Dead as a doornail - By Charlaine Harris Page 0,84

to the grindstone.” Eric flipped the phone shut and began tossing it in the air and catching it, over and over.

“You knew Mickey and Franklin were doing something wrong to start with,” I said, shocked but oddly unsurprised. “You know their boss would be glad to find out they were breaking the rules, since her vamp was violating your territory. So this won’t affect you at all.”

“I only realized that when you told me what you wanted,” Eric pointed out, the very essence of reason. He grinned at me. “How could I know that your heart’s desire would be for me to help someone else?”

“What did you think I wanted?”

“I thought maybe you wanted me to pay for rebuilding your house, or you would ask me to help find out who’s shooting the Weres. Someone who could have mistaken you for a Were,” Eric told me, as if I should have known that. “Who had you been with before you were shot?”

“I’d been to visit Calvin Norris,” I said, and Eric looked displeased.

“So you had his smell on you.”

“Well, I gave him a hug good-bye, so yeah.”

Eric eyed me skeptically. “Had Alcide Herveaux been there?

“He came by the house site,” I said.

“Did he hug you, too?”

“I don’t remember,” I said. “It’s no big deal.”

“It is for someone looking for shifters and Weres to shoot. And you are hugging too many people.”

“Maybe it was Claude’s smell,” I said thoughtfully. “Gosh, I didn’t think of that. No, wait, Claude hugged me after the shooting. So I guess the fairy smell didn’t matter.”

“A fairy,” Eric said, the pupils of his eyes actually dilating. “Come here, Sookie.”

Ah-oh. I might have overplayed my hand out of sheer irritation.

“No,” I said. “I told you what you wanted, you did what I asked, and now you can go back to Shreveport and let me get some sleep. Remember?” I pointed to my bandaged shoulder.

“Then I’ll come to you,” Eric said, and knelt in front of me. He pressed against my legs and leaned over so his head was against my neck. He inhaled, held it, exhaled. I had to choke back a nervous laugh at the similarity the process held to smoking dope. “You reek,” Eric said, and I stiffened. “You smell of shifter and Were and fairy. A cocktail of other races.”

I stayed completely immobile. His lips were about two millimeters from my ear. “Should I just bite you, and end it all?” he whispered. “I would never have to think about you again. Thinking about you is an annoying habit, and one I want to be rid of. Or should I start arousing you, and discover if sex with you was really the best I’ve ever had?”

I didn’t think I was going to get a vote on this. I cleared my throat. “Eric,” I said, a little hoarsely, “we need to talk about something.”

“No. No. No,” he said. With each “no” his lips brushed my skin.

I was looking past his shoulder at the window. “Eric,” I breathed, “someone’s watching us.”

“Where?” His posture didn’t change, but Eric had shifted from a mood that was definitely dangerous to me to one that was dangerous for someone else.

Since the eyes-at-the-window scenario was an eerie echo of the situation the night my house had burned, and that night the skulker had proved to be Bill, I hoped the watcher might be Bill again. Maybe he was jealous, or curious, or just checking up on me. If the trespasser was a human, I could have read his brain and found out who he was, or at least what he intended; but this was a vampire, as the blank hole where the brain pattern should be had informed me.

“It’s a vampire,” I told Eric in the tiniest whisper I could manage, and he put his arms around me and pulled me into him.

“You’re so much trouble,” Eric said, and yet he didn’t sound exasperated. He sounded excited. Eric loved the action moments.

By then, I was sure that the lurker wasn’t Bill, who would have made himself known. And Charles was presumably busy at Merlotte’s, mixing daiquiris. That left one vampire in the area unaccounted for. “Mickey,” I breathed, my fingers gripping Eric’s shirt.

“Salome moved more quickly than I thought,” Eric said in a regular voice. “He’s too angry to obey her, I suppose. He’s never been in here, correct?”

“Correct.” Thank God.

“Then he can’t come inside.”

“But he can break the window,” I said as glass shattered to our left. Mickey had thrown