All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #7)(38)
Author: Charlaine Harris

By that time the queen and Andre had met with the sheriffs Gervaise and Cleo Babbitt. The broad-faced Gervaise was a small man, perhaps five foot six. He appeared to be about thirty-five, though you could easily add a hundred years to that and be closer to his true age. Gervaise had borne the burden of Sophie-Anne’s maintenance and amusement for the past few weeks, and the wear and tear was showing. I’d heard he’d been renowned for his sophisticated clothing and debonair style. The only time I’d seen him before, his light hair had been combed as smooth as glass on his sleek round head. Now it was definitely disheveled. His beautiful suit needed to go to the cleaner, and his wing tips needed polishing. Cleo was a husky woman with broad shoulders and coal black hair, a wide face with a full-lipped mouth. Cleo was modern enough to want to use her last name; she’d been a vampire for only fifty years.

"Where is Eric?" Andre asked the other sheriffs.

Cleo laughed, the kind of deep-throated laugh that made men look. "He got conscripted," she said. "The priest didn’t show up, and Eric’s taken a course, so he’s going to officiate."

Andre smiled. "That’ll be something to watch. What’s the occasion?"

"It’ll be announced in a second," Gervaise said.

I wondered what church would have Eric as a priest. The Church of High Profits? I drifted over to Bill’s booth and attracted Pam’s attention.

"Eric’s a priest?" I murmured

"Church of the Loving Spirit," she told me, bagging three copies of the CD and handing them to a fangbanger sent by his master to pick them up. "He got his certificate from the online course, with Bobby Burnham’s help. He can perform marriage services."

A waiter somehow outmaneuvered all the guests around the queen and approached her with a tray full of wineglasses brimming with blood. In the blink of an eye Andre was between the waiter and the queen, and in the blink of another eye, the waiter swiveled and walked in another direction.

I tried to look in the waiter’s mind but found it perfectly blank. Andre had grabbed control of the guy’s will and sent him on his way. I hoped the waiter was okay. I followed his progress to a humble door set in a corner until I was sure that he was going back to the kitchen. Okay, incident averted.

There was a ripple in the currents of the display hall, and I turned to see what was happening. The King of Mississippi and the King of Indiana had come in together hand in hand, which seemed to be a public signal that they’d concluded their marriage negotiations. Russell Edgington was a slight, attractive vampire who liked other men – exclusively and extensively. He could be good company, and he was a good fighter, too. I liked him. I was a little anxious about seeing Russell, since a few months before I’d left a body in his pool. I tried to look on the bright side. The body was a vampire’s, so it should have disintegrated before the pool covering had been removed in the spring.

Russell and Indiana stopped in front of Bill’s booth. Indiana, incidentally, was a big bull-like guy with brown curly hair and a face I thought of as no-nonsense.

I drifted closer, because this could be trouble.

"Bill, you look good," Russell said. "My staff tells me you had a hard time at my place. You seem to have recovered nicely. I’m not sure how you got free, but I’m glad." If Russell was pausing for a reaction, he didn’t get one. Bill’s face was just as impassive as if Russell had been commenting on the weather, not Bill’s torture. "Lorena was your sire, so I couldn’t interfere," Russell said, his voice just as calm as Bill’s face. "And here you are, selling your own little computer thing that Lorena was trying so hard to get from you. As the Bard said, ‘All’s well that ends well.’"

Russell had been too verbose, which was the only indication that the king was anxious about Bill’s reaction. And sure enough, Bill’s voice was like cold silk running over glass. But all he said was, "Think nothing of it, Russell. Congratulations are in order, I understand."

Russell smiled up at his groom.

"Yes, Mississippi and I are tying the knot," the King of Indiana said. He had a deep voice. He would look at home beating up some welsher in an alley or sitting in a bar with sawdust on the floor. But Russell did everything but blush.

Maybe this was a love match.

Then Russell spotted me. "Bart, you have to meet this young woman," he said immediately. I about had a panic attack, but there was no way out of the situation without simply turning tail and running. Russell pulled his intended over to me by their linked hands. "This young woman was staked while she was in Jackson. Some of those Fellowship thugs were in a bar, and one of them stabbed her."

Bart looked almost startled. "You survived, obviously," he said. "But how?"

"Mr. Edgington here got me some help," I said. "In fact, he saved my life."

Russell tried to look modest, and he almost succeeded. The vampire was trying to look good in front of his intended, such a human reaction that I could scarcely believe it.

"However, I believe you took something with you when you left," Russell said severely, shaking a finger at me.

I tried to glean something from his face that would tell me which way to jump with my answer. I’d taken a blanket, sure enough, and some loose clothes the young men in Russell’s harem had left lying around. And I’d taken Bill, who’d been a prisoner in one of the outbuildings. Probably Russell was referring to Bill, huh?

"Yessir, but I left something behind in return," I said, since I couldn’t stand this verbal cat and mouse. All right, already! I’d rescued Bill and killed the vampire Lorena, though that had been more or less by accident. And I’d dumped her evil ass in the pool.

"I did think there was some sludge at the bottom when we got the pool ready for the summer," Russell said, and his bitter chocolate eyes examined me thoughtfully. "What an enterprising young woman you are, Miss…"

"Stackhouse. Sookie Stackhouse."

"Yes, I remember now. Weren’t you at Club Dead with Alcide Herveaux? He’s a Were, honey," Russell said to Bart.

"Yessir," I said, wishing he hadn’t remembered that little detail.

"Didn’t I hear Herveaux’s father was campaigning for packleader in Shreveport?"

"That’s right. But he…ah, he didn’t get it."

"So that was the day Papa Herveaux died?"

"It was," I said. Bart was listening intently, his hand running up and down Russell’s coat sleeve all the while. It was a lusty little gesture.

Quinn appeared at my side just then and put his arm around me, and Russell’s eyes widened. "Gentlemen," Quinn said to Indiana and Mississippi, "I believe we have your wedding ready and waiting."