Dead in the Family

you. Ladies, looking mighty fine tonight.”
    I went into high gear. “Hi, you-all!” I said brightly. “It was so nice of you to come at such short notice. Eric, you know Alcide. Alcide, this is Eric’s longtime friend Appius Livius Ocella, who’s in town visiting with his, ah, protégé, Alexei. Eric, I don’t know if you’ve met Alcide’s friend Annabelle, a new pack member, and Jannalynn, who’s been in the Long Tooth pack for ages. Jannalynn, we’ve never had a chance to talk much, but of course Sam talks about you all the time. And I think you all know my brother, Jason.”
    Whew. I felt like I’d run an introduction marathon. Since vamps don’t shake hands, that concluded the opening ceremonies. Then I had to get them all to sit down while I offered them drinks, which no one accepted.
    Eric fired the opening volley. “Alcide, one of my trackers went over Sookie’s land after Basim al Saud warned her about the strangers he smelled in her woods. Our tracker has found a new body buried there.”
    Alcide looked at Eric as though he had begun speaking in tongues.
    “We didn’t kill anyone that night,” Alcide said. “Basim said he told Sookie we smelled an old body, and a fairy or two, and a vampire. But he didn’t mention a fresh body.”
    “Yet there’s a new burial there now.”
    “Which we had nothing to do with.” Alcide shrugged. “We were there three nights before your tracker smelled the scent of a fresh body.”
    “It seems quite a huge coincidence, doesn’t it? A body on Sookie’s land, right after your pack is there?” Eric was looking aggravatingly reasonable.
    “Maybe it’s more of a coincidence that there was already a body on Sookie’s land.”
    Oh, boy, I really didn’t want to go there.
    Jannalynn was actually snarling at Eric. It was an interesting look, with the eye makeup and all. Annabelle was standing with her arms slightly away from her body, waiting to see which way she needed to jump.
    Alexei was staring off into space, which seemed to be his fallback stance, and Appius Livius simply seemed bored.
    “I say we should go see who it is,” Jason said unexpectedly.
    I looked at him with approval.
    So out we went into the woods to dig up a corpse.

Chapter 9
    Alcide changed to some boots he had in the truck, and he shed his tie and coat. Jannalynn wisely took off her spike-heeled sandals and Annabelle her own more modest heels. I gave them both some sneakers of mine, and I offered Jannalynn an old T-shirt to cover her shiny silver dress so it wouldn’t snag in the woods. She pulled it over her head. She even said, “Thanks,” though she didn’t sound actually grateful. I retrieved two shovels from the toolshed. Alcide took one shovel, Eric the other. Jason carried one of those great big flashlights called a lantern that he’d fished out of the toolbox on his truck. The lantern was for my benefit. The vampires could see perfectly well in the dark, and the Weres could see very well, too. Since Jason was a werepanther, he had excellent night vision. I was the blind one in the group.
    “Do we know where we’re going?” Annabelle said.
    “Heidi said it was due east, close to the stream, in a clearing,” I said, and we slogged eastward. I kept running into stuff, and after a while Eric handed off his shovel to Jason and crouched so I could cling to his back. I kept my head tucked behind his so branches wouldn’t hit me in the face. Our progress was smoother after that.
    “I smell it,” Jannalynn said suddenly. She was out ahead of us all, as if her job in the pack were to make the way clear for the packleader. She was a different woman out in the woods. Though I couldn’t see very well, I could see that. She was quick, sure-footed, and decisive. She darted ahead, and after a moment she called back, “Here it is!”
    We got there to find her standing over a patch of dirt in a little clearing. It had been disturbed recently, though an attempt had been made to camouflage that disturbance.
    Eric eased me down onto the ground, and Jason shone the lantern at the earth. “It’s not . . . ?” I whispered, knowing everyone there could hear me.
    “No,” Eric said firmly. “Too recent.” Not Debbie Pelt. She was elsewhere, in an older grave.
    “Only one way to find out who it is,” Alcide said. Jason and Alcide began to dig, and since they were both very strong, it went quickly. Alexei came over to stand by me, and it occurred to me that a grave in the