First a reminder that I don't own the characters. That's all Charlaine Harris' property. I'd also like to apologize for the weird fanfic issues with uploading last chapter. Though I'd like to blame the website, it was probably operator error.

Thanks to Cageyspice for editing and Amazen for suggesting I limit my dependent clauses and rambling sentences. I tried :) And I'd also like to thank you for reading! Without further yammering by the author...

"You're late," Pam said as Eric pulled the heavy warehouse door closed behind us. A caricature of impatience, she was even standing with her arms folded across her chest and tapping the toe of one very stylish boot.

"Sorry. We had … a problem with our transportation," I offered as explanation.

Like a switch, she turned on the charm. "Sookie. Nice coat." Her voice was low and sultry. And she stepped close to me and felt the faux-fur collar, just as she had with my silk blouse the first time we met. I shrugged her off. "More of a bedroom look, though, than an overcoat, wouldn't you say?"

My perfectly respectable peacoat, unfortunately, was in the cab of a stolen and wrecked Ford coupe. When Eric and I had departed from my apartment, he'd offered me his, but I'd declined in favor of my favorite robe. It fit better than his trench even if it wasn't as warm.

"Thanks," I said, determined not to let Pam get to me when I knew it must be her only intention.

"That's enough, Pam." Eric commanded the attention of everyone in the room. Longshadow, my Indian bartender acquaintance, who had been leaning against a wall looking bored, straightened up. Two young women were seated at a folding card table in the center of the otherwise empty space. "We're ready to begin, aren't we, Sookie?"

I didn't even try to convince Eric to let me interview the women alone, but I knew it would be best to do so individually. "Certainly. But I need to speak with them one at a time."

Eric agreed to this arrangement. "Longshadow, take Belinda outside for a walk. Ginger, you're up first. Miss Stackhouse is going to ask you a few questions and you will answer her honestly. Is that understood?"

Ginger, the skinny blond, nodded in agreement. Belinda, who I'd already offended my first night at Death Warmed Over, shot me a dark look before walking off with Longshadow. A shiver went up my spine at the depth of her unwarranted hatred of me. I tried not to take it too personally. I'd heard all kinds of thoughts about me in the minds of others. What was bouncing around her head was nothing original.

I took Belinda's vacated seat across from Ginger after shrugging off my robe. Something about the black satin didn't command respect, even if Pam had liked the fur collar. Ginger's eyes widened as she noticed my bandaged arm and bloody dress, and she wondered what had really made us late. Her eyes moved from me to Eric and back again. She was even afraid Eric had been the one to injure me. Though she didn't seem to recall ever having seen Eric hurt someone, she had memories of him exhibiting superhuman strength that gave her a healthy fear of him.

Maybe Ginger was smarter than she looked. I still wasn't convinced she had the capacity to be the mastermind of a plot to slowly siphon off funds from Eric's bar, but I'd have a poke around her head to be sure.

"Hi, Ginger. I'm Sookie. I'm a private investigator Eric hired to look into his finances. It seems a considerable sum has recently been found missing."

Ginger didn't show any of the physical signs of anxiousness, but her thoughts were flashing like warning lights. Eric might be able to pick up on tells I couldn't perceive—increased heart rate, maybe even spontaneous sweating—but to anyone else she'd seem calm and collected. Perhaps I'd underestimated her. She'd have fooled me without my gift. But since I could read her mind, I knew she knew exactly what I was talking about.

The problem was, she couldn't seem to access any memories related to the actual theft. There were holes in her thoughts. Outright voids and tears in the network of nerves that pulled together the disparate bits of information into coherent thoughts in a normally functioning brain. Someone had hacked out her memories, and not very neatly.

Bill had always been persuasive. It had taken me a while to realize he was able to manipulate the minds of others because his influence never worked on me. I'd noticed because I could see the effects of his mental strong-arming in the thoughts of others, but he'd been precise about it, slicing through the threads that held the memories together and knitting them back together into such a believable story no one ever noticed the difference. Poor Ginger had been stitched up so many times her brain looked like one of those colorful crocheted blankets Gran used to knit from leftover yarn.

I felt Eric step closer behind me, but I couldn't tell if he was being protective or aggressive so I did my best to ignore him.

"Do you know anything about that, Ginger?" I probed.

"Answer her," Eric said in a deep commanding voice that was very different from the way he'd spoken to me earlier tonight.

"If it's not you, Ginger, you're better off telling me who is responsible." I gave her an encouraging smile, but she sneered at me. I was tired and wanted to just get this over with, so I grabbed her hand to get a better read on her. She pulled away, convinced I was a witch.

