Pam did not come to work the next night, which was Saturday, one of their busiest nights of the week – though not lately, Eric reminded himself bitterly. He opened his phone and texted, "With Miriam?" Moments later, he received a "y" in response. Since she had two very good reasons to take the night off, those being Miriam and her anger at himself, and since he had no good reason to demand that she show up to their almost empty bar, he replied, "OK."

Fangtasia was depressing as hell, deserted and Pam-less. He decided against going to Bon Temps since the night before had been such a disaster. Instead, he busied himself with the accounts, working with the numbers every way he could think of to delay running the business at a loss. Nothing worked.

He felt a stab of fear from Sookie at one point, but it was over almost as soon as it began. Later, he felt her fall asleep, as he did every night. And he missed her, as he did every night.

On Sunday night, he arrived at the bar to find Pam already there. Their eyes met, and he cocked his head towards his office. She didn't look pleased about the summons, but she followed him inside and shut the door.

"Yes, Master?" she asked, her voice laced with ill-feeling.

"Don't," he said. "How did you leave Miriam?"

Pam's crossed arms now fell to her sides. Before this moment, Eric might have thought it impossible to look defeated while wearing skintight black leather and spiked heels. "Weak… She doesn't have long."

He paced towards his desk, then turned back again. "You don't have to stay here," he said at last. "You could take her away to some other area. No reasonable king or queen would deny your request. You have already done everything I asked and more."

"Fuck that," she interrupted. "I am not leaving you for a human." He stared at her in surprise, and she stared back as if she couldn't believe he was surprised. "Did you think I would?"

"You love her."

"She is nothing to me compared to you."

Eric could think of no response, none at all. He walked around and sat at his desk, and Pam, after standing and watching him for a short time, took one of the chairs facing him. He reached across the desk and handed her a thick stack of papers.

"This is the budget I've come up with," he told her. "Fangtasia is in the black until November. I have more than enough to keep the place afloat for years, even operating at a loss. That's not ideal, obviously, but…" He trailed off and watched in silence as she flipped through the pages. "Can you think of anything I've left out?"

She reached the last page and laid the budget back on the desk. "It's what I expected," she said. She folded her hands in her lap. "I want to talk about last night." He started to reply, but she held up her hand to stop him. "You have to tell Sookie the truth. You've exhausted your options, and she has the right to know. I'm only saying this because I've come to… care about her." As she spoke the word "care," Pam cringed as if she were saying something disgusting. "You insult her by not telling her."

"You can go," Eric replied.

When she reached the door, she turned around to look at him. "For me, there is no side but your side. You know that." She walked out into the bar and left the office door open.

There wasn't a customer in sight on Monday evening, but Eric had received word that Victor was thinking of dropping by. Wonderful, he thought as he deleted the e-mail.

It had been dark for less than an hour when a wave of fear from Sookie almost made his knees give way. Of all the emotions he had felt from her since they had exchanged blood, even since the first threads of her had wound their way into his blood in Dallas, fear was perhaps the most foreign to him. Unlike the moment of fear on Saturday night, this one did not go away quickly.

He made a signal to the bartender, rushed outside, and decided to take his car. Whatever had happened, he wanted to bring Sookie back to stay at his house tonight. But not just tonight.

Sookie's fear faded into calm as Eric was merging onto the interstate. Relieved, he slowed to only fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit. Sookie was just leaving the bar with the shifter and the war-damaged man when Eric walked around to the back of the building after parking in front. He leaned against a tree as he waited for her; he knew that she could feel him there.

After what seemed like ages, she emerged from the shifter's trailer, and he was at her side in a flash, holding her face under the lights. From all he could tell, she was unharmed.

"I want you to move in with me," he said, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs. "You can stay in one of the upstairs bedrooms if you want… the one we usually use. You don't have to stay down in the dark with me." He slid his hands down from her face to her arms. "I don't want you to be alone. I don't want to feel your fear one more time. It makes me crazy to know someone is attacking you, and I'm not there."

