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Good God-are "knowing" and "seeing" ever two different things!
"You also know," I continued, "that he loves you. And you love him. " When I don't want to yank off one of these heels and stick it . . . "You love him," I repeated sternly. "You've been through so much with him, and he's proved over and over that he'll go the extra mile for you. "
He had. He had!
I told myself that about twenty times.
"So," I said in a very reasonable voice, "Here's a chance to rise above circumstances, to prove what you're made of, and to help save both our lives. And that's what I'll do, because Gran raised me right. But when this is over . . . " I'll rip his damn head off. "No, I won't," I admonished myself. "We'll talk about it. "
THEN I'll rip his head off.
"Maybe," I said, and I could feel myself smiling.
"Sookie," Pam said from the other side of the door, "I can hear you talking to yourself. Are you ready to do this thing?"
"I am," I said sweetly. I stood, shook myself, and practiced a smile in the mirror. It was ghastly. I unlocked the door. I tried the smile out on Pam. Eric was standing right behind her, I guess thinking Pam would absorb the first blast if I came out shooting. "Is Felipe ready to talk?" I said.
For the first time since I'd met her, Pam looked a little uneasy as she looked at me. "Uh, yes," she said. "He is ready for our discussion. "
"Great, let's get going. " I maintained the smile.
Eric eyed me cautiously but didn't say anything. Good.
"The king and his aide are out here," Pam said. "The others have moved the party into the room across the hall. " Sure enough, I could hear squeals coming from behind the closed door.
Felipe and the square-jawed vamp-the one I'd last seen drinking from a woman-were sitting together on the couch. Eric and I took the (stained) loveseat arranged at right angles to the couch, and Pam took an armchair. The large, low coffee table (freshly gouged) that normally held only a few objets d'art was cluttered with bottles of synthetic blood and glasses of mixed drinks, an ashtray, a cell phone, some crumpled napkins. Instead of its normally attractive and orderly formality, the living room looked more like it belonged in a low dive.
I'd been conditioned for so many years that it was all I could do not to spring up, tie on an apron, and fetch a tray to clear away the clutter.
"Sookie, I don't believe you've met Horst Friedman," Felipe said.
I yanked my eyes away from the mess to look at the visiting vampire. Horst had narrow eyes, and he was tall and angular. His short hair was a light brown and closely cut. He did not look as if he knew how to smile. His lips were pink and his eyes pale blue; so his coloring was oddly dainty, while his features were anything but.
"Pleased to meet you, Horst," I said, making a huge effort to pronounce his name clearly. Horst's nod was barely perceptible. After all, I was a human.
"Eric, I have come to your territory to discuss the disappearance of Victor, my regent," Felipe said briskly. "He was last seen in this city, if you can call Shreveport a city. I suspect that you had something to do with his disappearance. He was never seen after he left for a private party at your club. "
So much for any elaborate story Eric had thought of spinning for Felipe.
"I admit nothing," Eric said calmly.
Felipe looked mildly surprised. "But you don't deny the charge, either. "
"If I did kill him, Your Majesty," Eric said, as if he were admitting to swatting a mosquito, "there would be not a trace of evidence against me. I regret that several of Victor's entourage also vanished when the regent did. "
Not that Eric had given Victor and his cohorts any opportunity to surrender. The only one who'd been offered the chance to escape death was Victor's new bodyguard, Akiro, and he'd turned the offer down. The fight in Fangtasia had been a no-debate full-frontal assault, involving gallons of blood and a lot of dismemberment and death. I tried not to remember it too vividly. I smiled and waited for Felipe's response.
"Why did you do this? Are you not sworn to me?" For the first time, Felipe appeared less than casual. In fact, he looked downright stern. "I appointed Victor my regent here in Louisiana. I appointed him . . . and I am your king. " At the escalation in tone, I noticed Horst was tensed for action. So was Pam.
