Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set

by Charlaine Harris

  I hoped there would be a map of the hotel, with all events and locations noted, in our registration packet. Or were the vampires too snooty for such mundane aids? No, there was a hotel diagram framed and lit for the perusal of guests and scheduled tours. This hotel was numbered in reverse order. The top floor, the penthouse, was numbered 1. The bottom, largest floor—the human floor—was numbered 15. There was a mezzanine between the human floor and lobby, and there were large convention rooms in the annex to the northern side of the hotel, the rectangular windowless projection that had looked so odd in the Internet picture.

  I eyed people scurrying through the lobby—maids, bodyguards, valets, bellmen. . . . Here we were, all us little human beavers, scurrying around to get things ready for the undead conventioneers. (Could you call them that, when this was billed as a summit? What was the difference?) I felt a little sour when I wondered why this was the order of things, when a few years ago, the vampires were the ones doing the scurrying, and that was back into a dark corner where they could hide. Maybe that had been the more natural way. I slapped myself mentally. I might as well go join the Fellowship, if that was how I really felt. I’d noticed the protesters in the little park across the street from the Pyramid of Gizeh, which some of the signs referred to as “The Pyramid of Geezers.”

  “Where are the coffins?” I asked Mr. Cataliades.

  “They’re coming in through a basement entrance,” he said.

  There had been a metal detector at the hotel door. I’d tried hard not to look when Johan Glassport had emptied his pockets. The detector had gone off like a siren when he’d passed through. “Do the coffins have to go through a metal detector, too?” I asked.

  “No. Our vampires have wooden coffins, but the hardware on them is metal, and you can’t empty the vampires out to search their pockets for other metal objects, so that wouldn’t make any sense,” Mr. Cataliades answered, for the first time sounding impatient. “Plus, some vampires have chosen the modern metal caskets.”

  “The demonstrators across the street,” I said. “They have me spooked. They’d love to sneak in here.”

  Mr. Cataliades smiled, a terrifying sight. “No one will get in here, Miss Sookie. There are other guards that you can’t see.”

  While Mr. Cataliades checked us in, I stood to his side and turned to look around at the other people. They were all dressed very nicely, and they were all talking. About us. I felt instantly anxious at the looks we were getting from the others, and the buzzing thoughts from the few live guests and staff reinforced my anxiety. We were the human entourage of the queen who had been one of the most powerful vampire rulers in America. Now she was not only weakened economically, but she was going on trial for murdering her husband. I could see why the other flunkies were interested—I would’ve found us interesting—but I was uncomfortable. All I could think about was how shiny my nose must be, and how much I wanted to have a few moments alone.

  The clerk went over our reservations very slowly and deliberately, as if to keep us on exhibit in the lobby for as long as possible. Mr. Cataliades dealt with him with his usual elaborate courtesy, though even that was getting strained after ten minutes.

  I’d been standing at a discreet distance during the process, but when I could tell the clerk—fortyish, recreational drug user, father of three—was just fucking us over to entertain himself, I took a step closer. I laid a hand on Mr. C’s sleeve to indicate that I wanted to join in the conversation. He interrupted himself to turn an interested face toward me.

  “You give us our keys and tell us where our vamps are, or I’ll tell your boss that you’re the one selling Pyramid of Gizeh items on eBay. And if you bribe a maid to even touch the queen’s panties, much less steal ’em, I’ll sic Diantha on you.” Diantha had just returned from tracking down a bottle of water. She obligingly revealed her sharp, pointed teeth in a lethal smile.

  The clerk turned white and then red in an interesting display of blood flow patterns. “Yes, ma’am,” he stammered, and I wondered if he would wet himself. After my little rummage through his head, I didn’t much care.

  In very short order, we all had keys, we had a list of “our” vampires’ resting places, and the bellman was bringing our luggage in one of those neat carts. That reminded me of something.

  Barry, I said in my head. You here?

  Yeah, said a voice that was far from the faltering one it had been the first time I’d heard it. Sookie Stackhouse?

