“The vampires around here. Did Bill pass you to Eric?”
He’d told me once I should go to Eric if anything happened to him, but I hadn’t taken that as meaning Eric should assume the same role that Bill had in my life. As it turned out, I had had a fling with Eric, but under entirely different circumstances.
“No, he didn’t,” I said with absolute clarity. “Let me think.” I mulled it over, feeling the terrible pressure of Tara’s eyes. “Who’s Mickey’s boss?” I asked. “Or his sire?”
“I think it’s a woman,” Tara said. “At least, Mickey’s taken me to a place in Baton Rouge a couple of times, a casino, where he’s met with a female vamp. Her name is Salome.”
“Like in the Bible?”
“Yeah. Imagine naming your kid that.”
“So, is this Salome a sheriff?”
“What?”
“Is she a regional boss?”
“I don’t know. Mickey and Franklin never talked about that stuff.”
I tried not to look as exasperated as I felt. “What’s the name of the casino?”
“Seven Veils.”
Hmmm. “Okay, did he treat her with deference?” That was a good Word of the Day entry from my calendar, which I hadn’t seen since the fire.
“Well, he kind of bowed to her.”
“Just his head, or from the waist?”
“From the waist. Well, more than the head. I mean, he bent over.”
“Okay. What did he call her?”
“Mistress.”
“Okay.” I hesitated, and then asked again, “You’re sure we can’t kill him?”
“Maybe you can,” she said morosely. “I stood over him with an ice pick for fifteen minutes one night when he went to sleep after, you know, sex. But I was too scared. If he finds out I’ve been here to see you, he’ll get mad. He doesn’t like you at all. He thinks you’re a bad influence.”
“He got that right,” I said with a confidence I was far from feeling. “Let me see what I can think of.”
Tara left after another hug. She even managed a little smile, but I didn’t know how justified her flash of optimism might be.
There was only one thing I could do.
The next night I’d be working. It was full dark by now, and he’d be up.
I had to call Eric.
13
“FANGTASIA,” SAID A BORED FEMININE VOICE. “Where all your bloody dreams come true.”
“Pam, it’s Sookie.”
“Oh, hello,” she said more cheerfully. “I hear you’re in even more trouble. Got your house burned. You won’t live much longer if you keep that up.”
“No, maybe not,” I agreed. “Listen, is Eric there?”
“Yes, he’s in his office.”
“Can you transfer me to him?”
“I don’t know how,” she said disdainfully.
“Could you take the phone to him, please, ma’am?”
“Of course. Something always happens around here after you call. It’s quite the break in routine.” Pam was carrying the phone through the bar; I could tell by the change in the ambient noise. There was music in the background. KDED again: “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes” this time. “What’s happening in Bon Temps, Sookie?” Pam asked, saying in a clear aside to some bar patron, “Step aside, you son of a misbegotten whore!
“They like that kind of talk,” she said to me conversationally. “Now, what’s up?”
“I got shot.”
“Oh, too bad,” she said. “Eric, do you know what Sookie is telling me? Someone shot her.”
“Don’t get so emotional, Pam,” I said. “Someone might think you care.”
She laughed. “Here is the man,” she said.
Sounding just as matter-of-fact as Pam had, Eric said, “It can’t be critical or you wouldn’t be talking to me.”
This was true, though I would have enjoyed a more horrified reaction. But this was no time to think of little issues. I took a deep breath. I knew, sure as shooting, what was coming, but I had to help Tara. “Eric,” I said with a feeling of doom, “I need a favor.”
“Really?” he said. Then, after a notable pause, “Really?”
He began to laugh.
“Gotcha,” he said.
He arrived at the duplex an hour later and paused on the doorsill after I’d responded to his knock. “New building,” he reminded me.
“You are welcome to come in,” I said insincerely, and he stepped in, his white face practically blazing with—triumph? Excitement? Eric’s hair was wet with rain and straggled over his shoulders in rattails. He was wearing a golden brown silk T-shirt and brown pleated trousers with a magnificent belt that was just barbaric: lots of leather, and gold, and dangling tassels. You can take the man out of the Viking era, but you can’t take the Viking out of the man.
