Dead Reckoning: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

by Charlaine Harris

  “Thank you for the offer, Victor,” Eric began, “but . . .”

  “I know you’ll raise a glass with me. The law prevents me from offering you a drink from Mindy or Mark since they’re not registered donors, and I’m all about being law-abiding.” He smiled at Mindy and Mark, who grinned back. Idiots. “Sookie, what will you have?”

  Eric and Pam were obliged to accept the offer of synthetic blood, but because I was only a human, I was allowed to insist I wasn’t thirsty. If he’d offered me country-fried steak and fried green tomatoes, I would’ve said I wasn’t hungry.

  Luis beckoned to one of the servers, and the man vanished to reappear with some TrueBlood. The bottles were on a large tray, along with the dark, fancy stemware matching Victor’s. “I’m sure the bottles don’t appeal to your aesthetic sense,” Victor said. “They offend me.”

  Like all the servers, the man who brought the drinks was human, a handsome guy in a leather loincloth (even smaller than Luis’s leather shorts) and high boots. A sort of rosette pinned to his loincloth read “Colton.” His eyes were a startling gray. When he placed the tray on the table and unloaded it, he was thinking about someone named Chic, or Chico . . . and when he met my eyes directly, he thought, Fairy blood on the glasses. Don’t let your vamps drink.

  I looked at him for a long moment. He knew about me. Now I knew something about him. He’d heard about my ability, common knowledge in the supernatural community, and he’d believed in it.

  Colton cast his eyes down.

  Eric twisted the cap to unseal the bottle, lifted it to pour the contents into the glass.

  NO, I said to him. We couldn’t communicate telepathically, but I sent a wave of negativity, and I prayed he’d pick up on it.

  “I have nothing against American packaging, as you do,” Eric said smoothly, raising the bottle directly to his lips. Pam followed suit.

  A flicker of vexation crossed Victor’s face so quickly I might have imagined it if I hadn’t been watching him so intently. The gray-eyed server backed away.

  “Have you seen your great-grandfather recently, Sookie?” Victor said, as if he were saying, “Gotcha!”

  There was no point pretending ignorance about my fairy connection.

  “Not in the past couple of weeks,” I said cautiously.

  “But you have two of your kind living in your house.”

  This was not classified information, and I was pretty sure Eric’s new vampire Heidi had told Victor. Heidi really didn’t have a choice, which was the downside to having living human relatives whom you still loved. “Yes, my cousin and my great-uncle are staying with me for a while.” I was proud that I managed to sound almost bored.

  “I wondered if you might be able to give me some insight into the state of fairy politics,” Victor said smoothly. Mindy Simpson, tired of conversations that didn’t include her, began pouting. She was unwise.

  “Not me. I stay away from politics,” I told Victor.

  “Truly? Even after your ordeal?”

  “Yep, even after my ordeal,” I said flatly. I really, really wanted to talk about my abduction and mutilation. Great party conversation. “I’m just not a political animal.”

  “But an animal,” Victor said smoothly.

  There was a moment’s frozen silence. However, I was determined that if Eric died trying to kill this vampire, it wasn’t going to be for an insult to me.

  “That’s me,” I said, returning his smile with interest. “Hot-blooded, breathing. I could even lactate. The whole mammal package.”

  Victor’s eyes narrowed. Maybe I’d gone too far.

  “Did we have anything further to discuss, Regent?” Pam asked, rightly guessing Eric was too angry to speak. “I’ll be glad to stay as late as you want, or as long as my words please you, but I am due to work at Fangtasia tonight, and my master Eric has a meeting to attend. And apparently my friend Miriam is the worse for wear tonight, and I’ll take her home with me to sleep it off.”

  Victor looked at the pallid woman as if he were only just now noticing her. “Oh, do you know her?” he asked negligently. “Yes, I believe someone mentioned that. Eric, is this the woman you told me Pam wanted to bring over? I’m so sorry I had to say no, since by my reckoning she may not have too long to live.”

  Pam didn’t move. She didn’t even twitch.

