Holly’s mouth was hanging open.
Even I, who had already seen the whole package and knew how
disagreeable Claude could be—even I was feeling a little jolt of excitement
down where I shouldn’t. Claude’s pleasure in receiving all this attention and
admiration was almost blissful in its purity.
For the grand finale of the evening, Claude leaped off the stage and
danced through the crowd in his man-thong. Everyone seemed determined to
unload all their remaining dollar bills—and their fives and a few tens. Claude
distributed kisses with abandon, but he dodged more personal touches with
an agility that almost betrayed him as other-than-human. When he
approached our table, Michele tucked a five under his G-string, saying, “You
earned this, buddy,” and Claude’s smile glinted back at hers. Then Claude
paused beside me and bent to kiss me on the cheek. I jumped. The women at
the surrounding tables shrieked and demanded their own kisses. I was left
with the glow in his dark eyes and the unexpected chill left by the touch of
his lips.
I was ready to leave a big tip for Gift and get out of there.
Tara drove back, since Michele said she was too tipsy. I knew Tara was
glad to have an excuse to be silent. The other women were providing cover
chatter about the fun they’d had, trying to give Tara space to come to terms
with the events of the evening.
“I hope I didn’t enjoy it too much,” Holly was saying. “I’d hate it if
Hoyt went to a strip club all the time.”
“Would you mind it if he went once?” I asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t like it,” she said honestly. “But if he was going
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because he was invited to a stag party or something, I wouldn’t kick up a fuss
about it.”
“I would hate it if Jason went,” Michele said.
“Do you think he’d cheat on you with a stripper?” Kennedy asked. I
was sure it was the liquor talking.
“If he did, he’d be out the door with a black eye,” Michele said with a
derisive snort. After a moment she said in a milder voice, “I’m a little older
than Jason, and maybe my body isn’t quite what it used to be. I look great
naked, don’t get me wrong. But probably not as great as the younger
strippers.”
“Men are never happy with what they’ve got, no matter how good it
is,” Kennedy muttered.
“What’s up with you, girl? You and Danny have a fight over another
woman?” Tara asked bluntly.
Kennedy turned a bright, hard look on Tara, and for a minute I thought
she’d say something cutting. Then we’d have an open quarrel. But Kennedy
said, “He’s doing something secret, and he won’t tell me what. He says he’s
gonna be gone on Monday/Wednesday/Friday mornings and evenings. He
won’t say where he’s going or why.”
Since the fact that Danny was totally smitten with Kennedy was
obvious to the dimmest bulb, we were all struck silent with astonishment at
her blindness.
“Did you ask him?” Michele said, in her forthright way.
“Hell, no!” Kennedy was too proud (and too scared, but only I knew
that) to ask Danny directly.
“Well, I don’t know who to ask or what to ask, but if I hear anything,
I’ll tell you. I really don’t think you need to worry about Danny stepping out
on you,” I said. How such massive insecurity could lurk behind such a pretty
face was amazing to me.
“Thanks, Sookie.” There was a little sob in her voice. Oh, Lord. All the
fun of the evening was draining away in a hurry.
We pulled up at the front of my house none too soon. I said my goodbyes
and my thank-yous in my brightest and most cheerful voice, and then I
was hurrying to my front door. Of course the big security light was on, and of
course Tara didn’t back out until I’d reached my front door, unlocked it, and
stepped inside. I locked the door behind me instantly. Though there were
magical wards around the house to keep supernatural enemies away, locks
and keys never hurt.
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Not only had I worked today, I’d endured the raucous crowd and the
pulse-pounding music, and there was all the drama with my friends, too. If
you’re telepathic, your brain gets exhausted. But in a contradictory way, I felt
too twitchy and restless to head directly to my bedroom. I decided to check
my e-mail.
It had been a couple of days since I’d had a chance to sit down at the
computer. I had ten messages. Two were from Kennedy and Holly, setting a
time to pick me up. Since that was a done deal, I tapped the Delete button.
The next three were ads. Those were gone in a flash. There was a note from
Amelia with an attachment, which proved to be a picture of her and her
boyfriend, Bob, sitting at a café in Paris. “We’re having a good time,” she
wrote. “The community over here is very welcoming. Think my little
problem with my NO community has been forgiven. What about you and
me?”
“Community” was Amelia’s code word for “coven.” Amelia’s little
problem had arisen when she’d accidentally turned Bob into a cat. Now that
he was a man again, they’d resumed their relationship. Go figure. And now
Paris! “Some people just lead charmed lives,” I said out loud. As for Amelia
and me being “okay”—she’d offended me deeply by trying to shove Alcide
Herveaux into my sex life. I’d expected better from her. No, I hadn’t entirely
forgiven her, but I was trying.
At that moment there was a quiet knock on the front door. I jumped
and spun around in the swivel chair. I hadn’t heard a vehicle, or footsteps.
Normally, that would mean a vampire had come calling; but when I cast out
my extra sense, the brain it encountered was not the blank of a vampire’s, but
something else entirely.
There was another discreet knock. I edged to the window and looked
out. Then I unlocked the door and flung it open.
“Great-grandfather,” I said, and leaped up and into his embrace. “I
thought I’d never see you again! How are you? Come in!”
Niall smelled wonderful—fairies do. To some extra-sensitive vampire
noses, I have a faint trace of the same odor, though I can’t detect it myself.
My ex-boyfriend Bill had told me once that to him the fae smelled like
his memory of the taste of apples.
Enveloped in my great-grandfather’s overwhelming presence, I
experienced the rush of affection and amazement I always did when I was
with him. Tall and regal, clad in an immaculate black suit, white shirt, and
black tie, Niall was both beautiful and ancient.
23
He was also a dab unreliable when it came to facts. Tradition says
fairies can’t lie, and the fairies themselves will tell you so—but they sure skirt
the truth when it suits them. Sometimes I thought that Niall had lived for so
long that his memory simply skipped a beat or two. It was a struggle to
remember this when I was with him, but I forced myself to keep it in my
mind.
“I’m well, as you see.” He gestured at his magnificence, though to do
him credit I believe he simply intended to draw my attention to his
unwounded state. “And you are beautiful, as always.”
Fairies are also somewhat flowery in their speech—unless they’ve been
living among humans for a long time, like Claude.
“I thought you were sealed off.”
“I widened the portal in your woods,” he said, as if the action had been
a casual whim of his. After the big deal he’d made about sealing the fae in for
the protection of humanity, severing all his business ties with the human
world, and so on, he’d enlarged an opening and come through … because he
wanted to check on my well-being? Even the fondest great-granddaughter
could smell a rat.
“I knew that portal was there,” I said, because I couldn’t think of
anything else to say.
He cocked his head. His white-blond hair moved like a satin curtain.
“Was it you who put the body in?”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to put it.” Corpse disposal
was not one of my talents.
“It was consumed entirely, if that was your purpose. Please abstain in
the future. We don’t want there to be crowding around the portal,” he said in
gentle admonishment, rather as though I’d been feeding pets from the dinner
table.
“Sorry,” I said. “So—why are you here?” I heard the bluntness of my
words and felt myself turning red. “I mean, to what do I owe the honor of
your visit? Can I get you a drink or something to eat?”
“No thank you, dearest. Where have you been this evening? You smell
of the fae and humans and many other things.”
I took a deep breath and tried to explain Ladies Only night at
Hooligans. With every sentence, I felt more of a fool. You should have seen
Niall’s face when I told him that one night a week, human women paid to
watch men take their clothes off. He sure didn’t get it.
“Do men do this also?” he asked. “Go in groups to special buildings,
24
pay to watch women undress?”
I said, “Yes, men much more often than women. The other nights, that’s
what happens at Hooligans.”
“And Claude makes money this way,” Niall said wonderingly. “Why
don’t the men just ask the women to take their clothes off, if they want to see
their bodies?”
I took another deep breath but let it out without attempting further
explanation. Some topics were just too complicated to tackle, especially with
a fairy who’d never lived in our world. Niall was a tourist, not a resident.
“Can we bypass this whole discussion until another time, or maybe until
never? Surely there’s something more important you want to talk about?” I
said.
“Of course. May I sit?”
“Be my guest.” We sat on the couch, angled forward so we were
looking into each other’s faces. There’s nothing like having a fairy examine
you to make you acutely aware of your every flaw.
“You’ve recovered well,” he said, to my surprise.
“I have,” I said, trying not to glance down, as if my scarred thigh would
show through my clothing. “It took a while.” Niall meant I looked good for
someone who’d been tortured. Two notorious fairies who’d had their teeth
sharpened like the elves’ had left me with some permanent physical damage.
Niall and Bill had arrived in time to save my body parts and my sanity, if not
all of my actual flesh. “Thanks for coming in time,” I said, forcing a smile on
my face. “I’ll never forget how glad I was to see you-all.”
Niall waved away my gratitude. “You are my blood,” he said. That was
reason enough for him. I thought about my great-uncle Dermot, Niall’s halfhuman
son, who believed Niall had cast a crazy spell on him. Kind of
contradictory, huh? I almost pointed that out to Great-Grandfather, but I did
want to keep the peace since I hadn’t seen him in so long.
“When I came through the portal tonight, I smelled blood in the ground
around your house,” he said abruptly. “Human blood, fae blood. Now I can
tell there is fae blood upstairs in your attic, recently spilled. And fairies are
living here now. Who?” Niall’s smooth hands took mine, and I felt a flush of
well-being.
“Claude and Dermot have been living here, kind of off and on,” I said.
“When Eric stays over, they spend the night in Claude’s house in Monroe.”
Niall looked very, very thoughtful. “What reason did Claude give you
for wanting to be in your house? Why did you permit this? Have you had sex
25
with him?” He didn’t sound angry or distressed, but the questions
themselves had a certain edge.
“I don’t have sex with relatives, first off,” I said, an edge to my own
voice. My boss, Sam Merlotte, had told me that the fae didn’t necessarily
consider such relationships taboo, but I sure did. I took yet another deep
breath. I would hyperventilate if Niall stayed very long.
I tried again, this time making an effort to modify my indignation. “Sex
between relatives is not something humans condone,” I told him, making
myself stop right there before adding any codicils. “I have slept in the same
bed with Dermot and Claude, because they told me that would make them
feel better. And I admit it helped me, too. They both seem kind of lost, since
they’re not able to enter Faery. A bunch of the fae got left outside, and they’re
pretty miserable.” I did my best not to sound reproachful, but Hooligans was
like Ellis Island in lockdown.
Niall was not going to be diverted. “Of course Claude would want to be
close to you,” he said. “The company of others with fairy blood is always
desirable. Did you suspect … he had any other reason?”
Was this a hint, or just a simple hesitation in Niall’s speech? As a matter
of fact, I did think the two fairies had another reason for their attraction to me
and my house, but I thought—I hoped—this reason was quite unconscious.
This was a chance to unburden myself of a great secret and gain more
information about an object I had in my possession. I opened my mouth to
tell Niall about what I’d found in a secret compartment in an old desk.
But the sense of caution I’d developed in my life as a telepath … well,
that sense jumped up and down, screaming, “Shut up!”
I said, “Do you think they had another reason?”
I noticed Niall had mentioned only his full-fairy grandson, Claude, not
his half-human son Dermot. Since Niall had always acted very lovingly
toward me, and my blood had only a trace of fairy, I couldn’t understand
why he wasn’t equally loving toward Dermot. Dermot had done some bad
things, but he’d been under a spell. Niall wasn’t cutting him any slack for
that. Just at the moment, Niall was looking at me doubtfully, his head cocked
to one side.
My cheeks yanked up in my brightest smile. I felt increasingly uneasy.
“Claude and Dermot have been real helpers. They carried down all the old
stuff in the attic. I sold it to an antiques dealer in Shreveport.” Niall smiled
back at me and stood. Before I could say Jack Robinson, he’d glided up the
stairs. He came back down them a couple of minutes later. I spent the time
26
sitting there with my mouth hanging open. Even for a fairy, this was odd
behavior. “I guess you were up there sniffing Dermot’s blood?” I said warily.
“I can tell I have irritated you, dearest.” Niall smiled at me, and his
beauty warmed me. “Why was there bleeding in the attic?”
Niall didn’t even use the pronoun “he.” I said, “A human came in
looking for me. Dermot was working and didn’t hear him coming. The
human clocked him one. Hit him on the head,” I explained, when Niall
looked confused.
“Is that the human whose blood I smelled outside in the ground?”
There’d been so many. Vampires and humans, Weres and fairies. I
actually had to think a minute. “Could be,” I said at last. “Bellenos healed
Dermot, and they caught the guys …” I fell silent. At the mention of
Bellenos’s name, Niall’s eyes flashed, and not with joy.
“Bellenos, the elf,” he said.
“Yes.”
His head turned sharply, and I knew he’d heard something I hadn’t.
We’d been too involved in our conversation to hear a car on the
driveway, apparently; but Niall had heard the key in the lock.
“Cousin, did you enjoy the show?” Claude called from the kitchen, and
I had time to think, Another OSM, before Claude and Dermot walked into the
living room.
There was a frozen silence. The three fairies were looking back and
forth like gunfighters at the OK Corral. Each one waited for the other to make
some decisive gesture that would determine whether they fought or talked.
“My house, my rules,” I said, and shot up from the couch like someone
had lit my ass on fire. “No brawling! Not! Any!”
There was another beat of the tense silence, and then Claude said, “Of
course not, Sookie. Prince Niall—Grandfather—I had feared I’d never see you
again.”
“Claude,” Niall said, nodding at his grandson.
“Hello, Father,” said Dermot very quietly.
Niall didn’t look at his child.
Awkward.
27
Chapter 2
Fairies. Never simple. My grandmother Adele would definitely have agreed.
She’d had a long affair with Dermot’s fraternal twin, Fintan, and my aunt
Linda and my father, Corbett, (both dead for years now) had been the results.
“Maybe it’s time for some plain speaking,” I said, trying to look
confident. “Niall, maybe you could tell us why you’re pretending Dermot
isn’t standing right here. And why you put that crazy spell on him.” Dr. Phil
to the fae—that was me.
Or not. Niall gave me his most lordly look.
“This one defied me,” he said, tilting his head at his son.
Dermot bowed his head. I didn’t know if he was keeping his eyes down
so he wouldn’t provoke Niall or if he was concealing rage or if he just
couldn’t think of where to begin.
Being related to Niall, even at two removes, was not easy. I couldn’t
imagine having a closer tie. If Niall’s beauty and power had been united with
a coherent course of action and a nobleness of purpose, he would have been
very like an angel.
This conviction could not have popped into my head at a more
inconvenient moment.
“You’re looking at me strangely,” Niall said. “What’s wrong, dearest
one?”
“In the time he’s spent here,” I said, “my great-uncle has been kind,
hardworking, and smart. The only thing that’s been wrong with Dermot is a
bit of mental fragility, a direct result of being made crazy for years. So, why’d
you do that? ‘He defied me’ isn’t really an answer.”
“You haven’t got the right to question me,” Niall said, in his most royal
voice. “I am the only living prince of Faery.”
“I don’t know why that means I can’t ask you questions. I’m an
American,” I said, standing tall.
The beautiful eyes examined me coldly. “I love you,” he said very
unlovingly, “but you’re presuming too much.”
“If you love me, or even if you just respect me a little, you need to
answer my question. I love Dermot, too.”
Claude was standing absolutely still, doing a great imitation of
Switzerland. I knew he wasn’t going to chime in on my side or Dermot’s side
or even Niall’s side. To Claude, the only side was his.
“You allied yourself with the water fairies,” Niall said to Dermot.
28
“After you cursed me,” Dermot protested, looking up at his father
briefly.
“You helped them kill Sookie’s father,” Niall said. “Your nephew.”
“I did not,” Dermot said quietly. “And I’m not mistaken in this. Even
Sookie believes this, and she lets me stay here.”
“You weren’t in your right mind. I know you would never do that if
you hadn’t been cursed,” I said.
“You see her kindness, and yet you have none for me,” Dermot told
Niall. “Why did you curse me? Why?” He was looking directly at his father,
his distress written all over his face.
“But I didn’t,” Niall said. He sounded genuinely surprised. Finally, he
was addressing Dermot directly. “I wouldn’t addle the brains of my own son,
half-human or not.”
“Claude told me it was you who bespelled me.” Dermot looked at
Claude, who was still waiting to see which way the frog would jump.
“Claude,” Niall said, the power in his voice making my head pound,
“who told you this?”
“It’s common knowledge among the fae,” Claude said. He’d been
preparing himself for this, was braced to make his answer.
“According to whom?” Niall was not going to give up.
“Murry told me this.”
“Murry told you I had cursed my son? Murry, the friend of my enemy
Breandan?” Niall’s elegant face was incredulous.
The Murry I killed with Gran’s trowel? I thought, but I knew it was better
not to interrupt.
“Murry told me this before he switched his allegiance,” Claude said
defensively.
“And who had told Murry?” Niall said, an edge of exasperation in his
voice.
“I don’t know.” Claude shrugged. “He sounded so certain, I never
questioned him.”
