“Tell me about him,” I said. “Your assistant, that is.” We didn’t have anything else to do, and lately we hadn’t had much time for general conversation.
“He’s a black man,” Eric said, as if he were saying the new assistant had brown eyes. Eric could remember, vividly, the first black man he ever saw . . . centuries before. “He’s a lone wolf, unaffiliated. Alcide has already made overtures to him about joining the Long Tooth pack, but I don’t think he’s interested, and of course now that he’s taken the job with me, they won’t be so anxious to have him.”
“And this is the guy you hired? A Were, whom you don’t trust and have to train? A guy who’ll automatically piss off Alcide and the Long Tooth pack?”
“He has an outstanding attribute,” Eric said.
“Good! What is it?”
“He can keep his mouth shut. And he hates Victor,” Eric said.
That made it a whole different shooting match. “Why?” I asked. “I’m assuming he has a good reason.”
“I don’t know what it is yet.”
“But you’re convinced he’s not pulling some elaborate double whammy? That Victor didn’t cleverly realize you’d hire someone who hated him, so he primed this guy and shot him over to you?”
“I’m convinced,” Eric said. “But I want you to sit with him a while tomorrow.”
“If I can get some sleep,” I said, yawning wide enough for my jaws to be in danger of cracking. It was after two in the morning, and we’d seen signs the bar was closing, but many of the employee cars were still waiting for their owners. “Oh, Eric, there he is!” I hardly recognized the server named Colton because he was wearing long khaki cargo shorts, flip-flops, and a green T-shirt with a pattern I couldn’t discern. I kind of missed the loincloth. I started my car after Colton did, and when he pulled out of the parking lot, I waited a discreet moment and followed him. He turned right onto the access road and drove west toward Shreveport. However, he didn’t go that far. He exited the interstate at Haughton.
“We’re looking pretty damn conspicuous,” I said.
“We need to talk to him.”
“So, we’re giving up on stealth, huh?”
Eric said, “Yes.” He didn’t sound happy about it, but we didn’t have that many choices.
Colton’s car, a Dodge Charger that had seen better days, turned into a narrow drive off a narrow road. He stopped in front of a goodsized trailer. He got out and stood by the car. His hand was down by his side, and I was pretty sure in that hand was a gun.
“Let me get out first,” I said, as I pulled up beside the man.
Before Eric could argue, I opened my car door and called, “Colton! It’s Sookie Stackhouse. You know who I am! I’m standing up now, and I’m not armed.”
“Go slow.” His voice was wary, and I couldn’t blame him.
“Just so you know, Eric Northman is with me, but he’s still in the car.”
“Good.”
My hands reaching for the sky, I stepped away from the car so he could have a good look at me. The front porch light of the trailer was all he had to see by, but he gave me a thorough scan. While he was trying to pat me down with his eyes, the trailer door opened and a young woman stepped out on the added-on porch.
“Colton, what’s going on?” she asked in a nasal voice with a very “country” accent.
“We got some company. Don’t worry about it,” he said automatically.
“Who’s she?”
“The Stackhouse woman.”
“Sookie?” The voice sounded startled.
“Yeah,” I said. “Do I know you? I can’t see you that well.”
“It’s Audrina Loomis,” she said. “You remember? I went out with your brother for a while in high school.”
So did half the girls in Bon Temps, so that didn’t really narrow my memory down. “It’s been a while,” I said carefully.
“He still single?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Oh, by the way, can my boyfriend get out now?” Since we were all being just folks here.
“Who’s he?”
“His name’s Eric; he’s a vampire.”
“Cool. Sure, let’s have a look.” Audrina seemed to be a little more reckless than Colton. On the other hand, Colton had warned me about the fairy blood.
Eric got out of my car, and there was a moment of impressed silence while Audrina absorbed Eric’s magnificence.
“Well, okay,” Audrina said, clearing her throat as though it had gone suddenly dry. “You two wanna come in and let us know what you’re doing here?”
“You think that’s smart?” Colton asked her.
“He coulda killed us about six times already.” Audrina was not as dumb as she sounded.
When we were all in the trailer and Eric and I were sitting on the couch, which had been covered with an old chenille bedspread and was missing several crucial springs, I got a good look at Audrina. Her roots were dark. The rest of her shoulder-length hair was platinum blond. She was wearing a nightgown that hadn’t really been designed for sleeping in. It was red and mostly sheer. She’d been waiting up for Colton with more on her mind than conversation.
Now that I wasn’t distracted by a leather loincloth and his startling eyes, Colton was much more of an average guy. Some men just can’t radiate sexual attraction unless they take their clothes off, and Colton was such a man. But his eyes were definitely unusual, and he was practically giving me a laser treatment with them now, though not in a sexy way.
“We don’t have any blood,” Audrina said. “Sorry.” She didn’t offer me anything to drink. She was doing this on purpose, her brain told me. She didn’t want this to seem in any way like a social occasion.
Okay. “Eric and I want to know why you warned us,” I said to Colton. And I wanted to know why I’d thought about him when Eric had told me the story of Chico and his mother.
“I heard about you,” he said. “Heidi told me.”
“You and Heidi are friends?” Eric was intent on Colton, but he spared one of his best smiles for Audrina.
“Yeah,” Colton said. “I worked for Felipe at a club in Reno. I knew Heidi from there.”
“You moved from Reno to take a low-paying job in Louisiana?” That didn’t make any sense.
“Audrina was from here, and she wanted to try living here again,” Colton explained. “Her grandma lives in the trailer down the road, and she’s pretty frail. Audrina works at Vic’s Redneck Roadhouse during the day as a bookkeeper. I work at night at Vampire’s Kiss. And the cost of living is a lot cheaper here. But you’re right, there’s more to the story.” He glanced at his girlfriend.
“We came for a reason,” Audrina said. “Colton is Chico’s brother.”
Eric and I both took a second to work that out. “So it was your mom,” I said to the young man. “I’m so sorry.” Though I hadn’t heard any more of the story, the name had been enough to snag in my brain.
“Yeah, it was my mom,” Colton said. He gave us an entirely blank stare. “My brother Chico is an asshole who didn’t think twice about becoming a vampire. He gave up his life like some lesser asshole would get a tattoo. ‘It’s cool, let’s do it!’ And then he kept on being an asshole, talking shit to Victor, not understanding. Not getting it.” Colton put his head in his hands and shook it from side to side. “Until that night. Then he got it. But our mom was dead. And Chico wishes he was, but he won’t ever be.”
“And how come Victor doesn’t know who you are, know to be leery of you?”
“Chico had a different dad, so he had a different last name,” Audrina said, to give Colton time to recover. “And Chico wasn’t a family type guy. He hadn’t lived at home for ten years. He only called his mom once every couple of months, never went to see them. But that was enough to give Victor the bright idea of reminding Chico he hadn’t signed a contract with the California Angels.”
“More like Hell’s Angels,” Colton said, straightening.
If the comparison bothered Eric, he didn’t let on. I was sure it wasn’t the worst he’d heard. “So thanks to Victor’s employee,” Eric began, “you knew about my Sookie. And you knew how to warn her when Victor was going to poison us.”