Whoever was banging at the door, they stopped for a moment. I held my breath, hoping that they were only testing for potential hidden rooms, that maybe they didn't actually know for a fact that someone was in here.

I could see a single person — a vampire, from the brain pattern I was picking up — just outside the panic room door, but I couldn't get a look at their face.

If I got out of this unscathed, I was going to have a serious talk with the person who had set up these blasted cameras. If they were alive, anyway.

Whoever was outside the door, they shouldn't be able to get in; Sophie-Anne had told me that the door could only be opened from the inside. But there was a panel that apparently had...

"Is anyone in there?"

... an intercom system. I wished I'd known that earlier. Not that I would have used it, but that was potentially useful information.

I walked over to the door and pressed the button to reply before it occurred to me that maybe that wasn't such a good idea. I released the button without speaking.

Unfortunately: "I heard that. Open the door."

Well, shit.

There was no way out of this. I'd have to open up sooner or later, and the more later it was, the more pissed off they'd be at me. I unlocked the door and darted backwards into the room so that there would be a few feet between me and whoever was on the other side.

Not like a vampire couldn't cross ten times that distance in the blink of an eye.

I knew it would be more nuisance than actual impediment if they wanted to get me, but I grabbed a wooden training sword (why was that even in here?) and stood at the ready, just like Gladiola had taught me. I wished it were a real sword, even though I hadn't ever held one before. Still, it was better than nothing.

Slowly, the door opened.

It was Eric fucking Northman. Even though he was scowling at me, I'd never been so glad to see him in all my life.

"Sookie? If you're in here, that means the telepath..."

"Is alive and well," I said, interrupting him.

"Where is he?"

He? Oh, right. The last time the sheriff and I had talked — he'd been driving me back to Bon Temps from New Orleans after my Gran's funeral — he'd indicated that he thought the Queen's telepath was male.

Before I could respond, Eric got a strange look on his face. He very visibly sniffed at the air.

I blushed. I'd never realized just how embarrassing it could be to be sniffed like that. Talk about awkward. It didn't help that he had gone perfectly still, standing in the doorway with one hand gripping the handle. Surely I didn't smell that bad.

"Whose scent is that? Who else has been in this room with you? Where is the telepath?"

I gulped. "No one. I've been here by myself."

"That's not possible."

Relieved as I was to see him, I had no idea what was going on other than the fact that my Queen and her children were all ashes. I had no fucking patience.

With all the command and poise I could muster, I straightened up and tossed the wooden sword onto the cot. "Come in and close the door behind you."

He didn't seem the type to do what he was told, but oddly enough, he obeyed. He wasn't happy about it, though, his jaw was clenched and his fists were knotted. He could be as mad as he wanted; I had nothing left to lose.

We stood there for a moment, leaning against opposite walls of the panic room. I took a deep breath and tried to keep the tears out of my eyes, the emotion out of my voice. "Are you alone out there? Or have you taken the kingdom back from Arkansas?"

He raised an eyebrow. "The kingdom is mine now. I arrived too late to save Sophie-Anne—"

"I think they killed her when you got here," I said, interrupting him. "I saw it on the monitors. I don't think they planned on killing her so soon; it was probably a reaction to your arrival."

"That is what we have been able to determine, yes. As I am now in charge, I need you to tell me where the telepath is, so that I can make sure he is safe and secure."

I snorted. "You're looking at her."

He blinked and looked around. "But it is only you in here, and I can smell someone; you have no scent, so someone else—"

"Eric, I'm the telepath." I decided to not address the fact that I was in desperate need of a shower. And for Dr. Ludwig to find out what was wrong with me.

"I… What? No. That can't be right."

I closed my eyes and rubbed them as I let out a frustrated sigh. "At your request, I listened in on you when you were interviewing potential employees for Fangtasia. You smiled and waved into the camera when no one else was around, and once told me that the voice distortion of the microphone made me sound like Darth Vader."

Twice now I'd gotten to see him gape like a fish out of water, counting that time he'd driven me back from Bon Temps. He was completely and utterly gobsmacked. "But... you..."

I raised my eyebrows and let him stammer for a few seconds before I cut him off. "I know. But I am the telepath, I swear on my Gran's grave. Look, can we deal with this later? There's something wrong with me. I need Dr. Ludwig."

Having something else to focus on seemed to help him collect his wits. He frowned and looked up and down my body, like he was checking for any possible injuries. Though the door was closed behind him, he was still holding onto the handle, behind his back, as if his life depended on it. Or maybe mine.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked. "Have you been injured?"

"I'm not supposed to…" I blushed, not knowing how to phrase it, or why I was having such difficulty talking about it. "Uh. I don't usually have a scent. And now I do."

