I couldn't sleep, my mind turning over the evening's events. After placing the bombshell in my lap that we were the ones who had to find five million dollars' worth of missing gold, Sigrid had then proceeded to bring in all the palace's human staff, one-by-one, and the rest of my evening was spent brain-deep inside their thoughts. Which was completely fruitless. Even Sigrid admitted she didn't expect to uncover much in the palace; no one on staff, and certainly none of the donors, had anything to do with Queen Freyda's financials and certainly none even knew about the Queen's horde of gold.

The donors had been last, flouncing in one at a time. They were less trashy than I expected, which I found inexplicably aggravating. The mere fact that they even roused any sort of emotion in me served to make me even more annoyed. This is just a job, I told myself. Just a job, and you are here to do your job. No moral judgement required.

While that 'I-am-woman-hear-me-roar' part of me initially bristled at the idea that the only aspiration these highly-glamoured and glamorous girls seemed to have involved being a food source and plaything at the end of some vampire's fangs… My impression of them quickly changed. Through the course of my interviews with them, I discovered they were in fact well provided for and lived in the palace on short-rotating contracts. One even told me how she was encouraged to go back to college when her contract finished up the next month. I saw from her mind it was Eric who had suggested it. How noble.

Interestingly, though most had a few bites visible on their neck, only one was covered with the evidence of many scarred and healed bites... A snooty girl named Claire Something-or-rather. Her neck was absolutely covered in telltale pale scars of old bites, plus not a small amount of healing ones. It was a lot. Even Sigrid seemed to curl her lip in distaste at the sight of her. I wondered whose favorite she was. I'd moved quickly on to questioning her otherwise. It wasn't my business.

In bed, my brain throbbed from the evening's work. It had been a long time since I'd used my ability like that. In fact, I rarely used it at all nowadays if I could help it. I was content to keep my shields up when company was around, and down when I was alone. Sometimes I forgot I was telepathic. Very briefly. For milliseconds. It was freeing.

For tomorrow night, Sigrid and I were to travel to the robbed credit union and interrogate staff there. I was over it already; so ready to get back home to my corner of Louisiana and settle back into my little life. Although a small nosy part of me had to admit that I was curious. Who was ballsy enough to steal from a queen? And how desperate must Freyda be that she had to rely on me to find her missing gold? Surely, that must gall her. If Sigrid's information was to be believed, then Freyda's reign must be very weak. Hanging by a thin financial thread, her position was precarious. It was difficult to comprehend with Eric by her side. Which only raised more questions, ones that I wasn't intent on asking, rhetorically or otherwise.

The moon was bright on this particular evening, so I pulled the drapes and gauzy privacy curtain open and took in the stars from where I lay in bed. The bed was positioned close to the windows, affording me a lovely view. The stars weren't as bright as back home in Bon Temps, or even as bright from the bedroom window in the living quarters above my bar in Minden. But they were still pretty. Back home, I'd often lay in bed after a busy night at The Dogwood bar and stare at the stars, allowing their stalwart blinking to slow the busyness of my mind after a long day's work. I briefly wondered if I'd have time to explore Oklahoma City through the day tomorrow but dismissed the idea. I didn't want to be here, I reminded myself. I didn't like it here. This wasn't a holiday. This was a working trip. A means to an end. A necessary evil. An awful, bitter experience.

I stared at the darkened sky until my swirling thoughts began to slow.

I was pulled sometime later from my mental wanderings by car lights flashing down the driveway. Feeling safe from my dark vantage on the second floor, I drew the gauze privacy curtain down into its original place, save a crack, and propped myself up on my elbow, watching as a black town car parked on the circular cobblestone driveway. Eric and Freyda emerged from the car, Eric offering his arm to her. My suite was situated on the eastern wing of the mansion, so I was able to watch them in profile. Freyda looped her hand through Eric's arm, a natural gesture. His bow tie was undone, the top button of his shirt opened, and Freyda was saying something to him while laughing, the honeyed cadence of her voice reaching through the opened crack of my window. Eric replied, and then they both laughed.

