Chapter 10

Two hours later, Bubba and I arrived to find the main door to Eric's bar was closed. We could see movement inside, so I tried the door and found it unlocked. Eric was pacing the bar floor, engaged in a terse phone call with a supplier, while a lean woman I didn't recognize stood behind the bar at the sink, a large crate of bottled synthetic blood beside her and a plastic tub on the floor filled with empty bottles.

"Sorry, we're not open," she called. She was younger than me, bleached blonde hair shaved in an alternative style, a buzz cut at the front with longer sections at the ears and neck. She was pretty and lean like a track-athlete and wore black denim overalls with a gray tank underneath.

"I'm here to see Eric." I nodded toward the vampire in question, as he hadn't even acknowledged our arrival, he was too busy wearing out the floorboards.

"Oh!" she said, "You must be Sookie!" She dropped the empty bottle with the others in the tub and reached over to shake my hand. "I'm Solly. Eric's hired me to manage …" She trailed off and waved a hand around in a vague manner.

"The bar?"

"No," she said with a short throaty laugh, "—his life."

"You're his day person?" I said, finally clicking.

"Right. I think that's the PC term for it."

So, this was who he'd hired. Definitely not what I was expecting. The moment our skin made contact upon shaking, I knew I liked the woman. She was warm and open like a book. She had the kind of smile that was hard not to return. Her style was alternative but not in the same way as Diantha. Solly had a nose ring in each nostril and her overall look kind of reminded me of a stripped-back version of Tank Girl, that is if Tank Girl were African American.

"What's going on? Is everything ok?" I asked and nodded to the tub of bottles at her feet.

Solly picked up a full bottle of blood from the carton and popped the cap. "The bar had its first blood delivery this evening. And someone had contaminated it." She poured the contents of the bottle into the sink.

"What?" I exclaimed.

"Don't know if it's the whole pallet or just the one Eric tasted but can't take any chances."

"Contaminated how?"

"The delivery driver wasn't actually a delivery driver. Not privy to the deets but somehow, someone switched the stock or altered what Eric had ordered for something that made Eric—" here she dropped her voice to a whisper, "—violently ill." Solly mouthed the word 'vomit' to me and suddenly Eric's foul mood at the cemetery made a whole lot more sense. I'd only known Eric to vomit once, and it had appalled him then, and I couldn't imagine a second time being any better. Solly opened another bottle of blood and began pouring it out, then tossed it with the other empties.

"There goes several thousand dollars worth of stock for nothing," Eric snarled, slamming his phone down on the bar.

"Claire?" I asked.

"I can only assume."

We went upstairs to talk in private, while Bubba lingered downstairs in the bar keeping Solly company. She didn't seem to recognize him at all. I could only presume her musical proclivities didn't include 1950s rock-and-roll. Eric strode into his office ahead of me and opened a sleek wooden armoire in the corner.

"Did you find anything at the cemetery?" I asked and sat down on the plush settee at the side of the room.

"I checked all the open vaults. Messy and fruitless. I did come across one that was closed but had evidence of being opened several times. It's difficult to ascertain who'd been in there. They all stink. Generations of dead have been laid to rest, coupled with animal activity… Can you imagine? Smells like shit and decomposition." Eric turned and pulled off his t-shirt, grimy with cemetery dust and dirt. The muscles in his back rippled. I dropped my gaze to my fingernails and began pushing at my cuticles. He continued, "I found one that had recently been opened and, you'll be interested to know, there was dried blood on the floor, some on the walls. Relatively fresh."

"How fresh?" I lifted my gaze in surprise.

Eric turned a little as he responded, unbuckling his belt. "In the last decade."

"That's not fresh!"

"Compared to the other remains housed in there, it is. Matches the timeline of the attacks."

Eric stepped out of his jeans and tossed them on the floor next to his abandoned shirt. I realized then he was entirely nude and raised a hand over my eyes.

