Шарлин Харрис - From Dead To Worse

I'd never heard Eric so chatty about vampire affairs. I was beginning to have an awful creeping feeling that I knew where he was headed.

"You expect some kind of takeover," I said, and felt my heart plummet. Not again. "You think Jonathan was a scout."

"Watch out, or I'll begin to think you can read my mind." Though Eric's tone was light as a marshmallow, his meaning was a sharp blade hidden inside.

"That's impossible," I said, and if he thought I was lying, he didn't challenge me. Eric seemed to be regretting telling me so much. The rest of our talk was very brief. He told me again to call him at the first sight of Jonathan, and I assured him I'd be glad to.

After I'd hung up, I didn't feel quite as sleepy. In honor of the chilly night I pulled on my fleecy pajama bottoms, white with pink sheep, and a white T-shirt. I unearthed my map of Louisiana and found a pencil. I sketched in the areas I knew. I was piecing my knowledge together from bits of conversations that had taken place in my presence. Eric had Area Five. The queen had had Area One, which was New Orleans and vicinity. That made sense. But in between, there was a jumble. The finally deceased Gervaise had had the area including Baton Rouge, and that was where the queen had been living since Katrina damaged her New Orleans properties so heavily. So that should have been Area Two, due to its prominence. But it was called Area Four. Very lightly, I traced a line that I could erase, and would, after I'd looked at it for a bit.

I mined my head for other bits of information. Five, at the top of the state, stretched nearly all the way across. Eric was richer and more powerful than I'd thought. Below him, and fairly even in territory, were Cleo Babbitt's Area Three and Arla Yvonne's Area Two. A swoop down to the Gulf from the south-westernmost corner of Mississippi marked off the large areas formerly held by Gervaise and the queen, Four and One respectively. I could only imagine what vampiric political contortions had led to the numbering and arrangement.

I looked at the map for a few long minutes before I erased all the light lines I'd drawn. I glanced at the clock. Nearly an hour had passed since my conversation with Eric. In a melancholy mood, I brushed my teeth and washed my face. After I climbed into bed and said my prayers, I lay there awake for quite a while. I was pondering the undeniable truth that the most powerful vampire in the state of Louisiana, at this very point in time, was Eric Northman, my blood-bonded, once-upon-a-time lover. Eric had said in my hearing that he didn't want to be king, didn't want to take over new territory; and since I'd figured out the extent of his territory right now, the size of it made that assertion a little more likely.

I believed I knew Eric a little, maybe as much as a human can know a vampire, which doesn't mean my knowledge was profound. I didn't believe he wanted to take over the state, or he would have done so. I did think his power meant there was a giant target pinned to his back. I needed to try to sleep. I glanced at the clock again. An hour and a half since I'd talked to Eric.

Bill glided into my room quite silently.

"What's up?" I asked, trying to keep my voice very quiet, very calm, though every nerve in my body had started shrieking.

"I'm uneasy," he said in his cool voice, and I almost laughed. "Pam had to leave for Fangtasia. She called me to take her place here."

"Why?"

He sat in the chair in the corner. It was pretty dark in my room, but the curtains weren't drawn completely shut and I got some illumination from the yard's security light. There was a night-light in the bathroom, too, and I could make out the contours of his body and the blur of his face. Bill had a little glow, like all vampires do in my eyes.

"Pam couldn't get Cleo on the phone," he said. "Eric left the club to run an errand, and Pam couldn't raise him, either. But I got his voice mail; I'm sure he'll call back. It's Cleo not answering that's the rub."

"Pam and Cleo are friends?"

"No, not at all," he said, matter-of-factly. "But Pam should be able to talk to her at her all-night grocery. Cleo always answers."

"Why was Pam trying to reach her?" I asked.

"They call each other every night," Bill said. "Then Cleo calls Arla Yvonne. They have a chain. It should not be broken, not in these days." Bill stood up with a speed that I couldn't follow. "Listen!" he whispered, his voice as light on my ear as a moth wing. "Do you hear?"

I didn't hear jack shit. I held still under the covers, wishing passionately that this whole thing would just go away. Weres, vampires, trouble, strife ... But no such luck. "What do you hear?" I asked, trying to be as quiet as Bill was being, an effort doomed in the attempt.

"Someone's coming," he said.

And then I heard a knock on the front door. It was a very quiet knock.

I threw back the covers and got up. I couldn't find my slippers because I was so rattled. I started for the bedroom door on my bare feet. The night was chilly, and I hadn't turned on the heat yet; my soles pressed coldly against the polished wood of the floor.

"I'll answer the door," Bill said, and he was ahead of me without my having seen him move.

"Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea," I muttered, and followed him. I wondered where Amelia was: asleep upstairs or on the living room couch? I hoped she was only asleep. I was so spooked by that time that I imagined she might be dead.

Bill glided silently through the dark house, down the hall, to the living room (which still smelled like popcorn), to the front door, and then he looked through the peephole, which for some reason I found funny. I had to slap a hand over my mouth to keep from giggling.

No one shot Bill through the peephole. No one tried to batter the door down. No one screamed.

The continuing silence was breaking me out in goose bumps. I didn't even see Bill move. His cool voice came from right beside my ear. "It is a very young woman. Her hair is dyed white or blond, and it's very short and dark at the roots. She's skinny. She's human. She's scared."

She wasn't the only one.

I tried like hell to think who my middle-of-the-night caller could be. Suddenly I thought I might know. "Frannie," I breathed. "Quinn's sister. Maybe."

"Let me in," a girl's voice said. "Oh, please let me in."

It was just like a ghost story I'd read once. Every hair on my arms stood up.

"I have to tell you what's happened to Quinn," Frannie said, and that decided me on the spot.

"Open the door," I said to Bill in my normal voice. "We have to let her in."

"She's human," Bill said, as if to say, "How much trouble can she be?" He unlocked the front door.

I won't say Frannie tumbled in, but she sure didn't waste any time getting through the door and slamming it behind her. I hadn't had a good first impression of Frannie, who was long on the aggression and attitude and short on the charm, but I'd come to know her a fraction better as she sat at Quinn's bedside in the hospital after the explosion. She'd had a hard life, and she loved her brother.

"What's happened?" I asked sharply as Frannie stumbled to the nearest chair and sat down.

"You would have a vampire here," she said. "Can I have a glass of water? Then I'll try to do what Quinn wants."

I hurried to the kitchen and got her a drink. I turned on the light in the kitchen, but even when I came back to the living room, we kept it dark.

"Where's your car?" Bill asked.

"It broke down about a mile back," she said. "But I couldn't wait with it. I called a tow truck and left the keys in the ignition. I hope to God they get it off the road and out of sight."

"Tell me right now what's happening," I said.

"Short or long version?"

"Short."