Chaos was the best word to describe the palace the next morning. I'd managed a full night's sleep after a long soak in the tub of my suite. Thanks to the taser, I felt like I'd had the biggest workout of my life, and my muscles complained bitterly. I dressed and made my way to the staff dining area on the first floor, dodging the array of people buzzing in and out and around the palace. Large garlands of flowers adorned the main foyer, and I was ushered out of the way by a duo of extremely stressed-out decorators who were mid-argument with one another.

Breakfast consisted of bacon, eggs and hash browns, and I ate like my life depended on it. I needed to fuel myself for what was going to be a big day. I was hoping, praying, that today would be my last day in Oklahoma. I chased breakfast with two cups of coffee. As I was finishing the second cup, a handful of the palace on-site donors wandered in for breakfast. The girls wore tight jogging clothes and tennis shoes, and all were covered in a light sheen of sweat. They'd come from the gym. Yes, of course, the palace had its own gym. I lingered on my last few sips of my cup, pretending to be absorbed in my cell phone while I watched them from the corner of my eye. They were excited, discussing the party ahead that night, what they were going to wear, who they were hoping to see, or rather which vampires they were hoping to spend time with. Eventually they finished eating and began filtering out one by one back to their living quarters, which were in the same wing of the mansion as my guest suite, but on a higher floor.

I caught up with them and sidled along next to Claire, the donor with the bite-scarred neck. She was easy to pick from the crowd just from the state of her neck alone.

"Howdy," I said to her.

"Do I know you?" she asked. She knew who I was, she was just a cow.

"I was just wondering if we could have a little chat?"

"I don't have time."

"How about," I pretended to check my watch. "…now?While you return to your room?"

She sighed peevishly. "I thought you questioned all of us already the other day."

"I did. I just have a few follow up questions."

She motioned for the other girls to go on ahead, and we dawdled behind, making our way back into the general direction of the donor apartments. As we walked, I asked after her living situation, and she told me how she shared an apartment-style suite with two other girls, and spoke lof what the day-to-day life was like for her. In the few short minutes I escorted her to her room, I learned a couple things.

One: Claire was in fact Freyda's favorite donor. But unlike Hadley and Sophie-Anne, whose relationship had been romantic (at least in a one-sided and unhealthy way), Claire was not infatuated with Queen Freyda. Rather, she was infatuated with being the Queen's favorite donor and the influence that gave her among humans, both in the palace and with the human hangers-on in the broader Oklahoma vampire community. And the second thing I learned? Claire was entirely insufferable but entirely innocent. She well and truly knew nothing about what had happened to the missing gold and I detected not even a whiff of glamour on the topic.

"The Queen really doesn't like you," Claire remarked.

Woe is me, not. "I'm not here to be liked."

Claire rolled her eyes. "Big deal. She married your ex. Get over it."

"I assure you, I am over it."

I said goodbye to Claire when we reached her door and I made my way down a set of service stairs at the end of the corridor that led to the second floor where my room, and the rest of the guest rooms, were located.

I mulled over my conversation with Claire and considered all I had learned the previous three days. In terms of real clues that Sigrid and I had uncovered, there was nothing truly solid. We had interviewed all the palace staff. Interviewed everyone at the credit union. None of the people I had encountered in my interviews appeared complicit. Someone had planted false evidence on one of the palace donors, who was probably now still in the gallery strung up. And that hadn't happened until after my run in with the witches. And who exactly were the witches talking about when they spoke of "you know who?" My thoughts grew a little blurry then... I knew I was forgetting something but couldn't quite think what. I'd told Eric the night before that I thought that this was all to do with money laundering. It had made the most sense with what I knew at that the time. But was that still the case?

I ran a hand tiredly over my face. It was hard to keep things straight in my head. What was the bigger picture I was missing here? I let myself into my suite with my key. I mean, what motivation would someone have to try to frame one the donors? I kicked off my shoes and slid into the fuzzy slippers I'd brought with me from home. I was glad I packed for cooler weather. I padded over to the dining set where I had my notes and the tablet sitting.