They crossed the drive and up the front steps. At the last moment Eric's head tilted toward the direction of my window and I froze, my heart's stumbling march coming to a standstill. As quickly as he had turned to my window, he looked away again and the couple disappeared from view inside the wide front doors. I laid back down, releasing my breath with a whoosh.

I rolled over, my back to the window. The stars had suddenly lost their appeal. Sleep beckoned.

•───── ─────•

I woke late in the day, the sun streaming through the windows. I'd fallen asleep with the thick drapes still left open. I rolled over and blinked blearily at the window, orienting myself. I was in Oklahoma. I was at Freyda's palace. My ex's new wife had hired me to find her missing gold.

Life was just great. Peachy keen.

As reality and my less-than-stellar circumstances slowly returned, I noticed how busy it was outside my window. It was noisy too. I heard a mower and more than one weed whacker. I pulled back the lace curtains. The lawn on the other side of the driveway was crawling with gardening staff and there was a large truck where workmen were unloading boxes onto dollys. Two of the guys rolled in the freight through the front doors. A third man followed behind with a rolled-up rug on his shoulder.

I dragged myself from the confines of my regrettably comfy bed and showered in the attached marble bathroom. I dressed again in business casual: black slacks, white button up and a rose-colored blazer. These were a new purchase—though not for the trip—I'd bought the outfit for my failed attempt at acquiring a business loan a month earlier. I brushed my hair out and blow dried it straight, pulling it back off my face and into place with black silk headband I'd picked up from Tara's a while ago.

I moved slowly, taking my time to organize my thoughts as I got ready for the day and coming night. I felt like I'd swallowed a brick. I hadn't expected the emotional toll of my visit here; I mean, of course, I'd expected it to be unpleasant, but not so… I struggled to find the right word. I was being stupid, I decided as I walked down the plush carpeted halls and made my way downstairs to kitchen area. (I'd been instructed to make my way there for daytime meals, as it was served cafeteria style for live-in human staff.) I refused to engage in self-pity. I was a strong, independent young woman. Working this job was a boon—it meant I'd have the money to be even more independent and strong. It just didn't feel that way. What I felt was small. And feeling small made me angry.

I sat alone in a small communal dining area that adjoined the kitchen. Through broad, sweeping windows I looked directly onto a prettily landscaped cottage garden, alive and vibrant with spring color. An interesting feature for a vampire's palace, since Freyda could never witness her garden in its daytime splendor. I recalled the garden at King of Mississippi Russell Edgington's mansion in Jackson as being more focused on interesting garden features, landscaping and hedge-work rather than flowers.

Breakfast was a scrambled egg, a cream cheese bagel and fruit platter brought over by a kitchen attendant I'd interviewed the night before. He was young, working as an apprentice and he nodded his head politely before leaving me, his mind already occupied with a large array of tasks he had to complete for the day between his usual jobs. As I'd already gathered while lying in bed that morning, the staff were preparing for something. Some big event. After finishing the last of the coffee from my French press, I loaded up the tray with my dishes and followed the path he took into the kitchen. The kitchen was commercial sized and stainless steel, and I navigated around several stacks of cardboard boxes in order to deposit my dishes in the sink. Staff were like bees, busy and moving from station to station unpacking goods as more uniformed men brought more boxes in from the truck outside.

The kitchen attendant appeared at my side and took the empty tray from my hands.

"What's going on?" I asked. "Y'all planning a party, or something?"

He regarded me as if I were mentally deficient. "Yes," he said, though he may as well have been saying 'duh'. "The Queen's birthday is in three nights."

He left me and I took a second to let that revelation absorb. A birthday party?

I laughed.

A different kitchen attendant walked past with a carton of Royal Blend synthetic blood and looked at me strangely. I fought to suppress my giggles, but it was useless. Was it a big birthday? Was she celebrating her 200th? Since her turning? Since her birth? Or did she just pluck some arbitrary date? It seemed absurd. My 30th was next year and I barely felt I had cause to celebrate it. I'd never even heard of a vampire celebrating a birthday. It hardly seemed worth the bother. The kitchen attendant briefly wondered if I was crazy as she passed by me. I couldn't blame the poor girl. I'd held her hand last night as I probed her mind, and she had no idea what I was doing then either. Whatever. I wasn't here to make friends.

