The Sookie Stackhouse Companion

go-between and truth barometer, and Patrick’s innocence is proven as he tells them his own wife is missing. They are ambushed by a female packmaster seeking to take over their territory. Among the casualties are Patrick, Amanda, and most of the enemy Weres. Sam surprises Sookie by shifting into a lion and fighting to protect her. Once again, Claudine pops in to rescue Sookie and reveals that Sookie’s great-grandfather Niall is also Claudine’s grandfather.
    No sooner has Sookie caught her breath from the Were war than another war literally lands on her doorstep. Knowing that Sophie-Anne Leclerq was injured in the summit bombing, the Nevada vamps launch a takeover and follow Eric to Sookie’s house, where he has fled after being cut off from Fangtasia. Quinn sends his sister, Frannie, to warn them. She tells Sookie that Quinn has been forced to work with the Nevada vamps. When the King of Nevada’s second shows up in Sookie’s front yard with his crew, Quinn accompanies them. He is waiting for Sookie when she wakes in the morning, and she breaks up with him because she feels that his responsibility to his mentally ill mother and younger sister will always stand in the way of a relationship with her.
    After finding out that Jason and his new wife, Crystal, are having problems and that Sandra Pelt, Debbie’s younger sister, is manipulating Tanya Grissom to cause trouble, Sookie asks Calvin, who has been seeing Tanya, to bring her to Amelia and her mentor, Octavia, to be unspelled. They are able to clear Tanya of Sandra’s influence, but even pregnant, Crystal is trouble all on her own. Jason sets up Sookie and Calvin to catch his wife cheating, and Sookie is forced to inflict punishment on Calvin, breaking his fingers with a brick, because she and Calvin stood for Jason and Crystal at their wedding. Sookie is so disgusted with her brother for making her take his place that she vows to never forgive him.
    When Eric and King Felipe de Castro are attacked in the Merlotte’s parking lot (along with innocent bystander Sam), Sookie runs over Sigebert, Sophie-Anne’s child and bodyguard, to save them, a gesture that earns her the promise of protection from the king. Great-grandfather Niall visits, asking Sookie if there is anything he can do for her, and she asks him to find her late cousin Hadley’s ex-husband, since she’s discovered Hadley left a child. He sends her the address and she visits them in Red Ditch, discovering that the child, Hunter, is a fellow telepath. She offers to help in any way she can.
    At work at Merlotte’s on the night the shifters come out live on TV, Sookie also sees action in the bar as Sam and Tray Dawson both shift in front of the patrons. Sookie is happy that it seems to go well, but Sam gets the news that his stepfather shot his mother when she shifted in front of him. Sam immediately heads out for Texas, leaving Sookie in charge of the bar. A few days later, Eric’s daytime guy, Bobby Burnham, brings her a wrapped package and tells her to present it to Eric in front of Victor Madden, King Felipe de Castro’s second-in-command. Doing so, she finds that she has inadvertently married Eric by vampire law, a strategy that Eric swears is for her own protection. She leaves Fangtasia angry at herself and Eric. The next morning she is visited by two FBI agents who want to discover exactly how she and her unidentified companion (Barry) helped save people at the summit. When Sookie is called to Merlotte’s by a report of a body in the parking lot, the agents follow, and they find that Crystal Norris Stackhouse has been crucified behind the bar. While the police and the FBI investigate the crime scene, Sookie heads back to Fangtasia at dark to speak with Eric, and he tells her about his past. Merlotte’s is allowed to open the next day, and Niall comes to visit, letting Sookie know that there is trouble among the fairies and that she should be careful. Mr. Cataliades also sends Diantha with a warning that fairies are indeed moving about in this world. Sookie calls Claude to get more information. She meets Claude and Claudine for lunch, and they explain Niall’s family tree, his position as the fairy prince, and the issues with his nephew Breandan, who despises humans, especially the offspring that have come from human and fairy couplings. Breandan wants to close off Faery so there will be no further contact with humanity. After Sookie returns home, she is attacked by a fairy in her