  “You may go,” Victor said, overdoing the offhanded air. “Since I’ve given you the news about my regency, and you’ve seen my beautiful club. Oh, I’m thinking of opening a tattoo establishment and maybe a lawyer’s office, though my man for that post has to study modern law. He received his law degree in Paris in the eighteen hundreds.” Victor’s indulgent smile faded completely. “You know that as regent, I have the right to open a business in anyone’s sheriffdom? All the money from the new clubs will come directly to me. I hope your revenues don’t suffer too much, Eric.”

  “Not at all,” Eric said. (I didn’t think that actually had any meaning.) “We’re all a part of your turf, Master.” If his voice had been laundry, it would have flapped in the wind, it was so dry and empty.

  We rose, more or less as one, and dipped our heads to Victor. He waved a dismissive hand at us and bent to kiss Mindy Simpson. Mark huddled closer on the vampire’s other side to nuzzle Victor’s shoulder. Pam went over to Miriam Earnest and bent over the girl to put her arm around her and help her to rise. Once on her feet and supported by Pam, Miriam focused on making it out the door. Her mind might be clouded, but her eyes were screaming.

  We left the club in grim silence (at least as far as our own conversation went; the music just never let up), escorted by Luis and Antonio. The brothers bypassed sturdy Ana Lyudmila to follow us out into the parking lot, which surprised me.

  When we had filed through the first row of cars, Eric turned to face them. Not coincidentally, the bulk of an Escalade blocked the view between Ana Lyudmila and our little party. “Do you two have something to say to me?” he asked very softly. As if she suddenly understood she was out of Vampire’s Kiss, Miriam gasped and began crying, and Pam took her in her arms.

  “It wasn’t our idea, sheriff,” said Antonio, the shorter of the two. His oiled abs gleamed under the parking lot lights.

  Luis said, “We’re loyal to Felipe, our true king, but Victor is not easy to serve. It was a bad night for us when we were dispatched to Louisiana to serve him. Now that Bruno and Corinna have disappeared, he hasn’t found anyone to take their places. No strong lieutenant. He’s traveling constantly, trying to keep his eye on every corner of Louisiana.” Luis shook his head. “We’re badly overextended. He needs to settle in New Orleans, building back up the vampire structure there. We don’t need to be trailing around in leather scarcely covering our asses, draining the income from your club. Halving the available income is not good economics, and the startup costs were steep.”

  “If you’re trying to lure me into betraying my new master, you’ve picked the wrong vampire,” Eric said, and I tried not to let my mouth hang open. I’d thought it was Christmas in June when Luis and Antonio revealed their discontent, but obviously I hadn’t been thinking deviously enough . . . again.

  Pam said, “Leather shorts are attractive compared to the black synthetics I have to wear.” She was holding up Miriam, but she didn’t look at her or refer to her, as if she wanted everyone else to forget the girl was there.

  Her costume complaint was not out of character, but it was irrelevant. Pam had always been nothing if not on task. Antonio gave her a look of disillusioned disgust. “You were supposed to be so fierce,” he muttered. He looked at Eric. “And you were supposed to be so bold.” He and Luis turned and strode back into the club.

  After that, Pam and Eric began to move with speed, as if we had a deadline to get off the property.

  Pam simply picked up Miriam and hurried to Eric’s car. He opened the back door, and she got her girlfriend in and slid in after her. Seeing that haste was the order of the night, I climbed into the front passenger sea
t and buckled up in silence. I looked back to see that Miriam had passed out the minute she realized she was safe.

  As the car left the parking lot, Pam began sniggering and Eric grinned broadly. I was too startled to ask them what was funny.

  “Victor just can’t restrain himself,” Pam said. “Making the show of my poor Miriam.”

  “And then the priceless offer from the leather twins!”

  “Did you see Antonio’s face?” Pam demanded. “Honestly, I haven’t had so much fun since I flashed my fangs at that old woman who complained about the color I painted my house!”

  “That’ll give them something to think about,” Eric said. He glanced over at me, his fangs glistening. “That was a good moment. I can’t believe he thought we’d fall for that.”

