I was touched that his first thought was for my safety. "Jason asked for a lot of money for doing it, and Pam and Chow agreed," I said, embarrassed.
"But Jason isn't there to take the heat, and you are."
Unanswerably true. But to give Jason credit, he certainly hadn't planned it that way. I told Alcide about the blood on the dock. "Might be a red herring," he said. "If the type matches Jason's, then you can worry." He took a sip of his coffee, his eyes focused inward. "I've got to make some calls," he said.
"Alcide, are you the packmaster for Shreveport?"
"No, no, I'm nowhere near important enough."
That didn't seem possible to me, and I said as much. He took my hand.
"Packmasters are usually older than me," he said. "And you have to be really tough. Really, really tough."
"Do you have to fight to get to be packmaster?"
"No, you get elected, but the candidates have to be very strong and clever. There's a sort of—well, you have a test you have to take."
"Written? Oral?" Alcide looked relieved when he saw I was smiling. "More like an endurance test?" I said.
He nodded. "More like."
"Don't you think your packmaster should know about this?"
"Yes. What else?"
"Why would they be doing this? Why pick on Shreveport? If they have that much going for them, the vampire blood and the will to do really bad things, why not set up shop in a more prosperous city?"
"That's a real good question." Alcide was thinking hard. His green eyes squinted when he thought. "I've never heard of a witch having this much power. I never heard of a witch being a shifter. I tend to think it's the first time this has ever happened."
"The first time?"
"That a witch has ever tried to take control of a city, tried to take away the assets of the city's supernatural community," he said.
"How do witches stand in the supernatural pecking order?"
"Well, they're humans who stay human." He shrugged. "Usually, the Supes feel like witches are just wanna-bes. The kind you have to keep an eye on, since they practice magic and we're magical creatures, but still . . ."
"Not a big threat?"
"Right. Looks like we might have to rethink that. Their leader takes vampire blood. Does she drain them herself?" He punched in a number and held the phone to his ear.
"I don't know."
"And what does she shift into?" Shape-shifters had a choice, but there was one animal each shifter had an affinity for, her habitual animal. A shape-shifter could call herself a "were-lynx" or a "were-bat," if she was out of hearing range of a werewolf. Werewolves objected very strenuously to any other two-natured creatures who termed themselves "Were."
"Well, she's . . . like you," I said. The Weres considered themselves the kings of the two-natured community. They only changed into one animal, and it was the best. The rest of the two-natured community responded by calling the wolves thugs.
"Oh, no." Alcide was appalled. At that moment, his packmaster answered the phone.
"Hello, this is Alcide." A silence. "I'm sorry to bother you when you were busy in the yard. Something important's come up. I need to see you as soon as possible." Another silence. "Yes, sir. With your permission, I'll bring someone with me." After a second or two, Alcide pressed a button to end the conversation. "Surely Bill knows where Pam and Chow live?" he asked me.
"I'm sure he does, but he's not here to tell me about it." If he would.
"And where is he?" Alcide's voice was deceptively calm.
"He's in Peru."
I'd been looking down at my napkin, which I'd pleated into a fan. I glanced up at the man next to me to see him staring down at me with an expression of incredulity.
"He's gone? He left you there alone?"
"Well, he didn't know anything was going to happen," I said, trying not to sound defensive, and then I thought, What am I saying? "Alcide, I haven't seen Bill since I came back from Jackson, except when he came over to tell me he was leaving the country."
"But she told me you were back with Bill," Alcide said in a very strange voice.
"Who told you that?"
"Debbie. Who else?"
I'm afraid my reaction was not very flattering. "And you believed Debbie?"
"She said she'd stopped by Merlotte's on her way over to see me, and she'd seen you and Bill acting very, ah, friendly while she was there."
"And you believed her?" Maybe if I kept shifting the emphasis, he'd tell me he was just joking.
Alcide was looking sheepish now, or as sheepish as a werewolf can look.
"Okay, that was dumb," he admitted. "I'll deal with her."
"Right." Pardon me if I didn't sound very convinced. I'd heard that before.
