Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

me ap-proach, he stepped out into the bright security light, looking both intent and focused. It was easy to see that Bill had a list of things to tell me. “I’ll start with the lesser things first,” he said, rather stiffly. “I don’t know if you’ve spared a moment to wonder about my efforts to find out who killed the young woman, but I assure you I’m trying to find out. She died while I was patrolling, and I won’t be easy until I understand why it happened.”
    Taken aback, I could only nod slightly. “I don’t know why you thought I … oh, Eric. Well, never mind. Please tell me what you’ve discovered. Would you like to sit?”
    We both sat in the lawn chairs. “Heidi and I went over Eric’s backyard with great attention,” Bill said. “You know it slopes down to a brick wall, the outer perimeter of the gated community.”
    “Right.” I hadn’t spent more than ten minutes total in Eric’s backyard, but I knew its contours. “There’s a gate in the brick wall.”
    “Yes, for the yard crew.” Bill said this like having a yard crew was an exotic indulgence, like having a bunch of peacocks. “It’s easier for the yard crew to gather all the yard debris and carry it out the back, rather than go uphill to the curb.” His tone made it plain what he thought of people who liked to have a job made easier for them.
    “It isn’t kept locked?” I was startled at the idea that it might have been swinging open.
    “Normally, yes. And normally, Mustapha is responsible for unlocking it for the yard crew on the day they’re expected, and he’s also responsible for locking it after they’re done. But the lock was missing.”
    “A werewolf or vampire could have snapped it,” I said. “So Mustapha’s not necessarily guilty of opening the gate, anyway.” He’d done something wrong, though. You don’t vanish unless you’ve done something wrong. “What did you smell? Anything?”
    “Even Heidi could not say for certain who’d been there,” Bill said. “Many humans, sweaty humans … the yard workers. A dash of fairy, but that could have been a very faint trace of the vial around the girl’s neck. And a stronger trace of twoey. That could have been from the girl herself.” He leaned back and looked up into the night sky … the only sky he’d seen in more than a hundred and thirty years.
    “What do you think happened?” I asked him, after we’d been quiet for a few calm moments. I’d been looking up, along with Bill. Though Bon Temps was close, it only cast a faint glow upward, especially this late. I could see the stars, vast and cold and distant. I shivered.
    “Look, Sookie,” he said, and held out something small. I took it and held it up to my nose to try to make it out in the patchy light.
    “It’s true, then,” I said. It was a rubber stopper, the kind that would close a small vial. “Where did you find it?”
    “In the living room. It rolled under the dining table and landed right by a chair leg. I think the woman Kym took out the stopper when she knew she was going to see Eric face-to-face,” he said. “She dropped it while she drank the blood. She tucked the vial down into her bra in case the lingering scent would attract him further. And when I found her on the lawn, I could smell that she was two-natured. That would have added to her … allure.”
    “The dad’s two-natured, a Were, I think. The Rowes showed up here at my house yesterday with a reporter, to try to make something quotable happen.”
    Bill wanted to hear all about it. “You have the reporter’s card?” he asked when I’d finished.
    I went into the house and found it on the kitchen counter. Now that I took a moment to look at it, I discovered that Harp Powell was based in Terre Sauvage, a small town that lay north of the interstate between Bon Temps and Shreveport. “Huh,” I said, handing it to Bill, “I assumed he was based in Shreveport or Baton Rouge or Monroe.”
    Bill said, “I met this man at Fangtasia. He’s been published by a small regional press. He’s written several books.”
    Bill sounded quite respectful; he had great admiration for the written word.
    “What was he doing at Fangtasia?” I asked, diverted.
    “He interviewed me and Maxwell Lee, since we’re both native Louisianans. He was hoping to do a collection of Louisiana vampires’ histories. He wanted to listen to our recollections of the times we grew up in, the historical events we’d witnessed. He thought