“Eric, you need to go to the front door and let them in,” I said. “I’ll bet they don’t really need an invitation.”

“Eric, she’s rare,” said Ocella in his oddly accented English. “Where did you find her?”

“I’m asking you in out of courtesy, because you’re Eric’s dad,” I said. “I could just leave you outside.” If I didn’t sound as strong as I wanted, at least I didn’t sound frightened.

“But my child is in this house, and if he is welcome, so am I. Am I not?” Ocella’s thick black brows rose. His nose. Well, you could tell why they coined the term “Roman nose.” “I waited to come in out of courtesy. We could have appeared in your bedroom.”

And the next moment they were inside.

I didn’t dignify that with an answer. I spared a glance for the boy, whose face was absolutely blank. He was no ancient Roman. He hadn’t been a vampire a full century, I estimated, and he seemed to come from Germanic stock. His hair was light and short and cut evenly, his eyes were blue, and when he met my own, he inclined his head.

“Your name is Alexei?” I asked.

“Yes,” said his maker, while the boy stood mute. “This is Alexei Romanov.”

Though the boy didn’t react, and neither did Eric, I had a moment of sheer horror. “You didn’t,” I said to Eric’s maker, who was about my height. “You didn’t.”

“I tried to save one of his sisters, too, but she was beyond my recall,” Ocella said bleakly. His teeth were white and even, though he was missing the one next to his left canine. If you had lost teeth before you became a vampire, they didn’t regenerate.

“Sookie, what is it?” Eric was not following, for once.

“The Romanovs,” I said, trying to keep my voice hushed as though the boy couldn’t hear me from twenty yards away. “The last Russian royal family.”

To Eric, the executions of the Romanovs must seem like yesterday, and perhaps not very important in the tapestry of deaths he’d experienced in his thousand years. But he understood that his maker had done something extraordinary. I looked at Ocella without anger, without fear, for just a few seconds, and I saw a man who, finding himself an outcast and lonely, looked for the most outstanding “children” he could find.

“Was Eric the first vampire you made?” I asked Ocella.

He was bemused by what he saw as my brazen attitude. Eric had a stronger reaction. As I felt his fear roll through me, I understood that Eric had to physically perform whatever Ocella ordered him to do. Before, that had been an abstract concept. Now I realized that if Ocella ordered Eric to kill me, Eric would be compelled to do it.

The Roman decided to answer me. “Yes, he was the first one I brought over successfully. The others I tried to bring over—they died.”

“Could we please leave my bedroom and go into the living room?” I said. “This is not the right place to receive visitors.” See? I was trying to be polite.

“Yes, I suppose,” said the older vampire. “Alexei? Where do you suppose the living room is?”

Alexei half turned and pointed in the right direction.

“Then that’s where we’ll go, dearest,” Ocella said, and Alexei led the way.

I had a moment to look up at Eric, and I knew my face was asking, “What the hell is going on here?” But he looked stunned, and helpless. Eric. Helpless. My head was whirling.

When I had a second to think about it, I was pretty nauseated, because Alexei was a child and I was fairly sure that Ocella had a sexual relationship with the boy, as he’d had with Eric. But I wasn’t foolish enough to think that I could stop it, or that any protest I made would make the slightest difference. In fact, I was far from sure Alexei himself would thank me for intervening, when I remembered Eric telling me about his desperate attachment to his maker during the first years of his new life as a vampire.

Alexei had been with Ocella for a long time now, at least in human terms. I couldn’t remember exactly when the Romanov family had been executed, but I thought it was sometime around 1918, and apparently it had been Ocella who’d saved the boy from final death. So whatever constituted their relationship, it had been ongoing for more than eighty years.

All these thoughts flickered through my head, one after another, as we followed the two visitors. Ocella had said he could have entered without warning. It would have been nice if Eric had told me about that. I could see how he might have hoped that Ocella would never visit, so I was willing to give Eric a pass. but I couldn’t help thinking that instead of his lecture on the ways vampires had sliced up my country according to their own convenience, it would have been more practical to let me know his maker could appear in my bedroom.

“Please, have a seat,” I said, after Ocella and Alexei had settled on the couch.

“So much sarcasm,” said Ocella. “Will you not offer us hospitality?” His gaze ran up and down me, and though the color of his eyes was rich and brown, they were utterly cold.

I had a second to realize how glad I was that I’d put a robe on. I would have rather eaten Alpo than been naked in front of these two. “I’m not happy with your popping up outside my bedroom window,” I said. “You could have come to the door and knocked, like people with good manners do.” I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know; vampires are good at reading people, and the oldest vampires are usually better than humans at telling what humans are feeling.

“Yes, but then I wouldn’t have seen such a charming sight.” Ocella let his gaze brush Eric’s shirtless body almost tangibly. Alexei, for the first time, showed an emotion. He looked scared. Was he afraid Ocella would reject him, throw him out onto the mercy of the world? Or was he afraid that Ocella would keep him?

I pitied Alexei from the bottom of my heart, and I feared him just as much.

He was as helpless as Eric.

Ocella had been looking at Alexei with an attention that was almost frightening. “He’s already much better,” Ocella murmured. “Eric, your presence is doing him so much good.”

I’d kind of figured things couldn’t get more awkward, but a peremptory knock at the back door followed by a “Sookie, you here?” told me that actually the night could get worse.

My brother, Jason, came in without waiting for me to answer. “Sookie, I saw your light on when I pulled up, so I figured you were awake,” he said, and then he stopped abruptly when he realized how much company I had. And what they were.

“Sorry to interrupt, Sook,” he said slowly. “Eric, how you doing?”

Eric said, “Jason, this is my. This is Appius Livius Ocella, my maker, and his other son Alexei.” Eric said it properly, “AP-pi-us Li-WEE-us Oh-KEL-ah.”

Jason nodded at both of the newcomers, but he avoided looking directly at the older vampire. Good instinct. “Good evening, O’Kelly. Hey, Alexei. So you’re Eric’s little brother, huh? Are you a Viking like Eric?”

“No,” said the boy faintly. “I am Russian.” Alexei’s accent was much lighter than the Roman’s. He looked at Jason with interest. I hoped he wasn’t thinking about biting my brother. The thing about Jason, and what made him so attractive to people (particularly women), was that he practically radiated life. He just seemed to have an extra helping of vigor and vitality, and it was returning with a boom now that the misery of his wife’s death was fading. This was his manifestation of the fairy blood in his veins.

“Well, good to meet you-all,” Jason said. Then he quit paying attention to the visitors. “Sookie, I came to get that little side table from up in the attic. I came by here once before to pick it up, but you were gone and I didn’t have my key with me.” Jason kept a key to my house for emergencies, just as I kept a key to his.

I’d forgotten his asking me for the table when we’d had dinner together. At this point, he could have asked me for my bedroom set, and I would have agreed just to get him out of danger. I said, “Sure, I don’t need it. Go on up. I don’t think it’s very far inside the door.”