"Bill's really in Peru?"
"As far as I know."
"And you're alone in the house with Eric?"
"Eric doesn't know he's Eric."
"He doesn't remember his identity?"
"Nope. He doesn't remember his character, either, apparently."
"That's a good thing," Alcide said darkly. He had never viewed Eric with any sense of humor, as I did. I'd always been leery of Eric, but I'd appreciated his mischief, his single-mindedness, and his flair. If you could say a vampire had joie de vivre, Eric had it in spades.
"Let's go see the packmaster now," Alcide said, obviously in a much grimmer mood. We slid out of the booth after he'd paid for the coffee, and without phoning in to work ("No point being the boss if I can't vanish from time to time"), he helped me up into his truck and we took off back into Shreveport. I was sure Ms. Crispy would assume we'd checked into a motel or gone to Alcide's apartment, but that was better than Ms. Crispy finding out her boss was a werewolf.
As we drove, Alcide told me that the packmaster was a retired Air Force colonel, formerly stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, which flowed into Shreveport. Colonel Flood's only child, a daughter, had married a local, and Colonel Flood had settled in the city to be close to his grandchildren.
"His wife is a Were, too?" I asked. If Mrs. Flood was also a Were, their daughter would be, too. If Weres can get through the first few months, they live a good long while, barring accidents.
"She was; she passed away a few months ago."
Alcide's packmaster lived in a modest neighborhood of ranch-style homes on smallish lots. Colonel Flood was picking up pine cones in his front yard. It seemed a very domestic and peaceable thing for a prominent werewolf to be doing. I'd pictured him in my head in an Air Force uniform, but of course he was wearing regular civilian outdoor clothes. His thick hair was white and cut very short, and he had a mustache that must have been trimmed with a ruler, it was so exact.
The colonel must have been curious after Alcide's phone call, but he asked us to come inside in a calm sort of way. He patted Alcide on the back a lot; he was very polite to me.
The house was as neat as his mustache. It could have passed inspection.
"Can I get you a drink? Coffee? Hot chocolate? Soda?" The colonel gestured toward his kitchen as if there were a servant standing there alert for our orders.
"No, thank you," I said, since I was awash with Applebee's coffee. Colonel Flood insisted we sit in the company living room, which was an awkwardly narrow rectangle with a formal dining area at one end. Mrs. Flood had liked porcelain birds. She had liked them a lot. I wondered how the grandchildren fared in this room, and I kept my hands tucked in my lap for fear I'd jostle something.
"So, what can I do for you?" Colonel Flood asked Alcide. "Are you seeking permission to marry?"
"Not today," Alcide said with a smile. I looked down at the floor to keep my expression to myself. "My friend Sookie has some information that she shared with me. It's very important." His smile died on the vine. "She needs to relate what she knows to you."
"And why do I need to listen?"
I understood that he was asking Alcide who I was—that if he was obliged to listen to me, he needed to know my bona
fides. But Alcide was offended on my behalf.
"I wouldn't have brought her if it wasn't important. I wouldn't have introduced her to you if I wouldn't give my blood for her."
I wasn't real certain what that meant, but I was interpreting it to assume Alcide was vouching for my truthfulness and offering to pay in some way if I proved false. Nothing was simple in the supernatural world.
"Let's hear your story, young woman," said the colonel briskly.
I related all I'd told Alcide, trying to leave out the personal bits.
"Where is this coven staying?" he asked me, when I was through. I told him what I'd seen through Holly's mind.
"Not enough information," Flood said crisply. "Alcide, we need the trackers."
"Yes, sir." Alcide's eyes were gleaming at the thought of action.
"I'll call them. Everything I've heard is making me rethink something odd that happened last night. Adabelle didn't come to the planning committee meeting."
Alcide looked startled. "That's not good."
They were trying to be cryptic in front of me, but I could read what was passing between the two shifters without too much difficulty. Flood and Alcide were wondering if their—hmmm, vice president?—Adabelle had missed the meeting for some innocent reason, or if the new coven had somehow inveigled her into joining them against her own pack.
