“That would be something to see,” said Eric, lifting his golden head from the papers on his desk. The sheriff registered my presence, gave me a hard look, and decided to ignore me. Eric and I had issues.
Despite the fact that the room was full of people waiting for his attention, Eric lay down his pen and stood to stretch his tall and magnificent body, perhaps for my benefit. As usual, Eric was in tight jeans and a Fangtasia T-shirt, black with the white stylized fangs that the bar used as its trademark. “Fangtasia” was written in jazzy red script across the white points in the same style as the neon sign outside. If Eric turned around, the back would read “The Bar with a Bite.” Pam had given me one when Fangtasia first got into marketing its own stuff.
Eric made the shirt look good, and I remembered all too well what was underneath it.
I tore my gaze away from Eric’s stretch to look around the room. There were lots of other vampires crammed into the smallish space, but till you saw them you didn’t know they were there, they were so still and silent. Clancy, the bar manager, had claimed one of the two visitor chairs before the desk. Clancy had just barely survived the previous year’s Witch War, but he hadn’t come out unscathed. The witches had drained Clancy near to the point of no return. By the time Eric discovered Clancy, tracing his smell to a Shreveport cemetery, Clancy was one Vacutainer short of dead. During his long recovery, the red-haired vamp had grown bitter and snappish. Now he grinned at me, showing some fang. “You can sit in my lap, Sookie,” he said, patting his thighs.
I smiled back, but not like my heart was in it. “No, thanks, Clancy,” I said politely. Clancy’s flirting had always had an edge to it, and now that edge was razor sharp. He was one of those vamps I’d rather not be alone with. Though he ran the bar capably, and he had never laid a finger on me, he still set off warning bells. I can’t read vampire minds, which was why I found it refreshing to hang with them, but when I felt that tingle of warning, I did find myself wishing I could just dip into Clancy’s head and find out what was going on in there.
Felicia, the newest bartender, was sitting on the couch, along with Indira and Maxwell Lee. It was like the vampire Rainbow Coalition meeting. Felicia was a happy mixture of African and Caucasian, and she was almost six feet tall, so there was more loveliness to appreciate. Maxwell Lee was one of the darkest men I’d ever seen. Little Indira was the daughter of Indian immigrants.
There were four more people in the room (using the term “people” loosely), and each one of them upset me, though in varying degrees.
One of them was someone I didn’t acknowledge. I’d taken a page from the Were rule book and treated him like an outlawed member of my pack: I abjured him. I didn’t speak his name, I didn’t speak to him, I didn’t recognize his existence. (Of course, this was my ex, Bill Compton—not that I recognized that he was in the room, brooding away in a corner.)
Leaning against the wall next to him was ancient Thalia, who was possibly even older than Eric. She was as small as Indira and very pale, with tightly waving black hair—and she was extremely rude.
To my amazement, some humans found that a complete turn-on. Thalia actually had a devoted following who seemed thrilled when she used her stilted English to tell them to fuck off. I’d discovered she even had a website, established and maintained by fans. Go figure. Pam had told me that when Eric had agreed to let Thalia live in Shreveport, it was the equivalent of keeping a badly trained pit bull tethered in the yard. Pam had not approved.
These undead citizens all lived in Area Five. To live and work under Eric’s protection, they’d all sworn fealty to him. So they were required to devote a certain amount of their time to doing his bidding, even if they didn’t work at the bar. There were a few extra vampires in Shreveport these days, since Katrina; just like a lot of humans, they had to go somewhere. Eric hadn’t decided what to do about the undead refugees, and they hadn’t been invited to the meeting.
Tonight there were two visitors in Fangtasia, one of whom outranked Eric.
Andre was the personal bodyguard of Sophie-Anne Leclerq, the Queen of Louisiana. The queen, at present, was an evacuee in Baton Rouge. Andre looked very young, maybe sixteen; his face was baby smooth, his pale hair was thick and heavy. Andre had lived a long existence caring only for Sophie-Anne, his maker and savior. He was not wearing his saber tonight, because he wasn’t acting as her bodyguard, but I was sure Andre was armed with something—knife or gun. Andre himself was a lethal weapon, with or without an aid.
