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By then, Sophie-Anne was standing in front of me. I did my head-bob thing. “I will need you with me during the next few hours,” she said, and I said, “Sure.” She glanced up and down my clothes, as if wishing I had dressed up a little more, but no one had warned me that a part of the night marked off for Commerce meant fancy clothes were appropriate.

Mr. Cataliades steamed up to me, wearing a beautiful suit and a dark red-and-gold silk tie, and he said, “Good to see you, my dear. Let me brief you on the next item on the schedule.”

I spread my hands to show I was ready. “Where’s Diantha?” I asked.

“She is working something out with the hotel,” Cataliades said. He frowned. “It’s most peculiar. There was an extra coffin downstairs, apparently.”

“How could that be?” Coffins belonged to somebody. It’s not like a vampire was going to be traveling with a spare, like you had to have a dress coffin and an everyday coffin. “Why did they call you?”

“It had one of our tags on it,” he said.

“But all of our vamps are accounted for, right?” I felt a tingle of anxiety in my chest. Just then, I saw the usual waiters moving among the crowd, and I saw one spot me and turn away. Then he saw Barry, who’d come in with the King of Texas. The waiter turned away yet again.

I actually started to call to a nearby vampire to hold the guy so I could have a look into his head, and then I realized I was acting as high-handed as the vampires themselves. The waiter vanished, and I hadn’t had a close look at him, so I wasn’t sure I could even identify him in a crowd of other servers in the same outfit. Mr. Cataliades was talking, but I held up a hand. “Hold it for a sec,” I murmured. The waiter’s quick turn had reminded me of something, something else that had seemed odd.

“Please pay attention, Miss Stackhouse,” the lawyer said, and I had to stow the thread of thought away. “Here’s what you need to do. The queen will be negotiating for a few favors she needs to help rebuild her state. Just do what you do best to discover if everyone dealing with her is honorable.”

This was not a very specific guideline. “Do my best,” I said. “But I think you should go find Diantha, Mr. C. I think there’s something really strange and wrong about this extra coffin they’re talking about. There was that extra suitcase, too,” I said. “I carried it up to the queen’s suite.”

Mr. Cataliades looked at me blankly. I could see that he considered the small problem of extra items turning up in a hotel to be a small one and below his concern. “Did Eric tell you about the murdered woman?” I asked, and his attention sharpened.

“I haven’t seen Master Eric this evening,” he said. “I’ll be sure to track him down.”

“Something’s up; I just don’t know what,” I muttered more or less to myself, and then I turned away to catch up with Sophie-Anne.

Commerce was conducted in a sort of bazaar style. Sophie-Anne positioned herself by the table where Bill was sitting, back at work selling the computer program. Pam was helping him, but she was in her regular clothes, and I was glad the harem costume was getting a rest. I wondered what the procedure was, but I adopted a wait-and-see attitude, and I found out soon enough. The first to approach Sophie-Anne was the big blond vampire who’d served as a judge earlier. “Dear madam,” he said, kissing her hand. “I am charmed to see you, as always, and devastated by the destruction of your beautiful city.”

“A small portion of my beautiful city,” Sophie-Anne said with the sweetest of smiles.

“I am in despair at the thought of the straits you must be in,” he continued after a brief pause to register her correction. “You, the ruler of such a profitable and prestigious kingdom . . . now brought so low. I hope to be able to assist you in my humble fashion.”

“And what form would that assistance take?” Sophie-Anne inquired.

After much palaver, it turned out that Mr. Flowery was willing to bring a gazillion board feet of lumber to New Orleans if Sophie-Anne would give him