Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set

by Charlaine Harris

  The detective’s frown grew even more formidable. “Yes, that’s true,” she said. “However, she was employed as a waitress, not an entertainer.” An entertainer? What did entertainers do at the Bat’s Wing? “She had only been working there a couple of months.”

  “Doesn’t the site used to dump her body indicate that there’s some kind of vampire involvement?” The reporter was more persistent than I would’ve been.

  “On the contrary, I believe the site was chosen to send a message to the vampires,” Kelner snapped, and then looked as if she regretted speaking. “Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  “Of course, detective,” the reporter said, a little dazed.

  “So, Tom,” and he turned to face the camera, as if he could see through it back to the anchor in the station, “that’s a provocative issue.”

  Huh?

  The anchor realized the reporter wasn’t making any sense, too, and quickly moved to another topic.

  Poor Bethany was dead, and there wasn’t anyone I could discuss that with. I pushed back tears; I hardly felt I had a right to cry for the girl. I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to Bethany Rogers last night after she’d been led from the room at the vampire nest. If there’d been no fang marks, surely a vampire hadn’t killed her. It would be a rare vampire who could pass up the blood.

  Sniffling from repressed tears and miserable with dismay, I sat on the couch and hunted through my purse to find a pencil. At last, I unearthed a pen. I used it to scratch up under the wig. Even in the air-conditioned dark of the hotel, it itched. In thirty minutes, there was a knock at the door. Once again, I looked through the peephole. There was Arturo again, with garments draped across his arm.

  “We’ll return the ones you don’t want,” he said, handing me the bundle. He tried not to stare at my hair.

  “Thanks,” I said, and tipped him. I could get used to this in a hurry.

  It wasn’t long until I was supposed to be meeting the Ayres guy, Isabel’s honey bun. Dropping the robe where I stood, I looked at what Arturo’d brought me. The pale peachy blouse with the off-white flowers, that would do, and the skirt . . . hmmm. He hadn’t been able to find denim, apparently, and the two he’d brought were khaki. That would be all right, I figured, and I pulled one on. It looked too tight for the effect I needed, and I was glad he’d brought another style. It was just right for the image. I slid my feet into flat sandals, put some tiny earrings in my pierced ears, and I was good to go. I even had a battered straw purse to carry with the ensemble. Unfortunately, it was my regular purse. But it fit right in. I dumped out my identifying items, and wished I had thought of that earlier instead of at the last minute. I wondered what other crucial safety measures I might have forgotten.

  I stepped out into the silent corridor. It was exactly as it had been the night before. There were no mirrors and no windows, and the feeling of enclosure was complete. The dark red of the carpet and the federal blue, red, and cream of the wallpaper didn’t help. The elevator snicked open when I touched the call button, and I rode down by myself. No elevator music, even. The Silent Shore was living up to its name.

  There were armed guards on either side of the elevator, when I reached the lobby. They were looking at the main doors to the hotel. Those doors were obviously locked. There was a television set mounted by the doors, and it showed the sidewalk outside of the doors. Another television set showed a wider view.

  I thought a terrible attack must be imminent and I froze, my heart racing, but after a few seconds of calm I figured out they must be there all the time. This was why vampires stayed here, and at other similar specialty hotels. No one would get past these guards to the elevators. No one would make it into the hotel rooms where sleeping and helpless vampires lay. This was why the fee for the hotel was exorbitant. The two guards on duty at the moment were both huge, and wearing the black livery of the hotel. (Ho, hum. Everyone seemed to think vampires were obsessed with black.) The guards’ sidearms seemed gigantic to me, but then, I’m not too familiar with guns. The men glanced at me and then went back to their bored forward stare.

  Even the desk clerks were armed. There were shot-guns on racks behind the counter. I wondered how far they would go to protect their guests. Would they really shoot other humans, intruders? How would the law handle it?

  A man wearing glasses sat in one of the padded chairs that punctuated the marble floor of the lobby. He was about thirty, tall and lanky, with sandy hair. He was wearing a suit, a lightweight summer khaki suit, with a conservative tie and penny loafers. The dishwasher, sure enough.

