If he wasn’t weeping with unrequited love on my doorstep, at least he was suffering a little. A tiny pleased smile was on my lips when I glimpsed myself in the mirror behind the bar.
A second vampire came in an hour later. She looked at Bill for a second, nodded to him, and then sat at a table in Arlene’s section. Arlene hustled over to take the vamp’s order. They spoke for a minute, but I was too busy to check in on them. Besides, I’d just have heard the vamp filtered through Arlene, since vampires are silent as the grave (ho ho) to me. The next thing I knew, Arlene was wending her way through the crowd to me.
“The dead gal wants to talk to you,” she said, not moderating her voice in the least, and heads turned in our direction. Arlene is not long on subtlety—or tact, for that matter.
After I made sure all my customers were happy, I went to the vamp’s table. “What can I do for you?” I asked, in the lowest voice I could manage. I knew the vamp could hear me; their hearing is phenomenal, and their vision is not far behind in acuity.
“You’re Sookie Stackhouse?” asked the vamp. She was very tall, just under six feet, and she was of some racial blend that had turned out awfully well. Her skin was a golden color, and her hair was thick and coarse and dark. She’d had it cornrowed, and her arms were weighed down with jewelry. Her clothes, in contrast, were simple; she wore a severely tailored white blouse with long sleeves, and black leggings with black sandals.
“Yes,” I said. “Can I help you?” She was looking at me with an expression I could only identify as doubtful.
“Pam sent me here,” she said. “My name is Felicia.” Her voice was as lilting and exotic as her appearance. It made you think about rum drinks and beaches.
“How-de-do, Felicia,” I said politely. “I hope Pam is well.”
Since vampires don’t have variable health, this was a stumper for Felicia. “She seems all right,” the vamp said uncertainly. “She has sent me here to identify myself to you.”
“Okay, I know you now,” I said, just as confused as Felicia had been.
“She said you had a habit of killing the bartenders of Fangtasia,” Felicia said, her lovely doe eyes wide with amazement. “She said I must come to beg your mercy. But you just seem like a human, to me.”
That Pam. “She was just teasing you,” I said as gently as I could. I didn’t think Felicia was the sharpest tool in the shed. Super hearing and super strength do not equal super intelligence. “Pam and I are friends, sort of, and she likes to embarrass me. I guess she likes to do the same thing to you, Felicia. I have no intention of harming anyone.” Felicia looked skeptical. “It’s true, I have a bad history with the bartenders of Fangtasia, but that’s just, ah, coincidence,” I babbled on. “And I am really, truly just a human.”
After chewing that over for a moment, Felicia looked relieved, which made her even prettier. Pam often had multiple reasons for doing something, and I found myself wondering if she’d sent Felicia here so I could observe her attractions—which of course would be obvious to Eric. Pam might be trying to stir up trouble. She hated a dull life.
“You go back to Shreveport and have a good time with your boss,” I said, trying to sound kind.
“Eric?” the lovely vampire said. She seemed startled. “He’s good to work for, but I’m not a lover of men.”
I glanced over at my tables, not only checking to see if anyone urgently needed a drink, but to see who’d picked up on that line of dialogue. Hoyt’s tongue was practically hanging out, and Catfish looked as though he’d been caught in the headlights. Dago was happily shocked. “So, Felicia, how’d you end up in Shreveport, if you don’t mind me asking?” I turned my attention back to the new vamp.
“Oh, my friend Indira asked me to come. She said servitude with Eric is not so bad.” Felicia shrugged, to show how “not so bad” it was. “He doesn’t demand sexual services if the woman is not so inclined, and he asks in return only a few hours in the bar and special chores from time to time.”
“So he has a reputation as a good boss?”
“Oh, yes.” Felicia looked almost surprised. “He’s no softie, of course.”
Softie was not a word you could use in the same sentence as Eric.
“And you can’t cross him. He doesn’t forgive that,” she continued thoughtfully. “But as long as you fulfill your obligations to him, he’ll do the same for you.”
I nodded. That more or less fit with my impression of Eric, and I knew Eric very well in some respects . . . though not at all in others.