  It’s me. We’re checking in. I’m in 1538. You?

  I’m in 1576. How are you doing?

  Good, personally. But Louisiana . . . we’ve had the hurricane, and we’ve got the trial. I guess you know all about that?

  Yeah. You saw some action.

  You could say that, I told him, wondering if my smile was coming across in my head.

  Got that loud and clear.

  Now I had an inkling of how people must feel when they were faced with me.

  I’ll see you later, I told Barry. Hey, what’s your real last name?

  You started something when you brought my gift out into the open, he told me. My real name is Barry Horowitz. Now I just call myself Barry Bellboy. That’s how I’m registered, if you forget my room number.

  Okay. Looking forward to visiting with you.

  Same here.

  And then Barry and I both turned our attention to other things, and that strange tickling feeling of mind-to-mind communication was gone.

  Barry’s the only other telepath I’ve ever encountered.

  Mr. Cataliades had discovered that the humans—well, the non-vampires—in the party had each been put in a room with another person. Some of the vampires had room-mates, too. He hadn’t been pleased that he himself was sharing a room with Diantha, but the hotel was extremely crowded, the clerk had said. He may have been lying about a lot of other things, but that much was clearly true.

  I was sharing a room with Gervaise’s squeeze, and as I slid the card into the slot on the door, I wondered if she’d be in. She was. I’d been expecting a woman like the fangbangers who hang around at Fangtasia, but Carla Danvers was another kind of creature entirely.

  “Hey, girl!” she said, as I entered. “I figured you’d be along soon when they brought your bags up. I’m Carla, Gerry’s girlfriend.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking hands. Carla was a prom queen. Maybe she hadn’t been, literally; maybe she hadn’t made homecoming queen, either, but she’d surely been on the court. Carla had dark brown chin-length hair, and big brown eyes, and teeth that were so straight and white that they were an advertisement for her orthodontist. Her breasts had been enhanced, and her ears were pierced, and her belly button, too. She had a tattoo on her lower back, some black vines in a vee pattern with a couple of roses with green leaves in the middle. I could see all this because Carla was naked, and she didn’t seem to have the slightest idea that her nudity was a little on the “too much information” side to suit me.

  “Have you and Gervaise been going together long?” I asked to camouflage how uncomfortable I was.

  “I met Gerry, let’s see, seven months ago. He said it would be better for me to have a separate room because he might have to have business meetings in his, you know? Plus, I’m going shopping while I’m here—retail therapy! Big city stores! And I wanted someplace to store my shopping bags so he won’t ask me how much it all costs.” She gave me a wink I can only say was roguish.

  “Okay,” I said. “Sounds good.” It really didn’t, but Carla’s program was hardly my business. My suitcase was waiting for me on a stand, so I opened it and started to unpack, noting that my hanging bag with my good dresses was already in the closet. Carla had left me exactly half the closet space and drawer space, which was decent. She had brought about twenty times more clothes than I had, which made her fairness all the more remarkable.

  “Whose girlfriend are you?” Carla asked. She was giving herself a pedicure. When she drew up one leg, the overhead light winked on
something metallic between her legs. Completely embarrassed, I turned away to straighten my evening dress on the hanger.

  “I’m dating Quinn,” I said.

  I glanced over my shoulder, keeping my gaze high.

  Carla looked blank.

  “The weretiger,” I said. “He’s arranging the ceremonies here.”

  She looked marginally more responsive.

  “Big guy, shaved head,” I said.

  Her face brightened. “Oh, yeah, I saw him this morning! He was eating breakfast in the restaurant when I was checking in.”

  “There’s a restaurant?”

  “Yeah, sure. Though of course it’s tiny. And there’s room service.”

  “You know, in vampire hotels there often isn’t a restaurant,” I said, just to make conversation. I’d read an article about it in American Vampire.

  “Oh. Well, that makes no sense at all.” Carla finished one set of toes and began another.

  “Not from a vampire point of view.”

