“How long has Vampire’s Kiss been open?” I beamed at the loathsome Victor. I’d had years of experience in looking happy when I wasn’t, and I was the queen of chitchat.
“You didn’t see all my advance publicity? Only three weeks, but so far it’s been quite the success,” Victor said, his eyes barely brushing me. He was not interested in me as a person, not at all. He wasn’t even interested in me sexually. Believe me, I know the signs. He was far more interested in me as a creature whose death would wound Eric. In other words, my absence would be more effective than my presence.
Since he was deigning to talk to me, I thought I’d take advantage of it.
“Do you spend a lot of time here? I’m surprised they don’t need you in New Orleans more often.” Snap! I waited for his answer, smiling steadily.
“Sophie-Anne saw fit to remain permanently based in New Orleans, but I see my rule as more of a floating government,” Victor said genially. “I like to keep a firm hand on all that goes on in Louisiana, especially since I find I am simply a regent, holding the state for Felipe, my dear king.” His grin became positively ferocious.
“My felicitations on becoming regent,” Eric said, as though nothing could be more desirable.
There was a lot of pretending going on in this building. So many undercurrents, you could drown in them, and we just might.
“You’re very welcome,” Victor said savagely. “Yes, Felipe has decreed I should style myself ‘regent.’ It’s so unusual for a king to have amassed as many territories as Felipe has, and he’s taken his time deciding what to do. He has decided to keep all the titles for himself.”
“And will you be regent of Arkansas, too?” Pam asked. At the sound of Pam’s voice, Miriam Earnest began to cry. She was managing to be as quiet about it as a woman can be, but no weeping is silent. Pam did not look in Miriam’s direction.
“No,” Victor said, biting out the word. “Red Rita has been given that honor.”
I didn’t have any idea who Red Rita might be, but both Eric and Pam seemed impressed. “She’s a great fighter,” Eric told me. “A strong vampire. She’s a good choice to rebuild Arkansas.”
Great, maybe we could go live
there
.
Though I couldn’t read vampire minds, I didn’t have to. All you had to do was watch Victor’s face to understand that Victor had wanted—yearned for—the title of king, that he had hoped to rule both of Felipe’s new territories. His disappointment had made him angry, and he was focusing that anger on Eric, the biggest target within his reach. Provoking Eric and intruding on his territory would not be enough for Victor.
And that was why Miriam was sitting in the club tonight. I tried to get inside her head. When I carefully felt around the edges, I met with a sort of white fog. She was drugged, though I didn’t know what sort of drug she’d taken or whether she’d been willing or coerced.
“Yes, of course,” Victor said, and I pulled myself back into the here and now with a jerk. While I’d zoned out in Miriam’s head, the vampires had stayed on the topic of Red Rita. “While she’s settling in next door, I thought it would be appropriate to build up the area of Louisiana that abuts her territory. I opened the human place, and this one.” Victor was practically purring.
“You own Vic’s Redneck Roadhouse,” I said numbly. Of course! I should have known. Was Victor
compiling
reasons for me to want him dead? Naturally, economics should have nothing to do with life and death, but all too often the two were definitely linked.
“Yes,” Victor said, grinning at me. He was just as merry as a department store Santa. “You’ve been by?” He replaced his glass on the table.
“Nope, too busy,” I said.
“But I heard business at Merlotte’s has fallen off?” Victor tried a look of faux concern on for size, discarded it. “If you need a job, Sookie, I’ll put in a good word with my manager at the Redneck Roadhouse . . . unless you’d prefer to work here? Wouldn’t that be fun!”
I had to take a deep breath. There was a long moment’s silence. For that moment, everything hung in the balance.
With an amazing control, Eric spackled his rage away behind a wall, at least temporarily. He said, “Sookie is well suited where she works now, Victor. If she were not, she would come to live with me and perhaps work at Fangtasia. She is a modern American woman and used to supporting herself.” Eric said this as if he were proud of my independence, though I knew that wasn’t the case. He really couldn’t understand why I persisted in keeping my job. “While I’m discussing my female associates, Pam tells me that you disciplined her. It’s not customary to discipline a sheriff’s second. Surely that should be left for her master to do.” Eric allowed his voice to have a slight edge.
