“You’re really worried about him?” I’d never known Pam to be seriously concerned about much of anything. When she nodded, I found myself saying, “When did you meet Eric?” I’d always been curious, and tonight Pam seemed to be in a sharing mood.
“I met him in London the last night of my life.” Her voice was level, coming out of the shadowy darkness. I could see half her face in the overhead security light, and she looked quite calm. “I risked everything for love. You’ll laugh to hear this.”
I wasn’t remotely close to laughing.
“I was a very wild girl for my times. Young ladies weren’t supposed to be alone with gentlemen, or any males, for that matter. A far cry from now.” Pam’s lips curved upward in a brief smile. “But I was a romantic, and bold. I slipped out of my house late at night to meet the cousin of my dearest friend, the girl who lived right next door. The cousin was visiting from Bristol, and we were very attracted to each other. My parents didn’t consider him to be my equal in social class, so I knew they wouldn’t let him court me. And if I were caught alone with him at night, it would be the end of me. No marriage, unless my parents could force him to wed me. So, no future at all.” Pam shook her head. “Crazy to think of now. Those were the times women didn’t have choices. The ironic part is, our meeting was quite innocent. A few kisses, a lot of sentimental claptrap, undying love. Yada yada yada.”
I grinned at Pam, but she didn’t look up to catch the smile.
“On my way back to my house, trying to move so silently through the garden, I met Eric. There was no way to slip silently enough to avoid him.” For a long moment, she was quiet. “And it really was the end of me.”
“Why’d he turn you?” I settled lower in my chair and crossed my legs. This was an unexpected and fascinating conversation.
“I think he was lonely,” she said, a faint note of surprise in her voice. “His last companion had struck out on her own, since children can’t stay with their maker for long. After a few years, the child must strike out on its own, though it may come back to the maker, and must if the maker calls.”
“Weren’t you angry with him?”
She seemed to be trying to remember. “At first, I was shocked,” Pam said. “After he’d drained me, he put me in bed in my own room, and of course my family thought I’d died of some mysterious ailment, and they buried me. Eric dug me up, so I wouldn’t wake up in my coffin and have to dig my own way out. That was a great help. He held me and explained it all to me. Up until the night I died, I’d always been a very conventional woman underneath my daring tendencies. I was used to wearing layers and layers of clothes. You would be amazed at the dress I died in: the sleeves, the trim. The fabric in the skirt alone could make you three dresses!” Pam looked fondly reminiscent, nothing more. “After I’d awakened, I discovered being a vampire freed some wild thing in me.”
“After what he did, you didn’t want to kill him?”
“No,” she said instantly. “I wanted to have sex with him, and I did. We had sex many, many times.” She grinned. “The tie between maker and child doesn’t have to be sexual, but with us it was. That changed quite soon, actually, as my tastes broadened. I wanted to try everything I’d been denied in my human life.”
“So you actually liked it, being a vampire? You were glad?”
Pam shrugged. “Yes, I’ve always loved being what I am. It took me a few days to understand my new nature. I’d never even heard of a vampire before I became one.”
I couldn’t imagine the shock of Pam’s awakening. Her self-proclaimed quick adjustment to her new state amazed me.
“Did you ever go back to see your family?” I asked. Okay, that was tacky, and I regretted it as soon as the words passed my lips.
“I saw them from a distance, maybe ten years later. You understand, the first thing a new vampire needed to do was leave her home area. Otherwise she ran the risk of being recognized and hunted down. Now you can parade around as much as you like. But we were so secret, so careful. Eric and I headed out of London as quickly as we could go, and after spending a little time in the north of England while I became accustomed to my state, we left England for the continent.”
This was gruesome but fascinating. “Did you love him?”
