Sookie 04 Dead to the World (10 page)

“So, what can I do for you?” Colonel Flood asked Alcide. “Are you seeking permission to marry?”

“Not today,” Alcide said with a smile. I looked down at the floor to keep my expression to myself. “My friend Sookie has some information that she shared with me. It’s very important.” His smile died on the vine. “She needs to relate what she knows to you.”

“And why do I need to listen?”

I understood that he was asking Alcide who I was-that if he was obliged to listen to me, he needed to know my bona fides. But Alcide was offended on my behalf.

“I wouldn’t have brought her if it wasn’t important. I wouldn’t have introduced her to you if I wouldn’t give my blood for her.”

I wasn’t real certain what that meant, but I was interpreting it to assume Alcide was vouching for my truthfulness and offering to pay in some way if I proved false. Nothing was simple in the supernatural world.

“Let’s hear your story, young woman,” said the colonel briskly.

I related all I’d told Alcide, trying to leave out the personal bits.

“Where is this coven staying?” he asked me, when I was through. I told him what I’d seen through Holly’s mind.

“Not enough information,” Flood said crisply. “Alcide, we need the trackers.”

“Yes, sir.” Alcide’s eyes were gleaming at the thought of action.

“I’ll call them. Everything I’ve heard is making me rethink something odd that happened last night. Adabelle didn’t come to the planning committee meeting.”

Alcide looked startled. “That’s not good.”

They were trying to be cryptic in front of me, but I could read what was passing between the two shifters without too much difficulty. Flood and Alcide were wondering if their-hmmm, vice president?-Adabelle had missed the meeting for some innocent reason, or if the new coven had somehow inveigled her into joining them against her own pack.

“Adabelle has been chafing against the pack leadership for some time,” Colonel Flood told Alcide, with the ghost of a smile on his thin lips. “I had hoped, when she got elected my second, that she’d consider that concession enough.”

From the bits of information I could glean from the packmaster’s mind, the Shreveport pack seemed to be heavily on the patriarchal side. To Adabelle, a modern woman, Colonel Flood’s leadership was stifling.

“A new regime might appeal to her,” Colonel Flood said, after a perceptible pause. “If the invaders learned anything about our pack, it’s Adabelle they’d approach.”

“I don’t think Adabelle would ever betray the pack, no matter how unhappy she is with the status quo,” Alcide said. He sounded very sure. “But if she didn’t come to the meeting last night, and you can’t raise her by phone this morning, I’m concerned.”

“I wish you’d go check on Adabelle while I alert the pack to action,” Colonel Flood suggested. “If your friend wouldn’t mind.”

Maybe his friend would like to get her butt back to Bon Temps and see to her paying guest. Maybe his friend would like to be searching for her brother. Though truly, I could not think of a single thing to do that would further the search for Jason, and it would be at least two hours before Eric rose.

Alcide said, “Colonel, Sookie is not a pack member and she shouldn’t have to shoulder pack responsibilities. She has her own troubles, and she’s gone out of her way to let us know about a big problem we didn’t even realize we had. We should have known. Someone in our pack hasn’t been honest with us.”

Colonel Flood’s face drew in on itself as if he’d swallowed a live eel. “You’re right about that,” he said. “Thank you, Miss Stackhouse, for taking the time to come to Shreveport and to tell Alcide about our problem . . . which we should have known.”

I nodded to him in acknowledgment.

“And I think you’re right, Alcide. One of us must have known about the presence of another pack in the city.”

“I’ll call you about Adabelle,” Alcide said.

The colonel picked up the phone and consulted a red leather book before he dialed. He glanced sideways at Alcide. “No answer at her shop.” He had as much warmth radiating from him as a little space heater. Since Colonel Flood kept his house about as cold as the great outdoors, the heat was quite welcome.

“Sookie should be named a friend of the pack.”

I could tell that was more than a recommendation. Alcide was saying something quite significant, but he sure wasn’t going to explain. I was getting a little tired of the elliptical conversations going on around me.

“Excuse me, Alcide, Colonel,” I said as politely as I could. “Maybe Alcide could run me back to my car? Since you all seem to have plans to carry out.”

“Of course,” the colonel said, and I could read that he was glad to be getting me out of the way. “Alcide, I’ll see you back here in, what? Forty minutes or so? We’ll talk about it then.”

