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“I’m here because I was with the group that found the bodies.”

“Well, you just need to keep quiet and let us do our work.”

She said this in the snottiest tone possible. “What work would that be? You don’t seem to be doing anything at all,” I said.

Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but she wasn’t doing anything. It seemed to me that she should be—

And then she grabbed me and slammed me into the wall and handcuffed me.

I gave a kind of yelp of surprise. “That really wasn’t what I meant you to do,” I said with some difficulty, since my face was mashed against the door of the suite.

There was a large silence from the crowd behind us. “Chief, I got a woman here causing trouble,” said Security Woman.

Maroon looked awful on her, by the way.

“Landry, what are you doing?” said an overly reasonable male voice. It was the kind of voice you use with an irrational child.

“She was telling me what to do,” replied Security Woman, but I could tell her voice was deflating even as she spoke.

“What was she telling you to do, Landry?”

“She wondered what all the people were doing here, sir.”

“Isn’t that a valid question, Landry?”

“Sir?”

“Don’t you think we should be clearing out some of these people?”

“Yes, sir, but she said she was here because she was in the party that found the bodies.”

“So she shouldn’t leave.”

“Right. Sir.”

“Was she trying to leave?”

“No, sir.”

“But you handcuffed her.”

“Ah.”

“Take the fucking handcuffs off her, Landry.”

“Yes, sir.” Landry was a flat pancake by now, no air left in her at all.

The handcuffs came off, to my relief, and I was able to turn around. I was so angry I could have decked Landry. But since I would’ve been right back in the handcuffs, I held off. Sophie-Anne and Andre pushed through the crowd; actually, it just kind of melted in front of them. Vampires and humans alike were glad to get out of the way of the Queen of Louisiana and her bodyguard.

Sophie-Anne glanced at my wrists, saw that they really weren’t hurt at all, and correctly diagnosed the fact that my worst injury was to my pride.

“This is my employee,” Sophie-Anne said quietly, apparently addressing Landry but making sure everyone there heard her. “An insult or injury to this woman is an insult or injury to me.”

Landry didn’t know who the hell Sophie-Anne was, but she could tell power when she saw it, and Andre was just as scary. They were the two most frightening teenagers in the world, I do believe.

“Yes, ma’am, Landry will apologize in writing. Now can you tell me what happened here just now?” Todd Donati asked in a very reasonable voice.

The crowd was silent and waiting. I looked for Batanya and Clovache and saw they were missing. Suddenly Andre said, “You are the chief of security?” in a rather loud voice, and as he did, Sophie-Anne leaned very close to me to say, “Don’t mention the Britlingens.”

“Yes, sir.” The policeman ran a hand over his mustache. “I’m Todd Donati, and this is my boss, Mr. Christian Baruch.”

“I am Andre Paul, and this is my queen, Sophie-Anne Leclerq. This young woman is our employee Sookie Stackhouse.” Andre waited for the next step.

Christian Baruch ignored me. But he gave Sophie-Anne the look I’d give a roast I was thinking of buying for Sunday dinner. “Your presence is a great honor to my hotel,” he murmured in heavily accented English, and I glimpsed the tips of his fangs. He was quite tall, with a large jaw and dark hair. But his small eyes were arctic gray.

Sophie-Anne took the compliment in stride, though her brows drew together for a second. Showing fang wasn’t an exactly subtle way of saying, “You shake my world.” No one spoke. Well, not for a long, awkward second. Then I said, “Are you all going to call the police, or what?”

“I think we must consider what we have to tell them,” Baruch said, his voice smooth, sophisticated, and making fun of rural-southern-human me. “Mr. Donati, will you go see what’s in the suite?”

Todd Donati pushed his way through the crowd with no subtlety at all. Sigebert, who’d been guarding the open doorway (for lack of anything