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"No, sir."
Behind the fake glasses, Stan's pale eyebrows flew up. "No?" He sounded as though he'd never heard
the word.
"By the terms of my contract, I don't go anywhere without a vampire from my area. Bill is that vampire. I
go nowhere without him, at night."
Stan gave me another good long stare. I was glad I had found the bug and proved myself useful
otherwise, or I wouldn't last long in Stan's bailiwick. "Go," he said, and Bill and I didn't waste any time.
We couldn't help Eric if Stan came to suspect him, and we might quite possibly give him away. I would
be by far the more likely to do that by some word or gesture, with Stan watching me. Vampires have
studied humans for centuries, in the way predators learn as much as they can about their prey.
Isabel came out with us, and we got back into her Lexus for the ride back to the Silent Shore Hotel. The
streets of Dallas, though not empty, were at least much quieter than when we'd arrived at the nest hours
earlier. I estimated it was less than two hours until dawn.
"Thank you," I said politely when we pulled under the porte cochere of the hotel.
"My human will come to get you at three o'clock in the afternoon," Isabel told me.
Repressing the urge to say, "Yes, ma'am!" and click my heels together, I just told her that would be fine.
"What's his name?" I asked.
"His name is Hugo Ayres," she said.
"Okay." I already knew that he was a quick man with an idea. I went into the lobby and waited for Bill.
He was only seconds behind me, and we went up in the elevator in silence.
"Do you have your key?" he asked me at the room door.
I had been half-asleep. "Where's yours?" I asked, none too graciously.
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"I'd just like to see you recover yours," he said.
Suddenly I was in a better mood. "Maybe you'd like to find it," I suggested.
A male vampire with a waist-length black mane strolled down the hall, his arm around a plump girl with a
head of curly red hair. When they'd entered a room farther down the hall, Bill began searching for the
key.
He found it pretty fast.
Once we'd gotten inside, Bill picked me up and kissed me at length. We needed to talk, since a lot had
happened during this long night, but I wasn't in the mood and he wasn't, either.
The nice thing about skirts, I discovered, was that they just slide up, and if you were only wearing a
thong underneath, it could vanish in a jiffy. The gray jacket was on the floor, the white shell was
discarded, and my arms were locked around Bill's neck before you could say, "Screw a vampire."
Bill was leaning against the sitting room wall trying to open his slacks with me still wrapped around him
when there was a knock at the door.
"Damn," he whispered in my ear. "Go away," he said, somewhat louder. I wriggled against him and his
breath caught in his throat. He pulled the bobby pins and the Hairagami out of my hair to let it roll down
my back.
"I need to talk to you," said a familiar voice, somewhat muffled by the thick door.
"No," I moaned. "Say it isn't Eric." The only creature in the world wehad to admit.
"It's Eric," said the voice.
I unlocked my legs from around Bill's waist, and he gently lowered me to the floor. In a real snit, I
stomped into the bedroom to put on my bathrobe. To hell with rebuttoning all those clothes.
I came back out as Eric was telling Bill that Bill had done well this evening.
"And, of course, you were marvelous, Sookie," Eric said, taking in the pink, short bathrobe with a
comprehensive glance. I looked up at him and up, and up and wished him at the bottom of the Red
River, spectacular smile, golden hair, and all.
"Oh," I said malignantly, "thanks so much for coming up to tell us this. We couldn't have gone to bed
without a pat on the back fromyou ."
Eric looked as blandly delighted as he possibly could. "Oh, dear," he said. "Did I interrupt something?
Would these well, this be yours, Sookie?" He held up the black string that had formerly been one
side of my thong.
Bill said, "In a word, yes. Is there anything else you would like to discuss with us, Eric?" Ice would've
been surprised by how cold Bill could sound.
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