"You want me to pour that beer on your head, Danny?"
"Don't make no difference to me how I get it." And they grinned at each other.
Just after dark, my cell phone vibrated in my apron pocket. As soon as I could, I stepped into Sam's office. I'd gotten a text from Eric. "See U later," it said. And that was all. But I had a genuine smile on my face the rest of the evening, and when I drove home, I felt happy all over to see Eric sitting on my front porch, whether he'd wrecked my kitchen or not. And he had a new toaster with him, a red bow stuck to the box.
"To what do I owe the honor?" I asked tartly. It didn't do to let Eric know I'd been anticipating his visit. Of course, he probably had an idea that was so, through our blood bond.
"We haven't had any fun lately," he said. He handed over the toaster.
"Between me putting out a fire and you attacking Pam? Yeah, I'd say that was a fair statement. Thanks for the replacement toaster, though I wouldn't classify that as fun. What do you have in mind?"
"Later, of course, I have spectacular sex in mind," he said, standing up and walking over to me. "I've thought of a position we haven't tried yet."
I'm not as flexible as Eric, and the last time we'd tried something real adventurous, I'd had a sore hip for three days. But I was willing to experiment. "What do you have in mind before the spectacular sex?" I asked.
"We have to visit a new dance club," he said, but I caught the shade of worry in his voice. "That's what they're calling it, to try to bring in the young people who look pretty. Like you."
"Where is this dance club?" Since I'd been on my feet for hours, this plan was not the most tempting. But it had had been a long time since we'd had fun as a couple-in public. been a long time since we'd had fun as a couple-in public.
"It's between here and Shreveport," Eric said, and hesitated. "Victor just opened it."
"Oh. Is it smart for you to go there?" I said, dismayed. Eric's program had zero appeal now.
Victor and Eric were engaged in a silent struggle. Victor Madden was the Louisiana proxy for Felipe, King of Nevada, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Felipe was based in Las Vegas, and we wondered (Eric and Pam and I) if he'd given Victor this large bone simply to get the ambitious Victor out of Felipe's richest territory. In my heart of hearts, I wanted Victor to die. Victor had sent his two most trusted minions, Bruno and Corinna, to kill Pam and me, simply in order to weaken Eric, whom Felipe had retained since he was the most productive sheriff in the state.
Pam and I had turned the tables. Bruno and Corinna were piles of dust by the interstate, and no one could prove we'd done it.
Victor had put out the word that he was offering a high bounty for anyone who could give him some information on his minions' whereabouts, but no one had come forward. Only Pam, Eric, and I knew what had happened. Victor could hardly accuse us outright, since that would be admitting that he'd sent them to kill us. Kind of a Mexican standoff.
Next time, Victor might send someone more cautious and careful. Bruno and Corinna had been overconfident.
"It's not smart to go to this club, but we don't have a choice," Eric said. "Victor has ordered me to make an appearance with my wife. He'll think I'm afraid of him if I don't bring you."
I thought this through while I was searching my closet, trying to think of anything I owned that would look good at a trendy dance club. Eric was lying on my bed, his hands behind his head. "There's something in my car, I forgot," he said suddenly, and was a blur going out the door. He was back in seconds, carrying a garment on a hanger enveloped in a clear plastic bag.
"What?" I said. "It's not my birthday."
"Can't a vampire give his lover a present?"
I had to smile back at him. "Well, yes he can," I said. I love presents. The toaster had been reparation. This was a surprise. I carefully removed the plastic bag. The garment on the hanger was a dress. Probably.
"This is-is this the whole thing?" I asked, holding it up. There was a black U-shaped neckband-a large U, both front and back-and the rest was bronze and shiny and pleated, like many broad bronze ribbons sewn together. Well, not so many. The saleswoman had left the price tag on. I tried not to look, failed, and felt my mouth fall open after I'd absorbed it. I could buy six or maybe ten pieces at Wal-Mart, or three at Dillard's, for the price of this dress.
"You will look wonderful," Eric said. He grinned fangily. "Everyone will envy me."
Who wouldn't feel good, hearing that?