  Carla frowned. “I know they don’t eat. But people do. And this is a people world, right? That’s like not learning English when you emigrate to America.”

  I turned around to check out Carla’s face, make sure she was serious. Yeah, she was.

  “Carla,” I said, and then stopped. I didn’t have any idea what to say, how to get across to Carla that a four-hundred-year-old vamp really didn’t care very much about the eating arrangements of a twenty-year-old human. But the girl was waiting for me to finish. “Well, it’s good that there’s a restaurant here,” I said weakly.

  She nodded. “Yeah, ’cause I need my coffee in the morning,” she said. “I just can’t get going without it. Course, when you date a vamp, your morning is liable to begin at three or four in the afternoon.” She laughed.

  “True,” I said. I’d finished unpacking, so I went over to our window and looked out. The glass was so heavily tinted that it was hard to make out the landscape, but it was see-able. I wasn’t on the Lake Michigan side of the hotel, which was a pity, but I looked at the buildings around the west side of the hotel with curiosity. I didn’t see cities that often, and I’d never seen a northern city. The sky was darkening rapidly, so between that and the tinted windows I really couldn’t see too much after ten minutes. The vampires would be awake soon, and my workday would begin.

  Though she kept up a sporadic stream of chatter, Carla didn’t ask what my role was at this summit. She assumed I was there as arm candy. For the moment, that was all right with me. Sooner or later, she’d find out what my particular talent was, and then she’d be nervous around me. On the other hand, now she was a little too relaxed.

  Carla was getting dressed (thank God) in what I thought of as “classy whore.” She was wearing a glittery green cocktail dress that almost didn’t have a top to it, and fuck-me shoes, and what amounted to a see-through thong. Well, she had her working clothes, and I had mine. I wasn’t too pleased with myself for being so judgmental, and maybe I was a little envious that my working clothes were so conservative.

  For tonight, I had chosen a chocolate brown lace handkerchief dress. I put in my big gold earrings and slid into brown pumps, put on some lipstick, and brushed my hair really well. Sticking my keycard into my little evening purse, I headed to the front desk to find out which suite was the queen’s, since Mr. Cataliades had told me to present myself there.

  I had hoped to run into Quinn along the way, but I didn’t see hide nor hair of him. What with me having a roommate, and Quinn being so busy all the time, this summit might not promise as much fun on the side as I’d hoped.

  The desk clerk blanched when he saw me coming, and he looked around to see if Diantha was with me. While he was scrawling the queen’s room number on a piece of notepaper with a shaking hand, I looked around me with more attention.

  There were security cameras in a few obvious locations, pointed at the front doors and at the registration desk. And I thought I could see one at the elevators. There were the usual armed guards—usual for a vampire hotel, that is. The big selling point for any vampire hotel was the security and privacy of its guests. Otherwise, vampires could stay more cheaply and centrally in the special vampire rooms of mainstream hotels. (Even Motel 6 had one vampire room at almost every location.) When I thought about the protesters outside, I really hoped the security crew here at the Pyramid was on the ball.

  I nodded at another human woman as I crossed the lobby to the central bank of elevators. The rooms got ritzier the higher up you went, I gathered, since there were fewer on the floor. The queen had one of the fourth floor suites, since she’d booked for this event a long time ago, before Katrina—and probably while her husband was still alive. There were only eight doors on her floor, and I didn’t have to see the number to know which room was Sophie-Anne’s. Sigebert was standing in front of it. Sigebert was a boulder of a man. He had guarded the queen for hundreds of years, as had Andre. The ancient vampire looked lonely without his brother, Wybert. Otherwise, he was the same old Anglo-Saxon warrior he’d been the first time I’d met him—shaggy beard, physique of a wild boar, missing a tooth or two in crucial places.

  Sigebert grinned at me, a terrifying sight. “Miss Sookie,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Sigebert,” I said, carefully pronouncing it “See-yabairt.” “Are you doing okay?” I wanted to convey sympathy without dipping into too-sentimental waters.

  “My brother, he died a hero,” Sigebert said proudly. “In battle.”

