“It’s still active,” Andre said.
Pam whispered, “Jennifer Cater was in training to become Peter Threadgill’s lieutenant. She was in Arkansas managing his affairs when the violence erupted.”
I nodded to let Pam know I appreciated her filling me in. The Arkansas vampires, though they hadn’t gone through a hurricane, had undergone quite a reduction in their own ranks, thanks to Louisiana’s group.
Andre said, “The queen has responded to the suit by testifying that she had to kill Peter to save her own life. Of course, she offered reparation to the common fund.”
“Why not to Arkansas?” I whispered to Pam.
“Because the queen maintains that since Peter is dead, Arkansas goes to her, according to the marriage contract,” Pam murmured. “She can’t make reparation to herself. If Jennifer Cater wins her suit, not only will the queen lose Arkansas, she’ll have to pay Arkansas a fine. A huge one. And make other restitution.”
Andre began to drift around the room soundlessly, the only indication that he was unhappy about the topic.
“Do we even have that much money after the disaster?” Clancy asked. It was an unwise question.
“The queen hopes the suit will be dismissed,” Andre said, again ignoring Clancy. Andre’s permanently teenage face was quite blank. “But apparently the court is prepared to hear a trial. Jennifer is charging that our queen lured Threadgill to New Orleans, away from his own territory, having planned all along to start the war and assassinate him.” This time Andre’s voice came from behind me.
“But that wasn’t what happened at all,” I said. And Sophie-Anne hadn’t killed the king. I’d been present at his death. The vampire standing behind me right at this moment had killed Threadgill, and I’d thought at the time he was justified.
I felt Andre’s cold fingers brush my neck as I sat there. How I knew the fingers were Andre’s, I couldn’t tell you; but the light touch, the second of contact, made me suddenly focus on an awful fact: I was the only witness to the death of the king, besides Andre and Sophie-Anne.
I’d never put it to myself in those terms, and for a moment, I swear, my heart stopped beating. At that skipped beat, I drew the gaze of at least half the vamps in the room. Eric’s eyes widened as he looked at my face. And then my heart beat again, and the moment was over as if it never had been. But Eric’s hand twitched on the desk, and I knew that he would not forget that second, and he would want to know what it meant.
“So you think the trial will be held?” Eric asked Andre.
“If the queen had been going to the summit as the ruler of New Orleans—New Orleans as it was—I believe the sitting court would have negotiated some kind of settlement between Jennifer and the queen. Maybe something involving Jennifer being raised to a position of power as the queen’s deputy and getting a large bonus; something like that. But as things are now . . .” There was a long silence while we filled in the blanks. New Orleans wasn’t as it had been, might never be so again. Sophie-Anne was a lame duck right now. “Now, because of Jennifer’s persistence, I think the court will pursue it,” Andre said, and then fell silent.
“We know there’s no truth to the allegations,” a clear, cold voice said from the corner. I’d been doing a good job of ignoring the presence of my ex, Bill. But it didn’t come naturally to me. “Eric was there. I was there. Sookie was there,” the vampire (Nameless, I told myself ) continued.
That was true. Jennifer Cater’s allegation, that the queen had lured her king to her party barn in order to kill him, was completely bogus. The bloodbath had been precipitated by the decapitation of one of the queen’s men by one of Peter Threadgill’s.
Eric smiled reminiscently. He’d enjoyed the battle. “I accounted for the one who started it,” he said. “The king did his best to trap the queen in an indiscretion, but he didn’t, thanks to our Sookie. When his plot didn’t work, he resorted to a simple frontal attack.” Eric added, “I haven’t seen Jennifer in twenty years. She’s risen fast. She must be ruthless.”
Andre had stepped to my right and within my line of vision, which was a relief. He nodded. Again, all the vampires in the room made a little group movement, not quite in unison but eerily close. I had seldom felt so alien: the only warmblood in a room full of animated dead creatures.
“Yes,” Andre said. “Ordinarily the queen would want a full contingent there to support her. But since we’re forced to practice economy, the numbers going have been cut.” Again, Andre came near enough to touch me, just a brush of my cheek.
The idea triggered a kind of mini-revelation:
This was how it felt to be a normal person.