What struck me as odd wasn't the fact that a human donor was framed, it was the timing of his framing. It wasn't like we were closing in on any suspects. So, why? To throw me off the scent of… what? I opened up the tablet, meaning to examine the photos of the evening's party guests, but instead the screen opened to an image of the woods on the palace's perimeter. Everything I'd forgotten flooded back to me. The sensation of my fingertips burning on the padlock. The strong pull of magic away from the forest. The whole reason for my trip to visit the witches. That's right, I'd been spelled to forget. Ah!

I jumped to my feet and paced the length of the suite, staring at the device in my hand. Okay, maybe this was it? The missing gold was tied up with those witches and their wards, that shack and the money laundering… and… what else? Dylan had been set up to steer our investigation in the wrong direction. Had the discovery of the gold bar in his room been deliberately set up to occur while I was in the forest? Or was it coincidence? Maybe it was just to lead us astray more broadly. I let out a frustrated growl.

I really needed someone to bounce ideas off. I looked toward the closed door that led to Thalia's light-tight quarters.

• •

At exactly five o'clock that afternoon my makeup artist knocked at my suite door. I wasn't expecting a makeup artist, I'd certainly not ordered one, but she made it very clear from the moment I opened the door that I did indeed have one.

"Blair George," she said by way of introduction. "Your makeup artist, courtesy of Ms. Ravenscroft." The young, lithe woman pushed the door open with the toe of her shoe and marched right past me, wheeling two silver cases behind her. She had spiked blonde hair, her features angular like a runway model's, and she carried herself with more of a regal air than I'd seen some vampire royalty exude.

"Please, do come in," I said to the empty doorway.

My afternoon of pacing the apartment and trying to untangle the mystery I was stuck in had turned my mood bleak and foul. I really didn't want to sit and be primped for the evening. I appreciated Pam's generosity, but I preferred to sit and stew in my own thoughts and continue trying to pick apart the knotted rubber band ball that was this mystery. I flopped back onto the settee and picked up my coffee cup.

"No," the woman barked. "Get up. Go and shower. Come out in this robe." She took my coffee cup from my hand and in its place thrust a silk robe and small microfiber towel. "And wrap your hair in the towel. Then I can assess what exactly I'm working with here." Judging by her thoughts, she didn't think me much of me as a canvas. "And for god's sake's, brush your teeth."

I scowled at her and got off the settee, grabbing the coffee cup from where she'd placed it on the table. I threw the rest of it back in one gulp. The woman strode over to the garment bag hanging on the back of my suite door and unzipped it.

"Is this what you're wearing?"

"Yes. And do you always just help yourself to whatever you like in people's private quarters?"

She looked over shoulder to me. "I'm not paid to be well mannered, Miss Southern Belle. I'm paid to make you look equal parts fuckable and delicious.

"I have a feeling that's a direct quote from whoever is paying you."

She didn't bother dignifying that with a response, so I took myself to the bathroom. I stayed in the shower until Blair banged on the door, and then once I was in my robe with my hair wrapped in the microfiber towel, she seated me on a bar stool in front of the bathroom mirror.

"You didn't think to get a spray tan?" she said. Blair was impossibly skinny and her makeup absolutely impeccable. It was hard not to make comparisons sitting beside her with my face flushed and splotchy from the hot water and revealing every flaw, big and small, under the harsh bathroom lighting.

"I didn't plan on going until yesterday."

I loved keeping up my tan, but it was hard these days. I worked up to 80-hour weeks. It was also hard to find a place where I could tan, and when I did have time at home in Bon Temps, well, I only did it for the pleasure of basking in the sun, not to actually brown myself. Once upon a time I'd frequented Bon Temp's tanning salon in the winter to keep up my healthy glow. But now there seemed little point, what with the significant scarring left over from my run-in with the fairies those few years ago. The scars stood out pale and shiny against my tanned skin. I'd bought some hose to wear with my dress when I'd been at the mega mall the day before, so I didn't have to worry about any inadvertently showing on my thighs.

