Шарлин Харрис - All Together Dead

The head judge, a hawk-faced guy with dark, liquid eyes, called the boy up to stand before them. "You owe these people respect and obedience, and you signed this contract, too," he said. "You may be a minor in human law, but to us, you are as responsible as... Cindy Lou." Boy, it just killed him, having to admit there was a vampire named Cindy Lou. "If you try to terrorize your human parents, or coerce them, or drink their blood, we will amputate your hand. And when it grows back, we'll amputate it again."

The boy could hardly be whiter than he was, and his human mother fainted. But he'd been so cocky, so sure of himself, and so dismissive of his poor parents, I thought the strong warning was necessary. I caught myself nodding.

Oh, yeah, this was fair, to threaten a kid with having his hand amputated.

But if you'd seen this kid, you might have agreed. And Cindy Lou was no prize; whoever had turned her must have been mentally and morally deficient.

I hadn't been needed after all. I was wondering about the rest of the evening when the queen came through the double doors at the end of the room, Sigebert and Andre in close attendance. She was wearing a sapphire blue silk pantsuit with a beautiful diamond necklace and small diamond earrings. She looked classy, absolutely smooth, sleek, and perfect. Andre made a beeline to me.

"I know," he said, "that is, Sophie-Anne tells me that I have done wrong to you. I'm not sorry, because I will do anything for her. Others don't mean anything to me. But I do regret that I have not been able to refrain from causing something that distresses you."

If that was an apology, it was the most half-assed one I'd ever received in my life. It left almost everything to be desired. All I could do was say, "I hear you." It was the most I'd ever get.

By then, Sophie-Anne was standing in front of me. I did my head-bob thing. "I will need you with me during the next few hours," she said, and I said, "Sure." She glanced up and down my clothes, as if wishing I had dressed up a little more, but no one had warned me that a part of the night marked off for Commerce meant fancy clothes were appropriate.

Mr. Cataliades steamed up to me, wearing a beautiful suit and a dark red-and-gold silk tie, and he said, "Good to see you, my dear. Let me brief you on the next item on the schedule."

I spread my hands to show I was ready. "Where's Diantha?" I asked.

"She is working something out with the hotel," Cataliades said. He frowned. "It's most peculiar. There was an extra coffin downstairs, apparently."

"How could that be?" Coffins belonged to somebody. It's not like a vampire was going to be traveling with a spare, like you had to have a dress coffin and an everyday coffin. "Why did they call you?"

"It had one of our tags on it," he said.

"But all of our vamps are accounted for, right?" I felt a tingle of anxiety in my chest. Just then, I saw the usual waiters moving among the crowd, and I saw one spot me and turn away. Then he saw Barry, who'd come in with the King of Texas. The waiter turned away yet again.

I actually started to call to a nearby vampire to hold the guy so I could have a look into his head, and then I realized I was acting as high-handed as the vampires themselves. The waiter vanished, and I hadn't had a close look at him, so I wasn't sure I could even identify him in a crowd of other servers in the same outfit. Mr. Cataliades was talking, but I held up a hand. "Hold it for a sec," I murmured. The waiter's quick turn had reminded me of something, something else that had seemed odd.

"Please pay attention, Miss Stackhouse," the lawyer said, and I had to stow the thread of thought away. "Here's what you need to do. The queen will be negotiating for a few favors she needs to help rebuild her state. Just do what you do best to discover if everyone dealing with her is honorable."

This was not a very specific guideline. "Do my best," I said. "But I think you should go find Diantha, Mr. C. I think there's something really strange and wrong about this extra coffin they're talking about. There was that extra suitcase, too," I said. "I carried it up to the queen's suite."

Mr. Cataliades looked at me blankly. I could see that he considered the small problem of extra items turning up in a hotel to be a small one and below his concern. "Did Eric tell you about the murdered woman?" I asked, and his attention sharpened.

"I haven't seen Master Eric this evening," he said. "I'll be sure to track him down."

"Something's up; I just don't know what," I muttered more or less to myself, and then I turned away to catch up with Sophie-Anne.

Commerce was conducted in a sort of bazaar style. Sophie-Anne positioned herself by the table where Bill was sitting, back at work selling the computer program. Pam was helping him, but she was in her regular clothes, and I was glad the harem costume was getting a rest. I wondered what the procedure was, but I adopted a wait-and-see attitude, and I found out soon enough. The first to approach Sophie-Anne was the big blond vampire who'd served as a judge earlier. "Dear madam," he said, kissing her hand. "I am charmed to see you, as always, and devastated by the destruction of your beautiful city."

"A small portion of my beautiful city," Sophie-Anne said with the sweetest of smiles.

"I am in despair at the thought of the straits you must be in," he continued after a brief pause to register her correction. "You, the ruler of such a profitable and prestigious kingdom... now brought so low. I hope to be able to assist you in my humble fashion."

"And what form would that assistance take?" Sophie-Anne inquired.

After much palaver, it turned out that Mr. Flowery was willing to bring a gazillion board feet of lumber to New Orleans if Sophie-Anne would give him 2 percent of her next five years' revenue. His accountant was with him. I looked into his eyes with great curiosity. I stepped back, and Andre slithered to my side. I turned so that no one could read my lips.

"Quality of the lumber," I said as quietly as a hummingbird's wings.

That took forever to hammer out, and it was boring, boring, boring. Some of the wannabe providers didn't have humans with them, and I was no help with those; but most of them did. Sometimes the human had paid the vampire a substantial sum to "sponsor" him, so he could just be in the hall and pitch his woo in a one-on-one setting. By the time vendor number eight simpered to a stop in front of the queen, I was unable to suppress my yawns. I'd noticed Bill was doing a landmark business selling copies of his vampire database. For a reserved kind of guy, he did a good job of explaining and promoting his product, considering some of the vampires were very mistrustful of computers. If I heard about the "Yearly Update Package" one more time, I was gonna puke. There were lots of humans clustering around Bill, because they were more computer savvy than the vamps as a whole. While they were absorbed, I tried to get a scan in here and there, but they were just thinking megahertz and RAM and hard drives – stuff like that.

I didn't see Quinn. Since he was a wereanimal, I figured he'd be completely over his wound of the night before. I could only take his absence as a signal. I was heart-heavy and weary.

The queen invited Dahlia, the little, pretty vampire who'd been so direct in her judgment, up to her suite for a drink. Dahlia accepted regally, and our whole party moved up to the suite. Christian Baruch tagged along; he'd been hovering around Sophie-Anne all evening.

His courtship of Sophie-Anne was heavy-handed, to say the least. I thought again of the boy toy I'd watched the previous evening, tickling the back of his ladylove in imitation of a spider, because he knew she was frightened of them, and how he'd gotten her to snuggle closer to him. I felt a lightbulb come on over my head and wondered if it was visible to anyone else.