"Adabelle has been chafing against the pack leadership for some time," Colonel Flood told Alcide, with the ghost of a smile on his thin lips. "I had hoped, when she got elected my second, that she'd consider that concession enough."
From the bits of information I could glean from the packmaster's mind, the Shreveport pack seemed to be heavily on the patriarchal side. To Adabelle, a modern woman, Colonel Flood's leadership was stifling.
"A new regime might appeal to her," Colonel Flood said, after a perceptible pause. "If the invaders learned anything about our pack, it's Adabelle they'd approach."
"I don't think Adabelle would ever betray the pack, no matter how unhappy she is with the status quo," Alcide said. He sounded very sure. "But if she didn't come to the meeting last night, and you can't raise her by phone this morning, I'm concerned."
"I wish you'd go check on Adabelle while I alert the pack to action," Colonel Flood suggested. "If your friend wouldn't mind."
Maybe his friend would like to get her butt back to Bon Temps and see to her paying guest. Maybe his friend would like to be searching for her brother. Though truly, I could not think of a single thing to do that would further the search for Jason, and it would be at least two hours before Eric rose.
Alcide said, "Colonel, Sookie is not a pack member and she shouldn't have to shoulder pack responsibilities. She has her own troubles, and she's gone out of her way to let us know about a big problem we didn't even realize we had. We should have known. Someone in our pack hasn't been honest with us."
Colonel Flood's face drew in on itself as if he'd swallowed a live eel. "You're right about that," he said. "Thank you, Miss Stackhouse, for taking the time to come to Shreveport and to tell Alcide about our problem . . . which we should have known."
I nodded to him in acknowledgment.
"And I think you're right, Alcide. One of us must have known about the presence of another pack in the city."
"I'll call you about Adabelle," Alcide said.
The colonel picked up the phone and consulted a red leather book before he dialed. He glanced sideways at Alcide. "No answer at her shop." He had as much warmth radiating from him as a little space heater. Since Colonel Flood kept his house about as cold as the great outdoors, the heat was quite welcome.
"Sookie should be named a friend of the pack."
I could tell that was more than a recommendation. Alcide was saying something quite significant, but he sure wasn't going to explain. I was getting a little tired of the elliptical conversations going on around me.
"Excuse me, Alcide, Colonel," I said as politely as I could. "Maybe Alcide could run me back to my car? Since you all seem to have plans to carry out."
"Of course," the colonel said, and I could read that he was glad to be getting me out of the way. "Alcide, I'll see you back here in, what? Forty minutes or so? We'll talk about it then."
Alcide glanced at his watch and reluctantly agreed. "I might stop by Adabelle's house while I'm taking Sookie to her car," he said, and the colonel nodded, as if that were only pro forma.
"I don't know why Adabelle isn't answering the phone at work, and I don't believe she'd go over to the coven," Alcide explained when we were back in his truck. "Adabelle lives with her mother, and they don't get along too well. But we'll check there first. Adabelle's Flood's second in command, and she's also our best tracker."
"What can the trackers do?"
"They'll go to Fangtasia and try to follow the scent trail the witches left there. That'll take them to the witches' lair. If they lose the scent, maybe we can call in help from the Shreveport covens. They have to be as worried as we are."
"At Fangtasia, I'm afraid any scent might be obscured by all the emergency people," I said regretfully. That would have been something to watch, a Were tracking through the city. "And just so you know, Hallow has contacted all the witches hereabouts already. I talked to a Wiccan in Bon Temps who'd been called in to Shreveport to meet with Hallow's bunch."
"This is bigger than I thought, but I'm sure the pack can handle it." Alcide sounded quite confident.
Alcide backed the truck out of the colonel's driveway, and we began making our way through Shreveport once again. I was seeing more of the city this day than I'd seen in my whole life.
"Whose idea was it for Bill to go to Peru?" Alcide asked me suddenly.
"I don't know." I was startled and puzzled. "I think it was his queen's."
"But he didn't tell you that directly."
"No."
"He might have been ordered to go."
