"Sitting here on your bed, smelling your scent," he said in a voice so low I had to strain to hear it. "Sookie . . . I remember everything."

"Oh,hell," I said, and went in the bathroom and shut the door. I brushed my hair and my teeth and scrubbed my face, but I had to come out. I was being as cowardly as Quinn if I didn't face the vampire.

Eric started talking the minute I emerged. "I can't believe I—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, loved a mere human, made all those promises, was as sweet as pie and wanted to stay with me forever," I muttered. Surely there was a shortcut we could take through this scene.

"I can't believe I felt something so strongly and was so happy for the first time in hundreds of years," Eric said with some dignity. "Give me some credit for that, too."

I rubbed my forehead. It was the middle of the night, I'd thought I was going to die, the man I'd been thinking of as my boyfriend had just turned my whole picture of him upside down. Though now "his" vamps were on the same side as "my" vamps, I'd emotionally aligned myself with the vampires of Louisiana, even if some of them had been terrifying in the extreme. Could Victor Madden and his crew be any less scary? I thought not. This very night they'd killed quite a few vamps I'd known and liked.

Coming on top of all these events, I didn't think I could cope with an Eric who'd just had a revelation.

"Can we talk about this some other time, if we have to talk about it?" I asked.

"Yes," he said after a long pause. "Yes. This isn't the right moment."

"I don't know that any time will be right for this conversation."

"But we're going to have it," Eric said.

"Eric . . . oh, okay." I made an "erase" movement with my hand. "I'm glad the new regime wants to keep you on."

"It would hurt you if I died."

"Yeah, we're blood bound, yadda yadda yadda."

"Not because of the bond."

"Okay, you're right. It would hurt me if you died. Also I would have died, too, most likely, so it wouldn't have hurt for long. Now can you please scoot?"

"Oh, yes," he said with a return of the old Eric flare. "I'll scoot for now, but I'm going to see you later. And rest assured, my lover, we'll come to an understanding. As for the vampires of Las Vegas, they'll be well-suited to running another state that relies heavily on tourism. The King of Nevada is a powerful man, and Victor is not one you can take lightly. Victor is ruthless, but he won't destroy something he may be able to use. He's very good at reining in his temper."

"So you're not really that unhappy with the takeover?" I couldn't keep the shock out of my voice.

"It's happened," Eric said. "There's no goal to be met in being ‘unhappy' now. I can't bring anyone back to life, and I can't defeat Nevada by myself. I won't ask my people to die in a futile attempt."

I just couldn't match Eric's pragmatism. I could see his points, and in fact when I'd had some rest, I might agree with him. But not here, not now; he seemed way too cold for me. Of course, he'd had a few hundred years to get that way, and maybe he'd had to go through this process many times.

What a bleak prospect.

Eric paused on his way out the door to bend down to kiss me on the cheek. This was another evening for collecting kisses. "I'm sorry about the tiger," he said, and that was the final cap to the night as far as I was concerned. I sat slumped in the little chair in the bedroom corner until I was sure everyone was out of the house. When only one warm brain remained, Amelia's, I peered out of my room to get a visual. Yep, everyone else was gone.

"Amelia?" I called.

"Yeah," she answered, and I went to find her. She was in the living room, and she was as exhausted as I was.

"Are you going to be able to sleep?" I asked.

"I don't know. I'm going to try." She shook her head. "This changes everything."

"Which this?" Amazingly, she understood me.

"Oh, the vampire takeover. My dad had lots of dealings with the New Orleans vampires. He was going to be working for Sophie-Anne, repairing her headquarters in New Orleans. All her other properties, too. I better call him and tell him. He's going to want to get in there early with the new guy."

In her own way Amelia was being as practical as Eric. I felt out of tune with the whole world. I couldn't think of anyone I could call who would feel the least bit mournful over the loss of Sophie-Anne, Arla Yvonne, Cleo . . . And the list went on. It made me wonder, for the first time, if vampires might not get inured to loss. Look at all the life that passed them by and then vanished. Generation after generation went to their graves, while still the undead lived on. And on.

Well, this tired human—who would eventually pass on— needed some sleep in the worst possible way. If there was another hostile takeover tonight, it would have to proceed without me. I locked the doors all over again, called up the stairs to Amelia to tell her good night, and crawled back into my bed. I lay awake for at least thirty minutes, because my muscles twitched just when I was about to drift off. I would start up into full wakefulness, thinking someone was coming in the room to warn me about a great disaster.

But finally even the twitching couldn't keep me awake any longer. I fell into a heavy sleep. When I woke, the sun was up and shining in the window, and Quinn was sitting in the chair in the corner where I'd slumped the night before while I was trying to deal with Eric.

This was an unpleasant trend. I didn't want a lot of guys popping in and out of my bedroom. I wanted one who would stay.

"Who let you in?" I asked, propping myself up on one elbow. He looked good for someone who hadn't gotten much sleep. He was a very large man with a very smooth head and huge purple eyes. I had always loved the way he looked.

"Amelia," he said. "I know I shouldn't have come in; I should have waited until you were up. You might not want me in the house."

I went in the bathroom to give myself a minute, another ploy that was getting all too familiar. When I came out, a little neater and more awake than when I'd entered, Quinn had a mug of coffee for me. I took a sip and instantly felt better able to cope with whatever was coming. But not in my bedroom.

"Kitchen," I said, and we went to the room that had always been the heart of the house. It had been dated when the fire had gotten it. Now I had a brand-new kitchen, but I still missed the old one. The table where my family had eaten for years had been replaced with a modern one, and the new chairs were lots more comfortable than the old ones, but regret still caught at me every now and then when I thought of what had been lost.

I had an ominous feeling that "regret" was going to be the theme of the day. During my troubled sleep, apparently I'd absorbed a dose of the practicality that had seemed so sad to me the night before. To stave off the conversation we were going to have to have, I stepped to the back door and looked to see that Amelia's car was gone. At least we were alone.

I sat down opposite the man I'd hoped to love.

"Babe, you look like someone just told you I was dead," Quinn said.

"Might as well have," I said, because I had to plow into this and look to neither the right nor the left. He flinched.

"Sookie, what could I have done?" he asked. "What could I have done?" There was an edge of anger in his voice.

"What canI do?" I asked in return, because I had no answer for him.

"I sent Frannie! I tried to warn you!"

"Too little, too late," I said. I second-guessed myself immediately: Was I being too hard, unfair, ungrateful? "If you'd called me weeks ago, even once, I might feel different. But I guess you were too busy trying to find your mother."

"So you're breaking up with me because of my mother," he said. He sounded bitter and I didn't blame him.