Well, I’d had worse nights.
I found the infirmary, which was easier to locate than I’d thought, because the door was open and I could hear a familiar laugh coming from the room. I stepped in to find that Quinn was talking to the honey bear-looking woman, who must be Bettina, and the black guy, who must be Hondo. Also, to my astonishment, Clovache was there. Her armor was not off, but she managed to give the impression of a guy who’d loosened his tie.
“Sookie,” said Quinn. He smiled at me, but the two shape-changers didn’t. I was definitely an unwelcome visitor.
But I hadn’t come to see them. I’d come to see the man who’d saved my life. I walked over to him, letting him watch me, giving him a little smile. I sat on the plastic chair by the bed and took his hand.
“Tell me how you’re feeling,” I said.
“Like I had a real close shave,” he said. “But I’m gonna be fine.”
“Could you all excuse us a moment, please?” I was at my most polite as I met the eyes of the three others in the room.
Clovache said, “Back to guarding Kentucky,” and took off. She might have winked at me before she vanished. Bettina looked a bit disgruntled, as if she’d been student teaching on her own and now the teacher had returned and snatched back her authority.
Hondo gave me a dark look that held more than a hint of threat. “You treat my man right,” he said. “Don’t give him no hard time.”
“Never,” I said. He couldn’t think of a way to stay, since Quinn apparently wanted to talk to me, so he left.
“My fan base just gets bigger and bigger,” I said, watching them go. I got up and shut the door behind them. Unless a vampire, or Barry, stood outside the door, we were reasonably private.
“Is this where you dump me for the vampire?” Quinn asked. All trace of good humor had vanished from his face, and he was holding very still.
“No. This is where I tell you what happened, and you listen, and then we talk.” I said this as if I was sure he’d go along with it, but that was far from the case, and my heart was thudding in my throat as I waited for his reply. Finally he nodded, and I closed my eyes in relief, clutching his left hand in both of mine. “Okay,” I said, bracing myself, and then I was off and running with my narrative, hoping that he would see that Eric really was the lesser of two evils.
Quinn didn’t pull his hand away, but he didn’t hold mine, either. “You’re bound to Eric,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You’ve exchanged blood with him at least three times.”
“Yes.”
“You know he can turn you whenever he feels like it?”
“Any of us could be turned whenever the vampires feel like it, Quinn. Even you. It might take two of them to hold you down and one to take all your blood and give you his, but it still could happen.”
“It wouldn’t take that long if he made up his mind, now that you two have swapped so often. And this is Andre’s fault.”
“There’s nothing I can do about that now. I wish there were. I wish I could cut Eric out of my life. But I can’t.”
“Unless he gets staked,” Quinn said.
I felt a pang in my heart that almost had me clapping a hand to my chest.
“You don’t want that to happen.” Quinn’s mouth was compressed in a hard line.
“No, of course not!”
“You care about him.”
Oh,
crap.
“Quinn, you know Eric and I were together for a while, but he had amnesia and he doesn’t remember it. I mean, he knows it’s a fact, but he doesn’t remember it at all.”
“If anyone besides you told me that story, you know what I’d think.”
“Quinn. I’m not anybody else.”
“Babe, I don’t know what to say. I care about you, and I love spending time with you. I love going to bed with you. I like eating at the table with you. I like cooking together. I like almost everything about you, including your gift. But I’m not good at sharing.”
“I don’t go with two guys at the same time.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, I’m going with you, unless you tell me different.”
“What will you do when Mr. Big and Blond tells you to hop in bed with him?”
“I’ll tell him I’m spoken for . . . if you’re going to speak.”
Quinn shifted restlessly on the narrow bed. “I’m healing, but I’m hurting,” he admitted. He looked very tired.
“I wouldn’t trouble you with all this if it didn’t seem pretty important to me,” I said. “I’m trying to be honest with you. Absolutely honest. You took the arrow for me, and it’s the least I can do in return.”
“I know that. Sookie, I’m a man who almost always knows his own mind, but I have to tell you . . . I don’t know what to say. I thought we were just about ideal for each other until this.” Quinn’s eyes blazed in his face suddenly. “If he died, we’d have no problems.”
