I help up a hand, indicating there was more to come. "They're moving into Shreveport to take over the vampires' financial kingdom. They put a curse or a hex or something on Eric, and it took away his memory. They raided Fangtasia, trying to discover the day resting place of the vampires. They put some kind of spell on two of the waitresses, and one of them is in the hospital. The other one is dead."

Alcide was already sliding his cell phone from his pocket.

"Pam and Chow have hidden Eric at my house, and I have to get back before dark to take care of him. And Jason is missing. I don't know who took him or where he is or if he's . . ." Alive. But I couldn't say the word.

Alcide's deep breath escaped in a whoosh, and he sat staring at me, the phone in his hand. He couldn't decide whom to call first. I didn't blame him.

"I don't like Eric being at your house," he said. "It puts you in danger."

I was touched that his first thought was for my safety. "Jason asked for a lot of money for doing it, and Pam and Chow agreed," I said, embarrassed.

"But Jason isn't there to take the heat, and you are."

Unanswerably true. But to give Jason credit, he certainly hadn't planned it that way. I told Alcide about the blood on the dock. "Might be a red herring," he said. "If the type matches Jason's, then you can worry." He took a sip of his coffee, his eyes focused inward. "I've got to make some calls," he said.

"Alcide, are you the packmaster for Shreveport?"

"No, no, I'm nowhere near important enough."

That didn't seem possible to me, and I said as much. He took my hand.

"Packmasters are usually older than me," he said. "And you have to be really tough. Really, really tough."

"Do you have to fight to get to be packmaster?"

"No, you get elected, but the candidates have to be very strong and clever. There's a sort of—well, you have a test you have to take."

"Written? Oral?" Alcide looked relieved when he saw I was smiling. "More like an endurance test?" I said.

He nodded. "More like."

"Don't you think your packmaster should know about this?"

"Yes. What else?"

"Why would they be doing this? Why pick on Shreveport? If they have that much going for them, the vampire blood and the will to do really bad things, why not set up shop in a more prosperous city?"

"That's a real good question." Alcide was thinking hard. His green eyes squinted when he thought. "I've never heard of a witch having this much power. I never heard of a witch being a shifter. I tend to think it's the first time this has ever happened."

"The first time?"

"That a witch has ever tried to take control of a city, tried to take away the assets of the city's supernatural community," he said.

"How do witches stand in the supernatural pecking order?"

"Well, they're humans who stay human." He shrugged. "Usually, the Supes feel like witches are just wanna-bes. The kind you have to keep an eye on, since they practice magic and we're magical creatures, but still . . ."

"Not a big threat?"

"Right. Looks like we might have to rethink that. Their leader takes vampire blood. Does she drain them herself?" He punched in a number and held the phone to his ear.

"I don't know."

"And what does she shift into?" Shape-shifters had a choice, but there was one animal each shifter had an affinity for, her habitual animal. A shape-shifter could call herself a "were-lynx" or a "were-bat," if she was out of hearing range of a werewolf. Werewolves objected very strenuously to any other two-natured creatures who termed themselves "Were."

"Well, she's . . . like you," I said. The Weres considered themselves the kings of the two-natured community. They only changed into one animal, and it was the best. The rest of the two-natured community responded by calling the wolves thugs.

"Oh, no." Alcide was appalled. At that moment, his packmaster answered the phone.

"Hello, this is Alcide." A silence. "I'm sorry to bother you when you were busy in the yard. Something important's come up. I need to see you as soon as possible." Another silence. "Yes, sir. With your permission, I'll bring someone with me." After a second or two, Alcide pressed a button to end the conversation. "Surely Bill knows where Pam and Chow live?" he asked me.

"I'm sure he does, but he's not here to tell me about it." If he would.

"And where is he?" Alcide's voice was deceptively calm.

"He's in Peru."

I'd been looking down at my napkin, which I'd pleated into a fan. I glanced up at the man next to me to see him staring down at me with an expression of incredulity.

"He's gone? He left you there alone?"

"Well, he didn't know anything was going to happen," I said, trying not to sound defensive, and then I thought, What am I saying? "Alcide, I haven't seen Bill since I came back from Jackson, except when he came over to tell me he was leaving the country."

"But she told me you were back with Bill," Alcide said in a very strange voice.

"Who told you that?"

"Debbie. Who else?"

I'm afraid my reaction was not very flattering. "And you believed Debbie?"

"She said she'd stopped by Merlotte's on her way over to see me, and she'd seen you and Bill acting very, ah, friendly while she was there."

"And you believed her?" Maybe if I kept shifting the emphasis, he'd tell me he was just joking.

Alcide was looking sheepish now, or as sheepish as a werewolf can look.

"Okay, that was dumb," he admitted. "I'll deal with her."

"Right." Pardon me if I didn't sound very convinced. I'd heard that before.

"Bill's really in Peru?"

"As far as I know."

"And you're alone in the house with Eric?"

"Eric doesn't know he's Eric."

"He doesn't remember his identity?"

"Nope. He doesn't remember his character, either, apparently."

"That's a good thing," Alcide said darkly. He had never viewed Eric with any sense of humor, as I did. I'd always been leery of Eric, but I'd appreciated his mischief, his single-mindedness, and his flair. If you could say a vampire had joie de vivre, Eric had it in spades.

"Let's go see the packmaster now," Alcide said, obviously in a much grimmer mood. We slid out of the booth after he'd paid for the coffee, and without phoning in to work ("No point being the boss if I can't vanish from time to time"), he helped me up into his truck and we took off back into Shreveport. I was sure Ms. Crispy would assume we'd checked into a motel or gone to Alcide's apartment, but that was better than Ms. Crispy finding out her boss was a werewolf.

As we drove, Alcide told me that the packmaster was a retired Air Force colonel, formerly stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, which flowed into Shreveport. Colonel Flood's only child, a daughter, had married a local, and Colonel Flood had settled in the city to be close to his grandchildren.

"His wife is a Were, too?" I asked. If Mrs. Flood was also a Were, their daughter would be, too. If Weres can get through the first few months, they live a good long while, barring accidents.

"She was; she passed away a few months ago."

Alcide's packmaster lived in a modest neighborhood of ranch-style homes on smallish lots. Colonel Flood was picking up pine cones in his front yard. It seemed a very domestic and peaceable thing for a prominent werewolf to be doing. I'd pictured him in my head in an Air Force uniform, but of course he was wearing regular civilian outdoor clothes. His thick hair was white and cut very short, and he had a mustache that must have been trimmed with a ruler, it was so exact.

The colonel must have been curious after Alcide's phone call, but he asked us to come inside in a calm sort of way. He patted Alcide on the back a lot; he was very polite to me.