There was a long silence. It was what I imagine is the definition of the word "fraught. "
"Your Majesty, if I did this thing, it might have been for several reasons," Eric said, and I began to breathe again. "I am sworn to you, and I'm loyal to you, but I can't stand still while someone is trying to kill my people for no good reason-and without previous discussion with me. Victor sent two of his best vampires to kill Pam and my wife. " Eric rested a cold hand on my shoulder, and I did my best to look shaken. (That wasn't too hard. )
"Only because Pam is a great fighter, and my wife can hold her own, did they escape," Eric said solemnly.
He gave us all a moment to contemplate that. Horst was looking skeptical, but Felipe had only raised his dark eyebrows. Felipe nodded, bidding Eric to continue.
"Though I don't admit to being guilty of his death, Victor was also attacking me-and therefore you, my king-economically. Victor put new clubs in my territory-but he kept the management, jobs, and revenue from these clubs exclusively for himself, which is against all precedent. I doubted he was passing along your share of the profits. I also believed he was trying to undercut me, to turn me from one of your best earners into an unnecessary hanger-on. I heard many rumors from the sheriffs in other areas-including some you brought in from Nevada-that Victor was neglecting all other business in Louisiana in this strange vendetta against me and mine. "
I couldn't read anything in Felipe's face. "Why didn't you bring your complaints to me?" the king said.
"I did," Eric said calmly. "I called your offices twice and talked to Horst, asking him to bring these issues to your attention. "
Horst sat up a little straighter. "This is true, Felipe. As I-"
"And why didn't you pass along Eric's concerns?" Felipe interrupted, turning his eyes on Horst.
I anticipated watching Horst wriggle. Instead, Horst looked stunned.
Maybe I'm just getting cynical from hanging around with vampires for so long, but I felt a near certainty that Horst had passed along Eric's complaints, but that Felipe had decided Eric would have to solve his issues with Victor in his own way. Now Felipe was throwing Horst under the bus without a qualm so he could maintain deniability.
"Your Majesty," I said, "we're awful sorry about Victor's disappearance, but maybe you haven't considered that Victor was a huge liability for you, too. " I gazed at him. Sadly. Regretfully.
There was a moment of silence. All four vampires looked at me as if I'd offered them a bucket of pig guts. I did my best to look simple and sincere.
"He was not my favorite vampire," Felipe said, after what seemed like about five hours. "But he was very useful. "
"I'm sure you've noticed," I said, "that in Victor's case, 'useful' was a synonym for 'money pit. ' Cause I've heard from people who serve at Vic's Redneck Roadhouse, for example, that they were underpaid and overworked, so there's a big staff turnover. That's never good for business. And some of the vendors haven't been paid. And Vic's is behind with the distributor. " (Duff had shared that with me two deliveries ago. ) "So, though Vic's started out great and pulled business from every bar around, they're not getting the repeat customers they need to sustain such a big place, and I know that revenue's fallen off. " I was only guessing, but I was accurate, I could tell by Horst's face. "Same thing for his vampire bar. Why pull customers away from the established vampire tourist spot, Fangtasia? Dividing doesn't mean multiplying. "
"You're giving me a lesson in economics?" Felipe leaned forward, picked up one of the op
ened TrueBlood bottles, and drank from it, his eyes never leaving my face.
"No, sir, I would never do such a thing. But I know what's happening on the local level, because people talk to me, or I hear it in their heads. Of course, observing all this about Victor doesn't mean I know what happened to him. " I smiled at him gently. You lying sack of shit.
"Eric, did you enjoy the young woman? When she came through this room, she said she'd been called to service you," Felipe said, not taking his eyes off me. "I was surprised, since I was under the impression you were married to Miss Stackhouse. But the young woman seemed like a nice change of pace for you. She had such an interesting odor. If she hadn't been earmarked for you, I might have taken her for myself. "
"You would have been welcome to her," Eric said in a completely empty voice.
"She told you she'd been called?" I was puzzled.
"That's what she said," Felipe said. His eyes were fixed on my face as though he were a hawk and I were a mouse he was considering for supper.
