Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (197 page)

This was turning out to be a long conversation. I wanted the queen to get to the point.

“The point is,” the queen said, “I am grateful that you—through the witches—gave me a better idea of how Hadley died. And also you have let me know there is a wider plot against me than just Waldo’s jealous heart.”

I had?

“So I am in your debt. Tell me what I can do for you now.”

“Ah. Send over a lot of boxes so I can pack up Hadley’s stuff and get back to Bon Temps? Get someone to take the stuff I don’t want to a charity drop-off?”

The queen looked down, and I swear she was smothering a smile. “Yes, I think I can do that,” she said. “I’ll send some human over tomorrow to do those things.”

“If someone could pack the stuff I want into a van and drive it up to Bon Temps, that would be real good,” I said. “Maybe I could ride back in that van?”

“Also not a problem,” she said.

Now for the big favor. “Do I actually have to go with you to this conference thing?” I asked, which I knew was kind of pushing it.

“Yes,” she said.

Okay, stonewall there.

She added, “But I’ll pay you handsomely.”

I brightened. Some of the money I’d gotten for my previous vampire services was still in my savings account, and I’d gotten a big financial break when Tara “sold” me her car for a dollar, but I was so used to living close to the financial bone that a cushion was always welcome. I was always scared I’d break my leg, or my car would throw a rod, or my house would burn down . . . wait, that had already happened . . . well, that some disaster would happen, like a high wind would blow off the stupid tin roof my grandmother had insisted on, or something.

“Did you want something of Hadley’s?” I asked her, my train of thought having veered away from money. “You know, a remembrance?”

Something flashed in her eyes, something that surprised me.

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” said the queen, with an adorable hint of a French accent.

Uh-oh. It couldn’t be good that she’d switched on the charm.

“I did ask Hadley to hide something for me,” she said. My bullshit meter was beeping like an alarm clock. “And if you come across it in your packing, I’d like to have it back.”

“What does it look like?”

“It’s a jewel,” she said. “My husband gave it to me as an engagement gift. I happened to leave it here before I got married.”

“You’re welcome to look in Hadley’s jewelry box,” I said immediately. “If it belongs to you, of course you have to have it back.”

“That’s very kind of you,” she said, her face back to its regular glassy smoothness. “It’s a diamond, a large diamond, and it’s fixed on a platinum bracelet.”

I didn’t remember anything like that in Hadley’s stuff, but I hadn’t looked carefully. I’d planned to pack Hadley’s jewelry box intact so I could pick through it at my leisure in Bon Temps.

“Please, look now,” I suggested. “I know that it would be like a faux pas to lose a present from your husband.”

“Oh,” she said gently, “you have no idea.” Sophie-Anne closed her eyes for just a second, as if she were too anxious for words. “Andre,” she said, and with that word he took off for the bedroom—didn’t need any directions, I noticed—and while he was gone, the queen looked oddly incomplete. I wondered why he hadn’t accompanied her to Bon Temps, and on an impulse, I asked her.

She looked at me, her crystalline eyes wide and blank. “I was not supposed to be gone,” she said. “I knew if Andre showed himself in New Orleans, everyone would assume I was here, too.” I wondered if the reverse would be true. If the queen was here, would everyone assume Andre was, also? And that sparked a thought in me, a thought that had gone before I could quite grasp hold of it.

Andre came back at that moment, the tiniest shake of his head telling the queen he hadn’t found what she wanted to reclaim. For a moment, Sophie-Anne looked quite unhappy. “Hadley did this in a minute of anger,” the queen said, and I thought she was talking to herself. “But she may bring me down from beyond the veil.” Then her face relaxed into its usual emotionless state.

“I’ll keep an eye open for the bracelet,” I said. I suspected that the value of the jewelry did not lie in its appraisal. “Would that bracelet have been left here the last night before the wedding?” I asked cautiously.

I suspected my cousin Hadley had stolen the bracelet from the queen out of sheer pique that the queen was getting married. That seemed like a Hadley thing to do. If I’d known about Hadley’s concealment of the bracelet, I would have asked the witches to roll the clock back on the ectoplasmic reconstruction. We could have watched Hadley hide the thing.