Just as Andre was about to speak to me, from beyond his chair a deep voice said, “Hey, Sookie.” Our second visitor, Jake Purifoy. I made myself hold still when every impulse I had was telling me to get out of the office. I was being an idiot. If I hadn’t run screaming at the sight of Andre, Jake shouldn’t make me think of bolting. I forced myself to nod to the nice-looking young man who still looked alive. But I knew my greeting didn’t look natural. He filled me with a terrible blend of pity and fear.
Jake, born a Were, had been attacked by a vampire and bled to the point of death. In what had been perhaps a mistaken gesture of mercy, my cousin Hadley (another vampire) had discovered Jake’s nearly lifeless body and brought Jake over. This might have been considered a good deed; but as it turned out, no one had really appreciated Hadley’s kindness . . . not even Jake himself. No one had ever heard of a turned Were before: Weres disliked and distrusted vampires, and the feeling was heartily reciprocated. The going was very rough for Jake, who occupied a lonely noman’s-land. The queen had given him a place in her service, since no one else had stepped forward.
Jake, blind with bloodlust, had gone after me as his first vampire snack. I had a still-red scar on my arm as a result.
What a wonderful evening this was turning out to be.
“Miss Stackhouse,” said Andre, rising from Eric’s second guest chair. He bowed. This was a true tribute, and it lifted my spirits a bit.
“Mr. Andre,” I said, bowing back. Andre swept his hand to indicate his politely vacated seat, and since that solved my placement problem, I accepted.
Clancy looked chagrined. He should have given me his chair, since he was the lower-ranked vampire. Andre’s action had pointed that out as clearly as a blinking neon arrow. I tried hard not to smile.
“How is Her Majesty?” I asked, trying to be just as courteous as Andre had been. It would be stretching it to say I liked Sophie-Anne, but I sure respected her.
“That’s part of the reason I am here tonight,” he said. “Eric, can we get started now?” A gentle chiding for Eric’s time-wasting tactics, I thought. Pam folded to the floor beside my chair, crouched on the balls of her feet.
“Yes, we’re all here. Go ahead, Andre. You have the floor,” Eric said with a little smile at his own modern terminology. He slumped back down into his chair, extending his long legs to rest his feet on the corner of his desk.
“Your queen is living in the Area Four sheriff ’s house in Baton Rouge,” Andre said to the little assemblage. “Gervaise was very gracious in extending his hospitality.”
Pam cocked an eyebrow at me. Gervaise would have lost his head if he
hadn’t
extended his hospitality.
“But staying at Gervaise’s place can only be a temporary solution,” Andre continued. “We’ve been down to New Orleans several times since the disaster. Here’s a report of our property’s condition.”
Though none of the vampires moved, I felt their attention had heightened.
“The queen’s headquarters lost most of its roof, so there was extensive water damage on the second floor and in the attic area. Furthermore, a large piece of someone else’s roof landed inside the building, causing a pileup of debris and some holes in walls—problems like that. While we’re drying the inside, the roof is still covered with blue plastic. One reason I came up this way is to find a contractor who will start reroofing immediately. So far, I haven’t had any luck, so if any of you have personal influence with some human who does this kind of work, I need your help. On the ground floor, there was a lot of cosmetic damage. Some water came in. We had some looters, too.”
“Maybe the queen should remain in Baton Rouge,” Clancy said maliciously. “I’m sure Gervaise would be overwhelmed with delight at the prospect of hosting her permanently.”
So Clancy was a suicidal idiot.
“A delegation of New Orleans leaders came to visit our queen in Baton Rouge to ask that she return to the city,” Andre said, ignoring Clancy completely. “The human leaders think that if the vampires will return to New Orleans, tourism will pick up again.” Andre fixed Eric with a cold gaze. “In the meantime, the queen has talked to the four other sheriffs about the financial aspect of restoring the New Orleans buildings.”
Eric gave an almost imperceptible inclination of the head. Impossible to say what he felt about being taxed for the queen’s repairs.
New Orleans had been the place to go for vampires and those who wanted to be around them ever since Anne Rice had been proven right about their existence. The city was like Disneyland for vamps. But since Katrina, all that had gone to hell, of course, along with so much else. Even Bon Temps was feeling the storm’s effect, and had been ever since Katrina had hit land. Our little town was still crowded with people who had fled from the south.