“Can I get you a drink?” I said. “I’m sorry, I don’t have any TrueBlood, and I’m not supposed to drive, so I couldn’t go get any.” I knew that was a big breach of hospitality, but there was nothing I could do about it. I hadn’t been about to ask anyone to bring me blood for Eric.
“Not important,” he said smoothly, looking around the small room.
“Please sit down.”
Eric said onto the couch, his right ankle on the knee of his left leg. His big hands were restless. “What’s the favor you need, Sookie?” He was openly gleeful.
I sighed. At least I was pretty sure he’d help, since he could practically taste the leverage he’d have over me.
I perched on the edge of the lumpy armchair. I explained about Tara, about Franklin, about Mickey. Eric got serious in a hurry. “She could leave during the day and she doesn’t,” he pointed out.
“Why should she leave her business and her home? He’s the one should leave,” I argued. (Though I have to confess, I’d wondered to myself why Tara didn’t just take a vacation. Surely Mickey wouldn’t stick around too long if his free ride was gone?) “Tara would be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life if she tried to shake him loose by running,” I said firmly.
“I’ve learned more about Franklin since I met him in Mississippi,” Eric said. I wondered if Eric had learned this from Bill’s database. “Franklin has an outdated mind-set.”
This was rich, coming from a Viking warrior whose happiest days had been spent pillaging and raping and laying waste.
“Vampires used to pass willing humans around,” Eric explained. “When our existence was secret, it was convenient to have a human lover, to maintain that person . . . that is, not to take too much blood . . . and then, when there was no one left who wanted her—or him,” Eric added hastily, so my feminist side would not be offended, “that person would be, ah, completely used.”
I was disgusted and showed it. “You mean drained,” I said.
“Sookie, you have to understand that for hundreds, thousands, of years we have considered ourselves better than humans, separate from humans.” He thought for a second. “Very much in the same relationship to humans as humans have to, say, cows. Edible like cows, but cute, too.”
I was knocked speechless. I had sensed this, of course, but to have it spelled out was just . . . nauseating. Food that walked and talked, that was us. McPeople.
“I’ll just go to Bill. He knows Tara, and she rents her business premises from him, so I bet he’ll feel obliged to help her,” I said furiously.
“Yes. He’d be obliged to try to kill Salome’s underling. Bill doesn’t rank any higher than Mickey, so he can’t order him to leave. Who do you think would survive the fight?”
The idea paralyzed me for a minute. I shuddered. What if Mickey won?
“No, I’m afraid I’m your best hope here, Sookie.” Eric gave me a brilliant smile. “I’ll talk to Salome and ask her to call her dog off. Franklin is not her child, but Mickey is. Since he’s been poaching in my area, she’ll be obliged to recall him.”
He raised a blond eyebrow. “And since you’re asking me to do this for you, of course,
you owe me.”
“Gosh, I wonder what you want in return?” I asked, maybe a little on the dry and sarcastic side.
He grinned at me broadly, giving me a flash of fang. “Tell me what happened while I was staying with you. Tell me completely, leaving out nothing. After that, I’ll do what you want.” He put both feet on the floor and leaned forward, focused on me.
“All right.” Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place. I looked down at my hands clasped in my lap.
“Did we have sex?” he asked directly.
For about two minutes, this might actually be fun. “Eric,” I said, “we had sex in every position I could imagine, and some I couldn’t. We had sex in every room in my house, and we had sex outdoors. You told me it was the best you’d ever had.” (At the time he couldn’t recall all the sex he’d ever had. But he’d paid me a compliment.) “Too bad you can’t remember it,” I concluded with a modest smile.
Eric looked like I’d hit him in the forehead with a mallet. For all of thirty seconds his reaction was completely gratifying. Then I began to be uneasy.
“Is there anything else I should know?” he said in a voice so level and even that it was simply scary.
“Um, yes.”
“Then perhaps you’ll enlighten me.”
“You offered to give up your position as sheriff and come to live with me. And get a job.”