For the rest of the afternoon I walked the gardens. The palace was abuzz, and I was underfoot wherever I traveled. Was this the reason for all the rush on acquiring my telepathy services? Freyda had to get the gold back before the party? To fund the party? Lord, it seemed extravagant, that was for sure. She'd never mentioned anything, though. My contract never hinted to any sort of extreme urgency. And it wasn't as if Freyda had said anything of substance to me before she flounced out the night before for their 'date'. Well, shoot. Hopefully tonight turned up some real leads for Sigrid to pursue.

Sigrid herself was a wildcard and I didn't know what to make of her. She knew the ins and outs of the palace. Moreso than everyone else I met last night… Though she seemed to be barely restraining her annoyance and anger at every turn. I was here to help. Why was she actively working against me? Maybe I was stomping on her turf? What I did know for sure was that I was really out of practice when it came to dealing with vampires. I barely saw Bill these days, I never saw Pam, and after her year of guarding me was up, Karin disappeared with nary a farewell.

The gardens were impressive and huge, though a little overdone for my tastes. I wandered down to the far end of the property where the grass grew wilder, and I found a gazebo with circular seating. I stretched out and pulled my pants up to my knees, letting the sun warm my calves. I shielded my eyes against the late afternoon sun and looked past the tall ornamental trees and thick shrubbery of the forest; it seemed as though there was a body of water on the other side, a small river or pond. I leaned back against the railing and dozed for a few minutes before my phone began buzzing in my pocket.

"There's a shipment here of IPA and they won't let me sign for it," came Kennedy's stressed voice through the line.

I sighed. "Alright." It was a new order from a small craft brewery. They were probably wary about me not being there to accept it. "The delivery guy still there? Put him on, would you?"

I managed to sort it out with the driver. It turned out he was in fact the part-owner of the small brewery and was overly cautious. Once resolved, I chatted again to Kennedy about the takings over the last two days. She informed me Sam had stuck his head in the evening before to check everything was okay, which was a relief. Things were a little weird between us at the moment. Money was tight. We were snippy with each other. And his girlfriend did not like me.

Yep. That ol' chestnut. Too bad I didn't have the foresight to both wish Sam alive and to also have better taste in women that fateful night at Alcide's with the cluviel dor.

I met Thalia back in my suite at sundown where she resumed her silent judgement of me while I ate the dinner delivered to my room by the same kitchen attendant from the morning.

"Did you know Freyda is having a birthday party here on Friday night?" I asked Thalia.

She snorted with derision and folded her arms across her chest. "Fledgling vampires," she spat. "Embarrassment to whole species."

I grinned around a bite of my pasta. What a hoot. Glad I wasn't the only one who thought it was stupid.

Sigrid met us shortly after, her cheeks pink, having fed as a precaution, I guessed, and we headed as a trio to the enormous garage attached to the mansion. The palace was even busier now that it had been through the day: vampires, weres, and humans alike were moving furniture in and out of a large room on the far side of the palace. I caught a flash from one human's mind—the room they were in was a ballroom. Big enough to feature a balconied viewing floor that encompassed the entire room. Good grief. There were mansions, and then there were mansions. I took back everything I'd thought about Freyda's palace not being as overdone as Sophie-Anne's. Admittedly, Sophie-Anne's style bordered on gauche… but Freyda? She was just plain over the top. Everything here was bigger than it needed to be. Why did royals even need a palace? Was it for show? To prove their wealth and prowess to other vampires? I snorted. Yes, it was the vampire equivalent of overcompensating for something. In this instance, wealth. I wondered how she paid for this all. How did Eric's finances figure into it all? Maybe he was bankrolling her birthday shindig. Thankfully, I'd seen neither hide of hair of Freyda and Eric since the night before. Not that it mattered and not that I wanted to. I forced myself to press those questions away, as far as I knew, those questions had nothing to do with the investigation at hand.

With me in the front seat, Thalia in the back and Sigrid at the helm of the black SUV, we navigated out of the leafy, sparsely populated neighborhood and toward the city.

"Did you engage in reconnaissance today?" Sigrid asked as we pulled out onto a busy freeway.

