After all, I was supposed to be under the protection of the Shreveport Were pack because I’d helped them out. I was also under the protection of the new vampire regime because I’d saved their leader’s ass. Felipe de Castro would have been a pile of ash if not for me; for that matter, so would Eric. Wasn’t this the best time in the world to call in those markers?
I got out of my car behind Merlotte’s. I looked up at the sky, but it was cloudy. I thought it was only a week after the new moon. And it was definitely full dark. I pulled my cell phone out of my purse. I’d discovered Eric’s cell number scrawled on the back of one of his business cards, tucked halfway under my bedside phone. He answered on the second ring.
“Yes,” he said, and I was able to tell by that one word that he was with others.
A little shiver went down my spine at the sound of his voice.
“Eric,” I said, and then wished I’d spent a little time framing my request. “The king said he owed me,” I continued, realizing this was a little bald and bold. “I’m in real danger. I wonder what he could do about that.”
“The threat involving your older kin?” Yes, he was definitely with other people.
“Yes. The, ah, enemy has been trying to get Amelia and Tray to introduce him to me. He doesn’t seem to realize I would recognize him, or maybe he’s very good at pretending. He’s supposed to be on the anti-human side, but he’s half human. I don’t understand his behavior.”
“I see,” Eric said after an appreciable pause. “So protection is necessary.”
“Yes.”
“And you ask this as . . . ?”
If he’d been with his own underlings, he’d have told them to leave so he could talk to me frankly. Since he hadn’t done that, he was probably with one of the Nevada vamps: Sandy Sechrest, Victor Madden, or Felipe de Castro himself, though that was unlikely. Castro’s far more lucrative business ventures in Nevada required his presence most of the time. I finally realized Eric was trying to find out if I was asking as his bed buddy and “wife,” or as someone he owed big-time.
“I ask this as someone who saved Felipe de Castro’s life,” I said.
“I’ll present this petition to Victor, since he’s here at the bar,” Eric said smoothly. “I’ll get back to you this night.”
“Great.” Mindful of vamps’ extreme hearing, I added, “I appreciate that, Eric,” as if we were friendly acquaintances.
Mentally dodging the question of what we actually were to each other, I tucked away the cell phone and went into work, hustling because I was a couple of minutes late. Now that I’d talked to Eric, I felt much more optimistic about my chances of survival.
Chapter 14
I kept my mental ears open that night, so it was a hard evening for me. After years of practice and some help from Bill, I’d learned to block out most of the thoughts of the humans around me. But tonight was just like the bad old days, when I’d smiled all the time to cover the confusion in my head caused by the constant bombardment of mental mutterings.
When I walked past the table where Bud Dearborn and his ancient crony Sid Matt Lancaster were having chicken baskets and beers, I heard,Crystal’s no great loss, but no one gets crucified in Renard Parish. . . . We gotta solve that case, andGot me some genuine werewolves for clients. I wish Elva Deane had lived to see this; she woulda loved it . But mostly Sid Matt was thinking about his hemorrhoids and his spreading cancer.
Oh, gosh, I hadn’t known. My next pass by his table, I patted the venerable lawyer on the shoulder. “Let me know if you need anything,” I said, and met his turtlelike stare with a blank face. He could take it any way he chose, as long as he knew I was willing to help.
When you throw out your net that wide, you come up with a lot of trash. I found out over the course of the evening that Tanya thought she might be settling down permanently with Calvin, that Jane Bodehouse thought she had chlamydia and wondered who was responsible, and that Kevin and Kenya, police officers who always requested the same shift, were actually living together now. Since Kenya was black and Kevin couldn’t be whiter, this was causing Kevin’s folks some problems, but he was standing firm. Kenya’s brother wasn’t too happy about her living situation, either, but he wasn’t going to beat up Kevin or anything like that. I gave them a big smile when I brought them bourbon and Cokes, and they smiled back. It was so rare to see Kenya crack a grin that I almost laughed. She looked about five years younger when she smiled.
Andy Bellefleur came in with his new wife, Halleigh. I liked Halleigh, and we hugged each other. Halleigh was thinking she might be pregnant, and it would be mighty early in the marriage for them to start a family, but Andy was quite a bit older than her. This maybe-pregnancy hadn’t been planned, so she was pretty worried about how Andy would take the news. Since I was laying myself out there tonight, I tried something new. I sent my extra sense down into Halleigh’s belly. If she really was pregnant, it was too soon for the little brain to be registering.
Andy was thinking Halleigh had been quiet the past couple of days, and he was worried something was wrong with her. He was also worried about the investigation of Crystal’s death, and when he felt Bud Dearborn’s eyes on him, he wished he’d picked any other place in Bon Temps for his evening out. The gunfight at Arlene’s trailer was haunting his dreams.
Other people in the bar were thinking about typical stuff.
What are the all-time most popular thoughts? Well, they’re really, really boring.
Most people think about their money problems, what they need from the store, what housework they have to do, how their jobs are going. They worry about their kids . . . a lot. They brood over issues with their bosses and their spouses and their coworkers and other members of their churches.
On the whole, 95 percent of what I hear is nothing anybody’d want to write down in her diary.
Every now and then the guys (less often, the women) think about sex with someone they see in the bar—but honestly, that’s so common I can brush it aside, unless they’re thinking about me. That’s pretty disgusting. The sex ideas multiply with the drinks consumed; no surprise there.
The people thinking about Crystal and her death were the law enforcement people charged with finding out who’d killed her. If one of the culprits was in the bar, he was simply not thinking about what he’d done. And there had to be more than a single person involved. Setting up a cross was not something a man on his own could handle; at least not without alot of preparation and some elaborate arrangement of pulleys. You’d have to be some kind of supernatural to pull it off by yourself.
This was Andy Bellefleur’s train of thought while he waited for his crispy chicken salad.
I had to agree with him. I’d bet Calvin had already considered that scenario. Calvin had sniffed the body, and he hadn’t said he’d smelled another wereanimal of any kind. But then I recalled that one of the two men who’d been wheeling the body out had been a supe.
As far as learning anything new, I was drawing a blank until Mel came in. Mel, who lived in one of Sam’s rental duplexes, looked like a reject from the cast ofRobin Hood, the Musical tonight. His longish light brown hair, neat mustache and beard, and tight pants gave him a theatrical air.
Mel surprised me by giving me a half hug before he sat down, as if I were a good buddy of his.
If this behavior was because he and my brother were both panthers . . . but that still didn’t make a lot of sense. None of the other werepanthers got cozy with me because of Jason—far from it. The Hotshot community had been a lot warmer toward me when Calvin Norris had been thinking of asking me to be his mate. Did Mel have a secret yearning to go out with me? That would be . . . unpleasant and unwelcome.