Dead Reckoning - Charlaine Harris [38]
I could have said several things. I could have said, “I’m not your vassal, and I’ll say what I want to say,” or I could have said, “Fuck you, let me out,” and called my brother to come get me.
But I sat in silence.
I am ashamed to say that at that moment I was scared of Eric, this desperate and determined vampire who was attacking his best friend because he didn’t want me to know . . . something. Through the tie I felt with him, I got a confused bundle of negative emotions: fear, anger, grim resolve, frustration.
“Take me home,” I said.
In an eerie echo, the limp Miriam whispered, “Take me home. . . .”
After a long moment, Eric let go of Pam, who collapsed in the backseat like a sack of rice. She hunched over Miriam protectively. In a frozen silence, Eric took me back to my house. There was no further mention of the sex we’d been scheduled to have after this “fun” evening. At that point, I would rather have had sex with Luis and Antonio. Or Pam. I said good-bye to Pam and Miriam, got out, and walked into my house without a backward glance.
I guess Eric and Pam and Miriam drove back to Shreveport together, and I guess at some point he permitted Pam to speak again, but I don’t know.
I couldn’t sleep after I’d washed my face and hung up the pretty dress. I hoped I’d get to wear it on a happier evening, sometime in the future. I’d looked too good to be this miserable. I wondered if Eric would have handled the evening with such sangfroid if it had been me Victor had captured and drugged and put out there on that banquette for the entire world to gape at.
And there was another thing troubling me. Here’s what I would have asked Eric if he hadn’t been playing dictator. I would have said, “Where did Victor get the fairy blood?”
That’s what I would have asked.
Chapter 4
I rose the next day feeling pretty grim in general, but I brightened when I saw that Claude and Dermot had returned to the house the night before. The evidence was clear. Claude’s shirt was tossed over the back of a kitchen chair, and Dermot’s shoes were at the foot of the stairs. Plus, after I’d had my coffee and my shower, and emerged from my room in shorts and a green T-shirt, the two were waiting for me in the living room.
“Good morning, guys,” I said. Even to my own ears, I didn’t sound too perky. “Did you remember that today was the day the antiques dealers come? They should be here in an hour or two.” I braced myself for the talk we had to have.
“Good, then this room will not look like a junk shop,” Claude said in his charming way.
I just nodded. Today, we had Obnoxious Claude, as opposed to the more rarely seen Tolerable Claude.
“We did promise you a talk,” Dermot said.
“And then you didn’t come home that night.” I sat back in an old rocker from the attic. I didn’t feel particularly ready for this conversation, but I was also anxious for some answers.
“Things were happening at the club,” Claude said evasively.
“Uh-huh. Let me guess, one of the fairies is missing.”
That made them sit up and take notice. “What? How did you know?” Dermot recovered first.
“Victor has him. Or her,” I added. I told them the story about last night.
“It’s not enough that we have to handle our own race’s problems,” Claude said. “Now we’re sucked into the fucking vampire struggles, too.”
“No,” I said, feeling I was walking uphill in this conversation. “You as a group weren’t sucked into the vampire struggles. One of you was taken for a specific purpose. Different scenario. Let me point out that at the very least, that fairy who was taken has been bled, because that was what the vamps needed, the blood. I’m not saying your missing comrade couldn’t be alive, but you know how the vamps lose control when a fairy is around, much less a bleeding fairy.”
“She’s right,” Dermot told Claude. “Cait must be dead. Are any of the fairies at the club her kin? We need to ask if they