I made myself listen. I gripped Eric's hand as if it were a lifeline.

"What I'm going to do-and you have to understand, Sookie, my hide depends on this, too …"

I looked him straight in the face, and he saw the rush of my surprise.

"Yes, my job, and maybe my life, too, Sookie-not just yours, and Bill's. I'm sending you a contact tomorrow. He lives in Shreveport, but he has a second apartment in Jackson. He has friends among the supernatural community there, the vampires, shifters, and Weres. Through him you can meet some of them, and their human employees."

I was not completely in my head right now, but I felt like I'd understand all this when I played it back. So I nodded. His fingers stroked mine, over and over.

"This man is a Were," Eric said carelessly, "so he is scum. But he is more reliable than some others, and he owes me a big personal favor."

I absorbed that, nodded again. Eric's long fingers seemed almost warm.

"He'll take you out and about in the vampire community in Jackson, and you can pick brains there among human employees. I know it's a long shot, but if there's something to discover, if Russell Edgington did abduct Bill, you may pick up a hint. The man who tried to abduct you was from Jackson, going by the bills in his car, and he was a Were, as the wolf's head on his vest indicates. I don't know why they came after you. But I suspect it means Bill is alive, and they wanted to grab you to use as leverage over him."

"Then I guess they should have abducted Lorena," I said.

Eric's eyes widened in appreciation.

"Maybe they already have her," he said. "But maybe Bill has realized it is Lorena who betrayed him. He wouldn't have been taken if she hadn't revealed the secret he had told her."

I mulled that over, nodded yet again.

"Another puzzle is why she happened to be there at all," Eric said. "I think I would have known if she'd been a regular member of the Mississippi group. But I'll be thinking about that in my spare time." From his grim face, Eric had already put in considerable brain time on that question. "If this plan doesn't work within about three days, Sookie, we may have to kidnap one of the Mississippi vampires in return. This would almost certainly lead to a war, and a war-even with Mississippi-would be costly in lives and money. And in the end, they would kill Bill anyway."

Okay, the weight of the world was resting on my shoulders. Thanks, Eric. I needed more responsibility and pressure.

"But know this: If they have Bill-if he is still alive-we will get him back. And you will be together again, if that's what you want."

Big if.

"To answer your question: I am your friend, and that will last as long as I can be your friend without jeopardizing my own life. Or the future of my area."

Well, that laid it on the line. I appreciated his honesty. "As long as it's convenient for you, you mean," I said calmly, which was both unfair and inaccurate. However, I thought it was odd that my characterization of his attitude actually seemed to bother him. "Let me ask you something, Eric."

He raised his eyebrows to tell me he was waiting. His hands traveled up and down my arms, absently, as if he wasn't thinking of what he was doing. The movement reminded me of a man warming his hands at a fire.

"If I'm understanding you, Bill was working on a project for the …" I felt a wild bubble of laughter rising, and I ruthlessly suppressed it. "For the queen of Louisiana," I finished. "But you didn't know about it. Is this right?"

Eric stared at me for a long moment, while he thought about what to tell me. "She told me she had work for Bill to do," he said. "But not what it was, or why he had to be the one to do it, or when it would be complete."

That would miff almost any leader, having his underling co-opted like that. Especially if the leader was kept in ignorance. "So, why isn't this queen looking for Bill?" I asked, keeping my voice carefully neutral.

"She doesn't know he's gone."

"Why is that?"

"We haven't told her."

Sooner or later he'd quit answering. "Why not?"

"She would punish us."

"Why?" I was beginning to sound like a two-year-old.

"For letting something happen to Bill, when he was doing a special project for her."

"What would that punishment be?"

"Oh, with her it's difficult to tell." He gave a choked laugh. "Something very unpleasant."

Eric was even closer to me, his face almost touching my hair. He was inhaling, very delicately. Vampires rely on smell, and hearing, much more than sight, though their eyesight is extremely accurate. Eric had had my blood, so he could tell more about my emotions than a vampire who hadn't. All bloodsuckers are students of the human emotional system, since the most successful predators know the habits of their prey.

Eric actually rubbed his cheek against mine. He was like a cat in his enjoyment of contact.

"Eric." He'd given me more information than he knew.

"Mmm?"

"Really, what will the queen do to you if you can't produce Bill on the date her project is due?"

My question got the desired result. Eric pulled away from me and looked down at me with eyes bluer than mine and harder than mine and colder than the Arctic waste.

"Sookie, you really don't want to know," he said. "Producing his work would be good enough. Bill's actual presence would be a bonus."

I returned his look with eyes almost as cold as his. "And what will I get in return for doing this for you?" I asked.

Eric managed to look both surprised and pleased. "If Pam hadn't hinted to you about Bill, his safe return would have been enough and you would have jumped at the chance to help," Eric reminded me.

"But now I know about Lorena."

"And knowing, do you agree to do this for us?"

"Yes, on one condition."

Eric looked wary. "What would that be?" he asked.

"If something happens to me, I want you to take her out."

He gaped at me for at least a whole second before he roared with laughter. "I would have to pay a huge fine," he said when he'd quit chortling. "And I'd have to accomplish it first. That's easier said than done. She's three hundred years old."

"You've told me that what will happen to you if all this comes unraveled would be pretty horrible," I reminded him.

"True."

"You've told me you desperately need me to do this for you."

"True."

"That's what I ask in return."

"You might make a decent vampire, Sookie," Eric said finally. "All right. Done. If anything happens to you, she'll never fuck Bill again."

"Oh, it's not just that."

"No?" Eric looked very skeptical, as well he might.

"It's because she betrayed him."

Eric's hard blue eyes met mine. "Tell me this, Sookie: Would you ask this of me if she were a human?" His wide, thin-lipped mouth, most often amused, was in a serious straight line.

"If she were a human, I'd take care of it myself," I said, and stood to show him to the door.

After Eric had driven away, I leaned against the door and laid my cheek against the wood. Did I mean what I'd told him? I'd long wondered if I were really a civilized person, though I kept striving to be one. I knew that at the moment I'd said I would take care of Lorena myself, I had meant it. There was something pretty savage inside me, and I'd always controlled it. My grandmother had not raised me to be a murderess.

As I plodded down the hall to my bedroom, I realized that my temper had been showing more and more lately. Ever since I'd gotten to know the vampires.

I couldn't figure out why that should be. They exerted tremendous control over themselves. Why should mine be slipping?

But that was enough introspection for one night.

I had to think about tomorrow.