So I was stuck here for an indefinite time—until the light, it shone. "Do your names have a meaning? I'm guessing they're, um, early English?" My voice petered out.

"We were Saxons. Our fadder went from Germany to England, you call now," Wybert said. "My name mean Bright Battle."

"And mine, Bright Victory," Sigebert added.

I remembered a program I'd seen on the History Channel. The Saxons eventually became the Anglo-Saxons and later were overwhelmed by the Normans. "So you were raised to be warriors," I said, trying to look intelligent.

They exchanged glances. "There was nothing else," Sigebert said. The end of his scar wiggled when he talked, and I tried not to stare. "We were sons of war leader."

I could think of a hundred questions to ask them about their lives as humans, but standing in the middle of a hallway in an office building in the night didn't seem the time to do it. "How'd you happen to become vampires?" I asked. "Or is that a tacky question? If it is, just forget I said anything. I don't want to step on any toes."

Sigebert actually glanced down at his feet, so I got the idea that colloquial English wasn't their strong suit. "This woman… very beautiful… she come to us the night before battle," Wybert said haltingly. "She say… we be stronger if she… have us."

They looked at me inquiringly, and I nodded to show I understood that Wybert was saying the vampire had implied her interest was in bedding them. Or had they understood she meant to bleed them? I couldn't tell. I thought it was a mighty ambitious vampire who would take on these two humans at the same time.

"She did not say we only fight at night after that," Sigebert said, shrugging to show that there had been a catch they hadn't understood. "We did not ask plenty questions. We too eager!" And he smiled. Okay, nothing so scary as a vampire left with only his fangs. It was possible Sigebert had more teeth in the back of his mouth, ones I couldn't see from my height, but Chester's plentiful-though-crooked teeth had looked super in comparison.

"That must have been a very long time ago," I said, since I couldn't think of anything else to say. "How long have you worked for the queen?"

Sigebert and Wybert looked at each other. "Since that night," Wybert said, astonished I hadn't understood. "We are hers."

My respect for the queen, and maybe my fear of the queen, escalated. Sophie-Anne, if that was her real name, had been brave, strategic, and busy in her career as a vampire leader. She'd brought them over and kept them with her, in a bond that—the one whose name I wasn't going to speak even to myself—had explained to me was stronger than any other emotional tie, for a vampire.

To my relief, the light shone green in the wall.

Sigebert said, "Go now," and pushed open the heavy door. He and Wybert gave me matching nods of farewell as I walked over the threshold and into a room that was like any executive's office anywhere.

Sophie-Anne Leclerq, Queen of Louisiana, and a male vampire were sitting at a round table piled with papers. I'd met the queen once before, when she'd come to my place to tell me about my cousin's death. I hadn't noticed then how young she must have been when she died, maybe no more than fifteen. She was an elegant woman, perhaps four inches shorter than my height of five foot six, and she was groomed down to the last eyelash. Makeup, dress, hair, stockings, jewelry—the whole nine yards.

The vampire at the table with her was her male counterpart. He wore a suit that would have paid my cable bill for a year, and he was barbered and manicured and scented until he almost wasn't a guy any more. In my neck of the woods, I didn't often see men so groomed. I guessed this was the new king. I wondered if he'd died in such a state; actually, I wondered if the funeral home had cleaned him up like that for his funeral, not knowing that his descent below ground was only temporary. If that had been the case, he was younger than his queen. Maybe age wasn't the only requirement, if you were aiming to be royalty.

There were two other people in the room. A short man stood about three feet behind the queen's chair, his legs apart, his hands clasped in front of him. He had close-cut white-blond hair and bright blue eyes. His face lacked maturity; he looked like a large child, but with a man's shoulders. He was wearing a suit, and he was armed with a saber and a gun.

Behind the man at the table stood a woman, a vampire, dressed all in red; slacks, T-shirt, Converses. Her preference was unfortunate, because red was not her color. She was Asian, and I thought she'd come from Vietnam—though it had probably been called something else then. She had very short unpainted nails, and a terrifying sword strapped to her back. Apparently, her hair had been cut off at chin length by a pair of rusty scissors. Her face was the unenhanced one God had given her.

Since I hadn't had a briefing on the correct protocol, I dipped my head to the queen, said, "Good to see you again, ma'am," and tried to look pleasantly at the king while doing the head-dip thing again. The two standees, who must be aides or bodyguards, received smaller nods. I felt like an idiot, but I didn't want to ignore them. However, they didn't have a problem with ignoring me, once they'd given me an all-over threat assessment.

"You've had some adventures in New Orleans," the queen said, a safe lead-in. She wasn't smiling, but then I had the impression she was not a smiley kind of gal.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Sookie, this is my husband. Peter Threadgill, King of Arkansas." There was not a trace of affection on her face. She might as well have been telling me the name of her pet cockapoo.

"How-de-do," I said, and repeated my head-bob, adding, "Sir," hastily. Okay, already tired of this.

"Miss Stackhouse," he said, turning his attention back to the papers in front of him. The round table was large and completely cluttered with letters, computer printouts, and an assortment of other papers—bank statements?

While I was relieved not to be an object of interest to the king, I was wondering exactly why I was there. I found out when the queen began to question me about the night before. I told her as explicitly as I could what had happened.

She looked very serious when I talked about Amelia's stasis spell and what it had done to the body.

"You don't think the witch knew the body was there when she cast the spell?" the queen asked. I noticed that though the king's gaze was on the papers in front of him, he hadn't moved a one of them since I'd begun talking. Of course, maybe he was a very slow reader.

"No, ma'am. I know Amelia didn't know he was there."

"From your telepathic ability?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Peter Threadgill looked at me then, and I saw that his eyes were an unusual glacial gray. His face was full of sharp angles: a nose like a blade, thin straight lips, high cheekbones.

The king and the queen were both good-looking, but not in a way that struck any chord in me. I had an impression that the feeling was mutual. Thank God.

"You're the telepath that my dear Sophie wants to bring to the conference," Peter Threadgill said.

Since he was telling me something I already knew, I didn't feel the need to answer. But discretion won over sheer irritation. "Yes, I am."

"Stan has one," the queen said to her husband, as if vampires collected telepaths the way dog fanciers collected springer spaniels.

The only Stan I knew was a head vampire in Dallas, and the only other telepath I'd ever met had lived there. From the queen's few words, I guessed that Barry the Bellman's life had changed a lot since I'd met him. Apparently he worked for Stan Davis now. I didn't know if Stan was the sheriff or even a king, since at the time I hadn't been privy to the fact that vampires had such.