  “Hugo Ayres?” I asked.

  He sprang up to shake my hand. “You must be Sookie? But your hair . . . last night, you were blond?”

  “I am. I’m wearing a wig.”

  “It looks very natural.”

  “Good. Are you ready?”

  “My car’s outside.” He touched my back briefly to point me in the right direction, as if I wouldn’t see the doors otherwise. I appreciated the courtesy, if not the implication. I was trying to get a feel for Hugo Ayres. He wasn’t a broadcaster.

  “How long have you been dating Isabel?” I asked as we buckled up in his Caprice.

  “Ah, um, I guess about eleven months,” Hugo Ayres said. He had big hands, with freckles on the back. I was surprised he wasn’t living in the suburbs with a wife with streaked hair and two sandy children.

  “Are you divorced?” I asked impulsively. I was sorry when I saw the grief cross his face.

  “Yes,” he said. “Pretty recently.”

  “Too bad.” I started to ask about the children, decided it was none of my business. I could read him well enough to know he had a little girl, but I couldn’t discover her name and age.

  “Is it true you can read minds?” he asked.

  “Yes, it’s true.”

  “No wonder you’re so attractive to them.”

  Well, ouch, Hugo. “That’s probably a good part of the reason,” I said, keeping my voice flat and even. “What’s your day job?”

  “I’m a lawyer,” Hugo said.

  “No wonder you’re so attractive to them,” I said, in the most neutral voice I could manage.

  After a longish silence, Hugo said, “I guess I deserved that.”

  “Let’s move on past it. Let’s get a cover story.”

  “Could we be brother and sister?”

  “That’s not out of the question. I’ve seen brother and sister teams that looked less like each other than we do. But I think boyfriend-girlfriend would account for the gaps in our knowledge of each other more, if we get separated and questioned. I’m not predicting that’ll happen, and I’d be amazed if it did, but as brother and sister we’d have to know all about each other.”

  “You’re right. Why don’t we say that we met at church? You just moved to Dallas, and I met you in Sunday school at Glen Craigie Methodist. That’s actually my church.”

  “Okay. How about I’m manager of a . . . restaurant?” From working at Merlotte’s, I thought I could be convincing in the role if I wasn’t questioned too intensively.

  He looked a little surprised. “That’s just different enough to sound good. I’m not much of an actor, so if I just stick to being me, I’ll be okay.”

  “How did you meet Isabel?” Of course I was curious.

  “I represented Stan in court. His neighbors sued to have the vampires barred from the neighborhood. They lost.” Hugo had mixed feelings about his involvement with a vampire woman, and wasn’t entirely sure he should’ve won the court case, either. In fact, Hugo was deeply ambivalent about Isabel.

  Oh, good, that made this errand much more frightening. “Did that get in the papers? The fact that you represented Stan Davis?”

  He looked chagrined. “Yes, it did. Dammit, someone at the Center might recognize my name. Or me, from my picture being in the papers.”

  “But that might be even better. You can tell them you saw the error of your ways, after you’d gotten
to know vampires.”

  Hugo thought that over, his big freckled hands moving restlessly on the steering wheel. “Okay,” he said finally. “Like I said, I’m not much of an actor, but I think I can bring that off.”

  I acted all the time, so I wasn’t too worried about myself. Taking a drink order from a guy while pretending you don’t know whether he’s speculating on whether you’re blond all the way down can be excellent acting training. You can’t blame people—mostly—for what they’re thinking on the inside. You have to learn to rise above it.

  I started to suggest to the lawyer that he hold my hand if things got tense today, to send me thoughts that I could act on. But his ambivalence, the ambivalence that wafted from him like a cheap cologne, gave me pause. He might be in sexual thrall to Isabel, he might even love her and the danger she represented, but I didn’t think his heart and mind were wholly committed to her.

