Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

vanished. Tell me exactly what he said when he was here.”
    “Which time? When he was here before the night of the party, or when he was here after the party?”
    “Tell me about both visits.”
    I related the first conversation to Bill, though there was surprisingly little to tell. Mustapha’d been here. He’d relayed Pam’s warning, which I hadn’t understood until I’d met Freyda. He’d warned me about Jannalynn. The second time he was here, he’d been worried about Warren.
    “You’ve told Eric this?” he asked.
    I snorted. “We’re not exactly having lengthy heart-to-hearts these days. My conversation with Freyda was longer than any talk I’ve had with Eric.”
    Wisely, Bill didn’t comment. He recapped. “So Mustapha comes to your house, though he’s been missing ever since the girl died. He tells you that he wants to talk to Alcide, but he’s afraid to call him or approach him directly since Jannalynn might be around to intercept him.”
    I thought that was a fair summary. “Yes, and I’ve passed that message along to Alcide,” I said. “Plus, what’s most important to Mustapha, his friend Warren is missing. I think someone abducted Warren, and they’re holding him in return for Mustapha’s good behavior.”
    “Then finding Warren would be a good thing,” Bill said, and I winced when I heard his voice. I’d screwed up.
    “I get that it was dumb for me not to have mentioned this first of all,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
    “Tell me about this Warren.”
    “You haven’t ever seen him?”
    Bill shrugged. “No. Why would I?”
    “He’s a shooter. He was stationed outside Fangtasia the night we killed Victor.”
    “So that was Warren. Skinny little guy, big eyes, long hair?”
    “Sounds right.”
    “What are he and Mustapha to each other?”
    It was my turn to shrug. “I have no idea. They were in prison together, I think.”
    “Mustapha was in prison?”
    I nodded. “Yeah, his real name is KeShawn Johnson. I got that out of his head.”
    Bill look puzzled. “But … do you remember the vampire who decapitated Wybert at the beginning of the brawl at Sophie-Anne’s monastery?”
    “I’ll never forget that. Thin, dreadlocks?”
    “His name was Ra Shawn.”
    We were just swapping expressions. It was my turn to do Puzzled. “No, I don’t recollect that at all. Oh … wait, yeah. Andre told me his name.”
    “You don’t think it’s an interesting coincidence? Ra Shawn and KeShawn? Both black? Both supernaturals?”
    “But one’s a werewolf, and the other was a vampire. Ra Shawn could have been born hundreds of years ago. I guess they could be related.”
    “I think that’s just possible.” Bill was giving me a long-suffering look.
    “The database,” I suggested, and he pulled a little bunch of keys from his pocket. There was a black rectangle attached to the key ring.
    “I have it right here,” he said, and I was amazed all over again at Bill’s plunge into the modern world.
    “And that would be a what?” I asked.
    “This is a jump drive.” Bill looked quizzical.
    “Oh, sure.” I’d had enough of feeling dumb for the evening. We went inside so Bill could use my computer. Bill carried over a chair for me and then took his seat in the rolling chair directly in front of the screen.
    He inserted the little stick into a slot I hadn’t even realized was on the side of my computer. After a couple of minutes, he had The Vampire Directory on the screen.
    “Wow.” I looked at the opening, some very dramatic graphics. Apair of Gothic gates hung closed, a giant lock on them. The background music was dark and atmospheric. I hadn’t paid any attention when I’d used a stolen copy of the database before, because I’d been so conscious of my guilt. Now I could appreciate the graveyard humor in Bill’s presentation. A written introduction appeared superimposed on the gates in many different languages. After you selected the language you wanted, a solemn voice read the introduction out loud. Bill skipped through all that. He touched a few keys, and the Gothic gates creaked open to show all our options. As Bill explained, you could sort the vampires in different ways. You could look for vampires in Yugoslavia, for example, or you could look for female vampires in the St. Louis area. Or all vampires more than a thousand years old in Myanmar.
    “I can’t believe you did all this,” I said admiringly. “It’s so cool.”
    “It was a lot of work,” he said