“Claude, come with me,” Niall said, after a moment’s fraught silence.
“We will talk to your father and to the rest of our people. We’ll discover who
spread this rumor about me. And we’ll know who actually cursed Dermot,
made him behave so.”
I would have thought Claude would be ecstatic, since he’d been ready
to return to Faery ever since entrance had been denied him. But he looked
absolutely vexed, just for a moment.
29
“What about Dermot?” I asked.
“It’s too dangerous for him now,” Niall said. “The one who cursed him
may be waiting to take further action against him. I’ll take Claude with me …
and, Claude, if you cause any trouble with your human ways …”
“I understand. Dermot, will you take over at the club until I return?”
“I will,” said Dermot, but he looked so dazed by the sudden turn of
events that I wasn’t sure he knew what he was saying.
Niall bent to kiss me on the mouth, and the subtle smell of fairy filled
my nose. Then he and Claude flowed out the back door and into the woods.
“Walked” is simply too jerky a word to describe their progress.
Dermot and I were left alone in my shabby living room. To my
consternation, my great-uncle (who looked a tiny bit younger than me) began
to weep. His knees crumpled, his whole body shook, and he pressed the heels
of his hands to his eyes.
I covered the few feet between us and sank to the floor beside him. I put
my arm around him and said, “I sure didn’t expect any of that.” I surprised a
laugh out of him. He hiccupped, raising reddened eyes to meet mine. I
stretched my free arm to reach the box of tissues on the table by the recliner. I
extracted one and used it to pat Dermot’s wet cheeks.
“I can’t believe you’re being so nice to me,” he said. “It’s seemed
incredible to me from the beginning, considering what Claude told you.”
I had been a little surprised myself, to tell you the truth.
I spoke from my heart. “I’m not convinced you were even there the
night my parents died. If you were, I think you were under a compulsion. In
my experience of you, you’ve been a total sweetie.”
He leaned against me like a tired child. By now, a human guy would
have made a huge effort to pull himself together. He’d be embarrassed at
displaying vulnerability. Dermot seemed quite willing to let me comfort him.
“Are you feeling better now?” I asked, after a couple of minutes.
He inhaled deeply. I knew he was drawing in my fairy scent and that it
would help him. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
“You probably need to get a shower and have a good night’s sleep,” I
advised him, floundering for something to say that wouldn’t sound totally
lame, like I was coddling a toddler. “I bet Niall and Claude’ll be back in no
time, and you’ll get to …” Then I had to trail off, since I didn’t know what it
was Dermot truly wanted. Claude, who’d been desperate to find a way to
enter Faery, had gotten his wish. I’d assumed that had been Dermot’s goal,
too. After Claude and I had broken the spell on Dermot, I’d never asked him.
30
As Dermot trudged off to the bathroom, I went around the house
checking all the windows and doors, part of my nightly ritual. I washed and
dried a couple of dishes while I tried to imagine what Claude and Niall might
be doing at this moment. What could Faery look like? Like Oz, in the movie?
“Sookie,” said Dermot, and I jerked myself into the here and now. He
was standing in the kitchen wearing plaid sleep pants, his normal night gear.
His golden hair was still damp from the shower.
“Feeling better?” I smiled at him.
“Yes. Could we sleep together tonight?”
It was as though he’d asked, “Can we catch a camel and keep it as a
pet?” Because of Niall’s questions about Claude and me, Dermot’s request
struck me kind of weird. I just wasn’t in a fairy-loving mood, no matter how
innocently he intended it. And truthfully, I wasn’t sure he hadn’t meant we
should do more than sleep. “Ahhhhh … no.”
Dermot looked so disappointed that I caught myself feeling guilty. I
couldn’t stand it; I had to explain.
“Listen, I understand that you don’t intend that we have sex together,
and I know that a couple of times in the past we’ve all slept in the same bed
and we all slept like rocks…. It was a good thing, a healing thing. But there
are maybe ten reasons I don’t want to do that again. Number one, it’s just
really peculiar, to a human. Two, I love Eric and I should only bunk down
with him. Three, you’re related to me, so sleeping in the same bed should
make me feel really squicky inside. Also, you look enough like my brother to
pass for him, which makes any kind of vaguely sexual situation double
squicky. I know that’s not ten, but I think that’s enough.”
“You don’t find me attractive?”
“Completely beside the point!” My voice was rising, and I paused to
give myself a second. I continued in a quieter tone. “It doesn’t make any
difference how attractive I find you. Of course you’re handsome. Just like my
brother. But I have no sex feelings about you, and I kind of feel the sleepingtogether
thing is just odd. So we’re not doing the fairy sleep-athon of comfort
anymore.”
“I’m sorry I’ve upset you,” he said, even more miserably.
I felt guilty again. But I made myself suppress the twinge. “I don’t think
anyone in the world has a great-uncle like you,” I said, but my voice was
fond.
“I’ll never bring it up again. I only sought comfort.” He gave me Big
Eyes. There was a hint of laughter turning up the corners of his mouth.
31
“You’ll just have to comfort yourself,” I said tartly.
He was smiling as he left the kitchen.
That night, for the first time in forever, I locked my bedroom door. I felt
bad when I turned the latch, like I was dishonoring Dermot with my
suspicions. But the last few years had taught me that one of my
grandmother’s favorite sayings was true. An ounce of prevention was worth a
pound of cure.
If Dermot turned my doorknob during the night, I was too soundly
asleep to hear it. And maybe my ability to drop off that deeply meant that on
a basic level I trusted my great-uncle. Or trusted the lock. When I woke the
next day, I could hear him working upstairs in the attic. His footsteps
sounded right above my head.
“I made some coffee,” I called up the stairs. He was down in a minute.
Somewhere he’d acquired a pair of denim overalls, and since he wasn’t
wearing a shirt underneath, he looked like he was about to take his place in
the stripper lineup from the night before as the Sexy Farmer with the Big
Pitchfork. I asked Sexy Farmer with a silent gesture if he wanted any toast,
and he nodded, happy as a kid. Dermot loved plum jam, and I had a jar made
by Maxine Fortenberry, Holly’s future mother-in-law. His smile widened
when he saw it.
“I was trying to get as much work finished as I could while it wasn’t so
hot,” he explained. “I hope I didn’t wake you up.”
“Nope. I slept like a rock. What are you doing up there today?” Dermot
had been inspired by HGTV to hang some doors in the walk-in attic to block
off a part of the big room for storage, and he was turning the rest of the
floored space into a bedroom for himself. He and Claude had been more or
less bunking together in the small bedroom and sitting room on the second
floor. When we’d cleared out the attic, Dermot had decided to “repurpose”
the space. He’d already painted the walls and refinished and resealed the
plank floor. I believe he’d recaulked the windows, too.
“The floor is dry now, so I built the new walls. Now I’m actually
putting in the hardware to hang the doors. I’m hoping to get that done today
and tomorrow. So if you have anything you want to store, the space will be
ready.”
When Dermot and Claude had helped me carry everything down from
the packed attic, I’d gotten rid of the accumulated Stackhouse debris—
generations of discarded trash and treasures. I was practical enough to know
that moldering things untouched for decades really weren’t doing anyone
32
any good, and the trash had gone in a large burn pile. The nice items had
gone to an antiques store in Shreveport. When I’d dropped by Splendide the
week before, Brenda Hesterman and Donald Callaway had told me a few of
the smaller pieces had sold.
While the two dealers were at the house looking through the
possibilities, Donald had discovered a secret drawer in one of the old pieces
of furniture, a desk. In it, I’d found a treasure: a letter from my gran to me
and a unique keepsake.
Dermot’s head turned at some noise I couldn’t yet hear. “Motorcycle
coming,” he said around a mouthful of toast and jelly, sounding almost eerily
like Jason. I snapped myself back to reality.
I knew only one person who regularly traveled by motorcycle.
A moment after I heard the motor cut off, there was a knock at the front
door. I sighed, reminding myself to remember days like this the next time I
felt lonely. I was wearing sleep shorts and a big old T-shirt, and I was a mess,
but that would have to be the problem of my uninvited guest.
Mustapha Khan, Eric’s daytime guy, was standing on the front porch.
Since it was way too hot to wear leather, his “Blade” impersonation had
suffered. But he managed to look plenty tough in a sleeveless denim shirt and
jeans and his ever-present shades. He wore his hair in a geometric burr, à la
the Wesley Snipes look in the movies, and I was sure he would have strapped
huge weapons to his legs if the gun laws had let him.
“Good morning,” I said, with moderate sincerity. “You want a cup of
coffee? Or some lemonade?” I tacked on the lemonade because he was
looking at me like I was crazy.
He shook his head in disgust. “I don’t take stimulants,” he said, and I
remembered—too late—that he’d told me that before. “Some people just
sleep their lives away,” he remarked after glancing at the clock on the mantel.
We walked back to the kitchen.
“Some people were out late last night,” I said, as Mustapha—who was a
werewolf—stiffened at the sight and scent of Farmer Dermot.
“I see what kind of work you been doing late,” Mustapha said.
I’d been about to explain that Dermot had been the one who’d worked
late, while I’d only watched him work, but at Mustapha’s tone I canceled that
plan. He didn’t deserve an explanation. “Oh, don’t be an idiot. You know this
is my great-uncle,” I said. “Dermot, you’ve met Mustapha Khan before. Eric’s
daytime guy.” I thought it more tactful not to bring up the fact that
Mustapha’s real name was KeShawn Johnson.
33
“He doesn’t look like anyone’s great-uncle,” Mustapha snarled.
“But he is, and it’s none of your business, anyway.”
Dermot hiked a blond eyebrow. “Do you want to make my presence an
issue?” he asked. “I’m sitting here eating breakfast with my great-niece. I
have no problem with you.”
Mustapha seemed to gather up his stoic Zen-like impassivity, an
important part of his image, and within a few seconds he was his cool self. “If
Eric don’t have a problem with it, why should I?” he said. (It would have
been nice if he had realized that earlier.) “I’m here to tell you a few things,
Sookie.”
“Sure. Have a seat.”
“No, thanks. Won’t be here long enough.”
“Warren didn’t come with you?” Warren was most often on the back of
Mustapha’s motorcycle. Warren was a skinny little ex-con with pale skin and
straggly blond hair and some gaps in his teeth, but he was a great shooter
and a great friend of Mustapha’s.
“Didn’t figure I’d need a gun here.” Mustapha looked away. He seemed
really jangled. Odd. Werewolves were hard to read, but it didn’t take a
telepath to know that something was up with Mustapha Khan.
“Let’s hope no one needs a gun. What’s happening in Shreveport that
you couldn’t tell me over the phone?”
I sat down myself and waited for Mustapha to deliver his message. Eric
could have left one on my answering machine or even sent me an e-mail,
rather than sending Mustapha—but like most vamps, he didn’t really have a
rock-solid trust in electronics, especially if the news was important.
“You want him to hear this?” Mustapha tilted his head toward Dermot.
“You might be better off not knowing,” I told Dermot. He gave the
daytime man a level blue stare that warned Mustapha to be on his best
behavior and rose, taking his mug with him. We heard the stairs creak as he
mounted them. When Mustapha’s Were hearing told him Dermot was out of
earshot, he sat down opposite me and placed his hands side by side on the
table very precisely. Style and attitude.
“Okay, I’m waiting,” I said.
“Felipe de Castro is coming to Shreveport to talk about the
disappearance of his buddy Victor.”
“Oh, shit,” I said.
“Say it, Sookie. We’re in for it now.” He smiled.
“That’s it? That’s the message?”
34
“Eric would like you to come to Shreveport tomorrow night to greet
Felipe.”
“I won’t see Eric till then?” I could feel my face narrow in a suspicious
squint. That didn’t suit me at all. The thin cracks in our relationship would
only spread wider if we didn’t get to spend time together.
“He has to get ready,” Mustapha said, shrugging. “I don’t know if he
got to clean out his bathroom cabinets or change the sheets or what. ‘Has to
get ready’ is what he told me.”
“Right,” I said. “And that’s it? That’s the whole message?”
Mustapha hesitated. “I got some other things to tell you, not from Eric.
Two things.” He took off his sunglasses. His chocolate-chip eyes were
downcast; Mustapha was not a happy camper.
“Okay, I’m ready.” I was biting the inside of my mouth. If Mustapha
could be stoical about Felipe’s impending visit, I could, too. We were at great
risk. We had both participated in the plan to trap Victor Madden, regent of
the state of Louisiana, put in place by King Felipe of Nevada, and we had
helped to kill Victor and his entourage. What was more, I was pretty sure
Felipe de Castro suspected all this with a high degree of certainty.
“First thing, from Pam.”
Blond and sardonic, Eric’s child Pam was as close to a friend as I had
among the vamps. I nodded, signaling Mustapha to deliver the message.
“She says, ‘Tell Sookie that this is the hard time that will show what she
is made of.’”
I cocked my head. “No advice other than that? Not too helpful. I
figured as much.” I’d pretty much assumed Felipe’s post-Victor visit would
be a very touchy one. But that Pam would warn me … seemed a bit odd.
“Harder than you know,” Mustapha said intently.
I stared at him, waiting for more.
Maddeningly, he did not elaborate. I knew better than to ask him to.
“The other thing is from me,” he continued.
Only the fact that I’d had to control my face all my life kept me from
giving him major Doubtful. Mustapha? Giving me advice?
“I’m a lone wolf,” he said, by way of preamble.
I nodded. He hadn’t affiliated with the Shreveport werewolves, all
members of the Long Tooth pack.
“When I first blew into Shreveport, I looked into joining. I even went to
a pack gathering,” Mustapha said.
It was the first chink I’d seen in his “I’m badass and I don’t need
35
anyone” armor. I was startled that he’d even tried. Alcide Herveaux, the
packleader in Shreveport, would have been glad to gain a strong wolf like
Mustapha.
“The reason I didn’t even consider it is because of Jannalynn,” he said.
Jannalynn Hopper was Alcide’s enforcer. She was about as big as a wasp, and
she had the same nature.
“Because Jannalynn’s really tough and she would challenge someone as
alpha as you?” I said.
He inclined his head. “She wouldn’t leave me standing. She would
push and push until we fought.”
“You think she could win? Over you.” I made it not quite a question.
With Mustapha’s size advantage and his greater experience, I could not
fathom why Mustapha had a doubt he would be the victor.
He inclined his head again. “I do. Her spirit is big.”
“She likes to feel in charge? She has to be the baddest bitch in the
fight?”
“I was in Hair of the Dog yesterday, early evening. Just to spend some
time with the other Weres after I got through working for the vamps, get the
smell of Eric’s house out of my nose … though we got a deader hanging
around at the Hair, lately. Anyway, Jannalynn was talking to Alcide while
she was serving him a drink. She knows you loaned Merlotte some money to
keep his bar afloat.”
I shifted in my chair, suddenly uneasy. “I’m a little surprised Sam told
her, but I didn’t ask him to keep it a secret.”
“I’m not so sure he did tell her. Jannalynn’s not above snooping when
she thinks she ought to know something, and she doesn’t even think of it as
snooping. She thinks of it as fact-gathering. Here’s the bottom line: Don’t
cross that bitch. You’re on the borderline with her.”
“Because I helped Sam? That doesn’t make any sense.” Though my
sinking heart told me it did.
“Doesn’t need to. You helped him when she couldn’t. And that galls
her. You ever seen her when she’s got a mad on?”
“I’ve seen her in action.” Sam always liked such challenging women. I
could only conclude that she saved her softer, gentler side for him.
“Then you know how she treats people she sees as a threat.”
“I wonder why Alcide hasn’t picked Jannalynn as his first lady, or
whatever the term is,” I said, just to veer away from the subject for a moment.
“He made her pack enforcer, but I would have thought he would pick the
36
strongest female wolf as his mate.”
“She’d love that,” Mustapha said. “I can smell that on her. He can smell
that on her. But she don’t love Alcide, and he don’t love her. She’s not the
kind of woman he likes. He likes women his own age, women with a little
curve to ’em. Women like you.”
“But she told Alcide …” I had to stop, because I was hopelessly
confused. “A few weeks ago, she advised Alcide he should try to seduce me,”
I said awkwardly. “She thought I would be an asset to the pack.”
“If you’re confused, think how Jannalynn’s feeling.” Mustapha’s face
might have been carved in stone. “She’s got a relationship with Sam, but you
were able to save him when she wasn’t. She halfway wants Alcide, but she
knows he wanted you, too. She’s big in the pack, and she knows you have
pack protection. You know what she can do to people who don’t.”
I shuddered. “She does enjoy the enforcement,” I said. “I’ve watched
her. Thanks for the heads-up, Mustapha. If you’d like a drink or something to
eat, the offer still stands.”
“I’ll take a glass of water,” he said, and I got it in short order. I could
hear one of Dermot’s rented power tools going above our heads in the attic,
and though Mustapha cocked an eye toward the ceiling, he didn’t comment
until he’d finished his drink. “Too bad he can’t come with you to
Shreveport,” he said then. “Fairies are good fighters.” Mustapha handed me
his empty glass. “Thanks,” he said. And then he was out the door.
