Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

said.
    Alcide got a call just then and talked to the pack members who’d secured my abductors. They were on their way to Alcide’s farm. “You don’t have to be too civil,” Alcide said into the phone, and I could hear the laughter that came from the other end of the line.
    I’d been struck by another thought, and as we went out to Alcide’s car, I said, “I guess growing up as a full-blooded Were in Shreveport,Jannalynn would be pretty much bound to know all the others around her age. Even the kids who weren’t full-blood.”
    Alcide and Mustapha shrugged, almost in unison. “We did,” they said, and then smiled at each other, though their growing tension made that hard to do.
    “Kym Rowe was half-Were and not much older than Jannalynn,” I observed. “Her folks came out to my house. Her dad’s Oscar, a full Were.” Mustapha stopped in his tracks, his head bowed. “Mustapha, was it Jannalynn who made you let Kym into Eric’s house?”
    “Yeah,” he said, and Alcide stopped and turned to him. His face was hard and accusing. Mustapha said to both of us, “She told me she had Warren. She told me I had to let this Rowe girl into the house. That was all I had to do.”
    “So it was her plan,” I said carefully. “ Her plan. To get Eric to drink from this girl?”
    “No, it was not her plan,” Mustapha said clearly. “She was hired to find a Were girl willing to carry it out, but it was the plan of this dude named Claude. I’ve seen him at your place. Your cousin?”

Chapter 13
    I was shocked. I was more than shocked.
    And the first coherent thought I had was, If Dermot was in on this, it’ll break my heart. Or I’ll break his neck.
    In our long drive through the night to Jannalynn’s parents’ former place, I had more time than I needed to think, or maybe not enough. I was scrambling for some solid foothold, some sure thing. “Why?” I said out loud. “Why?”
    “I sure don’t know,” Mustapha said. “The day I came to your house on the run, it was everything I could do to sit at the table with that Dermot and not try to choke it out of him.”
    “Why didn’t you?”
    “Because I didn’t know if he was in on it. That Dermot, he’s always nice, and he seems to have a lot of love for you. I just couldn’t see himstabbing you in the back like that. Or taking Warren, either, though I could see he might think that wasn’t so bad—not knowing Warren, hardly knowing me.”
    I had to assume it had been Claude’s blood that had made Kym so irresistible to Eric.
    “Dammit,” I said, and leaned forward to bury my face in my hands. I was glad to be sitting in the backseat where neither of them could see my face.
    “Sookie, we’ll figure all this out,” Alcide said. He sounded very confident and strong. “We’ll get this all taken care of. We’ll clear Eric with the police.”
    From which I understood he was scared I’d start crying. I could sort of sympathize with that, and, anyway, first things first. I was kind of beyond crying. I’d already shed enough tears.
    Glancing out the window, I saw we were now in a suburban area where the lots were at least four acres; maybe this had been out in the country once upon a time, until Shreveport had grown.
    “It’s right around here,” Mustapha said, and when we saw a white fence bordering the road, he said, “This is it. I remember the fence.”
    There was a horse gate across the driveway, and I hopped out to move it because I just wanted to get out of the car. They drove through and I followed them. It was completely dark out here, no streetlights. There was a security light in the front yard, but that was it. No lights on in the ranch-style house or in the freestanding garage a few feet behind it, where the driveway terminated. A dilapidated swing set rusted in the front yard. I pictured little Jannalynn playing on it, and found myself picturing a swing hitting her in the head.
    I grimly erased that image and joined the two men who’d gottenout of the car to stand uncertainly in the noisy night. The crickets and all the other myriad bugs of Louisiana were having a concert in the woods that bordered the property. I heard a dog bark, far away.
    “Now we break in,” Alcide said, and I said, “Wait.”
    “But—” Mustapha began.
    “Be quiet,” I said, finally feeling that there was something I could do rather than get swept into events as they passed me by. I sent out my other sense, the one that had shaped my life, the