Shit. I'd broken him again. His eyes widened further, which I hadn't thought possible. "That scent is coming from you?"

I rubbed my hands over my face, wrinkling my nose as I caught a whiff of the sweat on my palms; it wasn't a bad smell, I just wasn't used to it coming from me. It was similar to how I didn't mind pimples on anyone else, but if I got one? Total end-of-the-world stuff. "Yeah, sorry about that. I don't know what's causing it."

"No need to apologize." His voice was low, almost humming. Startled, I looked back up at him and saw that his pupils were dilated enough to make his irises almost non-existent. There was a much different look on his face; I'd seen that expression plenty of times — just never from him, and never directed at me.

"Eric," I said sharply, trying to snap him out of whatever was going on with him. He blinked and looked at me with slightly clearer eyes. "There's something wrong with me. Get Dr. Ludwig. I don't think I should leave this room until she checks me out."

He shook his head, as if that would magically clear it — like an Etch-a-Sketch, maybe. Oddly enough, it seemed to work; I wished I could do that. He nodded and intoned in an official sounding voice that I was "not to leave this room until further notice." I fought against the desire to roll my eyes as he closed the door on his way out.

That wasn't the only reaction I was fighting. A tight knot of anger, anxiety, and grief twisted in my belly. I closed my eyes and tried to keep myself together. I just needed to get through this minute, and then I would deal with the minute after that. I would just keep doing that until an hour had passed, and then another. Eventually I would get back to being okay.

There were going to be a lot of minutes and hours between right now and okay. I didn't even know what okay looked like anymore.

I lay back on the cot and actively listened to the hum of minds in the palace. I was pleased to discover that none of the donors had been killed, and most of the Weres had only been incapacitated.

That was bizarre, to say the least. Vampires generally viewed humans and Weres as beneath them, and as such, didn't care whether they lived or died.

With a shiver that gave way to a bone-deep chill, I realized why they had spared the lives of so many: the attackers had no idea who the telepath was. As I lay there, unable to stop shaking, I realized that keeping my secret had inadvertently saved dozens of lives.

I bolted upright and spent the next ten minutes emptying my stomach into a small trash bin. Not like that protein bar had done me much good, anyway.

I don't know how much time passed before Dr. Ludwig showed up, but it didn't seem like that long. Her eyes went wide when I let her into the panic room, but she didn't comment. Whatever type of non-human she was, I was guessing she had a fairly sensitive nose. That, or I was really stinking up the place.

My vitals were all a bit elevated, but she attributed that to stress and shock. She drew a small amount of blood and tested it by putting drops of it into different test tubes with different colored liquids. I watched all of this just as silently as she carried it out.

I didn't get nervous until she pulled out a cell phone and called someone. Whoever she'd called, she was speaking with them in a language that I'd never heard before. It didn't even sound like a human language — there were strange trills, growls and clicks mingling with the foreign syllables.

After closing her phone with a decisive snap, she reached into her big black bag and pulled out a syringe. Setting it to the side, she continued to dig in her bag until she rather triumphantly pulled out a small glass vial.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Just a little concoction of mine; it's an antibiotic combined with a mild sedative. It'll knock you out, but when you wake up, you'll be all better."

"Okay, that's great, but what's wrong with me?"

"Nothing that this juice and a little sleep won't cure," she said, reaching for my hand. "C'mon girl, give me your arm already. You think you're my only patient?"

As I felt the needle sting my arm, it carried the barest echo of what Sophie-Anne's teeth had felt like whenever they pierced my skin. Immediately, I felt the sedative begin to take effect, and I dived into unconsciousness, eager for the respite of a dreamless sleep.

When I woke up, I was back in my own room. Someone — I wasn't sure if I wanted to know who — had cleaned me up, put me into a nightgown, and tucked me into bed. I pulled the neckline of the gown away from my chest, first to look (I was wearing underwear, yay), and then to smell (I didn't, yay again).

Aside from the fact that everyone I loved was dead, all was once again right in my world.

You know, aside from that one minor little detail.

Alone in my room, I could finally let go a little. So I did. Except I let go a lot. Never before had I cried so hard or for so long. Not that I could recall.

I stayed holed up in my room long enough for me to lose track of how long I'd been there. Whatever bug, infection, or virus I'd gotten that made me smell funny, I didn't know if it was contagious. While I figured it wouldn't affect the vampires, it might still be dangerous for the Weres and humans that lived and worked in the palace. I didn't get sick often enough to have learned about that kind of thing; hell, I couldn't even recall ever having been sick. I knew it had to have happened — at least, before I'd bonded with Sophie-Anne.