"Honestly, Eric!"

"I remind you you've seen me like this dozens of times."

"That was different."

"Suppose I can't blame a woman for her uncontrollable urges around my naked form."

I looked up to see him smirking at me from over his shoulder. I flipped him the finger.

"So that was all you found? Recent-ish blood?" I asked.

"You're neglecting to ask a key question."

"Please put some clothes on?"

He chuckled and turned back to his closet muttering good-naturedly about American puritanism. I stared thoughtfully this time as he pulled on a new pair of jeans and a shirt. He was definitely preening for his audience, but I was distracted (as much as a red-blooded woman could be, considering the circumstances). What was it that I was neglecting to ask?

"Oh!" It came to me all of a sudden. "Whose blood was it? Or, wait… what sort of blood?"

Eric finished threading his belt through his new jeans, buckled it up and sat at his leather desk chair.

"It was vampire blood." He waggled his eyebrows.

"You're kidding me. Whose?"

"My nose isn't so sensitive to detect whose blood after that length of time."

I jumped up and began pacing the length of the room. "I suppose a vampire could be responsible for the attacks? But, no, that doesn't make sense... the thing I saw in Horace's mind was unlike any vampire I'd ever seen."

Eric leaned back in his chair, interlocking his fingers behind his head. "Doesn't mean a vampire wasn't involved. Time distorts memory."

"True. Trauma does as well, I guess. Things were pretty hectic in those weeks after the hurricane and flooding. Maybe his memory is warped or distorted? Or… maybe the shadow man wasn't a vampire, but happened to also attack a vampire, and that's why there's blood everywhere?"

"A vampire that also happened to be hiding out in the cemetery?"

"Why not? Where would those vampires living in the flooded areas escape to? Not like you can go to ground in New Orleans."

He nodded slowly, catching on to this idea. "Especially with how waterlogged it was here after the flood waters abated."

We regarded each other for a sober moment. And I knew our thoughts traveled along the same line. The horror of that time after Katrina. I'd seen footage on the news of coffins floating in stagnant water.

"Do you think vaults would be light tight?" I asked.

"They'd do in a pinch."

"I'll see if Agent Ray can send some forensics down there. Maybe there's some evidence there tying that vault to the missing person. Or any of the missing from that area. Shadow man theory aside, it would make the most sense that it's a vampire preying on locals in the aftermath of Katrina. And if it isn't, then maybe they'll find something else of note in there."

Eric's cell phone started buzzing on the desk, he looked at the incoming call and silenced it.

"I have to get to the palace," he said. "You know, you could ask Amelia to take a sample of the blood, and see if she can track it or divine its provenance? Find out who the vampire is."

That was a good idea, actually.

"What are you going to do about your blood?" I asked. He looked at me blankly. "The bottled blood downstairs."

Eric grimaced. "I reordered from the supplier. They won't replace the contaminated stock."

I whistled. "That's a lot of money."

"Don't remind me." He glowered.

"Honestly, Eric," I said with a shake of my head. "You need to deal with Claire now. The last thing you want is to worry about her sabotaging your bar when it opens. She might make another attempt on you on opening night."

I could tell this thought hadn't occurred to him.

I didn't envy his position. I recalled how scant my time was when I was preparing to open The Dogwood, my old bar back in Minden. There was a lot of stress leading up to the opening. First impressions were crucial for small businesses. On top of that, Eric had his duties to perform for Thalia and the state of Louisiana.

An inkling of a solution occurred to me then. It wasn't really an exact idea of how to help with his assassin problem, but more a gut feeling that I could intuit a solution if I approached this problem from a different slant. I had my obvious abilities in telepathy to help me, and yes, I had some not-inconsiderable experience with investigation… but I possessed other skills now too. Skills I was specifically honing and developing through my studies.

"Have you got any leads on Claire's whereabouts at all?" I asked.