“You weren’t here,” Victor protested smoothly. “And she showed my doormen great disrespect by insisting she should come inside before you did for a security check, as if we would permit anything in our club to threaten our most powerful sheriff.”
“Did you have business you wanted to discuss?” Eric said. “Not that it isn’t wonderful seeing what you’ve done here. However . . .” He let his voice trail off, as if he were simply too polite to say, “I have better fish to fry.”
“Of course, thanks for reminding me,” Victor said. He leaned forward to pick up the smoky gray stemmed glass, refilled by a server so that it was brimming with dark red liquid. “I’m sorry, I haven’t offered you a drink yet. Some blood for you, Eric, Pam?”
Pam had taken advantage of their conversation to glance at Miriam, who looked as though she were going to keel over any second . . . and maybe not get up again. Pam pulled her eyes away from the young woman and concentrated on Victor. She shook her head mutely.
“Thank you for the offer, Victor,” Eric began, “but . . .”
“I know you’ll raise a glass with me. The law prevents me from offering you a drink from Mindy or Mark since they’re not registered donors, and I’m all about being law-abiding.” He smiled at Mindy and Mark, who grinned back. Idiots. “Sookie, what will you have?”
Eric and Pam were obliged to accept the offer of synthetic blood, but because I was only a human, I was allowed to insist I wasn’t thirsty. If he’d offered me country-fried steak and fried green tomatoes, I would’ve said I wasn’t hungry.
Luis beckoned to one of the servers, and the man vanished to reappear with some TrueBlood. The bottles were on a large tray, along with the dark, fancy stemware matching Victor’s. “I’m sure the bottles don’t appeal to your aesthetic sense,” Victor said. “They offend me.”
Like all the servers, the man who brought the drinks was human, a handsome guy in a leather loincloth (even smaller than Luis’s leather shorts) and high boots. A sort of rosette pinned to his loincloth read “Colton.” His eyes were a startling gray. When he placed the tray on the table and unloaded it, he was thinking about someone named Chic, or Chico . . . and when he met my eyes directly, he thought,
Fairy blood on the glasses. Don’t let your vamps drink.
I looked at him for a long moment. He knew about me. Now I knew something about him. He’d heard about my ability, common knowledge in the supernatural community, and he’d believed in it.
Colton cast his eyes down.
Eric twisted the cap to unseal the bottle, lifted it to pour the contents into the glass.
NO,
I said to him. We couldn’t communicate telepathically, but I sent a wave of negativity, and I prayed he’d pick up on it.
“I have nothing against American packaging, as you do,” Eric said smoothly, raising the bottle directly to his lips. Pam followed suit.
A flicker of vexation crossed Victor’s face so quickly I might have imagined it if I hadn’t been watching him so intently. The gray-eyed server backed away.
“Have you seen your great-grandfather recently, Sookie?” Victor said, as if he were saying, “Gotcha!”
There was no point pretending ignorance about my fairy connection.
“Not in the past couple of weeks,” I said cautiously.
“But you have two of your kind living in your house.”
This was not classified information, and I was pretty sure Eric’s new vampire Heidi had told Victor. Heidi really didn’t have a choice, which was the downside to having living human relatives whom you still loved. “Yes, my cousin and my great-uncle are staying with me for a while.” I was proud that I managed to sound almost bored.
“I wondered if you might be able to give me some insight into the state of fairy politics,” Victor said smoothly. Mindy Simpson, tired of conversations that didn’t include her, began pouting. She was unwise.
“Not me. I stay away from politics,” I told Victor.
“Truly? Even after your ordeal?”
“Yep, even after my ordeal,” I said flatly. I really, really wanted to talk about my abduction and mutilation. Great party conversation. “I’m just not a political animal.”
“But an animal,” Victor said smoothly.
There was a moment’s frozen silence. However, I was determined that if Eric died trying to kill this vampire, it wasn’t going to be for an insult to me.
“That’s me,” I said, returning his smile with interest. “Hot-blooded, breathing. I could even lactate. The whole mammal package.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed. Maybe I’d gone too far.