I mounted the stairs to the second floor as the motorcycle roared its
way back to Hummingbird Road. I stood in the attic doorway. Dermot was
shaving the bottom off one of the doors. He knew I was there, but he kept on
working, casting a quick smile over his shoulder to acknowledge my
presence. I considered telling him what Mustapha had just told me, simply to
share my worries.
But as I watched my great-uncle work, I reconsidered. Dermot had his
own problems. Claude had left with Niall, and there was no way of knowing
when he’d return or in what condition. Until Claude’s return, Dermot was
supposed to make sure all was running smoothly at Hooligans. What would
that motley crew be capable of, without Claude’s control? I had no idea if
Dermot could keep them in line or if they’d ignore his authority.
I started to launch a boatful of worry about that, but I gave myself a
reality check. I couldn’t assume responsibility for Hooligans. It was none of
my business. For all I knew, Claude had a system in place and all Dermot had
to do was follow it. I could only worry about one bar, and that was
37
Merlotte’s. Kind of alternating with Fangtasia. Okay, two bars.
Speaking of which, my cell phone buzzed me to remind me we were
getting a beer delivery that morning. It was time for me to hustle in to work.
“If you need me, you call me,” I told Dermot.
With a proud air, as if he’d learned a clever phrase in a foreign
language, Dermot said, “You have a nice day, you hear?”
I took a hasty shower and pulled on some shorts and a Merlotte’s Tshirt.
I didn’t have time to blow-dry my hair completely, but at least I put on
some eye makeup before I hustled out the door. It felt excellent to shed my
supernatural worries and to fall back on thinking about what I had to do at
Merlotte’s, especially now that I’d bought into it.
The rival bar opened by the now-deceased Victor, Vic’s Redneck
Roadhouse, had taken a lot of customers away. To our relief, the newness of
our rival was wearing off, and some of our regulars were returning to the
fold. At the same time, the protests against patronizing a bar owned by a
shapeshifter had stopped since Sam had started attending the church that
had supplied most of the protesters.
It had been a surprisingly effective countermove, and I am proud to say
I thought of it. Sam had blown me off at first, but he’d reconsidered when
he’d cooled off. Sam had been pretty nervous the first Sunday, and only a
handful of people talked to him. But he’d kept it going, if irregularly, and the
members were getting to know him as a person first, a shapeshifter second.
I’d loaned Sam some money to float the bar through the worst time.
Instead of repaying me bit by bit as I’d imagined he would, Sam now
regarded me as a part owner. After a long and cautious conversation, he’d
upped my paycheck and added to my responsibilities. I’d never had
something that was kind of my own before. There was no other word for it
but “awesome.”
Now that I handled some of the administrative work at the bar and
Kennedy could come in as bartender, Sam was enjoying a little more wellearned
time off. He spent some of it with Jannalynn. He went fishing, a
pastime he’d enjoyed with his dad and mom when he was a kid. Sam also
worked on his double-wide inside and out, trimming his hedge and raking
his yard, planting flowers and tomatoes in season, to the amusement of the
rest of the staff.
I didn’t think it was funny. I thought it was real nice that Sam liked to
take care of his home, even if it was parked behind the bar.
What gave me the most pleasure was seeing the tension ease out of his
38
shoulders now that Merlotte’s was on an even keel again.
I was a little early. I had the time to make some measurements in the
storeroom. I figured if I had the right to accept beer shipments, I had the right
to institute a few changes, too—subject to Sam’s approval and consent, of
course.
The guy who drove the truck, Duff McClure, knew exactly where to put
the beer. I counted the cases as he unloaded them. I’d offered to help the first
time we’d dealt together, and Duff had made it clear it would be a cold day in
Hell before a woman helped him do physical work. “You been selling more
Michelob lately,” he remarked.
“Yeah, we got a few guys who’ve decided that’s all they’re gonna
drink,” I said. “They’ll be back to Bud Light before too long.”
“You need any TrueBlood?”
“Yeah, the usual case.”
“You got a regular vamp clientele.”
“Small but regular,” I agreed, my mind on writing the check for the
shipment. We had a few days to pay it, but Sam had always paid on delivery.
I thought that was a good policy.
“They take three, four cases at Vic’s,” Duff said conversationally.
“Bigger bar.” I began writing the check.
“I guess vamps are everywhere now.”
“Um-hum,” I muttered, filling it out carefully. I was serious about my
check-writing privileges. I signed with a flourish.
“Even that bar in Shreveport, that one that turned out to be for
werewolves, they take some blood drinks now.”
“Hair of the Dog?” Hadn’t Mustapha mentioned a vamp who was
hanging out at the Were bar?
“Yeah. I delivered there this morning.”
“Huh.” This news was unsettling, but husky Duff was a huge gossip,
and I didn’t want him to know he’d shaken me. “Well, everybody’s got to
drink,” I said easily. “Here’s your check, Duff. How’s Dorothy?” Duff tucked
the check into the zippered pouch he kept in a locked box in the passenger
floorboard. “She’s good,” he said with a grin. “We’re having another
young’un, she says.”
“Oh my gosh, how many does that make?”
“This’ll be number three,” Duff said, shaking his head with a rueful
grin. “They gonna have to take out some college loans, do it themselves.”
“It’ll be fine,” I said, which meant almost nothing except that I felt
39
goodwill toward the McClure family.
“Sure thing,” he said. “Catch you next time, Sookie. I see Sam’s got his
fishing pole out. Tell him I said to catch some crappie for me.”
When the truck had gone, Sam came out of the trailer and came over to
the bar.
“You did that on purpose,” I said. “You just don’t like Duff.”
“Duff’s okay,” Sam said. “He just talks too much. Always has.”
I hesitated a moment. “He says they’re stocking TrueBlood at the Hair
of the Dog.” I was treading on shaky ground.
“Really? That’s pretty weird.”
I may not be able to read two-natured minds as easily as I can human
minds, but I could tell Sam was genuinely surprised. Jannalynn hadn’t told
him a vampire was coming into her bar, a Were bar. I relaxed. “Come on in
and let me show you something,” I said. “I’ve been in there measuring.”
“Uh-oh, you want to move the furniture?” Sam was half-smiling as he
followed me into the bar.
“No, I want to buy some,” I said over my shoulder. “See here?” I paced
off a modest area just outside the storeroom. “Look, right here by the back
door. This is where we need us some lockers.”
“What for?” Sam didn’t sound indignant, but like he genuinely wanted
to know.
“So we women won’t have to put our purses in a drawer in your desk,”
I said. “So Antoine and D’Eriq can keep a change of clothes here. So each
employee will have their own little space to store stuff.”
“You think we need this?” Sam looked startled.
“So bad,” I said. “Now, I looked in a few catalogs and checked online,
and the best price I found …” We continued talking lockers for a few
minutes, Sam protesting at the expense, me giving him all kinds of grief, but
in a friendly way.
After a token fuss, Sam agreed. I’d been pretty sure he would.
Then it was thirty minutes till opening time, and Sam went behind the
bar to start slicing lemons for the tea. I tied on my apron and began to check
the salt and pepper shakers on the tables. Terry had come in very early that
morning to clean the bar, and he’d done his usual good job. I straightened a
few chairs.
“How long has it been since Terry had a raise?” I asked Sam, since the
other waitress hadn’t come in yet and Antoine was in the walk-in
refrigerator.
40
“Two years,” Sam said. “He’s due. But I couldn’t go giving raises until
things got better. I still think we better wait until we’re sure we’re level.”
I nodded, accepting his judgment. Now that I’d gone over the books, I
could see how careful Sam had been in the good times, saving money up for
the bad.
India, Sam’s newest hire, came in ten minutes early, ready to hustle. I
liked her more and more as I worked with her. She was clever at handling
difficult customers. Since the only person who came in (when we unlocked
the front door at eleven) was our most consistent alcoholic, Jane Bodehouse,
India went back to the kitchen to help Antoine, who’d turned on the fryers
and heated up the griddle. India was glad to find things to do while she was
at work, which was a refreshing change.
Kenya, one of our patrol officers, came and looked around inquiringly.
“You need something, Kenya?” I asked. “Kevin’s not here.” Kevin, another
patrolman, was deeply in love with Kenya, and she with him. They ate lunch
here at least once or twice a week.
“My sister here? She told me she was going to be working today,”
Kenya asked.
“Is India your sister?” Kenya was a good ten years older than India, so I
hadn’t put them together.
“Half sister. Yeah, our mother would get out the map when we were
born,” Kenya said, kind of daring me to find that amusing. “She named us
after places she wanted to go. My big brother’s name is Spain. I got a younger
one named Cairo.”
“She didn’t stick to countries.”
“No, she threw in a few cities for good measure. She thought the word
‘Egypt’ was ‘too chewy.’ That’s a direct quote.” Kenya was walking as she
talked, following my pointed finger in the direction of the kitchen. “Thanks,
Sookie.”
The foreign names were kind of cool. Kenya’s mom sounded like fun to
me. My mom hadn’t been a fun person; but then, she’d had a lot to worry
about, after she’d had me. I sighed to myself. I tried not to regret things I
couldn’t change. I listened to Kenya’s voice coming through the serving
hatch, brisk and warm and clear, greeting Antoine, telling India that Cairo
had fixed India’s car and she should come by to pick it up when she got off
work. I brightened when my own brother walked in just as Kenya was
leaving. Instead of sitting at the bar or taking a table, he came up to me.
“You think I look like a Holland?” I asked him, and Jason gave me one
41
of his blankest stares.
“Naw, you look like a Sookie,” he said. “Listen, Sook, I’m gonna do it.”
“Gonna do what?”
He looked at me impatiently. I could tell this wasn’t how he’d expected
the conversation to go. “I’m gonna ask Michele to marry me.”
“Oh, that’s great!” I said, with genuine enthusiasm. “Really, Jason, I’m
happy for you. I sure hope she says yes.”
“This time I’m going to do everything right,” he said, almost to himself.
His first marriage had been a mistake from the start, and it had ended
even worse than it had begun.
“Michele’s got a good head on her shoulders,” I said.
“She’s no kid,” he agreed. “In fact, she’s a little older than me, but she
don’t like me to bring that up.”
“You won’t, then, right? No jokes,” I warned him.
He grinned at me. “No jokes. And she’s not pregnant, and she’s got her
own job and her own money.” None of these facts had been true of his first
wife.
“Go for it, Brother.” I gave him a quick hug.
He flashed the grin at me, the one that had hooked scores of women.
“I’m asking her today when she gets off work. I was gonna eat lunch here,
but I’m too nervous.”
“Let me know what she says, Jason. I’ll be praying for you.” I beamed
at his back as he left the bar. He was as happy and nervous as I’d ever seen
him.
Merlotte’s began to fill up after that, and I was too busy to think much. I
love being at work, because I get to be around people and I know what’s
going on in Bon Temps. On the other hand, most of the time I know too much.
It’s a feathery balance between listening to people with my ears and not
listening to them in my head, and it’s not too surprising that I have a big rep
for being eccentric. At least most people are too nice to call me Crazy Sookie
anymore. I like to think I’ve proved myself to the community.
Tara came in with her assistant, McKenna, to order an early lunch. Tara
looked even bigger with her pregnancy than she had at Hooligans the night
before.
Since she’d brought McKenna along, I couldn’t ask Tara what I really
wanted to know. What had happened when she talked to JB about his second
job at Hooligans? Even if he hadn’t seen Tara in the crowd, he’d have to
know we were going to tell her.
42
But Tara was thinking about the shop with great determination, and
when she wasn’t planning to restock the lingerie counter, she was
concentrating on the Merlotte’s menu—the very limited menu that she knew
back and forth—trying to figure out what she could digest, and how many
more calories she could ingest, without actually exploding. McKenna’s brain
wasn’t any help; though McKenna loved to know every little snippet of
information about Bon Temps happenings, she didn’t know about JB’s
moonlighting. She would have been vastly interested if I’d told her. McKenna
would have loved to be a telepath, for about twenty-four hours.
But after she’d heard stuff like I can’t take it anymore, I’m going to wait till
he’s asleep and slash him or I’d like to take her and bend her over the bar and drive
my … Well, after a day or two of that, she wouldn’t love it so much.
Tara didn’t even go to the ladies’ room by herself. She towed McKenna
along. I looked questioningly at Tara. She glared at me. Not ready to talk, not
yet.
When the lunch rush was over, only two tables remained in use, and
they were in India’s section. I went back to Sam’s office to work on the
endless paperwork. Trees had died to make these forms, and that seemed a
great pity to me. I tried to fill out anything I could online, though I was very
slow at it. Sam came back to his office to retrieve a screwdriver from his desk,
so I asked him a question about an employee tax form. He was leaning over
me to look at it when Jannalynn walked in.
“Hey, Jannalynn,” I said. I didn’t even look at her because I’d identified
her mental signature before she’d entered, and I was trying real hard to
complete the form while Sam’s instructions were still fresh in my mind.
“Oh, hey, Jan,” Sam said. I could feel his smile in his voice.
Instead of a response, there was an ominous silence.
“What?” I said, filling in one more figure.
I finally looked up to see that Jannalynn was in high offensive mode,
her eyes round and wide, her nostrils dilated, her whole slim body tense with
aggression.
“What?” I asked again, alarmed. “Are we being attacked?”
Sam remained silent. I swung around in the swivel chair to look up at
him, and he was in a posture that was tense, too. But his face was one big
warning.
“You two want to be alone?” I scrambled to get up and out from
between them.
“I would have thought so before I walked in,” Jannalynn said, her fists
43
like little hammers.
“What … wait! You thinking Sam and I are fooling around in the
office?” Despite Mustapha’s warning, I was genuinely astonished. “Honey,
we are filling out tax forms. If you think there’s anything sexy about that, you
should get a job with the IRS!”
There was a long moment when I wondered if I was going to get my ass
kicked, but gradually the suspense ratcheted down. I did notice that Sam
didn’t say anything, not a word, until Jannalynn’s stance had completely
relaxed. I took a deep breath.
“Excuse us for a minute, Sookie,” Sam said, and I could tell he was
really angry.
“Certainly.” I was out of that room as fast as a greased pig. I would
rather have cleaned the men’s room after a Saturday night than have stayed
in Sam’s office.
India was helping D’Eriq clear off a table. She glanced at me and half
smiled. “What lit your tail on fire?” she asked. “Sam’s scary girlfriend?”
I nodded. “I’m just going to find something to do out here,” I said. This
was a very good opportunity to dust the bottles and shelves behind the bar,
and I moved them all carefully, cleaning a bit of shelf and moving on to
another one.
Though I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on in Sam’s office, I
reminded myself repeatedly that it wasn’t my business. I had the bar as clean
as a whistle by the time Jannalynn and Sam emerged.
“Sorry,” she said to me, with no particular sincerity.
I nodded in acknowledgment.
Jannalynn thought, She’ll get Sam if she can.
Oh, please! I thought, She’d be real happy if I died.
And then she left the bar, Sam following her to say good-bye. Or to
make sure she actually got in her car. Or both.
By the time he returned, I was so desperate for something to do I was
about to start counting the toothpicks in the clear plastic dispenser. “We can
get back on that paperwork tomorrow,” Sam said in passing, and continued
walking. He avoided my eyes. He was surely embarrassed. It’s always good
to give people time to recover from that, especially guys, so I cut Sam some
slack.
A work crew from Norcross came in, their shift over and some
celebration in progress. India and I began putting tables together to
accommodate all of them. While I worked, I thought about young shifter
44
women. I’d encountered more than one who was very aggressive, but there
were very few female packleaders in the United States, especially in the
South. An outstanding few of the female Weres I’d met were extremely
vicious. I wondered if this exaggerated aggression was due to the established
male power structure in the packs.
Jannalynn wasn’t psychotic, as the Pelt sisters and Marnie Stonebrook
had been; but she was uber-conscious of her own toughness and ability.
I had to abandon theoretical thinking to get the drink orders right for
the Norcross men and women. Sam emerged to work behind the bar, India
and I began moving at a faster pace, and gradually everything settled back to
normal.
Just as I was about to get off work, Michele and Jason came in together.
They were holding hands. From Jason’s smile, it was easy to see what her
answer had been.
“Seems like we’re going to be sisters,” Michele said in her husky voice,
and I gave her a heartfelt hug. I gave Jason an even happier one. I could feel
his delight pouring out of his head, and his thoughts weren’t so much
coherent as a jumble of pleasure.
“Have you two had time to think about when it’ll be?”
“Nothing stopping us from having it soon,” Jason said. “We’ve both
been married already, and we don’t go to church much, so there’s no reason
to have a church wedding.”
I thought that was a pity, but I kept my mouth shut. There was nothing
to gain and everything to lose by adding my two cents. They were grownups.
“I might need to prepare Cork a little bit,” Michele said, smiling. “I
don’t think he’ll kick up a fuss over me remarrying, but I do want to break it
to him gentle.” Michele still worked for her former father-in-law, who
seemed to have more regard for Michele than he had for his lazy son.
“So it’ll be soon. I hope that it’s okay if I come?”
