Charlaine Harris - Deadlocked

“Though I can hardly complain about Sigebert, since he would have kil ed me very shortly,” Felipe observed, with an air of being absolutely fair.

Final y! “I wondered if you remembered that part,” I muttered. I may have sounded a wee tad sardonic.

“You did do me a great service,” he said. “I’m just trying to decide how much of a thorn you are in my side now.”

“Oh, come on !” I was real y put out. “I haven’t done anything to you that you couldn’t have taken care of before it even happened.”

Pam and Horst blinked, but I saw that Felipe understood me. “You maintain that if I had been more … proactive, you would have been in no danger from Bruno and Corinna? That Victor would have stayed down in New Orleans, where the regent should be, and that, therefore, Eric could have run Area Five the way he has always run it?”

He had it in a nutshel , as my grandmother would have said. But (at least this time) I kept my mouth shut.

Eric, by my side, was rigid as a statue.

I’m not sure what would have happened next, but Bil appeared suddenly from the kitchen. He looked as excited as Bil ever looked.

“There’s a dead girl on the front lawn,” he said, “and the police are here.”

A variety of reactions passed on Felipe’s face in a few seconds.

“Then Eric, as the homeowner, must go out and talk to the good officers,” he said. “We’l set things to rights in here. Eric, be sure to invite them in.”

Eric was already on his feet. He cal ed to Mustapha, who didn’t appear. He and Pam exchanged a worried glance. Without looking at me, Eric reached back, and I stood to slide my hand into his. Time to close the ranks.

“Who is the dead woman?” he asked Bil .

“A skinny brunette,” he said. “A human.”

“Fang marks in her neck? Bright dress, mostly green and pink?” I asked, my heart sinking.

“I didn’t get that close,” Bil said.

“How did the police find out there was a body?” Pam said. “Who cal ed them?” We moved toward the front door. Now I could hear the noise outside. With the drapes shut, we hadn’t been able to see the flashing lights. Through the gap in the heavy fabric, I could see them.

“I never heard a scream or any other alarm,” Bil said. “So I don’t know why a neighbor would have cal ed … but someone did.”

“You wouldn’t have summoned the police yourself, for any reason?” Eric said, and there was the smel of danger in the room.

Bil looked surprised—which is to say, his eyebrows twitched and he frowned. “I can’t think of a reason I would do such a thing. On the contrary—

since I was outside patrol ing, I’l obviously be a suspect.”

“Where is Mustapha?” Eric said.

Bil stared at Eric. “I have no idea,” he answered. “He was patrol ing the perimeter, as he put it, earlier in the evening. I haven’t seen him since Sookie came in here.”

“I saw him in the kitchen,” I said. “We talked.” A presence caught my attention. “Brain at the front door,” I said.

Eric strode to the little-used front door, and since I was in tow, I trotted along. Eric threw the door open, and the woman standing on the porch was left standing foolishly poised to knock.

She looked up at Eric, and I could read her thoughts. To this woman, he was beautiful, disgusting, repel ent, and oddly fascinating. She didn’t like the “beautiful” and “fascinating” parts. She also didn’t like being caught on the wrong foot.

“Mr. Northman?” she said, her hand dropping to her side like a stone. “I’m Detective Cara Ambrosel i.”

“Detective Ambrosel i, you seem to know who I am already. This is my dearest one, Sookie Stackhouse.”

“Is there real y a dead person on the lawn?” I asked. “Who is she?” I didn’t have to make up the curiosity and anxiety in my voice. I real y, real y wanted to know.

“We were hoping you could help us with that,” the detective said. “We’re pretty sure the dead woman was leaving your house, Mr. Northman.”

“Why do you think so? You’re sure it was this house?” Eric said.

“Vampire bites on her neck, party clothes, your front yard. Yeah, we’re pretty sure,” Ambrosel i said drily. “If you could just step over here, keeping your feet on the stepping-stones …”

The stones, set at regular intervals in the grass, curved around to the driveway. The dark green and deep pink of the crepe myrtles coordinated with the pink and green of the dress worn by the dead woman. She was lying at their base, a little inclined to her left side, in a position disturbingly similar to the way she’d lain across Eric’s lap when I’d first seen her. Her dark hair had fal en across her neck.

“That’s the woman no one knew,” I said. “At least, I think so. I only saw her for a minute. She didn’t tel me her name.”

“What was she doing when you saw her?”

“She was donating some blood to my boyfriend, here,” I said.

“Donating blood?”

“Yeah, she told us she’d done it before and she was happy to give,” I said, my voice calm and matter-of-fact. “She definitely volunteered.”

There was a moment of silence.

“You’re kidding me,” Cara Ambrosel i said, but not as if she were at al amused. “You just stood there and let your boyfriend suck the neck of another woman? While you did … what?”

“It’s about food, not about sex,” I said, more or less lying. It was about food, but quite often it was also definitely about sex. “Pam and I talked about girl stuff.” I smiled at Pam. I was aiming for “winsome.”

Pam gave me a very level look in reply. I could imagine her looking at dead kittens that way. She said, “I love the color of Sookie’s toenails. We talked about pedicures.”

“So you two talked about your toenails while Mr. Northman fed off this woman, in the same room. Cozy! And then, what, Mr. Northman? After you had your little snack, you just gave her some money and sent her on her way? Did you get Mr. Compton to escort her to her car?”

“Money?” Eric asked. “Detective, are you cal ing this poor woman a whore? Of course I didn’t give her any money. She arrived, she volunteered, she said she had to go, and she left.”

“So what did she get out of your little transaction?”

“Excuse me, Detective, I can answer that,” I said. “When you’re giving blood, it’s real y very pleasurable. Usual y.” Of course, that was at the wil of the vamp doing the biting. I shot a quick glance at Eric. He’d bitten me before without bothering to make it fun, and it had hurt like hel .

“Then why weren’t you the donor, Ms. Stackhouse? Why did you let the dead girl have al the fun of feeding him?”

Geez! Persistent. “I can’t give blood as often as Eric needs it,” I said. I stopped there. I was in danger of overexplaining.

Ambrosel i’s neck whipped around as she sprung the next question on Eric.

“But you could survive just fine on a synthetic blood drink, Mr. Northman. Why’d you bite the girl?”

“It tastes better,” Eric said, and one of the uniforms spit on the ground.

“Did you decide you’d like a taste, Mr. Compton? Seeing as how she’d already been tapped?”

Bil looked mildly disgusted. “No, ma’am. That wouldn’t have been safe for the young lady.”

“As it turns out, she wasn’t safe, anyway. And none of you knows her name, or how she got here? Why she came to this house? You didn’t cal some kind of I need a drink hotline … like a vampire escort service?”

We al shook our heads simultaneously, saying no to al these questions at once. “I thought she came with my other guests, the ones from out of town,” Eric said. “They brought some new friends they met at a bar.”