The queen gave one short nod. “I must have it back,” the queen said. “You understand, it’s not the value of the diamond that concerns me? You understand, a wedding between vampire rulers is not a love match, where much can be forgiven? To lose a gift from your spouse, that’s a very grave offense. And our spring ball is scheduled for two nights from now. The king expects to see me wearing his gifts. If I’m not . . .” Her voice trailed away, and even Andre looked almost worried.

“I’m getting your point,” I said. I’d noticed the tension already rolling through the halls at Sophie’s headquarters. There’d be hell to pay, and Sophie-Anne would be the one to pay it. “If it’s here, you’ll get it back. Okay?” I spread my hands, asking her if she believed me.

“All right,” she said. “Andre, I can’t spend any more time here. Jade Flower will report the fact that I came up here with Sookie. Sookie, we must pretend to have had sex.”

“Sorry, anyone who knows me knows I don’t do women. I don’t know who you expect Jade Flower’s reporting to . . .” (Of course I did, and that would be the king, but it didn’t seem tactful to say “I know your business,” just then.) “But if they’ve done any homework, that’s just a fact about me.”

“Perhaps you had sex with Andre, then,” she said calmly. “And you let me watch.”

I thought of several questions, the first one being, “Is that the usual procedure with you?” followed by, “It’s not okay to misplace a bracelet, but okay to bump pelvises with someone else?” But I clamped my mouth shut. If someone were holding a gun to my head, I’d actually have to vote for having sex with the queen rather than with Andre, no matter what my gender preference, because Andre creeped me out big-time. But if we were just pretending . . .

In a businesslike way, Andre removed his tie, folded it, put it in his pocket, and undid a few shirt buttons. He beckoned to me with a crook of his fingers. I approached him warily. He took me in his arms and held me close, pressed against him, and bent his head to my neck. For a second I thought he was going to bite, and I had a flare of absolute panic, but instead he inhaled. That’s a deliberate act for a vampire.

“Put your mouth on my neck,” he said, after another long whiff of me. “Your lipstick will transfer.”

I did as he told me. He was cold as ice. This was like . . . well, this was just weird. I thought of the picture-taking session with Claude; I’d spent a lot of time lately
pretending
to have sex.

“I love the smell of fairy. Do you think she knows she has fairy blood?” he asked Sophie-Anne, while I was in the process of transferring my lipstick.

My head snapped back then. I stared right into his eyes, and he stared right back at me. He was still holding me, and I understood that he was ensuring I would smell like him and he would smell like me, as if we’d actually done the deed. He definitely wasn’t up for the real thing, which was a relief.

“I what?” I hadn’t heard him correctly, I was sure. “I have what?”

“He has a nose for it,” the queen said. “My Andre.” She looked faintly proud.

“I was hanging around with my friend Claudine earlier in the day,” I said. “She’s a fairy. That’s where the smell is coming from.” I really must need to shower.

“You permit?” Andre asked, and without waiting for an answer, he jabbed my wounded arm with a fingernail, right above the bandage.

“Yow!” I said in protest.

He let a little blood trickle onto his finger, and he put it in his mouth. He rolled it around, as if it were a sip of wine, and at last he said, “No, this smell of fairy is not from association. It’s in your blood.” Andre looked at me in a way that was meant to tell me that his words made it a done deal. “You have a little streak of fairy. Maybe your grandmother or your grandfather was half-fey?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” I said, knowing I sounded stupid, but not knowing what else to say. “If any of my grandparents were other than a hundred percent human, they didn’t pass that information along.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” the queen said, matter-of-factly. “Most humans of fairy descent hide the fact, because they don’t really believe it. They prefer to think their parents are mad.” She shrugged. Inexplicable! “But that blood would explain why you have supernatural suitors and not human admirers.”

“I don’t have human admirers because I don’t want ’em,” I said, definitely piqued. “I can read their minds, and that just knocks them out of the running. If they’re not put off from the get-go by my reputation for weirdness,” I added, back into my too-much-honesty groove.