“Oh, sure, Sook,” Jason said, and hugged me. “We ain’t eloping or
anything. We just don’t want a big church thing. We’ll have a party out at the
house afterward. Right, honey?” He deferred to Michele.
“Sure,” she said. “We’ll fire up our grill, maybe Hoyt can bring his over,
too, and we’ll cook whatever anybody brings. And other guests can bring
drinks or whatever, vegetables and desserts. That way no one will worry and
we’ll all have a good time.”
A potluck wedding. That was very practical and low-key. I asked them
45
to let me know what I could bring that would be most helpful. After lots of
mutual goodwill had been exchanged, they left, still holding hands and
smiling.
India said, “Another one bites the dust. How you feeling about this,
Sookie?”
“I like Michele real well. I’m so happy!”
Sam called, “They engaged?”
“Yeah,” I called back, a few happy tears in my eyes. Sam was making
an effort to sound upbeat, though he was still a little worried about his own
romantic situation. Any irritation I’d felt about the Jannalynn episode simply
melted away. Sam had been my friend for years, while significant others
came and went. I went up to the bar and leaned against it. “Second time
around for both of ’em. They’re real good together.”
He nodded, accepting my tacit reassurance that I wasn’t going to bring
up Jannalynn’s little outburst of jealousy. “Crystal was all wrong for your
brother; Michele is all right.”
“In a nutshell,” I agreed.
Since Holly called in to say her car wouldn’t start but Hoyt was
working on it, I was still at Merlotte’s when JB came in about ten minutes
later. My friend, the secret stripper, was looking handsome and hearty as
always. There’s something about JB, something warm and simple that’s really
appealing, especially when added to his nonthreatening good looks. He’s like
a great loaf of homemade bread.
“Hey, friend,” I said. “What can I get for you?”
“Sookie, I saw you last night.” He waited for my big reaction.
“I saw you, too.” Just about every inch of him.
“Tara was there,” JB told me, as though that would be news. “I saw her
as she was leaving.”
“Uh-huh,” I agreed. “She was.”
“Was she mad?”
“She was real surprised,” I said cautiously. “Are you seriously telling
me you-all have not talked about last night?”
“I got in pretty late,” he said. “I slept out on the couch. When I got up
this morning, she’d already gone to the store.”
“Oh, JB.” I shook my head. “Honey, you got to talk to her.”
“What can I say? I know I should have told her.” He made a hopeless
gesture with his hands. “I just couldn’t think of any other way to earn some
extra money. Her shop’s not doing so great right now, and I don’t make a lot.
46
We don’t have good insurance. Twins! That’s gonna be a big hospital bill.
What if one of ’em’s sick?”
It was so tempting to tell him not to worry about it—but there was
every reason for him to be concerned, and it would be patronizing to tell him
he didn’t need to be. JB had made a clever move, for JB; he had found a way
to use his assets to make extra money. His downfall had been in not
informing his wife he was taking off his clothes in front of many other
women on a weekly basis.
We talked off and on while JB nursed a beer at the bar. Tactfully, Sam
pretended to be so busy that he was deaf to our intermittent conversation. I
urged JB to cook something special for Tara that night or to stop off at Wal-
Mart and buy her a little bouquet. Maybe he could give her a foot rub and a
back massage, anything to make her feel loved and special. “And don’t tell
her how big she is!” I said, poking a finger into his chest. “Don’t you dare!
You tell her she’s more beautiful than ever now that she’s carrying your
children!”
JB looked exactly as though he were going to say, “But that’s not true.”
He was sure thinking it. He met my eyes and clamped his lips shut.
“Doesn’t make any difference what the truth is, you say she looks
great!” I told him. “I know you love her.”
JB looked sideways for a minute, testing that statement for its truth
value, and then he nodded. “I do love her,” he said. Then he smiled. “She
completes me,” he said proudly. JB loved movies.
“Well, you just complete her right back,” I said. “She needs to feel
pretty and adored, because she feels big and clumsy and uncomfortable. It’s
not easy being pregnant, I hear.”
“I’ll try, Sookie. Can I call you if she doesn’t soften up?”
“Yeah, but I know you can work this out, JB. Just be loving and sincere,
and she’ll come around.”
“I like stripping,” he said suddenly, as I was turning away.
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
“I knew you would understand.” He took a last sip of beer, left Sam a
tip, and went to work at the gym in Clarice.
“This must be couples day,” India said. “Sam and Jannalynn, Jason and
Michele, JB and Tara.” The thought didn’t seem to make her particularly
happy.
“You still dating Lola?” Though I knew the answer, it was always better
to ask.
47
“Naw. It didn’t work out.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe some day soon the right woman will just
walk in the door of the bar, and you’ll be all fixed up.”
“I hope so.” India looked depressed. “I’m not a fan of the wedding
industry, but I sure would like a steady someone. Dating makes me all
confused.”
“I never was any good at dating.”
“That why you go with the vamp? To scare off everyone else?”
“I love him,” I said steadily. “That’s why I go with him.” I didn’t point
out that human guys were simply impossible for me. You can imagine
reading your date’s mind every minute. No, it really wouldn’t be any fun,
would it?
“No need to get all defensive,” India said.
I thought I’d been matter-of-fact. “He’s fun,” I said mildly, “and he
treats me nice.”
“They’re … I don’t know how to ask this, but they’re cold, right?”
India wasn’t the first person who’d tried to find a delicate way to ask
me that. There wasn’t any delicate way.
“Not room temperature,” I said. I left it at that, because any more was
none of anyone else’s business.
“Damn,” she said, after a moment. After a longer moment, she said,
“Ew.”
I shrugged. She opened her mouth, looked as though she wanted to ask
me something else, and then she closed it.
Fortunately for both of us, her table gestured that they wanted their bill,
and one of Jane Bodehouse’s buddies came in drunk off her ass, so we both
had things to do. Holly finally arrived to relieve me, complaining about her
no-good car. India was working a double shift, so she kept her apron on. I
waved a casual good-bye to Sam, glad to be walking out the door.
I just made it to the library before it closed, and then I stopped by the
post office to buy some stamps from the machine in the lobby. Halleigh
Bellefleur was there on the same errand, and we greeted each other with real
pleasure. You know how sometimes you just like someone, though you don’t
hang around with them? Halleigh and I don’t have much of anything in
common, from our background to our educational level to our interests, but
we like each other, anyway. Halleigh’s baby bump was pronounced, and she
looked as rosy as Tara looked wrecked.
“How’s Andy doing?” I asked.
48
“He’s not sleeping well, he’s so excited about this baby,” she said. “He
calls me from work to ask how I am and to find out how many times the baby
kicked.”
“Sticking with ‘Caroline’?”
“Yeah, he was real pleased when I suggested that. His grandma
brought him up, and she was a fine woman, if a little on the scary side.”
Halleigh smiled.
Caroline Bellefleur had been more than a little on the scary side. She’d
been the last great lady of Bon Temps. She had also been my friend Bill
Compton’s great-granddaughter. Halleigh’s baby would be three more greats
away.
I told Halleigh about Jason’s engagement, and she said all the right
things. She was as polite as Andy’s grandmother—and a hell of a lot warmer.
Though it was good to see Halleigh, when I got back into the car with
my stamps I was feeling a little blue. I turned the key in the ignition, but I
didn’t put the car in reverse.
I knew I was a lucky woman in many respects. But there was life being
created all around me, and I wasn’t …
I shut down that line of thought with a sharp command to myself. I
would not start down the self-pity path. Just because I wasn’t pregnant and
wasn’t married to someone who could make me that way, that was no reason
to feel like an island in the stream. I shook myself briskly and set off to
complete the rest of my errands. When I caught a glimpse of Faye de Leon
coming out of Grabbit Kwik, my attitude adjusted. Faye had been pregnant
six times, and she was around my age. She’d told Maxine Fortenberry that
she hadn’t wanted the last three. But her husband loved to see her pregnant,
and he loved kids, and Faye allowed herself to be used “like a puppy mill,”
as Maxine put it.
Yes, attitude adjustment, indeed.
I had my evening meal and watched television and read one of my new
library books that night, and I felt just fine, all by myself, every time I thought
about Faye.
49
Chapter 3
There were no great revelations at work the next day, and not a single
outstanding incident. I actually enjoyed that. I just took orders and delivered
drinks and food, pocketing my tips. Kennedy Keyes was at the bar. I worried
that she and Danny were still quarreling, though he might be at his other job
at the home builders’ supply place. Kennedy was subdued and dull, and I
was sorry; but I didn’t want to find out any more about her relationship
problems—anybody’s relationship problems. I had enough of my own.
It’s a conscious effort to block out the thoughts of other people. Though
I’ve gotten better at it, it’s still work. I don’t have to try as hard with the twonatured,
because their thoughts are not as clear as human thoughts; I catch
only a sentence or emotion, here and there. Even among humans, some are
clearer broadcasters than others. But before I learned how to shield my brain,
it was like listening to ten radio stations at a time. Hard to act normal when
all that’s going on in your brain and you’re still trying to listen to what
people actually say with their mouths.
So during that little period of normality, I achieved a measure of peace.
I convinced myself that the meeting with Felipe would go well, that he would
believe either that we hadn’t killed Victor or that Victor’s death was
justifiable. I was in no hurry to face him to find out.
I stayed gossiping at the bar for a few minutes, and on the way home I
filled up the car with gas. I got a chicken sandwich from the Sonic and drove
home slowly.
Sunset was so late in the summer that the vamps wouldn’t be up for a
couple of hours yet. I hadn’t heard a word from anyone at Fangtasia. I didn’t
even know when I was supposed to get there. I just knew I had to look nice,
because Eric would expect it in front of visitors.
Dermot wasn’t in the house. I’d hoped Claude might have returned
from his mysterious trip to Faery, but if he had, there was no sign. I couldn’t
spare any more concern for the fae tonight. I had vampire problems on my
mind.
I was too anxious to eat more than half my sandwich. I sorted through
the mail I’d picked up at the end of the driveway, throwing most of it into the
trash can. I had to fish my electric bill out after I tossed it along with a
furniture-sale flyer. I opened it to check the amount. Claude had better return
from Faery; he was a reckless energy user, and my bill was almost double its
normal size. I wanted Claude to pay his share. My water heater was gas, and
50
that bill was way up, too. I put the Shreveport newspaper on the kitchen table
to read later. It was sure to be full of bad news.
I showered and redid my hair and makeup. It was so hot that I didn’t
want to wear slacks, and shorts would not suit Eric’s sense of formality. I
sighed, resigned to the inevitable. I began looking through my summer
dresses. Luckily, I’d taken the time to shave my legs, a habit Eric found both
fascinating and bizarre. My skin was nice and brown this far into the tanning
season, and my hair was a few shades lighter and still looked good from the
remedial trim the hairdresser Immanuel had given it a few weeks previously.
I put on a white skirt, a bright blue sleeveless blouse, and a real broad black
leather belt that had gotten too tight for Tara. My good black sandals were
still in pretty fair shape. My hand paused over the drawer of my dressing
table. Within it, camouflaged with a light dusting of face powder, lay a
powerful fairy magical object called a cluviel dor.
I’d never thought of carrying it around on my person. Part of me was
afraid of wasting the power of the cluviel dor. If I used it recklessly, it would
amount to using a nuclear device to kill a fly.
The cluviel dor was a rare and ancient fairy love gift. I guess it was the
fae equivalent of a Fabergé Easter egg, but magical. My grandfather—not my
human one, but my half-human, half-fairy grandfather, Fintan, Dermot’s
twin—had given it to my grandmother Adele, who had hidden it away. She
had never told me she had it, and I had only just discovered it during the
attic clean-out. It had taken me longer to identify it and to learn more about
its properties. Only the part-demon lawyer Desmond Cataliades knew I had
it … though perhaps my friend Amelia suspected, since I’d asked her to teach
me about what it could do.
Up until now, I’d hidden it just like my grandmother had. You can’t go
through life carrying a gun in your hand just in case someone wants to attack
you, right? Though the cluviel dor was a love gift, not a weapon, its use
might have results just as dramatic. Possession of the cluviel dor granted the
possessor a wish. That wish had to be a personal one, to benefit the possessor
or someone the possessor loved. But there were some awful scenarios I’d
imagined: What if I wished an oncoming car wouldn’t hit me, and instead it
hit another car and killed a whole family? What if I wished that my gran
were alive again, and instead of my living grandmother, her corpse
appeared?
So I understood why Gran had hidden it away from casual discovery. I
understood that it had frightened her with its potential, and maybe she
51
hadn’t believed that a Christian should use magic to change her own history.
On the other hand, the cluviel dor could have saved Gran’s life if she’d
had it at the moment she was attacked; but it had been in a secret drawer in
an old desk up in the attic, and she had died. It was like paying for a Life
Alert and then leaving it up in the kitchen cabinet out of reach. No one could
take it, and it couldn’t be used for ill; but then again, it couldn’t be used for
good, either.
If making one’s wish might lead to catastrophic results, it was almost as
perilous to simply possess the cluviel dor. If anyone—any supernatural—
learned I had this amazing object, I would be in even more danger than my
normal allotment.
I opened the drawer and looked at my grandmother’s love gift. The
cluviel dor was a creamy green and looked not unlike a slightly thick powder
compact, which was why I kept it in my makeup drawer. The lid was circled
with a band of gold. It would not open; it had never opened. I didn’t know
how to trigger it. In my hand, the cluviel dor radiated the same warmth I felt
when I was close to Niall … the same warmth times a hundred.
I was so tempted to put it in my purse. My hand hovered over it.
I took it out of the drawer and turned it over and over in my hands. As
I held the smooth object, feeling intense pleasure in its nearness, I weighed
the value of taking it with me against the risk.
In the end, I put it back in the drawer with a powder puff on top of it.
The phone rang.
Pam said, “Our meeting is at Eric’s house at nine o’clock.”
“I thought I’d be coming to Fangtasia,” I said, a little surprised. “Okay,
I’ll be on my way in a jiffy.”
Without answering, Pam hung up. Vampires are not experts on phone
manners. I leaned over to look in the mirror while I applied my lipstick.
In two minutes, the phone rang again.
“Hello?”
“Sookie,” said Mustapha’s gruff voice. “You don’t need to be here till
ten.”
“Oh? Well … okay.” That would give me a more reasonable amount of
time; I wouldn’t have to risk getting a ticket, and there were a few more little
things I’d wanted to do before I left.
I said a prayer, and I turned down my bed as a sign of faith that I
would return home to sleep in it. I watered my plants, just in case. I quickly
checked my e-mail, found nothing of interest. After looking at myself one
52
more time in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, I decided to leave.
I had a comfortable amount of time.
I listened to dance music on the way over to Shreveport, and I sang
along with songs from Saturday Night Fever. I loved to watch the young John
Travolta dance, and that was something I was good at. I could sing only
when I was by myself. I belted out “Stayin’ Alive,” aware that might be my
own theme song. By the time I stopped at the guardhouse at the entrance to
Eric’s gated community, I was a fraction less worried about the evening.
I wondered where Dan Shelley was. The new night guard, a muscular
human whose nametag read “Vince,” waved me through without getting up.
“Enjoy the party,” he called.
A little surprised, I smiled and waved back at him. I’d thought I was
going to a serious council, but evidently this visit by the Grand Poobah was
starting off on a social note.
Though Eric’s fancy neighbors on the circle raised their eyebrows at
cars parked on the street, I did just that because I didn’t want to be blocked
in. The broad driveway to the left of the yard, running slightly uphill to Eric’s
garage, was packed solid. I’d never seen so many cars there. I could hear
music coming from the house, though it was faint. Vampires didn’t need to
turn the volume up like humans did; they could hear all too well.
I turned off the motor and sat behind the wheel, trying to get my head
together before walking into the lion’s den. Why hadn’t I just said no when
Mustapha told me to come? Until this moment, I literally hadn’t considered
the option of staying home. Was I here because I loved Eric? Or because I was
in so deep in the vampire world that it hadn’t occurred to me to refuse?
Maybe a little of both.
I turned to open the Malibu door, and Bill was standing right there. I
gave a little yip of shock. “You know better than to do that!” I snarled, glad to
vent some of my fear in the guise of anger. I shot out of the driver’s seat and
slammed the door behind me.
“Turn around and go back to Bon Temps, sweetheart,” Bill said. In the
harsh streetlight, my first vampire lover looked horribly white except for his
eyes, which were shadowed pits. His dark thick hair and his dark clothing
provided even more contrast, so much so that he looked as though he were
enameled with luminescent paint, like a house sign.
“I’ve been sitting in my car thinking about it,” I admitted. “But it’s too
late.”
“You should go.” He meant it.
53
“Ah … that would be kind of leaving Eric in the lurch,” I said, and there
might have been a bit of a question in my voice.
“He can manage without you tonight. Please, go home.” Bill’s cool
hand took mine, and he applied very gentle pressure.
“You’d better tell me what’s happening.”
“Felipe has brought some of his vampires with him. They swept
through a bar or two to pick up some humans to drink with—and from. Their
behavior is … well, you remember how much Diane, Liam, and Malcolm
disgusted you?”
