All Together Dead

her a nod. Some supes shake hands, others don’t, so you have to be careful. I turned to the other passenger. With another human, I thought I was on firmer ground, so I held out my right hand. As if he’d been offered a dead fish, the man extended his own hand after a perceptible pause. He pressed my palm in a limp way and withdrew his fingers as if he could just barely refrain from wiping them on his suit pants.
    “Miss Stackhouse, this is Johan Glassport, a specialist in vampire law.”
    “Mr. Glassport,” I said politely, struggling not to take offense.
    “Johan, this is Sookie Stackhouse, the queen’s telepath,” Mr. Cataliades said in his courtly way. Mr. Cataliades’s sense of humor was as abundant as his belly. There was a twinkle in his eye even now. But you had to remember that the part of him that wasn’t human—the majority of Mr. Cataliades—was a demon. Diantha was half-demon; her uncle even more.
    Johan gave me a brief up-and-down scan, almost audibly sniffed, and returned to the book he had in his lap.
    Just then, the Anubis stewardess began giving us the usual spiel, and I buckled myself into my seat. Soon after that, we were airborne. I didn’t have a twinge of anxiety, because I was so disgusted by Johan Glassport’s behavior.
    I didn’t think I’d ever encountered such in-your-face rudeness. The people of northern Louisiana may not have much money, and there may be a high teen pregnancy rate and all kinds of other problems, but by God, we’re polite.
    Diantha said, “Johan’sanasshole.”
    Johan paid absolutely no attention to this accurate assessment but turned the page of his book.
    “Thanks, dear,” Mr. Cataliades said. “Miss Stackhouse, bring me up to date on your life.”
    I moved to sit opposite the trio. “Not much to tell, Mr. Cataliades. I got the check, as I wrote you. Thanks for tying up all the loose ends on Hadley’s estate, and if you’d reconsider and send me a bill, I’d be glad to pay it.” Not exactly glad, but relieved of an obligation.
    “No, child. It was the least I could do. The queen was happy to express her thanks in that way, even though the evening hardly turned out like she’d planned.”
    “Of course, none of us imagined it would end that way.” I thought of Wybert’s head flying through the air surrounded by a mist of blood, and I shuddered.
    “You are the witness,” Johan said unexpectedly. He slipped a bookmark into his book and closed it. His pale eyes, magnified behind his glasses, were fixed on me. From being dog poop on his shoe, I had been transformed into something quite interesting and remarkable.
    “Yeah. I’m the witness.”
    “Then we must talk, now.”
    “I’m a little surprised, if you’re representing the queen at this very important trial, that you haven’t gotten around to talking to me before,” I said in as mild a voice as I could manage.
    “The queen had trouble contacting me, and I had to finish with my previous client,” Johan said. His unlined face didn’t exactly change expression, but it did look a bit tenser.
    “Johan was in jail,” Diantha said very clearly and distinctly.
    “Oh, my goodness,” I said, truly startled.
    Johan said, “Of course, the charges were completely unfounded.”
    “Of course, Johan,” Mr. Cataliades said with absolutely no inflection in his voice.
    “Ooo,” I said. “What were those charges that were so false?”
    Johan looked at me again, this time with less arrogance. “I was accused of striking a prostitute in Mexico.”
    I didn’t know much about law enforcement in Mexico, but it did seem absolutely incredible to me that an American could get arrested in Mexico for hitting a prostitute, if that was the only charge. Unless he had a lot of enemies.
    “Did you happen to have something in your hand when you struck her?” I asked with a bright smile.
    “I believe Johan had a knife in his hand,” Mr. Cataliades said gravely.
    I know my smile vanished right about then. “You were in jail in Mexico for knifing a woman,” I said. Who was dog poop now?
    “A prostitute,” he corrected. “That was the charge, but of course, I was completely innocent.”
    “Of course,” I said.
    “Mine is not the case on the table right now, Miss Stackhouse. My job is to defend the queen against the very serious charges brought against her, and you are an important witness.”
    “I’m the only witness.”
    “Of course—to the actual death.”
    “There were several actual