She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and opened them again. "We need to talk. Do you have time?"

He thought of Victor's possible visit and decided that he didn't care at all if he missed it. Besides, wasn't his very presence enough to tell Sookie that he had come to be with her? "Tonight I'm making time," he replied. "Are the fairies at your house?"

"I don't know, actually," she said.

She reached for her phone and pressed one of the speed dial buttons. Her cousin confirmed that they were out for the night, and Eric walked Sookie to her car in the front lot of the bar. Once she had started the engine and pulled away, Eric went to his own car to follow her home.

They ended up on her sofa, he with a warmed bottle of True Blood that he didn't especially want, and Sookie with a glass of red wine. She was leaning against the arm on her end of the sofa, her smooth, tanned legs bridging the short distance between them. She had pushed her bare toes under his leg, and he found that endearing.

She took a small sip of her wine. "Eric, I know you don't ask people to stay in your house lightly," she said slowly, getting back to their conversation in the shifter's parking lot. "So… I want you to know how… touched and flattered I am that you invited me."

I have never asked anyone to stay in my house.

Because he could see that she was making a very real effort to consider his feelings, something she had not done often in the past, he paused to keep his anger at bay. "Oh, think nothing of it," he said. It sounded harsher than he had intended.

"I didn't say that right," she said, shaking her head. "Listen, I love you," she continued. Her face was earnest, and her words killed every trace of anger and frustration in him. "I feel thrilled that you want us to live together. But before I make up my mind whether to do that, we need to get some stuff straight."

"Stuff?" he asked.

He took an idle drink of True Blood as he waited for her to elaborate. At least they were talking about this; the last time he had brought it up, she had flatly refused and even insulted him. Now she was "thrilled." Slowly but surely, he was breaching the walls she had constructed to ward off the hurt that life and past relationships had taught her to expect.

"You married me to protect me," she began, and he nodded, for that had indeed been one of the reasons. "You hired Terry Bellefleur to spy on me, and you applied pressure where he couldn't take it to get him to comply."

Had she just learned of that tonight when he saw her and the shifter with the Bellefleur man? It had been so long ago, he had all but forgotten it. "That happened before I knew you, Sookie," he said.

"Yeah, I get that." She looked frustrated, as if she didn't know how to put her thoughts into words. "But it's the nature of the pressure you applied to a man whose mental state is so wobbly… it's the way you got me to marry you without knowing what I was doing."

"You wouldn't have done it otherwise," he said reasonably. And you would be in Las Vegas with Felipe, or you would be serving drinks for Victor at Vampire's Kiss.

She smiled a little. "You're right. I wouldn't. And Terry wouldn't have told you things about me if you'd offered him money. I know you see this as the smart way to do business, and I'm sure a lot of people would agree with you." Since you're alive and free, you should agree with me, too, he thought. Sookie sighed. "We're both living with this bond. I'm sure sometimes you would rather I didn't know what you're feeling." No. "Would you be wanting me to live with you if we didn't have the bond? If you didn't feel it every time I was in danger or angry or afraid?"

Evidently, she believed that he wanted her only because he wanted to protect her. Did she not think to turn that equation around? Did she not understand that he wanted to protect her because he wanted her? Needed her. Loved her.

"What a strange thing to say, my lover," he said gently. He sipped from his True Blood once more and set it aside, then turned back to her, pulling her feet up into his lap. "Are you saying that if I didn't know you needed me… I wouldn't need you?"

"I don't think so. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think you'd want me to live with you unless you felt like people were out to get me," she explained.

Ah. That he could understand. And he could respect it. She didn't want to accept his offer if he was making it for the wrong reasons, those reasons being fear or worry rather than affection. He didn't know how to explain that for him, there would be no fear or worry if there were no affection. Besides, there were many ways to protect a person that didn't involve offering his home and his life. He wouldn't have made the offer if he didn't want her. She must know that.