The three vampires, now finally dead, had not had any qualms about
having sex with humans in front of me, and it hadn’t ended there.
“Yes, I remember.”
“Felipe’s ordinarily more discreet than that, but he’s in a party mood
tonight.”
I swallowed. “I told Eric I’d come,” I said. “Felipe might take it bad if
I’m not here, since I’m Eric’s human wife.” Eric had coerced me into the title
because it gave me a certain amount of protection.
“Eric will survive your absence,” Bill said. If he’d extended that
sentence, I was pretty sure the ending would have been, “But you may not
survive your presence.” He continued, “I’m stuck out here on guard duty.
I’m not allowed inside. I can’t protect you.”
Leaving the cluviel dor at home had been a mistake.
“Bill, I do pretty good taking care of myself,” I said. “You wish me well,
you hear?”
“Sookie …”
“I have to go in.”
“Then I do wish you well.” His voice was wooden, but his eyes were
not.
I had a choice. I could be formal and go to the front door; a path of
stepping stones branched off from the driveway and meandered up the yard
to the massive front door. This path was prettily bordered by crepe myrtles,
now in full bloom. My other option was to continue up the driveway, swing
right into the garage, and enter through the kitchen. That was the one I chose.
After all, I was more at home here than any of the Nevada visitors. I strode
briskly up the driveway, my heels making a tittup sound in the quiet night.
The kitchen door was unlocked, which was also unusual. I looked
around the large and useless kitchen. Someone should be guarding this door,
surely, with guests in the house.
54
I finally realized Mustapha Khan was standing at the French windows
at the back of the kitchen, past the breakfast table where no one ever ate
breakfast. He was looking out into the night.
“Mustapha?” I said.
The daytime man swung around. His very posture was tense. He jerked
his chin at me by way of greeting. Despite the hour, Mustapha was wearing
his dark glasses.
I looked around for his shadow, but there was no Warren in sight.
For the first time, I wished I knew what Mustapha was thinking—but
his thoughts were as opaque as those of any Were I’d ever encountered.
My skin crawled, but I didn’t know why.
“How’s it going out there?” I asked, keeping my voice quiet.
After a pause he answered me, his own voice just as hushed. “Maybe I
shoulda gotten a job with some freakin’ goblins. Or joined the pack and let
Alcide boss me around. That would have been better than this. If I was you,
I’d get my ass back in the car and go home. If Eric wasn’t paying me so good,
that’s what I’d do.”
This was beginning to sound more and more like the beginning of a
fairy tale:
FIRST MAN: Don’t cross the bridge; it’s perilous.
HEROINE: But I must cross the bridge.
SECOND MAN: Upon your life, don’t cross the bridge!
HEROINE: But I have to cross the bridge.
In a fairy tale, there’d be a third encounter; there are always three. And
maybe I would have another one, yet. But I’d gotten the idea.
Anxiety trickled down my spine like sweat. I sure didn’t want to cross
that bridge. Maybe I should just ease on down the road?
But Pam entered the kitchen, and my opportunity was gone. “Thank
God you’re here,” she said, her faint British accent more apparent than usual.
“I was afraid you weren’t going to come. Felipe has noticed you haven’t put
in an appearance.”
“But you changed the time,” I replied, puzzled. “Mustapha told me to
be here …” I glanced at the clock on the microwave. “Just now.”
Pam shook her head, then gave Mustapha a look that seemed more
puzzled than irritated. “We’ll talk later,” she told him. She made an impatient
beckoning gesture to me.
55
I took a second to stow my purse in one of the kitchen cabinets, simply
because a kitchen is the safest storage place in a vampire house. Before I
followed Pam into the large open living room/dining room area, I fixed a
smile on my face. I couldn’t help casting a glance over my shoulder at
Mustapha, but all I saw was the blankness of the lenses of his dark glasses.
I looked ahead of me, after that. When you’re around vampires, it’s
always better to have your eye on what’s coming.
Though Eric’s bold decorating had been featured in Louisiana Interiors,
the photographer would hardly have recognized the room tonight. The
striped drapes across the front windows were firmly drawn. There were no
fresh flowers. A mixed group of humans and vampires were strewn around
the large space.
A hugely muscular man with dyed blond hair was dancing with a
young woman to my far left, close to the dining table, which Eric used for
business conferences. As I approached, they stopped dancing and started
kissing, noisily and with much tongue. A square-jawed male vampire was
taking blood from a well-endowed human female on the loveseat, and he was
making a messy job of it. There were blood drips on the upholstery.
Right then, I was pissed off. It added fuel to the flame when I absorbed
the fact that a red-haired vamp I didn’t know was standing on Eric’s coffee
table (in high heels!) dancing to an old Rolling Stones CD. Another vampire
with thick black hair was watching her with casual appreciation, as if he’d
seen her do the same thing many times but still enjoyed the sight. Her stiletto
heels were digging, digging into the wood of the table, one of Eric’s favorite
acquisitions.
I could feel my lips draw in like purse strings. A sideways glance at
Pam showed me she was keeping her face as smooth and empty as a pretty
bowl. With a huge effort, I wiped my own expression clean. Dammit, we’d
just replaced all the carpeting and had the walls repainted after the Alexei
Romanov debacle! Now the upholstery would need to be cleaned again, and
I’d have to find someone to refinish the table.
I reminded myself I had bigger problems than a few stains and gouges.
Bill had been right. Mustapha had been right. This was not a place I
should be. Despite what Pam had said, I couldn’t believe any of the vampires
would have missed me. They were all too busy.
But then the man watching the dancer turned his head to look at me. I
realized that he was a fully clothed (thank you, God) Felipe de Castro. He
smiled at me, his sharp white fangs glistening in the overhead light. Yes, he’d
56
been enjoying the dancing.
“Miss Stackhouse!” he said lazily. “I’d been afraid you wouldn’t come
tonight. It’s been too long since I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you.” Since
Felipe had a thick accent, my name sounded more like “Meees Stekhuss!”
The first time I’d met him, the king had been wearing an honest-to-God cape.
Tonight he’d dressed conservatively in a gray shirt, silver vest, and black
pants.
“It’s been a while, Your Majesty,” I said, which was simply all I could
think of to say. “I’m so sorry I’m a bit late to greet you. Where is Eric?”
“He’s in one of the bedrooms,” Felipe said, still smiling. His mustache
and chin strip were perfectly black and perfectly groomed. The King of
Nevada, Arkansas, and Louisiana was not a tall man. He was strikingly
handsome. He possessed a vitality that was hugely attractive—though not to
me, and not tonight. Felipe was also quite the politician, I’d heard, and he
was certainly a businessman. No telling how much money he’d amassed in
his long life.
I smiled back at the king in a frozen way. I was mighty put out. The
Nevada visitors weren’t acting any better than, say, small-town firemen
attending a convention in New Orleans. That these visitors were from Las
Vegas and yet felt it necessary to misbehave in Shreveport … well, it didn’t
speak well for them.
“In one of the bedrooms” didn’t sound good, but of course that was
what Felipe had intended. “I’d better tell him I’m here,” I said, and turned to
Pam. “Let’s go, girlfriend.”
Pam took my hand, and it was a measure of the evening that I actually
found that comforting. Her face was still as wax.
As we navigated through the room (the muscular man wasn’t actually
having sex with his companion, but it wasn’t far in the future), Pam hissed,
“Did you see that? The blood will never come out of the upholstery.”
“It won’t be as hard to clean up as the night Alexei went nuts here,” I
said, trying to get perspective. “Or the club, after we did—that thing.” I
didn’t want to say “killed Victor” out loud.
“But that was fun.” Pam was practically pouting.
“This isn’t, for you?”
“No, I like my pleasures more personal and private.”
“Oh, me, too,” I said. “Why is Eric back here instead of out there?”
“I don’t know. I just came back from a liquor run,” she said briefly.
“Mustapha insisted we needed some more rum.”
57
She was doing Mustapha’s bidding now? But I pressed my lips shut. It
was no business of mine.
By that time we’d reached the door of the bedroom I used at Eric’s,
since I didn’t want to be shut downstairs with him all day in his light-tight
sleeping room. Pam, a step ahead of me, pushed open the door and stiffened.
Eric was there, and he was sitting on the bed, but he was feeding off someone
—a dark-haired woman. She was sprawled across his lap, her bright summer
dress twisted around her body, one hand gripping his shoulder and kneading
it while he sucked from her neck. Her other hand was … she was pleasuring
herself.
“You asshole,” I said, and I reversed on the spot. Getting the hell out of
there was my all-consuming desire. Eric raised his head, his mouth bloody,
and his eyes met mine. He was … drunk.
“You can’t go,” Pam said. She gripped my arm now, and I could tell it
would break before she’d release me. “If you run out now, we’ll look weak,
and Felipe will react. We’ll all suffer. Something’s wrong with Eric.”
“I really don’t give a damn,” I told her. My head felt oddly light and
distant from the shock. I wondered if I would faint or throw up or leap on
Eric and choke him.
“You need to leave,” Eric told the woman. His words were slurred.
What the hell?
“But we were just getting around to the good part,” she said, in what
she thought was a seductive voice. “Don’t make me go, baby, before the big
payoff. If you want her to join in, that’s all right with me, sugar.” It took all
her effort to get the words out. She was white as a sheet. She’d lost a lot of
blood.
“You must go,” Eric said, a bit more clearly. His voice had the shove in
it vampires use to get humans moving.
Though I refused to look at the brunette, I knew when she got off the
bed, and Eric. I knew when she staggered and almost fell. Now I can keep my
car, she thought.
I was so startled to hear this that I turned to look at her. She was
younger than me, and she was skinny. Somehow that made Eric’s offense
worse. After a second I could glimpse, past my agitation, that she had a lot of
sickness in her head. The stuff churning around in her mind was both awful
and confusing. Self-loathing made her thoughts all tinged with gray, as if she
were rotting from her core out. The surface still looked pretty, but it wouldn’t
be for long.
58
The girl also had twoey blood, though I couldn’t tell what kind …
maybe werewolf. One of her parents was the real deal. That made sense,
given Eric’s condition. Twoey blood packed a punch for vampires, and she’d
amped it up somehow to make herself more intoxicating.
Pam said, “I don’t know who you are or how you got in here, girl, but
you must leave now.”
The girl laughed, which neither Pam nor I had expected. Pam jerked,
and I felt a solar flare go off in my head. I’d added rage to disgust. Laughing!
My eyes met the girl’s. The smirk vanished from her lips, and she blanched.
I was no vampire, but I guess I looked pretty threatening.
“All right, all right, I’m going. I’ll be out of Shreveport by dawn.” She
was lying. She decided to make one last attempt to … what? She sneered at
me and said deliberately, “It ain’t my fault that your man was hungry …”
Before I could move, Pam backhanded her. The girl lurched against the wall,
then slid to the ground.
“Get up,” Pam said, her voice deadly.
With visible effort, the girl rose to her feet. There were no more smiles
or provocative statements. She passed close to me as she left the room, and I
smelled her; not only a trace of twoey, but another scent, blood with a sweet
undertone. She made her way down the hall and out to the living room,
supporting herself with one hand against the wall.
After she’d cleared the door, Pam shut it. The room was oddly quiet.
My brain was running in a hundred different directions. From my late
arrival, to the new guard at the gate, to the strange thoughts I’d read from the
girl, the odd scent I’d caught when she was near … and then my whole focus
fell on a different subject.
My “husband.”
Eric still remained sitting on the side of the bed.
The bed I thought of as mine. The bed where we had sex. The bed
where I slept.
He spoke directly to me. “You know I take blood …” he began, but I
held up a hand.
“Don’t speak,” I said. He looked indignant, and his mouth opened, and
I said again, “Don’t. Speak.”
Seriously, if I could have gotten away by myself for thirty minutes (or
thirty hours or thirty days), I could have dealt with the situation. As it was, I
had to do a speed speech in my head.
I knew I wasn’t Eric’s only drinking fountain. (One person could not be
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the sole food source for a vampire; or rather, not for a vampire who doesn’t
supplement with synthetic.)
Not his fault he needed food, blah blah.
When it’s freely offered, why not take it, blah blah.
But.
He knew I was due to arrive.
He knew I would let him drink.
He knew the fact that he chose to drink from another woman would
hurt me deeply. And he did it, anyway. Unless there was something I didn’t
know about this woman, or something she’d done to Eric that had triggered
this reaction, this signaled that he didn’t care about me as deeply as I’d
always thought.
I could only think, Thank God I broke the blood bond. If I’d felt his enjoyment
while he was sucking on her, I’d have wanted to kill him.
Eric said, “If you hadn’t broken our blood bond, this would never have
happened.”
I had another solar flare in my head. “This is why I don’t carry a stake,”
I muttered, and swore long and fluently to myself.
I hadn’t told Pam not to speak. After eyeing me intently to assess my
mood, she said, “You know that in a while, you’ll adjust. This was a question
of timing, not of unfaithfulness.”
After I took a long moment to resent the hell out of her conviction that I
was going to accommodate Eric’s behavior, I had to nod. I wasn’t necessarily
agreeing with the premise behind her words—that when I’d calmed down I
wouldn’t mind what Eric had done. I was simply acknowledging the fact that
she had a point. Though it made me scream inside, I pushed aside all the
things I wanted to say to Eric, because something more urgent was
happening here. Even I could see that.
“Listen, here’s the important stuff,” I said, and Pam nodded. Eric
looked surprised, and his back stiffened. He looked more like himself, more
alert and intelligent.
“That girl didn’t just wander in here out of the blue; she was sent,” I
said.
The vampires looked at each other. They shrugged simultaneously. “I’d
never seen her before,” Eric said.
“I thought she came in with Felipe’s pickups,” Pam said.
“There’s a new guy at the gate.” I looked from one to the other.
“Where’d Dan Shelley go, tonight of all nights? And after Pam called me and
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told me to be here at nine, Mustapha called me right back and told me to be
here an hour later. Eric, I’m sure that girl tasted different to you?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding slowly. “I’m still feeling the effects. She was
extra …”
“Like she’d had some kind of supplement?” I suppressed another surge
of hurt and anger.
“Yes,” he agreed. He got up, but I could see that standing wasn’t easy.
“Yes, as if she’d had a Were-and-fairy cocktail.” His eyes closed. “Delicious.”
Pam said, “Eric, if you hadn’t been hungry, you would have questioned
such an opportune arrival.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “My mind isn’t yet clear, but I see the sense of your
words.”
“Sookie, what did you get from her thoughts?” Pam asked.
“She was earning money. But she was excited that she might die.” I
shrugged.
“But she didn’t.”
“No, I got here in time to interrupt what would have been a fatal
feeding. Right, Eric? Could you have stopped?”
He looked profoundly embarrassed. “Maybe not. My control was
almost gone. It was her smell. When she came up to me, she seemed so
ordinary. Well, attractive because of the Were blood, but nothing really
special. And I certainly didn’t offer her money. Then, suddenly …” He shook
his head and gulped.
“Why did her attraction suddenly increase?” Pam was nothing if not
pragmatic. “Wait. I apologize. We don’t have time to get lost in the whys and
wherefores. We must get through this tonight, us three,” she said, looking at
me and at Eric in turn. I nodded again. Eric gave a jerk of his head. “Good,”
she said. “Sookie, you got here just in time. She wasn’t here by accident. She
didn’t smell and taste that way by accident. A lot of things happened here
tonight that reek of a plot. My friend, I’m going to repeat myself—you have
to put aside personal pain for tonight.”
I gave Pam a very direct look. If I hadn’t gone into the bedroom, Eric
might have drained the woman, and the woman herself had considered that
result. I had a hunch something had been set in motion to catch Eric redhanded—
red-fanged, more appropriately.
“Go brush your teeth,” I told him. “Really scrub. Wash your face; rinse
out the sink with lots and lots of water.”
Eric didn’t like being told what to do, but he understood expediency
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very well. He went into the bathroom, leaving the door open. Pam said, “Let
me go check on what’s happening with our special guests,” and disappeared
down the hall into the living room, where the low music had continued
without a break.
Eric stepped back into the bedroom, drying his face with a towel. He
looked more alert, more present. He hesitated when he saw I was by myself.
Eric was pretty much a stranger to relationship problems. From little clues
and reminiscences he’d let drop, I’d gotten the picture that during literally
centuries of sexual adventures he’d called the shots and the women had said,
“Whatever you want, you big handsome Viking.” He’d had a fling or two
with other vampires. Those had been more balanced connections, but brief.
That was all I knew. Eric was not one to brag; he simply took sexual
relationships for granted.
I was already feeling calmer. That was all to the good, since I was alone
in a room with a man I’d wanted to shoot a few minutes before. Though we
weren’t bonded anymore, Eric knew me well enough to realize that he could
now speak.
“It was only blood,” he said. “I was anxious and hungry, you were late,
and I didn’t want to just bite into you the moment I saw you. She came in
while I was waiting, and I thought I’d have a quick drink. She smelled so
intoxicating.”