  In an unpleasant moment of self-examination, I wondered if the same could be said of Bill and me. But now was not the time and place to ponder this. I was getting enough from Hugo’s mind to wonder if he were completely trustworthy in terms of this little mission of ours. It was just a short step from there to wondering how safe I was in his company. I also wondered how much Hugo Ayres actually knew about me. He hadn’t been in the room when I’d been working the night before. Isabel hadn’t struck me as a chatterer. It was possible he didn’t know much about me.

  The four-lane road, running through a huge suburb, was lined with all the usual fast-food places and chain stores of all kinds. But gradually, the shopping gave way to residences, and the concrete to greenery. The traffic seemed unrelenting. I could never live in a place this size, cope with this on a daily basis.

  Hugo slowed and put on his turn signal when we came to a major intersection. We were about to turn into the parking lot of a large church; at least, it had formerly been a church. The sanctuary was huge, by Bon Temps standards. Only Baptists could count that kind of attendance, in my neck of the woods, and that’s if all their congregations joined together. The two-story sanctuary was flanked by two long one-story wings. The whole building was white-painted brick, and all the windows were tinted. There was a chemically green lawn surrounding the whole, and a huge parking lot.

  The sign on the well-tended lawn read THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE SUN CENTER—Only Jesus Rose from the Dead.

  I snorted as I opened my door and emerged from Hugo’s car. “That right there is false,” I pointed out to my companion. “Lazarus rose from the dead, too. Jerks can’t even get their scripture right.”

  “You better banish that attitude from your head,” Hugo warned me, as he got out and hit the lock button. “It’ll make you careless. These people are dangerous. They’ve accepted responsibility, publicly, for handing over two vampires to the Drainers, saying at least humanity can benefit from the death of a vampire in some way.”

  “They deal with Drainers?” I felt sick. Drainers followed an extremely hazardous profession. They trapped vampires, wound them around with silver chains, and drained the blood from them for sale on the black market. “These people in here have handed over vampires to the Drainers?”

  “That’s what one of their members said in a newspaper interview. Of course, the leader was on the news the next day, denying the report vehemently, but I think that was just smokescreen. The Fellowship kills vampires any way they can, thinks they’re unholy and an abomination, and they’re capable of anything. If you’re a vampire’s best friend, they can bring tremendous pressure to bear. Just remember that, every time you open your mouth in here.”

  “You, too, Mr. Ominous Warning.”

  We walked to the building slowly, looking it over as we went. There were about ten other cars in the parking lot, ranging from aging and dented to brand new and upscale. My favorite was a pearly white Lexus, so nice it might almost have belonged to a vampire.

  “Someone’s doing well out of the hate business,” Hugo observed.

  “Who’s the head of this place?”

  “Guy named Steve Newlin.”

  “Bet this is his car.”

  “That would account for the bumper sticker.”

  I nodded. It read TAKE THE UN OUT OF UNDEAD. Dangling from the mirror inside was a replica—well, maybe a replica—of a stake.

  This was a busy place, for a Saturday afternoon. There were children using the swing set and jungle gym in a fenced yard to the side of the building. The kids were being watched by a bored teenager, who looked up every now and then from picking at his nails. Today was not as hot as the day before—summer was losing its doomed last stand, and thank God for that—and the door of the building was propped open to take advantage of the beautiful day and moderate temperature.

  Hugo took my hand, which made me jump until I realized he was trying to make us look loverlike. He had zero interest in me personally, which was fine with me. After a second’s adjustment we managed to look fairly natural. The contact made Hugo’s mind just that more open to me, and I could tell that he was anxious but resolute. He found touching me distasteful, which was a little bit too strong a feeling for me to feel comfortable about; lack of attraction was peachy, but this actual distaste made me uneasy. There was something behind that feeling, some basic attitude . . . but there were people ahead of us, and I pulled my mind back to my job. I could feel my lips pull into their smile.

  Bill had been careful to leave my neck alone last night, so I didn’t have to worry about concealing any fang marks, and in my new outfit and on this lovely day it was easier to look carefree as we nodded at a middle-aged couple who were on their way out.