I hadn’t the slightest idea of the true intentions and plans of my companions. This was how real people lived every day of their lives. It was frightening but exciting; a lot like walking through a crowded room blindfolded. How did regular people stand the suspense of day-to-day living?
“The queen wants this woman close to her in meetings, since other humans will be there,” Andre continued. He was speaking strictly to Eric. The rest of us might as well not have been in the room. “She wants to know their thoughts. Stan is bringing his telepath. Do you know the man?”
“I’m sitting right here,” I muttered, not that anyone paid any attention but Pam, who gave me a sunny smile. Then, with all those cold eyes fixed on me, I realized that they were waiting for me, that Andre had been addressing me directly. I’d become so used to the vamps talking over and around me that I’d been taken by surprise. I mentally replayed Andre’s remarks until I understood he was asking me a question.
“I’ve only met one other telepath in my life, and he was living in Dallas, so I’m supposing it’s the same guy—Barry the Bellboy. He was working at the vamp hotel in Dallas when I picked up on his, ah, gift.”
“What do you know about him?”
“He’s younger than me, and he’s weaker than me—or at least he was at the time. He’d never accepted what he was, the way that I had.” I shrugged. That was the sum total of my knowledge.
“Sookie will be there,” Eric told Andre. “She is the best at what she does.”
That was flattering, though I faintly recalled Eric saying he’d encountered only one telepath previously. It was also infuriating, since he was implying to Andre that my excellence was to Eric’s credit instead of my own.
Though I was looking forward to seeing something outside of my little town, I found myself wishing I could think of a way to back out of the trip to Rhodes. But months ago I’d agreed to attend this vampire summit as a paid employee of the queen’s. And for the past month, I’d been working long hours at Merlotte’s Bar to bank enough time so the other barmaids wouldn’t mind covering for me for a week. My boss, Sam, had been helping me keep track of my overage with a little chart.
“Clancy will stay here to run the bar,” Eric said.
“This human gets to go while I have to remain?” the red-haired manager said. He was really, really unhappy with Eric’s decision. “I won’t get to see any of the fun.”
“That’s right,” Eric said pleasantly. If Clancy had thought of saying something else negative, he took one look at Eric’s face and clamped down on it. “Felicia will stay to help you. Bill, you will stay.”
“No,” said that calm, cool voice from the corner. “The queen requires me. I worked hard on that database, and she’s asked me to market it at the summit to help recoup her losses.”
Eric looked like a statue for a minute, and then he moved, a little lift of his eyebrows. “Yes, I’d forgotten your computer skills,” he said. He might have been saying, “Oh, I’d forgotten you can spell
cat
,” for all the interest or respect he showed. “I suppose you need to be with us, then. Maxwell?”
“If it’s your will, I will stay.” Maxwell Lee wanted to make it clear that he knew a thing or two about being a good underling. He glanced around at the assemblage to underscore his point.
Eric nodded. I guessed that Maxwell would get a nice toy for Christmas, and Bill—whoops, Nameless—would get ashes and switches. “Then you’ll remain here. And you, too, Thalia. But you must promise me that you will be good in the bar.” Thalia’s required tour of duty in the bar, which simply consisted of sitting around being mysterious and vampiric a couple of evenings a week, did not always go by without incident.
Thalia, perpetually sullen and broody, gave a curt nod. “I don’t want to go, anyway,” she muttered. Her round black eyes showed nothing but contempt for the world. She had seen too much in her very long life, and she hadn’t enjoyed herself in a few centuries, was the way I read it. I tried to avoid Thalia as much as possible. I was surprised she’d even hang with the other vamps; she seemed like a rogue to me.
“She has no desire to lead,” Pam breathed into my ear. “She only wants to be left in peace. She was thrown out of Illinois because she was too aggressive after the Great Revelation.” The Great Revelation was the vampire term for the night that they’d gone on television all over the world to let us know that they actually existed and, furthermore, that they wanted to come out of the shadows and into the economic and social flow of human society.
“Eric lets Thalia do what she wants as long as she follows the rules and shows up on time for her hours at the bar,” Pam continued in her tiny whisper. Eric was ruler of this little world, and no one was forgetting it. “She knows what the punishment will be if she steps out of line. Sometimes she seems to forget how little she would like that punishment. She should read Abby, get some ideas.”
