All Together Dead

the white stylized fangs that the bar used as its trademark. “Fangtasia” was written in jazzy red script across the white points in the same style as the neon sign outside. If Eric turned around, the back would read “The Bar with a Bite.” Pam had given me one when Fangtasia first got into marketing its own stuff.
    Eric made the shirt look good, and I remembered all too well what was underneath it.
    I tore my gaze away from Eric’s stretch to look around the room. There were lots of other vampires crammed into the smallish space, but till you saw them you didn’t know they were there, they were so still and silent. Clancy, the bar manager, had claimed one of the two visitor chairs before the desk. Clancy had just barely survived the previous year’s Witch War, but he hadn’t come out unscathed. The witches had drained Clancy near to the point of no return. By the time Eric discovered Clancy, tracing his smell to a Shreveport cemetery, Clancy was one Vacutainer short of dead. During his long recovery, the red-haired vamp had grown bitter and snappish. Now he grinned at me, showing some fang. “You can sit in my lap, Sookie,” he said, patting his thighs.
    I smiled back, but not like my heart was in it. “No, thanks, Clancy,” I said politely. Clancy’s flirting had always had an edge to it, and now that edge was razor sharp. He was one of those vamps I’d rather not be alone with. Though he ran the bar capably, and he had never laid a finger on me, he still set off warning bells. I can’t read vampire minds, which was why I found it refreshing to hang with them, but when I felt that tingle of warning, I did find myself wishing I could just dip into Clancy’s head and find out what was going on in there.
    Felicia, the newest bartender, was sitting on the couch, along with Indira and Maxwell Lee. It was like the vampire Rainbow Coalition meeting. Felicia was a happy mixture of African and Caucasian, and she was almost six feet tall, so there was more loveliness to appreciate. Maxwell Lee was one of the darkest men I’d ever seen. Little Indira was the daughter of Indian immigrants.
    There were four more people in the room (using the term “people” loosely), and each one of them upset me, though in varying degrees.
    One of them was someone I didn’t acknowledge. I’d taken a page from the Were rule book and treated him like an outlawed member of my pack: I abjured him. I didn’t speak his name, I didn’t speak to him, I didn’t recognize his existence. (Of course, this was my ex, Bill Compton—not that I recognized that he was in the room, brooding away in a corner.)
    Leaning against the wall next to him was ancient Thalia, who was possibly even older than Eric. She was as small as Indira and very pale, with tightly waving black hair—and she was extremely rude.
    To my amazement, some humans found that a complete turn-on. Thalia actually had a devoted following who seemed thrilled when she used her stilted English to tell them to fuck off. I’d discovered she even had a website, established and maintained by fans. Go figure. Pam had told me that when Eric had agreed to let Thalia live in Shreveport, it was the equivalent of keeping a badly trained pit bull tethered in the yard. Pam had not approved.
    These undead citizens all lived in Area Five. To live and work under Eric’s protection, they’d all sworn fealty to him. So they were required to devote a certain amount of their time to doing his bidding, even if they didn’t work at the bar. There were a few extra vampires in Shreveport these days, since Katrina; just like a lot of humans, they had to go somewhere. Eric hadn’t decided what to do about the undead refugees, and they hadn’t been invited to the meeting.
    Tonight there were two visitors in Fangtasia, one of whom outranked Eric.
    Andre was the personal bodyguard of Sophie-Anne Leclerq, the Queen of Louisiana. The queen, at present, was an evacuee in Baton Rouge. Andre looked very young, maybe sixteen; his face was baby smooth, his pale hair was thick and heavy. Andre had lived a long existence caring only for Sophie-Anne, his maker and savior. He was not wearing his saber tonight, because he wasn’t acting as her bodyguard, but I was sure Andre was armed with something—knife or gun. Andre himself was a lethal weapon, with or without an aid.
    Just as Andre was about to speak to me, from beyond his chair a deep voice said, “Hey, Sookie.” Our second visitor, Jake