Sophie-Anne. My Queen. My best friend. For as long as I could remember, she had been my one true constant. On some level I'd always known Gran wouldn't always be around, that old age would eventually take her from me. But not Sophie-Anne. She was supposed to outlive me.

Before the Great Revelation, she and I had talked about death, and how she felt about it. She wouldn't have wanted me to mourn her nearly half as long as I'd done. Her death had already been avenged; the people who had killed her were themselves ashes. Life was for the living, as Gran would say.

My strange illness was as good an excuse as any to make people leave me alone while I grieved. I had no idea how to handle what I'd seen, how to cope with what had happened. I thought that I should be falling apart at the seams or having some sort of blackout episode, but I felt oddly numb. Make no mistake: I wept until dehydration became a valid concern. But even as my bed shook with sobs, there was a part of me that felt detached, as if it was a silent observer to the whole process. That part of me shed no tears; it merely waited, but for what, I don't exactly know.

I knew that there were guards posted outside of my door, but their minds were oddly quiet, as if they'd been glamoured. That was fine by me. I wasn't sure who, but someone brought food into my room whenever I was sleeping. I suspected it might have been Eric, even though that seemed a bit beneath him, being the new King and all.

On the third or maybe fourth day — time really didn't hold much meaning for me — I woke up because I could feel someone watching me. Without opening my eyes or turning to face away from the wall, I spoke.

"Can I help you?"

"How did you know I was here?" It was Eric. "I hadn't made a single sound since I heard you wake."

After a yawn, I responded, my voice still hoarse from having cried myself to sleep. "Vampire minds feel like a big blank spot. Ever been in a completely silent room, and it's so quiet it makes your ears buzz? That's what you guys do to my brain."

"What about the guard outside your door?"

I briefly opened my eyes for the sole purpose of rolling them and let out a sigh: I knew he was testing me. "Guards. Plural. There's two of them: Armando and Julian. They're both Weres, which makes them harder to read, but they've also been glamoured — which is impressive, by the way; they're harder to glamour than humans — which makes their minds quieter."

"You really are the telepath," he said softly, no small amount of awe — or maybe trepidation — in his voice.

As tempted as I was to give a snarky response, I just didn't have the energy. "Yep."

"All this time, and I had no idea."

"I know. You thought I was male."

He chuckled. "You were obviously not male. I thought the telepath was male."

I didn't have the energy to respond to that, either. I sighed and curled into a tighter ball under the covers.

"Dr. Ludwig has cleared you for work. I have need of your services."

"I'll need to—"

"Mr. Cataliades is ready to go over your contract whenever you are."

I twisted my head and body just enough to look at him, frowning as I did so. I opened my mouth to say something rude to him, but he cut me off before I could get a single word out.

"I won't stop you from grieving, but from here on out you'll do it on your own time. I have a kingdom to get back in order, and the first line of business is to clear out any moles. I'll need your help with that. Surely you can understand that this is necessary for your own safety."

Damn it. He was right; in that moment, I hated him for that. All I wanted to do was stay in bed and be left alone. Even though I didn't technically work for Northman yet, he wasn't going to let me waltz on out of the palace now that he knew who and what I really was. No vampire who knew what I was would ever let me get away. There was a time when I found that thought comforting; I had no idea what to make of it anymore.

So now I would have to become the King's telepath.

I sat up in bed and looked over at Northman. His expression was stern at first, but softened slightly after a moment.

"I understand that you and Sophie-Anne were blood-bonded."

I nodded, then looked back down at my comforter. The bright yellow daffodil print that had once seemed so cheery almost seemed to mock me, like it was wrong to look at something that had pleased me before.

"There is a ritual we can do to break—"

"I know," I said, interrupting him. "It won't help."

He frowned. "You don't know what I was going to say."

"It doesn't matter," I responded, shrugging. "Have you ever been blood-bonded, Northman?"

"Eric. And no, I haven't."

"Northman," I insisted; it felt like less of a betrayal to Sophie-Anne if I kept things formal with my new King. "I know more about blood bonds than the average vampire. You think that I'm upset and in pain because of a dead bond. Maybe..." I paused to clear my throat, to stop my voice from cracking. "Maybe it's just because I loved her. She was all I had."

He was silent for a while; I stared down at my comforter and pulled off the little bits of fabric that had pilled on the surface.

There was a sharp rap on the door, and Northman called for whoever it was to enter. A female vampire walked in, closed the door behind her, and gave Northman a smirk. He stayed seated, but I saw him give her a quick wink; it reminded me of how Gran would wink affectionately at me at the dinner table. Seeing the connection between them was a sharp, stinging reminder that I was more alone than ever.

"Sookie, this is Pamela Ravenscroft, my child and my second. Pam, this is Sookie Stackhouse."

