Dead Reckoning (31 page)

“Miss Pam is outside,” Bubba said, looking sideways at Eric. “You and Mr. Eric doing okay in here?”

Bless his heart, he suspected Eric was hurting me, and he’d come in to check. Bubba was right; Eric was hurting me but not physically. I felt as though I were standing on the edge of a cliff, narrowly avoiding taking the step off the edge. I was pretty numb, but that wasn’t going to last.

At this interesting moment a knock at the front door announced the arrival of (I hoped) Audrina and Colton, our co-conspirators. I went to the door, the two vampires behind me. Feeling absolutely secure in doing so, I opened the front door. Sure enough, the human couple was standing on the front porch waiting, and each of them was gripped by a dripping, grim Pam. Pam’s blond straight hair was darker with rain and hanging in rattails. She looked like she could spit nails.

“Please come in,” I said politely. “And you, too, Pam.” After all, it was my house and she was my friend. “We need to put our heads together.” I thought of adding, “Though not literally,” when I flashed on the heads of Hod and Kelvin, but Audrina and Colton looked pretty frightened already. It was one thing to talk big in your trailer all alone. It was another thing to meet with desperate and terrifying people in a lonely house out in the woods. As I turned away to lead them to the kitchen, I decided to put out some drinks, a bucket of ice, and maybe a bowl of chips and dip.

It was time to get this assassination party started.

I’d think about other deaths later.

Audrina and Colton obviously couldn’t decide what was more amazing:
the threat of a sodden and beautiful (but menacing) Pam or the ruin of glory that was Bubba. They’d expected Eric, but Bubba was a complete surprise.

They were entranced. Though I whispered to them on our way through the living room not to call him by his real name, I didn’t know if they’d have enough self-control. Luckily for us all, they did. Bubba really, really, didn’t like being reminded of his past life. He had to be in a remarkable mood to sing.

Wait. Ha! Finally, I had a real idea.

They all sat around the table. Absorbed in figuring out my scheme, I got out the refreshments and pulled up a chair by Bubba. I had a floaty, surrealistic feeling. I simply couldn’t think about the crash and burn I’d just experienced. I had to think about this moment and this purpose.

Pam sat behind Eric so they wouldn’t meet each other’s eyes. They both looked miserable, and it was a look I’d seldom seen either of them wear. It didn’t look good on them. I felt somehow guilty about the breach between them, though it certainly wasn’t my fault. Or was it? I ran it through my mind. Nope, it wasn’t.

Eric proposed that he infiltrate his vampires into Vampire’s Kiss one night in disguise, and that they wait until the club was about to close and the crowds were thin. Then we would attack. And, of course, kill them all.

If Victor hadn’t been an employee of Felipe, king of three states, Eric’s scheme would have been workable, though there were some definite weak points. But surely killing a bunch of his vampires would piss off Felipe mightily, and I really couldn’t blame him.

Audrina had a plan, too, involving discovering Victor’s sleeping place and getting him while he was out for the day. Wow, that was fresh and original. However, it was a classic for a reason. Victor would be helpless.

“Except we don’t know where he sleeps,” I said, trying to slide the objection in there without sounding snooty.

“I do,” Audrina said proudly. “He sleeps in a big stone mansion. It’s set back from a parish road between Musgrave and Toniton. There’s one lone road in, and that’s it. There aren’t any trees around the house. It’s just grass.”

“Wow.” I was impressed. “How’d you track him down?”

“I know the guy who mows the yard,” she said. She grinned at me. “Dusty Kolinchek, remember him?”

“Sure,” I said, feeling a stir of interest. Dusty’s dad owned a fleet—okay, a small fleet—of lawn tractors and weed eaters, and every summer a group of Bon Temps high school boys earned their walking-around money working for Mr. Kolinchek. Dusty was inheriting the lawn-mowing empire, sounded like.

“He says that the house is almost empty during the day because Victor is paranoid about having anyone come in while he’s sleeping. He just has two bodyguards there, Dixie and Dixon Mayhew, and they’re some kind of wereanimals.”