“If you killed him, I’d have a problem,” I said. I couldn’t get any plainer than that.
Quinn closed his eyes. “We have to think about this again when I’m all healed and you’ve had sleep and time to relax,” he said. “You gotta meet Frannie, too. I’m so . . .” To my horror, I thought Quinn was going to choke up. If he cried, I would, too, and the last thing I needed was tears. I leaned over so far I thought I was going to fall on top of him, and I kissed him, just a quick pressure of my mouth on his. But then he held my shoulder and pulled me back to him, and there was much more to explore, his warmth and intensity . . . but then his gasp drew us out of the moment. He was trying not to grimace with pain.
“Oh! I’m sorry.”
“Don’t ever apologize for a kiss like that,” he said. And he didn’t look teary anymore. “We definitely have something going on, Sookie. I don’t want Andre’s vampire crap to ruin it.”
“Me, either,” I said. I didn’t want to give Quinn up, not the least because of our sizzling chemistry. Andre terrified me, and who knew what his intentions were? I certainly didn’t. I suspected Eric didn’t know, either, but he was never averse to power.
I said good-bye to Quinn, a reluctant good-bye, and began finding my way back to the dance. I felt obliged to check in with the queen to make sure she didn’t need me, but I was exhausted, and I needed to get out of my dress and collapse on my bed.
Clovache was leaning against a wall in the corridor ahead, and I had the impression she was waiting for me. The younger Britlingen was less statuesque than Batanya, and while Batanya looked like a striking hawk with dark curls, Clovache was lighter altogether, with feathery ash-brown hair that needed a good stylist and big green eyes with high, arched brows.
“He seems like a good man,” she said in her harsh accent, and I got the strong feeling that Clovache was not a subtle woman.
“He seems that way to me, too.”
“While a vampire, by definition, is twisty and deceptive.”
“By definition? You mean, without exception?”
“I do.”
I kept silent as we walked. I was too tired to figure out the warrior’s purpose in telling me this. I decided to ask. “What’s up, Clovache? What’s the point?”
“Did you wonder why we were here, guarding the King of Kentucky? Why he had decided to pay our truly astronomical fees?”
“Yes, I did, but I figured it wasn’t my business.”
“It’s very much your business.”
“Then tell me. I’m not up to guessing.”
“Isaiah caught a Fellowship spy in his entourage a month ago.”
I stopped dead, and Clovache did, too. I processed her words. “That’s really bad,” I said, knowing the words were inadequate.
“Bad for the spy, of course. But she gave up some information before she went to the vale of shadows.”
“Wow, that’s a pretty way to put it.”
“It’s a load of crap. She died, and it
wasn’t
pretty. Isaiah is an old-fashioned guy. Modern on the surface, a traditional vampire underneath. He had a wonderful time with the poor bitch before she gave it up.”
“You think you can trust what she said?”
“Good point. I’d confess to anything if I thought it would spare me some of the things his cronies did to her.”
I wasn’t sure that was true. Clovache was made of pretty stern stuff.
“But I think she told him the truth. Her story was, a splinter group in the Fellowship got wind of this summit and decided it would be a golden opportunity to come out in the open with their fight against the vampires. Not simply protests and sermons against the vamps, but out-and-out warfare. This isn’t the main body of the Fellowship . . . the leaders are always careful to say, ‘Oh, gosh, no, we don’t condone violence against anyone. We’re only cautioning people to be aware that if they consort with vampires, they’re consorting with the devil.’ ”
“You know a lot about things in this world,” I said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “I do a lot of research before we take a job.”
I wanted to ask her what her world was like, how she got from one to the other, how much she charged, if all the warriors on (in?) her world were women or could the guys kick butt, too; and if so, what they looked like in the wonderful pants. But this wasn’t the time or the place.
“So, what’s the bottom line on this?” I asked.
“I think maybe the Fellowship is trying to mount some major offensive here.”
“The bomb in the soda can?”
“Actually, that baffles me. But it was outside Louisiana’s room, and the Fellowship has to know by now that their operative didn’t succeed, if it was their work.”