Alcide glanced at his watch and reluctantly agreed. “I might stop by Adabelle’s house while I’m taking Sookie to her car,” he said, and the colonel nodded, as if that were only pro forma.

“I don’t know why Adabelle isn’t answering the phone at work, and I don’t believe she’d go over to the coven,” Alcide explained when we were back in his truck. “Adabelle lives with her mother, and they don’t get along too well. But we’ll check there first. Adabelle’s Flood’s second in command, and she’s also our best tracker.”

“What can the trackers do?”

“They’ll go to Fangtasia and try to follow the scent trail the witches left there. That’ll take them to the witches’ lair. If they lose the scent, maybe we can call in help from the Shreveport covens. They have to be as worried as we are.”

“At Fangtasia, I’m afraid any scent might be obscured by all the emergency people,” I said regretfully. That would have been something to watch, a Were tracking through the city. “And just so you know, Hallow has contacted all the witches hereabouts already. I talked to a Wiccan in Bon Temps who’d been called in to Shreveport to meet with Hallow’s bunch.”

“This is bigger than I thought, but I’m sure the pack can handle it.” Alcide sounded quite confident.

Alcide backed the truck out of the colonel’s driveway, and we began making our way through Shreveport once again. I was seeing more of the city this day than I’d seen in my whole life.

“Whose idea was it for Bill to go to Peru?” Alcide asked me suddenly.

“I don’t know.” I was startled and puzzled. “I think it was his queen’s.”

“But he didn’t tell you that directly.”

“No.”

“He might have been ordered to go.”

“I suppose.”

“Who had the power to do that?” Alcide asked, as if the answer would enlighten me.

“Eric, of course.” Since Eric was sheriff of Area Five. “And then the queen.” That would be Eric’s boss, the queen of Louisiana. Yeah, I know. It’s dumb. But the vampires thought they were a marvel of modern organization.

“And now Bill’s gone, and Eric’s staying at your house.” Alcide’s voice was coaxing me to reach an obvious conclusion.

“You think that Eric staged this whole thing? You think he ordered Bill out of the country, had witches invade Shreveport, had them curse him, began running half-naked out in the freezing cold when he supposed I might be near, and then just hoped I’d take him in and that Pam and Chow and my brother would talk to each other to arrange Eric’s staying with me?”

Alcide looked properly flattened. “You mean you’d thought of this?”

“Alcide, I’m not educated, but I’m not dumb.” Try getting educated when you can read the minds of all your classmates, not to mention your teacher. But I read a lot, and I’ve read lots of good stuff. Of course, now I read mostly mysteries and romances. So I’ve learned many curious odds and ends, and I have a great vocabulary. “But the fact is, Eric would hardly go to this much trouble to get me to go to bed with him. Is that what you’re thinking?” Of course, I knew it was. Were or not, I could see that much.

“Put that way . . .” But Alcide still didn’t look satisfied. Of course, this was the man who had believed Debbie Pelt when she said that I was definitely back with Bill.

I wondered if I could get some witch to cast a truth spell on Debbie Pelt, whom I despised because she had been cruel to Alcide, insulted me grievously, burned a hole in my favorite wrap and-oh-tried to kill me by proxy. Also, she had stupid hair.

Alcide wouldn’t know an honest Debbie if she came up and bit him in the ass, though backbiting was a specialty of the real Debbie.

If Alcide had known Bill and I had parted, would he have come by? Would one thing have led to another?

Well,sureit would have. And there I’d be, stuck with a guy who’d take the word of Debbie Pelt.

I glanced over at Alcide and sighed. This man was just about perfect in many respects. I liked the way he looked, I understood the way he thought, and he treated me with great consideration and respect. Sure, he was a werewolf, but I could give up a couple of nights of month. True, according to Alcide it would be difficult for me to carry his baby to term, but it was at least possible. Pregnancy wasn’t part of the picture with a vampire.

Whoa.Alcide hadn’t offered to father my babies, and he was still seeing Debbie. What had happened to her engagement to the Clausen guy?

With the less noble side of my character-assuming my character had a noble side-I hoped that someday soon Alcide would see Debbie for the bitch she truly was, and that he’d finally take the knowledge to heart. Whether, consequently, Alcide turned to me or not, he deserved better than Debbie Pelt.

