So here we went—the queen, Jade Flower, Andre, Sigebert, Wybert, and me. I guess I’ve been in company just as assorted, but I couldn’t tell you when. After a lot of corridor tromping, we entered a guarded garage and piled into a stretch limo. Andre jerked his thumb at one of the guards, indicating that the guard should drive. I hadn’t heard the baby-faced vampire utter a word, so far. To my pleasure, the driver was Rasul, who felt like an old friend compared to the others.
Sigebert and Wybert were uncomfortable in the car. They were the most inflexible vampires I’d ever met, and I wondered if their close association with the queen hadn’t been their undoing. They hadn’t had to change, and changing with the times was the key vampire survival technique before the Great Revelation. It remained so in countries that hadn’t accepted the existence of vampire with the tolerance America had shown. The two vampires would have been happy wearing skins and hand-woven cloth and would have looked perfectly at home in handmade leather boots, carrying shields on their arms.
“Your sheriff, Eric, came to speak to me last night,” the queen told me.
“I saw him at the hospital,” I said, hoping I sounded equally offhanded.
“You understand that the new vampire, the one that was a Were—he had no choice, you understand?”
“I get that a lot with vampires,” I said, remembering all the times in the past when Bill had explained things by saying he couldn’t help himself. I’d believed him at the time, but I wasn’t so sure any more. In fact, I was so profoundly tired and miserable I hardly had the heart to continue trying to wrap up Hadley’s apartment and her estate and her affairs. I realized that if I went home to Bon Temps, leaving unfinished business here, I’d just sit and brood when I got there.
I knew this, but at the moment, it was hard to face.
It was time for one of my self-pep talks. I told myself sternly I’d already enjoyed a moment or two of that very evening, and I would enjoy a few more seconds of every day until I built back to my former contented state. I’d always enjoyed life, and I knew I would again. But I was going to have to slog through a lot of bad patches to get there.
I don’t think I’ve ever been a person with a lot of illusions. If you can read minds, you don’t have many doubts about how bad even the best people can be.
But I sure hadn’t seen this coming.
To my horror, tears began sliding down my face. I reached into my little purse, pulled out a Kleenex, and patted my cheeks while all the vamps stared at me, Jade Flower with the most identifiable expression I’d seen on her face: contempt.
“Are you in pain?” the queen asked, indicating my arm.
I didn’t think she really cared; I was sure that she had schooled herself to give the correct human response for so long that it was a reflex.
“Pain of the heart,” I said, and could have bitten my tongue off.
“Oh,” she said. “Bill?”
“Yes,” I said, and gulped, doing my best to stop the display of emotion.
“I grieved for Hadley,” she said unexpectedly.
“It was good she had someone to care.” After a minute I said, “I would have been glad to know she was dead earlier than I did,” which was as cautiously as I could express it. I hadn’t found out my cousin was gone until weeks after the fact.
“There were reasons I had to wait to send Cataliades down,” Sophie-Anne said. Her smooth face and clear eyes were as impenetrable as a wall of ice, but I got the definite impression that she wished I hadn’t raised the subject. I looked at the queen, trying to pick up on some clue, and she gave a tiny flick of the eye toward Jade Flower, who was sitting on her right. I didn’t know how Jade Flower could be sitting in her relaxed position with the long sword strapped to her back. But I definitely had the feeling that behind her expressionless face and flat eyes, Jade Flower was listening to everything that transpired.
To be on the safe side, I decided I wouldn’t say anything at all, and the rest of the drive passed in silence.
Rasul didn’t want to take the limo into the courtyard, and I recalled that Diantha had parked on the