Pam looked a little puzzled. There was a tiny wrinkle in her smooth forehead. “Love him? No. We were good companions, and I enjoyed the sex and the hunting. But love? No.” In the glare of the overhead security lights, which cast curious dark shadows in the corners of the lot, I watched Pam’s face relax into its normal smooth lines. “I owe him my loyalty,” Pam said. “I have to obey him, but I do it willingly. Eric is intelligent, ambitious, and very entertaining. I would be crumbled to nothing in my grave by now if he hadn’t been watching me slip back to my house from meeting that silly young man. I went my own way for many, many years, but I was glad to hear from him when he opened the bar and called me to serve him.”
Was it possible for anyone in the world to be as detached as Pam over the whole “I was murdered” issue? There was no doubt Pam relished being a vampire, seemed to genuinely harbor a mild contempt for humans; in fact, she seemed to find them amusing. She had thought it was hilarious when Eric had first exhibited feelings for me. Could Pam truly be so changed from her former self?
“How old were you, Pam?”
“When I died? I was nineteen.” Not a flicker of feeling crossed her face.
“Did you wear your hair up every day?”
Pam’s face seemed to warm a little. “Yes, I did. I wore it in a very elaborate style; my maid had to help me. I put artificial pads underneath my hair to give it height. And the underwear! You would laugh yourself sick to see me get into it.”
As interesting as this conversation had been, I realized I was tired and ready to go home. “So the bottom line is, you’re really loyal to Eric, and you want me to know that neither of you knew that Bill had a hidden agenda when he came to Bon Temps.” Pam nodded. “So, you came here tonight to . . . ?”
“To ask you to have mercy on Eric.”
The idea of Eric needing my mercy had never crossed my mind. “That’s as funny as your human underwear,” I said. “Pam, I know you believe you owe Eric, even though he killed you—honey, he killed you—but I don’t owe Eric a thing.”
“You care for him,” she said, and for the first time she sounded a little angry. “I know you do. He’s never been so entangled in his emotions. He’s never been at such a disadvantage.” She seemed to gather herself, and I figured our conversation was over. We got up, and I returned Sam’s chairs.
I had no idea what to say.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to think of anything. Eric himself walked out of the shadows at the edge of the lot.
“Pam,” he said, and that one word was loaded. “You were so late, I followed your trail to make sure all was well.”
“Master,” she said, which was something I’d never heard from Pam. She went down on one knee on the gravel, which must have been painful.
“Leave,” Eric said, and just like that, Pam was gone.
I kept silent. Eric was giving me that vampiric fixed stare, and I couldn’t read him at all. I was pretty sure he was mad—but about what, at whom, and with what intensity? That was the fun part of being with vampires, and the scary part of being with vampires, all at the same time.
Eric decided action would speak louder than words. Suddenly, he was right in front of me. He put a finger under my chin and lifted my face to his. His eyes, which looked simply dark in the irregular light, latched on to mine with an intensity that was both exciting and painful. Vampires; mixed feelings. One and the same.
Not exactly to my astonishment, he kissed me. When someone has had approximately a thousand years to practice kissing, he can become very good at it, and I would be lying if I said I was immune to such osculatory talent. My temperature zoomed up about ten degrees. It was everything I could do to keep from stepping into him, wrapping my arms around him, and stroppin
g myself against him. For a dead guy, he had the liveliest chemistry—and apparently all my hormones were wide awake after my night with Quinn. Thinking of Quinn was like a dash of cold water.
With an almost painful reluctance, I pulled away from Eric. His face had a focused air, as if he was sampling something and deciding if it was good enough to keep.
“Eric,” I said, and my voice was shaking. “I don’t know why you’re here, and I don’t know why we’re having all this drama.”
“Are you Quinn’s now?” His eyes narrowed.
“I’m my own,” I said. “I choose.”
“And have you chosen?”
“Eric, this is beyond gall. You haven’t been dating me. You haven’t given me any sign that was on your mind. You haven’t treated me as though I had any significance in your life. I’m not saying I would have been open to those things, but I’m saying in their absence I’ve been free to find another, ah, companion. And so far, I like Quinn just fine.”