“Did we have anything further to discuss, Regent?” Pam asked, rightly guessing Eric was too angry to speak. “I’ll be glad to stay as late as you want, or as long as my words please you, but I am due to work at Fangtasia tonight, and my master Eric has a meeting to attend. And apparently my friend Miriam is the worse for wear tonight, and I’ll take her home with me to sleep it off.”
Victor looked at the pallid woman as if he were only just now noticing her. “Oh, do you know her?” he asked negligently. “Yes, I believe someone mentioned that. Eric, is this the woman you told me Pam wanted to bring over? I’m so sorry I had to say no, since by my reckoning she may not have too long to live.”
Pam didn’t move. She didn’t even twitch.
“You may go,” Victor said, overdoing the offhanded air. “Since I’ve given you the news about my regency, and you’ve seen my beautiful club. Oh, I’m thinking of opening a tattoo establishment and maybe a lawyer’s office, though my man for that post has to study modern law. He received his law degree in Paris in the eighteen hundreds.” Victor’s indulgent smile faded completely. “You know that as regent, I have the right to open a business in anyone’s sheriffdom? All the money from the new clubs will come directly to me. I hope your revenues don’t suffer too much, Eric.”
“Not at all,” Eric said. (I didn’t think that actually had any meaning.) “We’re all a part of your turf, Master.” If his voice had been laundry, it would have flapped in the wind, it was so dry and empty.
We rose, more or less as one, and dipped our heads to Victor. He waved a dismissive hand at us and bent to kiss Mindy Simpson. Mark huddled closer on the vampire’s other side to nuzzle Victor’s shoulder. Pam went over to Miriam Earnest and bent over the girl to put her arm around her and help her to rise. Once on her feet and supported by Pam, Miriam focused on making it out the door. Her mind might be clouded, but her eyes were screaming.
We left the club in grim silence (at least as far as our own conversation went; the music just
never let up
), escorted by Luis and Antonio. The brothers bypassed sturdy Ana Lyudmila to follow us out into the parking lot, which surprised me.
When we had filed through the first row of cars, Eric turned to face them. Not coincidentally, the bulk of an Escalade blocked the view between Ana Lyudmila and our little party. “Do you two have something to say to me?” he asked very softly. As if she suddenly understood she was out of Vampire’s Kiss, Miriam gasped and began crying, and Pam took her in her arms.
“It wasn’t our idea, sheriff,” said Antonio, the shorter of the two. His oiled abs gleamed under the parking lot lights.
Luis said, “We’re loyal to Felipe, our true king, but Victor is not easy to serve. It was a bad night for us when we were dispatched to Louisiana to serve him. Now that Bruno and Corinna have disappeared, he hasn’t found anyone to take their places. No strong lieutenant. He’s traveling constantly, trying to keep his eye on every corner of Louisiana.” Luis shook his head. “We’re badly overextended. He needs to settle in New Orleans, building back up the vampire structure there. We don’t need to be trailing around in leather scarcely covering our asses, draining the income from your club. Halving the available income is not good economics, and the startup costs were steep.”
“If you’re trying to lure me into betraying my new master, you’ve picked the wrong vampire,” Eric said, and I tried not to let my mouth hang open. I’d thought it was Christmas in June when Luis and Antonio revealed their discontent, but obviously I hadn’t been thinking deviously enough . . . again.
Pam said, “Leather shorts are attractive compared to the black synthetics
I
have to wear.” She was holding up Miriam, but she didn’t look at her or refer to her, as if she wanted everyone else to forget the girl was there.
Her costume complaint was not out of character, but it was irrelevant. Pam had always been nothing if not on task. Antonio gave her a look of disillusioned disgust. “You were supposed to be so fierce,” he muttered. He looked at Eric. “And you were supposed to be so bold.” He and Luis turned and strode back into the club.
After that, Pam and Eric began to move with speed, as if we had a deadline to get off the property.
Pam simply picked up Miriam and hurried to Eric’s car. He opened the back door, and she got her girlfriend in and slid in after her. Seeing that haste was the order of the night, I climbed into the front passenger seat and buckled up in silence. I looked back to see that Miriam had passed out the minute she realized she was safe.
As the car left the parking lot, Pam began sniggering and Eric grinned broadly. I was too startled to ask them what was funny.