I wouldn’t have thought so much about it if I hadn’t seen Pam’s face. She was looking at me, and her expression was clearly one of . . . pity.
“What?” I said, the hair on the back of my neck rising. “What’s up? If he said ‘Your Majesty,’ that’s Felipe calling, huh? That should be good . . . right?”
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “He’d kill me. He doesn’t even want you to know there’s anything to know, if you can pick up what I’m putting down.”
“Pam. Tell me.”
“I can’t,” she repeated. “You need to be looking out for yourself, Sookie.”
I looked at her with fierce intensity. I couldn’t will her mouth to open, and I didn’t have the strength to hold her down on the kitchen table and demand the facts from her.
Where could reason get me? Okay, Pam liked me. The only people she liked better were Eric and her Miriam. If there was something she couldn’t tell me, it had to be associated with Eric. If Eric had been human, I would’ve thought he had some dread disease. If Eric had lost all his assets in the stock market or some such financial calamity, Pam knew that money was not my ruling concern. What was the only thing I valued?
His love.
Eric had someone else.
I stood up without knowing I was standing, the chair clattering to the floor behind me. I wanted to reach into Pam’s brain and yank out the details. Now I understood very clearly why Eric had gone for her in this same room the night he’d brought Immanuel over. She’d wanted to tell me then and he’d forbidden her to speak.
Alarmed by the noise of the chair bouncing on the floor, Eric came running into the room, the phone still held to his ear. I was standing with my fists clenched, glaring at him. My heart was lurching around in my chest like a frog on a griddle.
“Excuse me,” he said into the phone. “There is a crisis. I’ll return your call later.” He snapped his phone shut.
“Pam,” he said. “I am very angry with you. I am seriously angry with you. Leave this house now and remain silent.”
With a posture I had never seen before, hunched and humbled, Pam scrambled up from her chair and out the back door. I wondered if she’d see Bubba in the woods. Or Bill. Or maybe there’d be fairies. Or some more kidnappers. A homicidal maniac! You never knew what you’d find in my woods.
I didn’t say a word. I waited. I felt like my eyes were shooting flames.
“I love you,” he said.
I waited.
“My maker, Appius Livius Ocella”—the dead Appius Livius Ocella—“was in the process of making a match for me before he died,” Eric said. “He mentioned it to me during his stay, but I didn’t realize the process had gone as far as it had when he died. I thought I could ignore it. That his death canceled it out.”
I waited. I could not read his face, and without the bond, I could only see that he was covering his emotion with a hard face.
“This isn’t much done anymore, though it used to be the norm. Makers used to find matches for their children. They’d receive a fee if it was an advantageous union, if each half could supply something the other lacked. It was mostly a business arrangement.”
I raised my eyebrows. At the only vampire wedding I’d witnessed, there’d been plenty of evidence of physical passion, though I’d been told the couple wouldn’t be spending all their time together.
Eric looked abashed, an expression I’d never thought to see on his face.
“Of course, it has to be consummated,” he said.
I waited for the coup de grace. Maybe the ground would open up and swallow him first. It didn’t.
“I’d have to put you aside,” he admitted. “It’s not done, to have a human wife and a vampire wife. Especially if the wife is the Queen of Oklahoma. The vampire wife must be the only one.” He looked away, his face stiff with a resentment he’d never expressed before. “I know you’ve always insisted that you weren’t my true wife, so presumably that would not be so difficult for you.”
Like hell.
He looked at my face as if he were reading a map. “Though I believe it would be,” he said softly. “Sookie, I swear to you that since I received the letter, I have done everything I could to stop this. I have pleaded that Ocella’s death should cancel the arrangement; I have said that I’m happy where I am; I have even put forward our marriage as a bar. And as my regent, Victor could plead that his wishes supersede those of Ocella, and that I’m too useful to him to leave the state.”
“Oh, no.” I found myself finally able to speak, though only in a whisper.