"I don't know what would constitute a lead," he said. "I don't think the investigator is any closer to finding her since I hired him."

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. That did not surprise me.

"How did you even know to begin with that it was Claire What's-Her-Name her targeting you?" I asked.

"Claire Duvall. She left me a voicemail. Several, in fact."

That inkling of mine turned into a buzzing.

"She contacts her hitmen on burner phones from what I can tell," he continued. "There's no way to track her through them."

He was categorically wrong about that. There was always a way to track someone. You just needed to know where to start looking and which path to take.

"Does your old pal Sigrid have any idea where she might be?"

"Why do you want to know?" he asked. He stood and pocketed his phone and slid into a leather jacket hanging off the back of his chair. He paused to check his reflection on the mirror affixed to the inside door of his armoire, running a hand through his hair. No surprises, he was a smoke show.

"Why not? I can help."

"I don't want your help," he said.

"I want to help."

"I don't need your help."

"You do if you want to open on schedule and without any major hiccups."

"This is not your problem," he said firmly. "Leave it with me."

"Fine," I said. "Then, humor me—for my own curiosity. What did Sigrid tell you about her?"

He narrowed his gaze at me in the mirror, but he offered an answer all the same. "Sigrid knew nothing outside the fact that Claire left the cohort of Oklahoma donors after Freyda met the true death."

I recalled what Eric had told me about Claire being a trust fund baby, living off her father's earnings. She could be anywhere living the high life. Nice for those who have endless coffers to draw from.

I seized upon that notion. "Do you still have those voice mails?"

He nodded and closed the armoire door.

"Why are you smiling like that?" he asked.

I stood to leave, not bothering to supress it any longer. "Don't delete them," I said. "Actually, back them up—do it right now. Upload them on your laptop over there. Maybe email a copy of them to Pam or something."

"Don't do anything stupid," he warned. "I don't need to worry about you too."

"I'm not getting involved." I said, though my smile was broad and totally gave me away. "I'll get out of your hair. Tell Thalia and Rasul I say hi."

He grunted. I paused at the doorway and looked back at him. My smile fell. We regarded each other for a few drawn out seconds. The only light in the office was his desk lamp, and it cast his handsome features in a warm glow.

"Anything else you wish to interrogate me about?" he asked. I saw that same faint uncertainty in his gaze as before.

I wished I could've said something right then. Something that would change the gulf that had appeared and rapidly widened between us. Too bad any words remotely close to being profound felt stuck like concrete in my throat.

"Pick your dirty laundry off the floor," I said. "Solly is no Bobby Burnham. She doesn't need to be doing your literal dirty work."

I took the steps downstairs quickly, two at a time.

In the main bar, Bubba was helping Solly empty the bottles and they were chatting up a storm. I was relieved to see that in my absence nothing had gone awry with Bubba. We hadn't properly tested the bounds of my curse-negating effect on him, but I was relieved to note that it permeated the walls and floors of the building.

"This guy's a hoot," Solly said grinning at me.

Bubba gave me an odd look, maybe noting my change of mood. He set a full bottle back in the carton.

"Ready to go, Miss Sookie?"

I could only nod in reply, I picked my handbag up from where I left it on the bar top. We bade Solly goodnight, and I called out to Eric upstairs that I'd see him soon. We made our way back home in silence. Bubba might not be all there at times, but boy he was excellent at reading the room.

Driving back in the car, the streets were now virtually empty, and it felt fitting that New Orleans chose that exact time to start raining. I had to make myself right with how things currently were with Eric. I had to respect his wishes. If he wanted to maintain a distance, then fine. I could deal with my physical attraction to him. I did so quite successfully long before we'd ever become an item. I knew that I could manage. It was all the rest of it that was the trouble. Not so much the lack of romance… just the lack of him. He kept me at arm's length now, and it hurt more than I cared to admit.

Beside me, Bubba began humming the beginning refrain from Always On My Mind.