  We passed into the dimness of the building, into what must have been the Sunday school wing of the church. There were fresh signs outside the rooms up and down the corridor, signs that read BUDGETING AND FINANCE, ADVERTISING, and most ominously, MEDIA RELATIONS.

  A woman in her forties came out of a door farther down the hall, and turned to face us. She looked pleasant, even sweet, with lovely skin and short brown hair. Her definitely pink lipstick matched her definitely pink fingernails, and her lower lip was slightly pouty, which gave her an unexpectedly sensuous air; it sat with odd provocation on her pleasantly round body. A denim skirt and a knit shirt, neatly tucked in, were the echo of my own outfit, and I patted myself on the back mentally.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, looking hopeful.

  “We want to find out more about the Fellowship,” Hugo said, and he seemed every bit as nice and sincere as our new friend. She had on a nametag, I noticed, which read S. NEWLIN.

  “We’re glad you’re here,” she said. “I’m the wife of the director, Steve Newlin? I’m Sarah?” She shook hands with Hugo, but not with me. Some women don’t believe in shaking hands with another woman, so I didn’t worry about it.

  We exchanged pleasedtomeetyou’s, and she waved a manicured hand toward the double doors at the end of the hall. “If you’ll just come with me, I’ll show you where we get things done.” She laughed a little, as if the idea of meeting goals was a touch ludicrous.

  All of the doors in the hall were open, and within the rooms there was evidence of perfectly open activity. If the Newlins’ organization was keeping prisoners or conducting covert ops, it was accomplishing its goals in some other part of the building. I looked at everything as hard as I could, determined to fill myself with information. But so far the interior of the Fellowship of the Sun was as blindingly clean as the outside, and the people hardly seemed sinister or devious.

  Sarah covered ground ahead of us with an easy walk. She clutched a bundle of file folders to her chest and chattered over her shoulder as she moved at a pace that seemed relaxed, but actually was a bit challenging. Hugo and I, abandoning the handholding, had to step out to keep up.

  This building was proving to be far larger than I’d estimated. We’d entered at the far end of one wing. Now we crossed the large sanctuary of the former church, set up for meetings like any big hall, and we passed into the oth
er wing. This wing was divided into fewer and larger rooms; the one closest to the sanctuary was clearly the office of the former pastor. Now it had a sign on the door that read G. STEVEN NEWLIN, DIRECTOR.

  This was the only closed door I’d seen in the building.

  Sarah knocked and, having waited for a moment, entered. The tall, lanky man behind the desk stood to beam at us with an air of pleased expectancy. His head didn’t seem quite big enough for his body. His eyes were a hazy blue, his nose was on the beaky side, and his hair was almost the same dark brown as his wife’s, with a threading of gray. I don’t know what I’d been expecting in a fanatic, but this man was not it. He seemed a little amused by his own life.

  He’d been talking to a tall woman with iron gray hair. She was wearing a pair of slacks and a blouse, but she looked as if she’d have been more comfortable in a business suit. She was formidably made up, and she was less than pleased about something—maybe our interruption.

  “What can I do for you today?” Steve Newlin asked, indicating that Hugo and I should be seated. We took green leather armchairs pulled up opposite his desk, and Sarah, unasked, plopped down in a smaller chair that was against the wall on one side. “Excuse me, Steve,” she said to her husband. “Listen, can I get you two some coffee? Soda?”

  Hugo and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

  “Honey, this is—oh, I didn’t even ask your names?” She looked at us with charming ruefulness.

  “I’m Hugo Ayres, and this is my girlfriend, Marigold.”

  Marigold? Was he nuts? I kept my smile pasted on my face with an effort. Then I saw the pot of marigolds on the table beside Sarah, and at least I could understand his selection. We’d certainly made a large mistake already; we should have talked about this on the drive over. It stood to reason that if the Fellowship was responsible for the bug, the Fellowship knew the name of Sookie Stackhouse. Thank God Hugo had figured that out.