  “What if Antonio and Luis were sincere?” I asked. “What if Victor had taken Miriam’s blood or brought her over himself?” I twisted in my seat to look back at Pam.

  She was looking at me almost with pity, as if I were a hopeless romantic. “He couldn’t,” she said. “He had her in a public place, she has lots of human relatives, and he has to know I’d kill him if he did that.”

  “Not if you were dead first,” I said. Eric and Pam didn’t seem to have my own respect for Victor’s lethal tactics. They seemed almost insanely cocky. “And why are you both so sure that Antonio and Luis were making all that up just to see how you’d react?”

  “If they meant what they said, they’ll approach us again,” Eric said bluntly. “They have no other recourse, if they’ve tried Felipe and he’s turned them down. I suspect he has. Tell me, lover, what was the problem with the drinks?”

  “The problem was that he’d rubbed the inside of the glasses with fairy blood,” I said. “The human server, the guy with the gray eyes, gave me the tip-off.”

  And the smiles vanished as if they’d been turned off with a switch. I had a moment of unpleasant satisfaction.

  Pure fairy blood is intoxicating to vampires. There’s no telling what Pam or Eric would have done if they’d drunk from those glasses. And they’d have gulped it down as quickly as they could because the smell is just as entrancing as the actual substance.

  As poisoning attempts went, this one was subtle.

  “I don’t think that amount could have caused us to behave in an uncontrollable way,” Pam said. But she didn’t sound so confident.

  Eric raised his blond eyebrows. “It was a cautious experiment,” he said thoughtfully. “We might have attacked anyone in the club, or we might have gone for Sookie, since she has that interesting streak of fairy. We would have made public fools of ourselves, in any case. We might have been arrested. It was an excellent thing that you stopped us, Sookie.”

  “I have my uses,” I said, suppressing the jolt of fear that the idea of Eric and Pam going fairy-struck on me evinced.

  “And you’re Eric’s wife,” Pam observed quietly.

  Eric glared at her in the rearview mirror.

  The silence that fell was so thick I wished I’d had a knife. This Pam-and-Eric secret quarrel was both upsetting and frustrating. And that was the understatement of the year.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” I asked, frightened of the answer. But anything was better than not knowing.

  “Eric got a letter—” Pam began, and before I could register that he’d moved, Eric had whipped around, reached over the seat, and seized her throat. Since he was still driving, I squawked in terror.

  “Eyes ahead, Eric! Not with the fighting again,” I said. “Look, just go on and tell me!”

  With his right hand, Eric was still holding Pam in a grip that would have choked her if she’d been a breather. He was steering with his left hand, and we coasted to a stop on the side of the road. I couldn’t see any oncoming traffic, and there were no lights behind us, either. I didn’t know if the isolation made me feel good or bad. Eric looked back at his child, and his eyes were so bright they were practically throwing sparks. He said, “Pam, don’t speak. That’s an order. Sookie, leave this be.”

  I could have said several things. I could have said, “I’m not your vassal, and I’ll say what I want to say,” or I could have said, “Fuck you, let me out,” and called my brother to come get me.

  But I sat in silence.

  I am ashamed to say that at that moment I was scared of Eric, this desperate and determined vampire who was attacking his best friend because he didn’t want me to know . . . something. Through the tie I felt with him, I got a confused bundle of negative emotions: fear, anger, grim resolve, frustration.

  “Take me home,” I said.

  In an eerie echo, the limp Miriam whispered, “Take me home. . . .”

  After a long moment, Eric let go of Pam, who collapsed in the backseat like a sack of rice. She hunched over Miriam protectively. In a frozen silence, Eric took me back to my house. There was no further mention of the sex we’d been scheduled to have after this “fun” evening. At that point, I would rather have had sex with Luis and Antonio. Or Pam. I said good-bye to Pam and Miriam, got out, and walked into my house without a backward glance.

  I guess Eric and Pam and Miriam drove back to Shreveport together, and I guess at some point he permitted Pam to speak again, but I don’t know.