"Yes," I said, though I hadn't really thought of it like that until now. "It was… busy here today. The only people who I encountered, outside of those I read last night, were delivery people bringing stuff for the party."

I heard a strange sort of strangled noise from the back seat. I looked over my shoulder, but Thalia's face was an impassive mask, her eyes trained out the window.

"Do y'all normally just let people in and out of the palace while you're all at rest?" I asked Sigrid.

"Yes. There are two-natured guards posted at every entrance and everyone that enters is pre-cleared and required to sign in at the gate."

"But not at the back of the property."

Sigrid glanced at me briefly before returning her attention to the road. "Clarify."

"At the back of the property where the forest is. There are no guards and it's quite overgrown. Someone could sneak in from there." I'd scoped that whole area of the woods while sitting in the gazebo at lunch.

"There is a river…" she said, a small of amount of uncertainty peppering her voice. "And the property is adequately warded along that edge. You did not sense any magic?"

I shook my head in response.

"It's of little consequence. There has been no theft upon the actual property."

I nodded. "I know. But what if someone were able to do their own reconnaissance, accessing the property from there?"

"Good luck to anyone who could make it past the wards. They're heavily magicked. Any interlopers who did would be quickly discovered and swiftly dealt with," Sigrid replied, swerving between lanes to get around a large truck carrying lumber.

"Something to consider on Friday night," Thalia's cool voice came from the back seat, "...before the great celebrations."

I stifled a smile and had to turn sideways in my seat and pretend to examine the view from my window.

"Freyda's party is in celebration of her 160th birthday and to showcase the completed renovations of her palace," came Sigrid' eventual cool reply.

"Renovations?"

"Yes," she confirmed, "for the last two years there has been much work to enlarge and extend the palace outside of its original design. It was originally a human dwelling; now it includes the receiving room where we first met, the ballroom, an industrial kitchen, and significant subterranean dwellings for vampire residents and guests."

"Two years…"

"Since the Northman arrived," Thalia remarked.

"Yes," Sigrid said, her lips twisting.

•───── ─────•

Oklahoma Corporate Credit Union was situated in an unassuming building on an unassuming street—a sad concrete affair in the business district of Oklahoma City proper. A thin, worried woman with curly red hair ushered us inside. She was dressed in a red and white uniform and led us through a surprisingly modern customer area, through the back to an open plan office area, and from there into a conference room featuring a large oak table where numerous nervous-looking staff members were seated and waiting.

"This is Ms. Stackhouse," Sigrid said, gesturing to me as I came to a stop beside her. "She is a consultant hired by the Queen. She will be assisting me this evening with my investigations." Sigrid placed her palms down with a slap on the table. One older woman flinched and whimpered. "Together she and I will uncover the circumstances surrounding the theft and find who perpetrated the crime. I suggest if any of you know anything that you reveal that information now."

The words sounded deadly coming from Sigrid's mouth; her accent pronounced, though there was a slight lisp around her fangs.

"You've already interviewed us... Twice," said a middle-aged man, whose white shirt was pulled tight at the buttons around his broad stomach. His name tag read Brent. He sat with his shoulders hunched, hands twisting in his lap.

"Yes, but Ms. Stackhouse here has a particular set of skills ensuring that we will find out every last scrap of information."

A dozen sets of eyes turned my way. All of them immediately fearful. I lifted my hand to offer a slight wave and a tight, strained smile. Brent wondered if I was the good cop to Sigrid's bad cop, his eyes already straying to my chest as he imagined how that might play out in some lurid sort of way. Ew. I narrowed my eyes at him and his thoughts stumbled with my sudden change in disposition. He then wondered if I was a torturer. This pleased him equally as much.

The bank manager, Cindy, who had ushered us in through the front door remained in the conference room with the staff members as Sigrid and I led them one-by-one into a private office for interrogation. At my insistence, I told Thalia to wait in the conference room too, I figured it might be too intimidating for the poor employees to be trapped in a small room with two scary vamps and me.

Each interview went a little like this: once the door clicked shut, the employee would just about pee their pants in fright, Sigrid would offer them a chance to confess anything they haven't revealed so far, they would either say they had no further information to offer or instead would just divulge information completely unrelated or useless to our investigations, then Sigrid would glamour them into acquiescence, and I would listen in as they replayed the day's events and explained them to me. I drew out details they weren't aware of and asked them to recall sections they only touched on briefly.

