two seconds.

“I’m protecting you,” he said, his voice not quite as neutral as usual.

“Had it occurred to you that I—”

And I stopped short. I closed my eyes. I counted to ten.

When I ventured a look at Bill, his eyes were fixed on my face, unblinking. I could practically hear the gears mesh.

“You—don’t need protection?” he guessed softly. “You are protecting—me?”

I didn’t say anything. I can do that.

But he took the back of my skull in his hand. He turned my head to him as though I were a puppet. (This was getting to be an annoying habit of his.) He looked so hard into my eyes that I thought I had tunnels burned into my brain.

I pursed my lips and blew into his face. “Boo,” I said. I was very uncomfortable. I glanced at the people in the bar, letting my guard down, listening.

“Boring,” I told him. “These people are boring.”

“Are they, Sookie? What are they thinking?” It was a relief to hear his voice, no matter that his voice was a little odd.

“Sex, sex, sex.” And that was true. Every single person in that bar had sex on the brain. Even the tourists, who mostly weren’t thinking about having sex with the vampires themselves, but were thinking about the fang-bangers having sex with the vampires.

“What are you thinking about, Sookie?”

“Not sex,” I answered promptly and truthfully. I’d just gotten an unpleasant shock.

“Is that so?”

“I was thinking about the chances of us getting out of here without any trouble.”

“Why were you thinking about that?”

“Because one of the tourists is a cop in disguise, and he just went to the bathroom, and he knows that a vampire is in there, sucking on the neck of a fang-banger. He’s already called the police on his little radio.”

“Out,” he said smoothly, and we were out of the booth swiftly and moving for the door. Pam had vanished, but as we passed Eric’s table, Bill gave him some sign. Just as smoothly, Eric eased from his seat and rose to his magnificent height, his stride so much longer than ours that he passed out the door first, taking the arm of the bouncer and propelling her outside with us.

As we were about to go out the door, I remembered the bartender, Long Shadow, had answered my questions willingly, so I turned and jabbed my finger in the direction of the door, unmistakably telling him to leave. He looked as alarmed as a vampire can look, and as Bill yanked me through the double doors, he was throwing down his towel.

Outside, Eric was waiting outside by his car—a Corvette, naturally.

“There’s going to be a raid,” Bill said.

“How do you know?”

Bill stuck on that one.

“Me,” I said, getting him off the hook.

Eric’s wide blue eyes shone even in the gloom of the parking lot. I was going to have to explain.

“I read a policeman’s mind,” I muttered. I snuck a look to see how Eric was taking this, and he was staring at me the same way the Monroe vampires had. Thoughtful. Hungry.

“That’s interesting,” he said. “I had a psychic once. It was incredible.”

“Did the psychic think so?” My voice was tarter than I’d meant it to be.

I could hear Bill’s indrawn breath.

Eric laughed. “For a while,” he answered ambiguously.

We heard sirens in the distance, and without further words Eric and the bouncer slid into his car and were gone into the night, the car seeming quieter than others’ cars, somehow. Bill and I buckled up hastily, and we were leaving the parking lot by one exit just as the police were coming in by another. They had their vampire van with them, a special prisoner transport with silver bars. It was driven by two cops who were of the fanged persuasion, and they sprang out of their van and reached the club door with a speed that rendered them just blurs on my human vision.

We had driven a few blocks when suddenly Bill pulled into the parking lot of yet another darkened strip mall.

“What—?” I began, but got no further. Bill had unclipped my seat belt, moved the seat back, and grabbed me before I had finished my sentence. Frightened that he was angry, I pushed against him at first, but I might as well have been heaving against a tree. Then his mouth located mine, and I knew what he was.

Oh, boy, could he kiss. We might have problems communicating on some levels, but this wasn’t one of them. We had a great time