  I thought of saying, “You must miss him so much after a thousand years.” Then I decided that was exactly like reporters asking the parents of missing children, “How do you feel?”

  “He was a great fighter,” I said instead, and that was exactly what Sigebert wanted to hear. He clapped me on the shoulder, almost knocking me to the ground. Then his look got a little absent, as if he were listening to an announcement.

  I’d suspected that the queen could talk to her “children” telepathically, and when Sigebert opened the door for me without another word, I knew that was true. I was glad she couldn’t talk to me. Being able to communicate with Barry was kind of fun, but if we hung out together all the time I was sure it would get old in a hurry. Plus, Sophie-Anne was a heck of a lot scarier.

  The queen’s suite was lavish. I’d never seen anything like it. The carpet was as thick as a sheep’s pelt, and it was off-white. The furniture was upholstered in shades of gold and dark blue. The slanting slab of glass that enclosed the outside wall was opaque. I have to say, the large wall of darkness made me feel twitchy.

  In the midst of this splendor, Sophie-Anne sat curled on a couch. Small and extremely pale, with her shining brown hair swept up in a chignon, the queen was wearing a raspberry-colored silk suit with black piping and black alligator heels. Her jewelry was heavy, gold, and simple.

  Sophie-Anne would have looked more age-appropriate wearing a Gwen Stefani L.A.M.B. outfit. She’d died as a human when she’d been maybe fifteen or sixteen. In her time, that would have made her a fully-grown woman and mother. In our time, that made her a mall rat. To modern eyes, her clothes were too old for her, but it would take an insane person to tell her so. Sophie-Anne was the world’s most dangerous teenager, and the second most dangerous had her back. Andre was standing right behind Sophie-Anne, as always. When he’d given me a thorough look, and the door had closed behind me, he actually sat beside Sophie-Anne, which was some kind of signal that I was a member of the club, I guess. Andre and his queen had both been drinking TrueBlood, and they looked rosy as a result—almost human, in fact.

  “How are your accommodations?” Sophie-Anne asked politely.

  “Fine. I’m rooming with a . . . girlfriend of Gervaise’s,” I said.

  “With Carla? Why?” Her brows rose up like dark birds in a clear sky.

  “The hotel’s crowded. It’s no big thing. I figure she’ll be with Gervaise most of the time, anyway,” I said.

  Sophie-Anne said, “What did you think o
f Johan?”

  I could feel my face harden. “I think he belongs in jail.”

  “But he will keep me out of it.”

  I tried to imagine what a vampire jail would be like, gave up. I couldn’t give her any positive feedback on Johan, so I just nodded.

  “You are still not telling me what you picked up from him.”

  “He’s very tense and conflicted.”

  “Explain.”

  “He’s anxious. He’s scared. He’s fighting different loyalties. He only wants to come out alive. He doesn’t care for anyone but himself.”

  “So how does that make him different from any other human?” Andre commented.

  Sophie-Anne responded with a twitch of one side of her mouth. That Andre, what a comedian.

  “Most humans don’t stab women,” I said as quietly and calmly as I could. “Most humans don’t enjoy that.”

  Sophie-Anne was not completely indifferent to the violent death Johan Glassport had meted out, but naturally she was a little more concerned with her own legal defense. At least, that was how I read her, but with vampires, I had to go on subtle body language rather than the sure knowledge right out of their brains. “He’ll defend me, I’ll pay him, and then he’s on his own,” she said. “Anything might happen to him then.” She gave me a clear-eyed look.

  Okay, Sophie-Anne, I got the picture.

  “Did he question you thoroughly? Did you feel he knew what he was doing?” she asked, returning to the important stuff.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said promptly. “He did seem to be really competent.”

  “Then he’ll be worth the trouble.”

  I didn’t even let my eyes flicker.

  “Did Cataliades tell you what to expect?”

  “Yes, ma’am, he did.”

  “Good. As well as your testimony at the trial, I need you to attend every meeting with me that includes humans.”