“You don’t know him any more than you really knew Bill.”
That sliced down where it hurt.
“At least I’m pretty damn sure he wasn’t ordered to get me in bed so I’d be a political asset!”
“It’s better that you knew about Bill,” Eric said.
“Yes, it’s better,” I agreed. “That doesn’t mean I enjoyed the process.”
“I knew that would be hard. But I had to make him tell you.”
“Why?”
Eric seemed stumped. I don’t know any other way to put it. He looked away, off into the darkness of the woods. “It wasn’t right,” he said at last.
“True. But maybe you just wanted to be sure I wouldn’t ever love him again?”
“Maybe both things,” he said.
There was a sharp moment of silence, as if something big was drawing in breath.
“Okay,” I said slowly. This was like a therapy session. “You’ve been moody around me for months, Eric. Ever since you were . . . you know, not yourself. What’s up with you?”
“Ever since that night I was cursed, I’ve wondered why I ended up running down the road to your house.”
I took a step or two back and tried to pull some evidence, some indication of what he was thinking, from his white face. But it was no use.
It had never occurred to me to wonder why Eric had been there. I’d been so astounded over so many things that the circumstances of finding Eric alone, half naked, and clueless, early in the morning on the first day of the New Year, had been buried in the aftermath of the Witch War.
“Did you ever figure out the answer?” I asked, realizing after the words had left my mouth how stupid the question was.
“No,” he said in a voice that was just short of a hiss. “No. And the witch who cursed me is dead, though the curse was broken. Now she can’t tell me what her curse entailed. Was I supposed to look for the person I hated? Loved? Could it have been random that I found myself running out in the middle of nowhere . . . except that nowhere was on the way to your house?”
A moment of uneasy silence on my part. I had no idea what to say, and Eric was clearly waiting for a response.
“Probably the fairy blood,” I said weakly, though I had spent hours telling myself that my fraction of fairy blood was not significant enough to cause more than a mild attraction on the part of the vampires I met.
“No,” he said. And then he was gone.
“Well,” I said out loud, unhappy with the quiver in my voice. “As exits go, that was a good one.” It was pretty hard to have the last word with a vampire.
8
“MY BAGS ARE PACKED . . .” I SANG.
“Well, I’m not so lonesome I could cry,” Amelia said. She’d kindly agreed to drive me to the airport, but I should have made her promise to be pleasant that morning, too. She’d been a little broody the whole time I was putting on my makeup.
“I wish I was going, too,” she said, admitting what had been sticking in her craw. Of course, I’d known Amelia’s problem before she’d said it out loud. But there wasn’t a thing I could do.
“It’s not up to me to invite or not invite,” I said. “I’m the hired help.”
“I know,” she said grumpily. “I’ll get the mail, and I’ll water the plants, and I’ll brush Bob. Hey, I heard that the Bayou State insurance salesman needs a receptionist, since the mom of the woman who worked for him got evacuated from New Orleans and has to have full-time care.”
“Oh, do go in to apply for that job,” I said. “You’ll just love it.” My insurance guy was a wizard who backed up his policies with spells. “You’ll really like Greg Aubert, and he’ll interest you.” I wanted Amelia’s interview at the insurance agency to be a happy surprise.
Amelia looked at me sideways with a little smile. “Oh, is he cute and single?”
“Nope. But he has other interesting attributes. And remember, you promised Bob you wouldn’t do guys.”
“Oh, yeah.” Amelia looked gloomy. “Hey, let’s look up your hotel.”
Amelia was teaching me how to use my cousin Hadley’s computer. I’d brought it back with me from New Orleans, thinking I’d sell it, but Amelia had coaxed me to set it up here at the house. It looked funny on a desk in the corner of the oldest part of the house, the room now used as a living room. Amelia paid for an extra phone line for the Internet, since she needed it for her laptop upstairs. I was still a nervous novice.