I emerged from the bathroom to find that my new buddy Immanuel was back. He'd set up a hair and makeup station on my dressing table. It felt very odd to see yet another man in my bedroom. Immanuel seemed to be in a much happier mood tonight. Even his odd haircut looked perkier. While Eric watched as closely as if he suspected Immanuel of being an assassin, the skinny hairdresser poofed me and curled me and made me up. Since Tara and I had been little girls, I hadn't had such a fun time in front of a mirror. When Immanuel was through, I looked . . . glossy and confident.
"Thank you," I said, wondering where the real Sookie had gone.
"You're welcome," Immanuel said seriously. "You've got great skin. I like working on you."
No one had ever said that to me, and all I could come up with in response was, "Please leave a card." He fished one out and propped it against a china lady my grandmother had loved. The juxtaposition left me feeling a little sad. I'd come down a long road since her death.
"How's your sister?" I asked, since I was thinking of sad things.
"She had a good day today," Immanuel said. "Thanks for asking." Though he didn't look at Eric while he said this, I saw Eric glance away, his jaw tight. Irritated.
Immanuel departed after packing up all his paraphernalia, and I found a strapless bra and a thong-which I hated, but who wants a pantyline under a dress like that?-and began to assemble myself. Luckily, I had good black heels. I knew strappy sandals would suit the dress better, but the heels would have to do.
Eric had really paid attention as I got dressed. "So smooth," he said, running his hand up my leg.
"Hey, you keep doing that, we won't get to the club, and all this preparation will have gone to waste." Call me pathetic, but I actually did want someone else besides Eric to see the total effect of the new dress and the new hair and the good makeup.
"Not entirely to waste," he said, but he changed into his own party clothes. I braided his hair so it would look neat and tied the end with a black ribbon. Eric looked like a buccaneer out on the town.
We should have been happy, excited about our date, looking forward to dancing together at the club. I couldn't know what Eric was thinking as we walked out to his car, but I knew he wasn't happy with what we were doing and where we were going.
That made two of us.
I decided to ease into a back-and-forth with a little light conversation.
"How are the new vamps working out?" I said.
"They come in when they're supposed to and put in their bar time," he said unenthusiastically. Three vampires who'd ended up in Eric's area after Katrina had asked Eric for permission to stay in Area Five, though they wanted to nest in Minden, not Shreveport itself.
"What's wrong with them?" I said. "You don't seem very excited about the addition to your ranks." I slid into my seat. Eric walked around the car.
"Palomino does well enough," he admitted grudgingly as he got in on the driver's side. "But Rubio is stupid, and Parker is weak."
I didn't know the three well enough to debate that. Palomino, who went by one name, was an attractive young vampire with freaky coloring-her skin was a natural tan tone, while her hair was pale blond. Rubio Hermosa was handsome, but-I had to agree with Eric-he was dim and never had much to say for himself. Parker was as nerdy in death as he had been in life, and though he'd improved the Fangtasia computer systems, he seemed scared of his own shadow.
"You want to talk to me about the argument between you and Pam?" I asked once I'd buckled up. Instead of his Corvette, Eric had brought Fangtasia's Lincoln Town Car. It was incredibly comfortable, and given the way he drove when he was in the Vette, I was always glad when we had an evening out in the Lincoln.
"No," said Eric. He was instantly brooding and emanating worry.
I waited for him to elaborate.
I waited some more.
"All right," I said, trying hard to regain my sense of pleasure in being out on a date with a gorgeous man. "Okeydokey. Have it your way. But I think the sex will be a few degrees less spectacular if I'm worried about you and Pam."
That bit of levity earned me a dark look.
"I know that Pam wants to make another vampire," I said. "I understand there's a time element involved."
"Immanuel shouldn't have talked," Eric said.
"It was nice to have someone actually share information with me, information directly pertaining to people I care about." Did I have to draw a picture?
"Sookie, Victor has said I can't give permission for Pam to make a child." Eric's jaw snapped shut like a steel trap.
Oh. "Kings have control over reproduction, I guess," I said cautiously.
"Yes. Absolute control. But you understand that Pam is giving me hell about this, and so is Victor."
