Believing she was the intended target when her grandmother becomes a victim of the killer, Sookie struggles with her guilt even as her relationship with Bill deepens. Adding to her problems, Eric Northman has decided to use her abilities to uncover an embezzler at Fangtasia. When the culprit is revealed as vampire Long Shadow, the bartender, Eric stakes Long Shadow as he attacks Sookie. Bill leaves town to campaign for a place in the vampire hierarchy as a measure against Eric, and Sookie is assaulted by the murderer, Rene Lenier, stabbing him in self-defense. Bill returns with the news that he has been named Area Five investigator, placing him under Eric’s protection.
Bill and Sookie are on the way to Fangtasia to get an assignment from Eric when the car breaks down and they quarrel. Sookie is attacked by a maenad as she walks home. Bill is able to get her to Fangtasia, where blood draining and then transfusions wash the maenad’s poison from her system, and after some recovery time, Eric informs them that they are going to Dallas to help find a missing vamp. Once there, Sookie and a human companion attempt to infiltrate the Fellowship of the Sun, an anti-vampire “church,” but her companion betrays her. Sookie is injured while escaping, with the help of first Godfrey, a vampire renouncer who seeks to meet the dawn, and then Luna, a shifter who has also infiltrated the organization. After Bill and the local vamps rescue the missing vamp, Sookie returns in the morning to the deserted compound to witness Godfrey’s self-immolation. Upon her return to Bon Temps, Sookie becomes involved in finding the murderer of the cook at Merlotte’s, Lafayette Reynold, whose body she had found in the bar’s parking lot in Andy Bellefleur’s car before going to Dallas. Invited to an orgy by those she suspects, Sookie asks Eric to escort her, as Bill has had to make a brief trip back to Dallas. She finds out the identity of the murderers, but before she, Eric, and a just-returned Bill can leave the orgy, a drunken Andy stumbles from the woods. Desperate to find the murderer and clear his name, he calls on Sookie to read the minds of the orgy participants. Callisto, the maenad, arrives, drawn by the atmosphere of lust and drunkenness. She sends her madness into the orgy, and Sookie is almost drawn into the insanity through her telepathy. Satisfied by her tribute, the maenad moves on, leaving Bill and Eric to clean up her mess. Andy is cleared when evidence of the murder is found in one of the automobiles of the deceased partygoers. Bill and Sookie relax at her home, finding a cake from Andy’s grandmother on her doorstep the next day as a gesture of thanks. Hearing her full name, Bill realizes that the Bellefleurs are his descendants through his daughter Sarah.
When Bill leaves town under suspicious circumstances, Sookie is hurt and angry but nevertheless becomes determined to find him when told he is now missing and considered kidnapped. Accompanied by werewolf Alcide Herveaux, she travels to Jackson and goes to Josephine’s, a supe bar nicknamed Club Dead, hoping to “hear” something about Bill. After being staked while protecting the King of Mississippi’s second-in-command, she locates Bill at the king’s mansion and is able to rescue him after killing his maker. Locked in a car trunk by Debbie Pelt, Alcide’s jealous ex-girlfriend, Sookie suffers a physical assault from a starved and tortured Bill, who is lost in bloodlust. They are finally able to escape the trunk, and Sookie has Eric, who has tagged along, take her home. Eric is attacked by thugs hired by the biker gang that frequents Club Dead when they stop for gas, and Sookie hurries to save both him and the young clerk. When they finally get to her house, they are attacked again by some of the gang members themselves. Sookie is beaten, but Eric and Bill, who drove home as well, burst in to kill all the bikers.
Sookie and Bill remain estranged, and soon after he goes on a research trip, she finds Eric running down the road to her home early on New Year’s morning. Confused and half-naked, Eric has been cursed with amnesia by a witch who wants to take over part of his holdings. Sookie agrees to shelter the befuddled vamp while Pam and Chow plan to restore Eric’s memory. Sookie’s brother, Jason, goes missing, and even as she worries about him, she heads to Shreveport to warn Alcide about the witches because some of them are Weres, and together they find that the coven has killed the Long Tooth pack’s second, Adabelle Yancy. Returning to Bon Temps, Sookie finds comfort with Eric, and the two begin a brief, passionate affair.
Sookie locates Crystal Norris, Jason’s date on New Year’s Eve, in the tiny town of Hotshot, hoping the young woman can offer some information. Although Crystal is unable to help, her uncle, Calvin Norris, offers Sookie his protection. Admitting that he has seen her in Merlotte’s, the Hotshot packleader begins a quiet courtship of Sookie, joining in an organized search of the woods surrounding Jason’s house with Bon Temps locals, along with Crystal and Hotshot’s best tracker, Felton Norris. Sookie despairs when there is no sign of Jason.
The Weres decide to partner with the vamps to destroy the coven, and Sookie attends the conflict with Eric, using her abilities to identify the innocent local witches who are being forced to participate. The Weres and vampires prevail, and Pam takes Hallow, the coven leader, captive to force her to break the spell on Eric. Attacked by Debbie Pelt on their return home, Sookie is forced to shoot and kill her. Eric disposes of her body and her car while Sookie cleans up the mess. When he awakens the next evening, the spell has been broken, his memories are restored, and he has no recollection of the time they spent together. Pam arrives to take him home and fill him in on the Were war and the damage done to Fangtasia by the coven. When Sam informs Sookie that the Hotshot shifters are panthers, she tells him that a panther track was found at Jason’s, and the two race out to Hotshot. With Calvin’s help they locate a badly bitten and freezing Jason in Felton’s toolshed. Calvin assures them that Hotshot will see that Jason’s kidnapper is punished, and Sookie takes her brother home, knowing the chances are good that he will now shift with the moon.
Sookie approaches Eric on Sam’s behalf when Sam is shot by a sniper targeting local shifters and needs to borrow a bartender. He complies, sending newly hired Charles Twining back to Bon Temps with her. Shortly thereafter, Alcide Herveaux escorts Sookie to the funeral of the Shreveport packmaster, who has died in a car accident. Sookie doesn’t realize at first that Alcide is also hoping she will use her ability for his father’s benefit on the Were running against his father for the packmaster position. At the funeral, her attention is caught by a tall, bald man who seems to be watching over the proceedings, including her furious albeit hushed discussion with Alcide on the church steps about his deceit. After work that night she takes Charles home with her to stay in the vampire hidey-hole. She is awakened in the night first by Charles confronting Bill in her yard and then by a fire. Claudine pops in to rescue her, and Charles claims he killed the arsonist in self-defense. Sookie is shaken but soon begins to rebuild her damaged kitchen, staying in a rental house in town. While returning books to the library, Sookie is winged by a sniper.
Sookie asks Eric for assistance for her friend Tara, who is being abused by a vampire named Mickey. Eric is happy to do a favor for Sookie, providing she repay it by telling him the truth about what happened while he had amnesia. She complies, and he is stunned to find that he was willing to give up everything to be with her.
She attends the packmaster contest and finds Quinn, the tall man from the funeral, officiating. Although she catches Alcide’s father’s opponent, Patrick Furnan, cheating, the pack decides to allow the contest to continue anyway, and Alcide’s father is ultimately killed by his opponent. Alcide turns from her, seeking comfort with another Were, and she goes to work that night with a heavy heart. She realizes that the bartender Eric lent to Sam is not who he says he is, and the vampire admits that he is there to kill her in revenge for the staking of Long Shadow. She is able to stuff her silver chain in his mouth and escape, and the vampire is staked by the regular patrons at Merlotte’s.