She huffed and turned my chin this way and that.

"Fine. I think we will leave your hair out for tonight. You have some natural curl to your hair?"

"Yes, if I let it air dry."

"Well, there's no time for that."

She brushed out my hair, spent forever blow-drying it, then began working on my face. Various serums and moisturizers, followed by a painful encounter with her tweezers, and then makeup. It was less coverage than I expected. I'd seen women with makeup caked on their face for events, but Blair kept it fairly light and even across my face. She finished with blush and bronzer for my cheek bones, smokey eyes, dark lip liner and dark, blood red lips.

"I'll side part here and keep your hair over your other shoulder," she said. "That way we expose this side of your face and keep the other side covered."

"Why do you want to cover the other side?"

"That's your bad side," she explained matter-of-factly.

"I have a bad side?" I self-consciously touched my cheek on the side she was referring to and she slapped my hand away before I smeared the makeup.

"Had you really never noticed?"

Wow. Okay. And her thoughts were not kind. Any sort of good feelings I had about my appearance were promptly extinguished. She styled my hair into sleek Hollywood waves that rested on my shoulder and sculpted against my cheek—the cheek of my apparently bad side.

Thalia appeared at the bathroom door at nightfall, and I looked at her in desperation. It had been a couple of hours of being primped and my self-esteem was not faring well under the harsh thoughts and scrutiny of Blair. I certainly looked amazing but felt significantly less so.

"Champagne. Beer. Booze. Anything—please," I begged the small vampire.

She didn't respond.

"Please." My voice might have cracked.

She muttered something under her breath in a language I didn't understand and was gone in a blink.

By the time I was zipped into my dress and Blair had departed, I was nearly through an entire bottle of Veuve Cliquot—goodness knows where Thalia procured that from—and feeling every bit of the champagne I'd drunk.

"Sober up," Thalia said, after I put on Pam's dazzling earrings. She passed me the platter I'd been intermittently snacking from. "You work tonight."

"I won't be getting paid at this point," I said, unable to keep the whine out of my voice.

"I refuse to stay longer in this shithole than necessary. Work it out." Her accent was sharp and pointy with anger.

I looked hard at Thalia. Could I talk to her about the case? She looked just as hard back at me. She was a scary vampire. But not as black and white of a person as I'd always taken her to be. In the last three days she'd proven she was keenly observant at many turns. Her English was definitely better than she let on. I wondered if the bad English routine was all part of her bad-girl act.

"I think I need your help to work it out," I said carefully.

Thalia blinked, the movement on her still, blank features uncanny. I wondered how angry my request would make her. I was surprised when her cupid-bow lips curled ever so slightly into a smile.

"How?"

"I think I am maybe beginning to understand what happened to the gold. And why... but I'm hoping I can talk it out with you."

• •

I managed a few crostinis and a small bottle of water before we made our way to the ballroom an hour later. We were early and considering my relatively sedate little black dress, and Thalia's all black and leather outfit, we didn't stand out too much from the wait staff who were scurrying around like cockroaches finalizing everything. I took a seat at a highball table in the corner between the bar and an enormous marble column. I was out of the way and still had full view of things from where I perched on the stool.

I did begin to sober as the food and water settled my stomach, and I took stock of how spectacular the ballroom looked. Huge swaths of gold silk were strung along the sides of the ballroom; and the main source of lighting, an enormous crystal chandelier that was probably worth more than my family home, provided the room with a golden glow. The beginning strains of the band at the front of the large dance floor made it feel as if I had stepped back in time.

I walked to the bar and poured a glass of water for myself from a crystal decanter when I felt a warm hand on my shoulder.

"Sookie, wow." I felt the brush of Joshua's thoughts and when I turned around, my cheeks were burning. My self-confidence climbed by a few notches. He thought I looked smokin' hot. Direct mental quote, thank you very much.