"Victor isn't a king, really, is he? Maybe if you went directly to Felipe?"
"Every time I bypass Victor, he finds a way to punish me."
There was no point in talking about it. Eric was being pulled in two different directions as it was.
So on the way to Victor's club, which Eric said was called Vampire's Kiss, we talked about the visit of the antiques dealers the next day. There were lots of things I would have liked to discuss, but in view of Eric's overwhelmingly difficult position, I didn't want to bring up my own problems. Plus, I still had the feeling that I didn't know everything there was to know about Eric's situation.
"Eric," I said, and knew I was speaking too abruptly and with too much intensity. "You don't tell me everything about your business, am I right?"
"You're right," he said, without missing a beat. "But that's for many reasons, Sookie. Most important is that some of it you could only worry about, and the rest of it might put you in danger. Knowledge isn't always power." I pressed my lips together and refused to look at him. Childish, I know, but I didn't completely believe him.
After a moment of silence, he added, "There's also the fact that I'm not used to sharing my daily concerns with a human, and it's hard to break the habit after a thousand years."
Right. And none of those secrets involved my future. Right. Right. Evidently, Eric read my stony self-possession as grudging acceptance, because he decided our tense moment was over. Evidently, Eric read my stony self-possession as grudging acceptance, because he decided our tense moment was over.
"But you tell me everything, my lover, don't you?" he asked teasingly.
I glared at him and didn't answer.
That wasn't what Eric had expected. "You don't?" he asked, and I couldn't figure out everything that was in his voice. Disappointment, concern, a touch of anger . . . and a dash of excitement. That was a lot to pack into a couple of words, but I swear it was all there. "That's an unexpected twist," he murmured. "And yet, we say we love each other."
"We say we do." I agreed. "And I do love you, but I'm beginning to see that being in love doesn't mean sharing as much as I thought we would."
He had nothing to say to that.
We passed Vic's Redneck Roadhouse on the way to the new dance club, and even from the interstate I could see that the parking lot was packed. "Crap," I said. "There sits all of Merlotte's business. What do they have that we haven't got?"
"Entertainment. The novelty of being the new place. Waitresses in hot pants and halter tops," Eric began.
"Oh, stop," I said, disgusted. "What with the trouble about Sam being a shapeshifter and all the other stuff, I don't know how much longer Merlotte's can hold out."
There was a surge of pleasure from Eric. "Oh, then you would have no job," he said, with faux sympathy. "You could work for me at Fangtasia."
"No thank you." I said it immediately. "I would hate to see the fangbangers come in night after night, always wanting what they shouldn't have. It's just sad and bad."
Eric glanced over at me, not at all happy with my quick response. "That's how I make my money, Sookie, on the perverse dreams and fantasies of humans. Most of those humans are tourists who visit Fangtasia once or twice and then go back to Minden or Emerson and tell their neighbors about their walk on the wild side. Or they're people from the Air Force base who like to show how tough they are by drinking at a vampire bar."
"I understand that. And I know if fangbangers don't come to Fangtasia, they'll go somewhere else they can hang around with vampires. But I don't think I'd like the ambience on a day-to-day basis." I was kind of proud of myself for working in "ambience."
"What would you do, then? If Merlotte's closed?"
That was a good question, and one I was going to have to consider seriously. I said, "I'd try to get another waitressing job, maybe at the Crawdad Diner. The tips wouldn't be as good as at a bar, but the aggravation would be less. And maybe I'd try to take some online classes and get some kind of degree. That would be nice, to have more education."
There was a moment's silence. "You didn't mention contacting your great-grandfather," Eric said. "He could make sure you never wanted for anything."
"I'm not sure I could," I said, surprised. "Contact him, that is. I guess Claude would know how. In fact, I'm sure he would. But Niall made it pretty clear he thought staying in touch wouldn't be a good idea." It was my turn to think for a second. "Eric, do you think Claude has an ulterior motive for coming to live with me?"
"Of course he does; Dermot, too," Eric said, without missing a beat. "I only wonder that you need to ask."
