Dead to the World

paid for the coffee, and without phoning in to work (“No point being the boss if I can’t vanish from time to time”), he helped me up into his truck and we took off back into Shreveport. I was sure Ms. Crispy would assume we’d checked into a motel or gone to Alcide’s apartment, but that was better than Ms. Crispy finding out her boss was a werewolf.
    As we drove, Alcide told me that the packmaster was a retired Air Force colonel, formerly stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, which flowed into Shreveport. Colonel Flood’s only child, a daughter, had married a local, and Colonel Flood had settled in the city to be close to his grandchildren.
    “His wife is a Were, too?” I asked. If Mrs. Flood was also a Were, their daughter would be, too. If Weres can get through the first few months, they live a good long while, barring accidents.
    “She was; she passed away a few months ago.”
    Alcide’s packmaster lived in a modest neighborhood of ranch-style homes on smallish lots. Colonel Flood was picking up pinecones in his front yard. It seemed a very domestic and peaceable thing for a prominent werewolf to be doing. I’d pictured him in my head in an Air Force uniform, but of course he was wearing regular civilian outdoor clothes. His thick hair was white and cut very short, and he had a mustache that must have been trimmed with a ruler, it was so exact.
    The colonel must have been curious after Alcide’s phone call, but he asked us to come inside in a calm sort of way. He patted Alcide on the back a lot; he was very polite to me.
    The house was as neat as his mustache. It could have passed inspection.
    “Can I get you a drink? Coffee? Hot chocolate? Soda?” The colonel gestured toward his kitchen as if there were a servant standing there alert for our orders.
    “No, thank you,” I said, since I was awash with Apple-bee’s coffee. Colonel Flood insisted we sit in the company living room, which was an awkwardly narrow rectangle with a formal dining area at one end. Mrs. Flood had liked porcelain birds. She had liked them a lot. I wondered how the grandchildren fared in this room, and I kept my hands tucked in my lap for fear I’d jostle something.
    “So, what can I do for you?” Colonel Flood asked Alcide. “Are you seeking permission to marry?”
    “Not today,” Alcide said with a smile. I looked down at the floor to keep my expression to myself. “My friend Sookie has some information that she shared with me. It’s very important.” His smile died on the vine. “She needs to relate what she knows to you.”
    “And why do I need to listen?”
    I understood that he was asking Alcide who I was—that if he was obliged to listen to me, he needed to know my bona fides. But Alcide was offended on my behalf.
    “I wouldn’t have brought her if it wasn’t important. I wouldn’t have introduced her to you if I wouldn’t give my blood for her.”
    I wasn’t real certain what that meant, but I was interpreting it to assume Alcide was vouching for my truthfulness and offering to pay in some way if I proved false. Nothing was simple in the supernatural world.
    “Let’s hear your story, young woman,” said the colonel briskly.
    I related all I’d told Alcide, trying to leave out the personal bits.
    “Where is this coven staying?” he asked me, when I was through. I told him what I’d seen through Holly’s mind.
    “Not enough information,” Flood said crisply. “Alcide, we need the trackers.”
    “Yes, sir.” Alcide’s eyes were gleaming at the thought of action.
    “I’ll call them. Everything I’ve heard is making me rethink something odd that happened last night. Adabelle didn’t come to the planning committee meeting.”
    Alcide looked startled. “That’s not good.”
    They were trying to be cryptic in front of me, but I could read what was passing between the two shifters without too much difficulty. Flood and Alcide were wondering if their—hmmm, vice president?—Adabelle had missed the meeting for some innocent reason, or if the new coven had somehow inveigled her into joining them against her own pack.
    “Adabelle has been chafing against the pack leadership for some time,” Colonel Flood told Alcide, with the ghost of a smile on his thin lips. “I had hoped, when she got elected my second, that she’d consider that concession enough.”
    From the bits of information I could glean from the packmaster’s mind, the Shreveport pack seemed to be heavily