“Do I actually get to chase you?” he asked, his fangs already out.

I made it halfway to the living room before he caught me. But he carried me back to the bedroom.

It was great. Even though I had a niggling anxiety gnawing at me, that gnawing was successfully stifled for a very satisfying forty-five minutes.

Eric liked to lie propped on his elbow, his other hand stroking my stomach. When I protested that since my stomach wasn’t completely flat, this made me feel fat, he laughed heartily. “Who wants a bag of bones?” he said, with absolute sincerity. “I don’t want to hurt myself on the sharp edges of the woman I’m bedding.”

That made me feel better than anything he’d said to me in a long time. “Did women. Were women curvier when you were human?” I asked.

“We didn’t always have choices about how fat we were,” Eric said dryly. “In bad years, we were all skin and bones. In good years, when we could eat, we did.”

I felt abashed. “Oh, sorry.”

“This is a wonderful century to live in,” Eric said. “You can have food anytime you want.”

“If you have the money to pay for it.”

“Oh, you can steal it,” he said. “The point is, the food is here to be had.”

“Not in Africa.”

“I know people still starve in many parts of the world. But sooner or later, this prosperity will extend everywhere. It just got here first.”

I found his optimism amazing. “You really think so?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “Braid my hair for me, would you, Sookie?”

I got my hairbrush and an elastic band. Color me silly, but I really enjoyed doing this. Eric sat on the stool in front of my vanity table, and I threw on a robe he’d given me, a beautiful peach-and-white-silk one. I began brushing Eric’s long hair. After he said he didn’t mind, I got some hair gel and slicked the blond strands back so there wouldn’t be any loose hairs ruining the look. I took my time, making the neatest braid I could, and then I tied off the end. Without his hair floating around his face, Eric looked more severe, but just as handsome. I sighed.

“What is this sound coming from you?” he asked, turning from side to side to get several views of himself in the mirror. “Are you not happy with the result?”

“I think you look great,” I said. Only the fact that he might accuse me of false modesty kept me from saying, “So what on earth are you doing with me?”

“Now I’ll do your hair.”

Something in me flinched. The night I’d had sex for the very first time, Bill had brushed my hair until the sensuality of the movement had turned into a very different kind of sensuality. “No, thanks,” I said brightly.

I realized that I felt very odd, all of a sudden.

Eric swung around to look up at me. “What’s making you so jumpy, Sookie?”

“Hey, what happened to Alaska and Hawaii?” I asked at random. I still had the brush in my hand, and without meaning to, I dropped it. It clattered on the wooden floor.

“What?” Eric looked down at the brush, then up at my face, in some confusion.

“What section are they in? They both in Nakamura?”

“Narayana. No. Alaska is lumped in with the Canadians. They have their own system. Hawaii is autonomous.”

“That’s just not right.” I was genuinely indignant. Then I remembered there was something very important I had to tell Eric. “I guess Heidi reported back to you after she sniffed out my land? She told you about the body?” My hand jerked involuntarily.

Eric was watching my every move, his eyes narrowed. “We already talked about Debbie Pelt. If you really want me to, I’ll move her.”

I shivered all over. I wanted to tell him that the body was fresh. I’d started out to do that, but somehow I was having trouble formulating my sentence. I felt so peculiar. Eric cocked his head, his eyes locked on my face. “You’re behaving very strangely, Sookie.”

“Do you think Alcide could tell from the smell that the corpse was Debbie?” I asked. What was wrong with me?

“Not from the scent,” he said. “A body is a body. It doesn’t retain the distinctive scent that identified it as a particular person, especially after this long. Are you so worried about what Alcide thinks?”

“Not as much as I used to be,” I said, babbling on. “Hey, I heard on the radio today that one of the senators from Oklahoma came out as a Were. He said he’d register with some government bureau the day they pried his fangs from his cold, dead corpse.”

“I think the backlash from this will benefit vampires,” Eric said with some satisfaction. “Of course, we’d always realized the government would want to keep track of us somehow. Now it seems that if the Weres win their fight to be free of supervision, we may be able to do the same.”

“You better get dressed,” I said. Something bad was going to happen soon, and Eric needed clothes.

He turned and peered at himself in the mirror one last time. “All right,” he said, a little surprised. He was still nude and magnificent. But at the moment, I wasn’t feeling a bit lusty. I was feeling jangly, and nervous, and worried. I felt like spiders were crawling all over my skin. I didn’t know what could be happening to me. I tried to speak but found I couldn’t. I made my fingers move in a “hurry up” gesture.

Eric gave me a quick, worried glance and wordlessly began searching for his clothes. He found his pants, and he pulled them on.

I sank down to the floor, my hands on both sides of my head. I thought my skull might detach from my spine. I whimpered. Eric dropped his shirt.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong?” he asked, sinking down to the floor beside me.

“Someone’s coming,” I said. “I feel so strange. Someone’s coming. Almost here. Someone with your blood.” I realized I’d felt a faint, faint trace of this same oddness before, when I’d confronted Bill’s maker, Lorena. I hadn’t had a blood bond with Bill, or at least not one anything like as binding as the one I had with Eric.

Eric rose to his feet in less than the blink of an eye, and I heard him make a sound deep in his chest. His hands were in white fists. I was huddled against my bed, and he was between me and the open window. In the blink of an eye, I realized there was someone right outside.

“Appius Livius Ocella,” Eric said. “It’s been a hundred years.”

Geez Louise. Eric’s maker.

Between Eric’s legs I could see a man, very scarred and very muscular, with dark eyes and hair. I knew he was short because I could only see his head and shoulders. He was wearing jeans and a Black Sabbath T-shirt. I couldn’t help it. I giggled.

“Haven’t you missed me, Eric?” The Roman’s voice had an accent I really couldn’t have broken down, it had so many layers.

“Ocella, your presence is always an honor,” Eric said. I giggled harder. Eric was lying.

“What is wrong with my wife?” he asked.

“Her senses are confused,” the older vampire said. “You have my blood. She’s had your blood. And another child of mine is here. The bond between us all is scrambling her thoughts and feelings.”

No shit.

“This is my new son, Alexei,” Appius Livius Ocella told Eric.

I peered past Eric’s legs. The new “son” was a boy of no more than thirteen or fourteen. In fact, I could hardly see his face. I froze, trying not to react.

“Brother,” said Eric by way of greeting his new sibling. The words came out level and cold.

I was going to stand up now. I was not going to crouch here any longer. Eric had crowded me into a very small space between the bed and the nightstand, with the bathroom door to my right. He hadn’t shifted from his defensive posture.

“Excuse me,” I said, with a great effort, and Eric took a step forward to give me room, keeping himself between me and his maker and the boy. I rose to my feet, pushing on the bed to get upright. I still felt fried. I looked Eric’s sire right in his dark and liquid eyes. For a fraction of a second, he looked surprised.