It's warm, suddenly. I never noticed it was cold, because my mind was somewhere far away, but now that it isn't cold I realize that, a second ago, it was. Or maybe that was a full minute ago. I've been in and out of this world since the basement, since Pam, since the magister . . . Keeping track of time has not been important. Sleeping, or something like it, has been important. I'm still tired . . . oh, my head . . .

"Annie?" Cold fingers push hair from my face. "Annika . . ."

I'm on something soft and squishy, but unfamiliar. I make my eyes open, even though they don't want to, and squint against yellow light. The first thing I make out is Eric, sitting on the edge of the second thing I make out, the floral-patterned couch beneath me. I'm on my back, my head on a stiff armrest. "There you are . . ." Eric murmurs when he sees I'm awake, his hand falling from my head to my shoulder.

"We're at Sookie's?" I whisper. It looks different in the glow of the ceiling fan – Sookie is still in Mississippi, I assume, so Eric must have turned on the lights for my benefit, as he has done so many times before – but I recognize the living room, with its layout of antique furniture and its photographs of happy people doing happy things like weddings, and birthday parties, and gardening in the sun.

"We are. It should be safe for you." With that, he pulls up his sleeve, fangs snapping out, and bites himself. I try to push myself up, but that makes my head throb and the room tilt, so I fall back again. "Here, sweetheart." Eric's wrist drips blood from the perfect pair of dots now punched into his skin. "Drink."

I take his arm in my hands – with effort, because everything about me feels heavier than it should be – but just before I bend my head his words from before sink in.

"What do you mean, it should be safe for me?"

"Drink, Annika."

So I put my lips to his wrist and begin gulping down his blood. "Good girl," Eric says, putting his free arm around me, resting his head on mine as the pain jolting through my skull begins to fade.

Vampire blood is salty and smoother than water, but more than that, it's . . . Well, you can feel the power in it, as you're taking it in. You can feel it making you better, making you more, giving you things that– as a human – you are not meant to have. It's power you aren't built for, but you're borrowing it, and, oh, it feels good, so good that it's really no wonder there's such a market for V. It's a wonder there isn't more of one . . .

"That's enough, Annie. That's enough . . ."

For a moment, my grip tightens on his wrist, but I catch myself, control myself, and snap my fingers from his skin, letting my hands fall to my lap. Eric eases his arm away, and I lick my lips and close my eyes, feeling his blood race through me like steel through copper. And Eric continues to hold me. In fact, both of his arms are around me now. It's unlike him, but this hasn't been a normal night. I press my forehead into his chest, letting the moment stretch out.

"Did they do anything to hurt you?" he asks.

"No. Just Pam."

And this is what makes him pull back. He cups my face in his hands. "I am going to get her back. Everything will be alright."

"How?" My headache is a memory, washed away by Eric's blood. The exhaustion that hit me in the dungeon, that pulled me under like a rough current, is no more – and so is the simpler, steadier exhaustion from sleep deprivation, actually. Physically, I feel like I did after I accidentally drank coffee on the plane to Dallas . . . only more so, a lot more so, and the blood still has places in my body to reach. My thoughts are spinning through my brain like leaves in autumn. "How are you going to get her back?"

"I have a plan." Eric disappears with a rush of air, I hear water running in the kitchen, and then he's back, standing behind the couch, holding out a white rag made grey with water. "You have blood on your face."

I wipe the cloth beneath my nose. It comes away smudged with red. I look up to ask Eric what his plan is, only to find him gone. A cabinet slams in the kitchen, then another, and another. I drop the rag and rise – actually, I jump up, because that's just something vampire blood makes your body want to do – and cross through the foyer, past the place where the werewolf bled out, and into the kitchen, where Eric is examining colorfully-packaged food products in a cupboard above the sink.

"It appears the kitchen is well-stocked," he says, shutting the cabinet a little too hard. He runs a hand through his hair, looking around the kitchen like it might be hiding something from him. "You should have plenty to eat while I am gone." He tugs out a drawer beside the refrigerator, scans what's inside, closes it – I hear silverware rattle as it bangs shut – and follows suit with the next drawer over.

"Why would you leave me here?"

