“I am here, my lover,” Eric said. It was hard not to shiver when I heard his voice, but the atmosphere of the ladies’ room in Merlotte’s was not at all conducive to lust.

“Well, I’m here, too, obviously. Listen, I really need to talk to you,” I said. “Some things have come up.”

“You’re worried.”

“Yes. With good reason.”

“I have a meeting in thirty minutes with Victor,” Eric said. “You know how tense that’s likely to be.”

“I do know. And I’m sorry to pester you with my problems. But you’re my boyfriend, and part of being a good boyfriend is listening.”

“Your boyfriend,” he said. “That sounds. strange. I am so not a boy.”

“Foof, Eric!” I was exasperated. “I don’t want to stand here in the bathroom trying to talk terminology! What’s the bottom line? Are you going to have free time later or not?”

He laughed. “Yes, for you. Can you drive over here? Wait, I’ll send Pam for you. She’ll be at your house at one o’clock, all right?”

I might have to hurry to get home by then, but it was doable. “Okay. And warn Pam that. Well, tell her not to get carried away by anything, hear?”

“Oh, certainly, I’ll be glad to pass that very specific message along,” Eric said. He hung up. Not big on saying good-bye, like most vampires.

This was going to be a very long day.

Luckily for me, all the customers cleared out early, and I was able to get my closing work done in record time. I called, “Good night!” over my shoulder and hared out the back door to my car. When I parked behind the house, I noticed Claude’s car wasn’t there. So he was probably still in Monroe, which simplified matters. I hurried to change clothes and freshen my makeup, and just as I put on some lipstick, Pam knocked at the back door.

Pam was looking especially Pammish tonight. Her blond hair was absolutely straight and shining, her pale blue suit looked like a vintage gem, and she was wearing hose with seams up the back, which she turned around to show me.

“Wow,” I said, which was the only possible response. “You’re looking great.” She put my red skirt and red and white blouse to shame.

“Yes,” she said with considerable satisfaction. “I am. Ah. ” She became utterly still. “Do I smell fairy?”

“You do, but there’s not one here now, so just rein it in. My cousin Claude was here today. He’s going to be bunking with me for a while.”

“Claude, the mouthwateringly beautiful asshole?”

Claude’s fame preceded him. “Yes, that Claude.”

“Why? Why is he staying with you?”

“He’s lonely,” I said.

“Do you really believe that?” Pam’s pale brows were arched incredulously.

“Well. yes, I do.” Why else would Claude want to stay at my house, which was not convenient to his job? He certainly didn’t want to get in my pants, and he hadn’t asked to borrow money.

“This is some fairy intrigue,” Pam said. “You were a fool to be taken in.”

Nobody likes being called a fool. Pam had stepped over the line, but then “tact” was not her middle name. “Pam, that’s enough,” I said. I must have sounded serious, because she stared at me for all of fifteen seconds.

“I’ve offended you,” she said, though not as if the idea gave her pain.

“Yeah, you have. Claude’s missing his sisters. There aren’t any fairies left for him to intrigue with since Niall closed the portal, or doors, or whatever the heck he closed. I’m the closest Claude’s got to his kind—which is pretty pitiful, since I just have a dab of fairy in me.”

“Let’s go,” Pam said. “Eric will be waiting.”

Changing the subject when she had nothing left to say was another of Pam’s characteristics. I had to smile and shake my head. “How’d the meeting with Victor go?” I asked.

“It would be a good thing if Victor met with an unfortunate accident.”

“You really mean that?”

“No. I really wish someone would kill him.”

“Me, too.” Our eyes met, and she gave me a brisk nod. We were in synch on the Victor issue.

“I suspect his every statement,” she said. “I question his every decision. I think he’s out to take Eric’s position. He doesn’t want to be the king’s emissary any longer. He wants to carve out his own territory.”

I pictured a fur-clad Victor paddling a canoe down the Red River with an Indian maiden sitting stoically behind him. I laughed. As we got into Pam’s car, she looked at me darkly.

“I don’t understand you,” she said. “I really don’t.” We went out to Hummingbird Road and turned north.

“Why would being a sheriff in Louisiana be a step above being the emissary of Felipe, who has a rich kingdom?” I asked very seriously, to make up my lost ground.

“ ‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,’ ” Pam said. I knew she was quoting someone, but I didn’t have a clue who it was.

“Louisiana is hell? Las Vegas is heaven?” I could almost believe some cosmopolitan vampire would consider Louisiana as less than desirable as a permanent residence, but Las Vegas—divine? I didn’t think so.

“I’m just saying.” Pam shrugged. “It’s time for Victor to get out from under Felipe’s thumb. They’ve been together a long time. Victor is ambitious.”

“That’s true. What do you think Victor’s strategy is? How do you think he plans to dislodge Eric?”

“He’ll try to discredit him,” Pam said, without pausing a beat. She’d really been thinking about this. “If Victor can’t do that, he’ll try to kill Eric—but he won’t do it directly, in combat.”

“He’s scared of fighting Eric?”

“Yes,” Pam said, smiling. “I do believe he is.” We’d reached the interstate and were on our way west to Shreveport. “If he challenged Eric, it would be Eric’s right to send me in first. I would so love to fight Victor.” Her fangs gleamed briefly in the dashboard light.

“Does Victor have a second? Wouldn’t he send that second in?”

Pam cocked her head to one side. She seemed to be thinking about it as she passed a semi. “His second is Bruno Brazell. He was with Victor the night Eric surrendered to Nevada,” she said. “Short beard, an earring? If Eric allowed me to fight for him, Victor might send in Bruno. He’s impressive, I grant you. But I would kill him in five minutes or less. You can put money on that.”

Pam, who had been a Victorian middle-class young lady with a secret wild streak, had been liberated by becoming a vampire. I had never asked Eric why he’d chosen Pam for the change, but I was convinced it was because Eric had detected her inner ferocity.

On an impulse, I said, “Pam? Do you ever wonder what would have happened to you if you hadn’t met up with Eric?”

There was a long silence, or at least it seemed long to me. I wondered if she was angry or sad about her lost chance for a husband and children. I wondered if she was looking back with longing on her sexual relationship with her maker, Eric, which (like most vampire-vampire relationships) hadn’t lasted long, but had surely been very intense.

Finally, just when I was going to apologize for asking, Pam said, “I think I was born for this.” The faint light from the dashboard illuminated her perfectly symmetrical face. “I would have been a dismal wife, a terrible mother. The part of me that has taken to slashing the throats of my enemies would have surfaced if I’d remained human. I wouldn’t have killed anyone, I suppose, because that wasn’t on my list of things I could do, when I was human. But I would have made my family very miserable; you can be sure of that.”

“You’re a great vampire,” I said, since I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

She nodded. “Yes. I am.”

We didn’t speak again until we reached Eric’s house. Oddly enough, he’d bought a place in a gated community with a strict building code. Eric liked the daytime security of the gate and the guard. And he liked the fieldstone house. There weren’t too many basements in Shreveport, because the water level was too high, but Eric’s house was on a slope. Originally, its downstairs was a walk-in from the back patio. Eric had had that door pulled out and the wall made solid, so he had a great place to sleep.