If you weren’t getting any joy out of your life, you needed to . . . oh, do something for others, or take up a new hobby, or something like that, right? Wasn’t that the usual advice? I flashed on Thalia volunteering to take the night shift at a hospice, and I shuddered. The idea of Thalia knitting, with two long, sharp needles, gave me another frisson of horror. To heck with the therapy.
“So, the only ones attending the summit are Andre, our queen, Sookie, myself, Bill, and Pam,” Eric said. “Cataliades the lawyer and his niece as his runner. Oh, yes, Gervaise from Four and his human woman, a concession since Gervaise has been hosting the queen so generously. Rasul, as driver. And Sigebert, of course. That’s our party. I know some of you are disappointed, and I can only hope that next year will be a better year for Louisiana. And for Arkansas, which we now consider part of our territory.”
“I think that’s all that we needed to talk about with all of you present,” Andre said. The rest of the stuff he and Eric had to discuss would be done in private. Andre didn’t touch me again, which was a good thing. Andre scared me down to my polished pink toenails. Of course, I should feel that way about everyone in the room. If I’d had good sense, I would move to Wyoming, which had the lowest vamp population (two; there’d been an article about them in
American Vampire
). Some days I was sorely tempted.
I whipped a little notepad out of my purse as Eric went over the date of our departure, the date of our return, the time our chartered Anubis Airline plane was arriving from Baton Rouge to pick up the Shreveport contingent, and a rundown of the clothes we would need. With some dismay, I realized I would have to go borrowing from my friends again. But Eric added, “Sookie, you wouldn’t need these clothes if it wasn’t for the trip. I’ve called your friend’s store and you have credit there. Use it.”
I could feel my cheeks redden. I felt like the poor cousin until he added, “The staff has an account at a couple of stores here in Shreveport, but that would be inconvenient for you.” My shoulders relaxed, and I hoped he was telling the truth. Not one flicker of an eyelid told me any different.
“We may have suffered a disaster, but we won’t go in looking poor,” Eric said, being careful to give me only a fraction of his stare.
“Don’t look poor,” I made a note.
“Is everyone clear? Our goals for this conference are to support the queen as she tries to clear herself of these ridiculous charges, and to let everyone know that Louisiana is still a prestigious state. None of the Arkansas vampires who came to Louisiana with their king survived to tell the tale.” Eric smiled, and it wasn’t a pleasant smile.
I hadn’t known that before this night.
Gosh, wasn’t that convenient.
2
“
H
ALLEIGH, SINCE YOU’RE MARRYING A POLICEMAN, maybe you’ll be able to tell me . . . just how big is a cop’s nightstick?” Elmer Claire Vaudry asked.
I was sitting beside the bride-to-be, Halleigh Robinson, since I’d been given the all-important task of recording each gift and its giver as Halleigh opened all the white-and-silver wrapped boxes and flowered gift bags.
No one else seemed the least surprised that Mrs. Vaudry, a fortyish grade school teacher, was asking a bawdy question at this firmly middle-class, church lady event.
“Why, I wouldn’t know, Elmer Claire,” Halleigh said demurely, and there was a positive chorus of disbelieving sniggers.
“Well, now, what about the handcuffs?” Elmer Claire asked. “You ever use those handcuffs?”
A fluttering of southern lady voices rose in the living room of Marcia Albanese, the hostess who’d agreed to let her house be the sacrificial lamb: the actual shower site. The other hostesses had had the lesser problems of bringing the food and the punch.
“You are just
something
, Elmer Claire,” Marcia said from her spot by the refreshments table. But she was smiling. Elmer Claire had her role as the Daring One, and the others were glad to let her enjoy it.
Elmer Claire would never have been so vulgar if old Caroline Bellefleur had been present at the shower. Caroline was the social ruler of Bon Temps. Miss Caroline was about a million years old and had a back stiffer than any soldier. Only something extreme would keep Miss Caroline home from a social event of this importance to her family, and something extreme had happened. Caroline Bellefleur had suffered a heart attack, to the amazement of everyone in Bon Temps. To her family, the event had not been a tremendous surprise.