"Calls? Where to?"
"Gas stations, all along the route from New Orleans to Bon Temps."
He turned to stare at me, but I pointed just in time for Quinn to apply the brakes.
A lion strolled across the drive.
"Okay, what's that? Animal? Or shifter?" I was edgier by the minute.
"Animal," Quinn said.
Scratch the idea of dogs roaming the enclosure. I hoped the wall was high enough to keep the lion in.
We parked in front of the former monastery, which was a very large two-story building. It hadn't been built for beauty, but for utility, so it was a largely featureless structure. There was one small door in the middle of the fa?ade, and small windows placed regularly. Again, fairly easy to defend.
Outside the small door stood six more vampires, three in fancy but unmatching clothes - surely Louisiana bloodsuckers - and three more from Arkansas, in their glaringly garish outfits.
"That's just butt-ugly," I said.
"But easy to see, even in the dark," Quinn said, looking as if he were thinking deep, significant thoughts.
"Duh," I said. "Isn't that the point? So they'll instantly... oh." I mulled it over. "Yeah," I said. "No one would wear anything close to that, on purpose or by accident. Under any circumstances. Unless it was really important to be instantly identifiable."
Quinn said, "It's possible that Peter Threadgill is not devoted to Sophie-Anne."
I gave a squawk of laughter just as two Louisiana vampires opened our car doors in a move so coordinated it must have been rehearsed. Melanie, the guard vampire I'd met at the queen's downtown headquarters, took my hand to help me from the car, and she smiled at me. She looked a lot better out of the overwhelming SWAT gear. She was wearing a pretty yellow dress with low heels. Now that she wasn't wearing a helmet, I could see her hair was short, intensely curly, and light brown.
She took a deep, dramatic breath as I passed, and then made an ecstatic face. "Oh, the odor of the fairy!" she exclaimed. "It makes my heart sing!"
I swatted at her playfully. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. Vampires, as a whole, are not noted for their sense of humor.
"Cute dress," Rasul said. "Kind of on the daring side, huh?"
Chester said, "Can't be too daring for me. You look really tasty."
I thought it couldn't be a coincidence that the three vampires I'd met at the queen's headquarters were the three vampires on door duty tonight. I couldn't figure out what that could mean, though. The three Arkansas vampires were silent, regarding the to-and-fro between us with cold eyes. They were not in the same relaxed and smiling mood as their fellows.
Something definitely off-kilter here. But with the acute vampire hearing all around, there wasn't anything to say about it.
Quinn took my arm. We walked into a long hall that seemed to run nearly the length of the building. A Thread-gill vampire was standing at the door of a room that seemed to serve as a reception area.
"Would you like to check your bag?" she asked, obviously put out at being relegated to a hat-check girl.
"No, thanks," I said, and thought she was going to pull it out from under my arm.
"May I search it?" she asked. "We screen for weapons."
I stared at her, always a risky thing to do to a vampire. "Of course not. I have no weapons."
"Sookie," Quinn said, trying not to sound alarmed. "You have to let her look in your purse. It's procedure."
I glared at him. "You could have told me," I said sharply.
The door guard, who was a svelte young vamp with a figure that challenged the cut of the white pants, seized my purse with an air of triumph. She turned it out over a tray, and its few contents clattered to the metal surface: a compact, a lipstick, a tiny tube of glue, a handkerchief, a ten-dollar bill, and a tampon in a rigid plastic applicator, completely covered in plastic wrap.
Quinn was not unsophisticated enough to turn red, but he did glance discreetly away. The vampire, who had died long before women carried such items in their purses, asked me its purpose and nodded when I explained. She repacked my little evening bag and handed it to me, indicating with a hand gesture that we should proceed down the hall. She'd turned to the people who'd come in behind us, a Were couple in their sixties, before we'd even exited the room.
"What are you up to?" Quinn asked, in the quietest possible voice, as we moved along the corridor.
"Do we have to pass through any more security?" I asked, in a voice just as hushed.
"I don't know. I don't see any up ahead."
"I have to do something," I said. "Excuse me, while I find the nearest ladies' room." I tried to tell him, with my eyes, and with the pressure of my hand on his arm, that in a few minutes everything would be all right, and I sincerely hoped that was the truth. Quinn was clearly not happy with me, but he waited outside the ladies' room (God knows what that had been when the building was a monastery) while I ducked into one of the stalls and made a few adjustments. When I came out, I'd tossed the tampon container into the little bin in the stall, and one of my wrists had been rebandaged. My purse was a little heavier.
The door at the end of the corridor led into the very large room that had been the monks' refectory. Though the room was still walled with stone and large pillars supported the roof, three on the left and three on the right, the rest of the decor was considerably different now. The middle of the room was cleared for dancing, and the floor was wooden. There was a dais for musicians close to the refreshments table, and another dais at the opposite end of the room for the royalty.
Around the sides of the room were chairs in conversational groupings. The whole room was decorated in white and blue, the colors of Louisiana. One of the walls had murals depicting scenes from around the state: a swamp scene, which made me shudder; a Bourbon Street montage; a field being plowed and lumber being cut; and a fisherman hoisting up a net in the Gulf Coast. These were all scenes featuring humans, I thought, and wondered what the thinking was behind that. Then I turned to look at the wall surrounding the doorway I'd just entered, and I saw the vampire side of Louisiana life: a group of happy vampires with fiddles under their chins, playing away; a vampire police officer patrolling the French Quarter; a vampire guide leading tourists through one of the Cities of the Dead. No vamps snacking on humans, no vamps drinking anything, I noticed. This was a statement in public relations. I wondered if it really fooled anyone. All you had to do was sit down at a supper table with vampires, and you'd be reminded how different they were, all right.