“I know them,” I said. “They’re werepanthers. They’re good.” The Mayhew twins were tough and professional. “They must be strapped for cash to work for a vampire.” Now that my sister-in-law was dead and Calvin Norris had married Tanya Grissom, I didn’t see many of the werepanthers with any frequency. Calvin didn’t come into the bar much, and Jason seemed to see his former in-laws only at the full moon, when he became one of them . . . in a limited way, since he’d been bitten, not born, as a were.

“So maybe I could bribe the Mayhews if they’re that hard up,” Eric said. “You wouldn’t need to kill them, then. Less mess. But you humans would have to do the job, since Pam and I will be down for the day.”

“We’d have to search the house, because I bet the Mayhews don’t know exactly where he sleeps,” I said. “Though I’m sure they have to have a pretty good idea.” The vampire smell alone should help the twoeys zone in on where Victor slept, but it seemed kind of tacky to say that out loud.

Pam kind of waved her hand. Eric half turned, catching the motion out of the corner of his eye. “What?” he said. “Oh, you can speak.”

Pam looked relieved. She said, “I think when he leaves the club in the morning would be a good time. His attention is on whoever he’s going to feed on, and we might be able to attack then.”

These were all pretty straightforward plans, and maybe that was both their strength and their weakness. They were simple. And that meant they were predictable. Eric’s plan was the bloodiest, of course. There would certainly be loss of life. Audrina and Colton’s plan was the most human, since it depended on a day attack. Pam’s was possibly the best, since it was a night attack but not in a heavily peopled area, though the club exit was so obviously the weakest point that I felt sure whatever vampires Victor used as bodyguards—maybe the toothsome Antonio and Luis?—would be extra vigilant at such a moment.

“I have a plan,” I said.

It was like I’d suddenly stood up and unhooked my bra. They all looked at me simultaneously, with a combination of surprise and skepticism. I will say that most of the skepticism came from Audrina and Colton, who hardly knew me. Bubba had been sitting on the high stool beside the counter, sipping a TrueBlood with an unsatisfied air. He looked pleased when I pointed to him and said, “
He’s
the way.”

I laid out my idea, trying hard to sound confident, and when I was through, they began trying to poke holes in it. And Bubba was reluctant, at least initially.

In the end, Bubba said he would do it if Mr. Bill said it was a good idea. I phoned Bill. He was over in a flash, and the look he gave me when I let him in told me he was enjoying remembering how I looked wrapped in a tablecloth. Or even before I’d found the tablecloth. With an effort, I swallowed my confusion and explained everything to him. And after a few embellishments had been added, he agreed.

We went over the order of events again and again, trying to allow for every contingency. By three thirty in the morning, we were all in agreement. I was so tired I was asleep on my feet, and Audrina and Colton were barely able to stifle their yawns. Pam, who’d been stepping out of the room to call Immanuel periodically, preceded Eric out the door. She was anxious to get to the hospital. Bill and Bubba had departed for Bill’s house, where Bubba would spend the day. I was alone with Eric.

We looked at each other, both at a loss. I tried to put myself in his place, feel what he must feel, but I simply couldn’t do it. I couldn’t imagine that, say, my grandmother had decided who I should marry and then passed away, fully expecting me to carry out her wishes. I couldn’t imagine that I had to follow directions from beyond the grave, leave my home and go to a new place with people I didn’t know, have sex with a stranger, simply because someone else had wanted me to.

Even,
a little voice said inside me,
if the stranger was beautiful and wealthy and politically astute?

No,
I told myself stoutly.
Not even then.

“Can you put yourself in my place?” Eric asked, chiming in on my thoughts. We knew each other pretty well, without the bond. He took my hand and held it between his cold ones.

“No, actually, I can’t,” I said, as evenly as I could manage. “I’ve been trying. But I’m not used to that sort of long-distance manipulation. Even after death, Appius is controlling you, and I just can’t picture myself in that position.”

“Americans,” Eric said, and I couldn’t decide if he said it admiringly or with a mild exasperation.

“Not just Americans, Eric.”

“I feel very old.”

“You are very old-
fashioned
.” He was ancient-fashioned.

“I can’t ignore a signed document,” he said, almost angrily. “He made an agreement for me, and I was his to order. He created me.”

What could I say, in the face of such conviction? “I’m so glad he’s dead,” I told Eric, not caring that my bitterness was written on my face. Eric looked sad, or at least regretful, but there was nothing else to say. Eric didn’t mention spending what was left of the night with me, which was smart on his part.

