"What's going on, Eric?" Pam demands of him when they reach the hallway. "You're upset."

"No shit, Pam," he says. They are speaking too low for any of the nearby humans to overhear, but Eric is aware that his body language is all too expressive. He straightens, adjusting the jacket of his grey suit. "Someone is playing me."

"Ooh, you used slang," says Pam. "Did it hurt?"

Eric gives her a quelling look. She rolls her eyes, but desists.

"Return to Shreveport," he says. "Retrieve the duplicates you made of the casefile before the AVL showed up and bring them here. And make arrangements for my accommodation in Bon Temps, I'm going to be here a few days."

Pam turns automatically to do his bidding, but because she's Pam she stops and looks back at him over her shoulder.

"What?" he says.

"Is it worth the trouble?" she says. "Interfering, when they've already got so much invested in this dog and pony show?"

Eric turns away. "There will be no trouble," he says. "In any case, I have a duty."

"I think trouble's a little like that old saying about the devil," she says. "You don't have to believe in it if it believes in you."

He doesn't look at her. A moment later her hears the clack of her heels as she walks away.

Through the window of the courtroom door, he sees Sid Matt Lancaster return to his seat, and Baker, the prosecutor, step forward to begin the cross-examination. He catches a glimpse of the girl's face through the narrow view afforded by the slit window. She looks frightened, wary, but determined. It is not the look of a guilty person, but of an innocent one determined to tell the truth no matter what it will cost her.

The implication of the thought strikes him full force a moment later. She is innocent, Eric thinks. I know this. He does not question how he knows it. But he thinks it must have been the girl's final outburst that convinced him. Either she had been too stupid to realize that her lawyer was essentially insuring her acquittal, or she simply had too much integrity to lend herself to a false implication.

And Eric feels quite sure she isn't stupid.

So what does it matter to him if the girl is innocent? Nothing at all, except for the fact that the identity of the true murderer is still unknown. And now Eric is the only person, vampire or human, looking for him.


Eric returns to the courtroom. He has no sooner taken his seat again than he can tell the cross-examination is not going well for the girl. She still has that determinedly brave upward tilt to her chin, but her mouth is tight, her eyes worried. Eric glances at Baker, who stands motionless at an angle that slights the girl and encompasses the jury.

"Ms. Stackhouse," he is saying. "From what you have revealed under Mr. Lancaster's questioning, am I to infer that at the time you began your relationship with Bill Compton, you were a virgin?"

Eric blinks. This was...not what he had expected.

"Objection." Sid Matt Lancaster stands. "Your Honor, Miss Stackhouse is a lady, and unaccustomed to prurient busybodies making a spectacle of her private concerns."

"It goes to motive, your Honor." Baker does not look at Lancaster.

"Get to the point quickly, Mr Baker," says the judge.

Baker turns to the witness stand. "Ms. Stackhouse?"

"I was," she says softly. Eric expects her to blush or look away, but she looks so steadily at Baker that after a moment or so he is forced to make eye contact with her. He looks away again almost immediately, as though she has made him uncomfortable.

"You are twenty-five years old, Ms. Stackhouse," says Baker. "I understand that you were raised along strict religious principles, but under those circumstances the normal, ah, conclusion to your condition would be marriage. Why did Mr Compton, with whom you were involved for only a matter of weeks, rate as the exception to a life-long practice of celibacy?"

"I fell in love with him," she says, in the same clear, steady voice. "I had never been in love with anyone before."

"You were in love with Mr Compton." Baker sneaks a quick glance behind him at jury, long enough to make eye contact with the vampires there. His lips turn up at the corners. "What qualities did Mr Compton possess to earn him so signal an honor?"

Eric's nostrils flare. There is an undertone of mockery to Baker's questions that he finds-distasteful.

The girl frowns. "He was-kind," she says. "He respected my grandmother. He was courteous and chivalrous to me. He was interested in what I had to say. He knew so much about life and the world. When I first met him, it was like meeting a favorite character out of the pages of a storybook." She hesitates, and then, with an expression of determined honesty, added, "And he wanted me. No one ever had before. I enjoyed that."