“So you were trying to spare me,” I said, letting sarcasm drip off my
words. “I see.” Then I made myself shut up.
“I acted impulsively.” And his mouth compressed into a straight line.
I considered him. I acted on impulse sometimes, myself. For example,
the few previous times I’d been this angry or this hurt, I’d walked out of the
situation—not because I wanted the last word or because I wanted to make a
dramatic statement, but because I needed alone time to cool off. I took a deep
breath. I looked Eric in the eye. I realized we both had to make a huge effort
to move past this, at least for tonight. Without conscious thought, I had
identified the subtle scent that must have screamed out at Eric’s senses.
“She’s already part Were, and she was doused in the scent of fairy
blood to make you want her more,” I said. “I believe you’d have had better
sense, if not for that. She was a trap. She came here because she expected to
make a lot of money if you fed from her, and maybe to flirt with her death
wish.”
“Can you manage to carry on with the evening as if we were in
harmony?” Eric asked.
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“I’ll do my best,” I said, trying not to sound bitter.
“That’s all I can ask.”
“You don’t seem to have any doubt that you can cope,” I observed. But
then I closed my eyes for a moment, and I used every bit of my self-control to
pull myself together into a coherent person. “So if I’m here to officially greet
Felipe and he’s supposed to be talking to us about the ‘disappearance’ of
Victor, when’s all the whoopee out in the great room going to stop? And just
so you know, I’m seriously mad about the table.”
“Me, too,” he said, with unmistakable relief. “I’ll tell Felipe that we
must talk tonight. Now.” He looked down at me. “My lover, don’t let your
pride get the better of you.”
“Well, me and my pride would be delighted to get back in my car and
go home,” I said, struggling to keep my voice quiet. “But I guess me and my
pride will make the effort to stay here and get through this evening, if you
could get everyone to stop screwing around long enough to get down to
business. Or you can kiss me and my pride good-bye.”
With that, I went into the bathroom and shut the door, very quietly and
deliberately. I locked it. I was through talking, at least for a while. I had to
have a few seconds when no one was looking at me.
From outside the door, there was silence. I sat down on the toilet lid. I
felt so full of conflicting emotions that it was like walking through a
minefield in my high-heeled black sandals with the silly flowers on them. I
looked down at my bright toenails.
“Okay,” I said to those toes. “Okay.” I took a deep breath. “You knew
he took blood from other people. And you knew ‘other people’ might mean
other women. And you knew that some women are younger and prettier and
skinnier than you.” If I kept repeating that, it would sink in.
Good God—are “knowing” and “seeing” ever two different things!
“You also know,” I continued, “that he loves you. And you love him.”
When I don’t want to yank off one of these heels and stick it … “You love him,” I
repeated sternly. “You’ve been through so much with him, and he’s proved
over and over that he’ll go the extra mile for you.”
He had. He had!
I told myself that about twenty times.
“So,” I said in a very reasonable voice, “Here’s a chance to rise above
circumstances, to prove what you’re made of, and to help save both our lives.
And that’s what I’ll do, because Gran raised me right. But when this is over
…” I’ll rip his damn head off. “No, I won’t,” I admonished myself. “We’ll talk
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about it.”
THEN I’ll rip his head off.
“Maybe,” I said, and I could feel myself smiling.
“Sookie,” Pam said from the other side of the door, “I can hear you
talking to yourself. Are you ready to do this thing?”
“I am,” I said sweetly. I stood, shook myself, and practiced a smile in
the mirror. It was ghastly. I unlocked the door. I tried the smile out on Pam.
Eric was standing right behind her, I guess thinking Pam would absorb the
first blast if I came out shooting. “Is Felipe ready to talk?” I said.
For the first time since I’d met her, Pam looked a little uneasy as she
looked at me. “Uh, yes,” she said. “He is ready for our discussion.”
“Great, let’s get going.” I maintained the smile.
Eric eyed me cautiously but didn’t say anything. Good.
“The king and his aide are out here,” Pam said. “The others have
moved the party into the room across the hall.” Sure enough, I could hear
squeals coming from behind the closed door.
Felipe and the square-jawed vamp—the one I’d last seen drinking from
a woman—were sitting together on the couch. Eric and I took the (stained)
loveseat arranged at right angles to the couch, and Pam took an armchair.
The large, low coffee table (freshly gouged) that normally held only a few
objets d’art was cluttered with bottles of synthetic blood and glasses of mixed
drinks, an ashtray, a cell phone, some crumpled napkins. Instead of its
normally attractive and orderly formality, the living room looked more like it
belonged in a low dive.
I’d been conditioned for so many years that it was all I could do not to
spring up, tie on an apron, and fetch a tray to clear away the clutter.
“Sookie, I don’t believe you’ve met Horst Friedman,” Felipe said.
I yanked my eyes away from the mess to look at the visiting vampire.
Horst had narrow eyes, and he was tall and angular. His short hair was a
light brown and closely cut. He did not look as if he knew how to smile. His
lips were pink and his eyes pale blue; so his coloring was oddly dainty, while
his features were anything but.
“Pleased to meet you, Horst,” I said, making a huge effort to pronounce
his name clearly. Horst’s nod was barely perceptible. After all, I was a
human.
“Eric, I have come to your territory to discuss the disappearance of
Victor, my regent,” Felipe said briskly. “He was last seen in this city, if you
can call Shreveport a city. I suspect that you had something to do with his
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disappearance. He was never seen after he left for a private party at your
club.”
So much for any elaborate story Eric had thought of spinning for Felipe.
“I admit nothing,” Eric said calmly.
Felipe looked mildly surprised. “But you don’t deny the charge, either.”
“If I did kill him, Your Majesty,” Eric said, as if he were admitting to
swatting a mosquito, “there would be not a trace of evidence against me. I
regret that several of Victor’s entourage also vanished when the regent did.”
Not that Eric had given Victor and his cohorts any opportunity to
surrender. The only one who’d been offered the chance to escape death was
Victor’s new bodyguard, Akiro, and he’d turned the offer down. The fight in
Fangtasia had been a no-debate full-frontal assault, involving gallons of
blood and a lot of dismemberment and death. I tried not to remember it too
vividly. I smiled and waited for Felipe’s response.
“Why did you do this? Are you not sworn to me?” For the first time,
Felipe appeared less than casual. In fact, he looked downright stern. “I
appointed Victor my regent here in Louisiana. I appointed him … and I am
your king.” At the escalation in tone, I noticed Horst was tensed for action. So
was Pam.
There was a long silence. It was what I imagine is the definition of the
word “fraught.”
“Your Majesty, if I did this thing, it might have been for several
reasons,” Eric said, and I began to breathe again. “I am sworn to you, and I’m
loyal to you, but I can’t stand still while someone is trying to kill my people
for no good reason—and without previous discussion with me. Victor sent
two of his best vampires to kill Pam and my wife.” Eric rested a cold hand on
my shoulder, and I did my best to look shaken. (That wasn’t too hard.)
“Only because Pam is a great fighter, and my wife can hold her own,
did they escape,” Eric said solemnly.
He gave us all a moment to contemplate that. Horst was looking
skeptical, but Felipe had only raised his dark eyebrows. Felipe nodded,
bidding Eric to continue.
“Though I don’t admit to being guilty of his death, Victor was also
attacking me—and therefore you, my king—economically. Victor put new
clubs in my territory—but he kept the management, jobs, and revenue from
these clubs exclusively for himself, which is against all precedent. I doubted
he was passing along your share of the profits. I also believed he was trying
to undercut me, to turn me from one of your best earners into an unnecessary
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hanger-on. I heard many rumors from the sheriffs in other areas—including
some you brought in from Nevada—that Victor was neglecting all other
business in Louisiana in this strange vendetta against me and mine.”
I couldn’t read anything in Felipe’s face. “Why didn’t you bring your
complaints to me?” the king said.
“I did,” Eric said calmly. “I called your offices twice and talked to
Horst, asking him to bring these issues to your attention.”
Horst sat up a little straighter. “This is true, Felipe. As I—”
“And why didn’t you pass along Eric’s concerns?” Felipe interrupted,
turning his eyes on Horst.
I anticipated watching Horst wriggle. Instead, Horst looked stunned.
Maybe I’m just getting cynical from hanging around with vampires for
so long, but I felt a near certainty that Horst had passed along Eric’s
complaints, but that Felipe had decided Eric would have to solve his issues
with Victor in his own way. Now Felipe was throwing Horst under the bus
without a qualm so he could maintain deniability.
“Your Majesty,” I said, “we’re awful sorry about Victor’s
disappearance, but maybe you haven’t considered that Victor was a huge
liability for you, too.” I gazed at him. Sadly. Regretfully.
There was a moment of silence. All four vampires looked at me as if I’d
offered them a bucket of pig guts. I did my best to look simple and sincere.
“He was not my favorite vampire,” Felipe said, after what seemed like
about five hours. “But he was very useful.”
“I’m sure you’ve noticed,” I said, “that in Victor’s case, ‘useful’ was a
synonym for ‘money pit.’ Cause I’ve heard from people who serve at Vic’s
Redneck Roadhouse, for example, that they were underpaid and
overworked, so there’s a big staff turnover. That’s never good for business.
And some of the vendors haven’t been paid. And Vic’s is behind with the
distributor.” (Duff had shared that with me two deliveries ago.) “So, though
Vic’s started out great and pulled business from every bar around, they’re not
getting the repeat customers they need to sustain such a big place, and I
know that revenue’s fallen off.” I was only guessing, but I was accurate, I
could tell by Horst’s face. “Same thing for his vampire bar. Why pull
customers away from the established vampire tourist spot, Fangtasia?
Dividing doesn’t mean multiplying.”
“You’re giving me a lesson in economics?” Felipe leaned forward,
picked up one of the opened TrueBlood bottles, and drank from it, his eyes
never leaving my face.
66
“No, sir, I would never do such a thing. But I know what’s happening
on the local level, because people talk to me, or I hear it in their heads. Of
course, observing all this about Victor doesn’t mean I know what happened
to him.” I smiled at him gently. You lying sack of shit.
“Eric, did you enjoy the young woman? When she came through this
room, she said she’d been called to service you,” Felipe said, not taking his
eyes off me. “I was surprised, since I was under the impression you were
married to Miss Stackhouse. But the young woman seemed like a nice change
of pace for you. She had such an interesting odor. If she hadn’t been
earmarked for you, I might have taken her for myself.”
“You would have been welcome to her,” Eric said in a completely
empty voice.
“She told you she’d been called?” I was puzzled.
“That’s what she said,” Felipe said. His eyes were fixed on my face as
though he were a hawk and I were a mouse he was considering for supper.
On one level of my brain, I puzzled over this. I’d been delayed, the
young woman had said she’d been called specifically for Eric … but on
another level, I was busy regretting I’d saved Felipe’s life when one of
Sophie-Anne’s bodyguards had been well on the way to killing him. I
regretted this intensely. Of course, I’d been saving Eric, too, and Felipe had
been a by-product, but still … back to level one, and I realized that none of
this was adding up. I smiled at Felipe more brightly.
“Are you simple?” Horst asked incredulously.
I’m simply sick of you, I thought, not trusting myself to speak.
Felipe said, “Horst, don’t mistake Miss Stackhouse’s cheerful looks for
any mental deficiency.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Horst tried to look chastened, but he didn’t quite
make it.
Felipe looked at him sharply. “I must remind you—unless I’m much
mistaken—Miss Stackhouse took out either Bruno or Corinna. Even Pam
couldn’t have handled both of them at the same time.”
I kept on smiling.
“Which one was it, Miss Stackhouse?”
There was another fraught silence. I wished we had background music.
Anything would be better than this dead air.
Pam stirred, looked at me almost apologetically. “Bruno,” Pam said.
“Sookie killed Bruno, while I took care of Corinna.”
“How did you do that, Miss Stackhouse?” Felipe said. Even Horst
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looked interested and impressed, which was not a good thing.
“It was kind of an accident.”
“You are too modest,” the king murmured skeptically.
“Really, it was.” I remembered the driving rain and the cold, the cars
parked on the shoulders of the interstate on a terrible dark night. “It was sure
pouring buckets that night,” I said quietly. Tumbling over and over down
into the ditch running with chilly water, a desperate pawing to find the silver
knife, sliding it into Bruno.
“Was this the same kind of accident you had when you killed Lorena?
Or Sigebert? Or the Were woman?”
Wow, how’d he know about Debbie? Or maybe he meant Sandra? And
his list was by no means complete. “Yeah. That kind of accident.”
“Though I can hardly complain about Sigebert, since he would have
killed me very shortly,” Felipe observed, with an air of being absolutely fair.
Finally! “I wondered if you remembered that part,” I muttered. I may
have sounded a wee tad sardonic.
“You did do me a great service,” he said. “I’m just trying to decide how
much of a thorn you are in my side now.”
“Oh, come on!” I was really put out. “I haven’t done anything to you
that you couldn’t have taken care of before it even happened.”
Pam and Horst blinked, but I saw that Felipe understood me. “You
maintain that if I had been more … proactive, you would have been in no
danger from Bruno and Corinna? That Victor would have stayed down in
New Orleans, where the regent should be, and that, therefore, Eric could
have run Area Five the way he has always run it?”
He had it in a nutshell, as my grandmother would have said. But (at
least this time) I kept my mouth shut.
Eric, by my side, was rigid as a statue.
I’m not sure what would have happened next, but Bill appeared
suddenly from the kitchen. He looked as excited as Bill ever looked.
“There’s a dead girl on the front lawn,” he said, “and the police are
here.”
A variety of reactions passed on Felipe’s face in a few seconds.
“Then Eric, as the homeowner, must go out and talk to the good
officers,” he said. “We’ll set things to rights in here. Eric, be sure to invite
them in.”
Eric was already on his feet. He called to Mustapha, who didn’t appear.
He and Pam exchanged a worried glance. Without looking at me, Eric
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reached back, and I stood to slide my hand into his. Time to close the ranks.
“Who is the dead woman?” he asked Bill.
“A skinny brunette,” he said. “A human.”
“Fang marks in her neck? Bright dress, mostly green and pink?” I
asked, my heart sinking.
“I didn’t get that close,” Bill said.
“How did the police find out there was a body?” Pam said. “Who called
them?” We moved toward the front door. Now I could hear the noise outside.
With the drapes shut, we hadn’t been able to see the flashing lights. Through
the gap in the heavy fabric, I could see them.
“I never heard a scream or any other alarm,” Bill said. “So I don’t know
why a neighbor would have called … but someone did.”
“You wouldn’t have summoned the police yourself, for any reason?”
Eric said, and there was the smell of danger in the room.
Bill looked surprised—which is to say, his eyebrows twitched and he
frowned. “I can’t think of a reason I would do such a thing. On the contrary—
since I was outside patrolling, I’ll obviously be a suspect.”
“Where is Mustapha?” Eric said.
Bill stared at Eric. “I have no idea,” he answered. “He was patrolling
the perimeter, as he put it, earlier in the evening. I haven’t seen him since
Sookie came in here.”
“I saw him in the kitchen,” I said. “We talked.” A presence caught my
attention. “Brain at the front door,” I said.
Eric strode to the little-used front door, and since I was in tow, I trotted
along. Eric threw the door open, and the woman standing on the porch was
left standing foolishly poised to knock.
She looked up at Eric, and I could read her thoughts. To this woman, he
was beautiful, disgusting, repellent, and oddly fascinating. She didn’t like the
“beautiful” and “fascinating” parts. She also didn’t like being caught on the
wrong foot.
“Mr. Northman?” she said, her hand dropping to her side like a stone.
“I’m Detective Cara Ambroselli.”
“Detective Ambroselli, you seem to know who I am already. This is my
dearest one, Sookie Stackhouse.”
“Is there really a dead person on the lawn?” I asked. “Who is she?” I
didn’t have to make up the curiosity and anxiety in my voice. I really, really
wanted to know.
“We were hoping you could help us with that,” the detective said.
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“We’re pretty sure the dead woman was leaving your house, Mr. Northman.”
“Why do you think so? You’re sure it was this house?” Eric said.
“Vampire bites on her neck, party clothes, your front yard. Yeah, we’re
pretty sure,” Ambroselli said drily. “If you could just step over here, keeping
your feet on the stepping-stones …”
The stones, set at regular intervals in the grass, curved around to the
driveway. The dark green and deep pink of the crepe myrtles coordinated
with the pink and green of the dress worn by the dead woman. She was lying
at their base, a little inclined to her left side, in a position disturbingly similar
to the way she’d lain across Eric’s lap when I’d first seen her. Her dark hair
had fallen across her neck.
“That’s the woman no one knew,” I said. “At least, I think so. I only saw
her for a minute. She didn’t tell me her name.”
“What was she doing when you saw her?”
“She was donating some blood to my boyfriend, here,” I said.
“Donating blood?”
“Yeah, she told us she’d done it before and she was happy to give,” I
said, my voice calm and matter-of-fact. “She definitely volunteered.”
There was a moment of silence.
