Charlaine Harris - Deadlocked

“I’m okay. I don’t know if you’ve heard what happened here at Eric’s last night …”

“Yeah, I heard something about it.”

No surprise there. Who needed the Internet, when you had the supes around? “Then you know Mustapha is missing.”

“Too bad he’s not pack. We’d find him.”

Pointed, much? “After al , he’s a werewolf,” I said briskly. “And the police do want him. I know he could explain everything if he’d just come in to talk to them. So maybe if someone in the pack sees him somewhere, you could let me know? He cal ed me—or at least someone using his phone did. I missed the cal , and I’m real y worried about him.”

“I’l let you know if I find out anything,” Alcide promised. “I need to talk to you about something else, though.”

I waited to hear what he had in mind.

“Sookie, you stil there?”

“Yes, I’m just waiting.”

“I’m hearing a complete lack of enthusiasm.”

“Wel , considering last time.” I didn’t even need to finish the sentence. Finding Alcide naked in my bed had not endeared him to me. There was a lot to like about the werewolf, but his timing had never matched mine and he’d taken some bad advice.

“Okay, I was wrong there. We had a good result from you acting as our shaman, but I was wrong to ask you to do it, and I freely acknowledge that.” Alcide said that kind of proudly.

Had he joined Werewolf Manipulators Anonymous? I looked at myself in the mirror and widened my eyes, to let my reflection know what I thought about the conversation.

“Good to hear that,” I said. “What’s up?”

Rueful chuckle. Charming rueful chuckle. “Wel , you’re right, Sookie, I do have a favor to ask you.”

I showed myself Amazed in the mirror. “Do tel ,” I said politely.

“You know my pack enforcer has been going out with your boss for a while.”

“I know that.” Cut to the chase.

“Wel , she wants you to help her out with something, and since you two have had your differences … for whatever reason … she asked me if I’d cal you.”

Sneaky Jannalynn. This was like a double … fake something. It was true I liked Jannalynn much less than I did Alcide. It was also true (though perhaps Alcide didn’t know this) that Jannalynn suspected my relationship with Sam was far more than it should be between an employee and her boss. If this were the fifties, she’d be checking Sam’s col ars for lipstick stains. (Did people do that anymore? Why did women kiss col ars, anyway? Besides, Sam almost always wore T-shirts.)

“What does she want me to help her with?” I asked, hoping my voice was suitably neutral.

“She’s going to propose to Sam, and she wants you to help her set the stage.”

I sat down on the end of the bed. I didn’t want to make faces in the mirror anymore. “She wants me to help her ask Sam to marry her?” I said slowly. I’d helped Andy Bel efleur propose to Hal eigh, but I couldn’t imagine Jannalynn wanting me to hide an engagement ring in a basket of French fries.

“She wants you to get Sam to drive down to Mimosa Lake,” Alcide said. “She’s borrowed a cottage down there, and she wants to surprise Sam with a dinner, kind of romantic, you know. I guess she’d spring the question there.” Alcide sounded oddly unenthusiastic or perhaps unconvinced that he should be relaying this request.

“No,” I said immediately. “I won’t do it. She’l have to get Sam there on her own.” I could just envision Sam imagining that I wanted him to go out to the lake with me, only to be confronted by Jannalynn and whatever she thought of as a romantic dinner—live rabbits they could chase together, maybe. The whole scenario made me acutely uncomfortable. I could feel a flush of anger creeping up my neck.

Alcide said, “Sookie, that’s not …”

“Not helpful or obliging? I don’t want to be, Alcide. There’s just too much room for disaster in that plan. Plus, I don’t think you understand Jannalynn too wel .” What I wanted to say was, “I think she’s trying to get me somewhere alone to kil me, or to stage some scene to make me look guilty.” But I didn’t.

There was a long silence.

“I guess Jannalynn was right,” he said, letting his dismay into his voice. “You do have it in for her. What, you don’t think she’s good enough for Sam?”

“No. As a matter of fact, I don’t. Tel her I …” I automatical y started to say I was sorry I couldn’t oblige her, and then I realized that would be a big fat lie. “I’m just … unable to be of assistance. She can do her own proposing. Good-bye, Alcide.” Without waiting to hear his response, I hung up.

Had his enforcer wrapped Alcide around her little finger, or what?

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I meant Alcide or Jannalynn or both of them.

I fumed as I gathered my few things together. Help that bitch propose to Sam? When Hel froze over. When pigs flew! Plus, as I’d told Alcide, if I’d been fool enough to go out to Mimosa Lake, she’d have staged some drama, for sure.

As I locked Eric’s kitchen door behind me and stomped out to my car in my now-painful high heels, I said words that had seldom crossed my lips before. I slammed my car door shut behind me, earning a sharp look from a sleek, wel -groomed neighbor of Eric’s who was weeding the flower bed around her mailbox.

“Next people wil be asking me to be a surrogate mom for their babies, cause it would be inconvenient for them to carry their own,” I said, sneering in an unattractive way into my rearview mirror. That reminded me of Tara, and I tried her number again, but with no better result.

I pul ed in behind my house about two o’clock. Dermot’s car was stil there. When I saw home, it was like I gave myself permission to run into a wal of weariness. It felt good that my great-uncle would be waiting for me. I grabbed my little bag of dirty clothes and my purse and trudged to the back door.

Tossing the clothes bag on the top of the washer on the back porch, I put my hand on the knob of the kitchen door, registering as I did so that two people were waiting inside.

Maybe Claude was back? Maybe al the problems in Faery had been solved, and everyone at Hooligans would be returning to the wonderful world of the fae. How many problems would that leave me with? Maybe only three or four big ones.

I was feeling honestly optimistic when I pushed the door open and registered the identity of the two men seated at the table.

Definitely an OSM. One man was Dermot, whom I’d expected. The other was Mustapha, whom I hadn’t.

“Geez Louise, where have you been?” I thought I was going to yel , but it came out as a startled wheeze.

“Sookie,” he said, in his deep voice.

“We thought you were dead! We were scared sick about you! What happened?”

“Take a deep breath,” Mustapha said. “Sit down and just … take a breath. I got some things to tel you. I can’t give you a ful answer. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s real y a life or a death.”

His statement cut off the next seven questions poised to pour off my tongue. Tossing my purse on the counter, I pul ed out a chair, sat, and took a deep breath as he’d advised me. I gave him al my attention. For the first time, I absorbed his ragged appearance. Mustapha’s grooming had always been meticulous. It was a shock to see him rumpled, his precise haircut uneven, his boots scuffed. “Did you see who kil ed that girl?” I asked. I had to.

He looked at me, looked hard. He didn’t answer.

“Did you kil that girl?” I tried again.

“I did not.”

“And because of this situation you referred to, you can’t tel me who did.”