"Delighted," she said, sounding anything but. "You're his new pet, then?"

I remembered having watched her on the monitors when I was helping with the Fangtasia interviews. She could rile up her maker like no one else; I suspected that she and I would get along famously.

"Fuck off, Pam. You know I'm the telepath; you suck at lying."

Pam grinned at Northman, who looked surprised — although I couldn't tell if it was from my response or her reaction. "She's feisty. Tell me we're keeping her."

He rolled his eyes and stood up. "Pam, make sure she gets dressed and goes downstairs to meet with Mr. Cataliades."

She ran her eyes over my body and quirked an eyebrow. "Sure, anything you say."

Northman walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. I threw the covers off and swung my legs over the side of the bed so I could get up.

"Whatever you've heard about me," I said, "take it with a small Siberian salt mine. It's probably not true."

"Well, let's go over what I've heard, shall we? Sophie-Anne rescued you from an orphanage at the tender age of eight and trained you for most of your life with the intention of making you her pet. She was your first and only lover. Even though your blood has no scent or flavor, she kept you around because, rumor had it, you're vampire-good in the sack. Now, as far as the telepath rumors go..."

"Don't bother," I interrupted. "We'll be here all night."

"I don't mind if you don't."

With a sigh, I stood up and stiffly walked over to my closet. "I do need to talk to Mr. C."

"How right was I?"

"Huh? Oh. Um. Everything was just a little off. Half-truths," I said as I looked through my clothes. "I came to live at the palace when I was eight. The rest of my family is dead, but I was never in an orphanage; my Gran took care of me until she died. We were brought here because of my telepathy. It's true that my blood doesn't normally smell or taste like anything, and no: I don't know why that is. What Sophie-Anne and I did or didn't do isn't anyone else's business."

By the time I was done rambling, I'd selected jeans, a black long-sleeved t-shirt, and gotten out a clean set of underwear. I walked over to my dresser and pulled out my pill box. The most recent tray of food had come with three bottles of water; I took one, cracked it open, and used it to take my daily vitamins.

Pam watched me like a hawk. "Pills?"

"Vitamins."

"Why? And what kind?"

"Why does anyone take vitamins? Because they're good for me. B12, C, D, and a multivitamin."

She narrowed her eyes slightly and responded only by humming. She did perk up a bit, though, when she realized I was heading towards my bathroom; even though I didn't smell anymore, I knew I needed a shower. I felt stale and itchy, like I was wearing a suit made of ants.

"Need any help, Sookie?" she asked in an overly sweet voice.

"Pam, are you trying to get into my pants?"

"You're not wearing any pants."

I looked down at my nightshirt, then back up at her."You know what I mean."

"Yes. I want to find out if you're really as good as they say. I know Eric's curious too, but we've heard you don't bat for his team."

It was really difficult to not laugh. I gave up and laughed. "Right. I'll be out in a minute. You can wait here or go away."

"Mmm. Can I wait in there?"

"No."

She let out a melodramatic sigh, but it didn't match the grin on her face. "I suppose I'll have to take what I can get. Besides, you might change your mind. I'll wait here."

I managed to keep the grin off my face until the bathroom door closed behind me, but it was gone by the time I turned on the water for my shower. The sadness that came back like a creeping tide brought with it a pang of guilt. I had lost everyone I'd ever loved; I shouldn't be bantering with flirty vampires.

My mind wandered as I mechanically went through my shower routine. How long was I supposed to mourn? How long should the grieving process be? When would it stop hurting to think about Sophie-Anne? The loss of Gran wasn't any help, because it was such a different situation, and I'd never expected Gran to live forever.

Feeling slightly better once I was cleaned and dressed in fresh clothes, I opened the bathroom door and went to sit by my vanity. Pam was still in my room, very openly snooping through my stuff. Maybe she thought it would upset me; maybe it should have, but I found I didn't have the energy to care. The only secrets I had were the ones I kept locked up inside myself.

After brushing through my wet hair, I split it into sections and put it into a single, long braid that trailed down my back, almost to my waist.

"She didn't let you cut it, did she?" Pam asked, her tone more subdued than I'd ever heard it.

"What? No. She never told me I couldn't. I just... didn't." I felt another twinge as I remembered why I'd never cut it; I once mentioned the idea to Sophie-Anne, and she'd looked sad. She'd gotten some strange comfort from my hair. I never understood, and even though I'd respected her privacy by not asking, I wished now that I'd known why.

I stood up, raised my eyebrows at Pam, who nodded. I let her lead me out of my room and downstairs so that I could meet with my demon lawyer.

Disclaimer: these characters all belong to Charlaine Harris, not me. I just like to make them do my nefarious bidding from time to time.