“This will be much better than Arkansas,” Felicia said.
“Why’d you leave Arkansas?” I asked, because I just couldn’t help it. Felicia was the simplest vampire I’d ever met.
“Peter Threadgill,” she said. “The king. He just married your queen.”
Sophie-Anne Leclerq of Louisiana was by no means my queen, but out of curiosity, I wanted to continue the conversation.
“What’s so wrong with Peter Threadgill?”
That was a poser for Felicia. She mulled it over. “He holds grudges,” she said, frowning. “He’s never pleased with what he has. It’s not enough that he’s the oldest, strongest vampire in the state. Once he became king—and he’d schemed for years to work his way up to it—he still wasn’t content. There was something wrong with the state, you see?”
“Like, ‘Any state that would have me for a king isn’t a good state to be king of ’?”
“Exactly,” Felicia said, as if I were very clever to think of such a phrase. “He negotiated with Louisiana for months and months, and even Jade Flower got tired of hearing about the queen. Then she finally agreed to the alliance. After a week of celebrating, the king grew sullen again. Suddenly, that wasn’t good enough. She had to love him. She had to give up everything for him.” Felicia shook her head at the vagaries of royalty.
“So it wasn’t a love match?”
“That’s the last thing vampire kings and queens marry for,” Felicia said. “Now he is having his visit with the queen in New Orleans, and I’m glad I’m at the other end of the state.”
I didn’t grasp the concept of a married couple visiting, but I was sure that sooner or later I’d understand.
I would have been interested in hearing more, but it was time for me to get back to my section and work. “Thanks for visiting, Felicia, and don’t worry about a thing. I’m glad you’re working for Eric,” I said.
Felicia smiled at me, a dazzling and toothy experience. “I’m glad you don’t plan on killing me,” she said.
I smiled back at her, a bit hesitantly.
“I assure you, now that I know who you are, you won’t get a chance to creep up on me,” Felicia continued. Suddenly, the true vampire looked out from Felicia’s eyes, and I shivered. It could be fatal to underestimate Felicia. Smart, no. Savage, yes.
“I don’t plan on creeping up on anyone, much less a vampire,” I said.
She gave me a sharp nod, and then she glided out the door as suddenly as she’d come in.
“What was all that about?” Arlene asked me, when we happened to be at the bar waiting for orders at the same time. I noticed Sam was listening, as well.
I shrugged. “She’s working at Fangtasia, in Shreveport, and she just wanted to make my acquaintance.”
Arlene stared at me. “They got to check in with you, now? Sookie, you need to shun the dead and involve yourself more with the living.”
I stared right back. “Where’d you get an idea like that?”
“You act like I can’t think for myself.”
Arlene had never worked out a thought like that in her life. Arlene’s middle name was tolerance, mostly because she was too easygoing to take a moral stance.
“Well, I’m surprised,” I said, sharply aware of how harshly I’d just evaluated someone I’d always looked on as a friend.
“Well, I been going to church with Rafe Prudhomme.”
I liked Rafe Prudhomme, a very quiet man in his forties who worked for Pel
ican State Title Company. But I’d never had the chance to get to know him well, never listened in to his thoughts. Maybe that had been a mistake. “What kind of church does he go to?” I said.
“He’s been attending that Fellowship of the Sun, that new church.”
My heart sank, almost literally. I didn’t bother to point out that the Fellowship was a collection of bigots who were bound together by hatred and fear. “It’s not really a church, you know. There’s a branch of the Fellowship close to here?”
“Minden.” Arlene looked away, the very picture of guilt. “I knew you wouldn’t like that. But I saw the Catholic priest, Father Riordan, there. So even the ordained people think it’s okay. We’ve been the past two Sunday evenings.”
“And you believe that stuff?”
But one of Arlene’s customers yelled for her, and she was definitely glad to walk away.