Not for the first time, I felt inadequate for the task of coping with my life. I fought a wave of self-pity, of bitterness, while I forced myself to examine Eric's words. I'd suspected as much, of course, and that was why I'd asked Sam if people really changed. Claude had always been the master of selfishness, the duke of disinterest. Why would he change? Oh, sure, he missed being around other fairies, especially now that his sisters were dead. But why would he come live with someone who had as little fairy blood as I did (especially when I'd been indirectly responsible for Claudine's death) unless he had something else on his mind?
Dermot's motivation was just as opaque. It would be easy to assume Dermot's character was like Jason's because they looked so much alike, but I had learned (from bitter experience) what happened when I made assumptions. Dermot had been under a spell for a long time, a spell that had rendered him crazed, but even through the mental haze of the magic worked on him, Dermot had tried to do the right thing. At least, that was what he'd told me, and I had a little evidence that that was true.
I was still brooding over my gullibility when we took an exit ramp in the middle of nowhere. You could see the shine of the lights of Vampire's Kiss, which of course was the point.
"Aren't you afraid that people who would have driven on into Shreveport to go to Fangtasia are just going to pull off when they see this club?" I said.
"Yes."
I'd asked a dumb question, so I gave him some slack for being short with me. Eric must have been brooding over his financial downturn ever since Victor had bought the building. But I wasn't prepared to give Eric any more free passes. We were a couple, and he should either share his life completely with me or let me worry about my own concerns. It wasn't easy, being yoked to Eric. I glanced over at him, realizing how stupid that would sound to one of the Fangtasia fangbangers. Eric was certainly one of the handsomest males I'd ever seen. He was strong, intelligent, and fantastic in bed.
Right now, there lay a frosty silence between that strong, intelligent, lusty man and me, and that silence lasted until we parked. It was hard to find a spot, which made Eric even more pissed off. That That wasn't hard to tell. wasn't hard to tell.
Since Eric had been summoned, it would have been polite to have reserved him a parking spot by the front door . . . or given him the green light to come in by the back entrance. There was also the unavoidable lesson in pictures that Vampire's Kiss was so busy it was hard to find a parking spot.
Ouch.
I struggled to push aside my own worries. I needed to concentrate on the troubles we were about to face. Victor didn't like or trust Eric, and the feeling was mutual. Since Victor had been put in charge of Louisiana, Eric's position as the only holdover from the Sophie-Anne era had become increasingly precarious. I was pretty sure I'd gotten to continue my life unmolested only because Eric had hoodwinked me into marrying him in the eyes of the vampires.
Eric, his mouth pressed into a thin line, came around to open my door. I could tell he was using the maneuver as a way to scan the parking lot for danger. He stood in such a way that his body was between me and the club, and as I swung my legs out of the Town Car, he asked, "Who's in the parking lot, lover?"
I stood, slowly and carefully, my eyes closed to concentrate. I put my hand over his where it rested on the door frame. In the warm night, with a light wind gently riffling my hair, I sent my extra sense out. "A couple having sex in a car two rows away," I whispered. "A man throwing up behind the black pickup on the other side of the parking lot. Two couples just pulling in, in an Escalade. One vampire by the door to the club. Another vampire closing fast fast."
When vamps go on alert, there's no mistaking it. Eric's fangs ran out, his body tensed, and he whirled to look outward.
Pam said, "Master." She stepped out of the shadow of a big SUV. Eric relaxed; and so, gradually, did I. Whatever had made the two fight at my house, it had been put aside for the evening.
"I came ahead as you bid me," she murmured, the night wind picking up her voice and tossing it. Her face looked oddly dark.
"Pam, step into the light," I said.
She did, though certainly she was not obliged to obey me.
The darkness under Pam's white skin was the result of a beating. Vampires don't bruise exactly like we do, and they heal quickly-but when they've been hit hard, you can tell it for a little while. "What happened to you?" Eric asked. His voice was completely empty, which I knew was an awfully bad thing.
"I told the door guards that I needed to come in to make sure Victor knew you were arriving. An excuse to make sure that the interior was secure."
"They prevented you."
"Yes."