Eric's eyes widen fractionally, then close. How mortifyingly naive the girl is. She honestly believes that no one wanted her before Bill Compton? She is more of a child than he'd realized.

"Like a character from a storybook." Baker repeats her words with an air of amusement. "He was chivalrous, you say. Quite like he was from another era entirely, would you say?"

"Yes," she says. "I suppose he was."

"You said earlier that you knew Mr Compton was a vampire the moment you saw him."

"I did."

"Did anyone else in the restaurant make the same deduction with the same rapidity?"

"I don't know."

"How long had you known Mr Compton before you consummated your, ah, romance?"

"About a week, I suppose," Sookie says.

"A week." Baker arches an eyebrow. "Twenty-five years of chastity, and in a week you overthrew all your convictions for the sake of a vampire."

Lancaster stands. "Your Honor-"

"I am about to make my point." Baker turns his back on the girl and faces the jury. "Ms. Stackhouse, are you familiar with the term 'fangbanger'?"

"Your Honor!"

Eric bristles in his chair. He glances toward the Queen, and finds her smiling, amused. The humans around him are muttering to themselves, exuding disapproval like a foul odor. The vampires on the jury look as though they've experienced a revelation, and the human jurors have set, knowing expressions, like they've just connected the dots.

"How is this relevant, Mr Baker?" asks the judge.

"If Ms Stackhouse will answer the question, I will make my point."

"Ms Stackhouse?" says the judge.

Sookie squares her shoulder. "It's a name for people who want to be used by vampires for sex, and...other things."

Other things, thinks Eric, in disbelief. If this child came to Fangtasia, she wouldn't even know what she was seeing. She has nothing in common with the desperate, lonely people who vie for the attention of the vampires in his club. Anyone who could look at her and think otherwise is blind.

"You told us a few minutes ago that when you saw Mr Compton you were delighted, because you had always wanted to meet a vampire."

"Yes," says the girl, frowning.

"It really wouldn't have mattered who the vampire was, would it?" Baker gives the jury a knowing smirk. "Any vampire would do."

"I wouldn't say that," says the girl, dismayed.

"Really?" Baker wheels on her. "You no sooner met your first vampire than you slept with him. Why surrender your virginity to him so quickly, if not because you were simply waiting for the first vampire you met?"

Eric's fist clenches. Two of the human jurors shake their heads, looking disgusted. He takes in the expressions of the other humans around him, and a chilling realization settles over him. This will work. Baker is playing skillfully, not only on their anti-vampire bias, but on their misogyny and Puritanism. Once the girl is estalished as a vampire-fucking whore in the minds of the jury, there is little they will not believe her capable of.

"It wasn't like that," says the girl, falteringly. Eric realizes that she too is sensible of the changing tenor of the jury's thought. She is no fool; she has lived among these people all her life, and she must know the darkness in their hearts.

"Wasn't it?" says Baker, his tone scornful. "From what you've told us about your first meeting with Mr Compton, it sounds to me like you'd spent the last couple of years since the Great Revelation building up an image in your mind of what a vampire would be like. Something from out of a storybook, didn't you say? An old-fashioned gentleman out of a forgotten era. Mr Compton was like something from out of a fantasy, wasn't he?"

"He-" She shakes her head. "That's not why I fell in love with him."

"Were you really in love with him at all? Or had you simply found a vampire at long last, a mysterious, old-fashioned, wealthy vampire who fulfilfed all your fantasies? You'd obviously come to the conclusion that none of the human men in your life were good enough for you, but a vampire! Well, that was another thing entirely."

A growl rises in Eric's throat. Every man on the jury who had ever seen the girl and lusted after her to no avail will be taken in by Baker's words. She doesn't stand a chance.

"I did love him," cries the girl. "Because of who he was, not because he was a vampire!"