"What difference does that make?" he asked her. "If I want you with me, I want you. The circumstances don't matter."

"But they do matter," she insisted. "And we're so different."

His hands, which had been rubbing her feet, stilled. "What?"

"Well, there are so many things you take for granted that I don't."

He rolled his eyes, torn between amusement and impatience. There was very little he took for granted – he wouldn't have survived the centuries otherwise – and nothing that involved her. "Like what?" he asked.

"Well… like Appius having sex with Alexei." She frowned. "It was not a big deal for you, even though Alexei was thirteen."

"Sookie," he said slowly, "it was what you call a 'done deal' long before I even knew I had a brother. In Ocella's time, people were reckoned practically grown at thirteen. They were even married that young." Mary, the mother of your own Jesus, would have been a child of exactly Alexei's age when your god put his seed in her. This he didn't say, not wanting to offend her. "Ocella never understood some of the changes in society that came with the centuries. And Alexei and Ocella are both dead now." She looked unconvinced, as if she had forgotten that Alexei was hardly an innocent victim in the end. "There was another side of that coin, you remember? Alexei used his youth, his childlike looks, to disarm all the vampires and humans around him. Even Pam was loath to put him down, though she knew how destructive he was… how insane. And she's the most ruthless vampire I know. He was a drain on all of us, sucking the will and force from us with the depth of his need."

His mood darkened as he remembered those miserable days, cutting himself off from Sookie as much as he could to spare her. Outside her house, he could hear the arrival of a car. Her brother, perhaps.

"What about the fact that you're going to outlive me for, like, forever?" she asked.

This again. She knew the solution. They had talked about it before this night.

"We can take care of that easily enough," he said. She only stared at him. "What? You don't want to live forever?" He smiled. "With me?"

"I don't know," she said, and his heart soared. The last time they had discussed this, she had been so adamant about not wanting to be turned. She had made him promise that he wouldn't, even if she were dying. Now, it seemed she might one day be persuaded. "You know, Eric, I can't…"

She stopped herself, and he felt her doubt and insecurity. Before he could ask her to finish her thought, her guest knocked. He followed her to the back door, which she opened to reveal the witch and a young man.

Fucking hell.

"Come on in!" Sookie exclaimed as happiness suffused both her voice and Eric's blood. "Eric's here, and he'll be glad to see you both!"

He forced a smile. "Yes, I am so glad that you've come to visit Sookie," he said.

The witch looked unconvinced and seemed about as thrilled to see Eric as he was to see her. She and her companion stepped in, and Sookie noticed that the man was carrying their bags.

"My relatives are staying upstairs," she explained, "so you two can use the guest bedroom down here." She motioned in that direction, and the young man proceeded there with the bags.

"Eric, how are things going at Fangtasia?" the witch asked. She was rotating her neck and stretching her arms over her head, apparently stiff from their long car ride from New Orleans. "How's the new management?" She bent over to touch her toes.

He ground his teeth, though he knew she hadn't asked the question from any ill will. "Business is going all right," he said. "Victor has opened some new clubs close by."

Standing straight again, Amelia looked between him and Sookie with fresh concern. "Victor's the smiley guy who was out in the yard the night of the takeover, right?"

"Yes. The smiley guy," he said, amused in spite of the sore topic.

"So, Sook, what troubles do you have now?" she asked.

Eric frowned and looked at Sookie suspiciously. Was there something she hadn't told him? "Yes, what troubles do you have now?"

"I was just going to get Amelia to reinforce the wards around the house," she replied. "Since so much stuff has happened at Merlotte's, I was feeling kind of insecure."

This was clearly a lie. Only a few hours had passed since the incident, and her friends could not have driven from New Orleans in so short a time. Amelia knew something that he didn't, and she had known it before tonight.

