Definitely Dead

lipstick, and a tampon. Quinn drove us carefully up the winding drive to the front of the monastery.
    “What did you do today, besides work on your outfit?” Quinn asked.
    “I made a lot of phone calls,” I said. “And one of them paid off.”
    “Calls? Where to?”
    “Gas stations, all along the route from New Orleans to Bon Temps.”
    He turned to stare at me, but I pointed just in time for Quinn to apply the brakes.
    A lion strolled across the drive.
    “Okay, what’s that? Animal? Or shifter?” I was edgier by the minute.
    “Animal,” Quinn said.
    Scratch the idea of dogs roaming the enclosure. I hoped the wall was high enough to keep the lion in.
    We parked in front of the former monastery, which was a very large two-story building. It hadn’t been built for beauty, but for utility, so it was a largely featureless structure. There was one small door in the middle of the façade, and small windows placed regularly. Again, fairly easy to defend.
    Outside the small door stood six more vampires, three in fancy but unmatching clothes—surely Louisiana bloodsuckers—and three more from Arkansas, in their glar ingly garish outfits.
    “That’s just butt-ugly,” I said.
    “But easy to see, even in the dark,” Quinn said, looking as if he were thinking deep, significant thoughts.
    “Duh,” I said. “Isn’t that the point? So they’ll instantly . . . oh.” I mulled it over. “Yeah,” I said. “No one would wear anything close to that, on purpose or by accident. Under any circumstances. Unless it was really important to be instantly identifiable.”
    Quinn said, “It’s possible that Peter Threadgill is not devoted to Sophie-Anne.”
    I gave a squawk of laughter just as two Louisiana vampires opened our car doors in a move so coordinated it must have been rehearsed. Melanie, the guard vampire I’d met at the queen’s downtown headquarters, took my hand to help me from the car, and she smiled at me. She looked a lot better out of the overwhelming SWAT gear. She was wearing a pretty yellow dress with low heels. Now that she wasn’t wearing a helmet, I could see her hair was short, intensely curly, and light brown.
    She took a deep, dramatic breath as I passed, and then made an ecstatic face. “Oh, the odor of the fairy!” she exclaimed. “It makes my heart sing!”
    I swatted at her playfully. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. Vampires, as a whole, are not noted for their sense of humor.
    “Cute dress,” Rasul said. “Kind of on the daring side, huh?”
    Chester said, “Can’t be too daring for me. You look really tasty.”
    I thought it couldn’t be a coincidence that the three vampires I’d met at the queen’s headquarters were the three vampires on door duty tonight. I couldn’t figure out what that could mean, though. The three Arkansas vampires were silent, regarding the to-and-fro between us with cold eyes. They were not in the same relaxed and smiling mood as their fellows.
    Something definitely off-kilter here. But with the acute vampire hearing all around, there wasn’t anything to say about it.
    Quinn took my arm. We walked into a long hall that seemed to run nearly the length of the building. A Threadgill vampire was standing at the door of a room that seemed to serve as a reception area.
    “Would you like to check your bag?” she asked, obviously put out at being relegated to a hat-check girl.
    “No, thanks,” I said, and thought she was going to pull it out from under my arm.
    “May I search it?” she asked. “We screen for weapons.”
    I stared at her, always a risky thing to do to a vampire. “Of course not. I have no weapons.”
    “Sookie,” Quinn said, trying not to sound alarmed. “You have to let her look in your purse. It’s procedure.”
    I glared at him. “You could have told me,” I said sharply. The door guard, who was a svelte young vamp with a figure that challenged the cut of the white pants, seized my purse with an air of triumph. She turned it out over a tray, and its few contents clattered to the metal surface: a compact, a lipstick, a tiny tube of glue, a handkerchief, a ten-dollar bill, and a tampon in a rigid plastic applicator, completely covered in plastic wrap.
    Quinn was not unsophisticated enough to turn red, but he did glance discreetly away. The vampire, who had died long before women carried such items in their purses, asked me its purpose and nodded when I explained. She repacked my little evening bag and