Шарлин Харрис - Definitely Dead

"All right," she said. "Andre, I can't spend any more time here. Jade Flower will report the fact that I came up here with Sookie. Sookie, we must pretend to have had sex."

"Sorry, anyone who knows me knows I don't do women. I don't know who you expect Jade Flower's reporting to…" (Of course I did, and that would be the king, but it didn't seem tactful to say "I know your business," just then.) "But if they've done any homework, that's just a fact about me."

"Perhaps you had sex with Andre, then," she said calmly. "And you let me watch."

I thought of several questions, the first one being, "Is that the usual procedure with you?" followed by, "It's not okay to misplace a bracelet, but okay to bump pelvises with someone else?" But I clamped my mouth shut. If someone were holding a gun to my head, I'd actually have to vote for having sex with the queen rather than with Andre, no matter what my gender preference, because Andre creeped me out big-time. But if we were just pretending…

In a businesslike way, Andre removed his tie, folded it, put it in his pocket, and undid a few shirt buttons. He beckoned to me with a crook of his fingers. I approached him warily. He took me in his arms and held me close, pressed against him, and bent his head to my neck. For a second I thought he was going to bite, and I had a flare of absolute panic, but instead he inhaled. That's a deliberate act for a vampire.

"Put your mouth on my neck," he said, after another long whiff of me. "Your lipstick will transfer."

I did as he told me. He was cold as ice. This was like… well, this was just weird. I thought of the picture-taking session with Claude; I'd spent a lot of time lately pretending to have sex.

"I love the smell of fairy. Do you think she knows she has fairy blood?" he asked Sophie-Anne, while I was in the process of transferring my lipstick.

My head snapped back then. I stared right into his eyes, and he stared right back at me. He was still holding me, and I understood that he was ensuring I would smell like him and he would smell like me, as if we'd actually done the deed. He definitely wasn't up for the real thing, which was a relief.

"I what?" I hadn't heard him correctly, I was sure. "I have what?"

"He has a nose for it," the queen said. "My Andre." She looked faintly proud.

"I was hanging around with my friend Claudine earlier in the day," I said. "She's a fairy. That's where the smell is coming from." I really must need to shower.

"You permit?" Andre asked, and without waiting for an answer, he jabbed my wounded arm with a fingernail, right above the bandage.

"Yow!" I said in protest.

He let a little blood trickle onto his finger, and he put it in his mouth. He rolled it around, as if it were a sip of wine, and at last he said, "No, this smell of fairy is not from association. It's in your blood." Andre looked at me in a way that was meant to tell me that his words made it a done deal. "You have a little streak of fairy. Maybe your grandmother or your grandfather was half-fey?"

"I don't know anything about it," I said, knowing I sounded stupid, but not knowing what else to say. "If any of my grandparents were other than a hundred percent human, they didn't pass that information along."

"No, they wouldn't," the queen said, matter-of-factly. "Most humans of fairy descent hide the fact, because they don't really believe it. They prefer to think their parents are mad." She shrugged. Inexplicable! "But that blood would explain why you have supernatural suitors and not human admirers."

"I don't have human admirers because I don't want 'em," I said, definitely piqued. "I can read their minds, and that just knocks them out of the running. If they're not put off from the get-go by my reputation for weirdness," I added, back into my too-much-honesty groove.

"It's a sad comment on humans that none of them are tolerable to one who can read their minds," the queen said.

I guess that was the final word on the value of mind-reading ability. I decided it would be better to stop the conversation. I had a lot to think about.

We went down the stairs, Andre leading, the queen next, and me trailing behind. Andre had insisted I take off my shoes and my earrings so it could be inferred that I had undressed and then just slipped back into the dress.

The other vampires were waiting obediently in the courtyard, and they sprang to attention when we began making our way down. Jade Flower's face didn't change at all when she read all the clues as to what we'd been up to in the past half hour, but at least she didn't look skeptical. The Berts looked knowing but uninterested, as if the scenario of Sophie-Anne watching her bodyguard engaging in sex (with a virtual stranger) were very much a matter of routine.

As he stood in the gateway waiting for further driving instructions, Rasul's face expressed a mild ruefulness, as if he wished he had been included in the action. Quinn, on the other hand, was pressing his mouth in such a grim line that you couldn't have fed him a straight pin. There was a fence to mend.

But as we'd walked out of Hadley's apartment, the queen had told me specifically not to share her story with anyone else, emphasis on the anyone . I would just have to think of a way to let Quinn know, without letting him know .

With no discussion or social chitchat, the vampires piled into their car. My brain was so crowded with ideas and conjectures and everything in between that I felt punch-drunk. I wanted to call my brother, Jason, and tell him he wasn't so irresistible after all, it was the fairy blood in him, just to see what he'd say. No, wait, Andre had implied that humans weren't affected by the nearness of fairies like vampires were. That is, humans didn't want to consume fairies, but did find them sexually attractive. (I thought of the crowd that always surrounded Claudine at Merlotte's.) And Andre had said that other supernaturals were attracted by fairy blood too, just not in the eat-'em-up way that vamps were. Wouldn't Eric be relieved? He would be so glad to know he didn't really love me! It was the fairy blood all along!

I watched the royal limo drive away. While I was fighting a wave compounded of about six different emotions, Quinn was fighting only one.

He was right in front of me, his face angry. "How'd she talk you into it, Sookie?" he asked. "If you'd yelled, I'd have been right up there. Or maybe you wanted to do that? I would have sworn you weren't the type."

"I haven't gone to bed with anyone this evening," I said. I looked him straight in the eyes. After all, this wasn't revealing anything the queen had told me, this was just… correcting an error. "It's fine if others think that," I said carefully. "Just not you."

He looked down at me for a long moment, his eyes searching mine as if he were reading some writing on the back of my eyeballs.

"Would you like to go to bed with someone this evening?" he asked. He kissed me. He kissed me for a long, long time, as we stood glued together in the courtyard. The witches did not return; the vampires stayed gone. Only the occasional car going by in the street or a siren heard in the distance reminded me we were in the middle of a city. This was as different from being held by Andre as I could imagine. Quinn was warm, and I could feel his muscles move beneath his skin. I could hear him breathe, and I could feel his heartbeat. I could sense the churn of his thoughts, which were mostly now centered on the bed he knew must be somewhere upstairs in Hadley's apartment. He loved the smell of me, the touch of me, the way my lips felt… and a large part of Quinn was attesting to that fact. That large part was pressed between us right at this very moment.

I'd gone to bed with two other males, and both times it hadn't worked out well. I hadn't known enough about them. I'd acted on impulse. You should learn from your mistakes. For a second, I wasn't feeling especially smart.