“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, and I hoped my tone made it clear I was serious. It was getting close to dawn, and I’d had a stressful night (which was the mildest way I could put it). I managed to catch Andre’s eye and give him the tiny nod toward Todd Donati. I was trying to clue him in that Donati was not entirely okay. In fact, he was as gray as a snow sky.
“If you’ll excuse us, Mr. Donati. . . . We’ve enjoyed your company, but we have much to discuss about our plans for tomorrow night,” Andre said smoothly, and Donati tensed, since he knew quite well he’d been dismissed.
“Of course, Mr. Andre,” the security chief said. “I hope all of you sleep well this day, and I’ll see you tomorrow night.” He rose to his feet with a lot more effort than it should have taken, and he suppressed a flinch at the pain. “Miss Stackhouse, I hope you get over your bad experience real soon.”
“Thank you,” I said, and Sigebert opened the door for Donati to leave.
“If you’ll excuse me,” I said the minute he was gone, “I’ll just go to my room now.”
The queen gave me a sharp look. “Are you unhappy about something, Sookie?” she said, though she sounded like she didn’t really want to hear my answer.
“Oh, why would I be unhappy? I love having things done to me without my will,” I said. The pressure had built up and up, and the words came out like lava erupting from a volcano, even though my more intelligent self kept telling me to put a plug in it. “And then,” I said very loudly, not listening to myself one little bit, “I like hanging around the ones responsible. That’s even better!” I was losing coherence and gaining momentum.
There was no telling what I would have said next if Sophie-Anne hadn’t held up one little white hand. She seemed a weensy bit perturbed, as my grandmother would have put it.
“You are assuming I know what you are talking about, and that I want to hear a human yelling at me,” Sophie-Anne said.
Eric’s eyes were glowing as if a candle burned behind them, and he was so lovely I could have drowned in him. God help me. I made myself look at Andre, who was examining me as if he was deciding where the best cut of meat was. Gervaise and Cleo just looked interested.
“Excuse me,” I said, returning to the world of reality with a thud. It was so late, and I was so tired, and the night had been filled with so many incidents that I thought for a split second that I might actually faint. But the Stackhouses don’t produce fainters, and neither do the fairies, I guess. It was time I gave a nod to that little percentage of my heritage. “I’m very tired.” I had no fight left in me all of a sudden. I really wanted to go to bed. Not a word was spoken as I trudged to the door, which was almost a miracle. Though, as I closed it behind me, I heard the queen say, “Explain, Andre.”
Quinn was waiting by the door to my room. I didn’t know if I even had the energy to be glad or sad to see him. I got out the plastic rectangle and opened the door, and after I’d scanned the interior and seen that my roommate was gone (though I wondered where, since Gervaise had been by himself ), I jerked my head to tell Quinn he could come in.
“I have an idea,” he said quietly.
I raised my eyebrows, too exhausted to speak.
“Let’s just climb in the bed and sleep.”
I finally managed to smile at him. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day,” I said. At that second, I saw how I could come to love Quinn. While he visited the bathroom, I pulled off my clothes, folded them, and slipped into my pajamas, short and pink and silky to the touch.
Quinn came out of the bathroom in his briefs, but I was just too worn out to appreciate the view. He got into the bed while I brushed my teeth and washed my face. I slid in beside him. He turned on his side and his arms opened, and I just kept on sliding right into them. We hadn’t showered, but he smelled good to me: he smelled alive and vital.
“Good ceremony tonight,” I remembered to say after I’d switched off the bedside lamp.
“Thanks.”
“Got any more coming up?”
“Yeah, if your queen goes on trial. Now that Cater was killed, who knows if that’s still on. And tomorrow night is the ball, after the trial.”
“Oh, I get to wear my pretty dress.” A little pleasure stirred in me at the prospect. “You got to work?”
“No, the ball’s being run by the hotel,” he said. “You gonna dance with me or the blond vampire?”
“Oh, hell,” I said, wishing Quinn hadn’t reminded me.
And right on cue, he said, “Forget it now, babe. We’re here, now, in bed together like we ought to be.”
Like we ought to be. That sounded good.