“And there are also the three murdered vampires in the Arkansas suite,” I pointed out.
“Like I say, baffled,” Clovache said.
“Would they have killed Jennifer Cater and the others?”
“Certainly, if they had a chance. But to tip their hand in such a small way when according to the spy they have planned something really big—that seems very unlikely. Also, how could a human get into the suite and kill three vampires?”
“So, what was the result of the Dr Pepper bomb?” I asked, trying hard to figure out the thinking behind it. We’d resumed walking, and now we were right outside the ceremonies room. I could hear the orchestra.
“Well, it gave you a few new white hairs,” Clovache said, smiling.
“I can’t think that was the goal,” I said. “I’m not that egocentric.”
Clovache had made up her mind. “You’re right,” she said, “because the Fellowship wouldn’t have planted it. They wouldn’t want to draw attention to their larger plan with the little bomb.”
“So it was there for some other purpose.”
“And what was that purpose?”
“The end result of the bomb, if it had gone off, would have been that the queen got a big scare,” I said slowly.
Clovache looked startled. “Not killed?”
“She wasn’t even in the room.”
“It should have gone off earlier than it did,” Clovache said.
“How do you know that?”
“Security guy. Donati. That’s what the police told him. Donati sees us as fellow professionals.” Clovache grinned. “He likes women in armor.”
“Hey, who doesn’t?” I grinned back.
“And it was a weak bomb, if any bomb can be called weak. I’m not saying there wouldn’t have been damage. There would have. Maybe even someone killed, like you could have been. But the episode seems to be ineffective and ill-planned.”
“Unless it was designed only to scare. Designed to be spotted. Designed to be disarmed.”
Clovache shrugged.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “If not the Fellowship, who? What does the Fellowship plan to do? Charge the lobby armed with sharpened baseball bats?”
“The security here is not so good,” Clovache said.
“Yeah, I know. When I was down in the basement, getting a suitcase for the queen, the guards were pretty lazy, and I don’t think the employees are searched as they come in, either. And they got a lot of suitcases mixed up.”
“And the vampires hired these people. Unbelievable. On one level vampires realize they’re not immortal. They can be killed. On another, they’ve survived for so long, it makes them feel omnipotent.” Clovache shrugged. “Well, back to duty.” We’d reached the ballroom. The Dead Man Dance Band was still playing.
The queen was standing very close to Andre, who no longer stood behind her but to her side. I knew this was significant, but it wasn’t plain enough to cause Kentucky to give up hope. Christian Baruch was also in close attendance. If he’d had a tail, it would have been wagging, he was so anxious to please Sophie-Anne. I glanced around the room at the other kings and queens, recognizable by their entourages. I hadn’t seen them in a room all together before, and I counted. There were only four queens. The other twelve rulers were males. Of the four queens, Minnesota appeared to be mated with the King of Wisconsin. Ohio had his arm around Iowa, so they were a couple. Besides Alabama, the only unmated queen was Sophie-Anne.
Though many vampires tend to be elastic about the gender of their sexual partner, or at least tolerant of those who prefer something different, some of them definitely aren’t. No wonder Sophie-Anne was shining so brightly, even from under the lifted cloud of Peter Threadgill’s death. Vampires didn’t seem to be afraid of merry widows.
Alabama’s boy toy scuttled his fingers up her bare back, and she shrieked in pretended fear. “You know I hate spiders,” she said playfully, looking almost human, clutching him close to her. Though he’d played at frightening her, she clung closer.
Wait,
I thought.
Wait just a minute.
But the idea wouldn’t form.
Sophie-Anne noticed me lurking, and she beckoned. “I think most of the humans are gone for the night,” she said.
A glance around the room told me that was true. “What did you think of Julian Trout?” I asked, to allay my fear that she’d do something awful to him.
“I think he doesn’t understand what he did,” Sophie-Anne said. “At least to some extent. But he and I will come to an understanding.” She smiled. “He and his wife are quite all right. I don’t need you anymore tonight. Go amuse yourself,” she said, and it didn’t sound condescending. Sophie-Anne really wanted me to have a good time, though, granted, she wasn’t too particular about how I did it.