Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

pleasurable. Usually.” Of course, that was at the will of the vamp doing the biting. I shot a quick glance at Eric. He’d bitten me before without bothering to make it fun, and it had hurt like hell.
    “Then why weren’t you the donor, Ms. Stackhouse? Why did you let the dead girl have all the fun of feeding him?”
    Geez! Persistent. “I can’t give blood as often as Eric needs it,” I said. I stopped there. I was in danger of overexplaining.
    Ambroselli’s neck whipped around as she sprung the next question on Eric.
    “But you could survive just fine on a synthetic blood drink, Mr. Northman. Why’d you bite the girl?”
    “It tastes better,” Eric said, and one of the uniforms spit on the ground.
    “Did you decide you’d like a taste, Mr. Compton? Seeing as how she’d already been tapped?”
    Bill looked mildly disgusted. “No, ma’am. That wouldn’t have been safe for the young lady.”
    “As it turns out, she wasn’t safe, anyway. And none of you knows her name, or how she got here? Why she came to this house? You didn’t call some kind of I need a drink hotline … like a vampire escort service?”
    We all shook our heads simultaneously, saying no to all these questions at once. “I thought she came with my other guests, the ones from out of town,” Eric said. “They brought some new friends they met at a bar.”
    “These guests are inside?”
    “Yes,” Eric said, and I thought, Oh, gosh, I hope Felipe got them out of the bedroom. But of course, the police would have to talk to them.
    “Then let’s take this inside and meet these guests,” Detective Ambroselli said. “Do you have any objection to us coming inside, Mr. Northman?”
    “Not the least in the world,” Eric said courteously.
    So I traipsed back into the house with Bill, Eric, and Pam. The detective led the way as if the house were hers. Eric permitted it. By now the Las Vegas contingent would have cleaned up, I hoped, since they’d certainly heard what Ambroselli had said when Eric went to the door.
    To my relief, the living room looked much more orderly. There were a few bottles of synthetic blood, but they were all positioned adjacent to a seated vampire. The big windows in the back were open and the air quality was much better. Even the ashtray was out of sight,and someone had positioned a large bowl over the worst gouge marks on the coffee table.
    All the vamps and the humans, fully clothed, had assembled in the living room. They wore serious expressions.
    Mustapha was not among them.
    Where was he? Had he simply decided he didn’t want to talk to the police, so he’d departed? Or had someone entered through the French windows in the kitchen doors and done something terrible to the Blade wannabe?
    Maybe Mustapha had heard something suspicious outside and had gone to investigate. Maybe the killer or killers had jumped him once he got outside, and that was why no one had heard anything. But Mustapha was so tough that I simply couldn’t imagine anyone ambushing him and getting away with it.
    Though “Mustapha” might not fear anything, in actuality he was the former KeShawn Johnson, and he was an ex-con. I didn’t know why he’d been incarcerated, but I knew it was for something he’d been ashamed of. That was why he’d adopted a new name and a new profession after he’d served his term. The police wouldn’t know him as Mustapha Khan … but they’d know he was KeShawn Johnson as soon as they took his fingerprints, and he was scared of prison.
    Oh, how I wished I could communicate all this to Eric.
    I didn’t believe Mustapha had killed the woman on the lawn. On the other hand, I’d never been completely inside his head, since he was a Were. But I’d never heard senseless aggression or random violence, either. Rather, Mustapha’s top priority had always registered as control.
    I believe most of us are capable of moments of rage, moments when our button’s been pressed to the point where we lash out to stopthe pressure. But I was sure that Mustapha was used to much worse treatment than anything that girl could have handed out.
    While I was worrying about Mustapha, Eric was introducing the remaining newcomers to Detective Ambroselli. “Felipe de Castro,” he said, and Felipe nodded regally. “His assistant, Horst Friedman.” To my surprise, Horst rose and shook her hand. Not a vampire thing, handshaking. Eric continued, “This is Felipe’s consort, Angie Weather-spoon.” She was the third