All Together Dead

you’ve given me the idea, it seems oddly possible. Eric?”
    “Yes, I think there is something in that,” Eric said, staring at me. “Sookie is good at thinking outside the box.”
    Pam smiled up at me from beside my elbow.
    “What about the suit filed by Jennifer Cater?” Clancy asked Andre. He’d been looking increasingly uncomfortable in the chair he’d thought he was so clever to snag.
    You could have heard a pin drop. I didn’t know what the hell the red-haired vampire was talking about, but I thought it would be better to find out from the conversation than to ask.
    “It’s still active,” Andre said.
    Pam whispered, “Jennifer Cater was in training to become Peter Threadgill’s lieutenant. She was in Arkansas managing his affairs when the violence erupted.”
    I nodded to let Pam know I appreciated her filling me in. The Arkansas vampires, though they hadn’t gone through a hurricane, had undergone quite a reduction in their own ranks, thanks to Louisiana’s group.
    Andre said, “The queen has responded to the suit by testifying that she had to kill Peter to save her own life. Of course, she offered reparation to the common fund.”
    “Why not to Arkansas?” I whispered to Pam.
    “Because the queen maintains that since Peter is dead, Arkansas goes to her, according to the marriage contract,” Pam murmured. “She can’t make reparation to herself. If Jennifer Cater wins her suit, not only will the queen lose Arkansas, she’ll have to pay Arkansas a fine. A huge one. And make other restitution.”
    Andre began to drift around the room soundlessly, the only indication that he was unhappy about the topic.
    “Do we even have that much money after the disaster?” Clancy asked. It was an unwise question.
    “The queen hopes the suit will be dismissed,” Andre said, again ignoring Clancy. Andre’s permanently teenage face was quite blank. “But apparently the court is prepared to hear a trial. Jennifer is charging that our queen lured Threadgill to New Orleans, away from his own territory, having planned all along to start the war and assassinate him.” This time Andre’s voice came from behind me.
    “But that wasn’t what happened at all,” I said. And Sophie-Anne hadn’t killed the king. I’d been present at his death. The vampire standing behind me right at this moment had killed Threadgill, and I’d thought at the time he was justified.
    I felt Andre’s cold fingers brush my neck as I sat there. How I knew the fingers were Andre’s, I couldn’t tell you; but the light touch, the second of contact, made me suddenly focus on an awful fact: I was the only witness to the death of the king, besides Andre and Sophie-Anne.
    I’d never put it to myself in those terms, and for a moment, I swear, my heart stopped beating. At that skipped beat, I drew the gaze of at least half the vamps in the room. Eric’s eyes widened as he looked at my face. And then my heart beat again, and the moment was over as if it never had been. But Eric’s hand twitched on the desk, and I knew that he would not forget that second, and he would want to know what it meant.
    “So you think the trial will be held?” Eric asked Andre.
    “If the queen had been going to the summit as the ruler of New Orleans—New Orleans as it was—I believe the sitting court would have negotiated some kind of settlement between Jennifer and the queen. Maybe something involving Jennifer being raised to a position of power as the queen’s deputy and getting a large bonus; something like that. But as things are now…” There was a long silence while we filled in the blanks. New Orleans wasn’t as it had been, might never be so again. Sophie-Anne was a lame duck right now. “Now, because of Jennifer’s persistence, I think the court will pursue it,” Andre said, and then fell silent.
    “We know there’s no truth to the allegations,” a clear, cold voice said from the corner. I’d been doing a good job of ignoring the presence of my ex, Bill. But it didn’t come naturally to me. “Eric was there. I was there. Sookie was there,” the vampire (Nameless, I told myself ) continued.
    That was true. Jennifer Cater’s allegation, that the queen had lured her king to her party barn in order to kill him, was completely bogus. The bloodbath had been precipitated by the decapitation of one of the queen’s men by one of Peter Threadgill’s.
    Eric smiled reminiscently. He’d enjoyed the battle. “I accounted for the one