“You’re kidding me,” Cara Ambroselli said, but not as if she were at all
amused. “You just stood there and let your boyfriend suck the neck of
another woman? While you did … what?”
“It’s about food, not about sex,” I said, more or less lying. It was about
food, but quite often it was also definitely about sex. “Pam and I talked about
girl stuff.” I smiled at Pam. I was aiming for “winsome.”
Pam gave me a very level look in reply. I could imagine her looking at
dead kittens that way. She said, “I love the color of Sookie’s toenails. We
talked about pedicures.”
“So you two talked about your toenails while Mr. Northman fed off this
woman, in the same room. Cozy! And then, what, Mr. Northman? After you
had your little snack, you just gave her some money and sent her on her way?
Did you get Mr. Compton to escort her to her car?”
“Money?” Eric asked. “Detective, are you calling this poor woman a
whore? Of course I didn’t give her any money. She arrived, she volunteered,
she said she had to go, and she left.”
“So what did she get out of your little transaction?”
“Excuse me, Detective, I can answer that,” I said. “When you’re giving
blood, it’s really very pleasurable. Usually.” Of course, that was at the will of
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the vamp doing the biting. I shot a quick glance at Eric. He’d bitten me before
without bothering to make it fun, and it had hurt like hell.
“Then why weren’t you the donor, Ms. Stackhouse? Why did you let
the dead girl have all the fun of feeding him?”
Geez! Persistent. “I can’t give blood as often as Eric needs it,” I said. I
stopped there. I was in danger of overexplaining.
Ambroselli’s neck whipped around as she sprung the next question on
Eric.
“But you could survive just fine on a synthetic blood drink, Mr.
Northman. Why’d you bite the girl?”
“It tastes better,” Eric said, and one of the uniforms spit on the ground.
“Did you decide you’d like a taste, Mr. Compton? Seeing as how she’d
already been tapped?”
Bill looked mildly disgusted. “No, ma’am. That wouldn’t have been
safe for the young lady.”
“As it turns out, she wasn’t safe, anyway. And none of you knows her
name, or how she got here? Why she came to this house? You didn’t call
some kind of I need a drink hotline … like a vampire escort service?”
We all shook our heads simultaneously, saying no to all these questions
at once. “I thought she came with my other guests, the ones from out of
town,” Eric said. “They brought some new friends they met at a bar.”
“These guests are inside?”
“Yes,” Eric said, and I thought, Oh, gosh, I hope Felipe got them out of the
bedroom. But of course, the police would have to talk to them.
“Then let’s take this inside and meet these guests,” Detective
Ambroselli said. “Do you have any objection to us coming inside, Mr.
Northman?”
“Not the least in the world,” Eric said courteously.
So I traipsed back into the house with Bill, Eric, and Pam. The detective
led the way as if the house were hers. Eric permitted it. By now the Las Vegas
contingent would have cleaned up, I hoped, since they’d certainly heard
what Ambroselli had said when Eric went to the door.
To my relief, the living room looked much more orderly. There were a
few bottles of synthetic blood, but they were all positioned adjacent to a
seated vampire. The big windows in the back were open and the air quality
was much better. Even the ashtray was out of sight, and someone had
positioned a large bowl over the worst gouge marks on the coffee table.
All the vamps and the humans, fully clothed, had assembled in the
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living room. They wore serious expressions.
Mustapha was not among them.
Where was he? Had he simply decided he didn’t want to talk to the
police, so he’d departed? Or had someone entered through the French
windows in the kitchen doors and done something terrible to the Blade
wannabe?
Maybe Mustapha had heard something suspicious outside and had
gone to investigate. Maybe the killer or killers had jumped him once he got
outside, and that was why no one had heard anything. But Mustapha was so
tough that I simply couldn’t imagine anyone ambushing him and getting
away with it.
Though “Mustapha” might not fear anything, in actuality he was the
former KeShawn Johnson, and he was an ex-con. I didn’t know why he’d
been incarcerated, but I knew it was for something he’d been ashamed of.
That was why he’d adopted a new name and a new profession after he’d
served his term. The police wouldn’t know him as Mustapha Khan … but
they’d know he was KeShawn Johnson as soon as they took his fingerprints,
and he was scared of prison.
Oh, how I wished I could communicate all this to Eric.
I didn’t believe Mustapha had killed the woman on the lawn. On the
other hand, I’d never been completely inside his head, since he was a Were.
But I’d never heard senseless aggression or random violence, either. Rather,
Mustapha’s top priority had always registered as control.
I believe most of us are capable of moments of rage, moments when our
button’s been pressed to the point where we lash out to stop the pressure. But
I was sure that Mustapha was used to much worse treatment than anything
that girl could have handed out.
While I was worrying about Mustapha, Eric was introducing the
remaining newcomers to Detective Ambroselli. “Felipe de Castro,” he said,
and Felipe nodded regally. “His assistant, Horst Friedman.” To my surprise,
Horst rose and shook her hand. Not a vampire thing, handshaking. Eric
continued, “This is Felipe’s consort, Angie Weather-spoon.” She was the third
Nevada vampire, the redhead.
“Pleased to meetcha,” Angie said, nodding.
The last time I’d seen her, Angie Weatherspoon had been dancing on
the low table, enjoying Felipe’s regard. Now the redhead was wearing a gray
pencil skirt, a sleeveless green button-up blouse with tiny ruffles on the deep
V neckline, and three-inch heels. Her legs went on forever. She looked great.
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When Eric turned to the humans for their introductions, he paused. Eric
clearly didn’t know the hugely muscular man’s name, but before the moment
could become awkward, the man extended a bulging arm and shook the
detective’s hand very delicately. “I’m Thad Rexford,” he said, and
Ambroselli’s mouth dropped open.
The uniform who’d come in behind her said, “Oh, wow! T-Rex!” with
sheer delight.
“Wow,” Ambroselli echoed, forgetting her stern expression.
All the vampires looked blank, but another human present, a plump
and perky twenty-year-old with a light brown mane of hair of which
Kennedy Keyes would have approved, looked proud, as if being at the same
party with him raised her status. “I’m Cherie Dodson,” she said, in a voice
that was surprisingly babyish. “This is my friend Viveca Bates. What’s going
on out front, guys?” Cherie was the woman who’d been making out with TRex.
Viveca, just as curvaceous but with slightly darker hair, had been the
one giving Felipe the “donation.”
Detective Ambroselli quickly recovered from the surprise of meeting a
famous wrestler at a vampire’s house, and she was twice as pugnacious since
she’d shown a moment of starstruck awe. “There’s a dead woman outside,
Ms. Dodson. That’s what’s going on. You-all need to stay here to be ready for
questioning. First off, did you ladies bring a third woman here with you?”
The detective was clearly talking to the humans; that is, all the humans except
me.
“These two lovely ladies were with me at the casino,” T-Rex said.
“Which one?” Ambroselli was all about the details.
“The Trifecta. We met Felipe and Horst at the bar there, struck up a
conversation over drinks. Felipe here kindly invited us to Mr. Northman’s
beautiful home.” The wrestler seemed completely at ease. “We was just out
on the town, having some fun. We didn’t bring nobody else with us.”
Cherie and Viveca shook their heads. “Just us,” Viveca said, and gave
Horst a coy sideways look.
“The victim came into the house, Mr. Northman says, but he doesn’t
seem to know who she was.” Cara Ambroselli’s flat tone made it clear what
she thought of men who took blood from women they’d never met, while at
the same time casting doubt on Eric’s assertion that he hadn’t known her.
That was a lot to convey in one sentence, but she managed.
I was standing right behind her, and I was getting a good reading on
her. Cara Ambroselli was both ambitious and tough—necessary attributes to
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get ahead in the law enforcement world, especially for a woman. She’d been a
patrol officer, distinguished herself by her courage in rescuing a woman from
a burning house, sustained a broken arm in the course of subduing a robbery
suspect, kept her head low and her social life secret. Now that she was a
detective, she wanted to shine.
She was simply packed full of information.
I kind of admired her. I hoped we wouldn’t be enemies.
Cherie Dodson said, “Tell me she doesn’t have on a green and pink
dress.” All the flirty fun had drained from her voice.
“That’s what she’s wearing,” the detective said. “Do you know her?”
“I met her this evening,” Cherie said. “Her name’s Kym. Kym-with-a-y,
she said. Her last name was Rowe, I think. T-Rex, you remember her?”
He looked down as though he were working hard at recovering the
recollection, his dyed platinum hair showing a quarter-inch of dark root. TRex’s
cheeks sported reddish-brown bristles, and his tight black T-shirt
revealed that he’d shaved his chest. I thought that he had some ambivalence
about his hair growth, but I was kind of fascinated by his musculature, I have
to admit. He just bulged muscles everywhere, even in his neck. I glanced up
to find Eric giving me a frosty look. Well, big whoop, considering.
“I had quite a bit to drink tonight, Miz Ambroselli,” the wrestler said,
with a charming ruefulness. “But I remember the name, so I must have met
her. Cherie, honey, was she at the bar?”
“No, baby. Here. While we were dancing, she walked through the
living room. She asked where Mr. Northman was.”
“How did this Kym arrive here?” Ambroselli asked. She looked at me
first. I don’t know why.
I shrugged. “She was already here when I came in this evening,” I said.
“Where was she?”
“She was giving Eric blood back in the first room on the left past the
bathroom.”
“And you invited her?” Ambroselli asked Eric.
“To my house? No, as I said, I’d never met her—that I can recall. I’m
sure you know I own Fangtasia, and many people come in and out of the bar,
of course. I had gone to Sookie’s room because I wanted to have a private
word with her before the … before we entertained our guests. This woman,
this Kym, came back to the room. She said that Felipe had sent her to me as a
present.”
The detective didn’t even ask Felipe. She just switched her dark gaze to
74
him. The king spread his hands charmingly. “She seemed at loose ends,” he
said, with a smile. “She asked me if I knew Eric. I told her where Eric might
be found. I suggested she go back to Eric and ask him if he wanted a drink. I
thought he might be lonely without Sookie.”
“Did you see the dead girl arrive? Do you know how she got here, or
why she came?” Ambroselli asked Pam.
“Our other guests entered through the front door, properly. I suppose
this Kym entered through the kitchen,” Pam said, shrugging elegantly. “Eric
sent me on an errand, and I didn’t see her arrive.”
“No, I didn’t,” Eric said. “What errand?”
“Mustapha told me you wanted me to go buy some more rum,” Pam
said. “Was this not the case?”
Eric shook his head. “I wouldn’t send you on an errand if Mustapha
was here at the house,” he said. “You’re better protection, any day.”
“I’ll check from now on,” Pam promised. Her voice was cold. “I
assumed the order came from you, and of course I set off for the store. When
I got back, I checked the living room to make sure all was well, and I heard
Sookie enter. Since I knew you were anxious to see her, and I knew you were
in the bedroom, I took her back there.”
I was in a group of multi-projectors. Ambroselli’s brain was the busiest,
naturally. T-Rex was thinking he was glad his publicist was on speed dial,
and wondering whether or not this incident would help his image. Viveca
and Cherie were terribly excited. They didn’t have the imagination to be
relieved that the body on the lawn wasn’t one of them. My own head was
whirling with the excitement pouring from so many heads.
“Mr. Compton, same questions for you,” Ambroselli said. “Did you see
the victim arrive?”
“I did not,” Bill said very positively. “I should have. I was in charge of
watching the front of the house. But I didn’t see her get out of a car or
approach by foot. She must have come through the back gate and up the hill
to creep around the corner of the house and enter through the garage, or
perhaps she came in through the French windows that open onto the kitchen
and the living room. Though I’m sure some of our guests would have noticed
if she’d entered there.”
There was a round of headshakes. No one had seen her come in that
way.
“And you didn’t know her? Had never seen her?” Ambroselli said to
Pam.
75
“As Eric pointed out, she may have been to Fangtasia. I don’t remember
meeting her or seeing her there.”
“Are there security cameras in Fangtasia?”
There was a moment of silence. “We don’t permit any sort of camera in
Fangtasia while the club is open,” Eric said smoothly. “If patrons want
pictures, there is a club photographer who is happy to take snapshots.”
“So let me see if I’ve got this right,” Ambroselli said. “This house
belongs to you, Mr. Northman.” She pointed from the floor to Eric. “And
you’re the proprietor of Fangtasia. Ms…. Ravenscroft works there with you
as the club manager. Ms. Ravenscroft does not live here in this house. Ms.
Stackhouse, from Bon Temps, is your girlfriend. She doesn’t live here, either.
Mr. Compton—who sometimes works for you?—also lives in Bon Temps.”
Eric nodded. “Exactly so, Detective.” Bill looked approving. Pam
looked bored.
“If you-all would go sit over at the dining table”—and the cop’s eyes
expressed sardonic pleasure that a vampire had a dining table—“I’ll talk to
these nice people.” She smiled unpleasantly at the visiting vamps.
Pam, Eric, Bill, and I went to sit at the table. The darkness pressing at
the windows loomed at my back in a very nerve-racking fashion.
“Mr. de Castro, Mr. Friedman, Ms. Witherspoon,” Ambroselli said.
“You’re all three visiting from—Vegas, is that right?” The three vampires,
wearing identical approving smiles, nodded in chorus. “Mr. de Castro, you
have a business in Las Vegas … Mr. Friedman is your assistant … and Ms.
Witherspoon is your girlfriend.” Her eyes went from Eric, Pam, and me to the
Las Vegas trio, drawing a definite parallel.
“Right,” Felipe said, as if he were encouraging a backward child.
Ambroselli gave him a look that told Felipe he was permanently on her
shit list. She turned to the next trio.
“So, Mr. Rexford, Ms. Dodson, Ms. Bates. Tell me again how you came
to be here? You met up with Mr. de Castro and his party in the bar of the
Trifecta?”
“I been dating T-Rex here for a while,” Cherie said. The massive
wrestler put an arm around her. “And Viveca is my best buddy. We three
were having a drink, and we met up with Felipe and his friends in the bar.
We got to talking.” She smiled to show off her dimples. “Felipe said they
were coming over to visit Eric, here, and they invited us to come along.”
“But the dead woman wasn’t with you at the bar at the casino.”
“No,” said T-Rex, now grave. “We never seen her at the Trifecta, or
76
anywhere else, before we came in this house.”
“Was anyone else inside when they got here?” Detective Ambroselli
asked Eric directly.
“Yes,” Eric said. “My daytime man, Mustapha Khan.” I fidgeted at his
side, and he cast me a quick glance.
Ambroselli blinked “What’s a daytime man?”
“It’s sort of like having another assistant,” I said, leaping into the
conversation. “Mustapha does the things that Eric can’t, things that require
going out in the daylight. He goes to the post office; he picks up stuff from
the printer; he goes to the dry cleaner; he gets supplies for this house; he gets
the cars serviced and inspected.”
“Do all vampires have a daytime man?”
“The lucky ones,” Eric said with his most charming smile.
“Mr. de Castro, do you have a daytime man?” Ambroselli asked him.
“I do, and I hope he is hard at work in Nevada,” Felipe said, radiating
bonhomie.
“What about you, Mr. Compton?”
“I’ve been fortunate enough to have a kind neighbor who will help me
out with daytime errands,” Bill said. (That would be me.) “I’m hiring
someone so I won’t tax her goodwill.”
The detective turned to the patrol officer behind her and issued some
commands that the vampires could surely hear, but I could not. However, I
could read her mind, and I knew that she was telling the officer to also search
for a man named Mustapha Khan who seemed to be missing, and that the
victim’s name was probably Kym Rowe and he should check the missingpersons
list to see if she was on it. A plainclothes guy—another detective, I
guessed—came in and took Ambroselli out on the front porch.
While he whispered in her ear, I was sure all the vampires were trying
hard to hear what he was telling her. But I could hear it in her brain. Pam
touched my arm, and I turned to face her. She raised her eyebrows in a
question. I nodded. I knew what they were talking about.
“I need to talk to all of you separately,” Ambroselli said, turning back to
us. “The crime-scene team needs to go through the house, so if you could
come down to headquarters with me?”
Eric looked angry. “I don’t want people going through my house. Why
would they?” he asked. “The woman died outside. I didn’t even know her.”
“Well, you took her blood quick enough,” Ambroselli said.
Valid point, I thought, tempted to smile for just a nanosecond.
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“We won’t know where she died until we look at your house, sir,”
Ambroselli continued. “For all I know, you’re all covering up a crime that
took place inside this very room.” I had to repress an impulse to glance
around in a guilty way.
“Eric, Sookie, and I were together from the time this Rowe woman left
the bedroom until we came out here to talk to Felipe and his friends,” Pam
said.
“And we were all together until Eric and Pam and Sookie came out here
from the bedroom,” Horst said promptly, which was simply not true. Any of
the Nevada vampires or their human pickups could have slipped outside and
disposed of Kym.
At least Pam was telling the truth.
Then I remembered that I’d been shut in the bathroom. By myself. For
at least ten minutes.
I’d assumed that Pam had remained outside the bathroom door; I’d
assumed Eric had gone into the living room to tell Felipe and his crowd that
it was time to get down to business. He would have suggested that the
human guests go into the other bedroom while we had our discussion.
