Definitely Dead

were two other people in the room. A short man stood about three feet behind the queen’s chair, his legs apart, his hands clasped in front of him. He had close-cut white-blond hair and bright blue eyes. His face lacked maturity; he looked like a large child, but with a man’s shoulders. He was wearing a suit, and he was armed with a saber and a gun.
    Behind the man at the table stood a woman, a vampire, dressed all in red; slacks, T-shirt, Converses. Her preference was unfortunate, because red was not her color. She was Asian, and I thought she’d come from Vietnam—though it had probably been called something else then. She had very short unpainted nails, and a terrifying sword strapped to her back. Apparently, her hair had been cut off at chin length by a pair of rusty scissors. Her face was the unenhanced one God had given her.
    Since I hadn’t had a briefing on the correct protocol, I dipped my head to the queen, said, “Good to see you again, ma’am,” and tried to look pleasantly at the king while doing the head-dip thing again. The two standees, who must be aides or bodyguards, received smaller nods. I felt like an idiot, but I didn’t want to ignore them. However, they didn’t have a problem with ignoring me, once they’d given me an all-over threat assessment.
    “You’ve had some adventures in New Orleans,” the queen said, a safe lead-in. She wasn’t smiling, but then I had the impression she was not a smiley kind of gal.
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Sookie, this is my husband. Peter Threadgill, King of Arkansas.” There was not a trace of affection on her face. She might as well have been telling me the name of her pet cockapoo.
    “How-de-do,” I said, and repeated my head-bob, adding, “Sir,” hastily. Okay, already tired of this.
    “Miss Stackhouse,” he said, turning his attention back to the papers in front of him. The round table was large and completely cluttered with letters, computer printouts, and an assortment of other papers—bank statements?
    While I was relieved not to be an object of interest to the king, I was wondering exactly why I was there. I found out when the queen began to question me about the night before. I told her as explicitly as I could what had happened.
    She looked very serious when I talked about Amelia’s stasis spell and what it had done to the body.
    “You don’t think the witch knew the body was there when she cast the spell?” the queen asked. I noticed that though the king’s gaze was on the papers in front of him, he hadn’t moved a one of them since I’d begun talking. Of course, maybe he was a very slow reader.
    “No, ma’am. I know Amelia didn’t know he was there.”
    “From your telepathic ability?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Peter Threadgill looked at me then, and I saw that his eyes were an unusual glacial gray. His face was full of sharp angles: a nose like a blade, thin straight lips, high cheekbones.
    The king and the queen were both good-looking, but not in a way that struck any chord in me. I had an impression that the feeling was mutual. Thank God.
    “You’re the telepath that my dear Sophie wants to bring to the conference,” Peter Threadgill said.
    Since he was telling me something I already knew, I didn’t feel the need to answer. But discretion won over sheer irritation. “Yes, I am.”
    “Stan has one,” the queen said to her husband, as if vampires collected telepaths the way dog fanciers collected springer spaniels.
    The only Stan I knew was a head vampire in Dallas, and the only other telepath I’d ever met had lived there. From the queen’s few words, I guessed that Barry the Bellman’s life had changed a lot since I’d met him. Apparently he worked for Stan Davis now. I didn’t know if Stan was the sheriff or even a king, since at the time I hadn’t been privy to the fact that vampires had such.
    “So you’re now trying to match your entourage to Stan’s?” Peter Threadgill asked his wife, in a distinctly un-fond kind of way. From the many clues thrown my way, I’d gotten the picture that this wasn’t a love match. If you asked me to cast a vote, I would say it wasn’t even a lust match. I knew the queen had liked my cousin Hadley in a lusty way, and the two brothers on guard had said she’d rocked their world. Peter Threadgill was nowhere near either side of that spectrum. But maybe that only proved the queen was omnisexual, if that was a word. I’d have to look it up when I went home. If I ever