Nice to see you again - glad you found me! Let's start the New Year with a new story...
CHAPTER 1
Five months previously
Eric slipped out of his stateroom, pulling the door silently closed behind him. From inside he heard their voices, rising to outraged shrieks – they hadn't even noticed him leave. He gritted his teeth and padded silently down the hall, shoes in hand, wondering where he could go in this wretched palace for some peace and quiet.
"Why, Eric," Pam drawled. "Leaving so soon? Have the fires of passion been extinguished so quickly?"
She was standing in front of him, hand on her hip. Her long blond hair had been teased into an elaborate up-do and she was wearing a navy suit, just a tad too tight to be respectable. Seeing his confusion, Pam threw her head back and laughed, stalking along beside him, almost at his height in her towering stilettos.
"Shut it, Pamela," he growled.
"In which universe did you imagine that was a good idea?" she asked, nodding back at the door he'd just come through. A woman screamed within, a scream of fury that made Eric wince.
When he'd returned from his disastrous trip to Ireland – jilted, humiliated, empty-handed – he'd ordered Pam to find him a woman. A beautiful woman.
"A fucking stunning woman," he'd said, looking at her in the mirror. He was fiddling with his tie, trying to get it to sit right. She'd eyed him up and down witheringly, then pulled an imaginary pencil from behind her ear.
"A fucking stunning woman," she repeated in a monotone, pretending to write it down.
"- two fucking stunning women," Eric said. "Make it two. And they'd better be beautiful, Pam. I want every man who sees them to turn green with envy. You got that?"
"Green with envy," she said, her invisible pencil skittering across the invisible page. "Two fucking stunning women to show the rest of the American vampires that you don't give a shit about Magdalena Kennick. Got it, boss. Any preferences, any types?"
"No red-heads," he said decisively.
"Obviously."
"And no blondes."
Pamela paused. "No Sookie Stackhouse lookalikes, either?"
"No!"
"Fine, fine," she said mildly. "So we're going to reverse your emasculation with a couple of raven-haired beauties? I can do that."
"Pamela Swynford de Beaufort, I swear on all the gods ..."
She'd cackled gleefully, then pulled him around to face her, deftly re-tying his tie.
"If that's what'll make you feel better," she said mildly, "then that's what I will do. It's not for nothing that I ran the best whorehouse in San Francisco, you know."
She gave him one of her rare, soft smiles and he touched her cheek in gratitude.
"One more thing," he said. "I want them... dumb."
"Dumb?"
"You know, not very smart. Not bright." He shrugged. "I just don't have the energy for high-maintenance women right now."
Pamela's smile disappeared and she arched an eyebrow. "You are joking, I presume?"
"Two dumb, beautiful women," he'd said, turning away to check himself in the mirror once more. The tie was perfect. "How hard can it be?"
And Pamela appeared to have come up trumps. Neve was a tall, dark-skinned young woman whose only occupation had ever been tending to her appearance. She'd left school at 14 to devote herself to it full-time and studied nail-polish and cosmetic trends with unwavering commitment. She had an Instagram account, a YouTube channel, thousands of Facebook followers and Eric quickly found that he was an unwitting star of her self-made reality series: Pamela had shown him a picture of his naked backside on Neve's Instagram account with a plethora of hashtags that seemed to all involve the word 'booty'. Appalled, he'd read through the dozens of comments, terrified that he would find something from the court of Texas or one of the other neighbouring states. He was enough of a laughing stock as it was.
So he had learned to confiscate her phone when she entered his rooms, something that made her bored and fractious within minutes , snapping at him and Evlere, her companion. They two of them had been friends for long enough to assess each other's weakness, then they'd begun a vicious war to establish their pecking order in Eric's life. The other woman was just as beautiful as Neve, but she had come to New Orleans from her home in a trailer park outside Baton Rouge and thought she'd won the jackpot when Pamela had spotted her at a nightclub in the city. At first she'd been awed by Neve's internet savoir-faire but she'd quickly understood that Neve tried Eric's nerves with her demands and nagging, so she liked to talk to him in a babydoll voice, flicking her hair and batting her eyelashes. It might have been sweet a few hundred years ago but Eric found her wiles tedious, and watching her pout made his fingers ball into a fist.
Admittedly, he'd found their competing for his attention rather flattering at first, a balm for his bruised ego, but after a time he began to suspect that they were more concerned with getting one up on each other than pleasing him. And that, quite frankly, is not what he'd wanted. What he'd wanted that evening was a straightforward threesome but instead he'd found himself in the middle of a quarrel about who should get to sit on his right-hand side at the next banquet and – apparently a greater cause for rage - who had first dibs on the grey BMW that was provided for their use. When the shrieking had started, he had slid out of the bed and tiptoed out of the room.
"You promised me two dumb women," he said to Pam, walking faster so she'd have to hurry – and hopefully topple over in her high-heels.
But no such luck: she kept pace.
