Not taking his eyes off me, Eric whipped a cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number from memory. "Rose-Anne," he said. "Are you well? Yes, please, if she's free. Tell her I have information that will interest her." I couldn't hear the response on the other end, but Eric nodded, as he would if the speaker had been present. "Of course I'll hold.Briefly." In a minute, he said, "And hello to you, too, most beautiful princess. Yes, it keeps me busy. How's business at the casino?Right, right. There's one born every minute. I called to tell you something about your minion, that one named Mickey. He has some business connection with Franklin Mott?"

Then Eric's eyebrows rose, and he smiled slightly. "Is that right? I don't blame you. Mott is trying to stick to the old ways, and this isAmerica ." He listened again. "Yes, I'm giving you this information for free. If you choose not to grant me a small favor in return, of course that's of no consequence. You know in what esteem I hold you." Eric smiled charmingly at the telephone. "I did think you should know about Mott's passing on a human woman to Mickey. Mickey's keeping her under his thumb by threatening her life and property. She's quite unwilling."

After another silence, during which his smile widened, Eric said, "The small favor is removing Mickey. Yes, that's all. Just make sure he knows he should never again approach this woman, Tara Thornton. He should have nothing more to do with her, or her belongings and friends. The connection should be completely severed. Or I'll have to see about severing some part of Mickey. He's done this in my area, without the courtesy of coming to visit me. I really expected better manners of any child of yours. Have I covered all the bases?"

That Americanism sounded strange, coming from Eric Northman. I wondered if he'd ever played baseball.

"No, you don't need to thank me, Salome. I'm glad to be of service. And if you could let me know when the thing is accomplished? Thanks. Well, back to the grindstone." Eric flipped the phone shut and began tossing it in the air and catching it, over and over.

"You knew Mickey and Franklin were doing something wrong to start with," I said, shocked but oddly unsurprised. "You know their boss would be glad to find out they were breaking the rules, since her vamp was violating your territory. So this won't affect you at all."

"I only realized that when you told me what you wanted," Eric pointed out, the very essence of reason. He grinned at me. "How could I know that your heart's desire would be for me to help someone else?"

"What did you think I wanted?"

"I thought maybe you wanted me to pay for rebuilding your house, or you would ask me to help find out who's shooting the Weres. Someone who could have mistaken you for a Were ," Eric told me, as if I should have known that. "Who had you been with before you were shot?"

"I'd been to visit Calvin Norris," I said, and Eric looked displeased.

"So you had his smell on you."

"Well, I gave him a hug good-bye, so yeah."

Eric eyed me skeptically. "Had Alcide Herveaux been there?

"He came by the house site," I said.

"Did he hug you, too?"

"I don't remember," I said. "It's no big deal."

"It is for someone looking for shifters and Weres to shoot. And you are hugging too many people."

"Maybe it was Claude's smell," I said thoughtfully. "Gosh, I didn't think of that. No, wait, Claude hugged me after the shooting. So I guess the fairy smell didn't matter."

"A fairy," Eric said, the pupils of his eyes actually dilating. "Come here, Sookie."

Ah-oh.I might have overplayed my hand out of sheer irritation.

"No," I said. "I told you what you wanted, you did what I asked, and now you can go back to Shreveport and let me get some sleep. Remember?" I pointed to my bandaged shoulder.

"Then I'll come to you," Eric said, and knelt in front of me. He pressed against my legs and leaned over so his head was against my neck. He inhaled, held it, exhaled. I had to choke back a nervous laugh at the similarity the process held to smoking dope. "You reek," Eric said, and I stiffened. "You smell of shifter and Were and fairy.A cocktail of other races."

I stayed completely immobile. His lips were about two millimeters from my ear. "Should I just bite you, and end it all?" he whispered. "I would never have to think about you again. Thinking about you is an annoying habit, and one I want to be rid of. Or should I start arousing you, and discover if sex with you was really the best I've ever had?"

I didn't think I was going to get a vote on this. I cleared my throat. "Eric," I said, a little hoarsely, "we need to talk about something."

"No. No. No," he said. With each "no" his lips brushed my skin.

I was looking past his shoulder at the window. "Eric," I breathed, "someone's watching us."

"Where?"His posture didn't change, but Eric had shifted from a mood that was definitely dangerous to me to one that was dangerous for someone else.

Since the eyes-at-the-window scenario was an eerie echo of the situation the night my house had burned, and that night the skulker had proved to be Bill, I hoped the watcher might be Bill again. Maybe he was jealous, or curious, or just checking up on me. If the trespasser was a human, I could have read his brain and found outwho he was, or at least what he intended; but this was a vampire, as the blank hole where the brain pattern should be had informed me.

"It's a vampire," I told Eric in the tiniest whisper I could manage, and he put his arms around me and pulled me into him.

"You're so much trouble," Eric said, and yet he didn't sound exasperated. He sounded excited. Eric loved the action moments.

By then, I was sure that the lurker wasn't Bill, who would have madehimself known. And Charles was presumably busy at Merlotte's, mixing daiquiris. That left one vampire in the area unaccounted for. "Mickey," I breathed, my fingers gripping Eric's shirt.

"Salome moved more quickly than I thought," Eric said in a regular voice. "He's too angry to obey her, I suppose. He's never been in here, correct?"

"Correct." Thank God.

"Then he can't come inside."

"But he can break the window," I said as glass shattered to our left. Mickey had thrown a large rock as big as my fist, and to my dismay the rock hit Eric squarely in the head. He went down like a—well, like a rock. He lay without moving. Dark blood welled from a deep cut in his temple. I leaped to my feet, completely stunned at seeing the powerful Eric apparently out cold.

"Invite me in," said Mickey, just outside the window. His face, white and angry, shone in the pelting rain. His black hair was plastered to his head.

"Of course not," I said, kneeling beside Eric, who blinked, to my relief. Not that he could be dead, of course, but still, when you see someone take a blow like that, vampire or not, it's just plain terrifying. Eric had fallen in front of the armchair, which had its back to the window, so Mickey couldn't see him.

But now I could see what Mickey was holding by one hand: Tara. She was almost as pale as he was, and she'd been beaten to a pulp. Blood was running out of the corner of her mouth. The lean vampire had a merciless grip on her arm. "I'll kill her if you don't let me in," he said, and to prove his point, he put both hands around her neck and began to squeeze. A clap of thunder and a bolt of lightning lit up Tara's desperate face as she clawed weakly at his arms. He smiled, fangs completely exposed.

If I let him in, he'd kill all of us. If I left him out there, I would have to watch him kill Tara. I felt Eric's hands take hold of my arm. "Do it," I said, not moving my gaze from Mickey. Ericbit, and it hurt like hell. He wasn't finessing this at all. He was desperate to heal in a hurry.

I'd just have to swallow the pain. I tried hard to keep my face still, but then I realized I had a great reason to look upset. "Let her go!" I yelled at Mickey, trying to buy a few seconds. I wondered if any of the neighbors were up, if they could hear the ruckus, and I prayed they wouldn't come searching to find out what was going on. I was even afraid for the police, if they came. We didn't have any vampire cops to handle vampire lawbreakers, like the cities did.