Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [705]
“Maybe the queen should remain in Baton Rouge,” Clancy said maliciously. “I’m sure Gervaise would be overwhelmed with delight at the prospect of hosting her permanently.”
So Clancy was a suicidal idiot.
“A delegation of New Orleans leaders came to visit our queen in Baton Rouge to ask that she return to the city,” Andre said, ignoring Clancy completely. “The human leaders think that if the vampires will return to New Orleans, tourism will pick up again.” Andre fixed Eric with a cold gaze. “In the meantime, the queen has talked to the four other sheriffs about the financial aspect of restoring the New Orleans buildings.”
Eric gave an almost imperceptible inclination of the head. Impossible to say what he felt about being taxed for the queen’s repairs.
New Orleans had been the place to go for vampires and those who wanted to be around them ever since Anne Rice had been proven right about their existence. The city was like Disneyland for vamps. But since Katrina, all that had gone to hell, of course, along with so much else. Even Bon Temps was feeling the storm’s effect, and had been ever since Katrina had hit land. Our little town was still crowded with people who had fled from the south.
“What about the queen’s entertainment estate?” asked Eric. The queen had bought an old monastery at the edge of the Garden District for entertaining large numbers of people, both vamp and non-vamp. Though surrounded by a wall, the estate was not considered easily defensible (since it was a registered building, historic and unchangeable, the windows couldn’t be blocked up), so the queen couldn’t actually live there. I thought of it as her party barn.
“It didn’t suffer much damage,” Andre said. “There were looters there, too. Of course, they left a trace of their smell.” Vampires were second only to Weres in their tracking abilities. “One of them shot the lion.”
I felt sorry for that. I’d liked the lion, sort of.
“Do you need help with the apprehension?” Eric asked.
Andre arched an eyebrow.
“I only ask because your numbers are low,” Eric said.
“No, already taken care of,” Andre said, and smiled just a tad.
I tried not to think about that.
“Aside from the lion and the looting, how was the estate?” Eric said to get the discussion of the storm damage back on track.
“The queen can stay there while she views the other properties,” Andre continued, “but at the most for a night or two only.”
There were tiny nods all around.
“Our loss of personnel,” Andre said, moving on in his agenda. All the vampires tensed a bit, even Jake, the newbie. “Our initial assessment was modest, as you know. We assumed some would come forward after the impact of the storm was absorbed. But only ten have surfaced: five here, three in Baton Rouge, two in Monroe. It seems that we have lost thirty of our number just in Louisiana. Mississippi has lost at least ten.”
There were tiny sounds and movements all over the room as the Shreveport vampires reacted to the news. The concentration of vamps, both resident and visiting, had been high in New Orleans. If Katrina had visited Tampa with that much force, the number of dead and missing would have been much lower.
I raised my hand to speak. “What about Bubba?” I asked when Andre nodded at me. I hadn’t seen or heard of Bubba since Katrina. You’d know Bubba if you saw him. Anyone on earth would know him; at least, anyone over a certain age. He hadn’t quite died on that bathroom floor in Memphis. Not quite. But his brain had been affected before he was brought over, and he wasn’t a very good vampire.
“Bubba’s alive,” said Andre. “He hid in a crypt