Okay, maybe this wasn’t going so well. Eric couldn’t get any whiter or stiller. “Ah,” he said. “Anything else?”
“Yes.” I ducked my head because I’d gotten to the absolutely un-fun part. “When we came home that last night, the night we’d had the battle with the witches in Shreveport, we came in the back door, right, like I always do. And Debbie Pelt—you remember her. Alcide’s—oh, whatever she was to him . . . Debbie was sitting at my kitchen table. And she had a gun and was gonna shoot me.” I risked a glance and found Eric’s brows had drawn in together in an ominous frown. “But you threw yourself in front of me.” I leaned forward very quickly and patted him on the knee. Then I retreated into my own space. “And you took the bullet, which was really, really sweet of you. But she was going to shoot again, and I pulled out my brother’s shotgun, and I killed her.” I hadn’t cried at all that night, but I felt a tear run down my cheek now. “I killed her,” I said, and gasped for breath.
Eric’s mouth opened as though he was going to ask a question, but I held up a hand in a wait gesture. I had to finish. “We gathered up the body and bagged it, and you took it and buried her somewhere while I cleaned the kitchen. And you found her car and you hid it. I don’t know where. It took me hours to get the blood out of the kitchen. It was on everything.” I grabbed desperately at my self-possession. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my wrist. My shoulder ached, and I shifted in the chair, trying to ease it.
“And now someone else has shot at you and I wasn’t there to take the bullet,” Eric said. “You must be living wrong. Do you think the Pelt family is trying to get revenge?”
“No,” I said. I was pleased that Eric was taking all this so calmly. I don’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t this. He seemed, if anything, subdued. “They hired private detectives, and as far as I know, the private detectives didn’t find any reason to suspect me any more than anyone else. The only reason I was a suspect anyway was because when Alcide and I found that body in Shreveport at Verena Rose’s, we told the police we were engaged. We had to explain why we went together to a bridal shop. Since he had such an on-and-off relationship with Debbie, him saying we were getting married naturally raised a red flag when the detectives checked it out. He had a good alibi for the time she died, as it turned out. But if they ever seriously suspect me, I’ll be in trouble. I can’t give you as an alibi, because of course you weren’t even here, as far as anyone knows. You can’t give me an alibi because you don’t remember that night; and of course, I’m just plain old guilty. I killed her. I had to do it.” I’m sure Cain had said that when he’d killed Abel.
“You’re talking too much,” Eric said.
I pressed my lips together. One minute he wanted me to tell him everything; the next minute he wanted me to stop talking.
For maybe five minutes, Eric just looked at me. I wasn’t always sure he was seeing me. He was lost in some deep thoughts.
“I told you I would leave everything for you?” he said at the end of all this rumination.
I snorted. Trust Eric to select that as the pertinent idea.
“And how did you respond?”
Okay, that astonished me. “You couldn’t just stay with me, not remembering. That wouldn’t be right.”
He narrowed his eyes. I got tired of being regarded through slits of blue. “So,” I said, curiously deflated. Maybe I’d expected a more emotional scene than this. Maybe I’d expected Eric to grab me and kiss me silly and tell me he still felt the same. Maybe I was too fond of daydreams. “I did your favor. Now you do mine.”
Not taking his eyes off me, Eric whipped a cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number from memory. “Rose-Anne,” he said. “Are you well? Yes, please, if she’s free. Tell her I have information that will interest her.” I couldn’t hear the response on the other end, but Eric nodded, as he would if the speaker had been present. “Of course I’ll hold. Briefly.” In a minute, he said, “And hello to you, too, most beautiful princess. Yes, it keeps me busy. How’s business at the casino? Right, right. There’s one born every minute. I called to tell you something about your minion, that one named Mickey. He has some business connection with Franklin Mott?”