"Wow, yourself," I said back to him. He grinned broadly. He looked damn fine in his tuxedo. He made a show of straightening his lapels with both hands. "I guess we scrub up alright," he said. I laughed as his eyes traced the curve of my dress along my waist. Were we flirting right now?

"I'll need to make an effort to come visit you at your bar one day. I'd love to see you at work," he said.

"What are you doing?" Sigrid snapped, suddenly at our side. "Are you prepared for this evening?"

"Yes," I said, irritated she'd chosen that particular moment to interrupt. I was enjoying the harmless flirting. It took my mind off the evening ahead. Sigrid's eyes also widened as she took me in, that same fang I'd seen on previous nights peeked out over her lip.

"Hungry?" I said, placing a hand on my hip.

"Where are your notes?" she shot back just as quickly, the fang gone with no further sign of being off kilter. She was dressed and made up impeccably in a slinky maroon gown that softened her sharp frame, her wild hair tamed into a pile of carefully placed curls pinned to the crown of her head, 1940s style.

"Photographic memory," I said. "Just another one of my remarkable abilities." I tapped my temple and smiled sweetly at her. She narrowed her eyes at me. Yes, it was a bald-faced lie, but she seemed to buy it. If Thalia and I were right, I wouldn't need to bother reading any of the guests this evening. "Where's Dylan?" I asked before she could cut me down some more.

"He is being fed and tended to. He'll be here."

I grimaced, picturing the poor donor, starved and exhausted and being forced into evening wear.

"I'll leave you ladies to it. I've got a million people in my ear asking me to do a million different things." Joshua gestured to his ear where a small Bluetooth earpiece was fitted. He leaned toward me and brushed a kiss to my cheek. "I'm not forgetting that dance," he murmured.

"Sure," I said with an easy smile and watched him saunter away. Now that wasn't a bad sight, no siree.

I took a champagne cocktail with me back to the table and sat down beside Thalia. She had spent the intervening time perfecting the art of glowering at everyone while simultaneously making it appear she was looking at nothing at all. A fine art, evidently. I chatted to her periodically as the room filled up so it wouldn't appear so strange that I was intensely people watching. It's harder than you'd think carrying on a one-sided conversation with a lethal ancient vampire, but what can I say? My skills are multi-faceted.

A long table to the right of the entrance was quickly filled with ostentatiously wrapped gifts as the ballroom filled with bodies. I wondered what exactly vampires would purchase a Queen for a birthday gift. Crystals carafes for blood? Jewelry? Home wares? Or maybe Freyda had registered somewhere? Bed, Bath and Beyond? Or perhaps Wayfair's vampire department? It had opened a couple of years earlier and been wildly successful. Other department stores like Target and Pottery Barn followed suit.

The band was in full swing, guests dancing and mingling, while wait staff carrying trays laden with glasses of blood and sparkling wine smoothly moved through the crowd keeping everyone liquored, or blooded, up. The more guests arrived, the more and more uncomfortable I felt. Many of the faces were familiar, some I could name, other I'd recognized or seen before at other events but couldn't quite recall where. Some I'd even saved at Rhodes. It was like being thrust three years back in time.

Or maybe this feeling was just the sense of dreadful inevitability that, try as I might, I would never be able to escape the supernatural world.

Thalia was now giving me a strange look, and I was sure I had patches of crimson rising up my décolletage and neck. I took a nervous gulp of my drink, and the band suddenly quietened. The double doors were pulled wide open by an attendant, and the hushed crowd parted at the length of red carpet near the entrance. I let out a slow exhale. The night was now officially beginning.

My heart caught in my throat as Queen Freyda and Eric glided into room. They shone like two otherworldly deities. Freyda's gown was as tight as a second layer of skin, a bias-cut champagne-colored strapless number that drew attention to her tiny waist and made her pale skin glow. Atop her head sat a glittering tiara that probably cost more than the ballroom's ostentatious crystal chandelier that probably cost more than my family home. And Eric, in an impeccably fitted suit, looked like a devilish Prince Charming. A strange feeling twisted around in my gut. I wanted to slink further into my seat. Further into my simple black dress. It was hard, actually impossible, to think that I had once been the girl on Eric's arm. They really were perfect for each other.

