Chapter 7
The minute the sun sank, Eric was out of the compartment below the guest-bedroom closet. He picked me up and kissed me thoroughly. I’d already warmed up some TrueBlood for him, and he made a face but gulped it down.
“Who is the child?” he asked.
“Hadley’s son,” I said. Eric had met Hadley when she’d been going with Sophie-Anne Leclerq, the now-finally-deceased Queen of Louisiana.
“She was married to a breather?”
“Yes, before she met Sophie-Anne,” I said. “A very nice guy named Remy Savoy.”
“Is that him I smell? Along with a big scent of fairy?”
Uh-oh. “Yes, Remy came to pick up Hunter this afternoon. I was keeping him because Remy had to go to a family funeral. He didn’t think that would be a good place to take a kid.” I didn’t bring up Hunter’s little problem. The fewer who knew about it, the better, and that included Eric.
“And?”
“I meant to tell you this the other night,” I said. “My cousin Claude?”
Eric nodded.
“He asked if he could stay here for a while, because he’s lonely in his house with both his sisters dead.”
“You are letting a man live with you.” Eric didn’t sound angry—more like he was poised to be angry, if you know what I mean? There was just a little edge in his voice.
“Believe me, he’s not interested in me as a woman,” I said, though I had a guilty flash of him walking in on me in the bathroom. “He is all about the guys.”
“I know you are fully aware of how to take care of a fairy who gives you trouble,” Eric said, after an appreciable silence.
I’d killed fairies before. I hadn’t particularly wanted to be reminded of that. “Yes,” I said. “And if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll keep a squirt gun loaded with lemon juice on my bedside table.” Lemon juice and iron—the fairy weaknesses.
“That would make me feel better,” Eric said. “Is it this Claude that Heidi scented on your land? I felt you were very worried, and that’s one reason I came over last night.”
The blood bond was hard at work. “She says neither of the fairies she tracked was Claude,” I said, “and that really worries me. But—”
“It worries me, too.” Eric looked down at the empty bottle of TrueBlood, then said, “Sookie, there are things you should know.”
“Oh.” I’d been about to tell him about the fresh corpse. I was sure he would have led off the discussion with the body if Heidi had mentioned it, and it seemed pretty important to me. I may have sounded a little peeved at being interrupted. Eric gave me a sharp look.
Okay, I was at fault, excuse me. I should have been longing to be chock-full of information that Eric felt would help me negotiate the minefield of vampire politics. And there were nights I’d have been delighted to learn more about my boyfriend’s life. But tonight, after the unusual stresses and strains of Hunter care, what I’d wanted was (again, excuse me) to tell him about the body-in-the-woods crisis and then have a good long screw.
Normally, Eric would be down with that program.
But not tonight, apparently.
We sat opposite each other at the kitchen table. I tried not to sigh out loud.
“You remember the summit at Rhodes, and how a sort of strip of states from south to north were invited,” Eric began.
I nodded. This didn’t sound too promising. My corpse was way more urgent. Not to mention the sex.
“Once we had ventured from one side of the New World to another, and the white breathing population migrated across, too—we were the first explorers—a large group of us met to divide things up, for better governing of our own population.”
“Were there any Native American vampires here when you came? Hey, were you on the Leif Ericson expedition?”
“No, not my generation. Oddly enough, there were very few Native American vampires. And the ones that were here were different in several ways.”
Now, that was pretty interesting, but I could tell Eric wasn’t going to stop and fill in the blanks.
“At that first national meeting, about three hundred years ago, there were many disagreements.” Eric looked very, very serious.
“No, really?” Vampires arguing? I could yawn.
And he didn’t appreciate my sarcasm, either. He raised blond eyebrows, as if to say, “Can I go on and get to the point? Or are you going to give me grief?”
I spread my hands: “Keep on going.”
“Instead of dividing the country the way humans would, we included some of the north and some of the south in every division. We thought it would keep the cross-representation going. So the easternmost division, which is mostly the coastal states, is called Moshup Clan, for the Native American mythical figure, and its symbol is a whale.”
Okay, maybe I looked a little glazed at that point. “Look it up on the Internet,” Eric said impatiently. “Our clan—the states that met in Rhodes compose this one—is Amun, a god from the Egyptian system, and our symbol is a feather, because Amun wore a feathered headdress. Do you remember that we all wore little feather pins there?”
Ah. No. I shook my head.
“Well, it was a busy summit,” Eric conceded.
What with the bombs, and the explosions, and all.
“To our west is Zeus, from the Roman system, and a thunderbolt is their symbol, of course.”
Sure. I nodded in profound agreement. Eric may have sensed that I was not exactly on board, by then. He gave me a stern look. “Sookie, this is important. As my wife, you must know this.”
I wasn’t even going to get into that tonight. “Okay, go ahead,” I said.
“The fourth clan, the West Coast division, is called Narayana, from early Hinduism, and its symbol is an eye, because Narayana created the sun and moon from his eyes.”
I thought of things I’d like to ask, like “Who the hell sat around and picked the stupid names?” But when I ran my questions through my inner censor, each one sounded snarkier than the last. I said, “But there were some vampires at the summit in Rhodes—the Amun Clan summit—that should be in Zeus, right?”
“Yes, good! There are visitors at the summits, if they have some vested interest in a topic under discussion. Or if they are engaged in a lawsuit against someone in that division. Or if they’re going to marry someone in the division whose time it is to have a summit.” His eyes crinkled at the corners with his smile of approval. Narayana created the sun from his eyes, I thought. I smiled back.
“I understand,” I said. “So, how come Felipe conquered Louisiana, since we’re Amun and he’s. Ah, is Nevada in Narayana or Zeus?”
“Narayana. He took Louisiana because he wasn’t as frightened of Sophie-Anne as everyone else. He planned, and executed quickly and with precision after the governing. board. of Narayana Clan approved his plan.”
“He had to present a plan before he moved on us?”
“That’s the way it’s done. The kings and queens of Narayana wouldn’t want their territory weakened if Felipe failed and Sophie-Anne managed to take Nevada. So he had to outline his plan.”
“They didn’t think we might want to say something about that plan?”
“Not their concern. If we’re weak enough to be taken, then we are fair game. Sophie-Anne was a good leader, and much respected. With her incapacitation, Felipe judged we were weak enough to attack. Stan’s lieutenant in Texas has struggled these past few months since Stan was injured in Rhodes, and it’s been hard for him to hold on to Texas.”
“How would they know how hurt Sophie-Anne was? How hurt Stan is?”
“Spies. We all spy on each other.” Eric shrugged. (Big deal. Spies.)
“What if one of the rulers in Narayana had owed some favor to Sophie-Anne and decided to tip her off to the takeover?”