With Sigrid's glamour and my telepathy, we eked out and raked over every last detail, even from the two security guards who discovered the theft overnight. All the staff were edgy, particularly Brent, and I could sense they were all glamoured at some point in the past, which I informed Sigrid who nodded in confirmation. "A necessary precaution when doing business with vampires," she explained. So there was nothing. No clues. No hidden insight that Sigrid had missed.

Nothing.

The night of the robbery no one saw or heard anything. It had been business as usual that day. They locked up as per normal protocol in the evening. Then at exactly 2:25am, the power to the security closed-circuit system had been mysteriously cut, the back-up systems failed to kick in, the corresponding alarms that should've alerted the necessary folk never went off and by the time anyone had realized it was too late. The vault hadn't been prized open, someone had just opened it and waltzed on in. The gold was gone.

When the last interviewee finished and skittered back to the conference room, I turned to Sigrid.

"Why not involve the police? Surely the bank has a protocol for this sort of thing? Has anyone checked for fingerprints?"

Sigrid narrowed her eyes at me. "I am the investigator."

Uh-huh, right. Of course. Vampires and their misplaced sense of authority.

"So you're trained in forensics and know how to inspect crime scenes?"

"There were no prints in the vault. No unusual scents. There is nothing further the police would be capable of finding."

I sighed and followed her around to the vault. Cindy opened it up for us. It was still virtually empty. I stepped inside and toed a wooden crate where the gold must've once been stacked.

"It still doesn't answer my original question," I quietly said to Sigrid. Something unknown about this whole thing hovered. Something I wasn't quite grasping, it felt like there was a question mark hovering in the air above the crate. The edgy staff. The glamour…

"Leave," Sigrid snapped to Cindy, who didn't need to be told twice. "The human authorities will not be involved," Sigrid explained as soon as we were alone. "No one must know. It will reflect poorly upon the Queen."

I folded my arms across my chest and tilted my head thoughtfully at the vampire. "You're not tellin' me something."

Sigrid's arms were also similarly crossed, but she didn't react at all to my words, not one iota. Her face was as still as a glassy pond. The lack of reaction was as good as a twitchy tell on a nervous human.

"Of course, it will reflect poorly on the Queen..." I said, sounding out my train of thought as I went. "But vampires talk, don't they? They all know I'm here. Certainly all the Oklahoma vamps do. The palace staff have an idea I'm investigating something, and you made no attempt to glamour away my presence from their memory last night. So if vampires are going to find out then they'd as good as know by now. Your logic doesn't make sense. This is already reflecting poorly on the Queen."

She stared at me, lips settling into a thin line. "You are more astute than you appear," Sigrid said eventually.

"I don't like being kept in the dark. I really don't like. Especially if it impedes my ability to do the job I'm paid to do. So tell me. Why haven't you involved the police? The FBI?"

More tense moments passed. I wondered if Thalia was still sitting in the conference room. I felt sorry for the bank staff if they were left out there alone with her. Thalia was truly intimidating… I thought back to her days back at Fangtasia and her fan club, although, yes, sometimes that gruff exterior of hers backfired.

"We cannot let the authorities know because of the credit union's primary activities for the Queen," Sigrid said, drawing me from my thoughts. Her narrow features were resigned.

I sighed impatiently. "Please. Enough with the ambiguity. Speak plainly."

The clock ticked and I heard the murmur of conversation in the main office area. I realized the staff were getting ready to leave.

"The Credit Union operates as a front for the Queen's money laundering," Sigrid clipped.

My jaw dropped.

A/N: I'm planning to post twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays (or thereabouts!)

(Also, I feel the need to clarify that this story begins two years after the final SVM book 'Dead Ever After'. I refuse to accept the coda 'After Dead' as canon—it straight up didn't happen, so any events detailed in that little money-grab book never occurred. If you recall, at the end of Dead Ever After, the story concluded with Sookie and Sam getting together, and Sookie thinking that she and Sam might soon become an official item, if she so wished.