That’s what I’d assumed.
But I had no way to know for sure.
78
Chapter 4
Down at the police station, we covered the same conversational ground, but
this time on an individual basis. It was both boring and tense. When I’m
dealing with the police, I’m always thinking what I could be guilty of. I
always imagine there are laws I don’t know about, laws that I’ve broken. And
of course, I’ve broken a few major laws that haunt me, some more than
others.
After the individual interviews, conducted by several policemen, we
were deposited back in our little groups and stowed separately around the
big room. The Nevada vampires were finishing up talking to a detective
several yards away, while I could see Cherie in a glass-walled cubicle with
yet another interviewer. T-Rex and Viveca waited for her on a bench against
the wall.
I was more than ready to leave this building. This late at night, even on
a Saturday, the traffic on Texas Boulevard would be light. If I had my car, I
could be home in an hour, maybe less. Unfortunately, the police had
suggested we all pile into Felipe’s Suburban for the trip to the station. Since
my car had been parked at the curb, it was temporarily part of the crime
scene.
Simply for want of something else to do while she waited to hear from
the crime-scene people, Cara Ambroselli was walking us through the evening
one more time.
“Yes,” an obviously bored Eric was saying. “My friend Bill Compton
came in from Bon Temps. Since the other vampires who work for me were
busy at the club, I asked Bill to help out at my house because I was having
company, though I confess I wasn’t expecting quite so much of it. Bill was …
tasked … with patrolling the front grounds. Though I live in a gated
community, from time to time curiosity seekers try to make my acquaintance,
especially during a party. So Bill was doing a circuit of the front yard and the
area around it, every few minutes. Right, Bill?”
Bill nodded agreeably. He and Eric were such buddies. “That’s what I
did,” he said. “I surprised one old man who came down to the end of his
driveway to get his newspaper, and I saw one woman out walking her dog. I
talked to Sookie when she arrived.”
It was my turn to do the smiling and nodding. We were all friends,
here! And if I’d followed Bill’s advice, I thought, I would never have seen Eric
sucking on Kym Rowe’s neck, and I would never have seen her dead body, and I
79
would be sound asleep in bed. I looked at Bill thoughtfully. He raised his brows
at me—What? I shook my head, a tiny motion.
“And you had asked this missing man, Mustapha, to help Mr. Compton
keep intruders away. Though his employment is as your daytime man.”
Detective Ambroselli was talking to Eric.
“I think we’ve already covered that.”
“Where do you think Mr. Khan is?”
“Last time I saw him, he was in the kitchen,” I said, figuring it was my
turn. “As I told you, we spoke when I came inside.”
“What was he doing?”
“Nothing in particular. We didn’t talk long. I was …” I was in a hurry to
see Eric, but he was busy with the dead woman. “I was anxious to apologize to
our guests for being a bit late,” I said. Mustapha had made me late on
purpose—but what that purpose had been, I couldn’t fathom.
“And you came upon Mr. Northman in your bedroom, or at least the
bedroom you customarily use, taking blood from another woman.”
There was really nothing to say to that.
“Didn’t that make you really angry, Ms. Stackhouse?”
“No,” I said. “I get anemic if he drinks from me too often.” At least that
part was the truth.
“So you’re not mad, even though he could get the same nourishment
from a bottle?”
She just wasn’t going to stop. That was what you wanted in a cop,
unless you had stuff to hide.
“I wasn’t happy,” I said simply. “But I accepted it, like death and taxes.
Comes with the territory when you’re dating a vampire.” I shrugged, trying
to imitate nonchalance.
“You were unhappy, and now she’s dead,” Ambroselli said. She looked
down at her notepad for dramatic effect. She thought we were all a bunch of
lousy liars. “According to Ms. Dodson, she heard Ms. Ravenscroft threaten
the victim.”
Eric turned a dark blue gaze on Cherie Dodson, clearly visible through
the glass of the enclosure. At the same moment, her wrestler friend, T-Rex,
was looking at Cherie almost as unhappily as Eric. Though I had to stretch a
little, I could get the gist of his thoughts. T-Rex knew what his girlfriend was
saying to the police. Cherie’s disclosure didn’t accord with T-Rex’s code of
ethics. Thad Rexford had a very interesting mind, and I would have liked to
wander around in it a little longer, but Eric gripped my hand to give it what
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he thought was a gentle squeeze. I turned to look up at him with narrowed
eyes. He could tell I was distracted, and he didn’t think my mind should be
wandering.
“I advised the woman that she should leave town, yes,” Pam said
imperturbably. “I don’t think that was threatening her. If I’d wanted to
threaten her, I’d have said, ‘I’ll rip your head from its neck.’”
Ambroselli took a deep breath. “Why did you tell her to leave town?”
“She had been insulting and insolent to Sookie, who is my friend, and
Eric, who is my boss.”
“What did she say that was so insulting?”
Probably I should answer this one. It would sound haughty coming
from Pam. Of course, Pam was haughty. “She was pretty excited that Eric
had taken blood from her.” I shrugged. “She seemed to think that made her
special. She wasn’t happy Eric told her to leave after I showed up. I guess
she’d assumed that Eric’s taking blood from her meant he wanted to have sex
with her, and she thought I would, you know, participate in that.” This was
hard to say, and it must have been unpleasant to hear, from the face the
detective made.
“You didn’t feel that way, too?”
“Honestly, it was the equivalent of being insulted by a pork chop my
boyfriend was eating,” I said. And then I was smart enough to shut my
mouth.
Eric smiled down at me. I would have given a lot to wipe that smile off
his face. I took advantage of Ambroselli being distracted by her cell phone to
smile back at Eric. He understood my expression well enough. His mouth
straightened out. Over his shoulder, I could see that Bill looked unmistakably
pleased.
“So, Ms. Ravenscroft, you told Kym Rowe to go, she left, and she died,”
Ambroselli said, by way of resuming the questioning. But she didn’t seem
focused on Pam the way she had been, and I could see that she was preparing
to move out.
“Yes, that’s right,” Pam said. She’d read Ambroselli’s body language
the same way I had, and she was eyeing the detective thoughtfully.
“Please stay where you are. I have to return to Mr. Northman’s place to
check something out,” Ambroselli said. She was on her feet, gathering up her
shoulder bag. “Givens, make sure everyone stays here until I say they can
go.”
And just like that, she left.
81
Givens, a man with a starved, concave face, looked very unhappy. He
called a few more people in—all men, I noticed—and assigned one to each
batch of us. “If they need to go to the restroom, send someone with ’em, don’t
let ’em go alone,” he instructed the heavy guy in charge of our little group.
“She’s the only one who should need to go,” he added, pointing at me.
Bored, I turned my chair around to watch the Nevada vamps for a
while. Felipe, Horst, and Angie seemed to have had a lot of experience with
the police. They sat together in silence, though a little downturn to one corner
of Felipe’s lips told me he was mighty displeased. As a king, he probably
hadn’t been treated like an ordinary vampire in a long time—not that
humans knew who or what he was, but ordinarily Felipe would have several
layers of insulation between him and the regular pitfalls of the vampire
world. If I had to pick a word to describe the king of Arkansas, Nevada, and
Louisiana, that word would be “miffed.”
He could hardly blame Eric for this turn of events. He might, anyway.
I switched my gaze to the human group in the glass-enclosed office. TRex
was signing autographs for some of the uniforms. Cherie and Viveca
were preening themselves, proud to be in such illustrious company. Under
his air of just-a-good-ole-boy, T-Rex was bored. He would have been glad to
be somewhere else. When the little cluster of cops dispersed, he pulled out
his cell phone and called his manager. I couldn’t tell what they were talking
about, but from his thoughts I could read that T-Rex couldn’t think of anyone
else to call in the middle of the night. He was tired of conversation with his
female companions, especially Cherie, who could not keep her mouth shut.
I spotted a familiar face among the cops going to and fro in the big
room. “Hey, Detective Coughlin!” I said, oddly happy to see someone I
knew. The middle-aged detective swung himself around, using his belly as a
fixed point. His hair was shorter than ever, and a bit grayer.
“Miss Stackhouse,” he said, coming over to us. “You found any more
bodies?”
“No, sir,” I said. “But a woman was found dead in the front yard of
Eric’s place, and I was in the house.” I jerked my head toward Eric, in case
Coughlin didn’t know who he was. Pretty unlikely that a police officer in
Shreveport wouldn’t know the city’s most prominent vampire, but it could
happen.
“So, who you going with now, young lady?” Coughlin didn’t approve
of me, but he didn’t hate me, either.
“Eric Northman,” I said, and I realized I didn’t sound at all happy
82
about that.
“Out with the furries and in with the coldies, huh?”
Eric had been talking to Pam in a very low voice, but now he turned to
stare at me.
“I guess so.” The first time I’d seen Detective Coughlin, I’d been with
Alcide Herveaux. The second time, I’d been with Quinn the weretiger. They
had been in their human forms then, and he hadn’t known their second
identity since the two-natured hadn’t revealed their existence. By now he’d
figured it out. Mike Coughlin might be slow and unimpressive, but he wasn’t
stupid.
“So you’re with the party that came in with T-Rex?” he asked.
I wasn’t used to the humans being more interesting than the vampires. I
smiled. “Yes, I met him tonight at Eric’s.”
“You ever see him wrestle?”
“No. He’s a big guy, huh?”
“Yeah, and he does a lot for the community, too. He takes toys to the
kids in the hospital at Christmas and Easter.”
So, though T-Rex was not a wereanimal, he was two-faced. One side of
him did community service and helped area charities raise money. The other
side of him hit opponents upside the head with chairs and made out with
women on other people’s dining room tables.
Mike Coughlin said, “If they rope me in to help question, I’ll ask for
you.”
“Thanks,” I said, wondering if that was really anything to smile about.
“But I hope I’m through with questions.”
He went off to have a closer look at Thad Rexford. Pam, Eric, Bill, and I
sat together without exchanging a word.
Vampires are super at silence. They just go into motionless vampire
mode. You would swear they were statues, they get so still. I don’t know
what they think about when they do this; maybe they don’t think at all, but
just switch themselves off. It’s almost impossible for a human to do this. I
guess deep meditation would be the closest state a breather could achieve,
and I am no practitioner of meditation, deep or shallow.
After a while, during which nothing much happened at all, Detective
Coughlin came over to tell us we could go. He gave no explanation. Eric
didn’t request one. I had been on the point of asking if I could curl up under
someone’s desk. I was too tired to summon the energy to be resentful at our
treatment.
83
Pam whipped out her cell phone to call Fangtasia so someone would
pick us up. Dawn wasn’t far away; Felipe and his party wanted to go directly
to their vampire-safe rooms at the Trifecta, and the Shreveport vamps didn’t
want to wait on a human cab.
While we were standing outside waiting on our ride, the three
vampires turned to me. “What was it the man on the telephone was telling
Cara Ambroselli?” Pam asked. “What did they find?”
“They found a little glass vial, like florists stick individual flowers in?”
The vampires looked puzzled. I measured one off with my fingers.
“Just big enough for one flower stem to soak in water,” I said. “The vial may
have had a stopper on it, but they didn’t find that. The vial was on the
ground underneath her. They think it had been tucked in her bra. It had
traces of blood.”
They all considered that. “I’ll bet you a demon’s dick that she had a bit
of fairy blood in it,” Pam said. “She came into the house somehow, and when
she got close to Eric, she uncorked the little vial and made herself
irresistible.”
“Except he could have resisted,” I muttered, but they all ignored me.
“And if that’s what happened, where is the stopper?”
We were all too tired to talk about this interesting development any
further; at least, I was, and the other three didn’t.
In five minutes, Palomino showed up in a candy-apple-red Mustang.
She was wearing the uniform the female waitstaff wore at the Trifecta, and
there wasn’t much to it. I was too sleepy to ask her when she’d begun
working at the casino. I climbed into the backseat with Bill, while Pam sat in
Eric’s lap in the passenger front seat. We didn’t even discuss the seating.
Eric broke the silence by asking Palomino if anyone had heard from
Mustapha.
The young vamp glanced over at him. Her hair was like corn silk and
her skin was like milky caramel. The unusual combination had earned her the
nickname, and that was the only thing I knew to call her. I had no idea what
had been written on her birth certificate.
“No, Master. No one has seen or heard from Mustapha.”
Bill silently took my hand. I silently let him. In the heat, his hand felt
pleasantly cool.
“Everything all right at the club?” Eric said. “At least, as far as you
know.”
“Yes, Master. I heard there was one disagreement, but Thalia settled it.”
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“How big was the bill for this settling?”
“A broken arm, a broken leg.”
Thalia was ancient, incredibly strong, and notoriously short on
patience.
“No furniture?”
“Not this time.”
“Indira and Maxwell Lee kept an eye on things?”
“Maxwell Lee says so,” Palomino said cautiously.
Eric laughed; not a big laugh, but something in the chuckle range.
“Damned with faint praise,” he said.
Indira and Maxwell, who lived and worked in Eric’s sheriffdom, Area
Five, were required to put in so many hours a month at the bar so Fangtasia
could boast that every night there were real vampires in the club. That was
the big draw for the tourists. While Indira and Maxwell (and most of the
other Area Five vamps) were dutiful about their bar appearances, they were
not enthusiastic.
Palomino and Eric might have solved the mysteries of the universe
during the rest of their conversation, but I didn’t hear their conclusions. I fell
asleep. When we arrived at Eric’s, Bill had to help me scramble out of the
backseat. Palomino pulled away the instant Bill slammed the door. Pam
quickly got into her own car for the short drive to her house, casting an
anxious glance at the sky as she backed out of the driveway.
If a crime-scene team had been at the house, its job was finished. We
had to enter through the garage door, since there was tape around the place
where Kym had lain. I trudged into the house, so groggy I was only partly
aware of what was going on around me.
Bill didn’t have time to get back to Bon Temps, so he was going to take
one of the fiberglass “guest” pods that Eric kept in the second upstairs
bedroom. He headed toward the back of the house immediately, leaving Eric
and me by ourselves. I looked around me in a dazed way. The kitchen had an
array of dirty bottles and glasses by the sink, but I noticed that the garbage
bag was gone. The police must have taken it.
I told Eric, “Mustapha had that door open when I came in,” and I
pointed to the door onto the backyard patio. Without a word, Eric went over
to the door. It was unlocked. He took care of that while I started across the
living room. It wasn’t too disordered since Felipe, Horst, and Angie had
neatened it, but still its disheveled state disturbed me. I began straightening
chairs and gathering up the few remaining bottles and glasses to take to the
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kitchen.
“Leave it be, Sookie,” Eric said.
I froze. “I know this isn’t my house,” I said, “but this mess just looks so
nasty. I’d hate to get up to face this.”
“The issue is not ownership of the house. The issue is that you are
exhausted and yet you feel compelled to do the maids’ job. I hope you’re
spending the rest of the night? I would feel uneasy if you drove back, as tired
as you must be.”
“I guess I’ll stay,” I said, though I was still far from satisfied with the
way things stood between us. If I’d been strong enough, I would have left.
But it would be very foolish to start driving home and risk having a wreck.
Eric was suddenly right in front of me, and he put his arms around me.
I started to pull away. “Sookie,” he said. “Let’s make this right. I have
enemies on every side, and I don’t want to have one here at home.” I made
myself hold still. I reviewed everything I’d told myself while I’d been taking
my time-out in the bathroom. That seemed to have been a week ago, instead
of hours.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Okay. I know that I should be totally all right
with what you did with that woman. I know if people are willing, there’s no
reason you shouldn’t take a sip from them, especially since she was actually
booby-trapped. I think you could have held out if you’d really wanted to. I
know my reaction is emotional, not logical. But it’s the reaction I’m having. I
also know, in my head, that I love you. I’m just not feeling it at this moment.
Oh, by the way, I have something to confess to you, too, regarding another
man.”
Ha! That sharpened him up. Eric’s eyebrows flew up and he stepped
back a little, looking down at me and very nearly scowling. “What?” he said,
biting the word out as if it tasted bad. I felt more cheerful.
“Remember, I told you I was going to Hooligans to see Claude strip?” I
said. “There were other guys, too, mostly fae, who did, well, almost the full
monty.” I raised one eyebrow and tried to look inscrutable.
Eric’s mouth quirked in what was very nearly a smile. “Claude is a
beautiful man. How do I stack up against the fairy?” he asked.
“Hmmm. The fairy was stacked all right,” I said, looking off in another
direction ostentatiously.
Eric squeezed me. “Sookie?”
“Eric! You know that you look pretty good naked.”
“Pretty good?”
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“That’s right, fish for compliments,” I said.
“That’s not all I’m fishing for,” he whispered. He picked me up by
sliding his hands under my rear, and suddenly I was at just the right height
to kiss him.
So an evening that had held so much that was bad ended in something
good, after all, and for fifteen minutes I utterly forgot that I was in the same
bed he’d sat on while he took blood from someone else … which may have
been the target Eric was aiming for. He hit it, dead center.
He got downstairs in the nick of time.
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