Charlaine Harris - Deadlocked

“Yes, that’s right,” Pam said. She’d read Ambrosel i’s body language the same way I had, and she was eyeing the detective thoughtful y.

“Please stay where you are. I have to return to Mr. Northman’s place to check something out,” Ambrosel i said. She was on her feet, gathering up her shoulder bag. “Givens, make sure everyone stays here until I say they can go.”

And just like that, she left.

Givens, a man with a starved, concave face, looked very unhappy. He cal ed a few more people in—al men, I noticed—and assigned one to each batch of us. “If they need to go to the restroom, send someone with ’em, don’t let ’em go alone,” he instructed the heavy guy in charge of our little group. “She’s the only one who should need to go,” he added, pointing at me.

Bored, I turned my chair around to watch the Nevada vamps for a while. Felipe, Horst, and Angie seemed to have had a lot of experience with the police. They sat together in silence, though a little downturn to one corner of Felipe’s lips told me he was mighty displeased. As a king, he probably hadn’t been treated like an ordinary vampire in a long time—not that humans knew who or what he was, but ordinarily Felipe would have several layers of insulation between him and the regular pitfal s of the vampire world. If I had to pick a word to describe the king of Arkansas, Nevada, and Louisiana, that word would be “miffed.”

He could hardly blame Eric for this turn of events. He might, anyway.

I switched my gaze to the human group in the glass-enclosed office. T-Rex was signing autographs for some of the uniforms. Cherie and Viveca were preening themselves, proud to be in such il ustrious company. Under his air of just-a-good-ole-boy, T-Rex was bored. He would have been glad to be somewhere else. When the little cluster of cops dispersed, he pul ed out his cel phone and cal ed his manager. I couldn’t tel what they were talking about, but from his thoughts I could read that T-Rex couldn’t think of anyone else to cal in the middle of the night. He was tired of conversation with his female companions, especial y Cherie, who could not keep her mouth shut.

I spotted a familiar face among the cops going to and fro in the big room. “Hey, Detective Coughlin!” I said, oddly happy to see someone I knew.

The middle-aged detective swung himself around, using his bel y as a fixed point. His hair was shorter than ever, and a bit grayer.

“Miss Stackhouse,” he said, coming over to us. “You found any more bodies?”

“No, sir,” I said. “But a woman was found dead in the front yard of Eric’s place, and I was in the house.” I jerked my head toward Eric, in case Coughlin didn’t know who he was. Pretty unlikely that a police officer in Shreveport wouldn’t know the city’s most prominent vampire, but it could happen.

“So, who you going with now, young lady?” Coughlin didn’t approve of me, but he didn’t hate me, either.

“Eric Northman,” I said, and I realized I didn’t sound at al happy about that.

“Out with the furries and in with the coldies, huh?”

Eric had been talking to Pam in a very low voice, but now he turned to stare at me.

“I guess so.” The first time I’d seen Detective Coughlin, I’d been with Alcide Herveaux. The second time, I’d been with Quinn the weretiger. They had been in their human forms then, and he hadn’t known their second identity since the two-natured hadn’t revealed their existence. By now he’d figured it out. Mike Coughlin might be slow and unimpressive, but he wasn’t stupid.

“So you’re with the party that came in with T-Rex?” he asked.

I wasn’t used to the humans being more interesting than the vampires. I smiled. “Yes, I met him tonight at Eric’s.”

“You ever see him wrestle?”

“No. He’s a big guy, huh?”

“Yeah, and he does a lot for the community, too. He takes toys to the kids in the hospital at Christmas and Easter.”

So, though T-Rex was not a wereanimal, he was two-faced. One side of him did community service and helped area charities raise money. The other side of him hit opponents upside the head with chairs and made out with women on other people’s dining room tables.

Mike Coughlin said, “If they rope me in to help question, I’l ask for you.”

“Thanks,” I said, wondering if that was real y anything to smile about. “But I hope I’m through with questions.”

He went off to have a closer look at Thad Rexford. Pam, Eric, Bil , and I sat together without exchanging a word.

Vampires are super at silence. They just go into motionless vampire mode. You would swear they were statues, they get so stil . I don’t know what they think about when they do this; maybe they don’t think at al , but just switch themselves off. It’s almost impossible for a human to do this. I guess deep meditation would be the closest state a breather could achieve, and I am no practitioner of meditation, deep or shal ow.

After a while, during which nothing much happened at al , Detective Coughlin came over to tel us we could go. He gave no explanation. Eric didn’t request one. I had been on the point of asking if I could curl up under someone’s desk. I was too tired to summon the energy to be resentful at our treatment.

Pam whipped out her cel phone to cal Fangtasia so someone would pick us up. Dawn wasn’t far away; Felipe and his party wanted to go directly to their vampire-safe rooms at the Trifecta, and the Shreveport vamps didn’t want to wait on a human cab.

While we were standing outside waiting on our ride, the three vampires turned to me. “What was it the man on the telephone was tel ing Cara Ambrosel i?” Pam asked. “What did they find?”

“They found a little glass vial, like florists stick individual flowers in?”

The vampires looked puzzled. I measured one off with my fingers. “Just big enough for one flower stem to soak in water,” I said. “The vial may have had a stopper on it, but they didn’t find that. The vial was on the ground underneath her. They think it had been tucked in her bra. It had traces of blood.”

They al considered that. “I’l bet you a demon’s dick that she had a bit of fairy blood in it,” Pam said. “She came into the house somehow, and when she got close to Eric, she uncorked the little vial and made herself irresistible.”

“Except he could have resisted,” I muttered, but they al ignored me. “And if that’s what happened, where is the stopper?”

We were al too tired to talk about this interesting development any further; at least, I was, and the other three didn’t.

In five minutes, Palomino showed up in a candy-apple-red Mustang. She was wearing the uniform the female waitstaff wore at the Trifecta, and there wasn’t much to it. I was too sleepy to ask her when she’d begun working at the casino. I climbed into the backseat with Bil , while Pam sat in Eric’s lap in the passenger front seat. We didn’t even discuss the seating.

Eric broke the silence by asking Palomino if anyone had heard from Mustapha.

The young vamp glanced over at him. Her hair was like corn silk and her skin was like milky caramel. The unusual combination had earned her the nickname, and that was the only thing I knew to cal her. I had no idea what had been written on her birth certificate.

“No, Master. No one has seen or heard from Mustapha.”

Bil silently took my hand. I silently let him. In the heat, his hand felt pleasantly cool.

“Everything al right at the club?” Eric said. “At least, as far as you know.”

“Yes, Master. I heard there was one disagreement, but Thalia settled it.”

“How big was the bil for this settling?”

“A broken arm, a broken leg.”

Thalia was ancient, incredibly strong, and notoriously short on patience.