I was sure the voice was Pam's. She'd sounded remarkably bored. I pressed three.
"Fangtasia, where all your undead dreams come true," said one of the fangbangers. "This is Elvira. How may I direct you?"
Elvira, my ass. "This is Sookie Stackhouse. I need to speak with Eric," I said.
"Could Clancy help you?" Elvira asked.
"No."
Elvira seemed stumped.
"The master is very busy," she said, as if that would be hard for a human like me to understand.
Elvira was definitely a newbie. Or maybe I was getting kind of arrogant. I was irritated with "Elvira."
"Listen," I said, trying to sound pleasant. "You get Eric on the phone in two minutes or he'll be mighty unhappy with you."
"Well," Elvira said. "You don't have to be a bitch about it."
"Evidently I do."
"I'm putting you on hold," Elvira said viciously. I glanced at the employee door of the bar. I needed to hustle.
Click. "This is Eric," he said. "Is this my former lover?"
Okay, even that made things inside me thud and shiver in excitement. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," I said, proud of how unshaken I sounded. "Listen, Eric, for what it's worth, I had a visit today from a New Orleans bigwig named Copley Carmichael. He'd been involved with Sophie-Anne in some business negotiations about rebuilding the headquarters. He wants to establish a relationship with the new regime." I took a deep breath. "Are you okay?" I asked, negating in one plaintive question all my cultivated indifference.
"Yes," he said, his voice intensely personal. "Yes, I am... coping with this. We are very, very lucky we were in a position to... We're very lucky."
I let out my breath very softly so he wouldn't pick up on it. Of course, he would anyway. I can't say I'd been on pins and needles wondering how things were going with the vampires, but I hadn't been resting very easy, either. "Okay, very good," I said briskly. "Now, about Copley. Is there anyone around who'd like to hook up with him about the construction stuff?"
"Is he in the area?"
"I don't know. He was here this morning. I can ask."
"The vampire I am working with now would probably be the right woman for him to approach. She could meet him at your bar or here at Fangtasia."
"Okay. I'm sure he'd do either one."
"Let me know. He needs to call here to set up an appointment. He should ask for Sandy."
I laughed. "Sandy, huh?"
"Yes," he said, sounding grim enough to sober me in a hurry. "She is not a bit funny, Sookie."
"Okay, okay, I get it. Let me call his daughter, she'll call him, he'll call Fangtasia, it'll all get set up, and I've done my favor for him."
"This is Amelia's father?"
"Yes. He's a jerk," I said. "But he's her dad, and I guess he knows his building stuff."
"I lay in front of your fire and talked to you about your life," he said.
Okay, way out of left field. "Uh. Yeah. We did that."
"I remember our shower together."
"We did that, too."
"We did so many things."
"Ah... yeah. Okay."
"In fact, if I didn't have so much to do here in Shreveport, I would be tempted to visit you all by myself to remind you how much you enjoyed those things."
"If memory serves," I said sharply, "you kind of enjoyed them, too."
"Oh, yes."
"Eric, I really need to go. I got to get to work." Or spontaneously combust, whichever came first.
"Good-bye." He could make even that sound sexy.
"Good-bye." I didn't.
It took me a second to gather my thoughts back together. I was remembering things I'd tried hard to forget. The days Eric had stayed with me - well, the nights - we'd done a lot of talking and a lot of sexing. And it had been wonderful. The companionship. The sex. The laughing. The sex. The conversations. The... well.
Somehow going in to serve beers seemed drab, all of a sudden.
But that was my job, and I owed it to Sam to show up and work. I trudged in, stowed my purse, and nodded to Sam as I tapped Holly on the shoulder to tell her I was here to take over. We switched shifts for the change and convenience but mostly because the night tips were higher. Holly was glad to see me because she had a date that night with Hoyt. They were going to a movie and dinner in Shreveport. She'd gotten a teenager to babysit Cody. She was telling me this as I was getting it from her contented brain, and I had to work hard not to get confused. That showed me how rattled I'd been by my conversation with Eric.
I was really busy for about thirty minutes, making sure everyone was well-supplied with drinks and food. I caught a moment to call Amelia soon after that to relay Eric's message, and she told me that she'd call her dad the minute she hung up. "Thanks, Sook," she said. "Again, you're a great roomie."
I hoped she'd think of that when she and Octavia were devising a magical solution to my Tanya problem.
Claudine came into Merlotte's that evening, raising male pulses as she sauntered to the bar. She was wearing a green silk blouse, black pants, and black high-heeled boots. That made her at least six foot one, I estimated. To my amazement, her twin brother, Claude, trailed in after her. The racing pulses spread to the opposite sex with the speed of wildfire. Claude, whose hair was as black as Claudine's, though not as long, was as lovely a hunk as ever posed in a Calvin Klein ad. Claude was wearing a masculine version of Claudine's outfit, and he'd tied his hair back with a leather thong. He was also wearing very "guy" boots. Since he stripped at a club in Monroe on ladies' night, Claude knew exactly how to smile at women, though he wasn't interested in them. I take that back. He was interested in how much money they had in their purses.
The twins had never come in together; in fact, I didn't recall Claude setting foot in Merlotte's before. He had his own place to run, his own fish to fry.
Of course I went over to say hi, and I got a comprehensive hug from Claudine. To my amazement, Claude followed suit. I figured he was playing to the audience, which was pretty much the whole bar. Even Sam was goggling; together, the fairy twins were overwhelming.
We stood at the bar with me sandwiched between them, each with an arm around me, and I heard brains light up all around the room with little fantasies, some of which startled even me, and I've seen the most bizarre things people can imagine. Yep, it's all there for lucky me to see in living color.