"They seem dumb enough to me," she said.
"They're scheming, tiresome vixens," he snapped. "Being with them drains my energy. Grates on my last nerve. Makes me want to skewer my ears with silver. Get where I'm going with this?"
"You wanted a pair of pretty concubines," she said. "I delivered. I doubt that either of them is capable of spelling concubine, which is the kind of woman I thought you wanted."
"I ordered two low-maintenance lovers," he growled, standing still so Pam had to almost spin on her heel. "Two pretty idiots. And I got two shrews, intent on wrecking my head with their bitching and quarrelling. Two pretty idiots. Is that too hard to understand?"
She looked at him in that disdainful way of hers.
"I understand perfectly," she said. "And I may have a solution for you. There's a company that supplies silicon dolls for the sole purpose of adult entertainment. Should I go ahead and order a couple for you? You can fuck your frustration out on them and they're guaranteed to say not a word, just stare at you adoringly. I think that more or less fulfils your criteria, am I right?"
Eric tried to stare her down, but the thunderous gaze that worked on everyone else was met with equanimity by Pam. He gave in; he knew this was a battle he would not win. He was aware that she was judging him and at that moment he didn't care.
"What did you want?" he asked, changing the subject.
Pamela must've needed something; her own suite was at the back of the palace with the rest of the staff's rooms. It was where the apartment he'd shared with Magdalena was, but when he'd returned to New Orleans, he'd walked out of their home and into the former Queen's apartment, much to the chagrin of the hotel staff. Under Magdalena's direction, the former Queen's rooms had been turned into a profitable rental suite, providing much needed income for the vampire state of Louisiana. Magdalena'd been the one that had persuaded him to move into the much smaller and far more modest one-bedroom apartment that had previously housed one of the palace hotel's managers, pointing out that she'd need a kitchen and a bathroom with a functioning toilet. Not to mention the fact that she needed the Queen's suite to turn a profit. She'd always had her eye on the state budget; Louisiana was the most prestigious vampire state but also one of the poorest and under her tight direction, they'd been trying to pull their accounts back into the black. With her gone, Eric had defiantly moved back into the most luxurious suite, one that was appropriate for his station and devoid of any trace of the red-haired woman's presence. Seeing Eric's possessions being carried through the double doors of the Regal Suite, Mr Montgomery had flapped and clucked and tut-tutted, suggesting perhaps a somewhat less imposing residence, as it were, but Eric had thundered at him,
"Am I not the king?"
And Montgomery had slinked away, plainly unhappy with the turn things had taken. Their butler was openly mourning the loss of Eric's consort, fulfilling his duties with a glum look on his face and lacklustre attention to his tasks.
"So what did you want, Pam?" he asked again.
"Your legal team is here," she said.
"Good news?" he barked. He wanted good news.
She grimaced. "Frankly, no," she said. "Do you want a summary?"
"No, I really don't, but I guess I'd rather hear it from you."
"Texas denies everything. Everyone denies everything. If someone took your consort, then it was clearly a rogue vampire or rogue vampires. No vampire in Texas' employ will admit to having been involved, and you can forget about that snake in Oklahoma – he's so far up Texas' ass, he's headbutting his liver."
"No witnesses? Not a single person willing to come forward?"
"Jessica Fortenberry is, apparently, a biased witness – she's your sheriff, who's going to believe her? And humans?" Pamela snorted. "When has the Vampire Authority ever considered a human a reliable witness? Can you imagine Jason Stackhouse under oath?"
"No," Eric muttered. "But I can imagine Sookie."
She shook her head. "Do you really want vampires to know that Sookie Stackhouse can't be glamoured?"
He didn't. He really did not. He set off again down the corridor towards the stairs, but Pam put her hand on his arm.
"Eric," she said softly, "The biggest problem is Maggie. She was returned to you unharmed. In fact, there's a lingering doubt as to whether she was taken in the first place or just went with them. You two have ... broken up and gone your separate ways – she's no longer your consort. As far as the Authority is concerned, it's kind of a case of no harm, no foul."
"Texas conspired against me," Eric hissed.
"You have no witnesses," she repeated. "No witnesses, Eric. Any action you take against Texas will be considered unprovoked and hostile. You have to back down. Live to fight another day."
He considered it, frowning. Pam grinned at him.
"What now?" he snapped.
"Your bulgy eyes," she said. "Maggie used to warn us if you were in a temper – she'd say, 'His eyes are bulging! The vein is popping!' and everyone would scamper out of your way. I miss her," she said wistfully.
"I don't," Eric said and started down the stairs, two at a time. From behind them, they heard the stateroom door slam and one of his women yelled, "Eric! Errrrric!"
He hurried down the stairs.
"Du saknar henne!" Pamela called, leaning over the banisters, as though speaking Swedish would make him confess.
"Jag saknar henne ... inte!" he called defiantly over his shoulder.
"Liar!" she shouted and when he looked up, she just shook her head.