Amelia clicked on Google and typed in “Pyramid of Gizeh hotel.” We stared at the picture that popped up on the screen. Most of the vampire hotels were in large urban centers, like Rhodes, and they were also tourist attractions. Often called simply “the Pyramid,” the hotel was shaped like one, of course, and it was faced with bronze-colored reflective glass. There was one band of lighter glass around one of the floors close to the base.
“Not exactly . . . hmmm.” Amelia looked at the building, her head tilted sideways.
“It needs to slant more,” I said, and she nodded.
“You’re right. It’s like they wanted to have a pyramid, but they didn’t really need enough floors to make it look right. The angle’s not steep enough to make it look really grand.”
“And it’s sitting on a big rectangle.”
“That, too. I expect those are the convention rooms.”
“No parking,” I said, peering at the screen.
“Oh, that’ll be below the building. They can build ’em that way up there.”
“It’s on the lakefront,” I said. “Hey, I get to see Lake Michigan. See, there’s just a little park between the hotel and the lake.”
“And about six lanes of traffic,” Amelia pointed out.
“Okay, that, too.”
“But it’s close to major shopping,” Amelia said.
“It’s got an all-human floor,” I read. “I’ll bet that’s this floor, the one that’s lighter. I thought that was just the design, but it’s so humans can go somewhere to have light during the day. People need that for their well-being.”
“Translation: it’s a law,” Amelia said. “What else is there? Meeting rooms, blah blah blah. Opaque glass throughout except for the human floor. Exquisitely decorated suites on the highest levels, blah blah blah. Staff thoroughly trained in vampires’ needs. Does that mean they’re all willing to be blood donors or fuck buddies?”
Amelia was so cynical. But now that I knew who her father was, that kind of made sense.
“I’d like to see the very top room, the tip of the pyramid,” I said.
“Can’t. It says here that that’s not a real guest floor. It’s actually where all the air conditioner stuff is.”
“Well, hell. Time to go,” I said, glancing at my watch.
“Oh, yeah.” Amelia stared gloomily at the screen.
“I’ll only be gone a week,” I said. Amelia was definitely a person who didn’t like to be by herself. We went downstairs and carried my bags to the car.
“I got the hotel number to call in case of emerg
ency. I got your cell phone number, too. You pack your charger?” She maneuvered down the long gravel driveway and out onto Hummingbird Road. We’d go right around Bon Temps to get to the interstate.
“Yeah.” And my toothbrush and toothpaste, my razor, my deodorant, my hair dryer (just in case), my makeup, all my new clothes and some extras, lots of shoes, a sleeping outfit, Amelia’s traveling alarm clock, underwear, a little jewelry, an extra purse, and two paperbacks. “Thanks for loaning me the suitcase.” Amelia had contributed her bright red roller bag and a matching garment bag, plus a carry-on I’d crammed with a book, a crossword puzzle compendium, a portable CD player, and a headset, plus a small CD case.
We didn’t talk much on the drive. I was thinking how strange it was going to be, leaving Amelia alone in my family home. There had been Stackhouses in residence on the site for over a hundred and seventy years.
Our sporadic conversation died by the time we neared the airport. There didn’t seem to be anything else to be said. We were right by the main Shreveport terminal, but we were going to a small private hangar. If Eric hadn’t booked an Anubis charter plane weeks ago, he would’ve been up a creek, because the summit was definitely taxing Anubis’s capabilities. All the states involved were sending delegations, and a big hunk of Middle America, from the Gulf to the Canadian border, was included in the American Central division.
A few months ago, Louisiana would have needed two planes. Now one would suffice, especially since a few of the party had gone ahead. I’d read the list of missing vampires after the meeting at Fangtasia, and to my regret, Melanie and Chester had been on it. I’d met them at the queen’s New Orleans headquarters, and though we hadn’t had time to become bosom buddies or anything, they’d seemed like good vamps.
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