Dead Reckoning

(but menacing) Pam or the ruin of glory that was Bubba. They’d expected Eric, but Bubba was a complete surprise.
    They were entranced. Though I whispered to them on our way through the living room not to call him by his real name, I didn’t know if they’d have enough self-control. Luckily for us all, they did. Bubba really, really, didn’t like being reminded of his past life. He had to be in a remarkable mood to sing.
    Wait. Ha! Finally, I had a real idea.
    They all sat around the table. Absorbed in figuring out my scheme, I got out the refreshments and pulled up a chair by Bubba. I had a floaty, surrealistic feeling. I simply couldn’t think about the crash and burn I’d just experienced. I had to think about this moment and this purpose.
    Pam sat behind Eric so they wouldn’t meet each other’s eyes. They both looked miserable, and it was a look I’d seldom seen either of them wear. It didn’t look good on them. I felt somehow guilty about the breach between them, though it certainly wasn’t my fault. Or was it? I ran it through my mind. Nope, it wasn’t.
    Eric proposed that he infiltrate his vampires into Vampire’s Kiss one night in disguise, and that they wait until the club was about to close and the crowds were thin. Then we would attack. And, of course, kill them all.
    If Victor hadn’t been an employee of Felipe, king of three states, Eric’s scheme would have been workable, though there were some definite weak points. But surely killing a bunch of his vampires would piss off Felipe mightily, and I really couldn’t blame him.
    Audrina had a plan, too, involving discovering Victor’s sleeping place and getting him while he was out for the day. Wow, that was fresh and original. However, it was a classic for a reason. Victor would be helpless.
    “Except we don’t know where he sleeps,” I said, trying to slide the objection in there without sounding snooty.
    “I do,” Audrina said proudly. “He sleeps in a big stone mansion. It’s set back from a parish road between Musgrave and Toniton. There’s one lone road in, and that’s it. There aren’t any trees around the house. It’s just grass.”
    “Wow.” I was impressed. “How’d you track him down?”
    “I know the guy who mows the yard,” she said. She grinned at me. “Dusty Kolinchek, remember him?”
    “Sure,” I said, feeling a stir of interest. Dusty’s dad owned a fleet—okay, a small fleet—of lawn tractors and weed eaters, and every summer a group of Bon Temps high school boys earned their walking-around money working for Mr. Kolinchek. Dusty was inheriting the lawn-mowing empire, sounded like.
    “He says that the house is almost empty during the day because Victor is paranoid about having anyone come in while he’s sleeping. He just has two bodyguards there, Dixie and Dixon Mayhew, and they’re some kind of wereanimals.”
    “I know them,” I said. “They’re werepanthers. They’re good.” The Mayhew twins were tough and professional. “They must be strapped for cash to work for a vampire.” Now that my sister-in-law was dead and Calvin Norris had married Tanya Grissom, I didn’t see many of the werepanthers with any frequency. Calvin didn’t come into the bar much, and Jason seemed to see his former in-laws only at the full moon, when he became one of them . . . in a limited way, since he’d been bitten, not born, as a were.
    “So maybe I could bribe the Mayhews if they’re that hard up,” Eric said. “You wouldn’t need to kill them, then. Less mess. But you humans would have to do the job, since Pam and I will be down for the day.”
    “We’d have to search the house, because I bet the Mayhews don’t know exactly where he sleeps,” I said. “Though I’m sure they have to have a pretty good idea.” The vampire smell alone should help the twoeys zone in on where Victor slept, but it seemed kind of tacky to say that out loud.
    Pam kind of waved her hand. Eric half turned, catching the motion out of the corner of his eye. “What?” he said. “Oh, you can speak.”
    Pam looked relieved. She said, “I think when he leaves the club in the morning would be a good time. His attention is on whoever he’s going to feed on, and we might be able to attack then.”
    These were all pretty straightforward plans, and maybe that was both their strength and their weakness. They were simple. And that meant they were predictable. Eric’s plan was the bloodiest, of course. There would certainly be