“You heard about me tonight, right?” he asked.
The night had contained so many incidents it took me a moment to remember that I’d learned about the things he’d had to do to survive.
And that he had a half sister. A troublesome, nutty, dependent half sister who hated me on sight.
He was a little tense, waiting for my reaction. I could feel it in his head, in his body. I tried to think of a sweet, wonderful way to put how I felt. I was too tired.
“Quinn, I’ve got no problem with you,” I said. I kissed his cheek, kissed his mouth. “No problem at all. And I’ll try to like Frannie.”
“Oh,” he said, sounding simply relieved. “Well, then.” He kissed my forehead, and we fell asleep.
I slept like a vampire. I didn’t wake to make a trip to the bathroom, even, or to turn over. I swam almost up to consciousness once to hear Quinn was snoring, just a faint ruffle of sound, and I snuggled closer to him. He stopped, murmured, and fell silent.
I looked at the bedside clock when I finally, really, woke up. It was four in the afternoon; I’d slept for twelve hours. Quinn was gone, but he’d drawn a big pair of lips (with my lipstick) on a piece of hotel stationery and laid it on his pillow. I smiled. My roommate hadn’t come in. Maybe she was spending the day in Gervaise’s coffin. I shuddered. “He leaves me cold,” I said out loud, wishing Amelia was there to respond. Speaking of Amelia . . . I fished my cell phone out of my purse and called her.
“Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”
“What are you doing?” I asked, trying not to feel home-sick.
“Brushing Bob,” she said. “He had a hair ball.”
“Aside from that?”
“Oh, I worked at the bar a little,” Amelia said, trying to sound casual.
I was dumbfounded. “Doing what?”
“Well, serving drinks. What else is there to do?”
“How come Sam needed you?”
“The Fellowship is having a big rally in Dallas, and Arlene wanted time off to go with that asshole she’s dating. Then Danielle’s kid got pneumonia. So Sam was really worried, and since I happened to be in the bar, he asked me if I knew how to do the job. I said, ‘Hey, how hard could it be?’ ”
“Thanks, Amelia.”
“Oh, okay, I guess that sounded pretty disrespectful.” Amelia laughed. “So, it is a little tricky. Everyone wants to talk to you, but you have to hurry, and you can’t spill their drinks on ’em, and you have to remember what everyone was drinking, and who’s paying for the round, and who’s on a tab. And you have to stand up for hours and hours.”
“Welcome to my world.”
“So, how’s Mr. Stripes?”
I realized she was talking about Quinn. “We’re okay,” I said, pretty sure that was true. “He did one big ceremony last night; it was so cool. A vampire wedding. You would’ve loved it.”
“What’s on for tonight?”
“Well, maybe a trial.” I didn’t feel like explaining, especially over a cell phone. “And a ball.”
“Wow, like Cinderella.”
“Remains to be seen.”
“How’s the business part of it going?”
“I’ll have to tell you about that when I get back,” I said, suddenly not so cheerful. “I’m glad you’re busy and I’m glad everything’s going okay.”
&nb
sp; “Oh, Terry Bellefleur called to ask if you wanted a puppy. You remember when Annie got out?”
Annie was Terry’s very expensive and much-loved Catahoula. He’d come out to my place looking for Annie when she’d roamed away, and by the time he’d found her, she had had some close encounters.
“What do the puppies look like?”
“He said you had to see them to believe them. I told him you’d come by next week, maybe. I didn’t commit you to anything.”
“Okay, good.”
We chatted a minute more but since I’d been gone from Bon Temps less than forty-eight hours, there really wasn’t that much to say.
“So,” she said in closing, “I miss you, Stackhouse.”
“Yeah? I miss you, too, Broadway.”
“Bye. Don’t get any strange fangs on you.”
Too late for that. “Bye. Don’t spill any beer on the sheriff.”
“If I do, it’ll be on purpose.”
I laughed, because I’d felt like dousing Bud Dearborn, too. I hung up feeling pretty good. I ordered room service, very tentatively. That was not something I got to do every day; even every year. Or ever. I was a little nervous about letting the waiter into my room, but Carla wandered in at just the same moment. She was decorated with hickeys and wearing last night’s dress.
