CLUB DEAD Page 0,79

might not be expecting her, but they won't turn her away, either, I'm sure. Especially if she says she has a message for Russell from the queen of Louisiana, or if she says she has something she wants to return to Russell ..." He shrugged, as if to say surely we could make up a good story.

I didn't want to go back in there. I thought of poor Bubba, and tried to worry about his fate - which he might have already met - but I was just too weak to worry about it.

"Flag of truce?" I suggested. I cleared my throat. "Do the vampires have such a thing?"

Eric looked thoughtful. "Of course, then I'd have to explain who I am," he said.

Happiness had made Alcide a lot easier to read. He was thinking about how soon he could call Debbie.

I opened my mouth, reconsidered, shut it, opened it again. What the hell. "Know who pushed me in the trunk and slammed it shut?" I asked Alcide. His green eyes locked onto me. His face became still, contained, as if he was afraid emotion would leak out. He turned and left the room, pulling the door shut behind him. For the first time, I registered that I was back in the guest bedroom in his apartment.

"So, who did the deed, Sookie?" Eric asked.

"His ex-girlfriend. Not so ex, after last night."

"Why would she do that?" Bill asked.

There was another significant silence. "Sookie was represented as Alcide's new girlfriend to gain entree to the club," Eric said delicately.

"Oh," Bill said. "Why did you need to go to the club?"

"You must have gotten hit on the head a few times, Bill," Eric said coldly. "She was trying to 'hear' where they had taken you."

This was getting too close to things Bill and I had to talk about alone.

"It's dumb to go back in there," I said. "What about a phone call?"

They both stared at me like I was turning into a frog.

"Well, what a good idea," Eric said.

***

The phone, as it turned out, was just listed under Russell Edgington's name; not "Mansion of Doom," or "Vampires R Us." I worked on getting my story straight as I downed the contents of a big opaque plastic mug. I hated the taste of the synthetic blood Bill insisted I drink, so he'd mixed it with apple juice, and I was trying not to look as I gulped it down.

They'd made me drink it straight when they'd gotten up to Alcide's apartment that evening; and I didn't ask them how. At least I knew why the clothes I'd borrowed from Bernard were really horrible now. I looked like I'd had my throat cut, instead of mangled by Bill's painful bite. It was still very sore, but it was better.

Of course I had been picked to make the call. I never met a man yet, above the age of sixteen, who liked to talk on the phone.

"Betty Joe Pickard, please," I said to the male voice that answered the phone.

"She's busy," he said promptly.

"I need to talk to her right now."

"She's otherwise engaged. May I take your number?"

"This is the woman who saved her life last night." No point beating around the bush. "I need to talk to her, right now. Tout de suite."

"I'll see."

There was a long pause. I could hear people walking by the phone from time to time, and I heard a lot of cheering that sounded as if it was corning from a distance. I didn't want to think about that too much. Eric, Bill, and Alcide - who had finally stomped back into the room when Bill had asked him if we could borrow his phone - were standing there making all kinds of faces at me, and I just shrugged back.

Finally, there was the click, click, click of heels on tile.

"I'm grateful, but you can't bank on this forever," Betty Jo Pickard said briskly. "We arranged for your healing, you had a place to stay to recuperate. We didn't erase your memory," she added, as if that was a little detail that had escaped her until just this moment. "What have you called to ask?"

"You have a vampire there, an Elvis impersonator?"

"So?" Suddenly she sounded very wary. "We caught an intruder within our walls last night, yes."

"This morning, after I left your place, I was stopped again," I said. We had figured this would sound convincing because I sounded so hoarse and weak.

There was a long silence while she thought through