“Oh, yes,” Eric said bitterly. “I’ve appealed to Felipe, but I haven’t heard from him. Oklahoma is one of the rulers eyeing his throne. He may want to placate her. In the meantime, she calls me every week, offering me a share of her kingdom if I’ll come to her.”
“So, she’s met you face-to-face.” My voice was a little stronger.
“Yes,” he said. “She was at the summit in Rhodes to make a deal with the King of Tennessee about a prisoner exchange.”
Did I remember her? When I was calmer, I might. There’d been several queens there, and not an ugly one among ’em. There were a thousand questions crowding to get out of my head and into my mouth, but I clamped my lips shut. This was not a time to speak, but a time to listen.
I believed this arrangement hadn’t been his idea. And now I understood what Appius had told me when he was about to die. He’d told me I’d never keep Eric. He’d died happy about that, that he’d arranged such an advantageous connection for his beloved son, one that would take Eric away from the lowly human he loved. If he’d been in front of me, I’d have killed Appius again and enjoyed it.
In the middle of this brooding, and while Eric was saying everything all over again, a white face peered in the kitchen window. Eric could see from my face that something was behind him, and he whipped around so quickly I didn’t see him move. To my relief, the face was familiar.
“Let him in,” I said, and Eric went to the back door.
Bubba was in the kitchen a second later, bending over to kiss my hand. “Hey, pretty lady,” he said, beaming at me. Bubba had one of the most recognizable faces in the world, though his heyday had been fifty years before.
“Good to see you,” I said, and I meant it. Bubba had some bad habits, because he was a bad vampire; he’d been too soaked in drugs when he’d been brought over, and the spark of life had been almost extinct. Two seconds later, it would have been too late. But a morgue attendant in Memphis, a vampire, had been so overwhelmed at seeing him that he’d brought the King over. Then, vampires had been secret creatures of the night, not on the cover of every other magazine the way they are now. Under the name “Bubba” he’d been passed around from kingdom to kingdom, given simple tasks to do to earn his keep, and every now and then on memorable nights, he wanted to sing. He was very fond of Bill, less attached to Eric, but Bubba understood the protocol well enough to be polite.
“Miss Pam is outside,” Bubba said, looking sideways at Eric. “You and Mr. Eric doing okay in here?”
Bless his heart, he suspected Eric was hurting me, and he’d come in to check. Bubba was right; Eric was hurting me but not physically. I felt as though I were standing on the edge of a cliff, narrowly avoiding taking the step off the edge. I was pretty numb, but that wasn’t going to last.
At this interesting moment a knock at the front door announced the arrival of (I hoped) Audrina and Colton, our co-conspirators. I went to the door, the two vampires behind me. Feeling absolutely secure in doing so, I opened the front door. Sure enough, the human couple was standing on the front porch waiting, and each of them was gripped by a dripping, grim Pam. Pam’s blond straight hair was darker with rain and hanging in rattails. She looked like she could spit nails.
“Please come in,” I said politely. “And you, too, Pam.” After all, it was my house and she was my friend. “We need to put our heads together.” I thought of adding, “Though not literally,” when I flashed on
the heads of Hod and Kelvin, but Audrina and Colton looked pretty frightened already. It was one thing to talk big in your trailer all alone. It was another thing to meet with desperate and terrifying people in a lonely house out in the woods. As I turned away to lead them to the kitchen, I decided to put out some drinks, a bucket of ice, and maybe a bowl of chips and dip.
It was time to get this assassination party started.
I’d think about other deaths later.
Chapter 13
Audrina and Colton obviously couldn’t decide what was more amazing: the threat of a sodden and beautiful (but menacing) Pam or the ruin of glory that was Bubba. They’d expected Eric, but Bubba was a complete surprise.
They were entranced. Though I whispered to them on our way through the living room not to call him by his real name, I didn’t know if they’d have enough self-control. Luckily for us all, they did. Bubba really, really, didn’t like being reminded of his past life. He had to be in a remarkable mood to sing.
Wait. Ha! Finally, I had a real idea.