“That smells good,” she said, and I handed her a croissant. She drank my orange juice while I had the coffee. It worked out okay. Carla did the talking for both of us, telling me all about the things I’d experienced. She didn’t seem to realize I’d been with the queen when the slaughter of Jennifer Cater’s group was discovered, and though she’d heard I’d found the Dr Pepper bomb, she told me all about it anyway, as though I hadn’t been there. Maybe Gervaise made her keep silent, and the words just built up.
“What are you wearing to the ball tonight?” I asked, feeling impossibly hokey to even be asking such a question. She showed me her dress, which was black, spangled, and almost nonexistent above the waist, like all her other evening wear. Carla definitely believed in emphasizing her assets.
She asked to see my dress, and we both made insincere noises about what good taste the other had.
We had to take turns in the bathroom, of course, which I wasn’t used to doing. I was pretty exasperated by the time Carla emerged. I hoped the entire city hadn’t run out of hot water. Of course, there was plenty left, and despite the scattering of her cosmetics on the bathroom counter, I managed to get clean and get made-up on time. In honor of my beautiful dress, I tried to put my hair up, but I’m no good with anything more complex than a ponytail. The hair would be down. I went a little heavier on the makeup than I do in the daytime, and I had some big earrings that Tara had told me were just right. I turned my head experimentally and watched them swing and glitter. They were silvery and white, just like the beading on the bodice of my evening dress. Which it is now time to put on, I told myself with a little jolt of anticipation.
Oh, boy. My dress was ice blue, and had silver and white beads, and was cut just the right depth in the front and back. It had a built-in bra so I didn’t have to wear one, and I pulled on some blue panties that would never leave a line on me. Then thigh-high hose. Then my shoes, which were high heeled and silvery.
I’d done my nails while Water Woman was in the shower, and I put on my lipstick and had a final look in the mirror.
Carla said, “You look real pretty, Sookie.”
“Thanks.” I knew I was smiling a big smile. There’s nothing like dressing up once in a while. I felt like my prom date was picking me up with a corsage to pin to my dress. JB had taken me to my senior prom, though other girls had asked him because he would look so good in the photographs. My aunt Linda had made my dress.
No more homemade dresses for me.
A knock at the door had me looking anxiously in the mirror. But it was Gervaise, checking to see if Carla was ready. She smiled and turned around to garner the admiration due her, and Gervaise gave her a kiss on the cheek. I wasn’t too impressed with Gervaise’s character, and he wasn’t my cup of tea physically, either, with his broad, bland face and his light mustache, but I had to hand it to him for generosity: he fastened a diamond tennis bracelet around Carla’s wrist then and there, with no further ado than if he were giving her a bauble. Carla tried to restrain her excitement, but then she cast that to the winds and threw her arms around Gervaise’s neck. I was embarrassed to be in the room, because some of the pet names she used while thanking him were sort of anatomically correct.
After they left, well pleased with each other, I stood in the middle of the bedroom. I didn’t want to sit down in my dress until I had to, because I knew it would wrinkle and lose that perfect feeling. That left me with very little to do, other than trying not to get miffed about the chaos Carla had left on her side and feeling a bit at a loss. Surely Quinn had said he’d come by the room to get me? We hadn’t been supposed to meet downstairs, right?
My purse made a noise, and I realized I’d stuck the queen’s pager in there. Oh, surely not!
“Get down here,” read the message. “Trial is now.”
At the same moment, the room phone rang. I picked it up, trying to catch my breath.
“Babe,” said Quinn. “I’m sorry. In case you hadn’t heard, the council has decided that the queen will have to go on trial, right now, and you gotta hustle down here. I’m sorry,” he said again, “I’m in charge of setting up. I gotta work. Maybe this won’t take long.”
“Okay,” I said weakly, and he hung up.
So much for my glamorous evening with my new guy.
But, dammit, I wasn’t going to change into anything less festive. Everyone else would have party clothes on, and even if my role in the evening had altered, I deserved to look pretty, too. I rode down on the elevator with one of the hotel employees, who couldn’t tell if I was a vampire or not. I made him very nervous. It always tickles me when people can’t tell. To me, vampires sort of glow, just a bit.
