All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #7)(34)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"Ah."

"Take the f**king handcuffs off her, Landry."

"Yes, sir." Landry was a flat pancake by now, no air left in her at all.

The handcuffs came off, to my relief, and I was able to turn around. I was so angry I could have decked Landry. But since I would’ve been right back in the handcuffs, I held off. Sophie-Anne and Andre pushed through the crowd; actually, it just kind of melted in front of them. Vampires and humans alike were glad to get out of the way of the Queen of Louisiana and her bodyguard.

Sophie-Anne glanced at my wrists, saw that they really weren’t hurt at all, and correctly diagnosed the fact that my worst injury was to my pride.

"This is my employee," Sophie-Anne said quietly, apparently addressing Landry but making sure everyone there heard her. "An insult or injury to this woman is an insult or injury to me."

Landry didn’t know who the hell Sophie-Anne was, but she could tell power when she saw it, and Andre was just as scary. They were the two most frightening teenagers in the world, I do believe.

"Yes, ma’am, Landry will apologize in writing. Now can you tell me what happened here just now?" Todd Donati asked in a very reasonable voice.

The crowd was silent and waiting. I looked for Batanya and Clovache and saw they were missing. Suddenly Andre said, "You are the chief of security?" in a rather loud voice, and as he did, Sophie-Anne leaned very close to me to say, "Don’t mention the Britlingens."

"Yes, sir." The policeman ran a hand over his mustache. "I’m Todd Donati, and this is my boss, Mr. Christian Baruch."

"I am Andre Paul, and this is my queen, Sophie-Anne Leclerq. This young woman is our employee Sookie Stackhouse." Andre waited for the next step.

Christian Baruch ignored me. But he gave Sophie-Anne the look I’d give a roast I was thinking of buying for Sunday dinner. "Your presence is a great honor to my hotel," he murmured in heavily accented English, and I glimpsed the tips of his fangs. He was quite tall, with a large jaw and dark hair. But his small eyes were arctic gray.

Sophie-Anne took the compliment in stride, though her brows drew together for a second. Showing fang wasn’t an exactly subtle way of saying, "You shake my world." No one spoke. Well, not for a long, awkward second. Then I said, "Are you all going to call the police, or what?"

"I think we must consider what we have to tell them," Baruch said, his voice smooth, sophisticated, and making fun of rural-southern-human me. "Mr. Donati, will you go see what’s in the suite?"

Todd Donati pushed his way through the crowd with no subtlety at all. Sigebert, who’d been guarding the open doorway (for lack of anything better to do), stood aside to let the human enter. The huge bodyguard worked his way over to the queen, looking happier when he was in proximity to his ruler.

While Donati examined whatever was left in the Arkansas suite, Christian Baruch turned to address the crowd. "How many of you came down here after you heard something had happened?"

Maybe fifteen people raised their hands or simply nodded.

"You will please make your way to the Draft of Blood bar on the ground level, where our bartenders will have something special for all of you." The fifteen moved out pretty quickly after that. Baruch knew his thirsty people. Vamps. Whatever.

"How many of you were not here when the bodies were discovered?" Baruch said after the first group had left. Everyone raised a hand except the four of us: me, the queen, Andre, Sigebert.

"Everyone else may feel free to leave," Baruch said as civilly as if he was extending a pleasant invitation. And they did. Landry hesitated and got a look that sent her hurtling down the stairs.

The area around the central elevator seemed spacious now, since it was so much emptier.

Donati came back out. He didn’t look deeply disturbed or sick, but he did look less composed.

"There’s only bits of them left now. There’s stuff all over the floor, though; residue, I guess you’d call it. I think there were three of them. But one of them is in so many pieces, that it might be two of them."

"Who’s on the registration?"

Donati referred to a palm-held electronic device. "Jennifer Cater, of Arkansas. This room was rented to the delegation of Arkansas vampires. The remaining Arkansas vampires."

The word remaining possibly got a little extra emphasis. Donati definitely knew the queen’s history.

Christian Baruch raised a thick, dark brow. "I do know my own people, Donati."

"Yes, sir."

Sophie-Anne’s nose might have wrinkled delicately with distaste. His own people, my ass, that nose said. Baruch was at most four years old, as a vampire.

"Who’s been in to see the bodies?" Baruch asked.

"Neither of us," Andre said promptly. "We haven’t set foot in the suite."

"Who did?"

"The door was unlocked, and we smelled death. In view of the situation between my queen and the vampires of Arkansas, we thought it was unwise to go inside," Andre said. "We sent Sigebert, the queen’s guard."

Andre simply omitted Clovache’s exploration of the suite. So Andre and I did have something in common: we could skirt the truth with something that wasn’t quite a lie. He’d done a masterful job.

As the questions continued – mostly unanswered or unanswerable – I found myself wondering if the queen would still have to go to trial now that her main accuser was dead. I wondered whom the state of Arkansas belonged to; it was reasonable to assume that the wedding contract had given the queen some rights regarding Peter Threadgill’s property, and I knew Sophie-Anne needed every bit of income she could claim, since Katrina. Would she still have those rights to Arkansas, since Andre had killed Peter? I hadn’t thought through how much was hanging over the queen’s head at this summit.

But after I’d finished asking myself all these questions, I realized that the most immediate issue had yet to be addressed. Who’d killed Jennifer Cater and her companions? (How many Arkansas vamps could be left, after the battle in New Orleans and today’s slaughter? Arkansas wasn’t that big a state, and it had very few population centers.)

I was recalled to the here and now when Christian Baruch caught my eyes. "You’re the human who can read minds," he said so suddenly that I jerked.

"Yes," I said, because I was tired of sirring and ma’aming everyone.

"Did you kill Jennifer Cater?"

I didn’t have to fake astonishment. "That’s giving me a lot of credit," I said. "Thinking I could have gotten the drop on three vampires. No, I didn’t kill her. She came up to me in the lobby this evening, talking trash, but that’s the only time I ever even saw her."