They all sat around the table. Absorbed in figuring out my scheme, I got out the refreshments and pulled up a chair by Bubba. I had a floaty, surrealistic feeling. I simply couldn’t think about the crash and burn I’d just experienced. I had to think about this moment and this purpose.
Pam sat behind Eric so they wouldn’t meet each other’s eyes. They both looked miserable, and it was a look I’d seldom seen either of them wear. It didn’t look good on them. I felt somehow guilty about the breach between them, though it certainly wasn’t my fault. Or was it? I ran it through my mind. Nope, it wasn’t.
Eric proposed that he infiltrate his vampires into Vampire’s Kiss one night in disguise, and that they wait until the club was about to close and the crowds were thin. Then we would attack. And, of course, kill them all.
If Victor hadn’t been an employee of Felipe, king of three states, Eric’s scheme would have been workable, though there were some definite weak points. But surely killing a bunch of his vampires would piss off Felipe mightily, and I really couldn’t blame him.
Audrina had a plan, too, involving discovering Victor’s sleeping place and getting him while he was out for the day. Wow, that was fresh and original. However, it was a classic for a reason. Victor would be helpless.
“Except we don’t know where he sleeps,” I said, trying to slide the objection in there without sounding snooty.
“I do,” Audrina said proudly. “He sleeps in a big stone mansion. It’s set back from a parish road between Musgrave and Toniton. There’s one lone road in, and that’s it. There aren’t any trees around the house. It’s just grass.”
“Wow.” I was impressed. “How’d you track him down?”
“I know the guy who mows the yard,” she said. She grinned at me. “Dusty Kolinchek, remember him?”
“Sure,” I said, feeling a stir of interest. Dusty’s dad owned a fleet—okay, a small fleet—of lawn tractors and weed eaters, and every summer a group of Bon Temps high school boys earned their walking-around money working for Mr. Kolinchek. Dusty was inheriting the lawn-mowing empire, sounded like.
“He says that the house is almost empty during the day because Victor is paranoid about having anyone come in while he’s sleeping. He just has two bodyguards there, Dixie and Dixon Mayhew, and they’re some kind of wereanimals.”
“I know them,” I said. “They’re werepanthers. They’re good.” The Mayhew twins were tough and professional. “They must be strapped for cash to work for a vampire.” Now that my sister-in-law was dead and Calvin Norris had married Tanya Grissom, I didn’t see many of the werepanthers with any frequency. Calvin didn’t come into the bar much, and Jason seemed to see his former in-laws only at the full moon, when he became one of them . . . in a limited way, since he’d been bitten, not born, as a were.
“So maybe I could bribe the Mayhews if they’re that hard up,” Eric said. “You wouldn’t need to kill them, then. Less mess. But you humans would have to do the job, since Pam and I will be down for the day.”
“We’d have to search the house, because I bet the Mayhews don’t know exactly where he sleeps,” I said. “Though I’m sure they have to have a pretty good idea.” The vampire smell alone should help the twoeys zone in on where Victor slept, but it seemed kind of tacky to say that out loud.
Pam kind of waved her hand. Eric half turned, catching the motion out of the corner of his eye. “What?” he said. “Oh, you can speak.”
Pam looked relieved. She said, “I think when he leaves the club in the morning would be a good time. His attention is on whoever he’s going to feed on, and we might be able to attack then.”
These were all pretty straightforward plans, and maybe that was both their strength and their weakness. They were simple. And that meant they were predictable. Eric’s plan was the bloodiest, of course. There would certainly be loss of life. Audrina and Colton’s plan was the most human, since it depended on a day attack. Pam’s was possibly the best, since it was a night attack but not in a heavily peopled area, though the club exit was so obviously the weakest point that I felt sure whatever vampires Victor used as bodyguards—maybe the toothsome Antonio and Luis?—would be extra vigilant at such a moment.
“I have a plan,” I said.