Eric must have given her some sort of sign, because Pam stepped forward and placed her hands firmly on Ginger's shoulders so she would stop squirming.

"Was it Belinda, Ginger? We won't let her know you told us anything," I promised, though I wasn't sure I could actually deliver.

"Belinda doesn't need to steal—she's got someone to take care of her. I'm the one that can't afford to lose this job."

When I caught a glimpse of her scrawny seven year old daughter in her head, the one she worked nights to support, the one whose father had run out on them when times got hard, I felt sorry for Ginger. This was a tough break. She'd been worried about her job when she'd heard of the raid, and to her, this interrogation was just icing on the cake.

But I'd had a bad night too, and no amount of my pity was going to change Ginger's situation any more than wallowing in my own misfortune could improve my lot in life.

I'd gotten enough information from her to be reasonably certain of my theory, so I turned over my shoulder and looked at Eric. We were getting pretty good at that silent communication thing he seemed to prefer.

"Ginger, wait here while I confer with Miss Stackhouse."

I stood from my seat. Eric placed his hand on the small of my back and led me to a far corner of the warehouse. We were at least out of Ginger's hearing range, if not Pam's.

"She's innocent."

"You're certain?"

"Yes. The other waitress might be more helpful."

Eric arched his eyebrow, urging me to explain and was obviously frustrated when I didn't take his bait. We stood in a silent battle of wits, testing one another. He chose not to force the issue, which was good, because I wasn't going to explain my theory until I was absolutely sure.

I needed Eric to trust me, even if I didn't trust him. Some day my life might depend on it.

Eric looked over my head towards the table. "Ginger, you are free to go."

She didn't hesitate to gather up her coat and purse so she could get home to her little girl. I thought about suggesting that Eric offer her some sort of compensation for losing her job, but asking him to part with more money when he'd already lost a considerable sum didn't seem like the best idea at the time.

"Pam, will you retrieve Belinda?"

That left Eric and me alone. I sat back down in my chair. He just stood and watched me with a contemplative expression.

Eric Northman looking at me with that penetrating gaze made me wonder what he was thinking. It was a curiosity I was unaccustomed to having. I absently ran my fingers over my cheek then tucked my hair behind my ear. Pam, Longshadow, and my next suspect walked in before either of us spoke.

The second interrogation followed the same pattern; I asked about the missing money and found big holes in her memories. But even though she didn't know anything about the theft didn't mean she couldn't provide some useful information, so I asked about other crimes in the area. I'd thought all this time that Jason's predicament and this case were somehow linked, and I wanted to follow up on my hunch even if it turned out to be nothing.

"There have been a rash of murders in the Quarter. Do you feel safe working in the area, especially so late at night? All of the victims have been young women, such as yourself."

"I got someone who needs me, who will make sure nothing bad happens to me, whether he loves me or not." At least those were her words, but her thoughts revealed a lot more. Suddenly it all made sense.

Before I could follow up on what I saw in Belinda's thoughts, my eyes instinctively darted to Longshadow, who moved from his position leaning against to wall to holding me by the throat faster than I could blink. Before he could bite, a bite that surely would have been meant to kill, Eric pulled broken the handle off a broom left idly in the corner and drove it through Longshadow's back. The Indian vampire started to flake away after regurgitating the blood from his stomach. He must have fed off Belinda while I'd been interrogating Ginger.

The only sound in the warehouse was the clinking of Eric's makeshift weapon as it fell against the cold cement floor when he dropped it. He looked back at me, fangs extended in all their menacing glory, and I wondered if I'd simply exchanged one attacker for another. I knew vampires could lose control at the sight of so much blood. But Eric slipped his arm around my back to support me and gently swept my bloody hair back off my forehead. More than anything I wanted something to wipe out the taste of vampire dust and blood from my mouth, but something told me vampires didn't carry handkerchiefs.

"Are you all right?" Eric asked.

Before I could reply I spit on the ground, spraying a little on Eric's shirt in the process. "I'll live."

Pam had Belinda restrained, which was a good thing, because I was certain she was the Midnight Romeo.

I'd pieced it together from glimpses into her thoughts. Eric had been wrong about a human stealing from him—it'd been Longshadow, though he'd seduced Belinda in an attempt to use her as a scapegoat. His seduction skills turned out to be more advanced than his criminal masterminding or glamouring, because Belinda had been so devoted to him she'd freaked out when she'd found out he'd been biting blond whores. Rather than take her revenge on the man, she'd killed the women.

Eric leaned down to whisper in my ear. "You're sure it was Longshadow?"