  I couldn’t sleep after I’d washed my face and hung up the pretty dress. I hoped I’d get to wear it on a happier evening, sometime in the future. I’d looked too good to be this miserable. I wondered if Eric would have handled the evening with such sangfroid if it had been me Victor had captured and drugged and put out there on that banquette for the entire world to gape at.

  And there was another thing troubling me. Here’s what I would have asked Eric if he hadn’t been playing dictator. I would have said, “Where did Victor get the fairy blood?”

  That’s what I would have asked.

  Chapter 4

  I rose the next day feeling pretty grim in general, but I brightened when I saw that Claude and Dermot had returned to the house the night before. The evidence was clear. Claude’s shirt was tossed over the back of a kitchen chair, and Dermot’s shoes were at the foot of the stairs. Plus, after I’d had my coffee and my shower, and emerged from my room in shorts and a green T-shirt, the two were waiting for me in the living room.

  “Good morning, guys,” I said. Even to my own ears, I didn’t sound too perky. “Did you remember that today was the day the antiques dealers come? They should be here in an hour or two.” I braced myself for the talk we had to have.

  “Good, then this room will not look like a junk shop,” Claude said in his charming way.

  I just nodded. Today, we had Obnoxious Claude, as opposed to the more rarely seen Tolerable Claude.

  “We did promise you a talk,” Dermot said.

  “And then you didn’t come home that night.” I sat back in an old rocker from the attic. I didn’t feel particularly ready for this conversation, but I was also anxious for some answers.

  “Things were happening at the club,” Claude said evasively.

  “Uh-huh. Let me guess, one of the fairies is missing.”

  That made them sit up and take notice. “What? How did you know?” Dermot recovered first.

  “Victor has him. Or her,” I added. I told them the story about last night.

  “It’s not enough that we have to handle our own race’s problems,” Claude said. “Now we’re sucked into the fucking vampire struggles, too.”

  “No,” I said, feeling I was walking uphill in this conversation. “You as a group weren’t sucked into the vampire struggles. One of you was taken for a specific purpose. Different scenario. Let me point out that at the very least, that fairy who was taken has been bled, because that was what the vamps needed, the blood. I’m not saying your missing comrade couldn’t be alive, but you know how the vamps lose control when a fairy is around, much less a bleeding fairy.”

  “She’s right,” Dermot told Claude. “Cait must be dead. Are any of the fairies at the club her kin? We n
eed to ask if they’ve had a death vision.”

  “A female,” Claude said. His handsome face was set in stone. “One we couldn’t afford to lose. Yes, we have to find out.”

  For a second I was confused, because Claude didn’t think that much about women in terms of his personal life. Then I remembered that there were fewer and fewer female fairies. I didn’t know about the rest of the fae, but it seemed the fairies were on the wane. It wasn’t that I lacked concern about the missing Cait (though I didn’t think there was a snowball’s chance in hell that she was alive), but I had other, selfish questions to ask, and I was not going to be diverted. As soon as Dermot had called Hooligans and asked Bellenos to call the fae together to ask about Cait’s kin, I got back on my own track.

  “While Bellenos is busy, you have some free time, and since the appraisers are coming soon, I really need you to answer my questions,” I said.

  Dermot and Claude looked at each other. Dermot seemed to lose the conversational coin toss, because he took a deep breath and began, “You know when one of your Caucasians marries one of your Negroes, sometimes the babies turn out looking much more like one race than another, seemingly at random. That likeness can vary even between children of the same couple.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard that.”

  “When Jason was a baby, our great-grandfather Niall checked on him.”

  I felt my mouth drop open. “Wait,” I said, and it came out in a hoarse croak. “Niall said he couldn’t visit because his half-human son Fintan guarded us from him. That Fintan was actually our grandfather.”

  “This is why Fintan guarded you from the fae. He didn’t want his father interfering in your lives the way he had interfered in his own. But Niall had his ways, and nonetheless, he found that the essential spark had passed Jason by. He became . . . uninterested,” Claude said.

  I waited.

  He continued, “That’s why he took so many years to make your acquaintance. He could have evaded Fintan, but he assumed you would be the same as Jason . . . attractive to humans and supernaturals, but other than that, essentially a normal human.”