Dead to the World

Oral?” Alcide looked relieved when he saw I was smiling. “More like an endurance test?” I said.
    He nodded. “More like.”
    “Don’t you think your packmaster should know about this?”
    “Yes. What else?”
    “Why would they be doing this? Why pick on Shreveport? If they have that much going for them, the vampire blood and the will to do really bad things, why not set up shop in a more prosperous city?”
    “That’s a real good question.” Alcide was thinking hard. His green eyes squinted when he thought. “I’ve never heard of a witch having this much power. I never heard of a witch being a shifter. I tend to think it’s the first time this has ever happened.”
    “The first time?”
    “That a witch has ever tried to take control of a city, tried to take away the assets of the city’s supernatural community,” he said.
    “How do witches stand in the supernatural pecking order?”
    “Well, they’re humans who stay human.” He shrugged. “Usually, the supes feel like witches are just wannabes. The kind you have to keep an eye on, since they practice magic and we’re magical creatures, but still . . .”
    “Not a big threat?”
    “Right. Looks like we might have to rethink that. Their leader takes vampire blood. Does she drain them herself?” He punched in a number and held the phone to his ear.
    “I don’t know.”
    “And what does she shift into?” A true shape-shifter can turn into anything, but they’re rare. Most so-called shifters only turn into one animal. A shifter could call herself a “werelynx” or a “werebat” if she was out of hearing range of a werewolf. Werewolves objected very strenuously to any other two-natured creatures terming themselves “Were.”
    “Well, she’s . . . like you,” I said. The Weres considered themselves the kings of the two-natured community. They only changed into one animal, and it was the best. The rest of the two-natured community responded by calling the wolves thugs.
    “Oh, no.” Alcide was appalled. At that moment, his packmaster answered the phone.
    “Hello, this is Alcide.” A silence. “I’m sorry to bother you when you were busy in the yard. Something important’s come up. I need to see you as soon as possible.” Another silence. “Yes, sir. With your permission, I’ll bring someone with me.” After a second or two, Alcide pressed a button to end the conversation. “Surely Bill knows where Pam and Chow live?” he asked me.
    “I’m sure he does, but he’s not here to tell me about it.” If he would.
    “And where is he?” Alcide’s voice was deceptively calm.
    “He’s in Peru.”
    I’d been looking down at my napkin, which I’d pleated into a fan. I glanced up at the man next to me to see him staring down at me with an expression of incredulity.
    “He’s gone ? He left you there alone?”
    “Well, he didn’t know anything was going to happen,” I said, trying not to sound defensive, and then I thought, What am I saying? “Alcide, I haven’t seen Bill since I came back from Jackson, except when he came over to tell me he was leaving the country.”
    “But she told me you were back with Bill,” Alcide said in a very strange voice.
    “Who told you that?”
    “Debbie. Who else?”
    I’m afraid my reaction was not very flattering. “And you believed Debbie? ”
    “She said she’d stopped by Merlotte’s on her way over to see me, and she’d seen you and Bill acting very, ah, friendly while she was there.”
    “And you believed her?” Maybe if I kept shifting the emphasis, he’d tell me he was just joking.
    Alcide was looking sheepish now, or as sheepish as a werewolf can look.
    “Okay, that was dumb,” he admitted. “I’ll deal with her.”
    “Right.” Pardon me if I didn’t sound very convinced. I’d heard that before.
    “Bill’s really in Peru?”
    “As far as I know.”
    “And you’re alone in the house with Eric?”
    “Eric doesn’t know he’s Eric.”
    “He doesn’t remember his identity?”
    “Nope. He doesn’t remember his character, either, apparently.”
    “That’s a good thing,” Alcide said darkly. He had never viewed Eric with any sense of humor, as I did. I’d always been leery of Eric, but I’d appreciated his mischief, his single-mindedness, and his flair. If you could say a vampire had joie de vivre, Eric had it in spades.
    “Let’s go see the packmaster now,” Alcide said, obviously in a much grimmer mood. We slid out of the booth after he’d