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I can’t sing, but I can dance; as it happened, Alcide could, too.

The good thing about dancing is that you don’t have to talk for a while, if you feel chatted out. The bad thing is it makes you hyperconscious of your partner’s body. I had already been uncomfortably aware of Alcide’s—excuse me—animal magnetism. Now, so close to him, swaying in rhythm with him, following his every move, I found myself in a kind of trance. When the song was over, we stayed on the little dance floor, and I kept my eyes on the floor. When the next song started up, a faster piece of music—though for the life of me I couldn’t have told you what—we began dancing again, and I spun and dipped and moved with the werewolf.

Then the muscular squat man sitting at a bar stool behind us said to his vampire companion, “He hasn’t talked yet. And Harvey called today. He said they searched the house and didn’t find anything.”

“Public place,” said his companion, in a sharp voice. The vampire was a very small man—perhaps he’d become a vampire when men were shorter.

I knew they were talking about Bill, because the human was thinking of Bill when he said, “He hasn’t talked.” And the human was an exceptional broadcaster, both sound and visuals coming through clearly.

When Alcide tried to lead me away from their orbit, I resisted his lead. Looking up into his surprised face, I cut my eyes toward the couple. Comprehension filtered into his eyes, but he didn’t look happy.

Dancing and trying to read another person’s mind at the same time is not something I’d recommend. I was straining mentally, and my heart was pounding with shock at the glimpse of Bill’s image. Luckily, Alcide excused himself to go to the men’s room just then, parking me on a stool at the bar right by the vampire. I tried to keep looking around at different dancers, at the deejay, at anything but the man to the vampire’s left, the man whose mind I was trying to pick through.

He was thinking about what he’d done during the day; he’d been trying to keep someone awake, someone who really needed to sleep—a vampire. Bill.

Keeping a vampire awake during the day was the worst kind of torture. It was difficult to do, too. The compulsion to sleep when the sun came up was imperative, and the sleep itself was like death.

Somehow, it had never crossed my mind—I guess since I’m an American—that the vampires who had snatched Bill might be resorting to evil means to get him to talk. If they wanted the information, naturally they weren’t just going to wait around until Bill felt like telling them. Stupid me—dumb, dumb, dumb. Even knowing Bill had betrayed me, even knowing he had thought of leaving me for his vampire lover, I was struck deep with pain for him.

Engrossed in my unhappy thoughts, I didn’t recognize trouble when it was standing right beside me. Until it grabbed me by the arm.

One of the Were gang members, a big dark-haired man, very heavy and very smelly, had grabbed hold of my arm. He was getting his greasy fingerprints all over my beautiful red sleeves, and I tried to pull away from him.

“Come to our table and let us get to know you, sweet thing,” he said, grinning at me. He had a couple of earrings in one ear. I wondered what happened to them during the full moon. But almost immediately, I realized I had more serious problems to solve. The expression on his face was too frank; men just didn’t look at women that way unless those women were standing on a street corner in hot pants and a bra: in other words, he thought I was a sure thing.

“No, thank you,” I said politely. I had a weary, wary feeling that this wasn’t going to be the end of it, but I might as well try. I’d had plenty of experience at Merlotte’s with pushy guys, but I always had backup at Merlotte’s. Sam wouldn’t tolerate the servers being pawed or insulted.

“Sure, darlin’. You want to come see us,” he said insistently.

For the first time in my life, I wished Bubba were with me.

I was getting far too used to people who