After he left, I began checking all the windows and doors in the house. Since so many people had been in and out that day and night, it seemed a good idea. I wasn’t too surprised to see Bill out in the yard when I was locking the kitchen window over the sink.

Though he didn’t beckon to me, I took my weary self outside.

“What has Eric done to you?” he said.

I condensed the situation into a few sentences.

“What a dilemma,” Bill said, not totally displeased.

“So you’d feel the way Eric does?”

In an eerie echo, Bill took my hand just as Eric had earlier. “Not only did Appius already enter negotiations, so there are presumably legal documents on the table, but also I would have to give my maker’s wishes some consideration—as much as I hate to acknowledge that. You have no idea how strong the bond is. The years spent with one’s maker are the most important years of a vampire’s existence. As loathsome as I found Lorena, I have to admit that she did her best to teach me to be an effective vampire. Looking back on her life now—Judith and I talked about this, of course—Lorena betrayed her own maker, and then had years and years to regret it. The guilt drove her mad, we think.”

Well, I was glad Bill and Judith had gotten to talk over fun times in the old days with Mama Lorena—murderess, prostitute, torturer. I couldn’t really hold the prostitute part against her, since there hadn’t been that many ways for a woman alone to make a living in the old times, even a vampire woman. But the rest—no matter what her circumstances had been, no matter how hard her life before and after her first death, Lorena had been an evil bitch. I pulled my hand away from Bill.

“Good night,” I said. “I’m overdue for bed.”

“Are you angry with me?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “I’m just tired and sad.”

“I love you,” Bill said helplessly, as if he wished those magic words would heal me. But he knew they wouldn’t.

“That’s what you all keep saying,” I answered. “But it doesn’t seem to get me any happier.” I didn’t know if I had a valid point or if I was simply being self-pitying, but it was too late at night—no, too early in the morning—to have the clarity of mind to decide that. A few minutes later, I crawled into my bed in an empty house, and being alone felt pretty damn good.

I woke up at noon on Friday with two pressing thoughts. The first was,
Did Dermot renew my wards?
And the second was,
Oh my God, the baby shower is tomorrow!

After some coffee and pulling on my clothes, I called Hooligans. Bellenos answered.

“Hi,” I said. “Can I speak to Dermot? Is he better?”

“He’s well,” Bellenos said. “But he’s on his way to your house.”

“Oh, good! Listen, maybe you’ll know this. . . . Did he renew the wards on the house, or am I unprotected?”

“God forbid you should be with a fairy unprotected,” Bellenos said, trying to sound serious.

“No double entendres!”

“Okay, okay,” he said, and I could tell he was flashing that sharptoothed smile. “I myself put wards around your house, and I assure you they will hold.”

“Thanks, Bellenos,” I said, but I wasn’t completely happy that someone I trusted as little as Bellenos had been in charge of my protection.

“You’re welcome. Despite your doubts, I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“That’s good to know,” I said, keeping all expression out of my voice.

Bellenos laughed. “If you get too lonely out there in the woods, you can always call me,” he said.

“Hmmm,” I said. “Thanks.” Was the elf coming on to me? That made no sense. More likely he wanted to eat me, and not in the fun way.

Maybe better not to know. I wondered how Dermot was getting here but not enough to call Bellenos again.

Reassured that Dermot was returning, I studied my list of shower preparations. I’d asked Maxine Fortenberry to make the punch, because hers was famous. I was picking up the cake from the bakery. I didn’t have to work today or tomorrow, which meant a big loss in tips, but it was turning out real convenient. So my to-do list was like: Today, complete all preparations for the baby shower. Tonight, kill Victor. Tomorrow, guests arrive for shower.

In the meantime, like any incipient hostess, I was going to be all about the cleaning. My living room was still below par since the attic stuff had been sitting in it, and I started from the top down: dust the pictures, then the furniture, then the baseboards. Then vacuum. I worked my way down the hall, visiting my bedroom, the guest bedroom, and the hall bathroom. I got a squirt bottle of all-purpose cleaner and attacked the kitchen surfaces. I was about to mop the floors when I saw Dermot in the backyard. He’d driven back in a battered Chevy compact.