Dead in the Family

accurate reading.”
    He was right.
    “A year ago,” I said, “you wouldn’t have asked this of me.”
    “A year ago,” he answered, “you wouldn’t have hesitated to drink.”
    I crossed to the desk and tossed it down.

Chapter 14
    I went down the stairs on Alcide’s arm. I was already feeling a little swimmy in the head, having taken an illegal drug for the first time in my life.
    I was an idiot.
    However, I was an increasingly warm and comfortable idiot. A delightful side effect of the shaman’s drink was that I couldn’t feel Eric and Alexei and Appius Livius with nearly as much immediacy, and the relief was incredible.
    A less pleasant side effect was that my legs didn’t feel quite real underneath me. Maybe that was why Alcide was keeping such a tight grip on my arm. I remembered what he’d said about his former hope that we’d be a couple one day, and I thought it might be nice to kiss him and remind myself what it felt like. Then I realized I’d better channel those warm and fuzzy feelings into finding out the answers to the puzzles facing Alcide. I directed my feelings, which was an excellent decision. I was so proud of my excellence I could have rolled in it.
    The shaman had probably known a few tricks for keeping all this dreaminess focused on the matter at hand. I made a huge effort to sharpen up. In my absence, the group in the living room had swollen in numbers; the whole pack was here. I could feel the totality of it, the completeness.
    Eyes turned to look at us as we descended the stairs. Jason looked alarmed, but I gave him a reassuring smile. Something must have been off about it, because his face didn’t smooth out.
    Alcide’s second went to stand by the kneeling Annabelle. Jannalynn threw back her head and gave a series of yips. Now I was standing by my brother, and he was holding on to me. Somehow, Alcide had passed me over to Jason’s keeping.
    “Geez,” Jason muttered. “What’s wrong with waving your hand in the air or ringing a triangle?” I could assume yipping was not a summons in the panther pride. That was okay. I smiled at Jason. I felt a lot like Alice in Wonderland after she took a bite of the mushroom.
    I was on one side of the empty space around Annabelle, Alcide on the other. He looked around to collect the pack’s attention. “We’re here tonight with two visitors to decide what to do about Annabelle,” he said without a preamble. “We’re here to judge whether she had anything to do with the death of Basim, or if that death can be laid at the door of anyone else.”
    “Why are there visitors?” asked a woman’s voice. I tried to find her face, but she was standing so far in the back I couldn’t see her. I estimated there were perhaps as many as forty people in the room, ranging in age from sixteen (the change began after puberty) to seventy. Ham and Patricia were to my left, about a quarter of the circle away. Jannalynn had stayed by Annabelle. The few other pack members I knew by name were scattered through the crowd.
    “Listen hard,” Alcide said, looking directly at me. Okay, Alcide, message received. I closed my eyes, and I listened. Well, this was absofucking-lutely amazing. I found I knew when his gaze swept the assembled pack members by the ripple of fear that followed. I could see the fear. It was dark yellow. “Basim’s body was found on Sookie’s land,” Alcide said. “It was planted there in an attempt to blame her for his death. The police came to search for it right after we removed it.”
    There was a general surge of surprise . . . from almost everyone.
    “You moved the body?” Patricia said. My eyes flew open. Why had Alcide elected to keep that a secret? Because it had been a total shock to Patricia, and to a few others, that Basim’s body was not still in the clearing. Jason moved up behind me and put his beer down. He knew he needed his hands free. My brother might not be a mental giant, but he had good instincts.
    I was amazed at Alcide’s cleverness in setting up the scene. I might not get Were thoughts that clearly, but Were emotions . . . That was what he was after. Now that I was concentrating, focusing on the creatures in the room, almost out of my body with the intensity of it, I saw Alcide as a ball of red energy, pulsing and attractive, and all the other Weres were circling around him. I understood for the first time that the packleader was the planet around which all others orbited in the Were universe. The