On one level of my brain, I puzzled over this. I'd been delayed, the young woman had said she'd been called specifically for Eric . . . but on another level, I was busy regretting I'd saved Felipe's life when one of Sophie-Anne's bodyguards had been well on the way to killing him. I regretted this intensely. Of course, I'd been saving Eric, too, and Felipe had been a by-product, but still . . . back to level one, and I realized that none of this was adding up. I smiled at Felipe more brightly.
"Are you simple?" Horst asked incredulously.
I'm simply sick of you, I thought, not trusting myself to speak.
Felipe said, "Horst, don't mistake Miss Stackhouse's cheerful looks for any mental deficiency. "
"Yes, Your Majesty. " Horst tried to look chastened, but he didn't quite make it.
Felipe looked at him sharply. "I must remind you-unless I'm much mistaken-Miss Stackhouse took out either Bruno or Corinna. Even Pam couldn't have handled both of them at the same time. "
I kept on smiling.
"Which one was it, Miss Stackhouse?"
There was another fraught silence. I wished we had background music. Anything would be better than this dead air.
Pam stirred, looked at me almost apologetically. "Bruno," Pam said. "Sookie killed Bruno, while I took care of Corinna. "
"How did you do that, Miss Stackhouse?" Felipe said. Even Horst looked interested and impressed, which was not a good thing.
"It was kind of an accident. "
"You are too modest," the king murmured skeptically.
"Really, it was. " I remembered the driving rain and the cold, the cars parked on the shoulders of the interstate on a terrible dark night. "It was sure pouring buckets that night," I said quietly. Tumbling over and over down into the ditch running with chilly water, a desperate pawing to find the silver knife, sliding it into Bruno.
"Was this the same kind of accident you had when you killed Lorena? Or Sigebert? Or the Were woman?"
Wow, how'd he know about Debbie? Or maybe he meant Sandra? And his list was by no means complete. "Yeah. That kind of accident. "
"Though I can hardly complain about Sigebert, since he would have killed me very shortly," Felipe observed, with an air of being absolutely fair.
Finally! "I wondered if you remembered that part," I muttered. I may have sounded a wee tad sardonic.
"You did do me a great service," he said. "I'm just trying to decide how much of a thorn you are in my side now. "
"Oh, come on!" I was really put out. "I haven't done anything to you that you couldn't have taken care of before it even happened. "
Pam and Horst blinked, but I saw that Felipe understood me. "You maintain that if I had been more . . . proactive, you would have been in no danger from Bruno and Corinna? That Victor would have stayed down in New Orleans, where the regent should be, and that, therefore, Eric could have run Area Five the way he has always run it?"
He had it in a nutshell, as my grandmother would have said. But (at least this time) I kept my mouth shut.
Eric, by my side, was rigid as a statue.
I'm not sure what would have happened next, but Bill appeared suddenly from the kitchen. He looked as excited as Bill ever looked.
"There's a dead girl on the front lawn," he said, "and the police are here. "
A variety of reactions passed on Felipe's face in a few seconds.
"Then Eric, as the homeowner, must go out and talk to the good officers," he said. "We'll set things to rights in here. Eric, be sure to invite them in. "
Eric was already on his feet. He called to Mustapha, who didn't appear. He and Pam exchanged a worried glance. Without looking at me, Eric reached back, and I stood to slide my hand into his. Time to close the ranks.
"Who is the dead woman?" he asked Bill.
"A skinny brunette," he said. "A human. "
"Fang marks in her neck? Bright dress, mostly green and pink?" I asked, my heart sinking.
"I didn't get that close," Bill said.
"How did the police find out there was a body?" Pam said. "Who called them?" We moved toward the front door. Now I could hear the noise outside. With the drapes shut, we hadn't been able to see the flashing lights. Through the gap in the heavy fabric, I could see them.
"I never heard a scream or any other alarm," Bill said. "So I don't know why a neighbor would have called . . . but someone did. "
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