"I suppose."
"Who had the power to do that?" Alcide asked, as if the answer would enlighten me.
"Eric, of course." Since Eric was sheriff of Area Five. "And then the queen." That would be Eric's boss, the queen of Louisiana. Yeah, I know. It's dumb. But the vampires thought they were a marvel of modern organization.
"And now Bill's gone, and Eric's staying at your house." Alcide's voice was coaxing me to reach an obvious conclusion.
"You think that Eric staged this whole thing? You think he ordered Bill out of the country, had witches invade Shreveport, had them curse him, began running half-naked out in the freezing cold when he supposed I might be near, and then just hoped I'd take him in and that Pam and Chow and my brother would talk to each other to arrange Eric's staying with me?"
Alcide looked properly flattened. "You mean you'd thought of this?"
"Alcide, I'm not educated, but I'm not dumb." Try getting educated when you can read the minds of all your classmates, not to mention your teacher. But I read a lot, and I've read lots of good stuff. Of course, now I read mostly mysteries and romances. So I've learned many curious odds and ends, and I have a great vocabulary. "But the fact is, Eric would hardly go to this much trouble to get me to go to bed with him. Is that what you're thinking?" Of course, I knew it was. Were or not, I could see that much.
"Put that way . . ." But Alcide still didn't look satisfied. Of course, this was the man who had believed Debbie Pelt when she said that I was definitely back with Bill.
I wondered if I could get some witch to cast a truth spell on Debbie Pelt, whom I despised because she had been cruel to Alcide, insulted me grievously, burned a hole in my favorite wrap and—oh—tried to kill me by proxy. Also, she had stupid hair.
Alcide wouldn't know an honest Debbie if she came up and bit him in the ass, though backbiting was a specialty of the real Debbie.
If Alcide had known Bill and I had parted, would he have come by? Would one thing have led to another?
Well, sure it would have. And there I'd be, stuck with a guy who'd take the word of Debbie Pelt.
I glanced over at Alcide and sighed. This man was just about perfect in many respects. I liked the way he looked, I understood the way he thought, and he treated me with great consideration and respect. Sure, he was a werewolf, but I could give up a couple of nights of month. True, according to Alcide it would be difficult for me to carry his baby to term, but it was at least possible. Pregnancy wasn't part of the picture with a vampire.
Whoa. Alcide hadn't offered to father my babies, and he was still seeing Debbie. What had happened to her engagement to the Clausen guy?
With the less noble side of my character—assuming my character had a noble side—I hoped that someday soon Alcide would see Debbie for the bitch she truly was, and that he'd finally take the knowledge to heart. Whether, consequently, Alcide turned to me or not, he deserved better than Debbie Pelt.
Adabelle Yancy and her mother lived in a cul-de-sac in an upper-middle-class neighborhood that wasn't too far from Fangtasia. The house was on a rolling lawn that raised it higher than the street, so the driveway mounted and went to the rear of the property. I thought Alcide might park on the street and we'd go up the brick walkway to the front door, but he seemed to want to get the truck out of sight. I scanned the cul-de-sac, but I didn't see anyone at all, much less anyone watching the house for visitors.
Attached to the rear of the house at a right angle, the three-car garage was neat as a pin. You would think cars were never parked there, that the gleaming Subaru had just strayed into the area. We climbed out of the truck.
"That's Adabelle's mother's car," Alcide was frowning. "She started a bridal shop. I bet you've heard of it—Verena Rose. Verena's retired from working there full-time. She drops in just often enough to make Adabelle crazy."
I'd never been to the shop, but brides of any claim to prominence in the area made a point of shopping there. It must be a real profitable store. The brick home was in excellent shape, and no more than twenty years old. The yard was edged, raked, and landscaped.
When Alcide knocked at the back door, it flew open. The woman who stood revealed in the opening was as put-together and neat as the house and yard. Her steel-colored hair was in a neat roll on the back of her head, and she was in a dull olive suit and low-heeled brown pumps. She looked from Alcide to me and didn't find what she was seeking. She pushed open the glass storm door.
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