All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #7)(74)
Author: Charlaine Harris

I could only sit there and look at him.

"No, I didn’t know when or what they were going to do! I went to bed finally kind of worrying about them, what the plan was, and when I couldn’t settle into a good sleep, I finally quit trying and called you. And we tried to get everyone out," he said, and began crying.

I sat beside him and put my arm around him. I didn’t know what to say. Of course, he could tell what I was thinking.

"Yes, I wish I’d said something before I did," he said in a choked voice. "Yes, I did the wrong thing. But I thought if I spoke up before I knew something for sure, the vamps would fall on them and drain them. Or they’d want me to point out who knew and who didn’t. And I couldn’t do that."

There was a long silence.

"Mr. Cataliades, have you seen Quinn?" I asked to break the silence.

"He’s at the human hospital. He couldn’t stop them from taking him."

"I have to go see him."

"How serious is your fear that the authorities will try to coerce you into doing their bidding?"

Barry raised his head and looked at me. "Pretty serious," we said simultaneously.

"It’s the first time I’ve ever shown anyone, aside from local people, what I can do," I said.

"Me, too." Barry wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "You should have seen that guy’s face when he finally believed that we could find people. He thought we were psychics or something, and he couldn’t understand that what we were doing was registering a live brain signature. Nothing mystical about it."

"He was all over the idea once he believed us," I said. "You could hear in his head that he was thinking of the hundred different ways we could be of use to rescue operations, to the government at conferences, police interrogations."

Mr. Cataliades looked at us. I couldn’t pick out all his snarly demon thoughts, but he was having a lot of them.

"We’d lose control over our lives," Barry said. "I like my life."

"I guess I could be saving a lot of people," I said. I’d just never thought about it before. I’d never been faced with a situation like the one we’d faced the previous day. I hoped I never was again. How likely was it I would ever be on-site again at a disaster? Was I obligated to give up a job I liked, among people I cared about, to work for strangers in far away places? I shivered when I thought of it. I felt something harden within me when I realized that the advantage Andre had taken of me would only be the beginning, in situations like that. Like Andre, everyone would want to own me.

"No," I said. "I won’t do it. Maybe I’m just being selfish and I’m damning myself, but I won’t do it. I don’t think we’re exaggerating how bad that would be for us, not a bit."

"Then going to the hospital is not a good idea," Cataliades said.

"I know, but I have to, anyway."

"Then you can stop by on your way to the airport."

We sat up straighter.

"There’s an Anubis plane flying out in three hours. It’ll go to Dallas first, then Shreveport. The queen and Stan are paying for it jointly. It’ll have all the survivors of both parties on it. The citizens of Rhodes have donated used coffins for the trip." Mr. Cataliades made a face, and honestly, I couldn’t blame him. "Here’s all the cash we can spare," he continued, handing me a short stack of bills. "Make it to the Anubis terminal in time, and you’ll both go home with us. If you don’t make it, I’ll assume something happened to stop you and you’ll have to call to make some other arrangement. We know we owe you a great debt, but we have wounded to get home ourselves, and the queen’s credit cards and so on were lost in the fire. I’ll have to call her credit company for emergency service, but that won’t take much time."

This seemed a little cold, but after all, he wasn’t our best friend, and as the daytime guy for the queen, he had a lot to do and many more problems to solve.

"Okay," I said. "Hey, listen, is Christian Baruch at the shelter?"

His face sharpened. "Yes. Though somewhat burned, he’s hanging around the queen in Andre’s absence as if he would take Andre’s place."

"He wants to, you know. He wants to be the next Mr. Queen of Louisiana."

"Baruch?" Cataliades could not have been more scornful if a goblin had applied for the job.

"No, he’s gone to extreme lengths." I already told Andre about this. Now I had to explain again. "That’s why he planted that Dr Pepper bomb," I said about five minutes later.

"How do you know this?" Mr. Cataliades asked.

"I figured it out, from this and that," I said modestly. I sighed. Here came the yucky part. "I found him yesterday, hiding underneath the registration desk. There was another vampire with him, badly burned. I don’t even know who that one was. And in the same area was Todd Donati, the security guy, alive but hurt, and a dead maid." I felt the exhaustion all over again, smelled the awful smell, tried to breathe the thick air. "Baruch was out of it, of course."

I was not exactly proud of this, and I looked down at my hands. "Anyway, I was trying to read Todd Donati’s mind, to find out how hurt he was, and he was just hating Baruch and blaming him, too. He was willing to be frank, this time. No more job to worry about. Todd told me he’d watched all the security tapes over and over again, and he’d finally figured out what he was seeing. His boss was leaping up to block the camera with gum so he could plant the bomb. Once he’d figured that out, Donati knew that Baruch had wanted to alarm the queen, make her insecure, so she’d take a new husband. And that would be Christian Baruch. But guess why he wants to marry her?"

"I can’t imagine," said Mr. Cataliades, thoroughly shocked.

"Because he wants to open a new vampire hotel in New Orleans. Blood in the Quarter got flooded and closed, and Baruch thought he could rebuild and reopen."

"But Baruch didn’t have anything to do with the other bombs?"

"I sure don’t think so, Mr. Cataliades. I think that was the Fellowship, just like I said yesterday."

"Then who killed the vampires from Arkansas?" Barry asked. "I guess the Fellowship did that, too? No, wait…why would they? Not that they’d quibble at killing some vampires, but they’d know the vampires would probably get killed in the big explosion."

"We have an overload of villains," I said. "Mr. Cataliades, you got any ideas about who might have taken out the Arkansas vampires?" I gave Mr. Cataliades a straight-in-the-eyes stare.

"No," Mr. Cataliades said. "If I did, I would never say those ideas out loud. I think you should be concentrating on your man’s injuries and getting back to your little town, not worrying about three deaths among so many."