All Together Dead

Russell said. “My staff tells me you had a hard time at my place. You seem to have recovered nicely. I’m not sure how you got free, but I’m glad.” If Russell was pausing for a reaction, he didn’t get one. Bill’s face was just as impassive as if Russell had been commenting on the weather, not Bill’s torture. “Lorena was your sire, so I couldn’t interfere,” Russell said, his voice just as calm as Bill’s face. “And here you are, selling your own little computer thing that Lorena was trying so hard to get from you. As the Bard said, ‘All’s well that ends well.’”
    Russell had been too verbose, which was the only indication that the king was anxious about Bill’s reaction. And sure enough, Bill’s voice was like cold silk running over glass. But all he said was, “Think nothing of it, Russell. Congratulations are in order, I understand.”
    Russell smiled up at his groom.
    “Yes, Mississippi and I are tying the knot,” the King of Indiana said. He had a deep voice. He would look at home beating up some welsher in an alley or sitting in a bar with sawdust on the floor. But Russell did everything but blush.
    Maybe this was a love match.
    Then Russell spotted me. “Bart, you have to meet this young woman,” he said immediately. I about had a panic attack, but there was no way out of the situation without simply turning tail and running. Russell pulled his intended over to me by their linked hands. “This young woman was staked while she was in Jackson. Some of those Fellowship thugs were in a bar, and one of them stabbed her.”
    Bart looked almost startled. “You survived, obviously,” he said. “But how?”
    “Mr. Edgington here got me some help,” I said. “In fact, he saved my life.”
    Russell tried to look modest, and he almost succeeded. The vampire was trying to look good in front of his intended, such a human reaction that I could scarcely believe it.
    “However, I believe you took something with you when you left,” Russell said severely, shaking a finger at me.
    I tried to glean something from his face that would tell me which way to jump with my answer. I’d taken a blanket, sure enough, and some loose clothes the young men in Russell’s harem had left lying around. And I’d taken Bill, who’d been a prisoner in one of the outbuildings. Probably Russell was referring to Bill, huh?
    “Yessir, but I left something behind in return,” I said, since I couldn’t stand this verbal cat and mouse. All right, already! I’d rescued Bill and killed the vampire Lorena, though that had been more or less by accident. And I’d dumped her evil ass in the pool.
    “I did think there was some sludge at the bottom when we got the pool ready for the summer,” Russell said, and his bitter chocolate eyes examined me thoughtfully. “What an enterprising young woman you are, Miss…”
    “Stackhouse. Sookie Stackhouse.”
    “Yes, I remember now. Weren’t you at Club Dead with Alcide Herveaux? He’s a Were, honey,” Russell said to Bart.
    “Yessir,” I said, wishing he hadn’t remembered that little detail.
    “Didn’t I hear Herveaux’s father was campaigning for packleader in Shreveport?”
    “That’s right. But he…ah, he didn’t get it.”
    “So that was the day Papa Herveaux died?”
    “It was,” I said. Bart was listening intently, his hand running up and down Russell’s coat sleeve all the while. It was a lusty little gesture.
    Quinn appeared at my side just then and put his arm around me, and Russell’s eyes widened. “Gentlemen,” Quinn said to Indiana and Mississippi, “I believe we have your wedding ready and waiting.”
    The two kings smiled at each other. “No cold feet?” Bart asked Russell.
    “Not if you keep them warm,” Russell said with a smile that would have melted an iceberg. “Besides, our lawyers would kill us if we reneged on those contracts.”
    They both nodded at Quinn, who loped to the dais at one end of the exhibit hall. He stood at the highest level and stretched out his arms. There was a microphone up there, and his deep voice boomed out over the crowd. “Your attention, ladies and gentlemen, kings and commoners, vampires and humans! You are all requested and invited to attend the union of Russell Edgington, King of Mississippi, and Bartlett Crowe, King of Indiana, in the Ritual Room. The ceremony will begin in ten minutes. The Ritual Room is through the double doors in the east wall of the hall.” Quinn pointed regally