Freyda smiled graciously at the crowd around her and the two began greeting the line of guests waiting either side of the walkway.

I made a noise of disgust into my glass and quaffed the rest of the drink in one mouthful. Well, this mere-mortal southern bumpkin had better things to be doing.

"How long?" I mouthed to Thalia.

Fingers spread wide, she lifted her hand off the table twice. Ten minutes. This plan we'd concocted better go off without a hitch. And my hunch better be right. I was desperate to get home.

The birthday girl made her way to the center of the dance floor where Josh, MC for the night, announced her arrival and wished her a happy birthday. The band struck up a jaunty tune and she and Eric were lost in a mass of swirling, dancing couples. Among the mass of bodies, I spotted the King of Mississippi Russell Edgington and his husband, King of Indiana, Bartlett Crowe. Russell was whispering something into Bartlett's ear and Bartlett was laughing heartily as they waltzed together. I saw the Queen of Minnesota and then nearby a number of other vampires I'd met in Louisiana back in the day. Maybe they'd defected to Oklahoma with Eric's move.

I gasped and kicked Thalia under the table and nodded toward Sigrid who was twirling around the dance floor with the mysterious Christof Mirzoyan, her vampire sibling, leading the way. Disappointingly, though unsurprisingly, Thalia failed to react. I huffed and hailed the passing waiter for another champagne. A fly could land on her nose and Thalia still wouldn't flinch.

I had enough time to finish my drink before Thalia and I ducked out of a side door unseen. Once we got outside, she stalked ahead. We walked the long path through the ornamental garden and then across the grass to the gazebo. I carried my heels in one hand and kept up with the speedy vamp in my bare feet. It was necessary to go barefoot, otherwise my heels would've been sinking into the soft earth. My right big toe poked a hole in my sheer black stocking. Shoot.

Thalia pulled back a part of the trellis at the base of the gazebo and withdrew the bag she'd stowed before we'd arrived at the ballroom.

I pulled on the pair of tennis shoes I had packed in there and handed Thalia a crowbar. I consulted my tablet, until I was sure of the direction of the forgotten shack and pointed Thalia in the right direction. She grabbed a hold of my waist and we sped at vampire speed toward the forest.

Thalia let out a loud grunt and then we toppled backward to the ground.

"What the ever-loving heck are you doing?" I hissed.

She glared at me and dragged me back to my feet. "We were repelled." The usual slick dark waves of her hair were ruffled, and her leather jacket was askew. She looked almost… well, not human exactly, but not like the tightly zipped and terrifying vampire she was.

I let out a champagne-infused giggle and grabbed a hold of her hand. "So you say."

I walked slowly toward the edge of the forest and felt the swelling influence of the ward. I pictured the shack nestled deep between the trees as I'd seen it in my photos, and then I pictured Eric and Freyda arm-in-arm schmoozing across the ballroom somewhere behind me. It's repelling effect was significantly greater than any lousy ward. I guided Thalia and myself deeper and deeper through the trees until we were spitting distance from the shack.

"This is dangerous," Thalia hissed, tugging on my arm. "We mustn't proceed."

"Oh, hush now. You don't really mean that otherwise you'd be dragging me out of here ten seconds ago." Emboldened by booze and by how sure my voice sounded—because really, I wanted nothing more than to find something better to do—I squeezed the petite vampire's hand and clenched down hard on my teeth until I pulled us the remaining feet toward the shack. I focused on breathing steadily, and not the overwhelming urge to run or faint or hurl.

With a cautious hand, Thalia touched the lock and it sizzled at her fingers.

"What did you do that for?" I asked.

She shrugged and examined her fingers. "Curious."

"What are you, a cat?"

Thalia scowled at me and then brought the crowbar down hard. The lock smashed off the door in an explosion of splinters and she kicked it open. We looked inside the shack and then looked at each other, a slow grin spreading on my face.

"Bingo."