My eyes met Sam’s, and we looked equally troubled. The Fellowship of the Sun was an antivampire, antitolerance organization, and its influence was spreading. Some of the Fellowship enclaves were not militant, but many of them preached hatred and fear in its most extreme form. If the Fellowship had a secret underground hit list, I was surely on it. The Fellowship founders, Steve and Sarah Newlin, had been driven out of their most lucrative church in Dallas because I’d interfered with their plans. I’d survived a couple of assassination attempts since then, but there was always the chance the Fellowship would track me down and ambush me. They’d seen me in Dallas, they’d seen me in Jackson, and sooner or later they’d figure out who I was and where I lived.
I had plenty to worry about.
11
THE NEXT MORNING, TANYA SHOWED UP AT MY house. It was Sunday, and I was off work, and I felt pretty cheerful. After all, Crystal was healing, Quinn seemed to like me, and I hadn’t heard any more from Eric, so maybe he would leave me alone. I try to be optimistic. My gran’s favorite saying from the Bible was, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” She had explained that that meant that you don’t worry about tomorrow, or about things you can’t change. I tried to practice that philosophy, though most days it was hard. Today it was easy.
The birds were tweeting and chirping, the bugs were buzzing, and the pollen-heavy air was full of peace as if it were yet another plant emission. I was sitting on the front porch in my pink robe, sipping my coffee, listening to Car Talk on Red River Radio, and feeling really good, when a little Dodge Dart chugged up my driveway. I didn’t recognize the car, but I did recognize the driver. All my peacefulness vanished in a puff of suspicion. Now that I knew about the proximity of a new Fellowship conclave, Tanya’s inquisitive presence seemed even more suspicious. I was not happy to see her at my home. Common courtesy forbade me from warning her off, with no more provocation than I’d had, but I wasn’t giving her any welcoming smile when I lowered my feet to the porch and stood.
“Good morning, Sookie!” she called as she got out of her car.
“Tanya,” I said, just to acknowledge the greeting.
She paused halfway to the steps. “Um, everything okay?”
I didn’t speak.
“I should have called first, huh?” She tried to look winsome and rueful.
“That would have been better. I don’t like unannounced visitors.”
“Sorry, I promise I’ll call next time.” She resumed her progress over the stepping stones to the steps. “Got an extra cup of coffee?”
I violated one of the most basic rules of hospitality. “No, not this morning,” I said. I went to stand at the top of the steps to block her way onto the porch.
“Well . . . Sookie,” she said, her voice uncertain. “You really are a grump in the morning.”
I looked down at her steadily.
“No wonder Bill Compton’s dating someone else,” Tanya said with a little laugh. She knew immediately she’d made an error. “Sorry,” she added hastily, “maybe I haven’t had enough coffee myself. I shouldn’t have said that. That Selah Pumphrey’s a bitch, huh?”
Too late now, Tanya. I said, “At least you know where you stand with Selah.” That was clear enough, right? “I’ll see you at work.”
“Okay. I’ll call next time, you hear?” She gave me a bright, empty smile.
“I hear you.” I watched her get back into the little car. She gave me a cheerful wave and, with a lot of extra maneuvering, she turned the Dart around and headed back to Hummingbird Road.
I watched her go, waiting until the sound of the engine had completely died away before I resumed my seat. I left my book on the plastic table beside my lawn chair and sipped the rest of my coffee without the pleasure that had accompanied the first few mouthfuls.
Tanya was up to something.
She practically had a neon sign flashing above her head. I wished the sign would be obliging enough to tell me what she was, who she worked for, and what her goal might be, but I guessed I’d just have to find that out myself. I was going to listen to her head every chance I got, and if that didn’t work—and sometimes it doesn’t, because not only was she a shifter, but you can’t make people think about what you need to them to, on demand—I would have to take more drastic action.
Not that I was sure what that would be.
In the past year, somehow I’d assumed the role of guardian of the weird in my little corner of our state. I was the poster girl for interspecies tolerance. I’d learned a lot about the other universe, the one that surrounded the (mostly oblivious) human race. It was kind of neat, knowing stuff that other people didn’t. But it complicated my already difficult life, and it led me into dangerous byways among beings who desperately wanted to keep their existence a secret.