Andre was waiting for me when I got off the elevator. He was as flustered as I’d ever seen him; I could tell because his fingers were clenching and unclenching, and his lip was bloody where he’d bitten it, though it healed as I watched. Before last night, Andre had just made me nervous. Now I loathed him. But it was evident I had to put personal issues aside until another time.
“How could this happen?” he asked. “Sookie, you need to learn everything you can about this. We have more enemies than we knew.”
“I thought there wouldn’t be a trial after Jennifer got killed. Since she was the queen’s chief accuser—”
“That’s what we all thought. Or, if there was a trial, it would be an empty form, staged simply so the charges could be dismissed. But we got down here tonight and they were waiting for us. They’ve put off the start of the ball to do this. Take my arm,” he said, and I was so taken by surprise that I slid my arm through his.
“Smile,” he said. “Look confident.”
And we walked into the convention hall with bold faces—me and my good buddy Andre.
It was lucky I’d had plenty of practice in insincere smiling, because this was like the marathon of Saving Face. All the vampires and their human entourages parted way for us. Some of them were smiling, too, though not pleasantly, and some looked concerned, and some just looked mildly anticipatory, as if they were about to watch a movie that had gotten good buzz.
And the rush of thoughts engulfed me. I smiled and walked on automatic while I listened in. Pretty . . . Sophie-Anne’ll get what’s coming to her . . . maybe I can call her lawyer, see if she’s open to an approach from our king . . . nice boobs . . . my man needs a telepath . . . hear she’s fucking Quinn . . . hear she’s fucking the queen and Baby Boy Andre . . . found her at a bar . . . Sophie-Anne’s washed up, serves her right . . . hear she’s fucking Cataliades . . . stupid trial, where’s the band? . . . hope they have some food at the dance, people food . . .
And on and on. Some of it pertaining to me,
the queen, and/or Andre, some of it the simple thoughts of people who are tired of waiting and want to get the party started.
We strolled the gauntlet until it terminated in the room where the wedding had been held. The crowd in this room was almost 100 percent vampire. A notable absence: human servers, and any other human hotel staff. The only ones circulating with drinks trays were vampires. Things were going to happen in this room that weren’t for human consumption. If it was possible for me to feel more anxious, I did.
I could see Quinn had been busy. The low platform had been rearranged. The giant ankh had been put away, and two lecterns had been added. On the spot where Mississippi and his loved one had taken their vows, about midway between the two lecterns, there sat a thronelike chair. In it was an ancient woman with wild white hair. I had never seen a vampire who had been turned when she was so old, and though I’d sworn I wasn’t going to speak to him, I said as much to Andre.
“That is the Ancient Pythoness,” he said absently. He was scanning the crowd, trying to find Sophie-Anne, I supposed. I spotted Johan Glassport, who was going to get his moment in the limelight after all, and the rest of the Louisiana contingent was with the murderous lawyer—all except the queen and Eric and Pam, whom I’d glimpsed standing near the stage.
Andre and I took our seats at the right front. On the left front was a clump of vampires who were no fans of ours. Chief among them was Henrik Feith. Henrik had transformed himself from a panicky scaredy-cat to a ball of wrath. He glowered at us. He did everything but throw spitballs.
“What crawled up his ass and died?” muttered Cleo Babbitt, dropping into the seat to my right. “The queen offers to take him under her wing when he’s alone and defenseless, and this is the thanks she gets?” Cleo was wearing a traditional tuxedo, and she looked pretty darn good in it. The severity of it suited her. Her boy toy looked much more feminine than she did. I wondered at his inclusion in the crowd, which was all supe and overwhelmingly vampire. Diantha leaned forward from the row behind us to tap me on the shoulder. She was wearing a red bustier with black ruffles and a black taffeta skirt, also ruffled. Her bustier didn’t have much bust to fill it. She was clutching a handheld computer game. “Goodtoseeya,” she said, and I made the effort of smiling at her. She returned her attention to the computer game.
Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set Page 179
