All Together Dead

who wanted to be around them ever since Anne Rice had been proven right about their existence. The city was like Disneyland for vamps. But since Katrina, all that had gone to hell, of course, along with so much else. Even Bon Temps was feeling the storm’s effect, and had been ever since Katrina had hit land. Our little town was still crowded with people who had fled from the south.
    “What about the queen’s entertainment estate?” asked Eric. The queen had bought an old monastery at the edge of the Garden District for entertaining large numbers of people, both vamp and non-vamp. Though surrounded by a wall, the estate was not considered easily defensible (since it was a registered building, historic and unchangeable, the windows couldn’t be blocked up), so the queen couldn’t actually live there. I thought of it as her party barn.
    “It didn’t suffer much damage,” Andre said. “There were looters there, too. Of course, they left a trace of their smell.” Vampires were second only to Weres in their tracking abilities. “One of them shot the lion.”
    I felt sorry for that. I’d liked the lion, sort of.
    “Do you need help with the apprehension?” Eric asked.
    Andre arched an eyebrow.
    “I only ask because your numbers are low,” Eric said.
    “No, already taken care of,” Andre said, and smiled just a tad.
    I tried not to think about that.
    “Aside from the lion and the looting, how was the estate?” Eric said to get the discussion of the storm damage back on track.
    “The queen can stay there while she views the other properties,” Andre continued, “but at the most for a night or two only.”
    There were tiny nods all around.
    “Our loss of personnel,” Andre said, moving on in his agenda. All the vampires tensed a bit, even Jake, the newbie. “Our initial assessment was modest, as you know. We assumed some would come forward after the impact of the storm was absorbed. But only ten have surfaced: five here, three in Baton Rouge, two in Monroe. It seems that we have lost thirty of our number just in Louisiana. Mississippi has lost at least ten.”
    There were tiny sounds and movements all over the room as the Shreveport vampires reacted to the news. The concentration of vamps, both resident and visiting, had been high in New Orleans. If Katrina had visited Tampa with that much force, the number of dead and missing would have been much lower.
    I raised my hand to speak. “What about Bubba?” I asked when Andre nodded at me. I hadn’t seen or heard of Bubba since Katrina. You’d know Bubba if you saw him. Anyone on earth would know him; at least, anyone over a certain age. He hadn’t quite died on that bathroom floor in Memphis. Not quite. But his brain had been affected before he was brought over, and he wasn’t a very good vampire.
    “Bubba’s alive,” said Andre. “He hid in a crypt and survived on small mammals. He isn’t doing too well mentally, so the queen has sent him up to Tennessee to stay with the Nashville community for a while.”
    “Andre has brought me a list of those that are missing,” Eric said. “I’ll post it after the meeting.”
    I’d known a few of the queen’s guards, too, and I would be glad to find out how they’d fared.
    I had another question, so I waved my hand.
    “Yes, Sookie?” Andre asked. His empty gaze fixed me in place, and I was sorry I’d asked to speak.
    “You know what I wonder, y’all? I wonder if one of the kings or queens attending this summit, or whatever you all call it, has a—like a weather predictor, or something like that on staff.”
    Plenty of blank stares were aimed my way, though Andre was interested.
    “Because, look, the summit, or conference, or whatever, was supposed to take place in late spring originally. But—delay, delay, delay, right? And then Katrina hit. If the summit had started when it was supposed to, the queen could have gone in a powerful position. She would have had a big war chest and a full quiver of vamps, and maybe they wouldn’t have been so anxious to prosecute her for the king’s death. The queen would have gotten anything she asked for, probably. Instead, she’s going in as”—I started to say “a beggar,” but I considered Andre just in time—“much less powerful.” I’d been afraid they’d laugh or maybe ridicule me, but the silence that followed was intensely thoughtful.
    “That’s one of the things you’ll need to look for at the summit,” Andre said. “Now that