I wondered if he'd known that all along and this was all just some sort of game. It didn't stop me from holding onto him. I tilted my head so that my mouth was at his ear. "And she's the killer."

Though his hands remained locked behind my back, supporting me, he leaned back to look me in the eye. "You're certain?"

I nodded again.

"Pam, will you show Sookie where she can get cleaned up? I need a moment alone with Belinda."

"My pleasure," Pam retorted and gave me a saucy smile. She was showing fang.

"Remember what you promised me," I reminded Eric. Though he didn't look particularly thrilled about it, he nodded once in agreement before helping me to my feet.

Pam showed me to a small washroom and produced an article of clothing she had on hand and was willing to part with, which happened to be a cream satin slip with black lace trim. She helped me wash the ash and blood off me as best as we could with limited resources available and eagerly helped me into my borrowed garment. Unfortunately, Pam was much more petite than me. The slip left little to the imagination and showed a lot more cleavage than I was comfortable with, though it was an improvement over my destroyed dress.

"It even matches your robe," Pam said, beaming. "Eric will approve."

I was glad there was no mirror inside the cramped closet so I was blissfully ignorant of how grotesque I really looked.

When I emerged from the washroom marginally cleaner and generally unmolested, I was surprised to find Belinda calmly sitting in her chair rather than bound and gagged. Vampires certainly weren't predictable.

"Ready?" Eric asked.

I looked from him to Belinda, curious about what had transpired between the killer and the vampire while I'd been freshening up, but I didn't have the energy to ask.

"Oh, yes," I said. Eric and Pam shared a silent communication that made me wonder if they were telepathic, at least between each other, before he whisked me out of the warehouse and into the backseat of a waiting cab. I didn't even argue about the dangers of motor transport or ask how the driver had been summoned. I just let my head lean against Eric's shoulder as we rode in silence back to my office on Bourbon Street.

I started to remove my robe and place it on the coat rack as I always did when I returned home, but then remembered I was wearing next to nothing underneath and I hastily retied the sash.

Eric was still standing on the other side of the threshold, a conflicted look on his face. No smile. It was almost as if he were debating whether or not to follow. "Pam will see that you receive your payment soon."

"Thanks. I appreciate it." I'd certainly earned it.

He stepped through the doorway so smoothly the movement was nearly invisible. "Belinda will confess to the murders and lead them to evidence of her guilt. Your brother will be released."

"I'm relieved to know you are a man of your word." I hadn't ever completely trusted Eric. I still didn't. This could have gone very badly for me. I still wasn't sure why he had intervened when Longshadow had tried to kill me, or why Eric believed me when I said he was the thief. But my brother would be cleared of the false charges against him and I was still alive. The situation had turned out better than I could have hoped.

He took a step closer. His long stride put him within arm's reach of me. "You think of me as a man. Not a vampire."

I cocked my head to the side and considered his statement. I hadn't been deliberate in my choice of words, but Eric was right. That little flutter in my gut when I looked into his eyes was definitely a result of my thinking of him as a man. Still, that prickle in the back of my mind warned that he was a vampire, and even if I didn't think he'd injure me, getting mixed up with him could be even more painful than the wounds that had left me with my scars.

"You're both. I don't think you're a monster, if that's what you're getting at." I'd seen and heard enough of human thoughts to know that they could be just as devious and cruel as the vampires I'd met. It didn't strike me as impossible for a vampire to be capable of … more. Even if my own limited experience would lead me to believe otherwise, I wouldn't judge Eric by the mistakes of another of his kind.

He reached out and tipped my chin up, then let his finger lazily trace down my jaw to my neck. His slight touch sent a shiver down my spine. "You make me feel like a man," he whispered before he brought his lips to mine.

Eric kissed me liked he'd invented it. For all I knew, he had. He could be a thousand years old; he could have slaughtered people for centuries; in the moment, I couldn't care. When he kissed me like that I wasn't worried about the consequences.

Too soon, he pulled back. He closed his mouth and gazed down at me for several seconds before speaking. "I will see you again."

I nodded. Then his hands were on my hips, drawing me towards him. Feeling brazenly irresponsible, I reached my hands up to his shoulders and pressed my body flush against his. Our close contact was exhilarating and intoxicating and I brought my mouth to his again before I could think better of it. We lost ourselves in lips, teeth, and tongue until I was breathless and stumbled back, dizzy with desire.

To my credit, though he didn't breath, Eric seemed similarly affected by our embrace.

He pressed his lips against my forehead one last time before whispering, "soon," and melting into the darkness as his shadow disappeared from my doorway.