“What about the queen’s entertainment estate?” asked Eric. The queen had bought an old monastery at the edge of the Garden District for entertaining large numbers of people, both vamp and non-vamp. Though surrounded by a wall, the estate was not considered easily defensible (since it was a registered building, historic and unchangeable, the windows couldn’t be blocked up), so the queen couldn’t actually live there. I thought of it as her party barn.
“It didn’t suffer much damage,” Andre said. “There were looters there, too. Of course, they left a trace of their smell.” Vampires were second only to Weres in their tracking abilities. “One of them shot the lion.”
I felt sorry for that. I’d liked the lion, sort of.
“Do you need help with the apprehension?” Eric asked.
Andre arched an eyebrow.
“I only ask because your numbers are low,” Eric said.
“No, already taken care of,” Andre said, and smiled just a tad.
I tried not to think about that.
“Aside from the lion and the looting, how was the estate?” Eric said to get the discussion of the storm damage back on track.
“The queen can stay there while she views the other properties,” Andre continued, “but at the most for a night or two only.”
There were tiny nods all around.
“Our loss of personnel,” Andre said, moving on in his agenda. All the vampires tensed a bit, even Jake, the newbie. “Our initial assessment was modest, as you know. We assumed some would come forward after the impact of the storm was absorbed. But only ten have surfaced: five here, three in Baton Rouge, two in Monroe. It seems that we have lost thirty of our number just in Louisiana. Mississippi has lost at least ten.”
There were tiny sounds and movements all over the room as the Shreveport vampires reacted to the news. The concentration of vamps, both resident and visiting, had been high in New Orleans. If Katrina had visited Tampa with that much force, the number of dead and missing would have been much lower.
I raised my hand to speak. “What about Bubba?” I asked when Andre nodded at me. I hadn’t seen or heard of Bubba since Katrina. You’d know Bubba if you saw him. Anyone on earth would know him; at least, anyone over a certain age. He hadn’t quite died on that bathroom floor in Memphis. Not quite. But his brain had been affected before he was brought over, and he wasn’t a very good vampire.
“Bubba’s alive,” said Andre. “He hid in a crypt and survived on small mammals. He isn’t doing too well mentally, so the queen has sent him up to Tennessee to stay with the Nashville community for a while.”
“Andre has brought me a list of those that are missing,” Eric said. “I’ll post it after the meeting.”
I’d known a few of the queen’s guards, too, and I would be glad to find out how they’d fared.
I had another question, so I waved my hand.
“Yes, Sookie?” Andre asked. His empty gaze fixed me in place, and I was sorry I’d asked to speak.
“You know what I wonder, y’all? I wonder if one of the kings or queens attending this summit, or whatever you all call it, has a—like a weather predictor, or something like that on staff.”
Plenty of blank stares were aimed my way, though Andre was interested.
“Because, look, the summit, or conference, or whatever, was supposed to take place in late spring originally. But—delay, delay, delay, right? And then Katrina hit. If the summit had started when it was supposed to, the queen could have gone in a powerful position. She would have had a big war chest and a full quiver of vamps, and maybe they wouldn’t have been so anxious to prosecute her for the king’s death. The queen would have gotten anything she asked for, probably. Instead, she’s going in as”—I started to say “a beggar,” but I considered Andre just in time—“much less powerful.” I’d been afraid they’d laugh or maybe ridicule me, but the silence that followed was intensely thoughtful.
“That’s one of the things you’ll need to look for at the summit,” Andre said. “Now that you’ve given me the idea, it seems oddly possible. Eric?”
“Yes, I think there is something in that,” Eric said, staring at me. “Sookie is good at thinking outside the box.”
Pam smiled up at me from beside my elbow.
“What about the suit filed by Jennifer Cater?” Clancy asked Andre. He’d been looking increasingly uncomfortable in the chair he’d thought he was so clever to snag.
You could have heard a pin drop. I didn’t know what the hell the red-haired vampire was talking about, but I thought it would be better to find out from the conversation than to ask.