"Where else am I to leave you? This house is safe. No vampire can enter without an invitation. Not that I expect any to come for you, but it eases my mind."

"But you told the magister you were going to use me –"

"Which got him to release you. Now I must get him to release Pam." He looks up from the drawer at the end of the counter. "You tore that cane from his hands," he says, almost to himself. "How long have you had telekinetic ability?"

That moment is foggy in my memory, honestly, but I can remember enough of it – enough of how it felt, at least – to know that saying I tore it from his hands isn't quite right. Tore is a strong word which implies, in my mind, that a decision was made with certainty to take something from someone. I didn't decide anything, with or without certainty. "That was the first time something like that ever happened."

"It was too much for you. Don't try it again, not anytime soon."

"I didn't try to do itin the first place. I just . . . It just happened."

Eric closes the drawer, and, for a moment, he seems to focus totally on me, so closely I want to squirm. Whatever ideas rush through his mind, however, he doesn't share, and then the moment is gone. He sort of shakes his head, but only once, as if tossing a thought aside. "We must discuss this, but now is not the time. I cannot find an EpiPen. Check everything for strawberries before you eat it, no matter what it is."

"Eric –"

"If there is an emergency," he continues, pointing to a tan, old-time phone stuck to the wall, "dial 911 before you call me. An ambulance will be able to reach you before I can."

"You're going to Mississippi," I blurt, if only to make sure I get all the words out before he interrupts. Or leaves.

"Yes."

"Because Bill is there." Bill Compton, damn him, damn him. "Why – I don't understand, why would he frame you for selling blood?"

"He does not like me. You once told me that yourself."

"But you're his sheriff, and Sookie –"

"It is complicated, Annika, and at the moment, irrelevant. I must find him. That is all that matters."

"What are you going to do when you get to Mississippi?"

"I am going to request assistance from someone powerful."

I shake my head. "You shouldn't leave me here," I say, and I mean it with everything I have. "You should take me with you."

Even now, Eric smiles – it's the sort of smile he makes when nothing is really that funny – and huffs out a breath. "No."

"Eric!" I say, far too sharply. But it gets his attention. "I can help you!"

"I do not need your help. I need you to be here, so I am not distracted with the issue of your safety."

"I'm safest with you."

"You are safest doing as I say."

"I was doing as you said when the magister and those – those bastards came into our home and grabbed me and started torturing Pam!"

It's as if someone flips a switch in Eric's brain, a switch with two very different labels on its opposite ends, with one end reading something like Kind Eric, or Controlled Eric, or even Annika's Eric.

The label on the other side would probably just read DANGER.

Eric's fangs shoot down. I see them well, because his lips pull back in a snarl as he takes one stride in my direction, making a terrible hissing sound not far at all from the one he made with the wolf the other night.

I can't say why I don't step back. It's not from lack of fear. Maybe it's due to fear – maybe I'm frozen, like a cornered animal, which is something I suppose I ultimately am. Or maybe it's because I can't believe Eric would ever harm me. Maybe it's something else altogether, I don't know. But I don't step back. I cross my arms, I flinch, but I don't step back.

It's over, then. Eric stops. He backs up. He turns his head. I hear his fangs slide away into their hiding places.

It gets very quiet.

"I gave you too much of my blood," he finally says. "It is making you forget yourself."

I wouldn't put it like that, no, not at all.

But maybe that's the blood talking.

"I'm not forgetting myself," I whisper. I clear my throat before I continue, louder, "I'm right. I need to go with you."

"Enough."

"Eric, I can sense Bill!" Sometimes. Well, I have. Once or twice. But if there's even some hope . . . "Not as clearly as a human, but well enough, since he's young and I know him. I can help you find him!"

"As you helped me find Godric?"

I haven't heard Eric speak that name since his return from Dallas, and now he uses it like a weapon. Logically, I know he does so because he is stressed, to say the least. He wants to correct the world, his and mine. He wants to end this conversation and move into action.

It still cuts deep.

"Godric was two thousand years old." My voice has dropped, even though I didn't mean for it to, and it may wobble a bit, but just a bit. I have it under control. "And I'd never met him."

