Dead in the Family

Hadley when she’d been going with Sophie-Anne Leclerq, the now-finally-deceased Queen of Louisiana.
    “She was married to a breather?”
    “Yes, before she met Sophie-Anne,” I said. “A very nice guy named Remy Savoy.”
    “Is that him I smell? Along with a big scent of fairy?”
    Uh-oh. “Yes, Remy came to pick up Hunter this afternoon. I was keeping him because Remy had to go to a family funeral. He didn’t think that would be a good place to take a kid.” I didn’t bring up Hunter’s little problem. The fewer who knew about it, the better, and that included Eric.
    “And?”
    “I meant to tell you this the other night,” I said. “My cousin Claude?”
    Eric nodded.
    “He asked if he could stay here for a while, because he’s lonely in his house with both his sisters dead.”
    “You are letting a man live with you.” Eric didn’t sound angry—more like he was poised to be angry, if you know what I mean? There was just a little edge in his voice.
    “Believe me, he’s not interested in me as a woman,” I said, though I had a guilty flash of him walking in on me in the bathroom. “He is all about the guys.”
    “I know you are fully aware of how to take care of a fairy who gives you trouble,” Eric said, after an appreciable silence.
    I’d killed fairies before. I hadn’t particularly wanted to be reminded of that. “Yes,” I said. “And if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll keep a squirt gun loaded with lemon juice on my bedside table.” Lemon juice and iron—the fairy weaknesses.
    “That would make me feel better,” Eric said. “Is it this Claude that Heidi scented on your land? I felt you were very worried, and that’s one reason I came over last night.”
    The blood bond was hard at work. “She says neither of the fairies she tracked was Claude,” I said, “and that really worries me. But—”
    “It worries me, too.” Eric looked down at the empty bottle of TrueBlood, then said, “Sookie, there are things you should know.”
    “Oh.” I’d been about to tell him about the fresh corpse. I was sure he would have led off the discussion with the body if Heidi had mentioned it, and it seemed pretty important to me. I may have sounded a little peeved at being interrupted. Eric gave me a sharp look.
    Okay, I was at fault, excuse me . I should have been longing to be chock-full of information that Eric felt would help me negotiate the minefield of vampire politics. And there were nights I’d have been delighted to learn more about my boyfriend’s life. But tonight, after the unusual stresses and strains of Hunter care, what I’d wanted was (again, excuse me ) to tell him about the body-in-the-woods crisis and then have a good long screw.
    Normally, Eric would be down with that program.
    But not tonight, apparently.
    We sat opposite each other at the kitchen table. I tried not to sigh out loud.
    “You remember the summit at Rhodes, and how a sort of strip of states from south to north were invited,” Eric began.
    I nodded. This didn’t sound too promising. My corpse was way more urgent. Not to mention the sex.
    “Once we had ventured from one side of the New World to another, and the white breathing population migrated across, too— we were the first explorers—a large group of us met to divide things up, for better governing of our own population.”
    “Were there any Native American vampires here when you came? Hey, were you on the Leif Ericson expedition?”
    “No, not my generation. Oddly enough, there were very few Native American vampires. And the ones that were here were different in several ways.”
    Now, that was pretty interesting, but I could tell Eric wasn’t going to stop and fill in the blanks.
    “At that first national meeting, about three hundred years ago, there were many disagreements.” Eric looked very, very serious.
    “No, really?” Vampires arguing? I could yawn.
    And he didn’t appreciate my sarcasm, either. He raised blond eyebrows, as if to say, “Can I go on and get to the point? Or are you going to give me grief?”
    I spread my hands: “Keep on going . ”
    “Instead of dividing the country the way humans would, we included some of the north and some of the south in every division. We thought it would keep the cross-representation going. So the easternmost division, which is mostly the coastal states, is called Moshup Clan, for the Native American mythical figure, and its symbol is a whale.”
    Okay, maybe I looked a little