Dead to the World (Sookie Stackhouse #4)(57)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"She’s Alcide’s woman," Pam said, in a cautious, puzzled sort of way.

I raised my eyebrows, looking at Alcide, and he turned a dusky red.

"She’s here for a visit, and she decided to come along with him," Pam went on. "You object to her presence?"

"She joined in while I was being tortured in the king of Mississippi’s compound," Bill said. "She enjoyed my pain."

Alcide stood, looking as shocked as I’d ever seen him. "Debbie, is this true?"

Debbie Pelt tried not to flinch, now that every eye was on her, and every eye was unfriendly. "I just happened to be visiting a Were friend who lived there, one of the guards," she said. Her voice didn’t sound calm enough to match the words. "Obviously, there was nothing I could do to free you. I would have been ripped to shreds. I can’t believe you remember me being there very clearly. You were certainly out of it." There was a hint of contempt in her words.

"You joined in the torture," Bill said, his voice still impersonal and all the more convincing for it. "You liked the pincers best."

"You didn’t tell anyone he was there?" Alcide asked Debbie. His voice was not impersonal at all. It held grief, and anger, and betrayal. "You knew someone from another kingdom was being tortured at Russell’s, and you didn’t do anything?"

"He’s a vamp, for God’s sake," Debbie said, sounding no more than irritated. "When I found out later that you’d been taking Sookie around to hunt for him so you could get your dad out of hock with the vamps, I felt terrible. But at the time, it was just vamp business. Why should I interfere?"

"But why would any decent person join in torture?" Alcide’s voice was strained.

There was a long silence.

"And of course, she tried to kill Sookie," Bill said. He still managed to sound quite dispassionate.

"I didn’t know you were in the trunk of the car when I pushed her in! I didn’t know I was closing her in with a hungry vampire!" Debbie protested.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I wasn’t convinced for a second.

Alcide bent his rough black head to look down into his hands as if they held an oracle. He raised his face to look at Debbie. He was a man unable to dodge the bullet of truth any longer. I felt sorrier for him than I’d felt for anyone in a long, long time.

"I abjure you," Alcide said. Colonel Flood winced, and young Sid, Amanda, and Culpepper looked both astonished and impressed, as if this were a ceremony they’d never thought to witness. "I see you no longer. I hunt with you no longer. I share flesh with you no longer."

This was obviously a ritual of great significance among the two-natured. Debbie stared at Alcide, aghast at his pronouncement. The witches murmured to one another, but otherwise the room remained silent. Even Bubba was wide-eyed, and most things went right over his shiny head.

"No," Debbie said in a strangled voice, waving a hand in front of her, as if she could erase what had passed. "No, Alcide!"

But he stared right through her. He saw her no longer.

Even though I loathed Debbie, her face was painful to see. Like most of the others present, as soon as I could, I looked anywhere else but at the shifter. Facing Hallow’s coven seemed like a snap compared to witnessing this episode.

Pam seemed to agree. "All right then," she said briskly. "Bubba will lead the way with Sookie. She will do her best to do whatever it is that she does – and she’ll signal us." Pam pondered for a moment. "Sookie, a recap: We need to know the number of people in the house, whether or not they are all witches, and any other tidbit you can glean. Send Bubba back to us with whatever information you find and stand guard in case the situation changes while we move up. Once we’re in position, you can retire to the cars, where you’ll be safer."

I had no problem with that whatsoever. In a crowd of witches, vampires, and Weres, I was no kind of combatant.

"This sounds okay, if I have to be involved at all," I said. A tug on my hand drew my eyes to Eric’s. He looked pleased at the prospect of fighting, but there was still uncertainty in his face and posture. "But what will happen to Eric?"

"What do you mean?"

"If you go in and kill everyone, who’ll un-curse him?" I turned slightly to face the experts, the Wiccan contingent. "If Hallow’s coven dies, do their spells die with them? Or will Eric still be without a memory?"

"The spell must be removed," said the oldest witch, the calm African-American woman. "If it is removed by the one who laid it in the first place, that’s best. It can be lifted by someone else, but it will take more time, more effort, since we don’t know what went into the making of the spell."

I was trying to avoid looking at Alcide, because he was still shaking with the violence of the emotions that had led him to cast out Debbie. Though I hadn’t known such an action was possible, my first reaction was to feel a little bitter about his not casting her out right after I’d told him a month ago she’d tried to kill me. However, he could have told himself I’d been mistaken, that it hadn’t been Debbie I’d sensed near me before she’d pushed me into the Cadillac’s trunk.

As far as I knew, this was the first time Debbie had admitted she had done it. And she’d protested she hadn’t known Bill was in the trunk, unconscious. But shoving a person into a car trunk and shutting the lid was no kind of amusing prank, right?

Maybe Debbie had been lying to herself some, too.

I needed to listen to what was happening now. I’d have lots of time to think about the human ego’s capacity to deceive itself, if I survived the night.

Pam was saying, "So you’re thinking we need to save Hallow? To take the spell off Eric?" She didn’t sound happy at the prospect. I swallowed my painful feelings and made myself listen. This was no time to start brooding.

"No," the witch said instantly. "Her brother, Mark. There is too much danger in leaving Hallow alive. She must die as quickly as we can reach her."

"What will you be doing?" Pam asked. "How will you help us in this attack?"

"We will be outside, but within two blocks," the man said. "We’ll be winding spells around the building to make the witches weak and indecisive. And we have a few tricks up our sleeves." He and the young woman, who had on a huge amount of black eye makeup, looked pretty pleased at a chance to use those tricks.

Pam nodded as if winding spells was sufficient aid. I thought waiting outside with a flamethrower would have been better.

All this time, Debbie Pelt had been standing as if she’d been paralyzed. Now she began to pick her way through to the back door. Bubba leaped up to grab her arm. She hissed at him, but he didn’t falter, though I would have.