Dead Ever After

for the queen to find me and kill me . . . or worse. If Eric turned me, or got Pam to do the deed, I’d at least have my days taken care of; I’d be dead in a small, dark space. Maybe I’d spend my nights hanging around with Pam and Karin, we three blondes, waiting at Eric’s beck and call—for eternity. I shuddered. The mental image of me hanging around with Karin and Pam—like Dracula’s females, waiting for an unwary passerby in some Gothic castle—was simply disgusting. I’d want to stake myself. (After a year or two, probably Pam would be glad to oblige me with that.) And what if Eric ordered me to kill someone, someone I cared about? I’d have to obey him.
    And that was if I survived the change, which was by no means certain. I read every week about bodies that had been found in hastily dug graves, bodies that had never reanimated, never clawed their way to the surface. People who’d thought it would be cool to be undead and persuaded or paid some vampire to turn them. But they hadn’t risen.
    I shuddered again.
    There was more to think about and more ground to retread, but suddenly I was dazed with exhaustion. I wouldn’t have imagined I could get into bed and close my eyes ever again, after a day like today . . . but my body thought otherwise, and I let it rule.
    I might rue what I’d said this night when I woke up in the daytime. I might call myself a fool and pack my bags for Oklahoma. Right now, I had to let my regrets and conjectures go. As I scrubbed my face at the bathroom sink, I remembered I’d made a promise. Instead of calling Sam and having to answer questions, I texted him. “Home okay, bad but over.”
    I slept without dreams and woke to another day of rain.
    The police were at my door, and they arrested me for murder.
    ELSEWHERE
in a motel on the interstate fifteen miles from Bon Temps
    The tall man was lying back on the double bed, his big hands clasped over his belly, his expression totally satisfied. “God be praised,” he said to the ceiling. “Sometimes the evildoers get punished as they deserve.”
    His roommate ignored him. He was on the telephone again. “Yes,” the medium man was saying. “It’s confirmed. She’s been arrested. Are we through here now? If we stay any longer, we run the risk of being noticed, and in my companion’s case . . .” He glanced over at the other bed. The tall man had left his bed to go to the bathroom, and he’d shut the door. The medium man continued in a hushed voice. “In his case, recognized. We couldn’t use the trailer because the police were sure to search it, and we couldn’t risk leaving trace, even with the Bon Temps police department. We’ve been changing motels every night.”
    The rich male voice said, “I’ll be there tomorrow. We’ll talk.”
    “Face-to-face?” The medium man sounded neutral, but since he was alone, he let his expression show his apprehension.
    He heard the man on the other end laughing, but it was more like a series of coughs. “Yes, face-to-face,” the man said.
    After he’d ended the conversation, the medium man stared at the wall for a few minutes. He didn’t like this turn of events. He wondered if he was worried enough to forgo the remainder of his pay for this job.
    He hadn’t lasted this long without being wily and without knowing when to cut his losses. Would his employer really track him down if he left?
    Gloomily, Johan Glassport concluded that he would.
    By the time Steve Newlin came out of the bathroom zipping up his pants, Glassport was able to relate the conversation without revealing by any blink of an eyelash how repugnant he found the idea of meeting their employer again. Glassport was ready to turn out the lights and crawl into his bed, but Newlin wouldn’t shut up.
    Steve Newlin was in an exceptionally good mood, because he was imagining several things that might happen to the Stackhouse woman while she was in jail. None of these things was pleasant, and some of them were pornographic, but all of them were couched in terms of what Steve Newlin’s personal Bible interpreted as hellfire and damnation.

Chapter 9
    I never would have imagined I could be glad my grandmother was dead, but that morning I was. It would have killed Gran to see me arrested and put into a police car.
    I never had experimented with bondage, and now I surely never would. I hate handcuffs.
    I had a trite-but-true moment when Alcee Beck told me he was arresting me for murder. I thought, Any minute