"So she called me," the witch said. Eric got the obvious, unspoken message: "Me, not you."

"But now that the bitch has been cornered, Sookie, surely the threat's been removed?" he asked. Might as well play along.

"What? What happened tonight, Sookie?"

Eric bit back a smile. Amelia had about as much tact as an elephant in a circus, and her mouth was just as big. He could only hope that Sookie would never come to harm because of it.

"Debbie Pelt's sister came to Merlotte's tonight," Sookie replied. "Sam and all took care of it. I'd still feel better if you made sure the wards were in place, though."

Amelia grinned. "That's one of the things I've come to do, Sookie." She turned her bright smile on Eric. Her "I know something you don't know" expression was not at all subtle.

He satisfied himself with the mental image of kicking her outside on her ass.

The witch's male friend returned and said, "Those weren't my kittens," to which pronouncement Eric could only stare. "I mean, Weres can't breed with the animal they turn into. So I don't think those were my kittens."

The conversation didn't end there, but Eric was too disgusted at the topic and too annoyed at his and Sookie's disrupted evening to listen further. "Sookie, I need to get back to Fangtasia," he said at last.

"Okay, Eric," she said cheerfully. "Tell Pam I said hello if you two are back to speaking."

"She's a better friend to you than you know," he muttered, and in a flash, he was in his car, speeding down her graveled road.

He and Pam were going over a merchandise order when Sookie disappeared. One minute he had felt her in his blood, quiet and safe as she usually was, and the next…

There was no pain, only a terrible nothing. She was gone.

He doubled over in his desk chair and let out a cry of anguish. A split-second later, Pam was kneeling in front of him, holding his head to her shoulder.

"Eric, what is it?" she asked. "Tell me." His only reply was something grief-stricken and unintelligible. "Please, Eric, what happened?"

"Sookie…"

"What?" she pressed after waiting for him to say more. "What about Sookie?" He raised his head and saw that her shirt and hands were bloody. He had wept… was still weeping. Pam, who never cried, had blood welling in the corners of her eyes. "Eric, please! Is she in danger? Let's go to her!"

"Gone. Gone."

Pam took out her phone and pushed some buttons. Seconds later, he heard the voice that called him back up from hell: "Hello?" Pam shoved the phone to his ear and paced away, holding her arms around herself.

He gripped the phone so tightly that he heard a small crack, and he loosened his fingers. "Are you there? Are you there? Are you all right?"

"Eric," Sookie breathed on the other end of the line, and he had never heard anything more beautiful than her voice saying his name after he thought he would never hear it again. "Oh, I'm so glad you're all right! You are, aren't you?"

It was then that he realized what had happened. He didn't want to believe it. He told himself that there was another explanation. "What have you done?" he managed to ask.

"Amelia found a way to break the bond," she said.

He was so furious – so hurt – so shocked – he was unable to speak. But Sookie was waiting.

"Sookie… the marriage gives you some protection, but the bond is what is important."

"What?"

"You heard me." The marriage was a ritual. The bond was everything. "I am so angry with you." He heard another soft crack, and again he loosened his grip on Pam's phone.

"Come here," she said.

He growled. "No. If I see Amelia, I'll break her neck. She's always wanted you to get rid of me."

"But…" Sookie's voice trailed off.

"I'll see you when I've got control of myself." He pressed the button to end the call and slammed the phone on his desk.

"You really love her," Pam murmured after a long silence. He raised his head to see her looking down at her hands, which were still covered with his blood. "The bond was gone, and still…"

"It wasn't the blood," he said. "Am I the only one who knew that?"

She looked up and fixed her eyes on his. "You will be stronger now. Her humanity weakened you. It weighed you down like a ball and chain."

"That's enough, Pam."

"Don't you understand how sick with worry I have been since Rhodes? To see you losing more and more of your-"

"Enough."

"Fine. You owe me a new shirt, by the way." She started to walk away, then stopped. "And a new phone."