Dead Reckoning - Charlaine Harris [101]
“We’ve had eyes looking for her in Shreveport, but no one’s spotted her,” Eric said.
“So this Sandra’s goal,” Pam said, pulling her straight pale hair behind her shoulders to braid it, “is to destroy you, your place of work, and anything else that gets in her way.”
“That sounds about right. But evidently she’s not behind this. I have too many enemies.”
“Charming,” Pam said.
“How’s your friend?” I asked. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask before.”
Pam gave me a straight look. “She’s going to pass soon,” she said. “I’m running out of options, and I’m running out of hope that the process can be legal.”
Eric’s cell phone rang, and he got up to walk into the hall to take it. “Yes?” he said curtly. Then his voice changed. “Your Majesty,” he said, and he walked quickly into the living room so I couldn’t hear.
I wouldn’t have thought so much about it if I hadn’t seen Pam’s face. She was looking at me, and her expression was clearly one of . . . pity.
“What?” I said, the hair on the back of my neck rising. “What’s up? If he said ‘Your Majesty,’ that’s Felipe calling, huh? That should be good . . . right?”
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “He’d kill me. He doesn’t even want you to know there’s anything to know, if you can pick up what I’m putting down.”
“Pam. Tell me.”
“I can’t,” she repeated. “You need to be looking out for yourself, Sookie.”
I looked at her with fierce intensity. I couldn’t will her mouth to open, and I didn’t have the strength to hold her down on the kitchen table and demand the facts from her.
Where could reason get me? Okay, Pam liked me. The only people she liked better were Eric and her Miriam. If there was something she couldn’t tell me, it had to be associated with Eric. If Eric had been human, I would’ve thought he had some dread disease. If Eric had lost all his assets in the stock market or some such financial calamity, Pam knew that money was not my ruling concern. What was the only thing I valued?
His love.
Eric had someone else.
I stood up without knowing I was standing, the chair clattering to the floor behind me. I wanted to reach into Pam’s brain and yank out the details. Now I understood very clearly why Eric had gone for her in this same room the night he’d brought Immanuel over. She’d wanted to tell me then and he’d forbidden her to speak.
Alarmed by the noise of the chair bouncing on the floor, Eric came running into the room, the phone still held to his ear. I was standing with my fists clenched, glaring at him. My heart was lurching around in my chest like a frog on a griddle.
“Excuse me,” he said into the phone. “There is a crisis. I’ll return your call later.” He snapped his phone shut.
“Pam,” he said. “I am very angry with you. I am seriously angry with you. Leave this house now and remain silent.”
With a posture I had never seen before, hunched and humbled, Pam scrambled up from her chair and out the back door. I wondered if she’d see Bubba in the woods. Or Bill. Or maybe there’d be fairies. Or some more kidnappers. A homicidal maniac! You never knew what you’d find in my woods.
I didn’t say a word. I waited. I felt like my eyes were shooting flames.
“I love you,” he said.
I waited.
“My maker, Appius Livius Ocella”—the dead Appius Livius Ocella—“was in the process of making a match for me before he died,” Eric said. “He mentioned it to me during his stay, but I didn’t realize the process had gone as far as it had when he died. I thought I could ignore it. That his death canceled it out.”
I waited. I could not read his face, and without the bond, I could only see that he was covering his emotion with a hard face.
“This isn’t much done anymore, though it used to be the norm. Makers used to find matches for their children. They’d receive a fee if it was an advantageous union,