"Can I get you a drink?" I said. "I'm sorry, I don't have any TrueBlood, and I'm not supposed to drive, so I couldn't go get any." I knew that was a big breach of hospitality, but there was nothing I could do about it. I hadn't been about to ask anyone to bring me blood for Eric.

"Not important," he said smoothly, looking around the small room.

"Please sit down."

Eric said onto the couch, his right ankle on the knee of his left leg. His big hands were restless. "What's the favor you need, Sookie?" He was openly gleeful.

I sighed. At least I was pretty sure he'd help, since he could practically taste the leverage he'd have over me.

I perched on the edge of the lumpy armchair. I explained about Tara, about Franklin, about Mickey. Eric got serious in a hurry. "She could leave during the day and she doesn't," he pointed out.

"Why should she leave her business and her home? He's the one should leave," I argued. (Though I have to confess, I'd wondered to myself why Tara didn't just take a vacation. Surely Mickey wouldn't stick around too long if his free ride was gone?) "Tara would be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life if she tried to shake him loose by running," I said firmly.

"I've learned more about Franklin since I met him in Mississippi ," Eric said. I wondered if Eric had learned this from Bill's database. "Franklinhas an outdated mind-set."

This was rich, coming from a Viking warrior whose happiest days had been spent pillaging and raping and laying waste.

"Vampires used to pass willing humans around," Eric explained. "When our existence was secret, it was convenient to have a human lover, to maintain that person . . . that is, not to take too much blood . . . and then, when there was no one left who wanted her—or him," Eric added hastily, so my feminist side would not be offended, "that person would be, ah, completely used."

I was disgusted and showed it. "You mean drained," I said.

"Sookie, you have to understand that for hundreds, thousands, of years we have considered ourselves better than humans, separate from humans." He thought for a second. "Very much in the same relationship to humans as humans have to, say, cows. Edible like cows, but cute, too."

I was knocked speechless. I had sensed this, of course, but to have it spelled out wasjust .  . . nauseating. Food that walked andtalked, that was us.McPeople.

"I'll just go to Bill. He knows Tara, and she rents her business premises from him, so I bet he'll feel obliged to help her," I said furiously.

"Yes. He'd be obliged to try to kill Salome's underling. Bill doesn't rank any higher than Mickey, so he can't order him to leave. Who do you think would survive the fight?"

The idea paralyzed me for a minute. I shuddered. What if Mickey won?

"No, I'm afraid I'm your best hope here, Sookie." Eric gave me a brilliant smile. "I'll talk to Salome and ask her to call her dog off. Franklin is not her child, but Mickey is. Since he's been poaching in my area, she'll be obliged to recall him."

He raised a blond eyebrow. "And since you're asking me to do this for you, of course, you owe me."

"Gosh, I wonder what you want inreturn? " I asked, maybe a little on the dry and sarcastic side.

He grinned at me broadly, giving me a flash of fang. "Tell me what happened while I was staying with you. Tell me completely, leaving out nothing. After that, I'll do what you want." He put both feet on the floor and leaned forward, focused on me.

"All right."Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place. I looked down at my hands clasped in my lap.

"Did we have sex?" he asked directly.

For about two minutes, this might actually be fun. "Eric," I said, "we had sex in every position I could imagine, and some I couldn't. We had sex in every room in my house, and we had sex outdoors. You told me it was the best you'd ever had." (At the time he couldn't recall all the sex he'd ever had. But he'd paid me a compliment.) "Too bad you can't remember it," I concluded with a modest smile.

Eric looked like I'd hit him in the forehead with a mallet. For all of thirty seconds his reaction was completely gratifying. Then I began to be uneasy.

"Is there anything else I should know?" he said in a voice so level and even that it was simply scary.

"Um, yes."

"Then perhaps you'll enlighten me."

"You offered to give up your position as sheriff and come to live with me. And get a job."

Okay, maybe thiswasn't going so well. Eric couldn't get any whiter or stiller. "Ah," he said."Anything else?"

"Yes." I ducked my head because I'd gotten to the absolutely un-fun part. "When we came home that last night, the night we'd had the battle with the witches in Shreveport , we came in the back door, right, like I always do. And Debbie Pelt—you remember her. Alcide's—oh, whatever she was tohim .  . . Debbie was sitting at my kitchen table. And she had a gun and was gonna shoot me." I risked a glance and found Eric's brows had drawn in together in an ominous frown. "But you threw yourself in front of me." I leaned forward very quickly and patted him on the knee. Then I retreated into my own space. "And you took the bullet, which was really, really sweet of you. But she was going to shoot again, and I pulled out my brother's shotgun, and I killed her." I hadn't cried at all that night, but I felt a tear run down my cheek now. "I killed her," I said, and gasped for breath.

Eric's mouth opened as though he was going to ask a question, but I held up a hand in await gesture. I had to finish. "We gathered up the body and bagged it, and you took it and buried her somewhere while I cleaned the kitchen. And you found her car and you hid it. I don't know where. It took me hours to get the blood out of the kitchen. It was on everything." I grabbed desperately at my self-possession. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my wrist. My shoulder ached, and I shifted in the chair, trying to ease it.

"And now someone else has shot at you and I wasn't there to take the bullet," Eric said. "You must be living wrong. Do you think the Pelt family is trying to get revenge?"

"No," I said. I was pleased that Eric was taking all this so calmly. I don't know what I'd expected, but it wasn't this. He seemed, if anything, subdued. "They hired private detectives, and as far as I know, the private detectives didn't find any reason to suspect me any more than anyone else. The only reason I was a suspect anyway was because when Alcide and I found that body in Shreveport at Verena Rose's, we told the police we were engaged. We had to explain why we went together to a bridal shop. Since he had such an on-and-off relationship with Debbie,him saying we were getting married naturally raised a red flag when the detectives checked it out. He had a good alibi for the time she died, as it turned out. But if they ever seriously suspect me, I'll be in trouble. I can't give you as an alibi, because of course you weren't even here, as far as anyone knows. You can't give me an alibi because you don't remember that night; and of course, I'm just plain old guilty. I killed her. I had to do it." I'm sure Cain had said that when he'd killed Abel.

"You're talking too much," Eric said.

I pressed my lips together. One minute he wanted me to tell him everything; the next minute he wanted me to stop talking.

For maybe five minutes, Eric just looked at me. I wasn't always sure he was seeing me. He was lost in some deep thoughts.

"I told you I would leave everything for you?" he said at the end of all this rumination.

I snorted. Trust Eric to select that as the pertinent idea.

"And how did you respond?"

Okay, that astonished me. "You couldn't just stay with me, not remembering. That wouldn't be right."

He narrowed his eyes. I got tired of being regarded through slits of blue. "So," I said, curiously deflated. Maybe I'd expected a more emotional scene than this. Maybe I'd expected Eric to grab me and kiss me silly and tell me he still felt the same. Maybe I was too fond of daydreams. "I did your favor. Now you do mine."