Adabelle Yancy and her mother lived in a cul-de-sac in an upper-middle-class neighborhood that wasn’t too far from Fangtasia. The house was on a rolling lawn that raised it higher than the street, so the driveway mounted and went to the rear of the property. I thought Alcide might park on the street and we’d go up the brick walkway to the front door, but he seemed to want to get the truck out of sight. I scanned the cul-de-sac, but I didn’t see anyone at all, much less anyone watching the house for visitors.

Attached to the rear of the house at a right angle, the three-car garage was neat as a pin. You would think cars were never parked there, that the gleaming Subaru had just strayed into the area. We climbed out of the truck.

“That’s Adabelle’s mother’s car,” Alcide was frowning. “She started a bridal shop. I bet you’ve heard of it-Verena Rose. Verena’s retired from working there full-time. She drops in just often enough to make Adabelle crazy.”

I’d never been to the shop, but brides of any claim to prominence in the area made a point of shopping there. It must be a real profitable store. The brick home was in excellent shape, and no more than twenty years old. The yard was edged, raked, and landscaped.

When Alcide knocked at the back door, it flew open. The woman who stood revealed in the opening was as put-together and neat as the house and yard. Her steel-colored hair was in a neat roll on the back of her head, and she was in a dull olive suit and low-heeled brown pumps. She looked from Alcide to me and didn’t find what she was seeking. She pushed open the glass storm door.

“Alcide, how nice to see you,” she lied desperately. This was a woman in deep turmoil.

Alcide gave her a long look. “We have trouble, Verena.”

If her daughter was a member of the pack, Verena herself was a werewolf. I looked at the woman curiously, and she seemed like one of the more fortunate friends of my grandmother’s. Verena Rose Yancy was an attractive woman in her late sixties, blessed with a secure income and her own home. I could not imagine this woman down on all fours loping across a field.

And it was obvious that Verena didn’t give a damn what trouble Alcide had. “Have you seen my daughter?” she asked, and she waited for his answer with terror in her eyes. “She can’t have betrayed the pack.”

“No,” Alcide said. “But the packmaster sent us to find her. She missed a pack officer’s meeting last night.”

“She called me from the shop last night. She said she had an unexpected appointment with a stranger who’d called the shop right at closing time.” The woman literally wrung her hands. “I thought maybe she was meeting that witch.”

“Have you heard from her since?” I said, in the gentlest voice I could manage.

“I went to bed last night mad at her,” Verena said, looking directly at me for the first time. “I thought she’d decided to spend the night with one of her friends. One of hergirlfriends,” she explained, looking at me with eyebrows arched, so I’d get her drift. I nodded. “She never would tell me ahead of time, she’d just say, ‘Expect me when you see me,’ or ‘I’ll meet you at the shop tomorrow morning,’ or something.” A shudder rippled through Verena’s slim body. “But she hasn’t come home and I can’t get an answer at the shop.”

“Was she supposed to open the shop today?” Alcide asked.

“No, Wednesday’s our closed day, but she always goes in to work on the books and get paperwork out of the way. She always does,” Verena repeated.

“Why don’t Alcide and I drive over there and check the shop for you?” I said gently. “Maybe she left a note.” This was not a woman you patted on the arm, so I didn’t make that natural gesture, but I did push the glass door shut so she’d understand she had to stay there and she shouldn’t come with us. She understood all too clearly.

Verena Rose’s Bridal and Formal Shop was located in an old home on a block of similarly converted two-story houses. The building had been renovated and maintained as beautifully as the Yancys’ residence, and I wasn’t surprised it had such cachet. The white-painted brick, the dark green shutters, the glossy black ironwork of the railings on the steps, and the brass details on the door all spoke of elegance and attention to detail. I could see that if you had aspirations to class, this is where you’d come to get your wedding gear.

Set a little back from the street, with parking behind the store, the building featured one large bay window in front. In this window stood a faceless mannequin wearing a shining brown wig. Her arms were gracefully bent to hold a stunning bouquet. Even from the truck, I could see that the bridal dress, with its long embroidered train, was absolutely spectacular.

We parked in the driveway without pulling around back, and I jumped out of the pickup. Together we took the brick sidewalk that led from the drive to the front door, and as we got closer, Alcide cursed. For a moment, I imagined some kind of bug infestation had gotten into the store window and landed on the snowy dress. But after that moment, I knew the dark flecks were surely spatters of blood.