Then Eric’s eyebrows rose, and he smiled slightly. “Is that right? I don’t blame you. Mott is trying to stick to the old ways, and this is America.” He listened again. “Yes, I’m giving you this information for free. If you choose not to grant me a small favor in return, of course that’s of no consequence. You know in what esteem I hold you.” Eric smiled charmingly at the telephone. “I did think you should know about Mott’s passing on a human woman to Mickey. Mickey’s keeping her under his thumb by threatening her life and property. She’s quite unwilling.”
After another silence, during which his smile widened, Eric said, “The small favor is removing Mickey. Yes, that’s all. Just make sure he knows he should never again approach this woman, Tara Thornton. He should have nothing more to do with her, or her belongings and friends. The connection should be completely severed. Or I’ll have to see about severing some part of Mickey. He’s done this in my area, without the courtesy of coming to visit me. I really expected better manners of any child of yours. Have I covered all the bases?”
That Americanism sounded strange, coming from Eric Northman. I wondered if he’d ever played baseball.
“No, you don’t need to thank me, Salome. I’m glad to be of service. And if you could let me know when the thing is accomplished? Thanks. Well, back to the grindstone.” Eric flipped the phone shut and began tossing it in the air and catching it, over and over.
“You knew Mickey and Franklin were doing something wrong to start with,” I said, shocked but oddly unsurprised. “You know their boss would be glad to find out they were breaking the rules, since her vamp was violating your territory. So this won’t affect you at all.”
“I only realized that when you told me what you wanted,” Eric pointed out, the very essence of reason. He grinned at me. “How could I know that your heart’s desire would be for me to help someone else?”
“What did you think I wanted?”
“I thought maybe you wanted me to pay for rebuilding your house, or you would ask me to help find out who’s shooting the Weres. Someone who could have mistaken you for a Were,” Eric told me, as if I should have known that. “Who had you been with before you were shot?”
“I’d been to visit Calvin Norris,” I said, and Eric looked displeased.
“So you had his smell on you.”
“Well, I gave him a hug good-bye, so yeah.”
Eric eyed me skeptical
ly. “Had Alcide Herveaux been there?
“He came by the house site,” I said.
“Did he hug you, too?”
“I don’t remember,” I said. “It’s no big deal.”
“It is for someone looking for shifters and Weres to shoot. And you are hugging too many people.”
“Maybe it was Claude’s smell,” I said thoughtfully. “Gosh, I didn’t think of that. No, wait, Claude hugged me after the shooting. So I guess the fairy smell didn’t matter.”
“A fairy,” Eric said, the pupils of his eyes actually dilating. “Come here, Sookie.”
Ah-oh. I might have overplayed my hand out of sheer irritation.
“No,” I said. “I told you what you wanted, you did what I asked, and now you can go back to Shreveport and let me get some sleep. Remember?” I pointed to my bandaged shoulder.
“Then I’ll come to you,” Eric said, and knelt in front of me. He pressed against my legs and leaned over so his head was against my neck. He inhaled, held it, exhaled. I had to choke back a nervous laugh at the similarity the process held to smoking dope. “You reek,” Eric said, and I stiffened. “You smell of shifter and Were and fairy. A cocktail of other races.”
I stayed completely immobile. His lips were about two millimeters from my ear. “Should I just bite you, and end it all?” he whispered. “I would never have to think about you again. Thinking about you is an annoying habit, and one I want to be rid of. Or should I start arousing you, and discover if sex with you was really the best I’ve ever had?”
I didn’t think I was going to get a vote on this. I cleared my throat. “Eric,” I said, a little hoarsely, “we need to talk about something.”
“No. No. No,” he said. With each “no” his lips brushed my skin.
I was looking past his shoulder at the window. “Eric,” I breathed, “someone’s watching us.”
“Where?” His posture didn’t change, but Eric had shifted from a mood that was definitely dangerous to me to one that was dangerous for someone else.
Since the eyes-at-the-window scenario was an eerie echo of the situation the night my house had burned, and that night the skulker had proved to be Bill, I hoped the watcher might be Bill again. Maybe he was jealous, or curious, or just checking up on me. If the trespasser was a human, I could have read his brain and found out who he was, or at least what he intended; but this was a vampire, as the blank hole where the brain pattern should be had informed me.
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