I believed I knew Eric a little, maybe as much as a human can know a vampire, which doesn't mean my knowledge was profound. I didn't believe he wanted to take over the state, or he would have done so. I did think his power meant there was a giant target pinned to his back. I needed to try to sleep. I glanced at the clock again. An hour and a half since I'd talked to Eric.
Bill glided into my room quite silently.
"What's up?" I asked, trying to keep my voice very quiet, very calm, though every nerve in my body had started shrieking.
"I'm uneasy," he said in his cool voice, and I almost laughed. "Pam had to leave for Fangtasia. She called me to take her place here."
"Why?"
He sat in the chair in the corner. It was pretty dark in my room, but the curtains weren't drawn completely shut and I got some illumination from the yard's security light. There was a night-light in the bathroom, too, and I could make out the contours of his body and the blur of his face. Bill had a little glow, like all vampires do in my eyes.
"Pam couldn't get Cleo on the phone," he said. "Eric left the club to run an errand, and Pam couldn't raise him, either. But I got his voice mail; I'm sure he'll call back. It's Cleo not answering that's the rub."
"Pam and Cleo are friends?"
"No, not at all," he said, matter-of-factly. "But Pam should be able to talk to her at her all-night grocery. Cleo always answers."
"Why was Pam trying to reach her?" I asked.
"They call each other every night," Bill said. "Then Cleo calls Arla Yvonne. They have a chain. It should not be broken, not in these days." Bill stood up with a speed that I couldn't follow. "Listen!" he whispered, his voice as light on my ear as a moth wing. "Do you hear?"
I didn't hear jack shit. I held still under the covers, wishing passionately that this whole thing would just go away. Weres, vampires, trouble, strife... But no such luck. "What do you hear?" I asked, trying to be as quiet as Bill was being, an effort doomed in the attempt.
"Someone's coming," he said.
And then I heard a knock on the front door. It was a very quiet knock.
I threw back the covers and got up. I couldn't find my slippers because I was so rattled. I started for the bedroom door on my bare feet. The night was chilly, and I hadn't turned on the heat yet; my soles pressed coldly against the polished wood of the floor.
"I'll answer the door," Bill said, and he was ahead of me without my having seen him move.
"Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea," I muttered, and followed him. I wondered where Amelia was: asleep upstairs or on the living room couch? I hoped she was only asleep. I was so spooked by that time that I imagined she might be dead.
Bill glided silently through the dark house, down the hall, to the living room (which still smelled like popcorn), to the front door, and then he looked through the peephole, which for some reason I found funny. I had to slap a hand over my mouth to keep from giggling.
No one shot Bill through the peephole. No one tried to batter the door down. No one screamed.
The continuing silence was breaking me out in goose bumps. I didn't even see Bill move. His cool voice came from right beside my ear. "It is a very young woman. Her hair is dyed white or blond, and it's very short and dark at the roots. She's skinny. She's human. She's scared."
She wasn't the only one.
I tried like hell to think who my middle-of-the-night caller could be. Suddenly I thought I might know. "Frannie," I breathed. "Quinn's sister. Maybe."
"Let me in," a girl's voice said. "Oh, please let me in."
It was just like a ghost story I'd read once. Every hair on my arms stood up.
"I have to tell you what's happened to Quinn," Frannie said, and that decided me on the spot.
"Open the door," I said to Bill in my normal voice. "We have to let her in."
"She's human," Bill said, as if to say, "How much trouble can she be?" He unlocked the front door.
I won't say Frannie tumbled in, but she sure didn't waste any time getting through the door and slamming it behind her. I hadn't had a good first impression of Frannie, who was long on the aggression and attitude and short on the charm, but I'd come to know her a fraction better as she sat at Quinn's bedside in the hospital after the explosion. She'd had a hard life, and she loved her brother.
"What's happened?" I asked sharply as Frannie stumbled to the nearest chair and sat down.
"You would have a vampire here," she said. "Can I have a glass of water? Then I'll try to do what Quinn wants."
I hurried to the kitchen and got her a drink. I turned on the light in the kitchen, but even when I came back to the living room, we kept it dark.
"Where's your car?" Bill asked.
"It broke down about a mile back," she said. "But I couldn't wait with it. I called a tow truck and left the keys in the ignition. I hope to God they get it off the road and out of sight."
"Tell me right now what's happening," I said.
"Short or long version?"
"Short."
"Some vampires from Vegas are coming to take over Louisiana."
It was a showstopper.
Chapter 11
Bill's voice was very fierce. "Where, when, how many?"
"They've taken out some of the sheriffs already," Frannie said, and I could tell there was just a hint of enjoyment at getting to deliver this momentous news. "Smaller forces are taking out the weaker ones while a larger force gathers to surround Fangtasia to deal with Eric."
Bill was on his cell phone before the words had finished leaving Frannie's mouth, and I was left gaping at him. I had come so late to the realization of how weak Louisiana's situation was that it seemed to me for a second that I had brought this about by thinking of it.
"How did this happen?" I asked the girl. "How did Quinn get involved? How is he? Did he send you here?"
"Of course he sent me here," she said, as if I were the stupidest person she'd ever met. "He knows you're tied to that vampire Eric, so that makes you part of the target. The Vegas vamps sent someone to have a look at you, even."
Jonathan.
"I mean, they were evaluating Eric's assets, and you were considered part of that."
"Why was this Quinn's problem?" I asked, which may not have been the clearest way to put it, but she got my meaning.
"Our mother, our goddamned screwed-up, screw-up mother," Frannie said bitterly. "You know she got captured and raped by some hunters, right? In Colorado. Like a hundred years ago." Actually, it had been maybe nineteen years ago, because that was how Frannie had been conceived.