The house was as neat as his mustache. It could have passed inspection.

"Can I get you a drink? Coffee? Hot chocolate? Soda?" The colonel gestured toward his kitchen as if there were a servant standing there alert for our orders.

"No, thank you," I said, since I was awash with Applebee's coffee. Colonel Flood insisted we sit in the company living room, which was an awkwardly narrow rectangle with a formal dining area at one end. Mrs. Flood had liked porcelain birds. She had liked them a lot. I wondered how the grandchildren fared in this room, and I kept my hands tucked in my lap for fear I'd jostle something.

"So, what can I do for you?" Colonel Flood asked Alcide. "Are you seeking permission to marry?"

"Not today," Alcide said with a smile. I looked down at the floor to keep my expression to myself. "My friend Sookie has some information that she shared with me. It's very important." His smile died on the vine. "She needs to relate what she knows to you."

"And why do I need to listen?"

I understood that he was asking Alcide who I was—that if he was obliged to listen to me, he needed to know my bona fides. But Alcide was offended on my behalf.

"I wouldn't have brought her if it wasn't important. I wouldn't have introduced her to you if I wouldn't give my blood for her."

I wasn't real certain what that meant, but I was interpreting it to assume Alcide was vouching for my truthfulness and offering to pay in some way if I proved false. Nothing was simple in the supernatural world.

"Let's hear your story, young woman," said the colonel briskly.

I related all I'd told Alcide, trying to leave out the personal bits.

"Where is this coven staying?" he asked me, when I was through. I told him what I'd seen through Holly's mind.

"Not enough information," Flood said crisply. "Alcide, we need the trackers."

"Yes, sir." Alcide's eyes were gleaming at the thought of action.

"I'll call them. Everything I've heard is making me rethink something odd that happened last night. Adabelle didn't come to the planning committee meeting."

Alcide looked startled. "That's not good."

They were trying to be cryptic in front of me, but I could read what was passing between the two shifters without too much difficulty. Flood and Alcide were wondering if their—hmmm, vice president?—Adabelle had missed the meeting for some innocent reason, or if the new coven had somehow inveigled her into joining them against her own pack.

"Adabelle has been chafing against the pack leadership for some time," Colonel Flood told Alcide, with the ghost of a smile on his thin lips. "I had hoped, when she got elected my second, that she'd consider that concession enough."

From the bits of information I could glean from the packmaster's mind, the Shreveport pack seemed to be heavily on the patriarchal side. To Adabelle, a modern woman, Colonel Flood's leadership was stifling.

"A new regime might appeal to her," Colonel Flood said, after a perceptible pause. "If the invaders learned anything about our pack, it's Adabelle they'd approach."

"I don't think Adabelle would ever betray the pack, no matter how unhappy she is with the status quo," Alcide said. He sounded very sure. "But if she didn't come to the meeting last night, and you can't raise her by phone this morning, I'm concerned."

"I wish you'd go check on Adabelle while I alert the pack to action," Colonel Flood suggested. "If your friend wouldn't mind."

Maybe his friend would like to get her butt back to Bon Temps and see to her paying guest. Maybe his friend would like to be searching for her brother. Though truly, I could not think of a single thing to do that would further the search for Jason, and it would be at least two hours before Eric rose.

Alcide said, "Colonel, Sookie is not a pack member and she shouldn't have to shoulder pack responsibilities. She has her own troubles, and she's gone out of her way to let us know about a big problem we didn't even realize we had. We should have known. Someone in our pack hasn't been honest with us."

Colonel Flood's face drew in on itself as if he'd swallowed a live eel. "You're right about that," he said. "Thank you, Miss Stackhouse, for taking the time to come to Shreveport and to tell Alcide about our problem . . . which we should have known."

I nodded to him in acknowledgment.

"And I think you're right, Alcide. One of us must have known about the presence of another pack in the city."

"I'll call you about Adabelle," Alcide said.

The colonel picked up the phone and consulted a red leather book before he dialed. He glanced sideways at Alcide. "No answer at her shop." He had as much warmth radiating from him as a little space heater. Since Colonel Flood kept his house about as cold as the great outdoors, the heat was quite welcome.

"Sookie should be named a friend of the pack."

I could tell that was more than a recommendation. Alcide was saying something quite significant, but he sure wasn't going to explain. I was getting a little tired of the elliptical conversations going on around me.

"Excuse me, Alcide, Colonel," I said as politely as I could. "Maybe Alcide could run me back to my car? Since you all seem to have plans to carry out."

"Of course," the colonel said, and I could read that he was glad to be getting me out of the way. "Alcide, I'll see you back here in, what? Forty minutes or so? We'll talk about it then."

Alcide glanced at his watch and reluctantly agreed. "I might stop by Adabelle's house while I'm taking Sookie to her car," he said, and the colonel nodded, as if that were only pro forma.

"I don't know why Adabelle isn't answering the phone at work, and I don't believe she'd go over to the coven," Alcide explained when we were back in his truck. "Adabelle lives with her mother, and they don't get along too well. But we'll check there first. Adabelle's Flood's second in command, and she's also our best tracker."

"What can the trackers do?"

"They'll go to Fangtasia and try to follow the scent trail the witches left there. That'll take them to the witches' lair. If they lose the scent, maybe we can call in help from the Shreveport covens. They have to be as worried as we are."

"At Fangtasia, I'm afraid any scent might be obscured by all the emergency people," I said regretfully. That would have been something to watch, a Were tracking through the city. "And just so you know, Hallow has contacted all the witches hereabouts already. I talked to a Wiccan in Bon Temps who'd been called in to Shreveport to meet with Hallow's bunch."

"This is bigger than I thought, but I'm sure the pack can handle it." Alcide sounded quite confident.

Alcide backed the truck out of the colonel's driveway, and we began making our way through Shreveport once again. I was seeing more of the city this day than I'd seen in my whole life.

"Whose idea was it for Bill to go to Peru?" Alcide asked me suddenly.

"I don't know." I was startled and puzzled. "I think it was his queen's."

"But he didn't tell you that directly."

"No."

"He might have been ordered to go."

"I suppose."

"Who had the power to do that?" Alcide asked, as if the answer would enlighten me.

"Eric, of course." Since Eric was sheriff of Area Five. "And then the queen." That would be Eric's boss, the queen of Louisiana. Yeah, I know. It's dumb. But the vampires thought they were a marvel of modern organization.

"And now Bill's gone, and Eric's staying at your house." Alcide's voice was coaxing me to reach an obvious conclusion.

"You think that Eric staged this whole thing? You think he ordered Bill out of the country, had witches invade Shreveport, had them curse him, began running half-naked out in the freezing cold when he supposed I might be near, and then just hoped I'd take him in and that Pam and Chow and my brother would talk to each other to arrange Eric's staying with me?"