Baker rounds on her, his voice rising in fury. "You broke up with him just a couple of weeks after you slept with him! Does that sound like love to you? Doesn't it sound more like you turned your back on him as soon as he proved he was a real, complex person, instead of a fantasy figure? And didn't that make you angry? Didn't you decide that you needed to find a new vampire, one that lived up to your expectations? Didn't you know that no other vampire would touch you as long as you were known to be associating with Bill Compton? Isn't that why you killed him, so you'd be free to pursue a vampire more to your liking?"

"No!" the girl shouted, as the courtroom erupts into murmurs and whispers. She is crying now-not from grief, Eric thinks, but from frustration. "No, I didn't kill him!"

"No more questions, your Honor." Baker returns to his table. Smugness radiates from him. The girl stares after him, looking lost, bewildered, furious. Something in the set of her shoulders tells Eric that she would like to settle the argument with fists, instead of words. He realizes, somewhat to his surprise, that he would like to give her that chance.

"Re-direct, your Honor." Lancaster rises, striding toward the witness stand. "Sookie. Look at me, darlin'. That's right. Now tell me, how many other vampires besides Mr Compton have you met?"

"Just a couple," says the girl, struggling for control of her voice.

"When you discovered Mr Compton's deception, and ended your relationship with him, did you seek those vampires out?"

"No, I never saw them again."

"In all the time you were with Mr Compton, did you ever ask him to introduce you to other vampires of his acquaintance?"

"I did not," says the girl. And Compton would have been a fool to accede to any such request, Eric thinks.

"Did you know that just a half hour's drive from here, in Shreveport, there's a well known vampire bar where humans often go in order to attract the attention of vampires?"

"I knew about it."

Eric blinks in surprise. What does she know of Fangtasia? Of him?

"Did you ever ask Mr Compton to take you there, or visit it on your own?"

"I did not."

If only you had, Eric thinks. If only he had known the girl before this. Much would be different.

"No further questions." Lancaster returns to his table and sits.

"You're excused, Miss Stackhouse," says the judge.

The girl rises unsteadily from her seat. She smooths her skirt automatically and picks her delicate way down the steps. Eric's eyes are riveted on her. She is shorter, smaller than he'd realized. She takes her seat at the defense table beside Lancaster, who pats her shoulder and ducks his head to whisper in her ear.

"Court is in recess until tomorrow evening," says the judge. "Officers, you will return the defendant to her cell."

"All rise," says the bailiff.

Eric waits until the judge has exited the room. He watches the uniformed men lead the girl away from the courtroom. His eyes linger on the back of her head until she disappears from sight.

He slips through the crowd to make his way toward the prosecutor's table.

"Baker," he says, low in the other vampire's ear.

Baker turns to him, and apprehension flashes in his eyes before his features resume their usual bland lack of expression. "Sheriff Northman," he says.

"What exactly do you think you're doing?" Eric says.

"Convicting a murderer," he says. "Why, do you think I should be doing something else?"

Eric bares his teeth. "The entire point of this absurd exercise was to foster harmony between humans and vampires. Your cross-examination today did nothing but appeal to the prejudice of the human jurors against those humans who willingly associate with our kind. How, might I ask, will this improve matters?"

Baker gives him a long, calculating look and adjusts his suit. He picks up his briefcase. "Sheriff," he says, "I've been a vampire for three years. But I've been a prosecutor for nearly fifteen. I am doing my job the only way I know how to do it."

"You have a higher duty now than to your conviction ratio." Eric instills the statement with all the threat he can muster.

"I see no conflict between my duty as a vampire and my duty to the court and the state of Louisiana," says Baker, in a voice pitched to resonate in a reporter's microphone. "You know perfectly well what our odds of conviction are in this case. I will say and do whatever I have to within the bounds of the law to overcome those odds."

Baker slips past him. There are reporters waiting for him on the courthouse steps. Eric remains where he is, then crosses the room to the defense table, where Sid Matt Lancaster sits alone, gathering his papers into his briefcase.

Lancaster looks up, startled, as Eric comes to stand before him.

"My name is Eric Northman," he says. "I want to see your client."