she’d been standing at the top of the stairs listening to every word.
And here came Octavia in her favorite green pants and striped long-sleeved shirt, looking as dignified and sweet as an elderly white-haired black woman can look. Ruby Dee has nothing on Octavia.
“Hello,” she said, beaming. Though she looked like everyone’s favorite granny, Octavia was a powerful witch who could cast spells with almost surgical precision. She’d had a lifetime of practice in concealing her ability. “Sookie didn’t tell us she was expecting company, or we would have cleaned up the house.” Octavia beamed some more. She swept a hand to indicate the spotless living room. It would never be featured in Southern Living, but it was clean, by golly.
“Looks great to me,” Weiss said respectfully. “I wish my house looked this neat.” She was telling the truth. Weiss had two teenagers and a husband and three dogs. I felt a lot of sympathy—and maybe some envy—for Agent Weiss.
“Sookie, I’ll bring tea for your guests while you talk,” Octavia said in her sweetest voice. “You just sit down and visit a spell.” The agents were settled on the couch and looking around the shabby living room with interest when she returned with napkins and two glasses of sweet tea, ice rattling in a pleasant way. I rose from the chair opposite the couch to put napkins in front of them, and Octavia placed the glasses on the napkins. Lattesta took a large swallow. The corner of Octavia’s mouth twitched just a little when he made a startled face and then did his best to amend his expression to pleased surprise.
“What did you-all want to ask me?” Time to get down to brass tacks. I smiled at them brightly, my hands folded in my lap, my feet parallel, and my knees clamped together.
Lattesta had brought in a briefcase, and now he put it on the coffee table and opened it. He extracted a picture and handed it to me. It had been taken in the middle of the afternoon in the city of Rhodes a few months before. The picture was clear enough, though the air around the people in it was blighted with the clouds of dust that had billowed up from the collapsed Pyramid of Gizeh.
I kept my eyes on the picture, I kept my face smiling, but I couldn’t stop my heart from sinking into my feet.
In the picture, Barry the Bellboy and I were standing together in the rubble of the Pyramid, the vampire hotel that a splinter Fellowship group had blown up the previous October. I was somewhat more recognizable than my companion, because Barry was standing in profile. I was facing the camera, unaware of it, my eyes on Barry’s face. We were both covered in dirt and blood, ash and dust.
“That’s you, Miss Stackhouse,” Lattesta said.
“Yes, it is.” Pointless to deny the woman in the picture was me, but I sure would have loved to have done so. Looking at the picture made me feel sick because it forced me to remember that day all too clearly.
“So you were staying at the Pyramid at the time of the explosion?”
“Yes, I was.”
“You were there in the employ of Sophie-Anne Leclerq, a vampire businesswoman. The so-called Queen of Louisiana.”
I started to tell him there had been no “so-called” about it, but discretion blocked those words. “I flew up there with her,” I said instead.
“And Sophie-Anne Leclerq sustained severe injuries in the blast?”
“I understand she did.”
“You didn’t see her after the explosion?”
“No.”
“Who is this man standing with you in the picture?”
Lattesta hadn’t identified Barry. I had to keep my shoulders stiff so they wouldn’t sag with relief. I shrugged. “He came up to me after the blast,” I said. “We were in better shape than most, so we helped search for survivors.” Truth, but not the whole truth. I’d known Barry for months before I’d encountered him at the convention at the Pyramid. He’d been there in the service of the King of Texas. I wondered how much about the vamp hierarchy the FBI actually knew.
“How did the two of you search for survivors?” Lattesta asked.
That was a very tricky question. At that time, Barry was the only other telepath I’d ever met. We’d experimented by holding hands to increase our “wattage,” and we’d looked for brain signatures in the piles of debris. I took a deep breath. “I’m good at finding things,” I said. “It seemed important to help. So many people hurt so bad.”