CLUB DEAD Page 0,18

a cat in his enjoyment of contact.

"Eric." He'd given me more information than he knew.

"Mmm?"

"Really, what will the queen do to you if you can't produce Bill on the date her project is due?"

My question got the desired result. Eric pulled away from me and looked down at me with eyes bluer than mine and harder than mine and colder than the Arctic waste.

"Sookie, you really don't want to know," he said. "Producing his work would be good enough. Bill's actual presence would be a bonus."

I returned his look with eyes almost as cold as his. "And what will I get in return for doing this for you?" I asked.

Eric managed to look both surprised and pleased. "If Pam hadn't hinted to you about Bill, his safe return would have been enough and you would have jumped at the chance to help," Eric reminded me.

"But now I know about Lorena."

"And knowing, do you agree to do this for us?"

"Yes, on one condition."

Eric looked wary. "What would that be?" he asked.

"If something happens to me, I want you to take her out."

He gaped at me for at least a whole second before he roared with laughter. "I would have to pay a huge fine," he said when he'd quit chortling. "And I'd have to accomplish it first. That's easier said than done. She's three hundred years old."

"You've told me that what will happen to you if all this comes unraveled would be pretty horrible," I reminded him.

"True."

"You've told me you desperately need me to do this for you."

"True."

"That's what I ask in return."

"You might make a decent vampire, Sookie," Eric said finally. "All right. Done. If anything happens to you, she'll never fuck Bill again."

"Oh, it's not just that."

"No?" Eric looked very skeptical, as well he might.

"It's because she betrayed him."

Eric's hard blue eyes met mine. "Tell me this, Sookie: Would you ask this of me if she were a human?" His wide, thin-lipped mouth, most often amused, was in a serious straight line.

"If she were a human, I'd take care of it myself," I said, and stood to show him to the door.

After Eric had driven away, I leaned against the door and laid my cheek against the wood. Did I mean what I'd told him? I'd long wondered if I were really a civilized person, though I kept striving to be one. I knew that at the moment I'd said I would take care of Lorena myself, I had meant it. There was something pretty savage inside me, and I'd always controlled it. My grandmother had not raised me to be a murderess.

As I plodded down the hall to my bedroom, I realized that my temper had been showing more and more lately. Ever since I'd gotten to know the vampires.

I couldn't figure out why that should be. They exerted tremendous control over themselves. Why should mine be slipping?

But that was enough introspection for one night.

I had to think about tomorrow.

Chapter Four

Since it seemed I was going out of town, there was laundry to be done, and stuff in the refrigerator that needed throwing away. I wasn't particularly sleepy after spending so long in bed the preceding day and night, so I got out my suitcase, opened it, and tossed some clothes into the washer out on the freezing back porch. I didn't want to think about my own character any longer. I had plenty of other items to mull over.

Eric had certainly adopted a shotgun approach to bending me to his will. He'd bombarded me with many reasons to do what he wanted: intimidation, threat, seduction, an appeal for Bill's return, an appeal for his (and Pam's, and Chow's) life and/or well-being - to say nothing of my own health. "I might have to torture you, but I want to have sex with you; I need Bill, but I'm furious with him because he deceived me; I have to keep peace with Russell Edgington, but I have to get Bill back from him; Bill is my serf, but he's secretly working more for my boss."

Darn vampires. You can see why I'm glad their glamour doesn't affect me. It's one of the few positives my mind-reading ability has yielded me. Unfortunately, humans with psychic glitches are very attractive to the undead.

I certainly could not have foreseen any of this when I'd become attached to Bill. Bill had become almost as necessary to me as water; and not entirely because of my deep feelings for him, or my physical