"I know," Eric says, his voice a hundred times softer now, eyes on the floor.

"And Bill Compton is no Godric."

"On that we agree," he says, weariness in every syllable, every piece of his face. "So let us leave it there. It has been a difficult night, for you more than me, I know. I do not want to fight with you, I do not want to be angry with you, I want to rescue Pam and then lock the both of you in a box and put you in my pocket so no one can do anything like this ever again."

I gaze at my shoes. "Pam would kill you first."

"Oh, I think you both would," he replies, which may be one of the highest bits of praise he's ever given me, but I'm hardly in the mood to be proud. Or to have the subject changed, let alone shut down.

Eric comes to me and covers my shoulders with his hands. "Annika, I will save her. Everything is going to be fine."

I want to believe that. Or even just believe that he believes that. And maybe I do.

Maybe it just isn't enough.

"Eric. Take me with you."

He removes his hands from my shoulders and turns for the foyer.

"Eric! I love her, too!"

He stops. He doesn't turn around, but at least he stops.

"You have nothing to lose by taking me! I'll be with you, I'll be protected, and if I don't sense anything, I don't, but if I do – it could make all the difference! It could mean her life!" He doesn't move. But he hasn't left. I dig my fingernails into my palms and go to him, circling around so I can see his face. It gives away nothing. "Don't ask me to just sit here when there could be even the slightest chance I could help her. This is Pam."

He meets my gaze. If it wasn't Eric, I'd say that his eyes look nearly pleading. But it is Eric, so I don't know exactly what I'm seeing. "I'm not afraid," I tell him.

That does nothing to change his expression.

But, after a minute: "At this place, the vampires will almost certainly understand humans only as pets or food. And we will be on their territory. You will obey me immediately and without question. If you fail to do so, even if no harm comes of it, I will punish you severely. I do not say this to frighten you. I say this because I will be taking you – at your request – to a place where some measure of your safety, and my reputation, will be in your hands, and I must believe that you will handle both of those things with the utmost care. These are not vampires who will understand or approve of the depth of my affection for you. Nor are these vampires who would face any great penalty for harming a human who belongs to another – one of them is a three-thousand-year-old king. So you will give them no reason to harm you, no reason to acknowledge you. You will be silent. You will be meek. You will speak when spoken to, and treat me as an animal treats its master. Maybe for a few hours. Maybe for longer. But if you wish to come with me, this is how it must be, regardless of how much time we spend in Mississippi."

As Eric pauses, I realize I'm wringing my hands, and I make myself stop. I stare at his stomach, as I've been doing for most of his speech. "Have you changed your mind?" he asks softly.

"No." Intentionally or otherwise, Eric just told me that he agrees with me, that he knows I could help him, that bringing me along is sensical. If he didn't think so, he would have simply left, not bothering with warnings and descriptions of scary things. But he didn't. I roll my shoulders back, trying to look, if anything, bored. "I'm ready whenever you are."

He says nothing for a long time. I wait, trying to be still.

Then he's moving. But not out of the house. He passes me to get to and open a narrow door beside the stairs, packed with jackets and dirty work boots. He pulls out a thick red coat and offers it to me. "I'm sure Sookie won't mind you borrowing this."

The material feels plastic and slippery, and the coat is too big – the sleeves only allow the tips of my fingers to show – but it's warm from the inside. I zip it up, working through a catch once.

Eric takes my chin and makes me look at him. "Immediately and without question," he repeats. "Silent and meek." He rubs his thumb across my cheek once. "Please do not make me regret this, little one."

"I'm not that little, Eric," I say, fanning my fingers to dry the sweat forming on my palms. "I'm almost twelve."

He lets out a long sigh that I understand no better than the look in his eyes. I take a deep breath. Eric can hear my heartbeat, and he's had my blood, so he can sense how I feel. If I'm calm, it will let him focus better. So I'll be calm. For him, for Pam, for all of us. "You tell me to trust you," I say as he releases me. "I wish you would trust me more."

"I would not even consider this if I did not have some measure of trust in you. Do not make me regret that, either." He opens the door, letting cool, fresh air flood the room. It smells like nighttime. "Come. Let's go meet a king."