It was like I’d suddenly stood up and unhooked my bra. They all looked at me simultaneously, with a combination of surprise and skepticism. I will say that most of the skepticism came from Audrina and Colton, who hardly knew me. Bubba had been sitting on the high stool beside the counter, sipping a TrueBlood with an unsatisfied air. He looked pleased when I pointed to him and said, “He’s the way.”
I laid out my idea, trying hard to sound confident, and when I was through, they began trying to poke holes in it. And Bubba was reluctant, at least initially.
In the end, Bubba said he would do it if Mr. Bill said it was a good idea. I phoned Bill. He was over in a flash, and the look he gave me when I let him in told me he was enjoying remembering how I looked wrapped in a tablecloth. Or even before I’d found the tablecloth. With an effort, I swallowed my confusion and explained everything to him. And after a few embellishments had been added, he agreed.
We went over the order of events again and again, trying to allow for every contingency. By three thirty in the morning, we were all in agreement. I was so tired I was asleep on my feet, and Audrina and Colton were barely able to stifle their yawns. Pam, who’d been stepping out of the room to call Immanuel periodically, preceded Eric out the door. She was anxious to get to the hospital. Bill and Bubba had departed for Bill’s house, where Bubba would spend the day. I was alone with Eric.
We looked at each other, both at a loss. I tried to put myself in his place, feel what he must feel, but I simply couldn’t do it. I couldn’t imagine that, say, my grandmother had decided who I should marry and then passed away, fully expecting me to carry out her wishes. I couldn’t imagine that I had to follow directions from beyond the grave, leave my home and go to a new place with people I didn’t know, have sex with a stranger, simply because someone else had wanted me to.
Even, a little voice said inside me, if the stranger was beautiful and wealthy and politically astute?
No, I told myself stoutly. Not even then.
“Can you put yourself in my place?” Eric asked, chiming in on my thoughts. We knew each other pretty well, without the bond. He took my hand and held it between his cold ones.
“No, actually, I can’t,” I said, as evenly as I could manage. “I’ve been trying. But I’m not used to that sort of long-distance manipulation. Even after death, Appius is controlling you, and I just can’t picture myself in that position.”
“Americans,” Eric said, and I couldn’t decide if he said it admiringly or with a mild exasperation.
“Not just Americans, Eric.”
“I feel very old.”
“You are very old-fashioned.” He was ancient-fashioned.
“I can’t ignore a signed doc
ument,” he said, almost angrily. “He made an agreement for me, and I was his to order. He created me.”
What could I say, in the face of such conviction? “I’m so glad he’s dead,” I told Eric, not caring that my bitterness was written on my face. Eric looked sad, or at least regretful, but there was nothing else to say. Eric didn’t mention spending what was left of the night with me, which was smart on his part.
After he left, I began checking all the windows and doors in the house. Since so many people had been in and out that day and night, it seemed a good idea. I wasn’t too surprised to see Bill out in the yard when I was locking the kitchen window over the sink.
Though he didn’t beckon to me, I took my weary self outside.
“What has Eric done to you?” he said.
I condensed the situation into a few sentences.
“What a dilemma,” Bill said, not totally displeased.
“So you’d feel the way Eric does?”
In an eerie echo, Bill took my hand just as Eric had earlier. “Not only did Appius already enter negotiations, so there are presumably legal documents on the table, but also I would have to give my maker’s wishes some consideration—as much as I hate to acknowledge that. You have no idea how strong the bond is. The years spent with one’s maker are the most important years of a vampire’s existence. As loathsome as I found Lorena, I have to admit that she did her best to teach me to be an effective vampire. Looking back on her life now—Judith and I talked about this, of course—Lorena betrayed her own maker, and then had years and years to regret it. The guilt drove her mad, we think.”
Well, I was glad Bill and Judith had gotten to talk over fun times in the old days with Mama Lorena—murderess, prostitute, torturer. I couldn’t really hold the prostitute part against her, since there hadn’t been that many ways for a woman alone to make a living in the old times, even a vampire woman. But the rest—no matter what her circumstances had been, no matter how hard her life before and after her first death, Lorena had been an evil bitch. I pulled my hand away from Bill.
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