maybe he was too far from inscrutable. He was probably insulting the hell out of me, and I was too dumb to know it.

Pam was dressed, as always, in sort of middle-class anonymous clothes. This evening it was a pair of winter white knit pants and a blue sweater. Her blond hair was shining, straight and loose, down her back. She looked like Alice in Wonderland with fangs.

“Have you found out anything else about Bill?” I asked, when they’d all had a swallow of their drinks.

Eric said, “A little.”

I folded my hands in my lap and waited.

“I know Bill’s been kidnapped,” he said, and the room swam around my head for a second. I took a deep breath to make it stop.

“Who by?” Grammar was the least of my worries.

“We aren’t sure,” Chow told me. “The witnesses are not agreeing.” His English was accented, but very clear.

“Let me at them,” I said. “If they’re human, I’ll find out.”

“If they were under our dominion, that would be the logical thing to do,” Eric said agreeably. “But, unfortunately, they’re not.”

Dominion, my foot. “Please explain.” I was sure I was showing extraordinary patience under the circumstances.

“These humans owe allegiance to the king of Mississippi.”

I knew my mouth was falling open, but I couldn’t seem to stop it. “Excuse me,” I said, after a long moment, “but I could have sworn you said . . . the king? Of Mississippi?”

Eric nodded without a trace of a smile.

I looked down, trying to keep a straight face. Even under the circumstances, it was impossible. I could feel my mouth twitch. “For real?” I asked helplessly. I don’t know why it seemed even funnier that Mississippi had a king—after all, Louisiana had a queen—but it did. I reminded myself I wasn’t supposed to know about the queen. Check.

The vampires looked at one another. They nodded in unison.

“Are you the king of Louisiana?” I asked Eric, giddy with all my mental effort to keep varying stories straight. I was laughing so hard that it was all I could do to keep upright in the chair. Possibly there was a note of hysteria.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I am the sheriff of Area 5.”

That really set me off. I had tears running down my face, and Chow was looking uneasy. I got up, made myself some Swiss Miss microwave hot chocolate, and stirred it with a spoon so it would cool off. I was calming down as I performed the little task, and by the time I returned to the table, I was almost sober.

“You never told me all this before,” I said, by way of explanation. “You all have divided up America into kingdoms, is that right?”

Pam and Chow looked at Eric with some surprise, but he didn’t regard them. “Yes,” he said simply. “It has been so since vampires came to America. Of course, over the years the system’s changed with the population. There were far fewer vampires in America for the first two hundred years, because the trip over was so perilous. It was hard to work out the length of the voyage with the available blood supply.” Which would have been the crew, of course. “And the Louisiana Purchase made a great difference.”

Well, of course itwould . I stifled another bout of giggles. “And the kingdoms are divided into . . . ?”

“Areas. Used to be called fiefdoms, until we decided that was too behind the times. A sheriff controls each area. As you know, we live in Area 5 of the kingdom of Louisiana. Stan, whom you visited in Dallas, is sheriff of Area 6 in the kingdom of . . . in Texas.”

I pictured Eric as the sheriff of Nottingham, and when that had lost amusement value, as Wyatt Earp. I was definitely on the light-headed side. I really felt pretty bad physically. I told myself to pack away my reaction to this information, to focus on the immediate problem. “So, Bill was kidnapped in daylight, I take it?”

Multiple nods all around.

“This kidnapping was witnessed by some humans who live in the kingdom of Mississippi.” I just loved to say that. “And they’re under the control of a vampire king?”

“Russell Edgington. Yes, they live in his kingdom, but a few of them will give me information. For a price.”

“This king won’t let you question them?”

“We haven’t asked him yet. It could be Bill was taken on his orders.”

That raised a whole new crop of questions, but I told myself to stay focused. “How can