"I get that a lot with vampires," I said, remembering all the times in the past when Bill had explained things by saying he couldn't help himself. I'd believed him at the time, but I wasn't so sure any more. In fact, I was so profoundly tired and miserable I hardly had the heart to continue trying to wrap up Hadley's apartment and her estate and her affairs. I realized that if I went home to Bon Temps, leaving unfinished business here, I'd just sit and brood when I got there.

I knew this, but at the moment, it was hard to face.

It was time for one of my self—pep talks. I told myself sternly I'd already enjoyed a moment or two of that very evening, and I would enjoy a few more seconds of every day until I built back to my former contented state. I'd always enjoyed life, and I knew I would again. But I was going to have to slog through a lot of bad patches to get there.

I don't think I've ever been a person with a lot of illusions. If you can read minds, you don't have many doubts about how bad even the best people can be.

But I sure hadn't seen this coming.

To my horror, tears began sliding down my face. I reached into my little purse, pulled out a Kleenex, and patted my cheeks while all the vamps stared at me, Jade Flower with the most identifiable expression I'd seen on her face: contempt.

"Are you in pain?" the queen asked, indicating my arm.

I didn't think she really cared; I was sure that she had schooled herself to give the correct human response for so long that it was a reflex.

"Pain of the heart," I said, and could have bitten my tongue off.

"Oh," she said. "Bill?"

"Yes," I said, and gulped, doing my best to stop the display of emotion.

"I grieved for Hadley," she said unexpectedly.

"It was good she had someone to care." After a minute I said, "I would have been glad to know she was dead earlier than I did," which was as cautiously as I could express it. I hadn't found out my cousin was gone until weeks after the fact.

"There were reasons I had to wait to send Cataliades down," Sophie-Anne said. Her smooth face and clear eyes were as impenetrable as a wall of ice, but I got the definite impression that she wished I hadn't raised the subject. I looked at the queen, trying to pick up on some clue, and she gave a tiny flick of the eye toward Jade Flower, who was sitting on her right. I didn't know how Jade Flower could be sitting in her relaxed position with the long sword strapped to her back. But I definitely had the feeling that behind her expressionless face and flat eyes, Jade Flower was listening to everything that transpired.

To be on the safe side, I decided I wouldn't say anything at all, and the rest of the drive passed in silence.

Rasul didn't want to take the limo into the courtyard, and I recalled that Diantha had parked on the street, too. Rasul came back to open the door for the queen, and Andre got out first, looked around for a long time, then nodded that it was safe for the queen to emerge. Rasul stood at the ready, rifle in his hands, sweeping the area visually for attackers. Andre was just as vigilant.

Jade Flower slithered out of the backseat next and added her eyes to those scanning the area. Protecting the queen with their bodies, they moved into the courtyard. Sigebert got out next, ax in hand, and waited for me. After I'd joined him on the sidewalk, he and Wybert took me through the open gateway with less ceremony than the others had taken the queen.

I'd seen the queen at my own home, unguarded by anyone but Cataliades. I'd seen the queen in her own office, guarded by one person. I guess I didn't realize until that moment how important security was for Sophie-Anne, how precarious her hold on power must be. I wanted to know against whom all these guards were protecting her. Who wanted to kill the Louisiana queen? Maybe all vampire rulers were in this much danger—or maybe it was just Sophie-Anne. Suddenly the vampire conference in the fall seemed like a much scarier proposition than it had before.

The courtyard was well lit, and Amelia was standing on the circular driveway with three friends. For the record, none of them were crones with broomsticks. One of them was a kid who looked just like a Mormon missionary: black pants, white shirt, dark tie, polished black shoes. There was a bicycle leaning up against the tree in the center of the circle. Maybe he was a Mormon missionary. He looked so young that I thought he might still be growing. The tall woman standing beside him was in her sixties, but she had a Bowflex body. She was wearing a tight T-shirt, knit slacks, sandals, and a pair of huge hoop earrings. The third witch was about my age, in her mid- to late twenties, and she was Hispanic. She had full cheeks, bright red lips, and rippling black hair, and she was short and had more curves than an S turn. Sigebert admired her especially (I could tell by his leer), but she ignored all the vampires as if she couldn't see them.

Amelia might have been startled by the influx of vampires, but she handled introductions with aplomb. Evidently the queen had already identified herself before I approached. "Your Majesty," Amelia was saying, "These are my co-practitioners." She swept her hand before them as if she were showing off a car to the studio audience. "Bob Jessup, Patsy Sellers, Terencia Rodriguez—Terry, we call her."

The witches glanced at each other before nodding briefly to the queen. It was hard to tell how she took that lack of deference, her face was so glass-smooth—but she nodded back, and the atmosphere remained tolerable.

"We were just preparing for our reconstruction," Amelia said. She sounded absolutely confident, but I noticed that her hands were trembling. Her thoughts were not nearly as confident as her voice, either. Amelia was running over their preparations in her head, frantically itemizing the magic stuff she'd assembled, anxiously reassessing her companions to satisfy herself they were up to the ritual, and so on. Amelia, I belatedly realized, was a perfectionist.

I wondered where Claudine was. Maybe she'd seen the vamps coming and prudently fled to some dark corner. While I was looking around for her, I had a moment when the heartache I was staving off just plain ambushed me. It was like the moments I had after my grandmother died, when I'd be doing something familiar like brushing my teeth, and all of a sudden the blackness would overwhelm me. It took a moment or two to collect myself and swim back to the surface again.

It would be like that for a while, and I'd just have to grit my teeth and bear it.

I made myself take notice of those around me. The witches had assumed their positions. Bob settled himself in a lawn chair in the courtyard, and I watched with a tiny flare of interest as he drew powdered stuff from little snack-size Ziploc bags and got a box of matches out of his chest pocket. Amelia bounded up the stairs to the apartment, Terry stationed herself halfway down the stairs, and the tall older witch, Patsy, was already standing on the gallery looking down at us.

"If you all want to watch, probably up here would be best," Amelia called, and the queen and I went up the stairs. The guards gathered in a clump by the gate so they'd be as far away from the magic as they could be; even Jade Flower seemed respectful of the power that was about to be put to use, even if she did not respect the witches as people.

As a matter of course, Andre followed the queen up the stairs, but I thought there was a less than enthusiastic droop to his shoulders.

It was nice to focus on something new instead of mulling over my miseries, and I listened with interest as Amelia, who looked like she should be out playing beach volleyball, instead gave us instructions on the magic spell she was about to cast.

"We've set the time to two hours before I saw Jake arrive," she said. "So you may see a lot of boring and extraneous stuff. If that gets old, I can try to speed up the events."