“It’s a sad comment on humans that none of them are tolerable to one who can read their minds,” the queen said.

I guess that was the final word on the value of mind-reading ability. I decided it would be better to stop the conversation. I had a lot to think about.

We went down the stairs, Andre leading, the queen next, and me trailing behind. Andre had insisted I take off my shoes and my earrings so it could be inferred that I had undressed and then just slipped back into the dress.

The other vampires were waiting obediently in the courtyard, and they sprang to attention when we began making our way down. Jade Flower’s face didn’t change at all when she read all the clues as to what we’d been up to in the past half hour, but at least she didn’t look skeptical. The Berts looked knowing but uninterested, as if the scenario of Sophie-Anne watching her bodyguard engaging in sex (with a virtual stranger) were very much a matter of routine.

As he stood in the gateway waiting for further driving instructions, Rasul’s face expressed a mild ruefulness, as if he wished he had been included in the action. Quinn, on the other hand, was pressing his mouth in such a grim line that you couldn’t have fed him a straight pin. There was a fence to mend.

But as we’d walked out of Hadley’s apartment, the queen had told me specifically not to share her story with anyone else, emphasis on the
anyone.
I would just have to think of a way to let Quinn know, without letting him
know.

With no discussion or social chitchat, the vampires piled into their car. My brain was so crowded with ideas and conjectures and everything in between that I felt punch-drunk. I wanted to call my brother, Jason, and tell him he wasn’t so irresistible after all, it was the fairy blood in him, just to see what he’d say. No, wait, Andre had implied that humans weren’t affected by the nearness of fairies like vampires were. That is, humans didn’t want to consume fairies, but did find them sexually attractive. (I thought of the crowd that always surrounded Claudine at Merlotte’s.) And Andre had said that other supernaturals were attracted by fairy blood too, just not in the eat-’em-up way that vamps were. Wouldn’t Eric be relieved? He would be so glad to know he didn’t really love me! It was the fairy blood all along!

I watched the royal limo drive away. While I was fighting a wave compounded of about six different emotions, Quinn was fighting only one.

He was right in front of me, his face angry. “How’d she talk you into it, Sookie?” he asked. “If you’d yelled, I’d have been right up there. Or maybe you wanted to do that? I would have sworn you weren’t the type.”

“I haven’t gone to bed with anyone this evening,” I said. I looked him straight in the eyes. After all, this wasn’t revealing anything the queen had told me, this was just . . . correcting an error. “It’s fine if others think that,” I said carefully. “Just not you.”

He looked down at me for a long moment, his eyes searching mine as if he were reading some writing on the back of my eyeballs.

“Would you
like
to go to bed with someone this evening?” he asked. He kissed me. He kissed me for a long, long time, as we stood glued together in the courtyard. The witches did not return; the vampires stayed gone. Only the occasional car going by in the street or a siren heard in the distance reminded me we were in the middle of a city. This was as different from being held by Andre as I could imagine. Quinn was warm, and I could feel his muscles move beneath his skin. I could hear him breathe, and I could feel his heartbeat. I could sense the churn of his thoughts, which were mostly now centered on the bed he knew must be somewhere upstairs in Hadley’s apartment. He loved the smell of me, the touch of me, the way my lips felt . . . and a large part of Quinn was attesting to that fact. That large part was pressed between us right at this very moment.

I’d gone to bed with two other males, and both times it hadn’t worked out well. I hadn’t known enough about them. I’d acted on impulse. You should learn from your mistakes. For a second, I wasn’t feeling especially smart.

Luckily for my decision-making ability, Quinn’s phone chose that moment to ring. God bless that phone. I’d been within an ace of chucking my good resolutions right out the window, because I’d been scared and lonely throughout the evening, and Quinn felt relatively familiar and he wanted me so much.

Quinn, however, was not following the same thought processes—far from it—and he cursed when the phone rang a second time.

“Excuse me,” he said, fury in his voice, and answered the damn phone.

“All right,” he said, after listening for a moment to the voice on the other end. “All right, I’ll be there.”