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The beautiful blond vampire opened the door, the female who’d been at the table with Eric when I’d been to the bar before. She stood back without speaking to let us enter.

If Bill had been human, he would have protested at how tightly I was holding his hand.

The female was in front of us more quickly than my eyes could follow, and I started. Bill wasn’t surprised at all, naturally. She led us through a storeroom disconcertingly similar to Merlotte’s and into a little corridor. We went through the door on our right.

Eric was in the small room, his presence dominating it. Bill didn’t exactly kneel to kiss his ring, but he did nod kind of deep. There was another vampire in the room, the bartender, Long Shadow; he was in fine form tonight, in a skinny-strap tee and weight-lifting pants, all in deep green.

“Bill, Sookie,” Eric greeted us. “Bill, you and Sookie know Long Shadow. Sookie, you remember Pam.” Pam was the blond female. “And this is Bruce.”

Bruce was a human, the most frightened human I’d ever seen. I had considerable sympathy with that. Middle-aged and paunchy, Bruce had thinning dark hair that curved in stiff waves across his scalp. He was jowly and small-mouthed. He was wearing a nice suit, beige, with a white shirt and a brown-and-navy patterned tie. He was sweating heavily. He was in a straight chair across the desk from Eric. Naturally, Eric was in the power chair. Pam and Long Shadow were standing against the wall across from Eric, by the door. Bill took his place beside them, but as I moved to join him, Eric spoke again.

“Sookie, listen to Bruce.”

I stood staring at Bruce for a second, waiting for him to speak, until I understood what Eric meant.

“What exactly am I listening for?” I asked, knowing my voice was sharp.

“Someone has embezzled about sixty thousand dollars from us,” Eric explained.

Boy, somebody had a death wish.

“And rather than put all our human employees to death or torture, we thought perhaps you would look into their minds and tell us who it was.”

He said “death or torture” as calmly as I said, “Bud or Old Milwaukee.”

“And then what will you do?” I asked.

Eric seemed surprised.

“Whoever it is will give our money back,” he said simply.

“And then?”

His big blue eyes narrowed as he stared at me.

“Why, if we can produce proof of the crime, we’ll turn the culprit over to the police,” he said smoothly.

Liar, liar, pants on fire. “I’ll make a deal, Eric,” I said, not bothering to smile. Winsome did not count with Eric, and he was far from any desire to jump my bones. At the moment.

He smiled, indulgently. “What would that be, Sookie?”

“If you really do turn the guilty person over to the police, I’ll do this for you again, whenever you want.”

Eric cocked an eyebrow.

“Yeah, I know I’d probably have to anyway. But isn’t it better if I come willing, if we have good faith with each other?” I broke into a sweat. I could not believe I was bargaining with a vampire.

Eric actually seemed to be thinking that over. And suddenly, I was in his thoughts. He was thinking he could make me do what he wanted, anywhere, anytime, just by threatening Bill or some human I loved. But he wanted to mainstream, to keep as legal as he could, to keep his relations with humans aboveboard, or at least as aboveboard as vampire-human dealings could be. He didn’t want to kill anyone if he didn’t have to.

It was like suddenly being plunged into a pit of snakes, cold snakes, lethal snakes. It was only a flash, a slice of his mind, sort of, but it left me facing a whole new reality.

“Besides,” I said quickly, before he could see I’d been inside his head, “how sure are you that the thief is a human?”

Pam and Long Shadow both moved suddenly, but Eric flooded the room with his presence, commanding them to be still.

“That’s an interesting idea,” he said. “Pam and Long Shadow are my partners in this bar, and if none of the humans is guilty, I guess we’ll have to look at them.”

“Just a thought,” I said meekly, and Eric looked at me with the glacial blue eyes of a being who hardly remembers what