The phone rang inside the house, and I stirred myself from my unhappy thoughts to answer it.
“Hey, babe,” said a warm voice on the other end.
“Quinn,” I said, trying not to sound too happy. Not that I was emotionally invested in this man, but I sure needed something positive to happen right now, and Quinn was both formidable and attractive.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, sitting on my front porch drinking coffee in my bathrobe.”
“I wish I was there to have a cup with you.”
Hmmm. Idle wish, or serious “ask me over”?
“There’s plenty in the pot,” I said cautiously.
“I’m in Dallas, or I’d be there in a flash,” he said.
Deflation. “When did you leave?” I asked, because that seemed the safest, least prying question.
“Yesterday. I got a call from the mother of a guy who works for me from time to time. He quit in the middle of a job we were working on in New Orleans, weeks ago. I was pretty pissed at him, but I wasn’t exactly worried. He was kind of a free-floating guy, had a lot of irons in the fire that took him all over the country. But his mom says he still hasn’t shown up anywhere, and she thinks something’s happened to him. I’m looking around his house and going through his files to help her out, but I’m reaching a dead end. The track seems to have ended in New Orleans. I’ll be driving back to Shreveport tomorrow. Are you working?”
“Yes, early shift. I’ll be off around five-ish.”
“So can I invite myself over for dinner? I’ll bring the steaks. You got a grill?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. It’s pretty old, but it works.”
“Got coals?”
“I’d have to check.” I hadn’t cooked out since my grandmother had died.
“No problem. I’ll bring some.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll fix everything else.”
“We have a plan.”
“See you at six?”
“Six it is.”
“Okay, good-bye then.”
Actually, I would have liked to talk to him longer, but I wasn’t sure what to say, since I’d never had the experience of much idle chitchat with boys. My dating career had begun last year, when I’d met Bill. I had a lot of catching up to do. I was not like, say, Lindsay Popken, wh
o’d been Miss Bon Temps the year I graduated from high school. Lindsay was able to reduce boys to drooling idiots and keep them trailing after her like stunned hyenas. I’d watched her at it often and still could not understand the phenomenon. It never seemed to me she talked about anything in particular. I’d even listened to her brain, but it was mostly full of white noise. Lindsay’s technique, I’d concluded, was instinctive, and it was based on never saying anything serious.
Oh well, enough of reminiscence. I went into the house to see what I needed to do to get it ready for Quinn’s visit the next evening and to make a list of necessary purchases. It was a happy way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I’d go shopping. I stepped into the shower contemplating a pleasurable day.
A knock at my front door interrupted me about thirty minutes later as I was putting on some lipstick. This time I looked through the peephole. My heart sank. However, I was obliged to open the door.
A familiar long black limo was parked in my drive. My only previous experience with that limo led me to expect unpleasant news and trouble.
The man—the being—standing on my front porch was the personal representative and lawyer for the vampire queen of Louisiana, and his name was Mr. Cataliades, emphasis on the second syllable. I’d first met Mr. Cataliades when he’d come to let me know that my cousin Hadley had died, leaving her estate to me. Not only had Hadley died, she’d been murdered, and the vampire responsible had been punished right before my eyes. The night had been full of multiple shocks: discovering not only that Hadley had left this world, but she’d left it as a vampire, and she’d been the favorite of the queen, in a biblical sense.
Hadley had been one of the few remaining members of my family, and I felt her loss; at the same time, I had to admit that Hadley, in her teenage years, had been the cause of much grief to her mother and much pain to my grandmother. If she’d lived, maybe she’d have tried to make up for that—or maybe she wouldn’t. She hadn’t had the chance.
I took a deep breath. I opened the door. “Mr. Cataliades,” I said, feeling my anxious smile stretch my lips unconvincingly. The queen’s lawyer was a man composed of circles, his face round and his belly rounder, his eyes beady and circular and dark. I didn’t think he was human—or perhaps not wholly human—but I wasn’t sure what he could be. Not a vampire; here he was, in broad daylight. Not Were, or shifter; no red buzz surrounding his brain.
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