The Sookie Stackhouse Companion

bartender, Eric stakes Long Shadow as he attacks Sookie. Bill leaves town to campaign for a place in the vampire hierarchy as a measure against Eric, and Sookie is assaulted by the murderer, Rene Lenier, stabbing him in self-defense. Bill returns with the news that he has been named Area Five investigator, placing him under Eric’s protection.
    Bill and Sookie are on the way to Fangtasia to get an assignment from Eric when the car breaks down and they quarrel. Sookie is attacked by a maenad as she walks home. Bill is able to get her to Fangtasia, where blood draining and then transfusions wash the maenad’s poison from her system, and after some recovery time, Eric informs them that they are going to Dallas to help find a missing vamp. Once there, Sookie and a human companion attempt to infiltrate the Fellowship of the Sun, an anti-vampire “church,” but her companion betrays her. Sookie is injured while escaping, with the help of first Godfrey, a vampire renouncer who seeks to meet the dawn, and then Luna, a shifter who has also infiltrated the organization. After Bill and the local vamps rescue the missing vamp, Sookie returns in the morning to the deserted compound to witness Godfrey’s self-immolation. Upon her return to Bon Temps, Sookie becomes involved in finding the murderer of the cook at Merlotte’s, Lafayette Reynold, whose body she had found in the bar’s parking lot in Andy Bellefleur’s car before going to Dallas. Invited to an orgy by those she suspects, Sookie asks Eric to escort her, as Bill has had to make a brief trip back to Dallas. She finds out the identity of the murderers, but before she, Eric, and a just-returned Bill can leave the orgy, a drunken Andy stumbles from the woods. Desperate to find the murderer and clear his name, he calls on Sookie to read the minds of the orgy participants. Callisto, the maenad, arrives, drawn by the atmosphere of lust and drunkenness. She sends her madness into the orgy, and Sookie is almost drawn into the insanity through her telepathy. Satisfied by her tribute, the maenad moves on, leaving Bill and Eric to clean up her mess. Andy is cleared when evidence of the murder is found in one of the automobiles of the deceased partygoers. Bill and Sookie relax at her home, finding a cake from Andy’s grandmother on her doorstep the next day as a gesture of thanks. Hearing her full name, Bill realizes that the Bellefleurs are his descendants through his daughter Sarah.
    When Bill leaves town under suspicious circumstances, Sookie is hurt and angry but nevertheless becomes determined to find him when told he is now missing and considered kidnapped. Accompanied by werewolf Alcide Herveaux, she travels to Jackson and goes to Josephine’s, a supe bar nicknamed Club Dead, hoping to “hear” something about Bill. After being staked while protecting the King of Mississippi’s second-in-command, she locates Bill at the king’s mansion and is able to rescue him after killing his maker. Locked in a car trunk by Debbie Pelt, Alcide’s jealous ex-girlfriend, Sookie suffers a physical assault from a starved and tortured Bill, who is lost in bloodlust. They are finally able to escape the trunk, and Sookie has Eric, who has tagged along, take her home. Eric is attacked by thugs hired by the biker gang that frequents Club Dead when they stop for gas, and Sookie hurries to save both him and the young clerk. When they finally get to her house, they are attacked again by some of the gang members themselves. Sookie is beaten, but Eric and Bill, who drove home as well, burst in to kill all the bikers.
    Sookie and Bill remain estranged, and soon after he goes on a research trip, she finds Eric running down the road to her home early on New Year’s morning. Confused and half-naked, Eric has been cursed with amnesia by a witch who wants to take over part of his holdings. Sookie agrees to shelter the befuddled vamp while Pam and Chow plan to restore Eric’s memory. Sookie’s brother, Jason, goes missing, and even as she worries about him, she heads to Shreveport to warn Alcide about the witches because some of them are Weres, and together they find that the coven has killed the Long Tooth pack’s second, Adabelle Yancy. Returning to Bon Temps, Sookie finds comfort with Eric, and the two begin a brief, passionate affair.
    Sookie locates Crystal Norris, Jason’s date on New Year’s Eve, in the tiny town of Hotshot, hoping the young woman can offer some information.