Chapter 12

I simply couldn't process what had just happened; it didn't jibe with my inner picture of myself or how I behaved. I could only think, You had to be there. And even then that didn't sound convincing.

Okay, Sookie, I said to myself. What else could you have done? It wasn't the time to do a lot of detailed thinking, but a quick scan of my options came up zero. I couldn't have fought off Andre or persuaded him to leave me alone. Eric could have fought Andre, but he chose not to because he wanted to keep his place in the Louisiana hierarchy, and also because he might have lost. Even if he'd chanced to win, the penalty would have been incredibly heavy. Vampires didn't fight over humans.

Likewise, I could have chosen to die rather than submit to the blood exchange, but I wasn't quite sure how I would have achieved that, and I was quite sure I didn't want to.

There was simply nothing I could have done, at least nothing that popped to my mind as I squatted there in the beigeness of the back stairway.

I shook myself, blotted my face with a tissue from my pocket, and smoothed my hair. I stood up straighter. I was on the right track to regaining my self-image. I would have to save the rest for later.

I pushed open the metal door and stepped into a cavernous area floored with concrete. As I'd progressed farther into the working area of the hotel (beginning with the first plain beige corridor), the decor had scaled back to minimal. This area was absolutely functional.

No one paid the least attention to me, so I had a good look around. It's not like I was anxious to hurry back to the queen, right? Across the floor, there was a huge industrial elevator. This hotel had been designed with as few openings onto the outside world as possible, to minimize the chance of intrusion, both of humans and the enemy sun. But the hotel had to have at least one large dock to load and unload coffins and supplies. This was the elevator that served that dock. The coffins entered here before they were taken to their designated rooms. Two uniformed men armed with shotguns stood facing the elevator, but I have to say that they looked remarkably bored, not at all like the alert watchdogs in the lobby.

In an area by the far wall, to the left of the huge elevator, some suitcases were slumped together in a forlorn sort of suitcase corral, an area delineated by those posts that contain retractable strips that are used to direct crowds in airports. No one appeared to be in charge of them, so I walked over – and it was a long walk – and began reading labels. There was already another lackey like me searching through the luggage, a young man with glasses and wearing a business suit.

"What are you looking for?" I asked. "If I see it while I'm looking, I can pull it out for you."

"Good idea. The desk called to say we had a suitcase down here that hadn't made it to the room, so here I am. The tag should say 'Phoebe Golden, Queen of Iowa' or something like that. You?"

"Sophie-Anne Leclerq, Louisiana."

"Wow, you work for her? Did she do it?"

"Nope, and I know because I was there," I said, and his curious face got even more curious. But he could tell I wasn't going to say any more about it, and he resumed looking.

I was surprised at the number of suitcases in the corral.

"How come," I asked the young man, "they can't just bring these up and leave them in the rooms? Like the rest of the luggage?"

He shrugged. "I was told it's some kind of liability issue. We have to identify our suitcases personally, so they can say we were the ones who picked them out. Hey, this is the one I want," he said after a moment. "I can't read the name of the owner, but it does say Iowa, so it must belong to someone in our group. Well, bye, nice to talk to you." He set off briskly with a black rolling bag.

Immediately after that, I hit luggage pay dirt. A blue leather suitcase was tagged with "Sheriff, Area" – well, that was too scribbled to make out. The vampires used all kinds of scripts, depending on the education they'd had in the age they were born. "Louisiana": the label did say that. I picked up the old suitcase and lifted it over the barrier. The writing wasn't any clearer closer to my eyes. Like my opposite number in Iowa, I decided the best course would be to take it upstairs and show it around until someone claimed it.

One of the armed guards had turned halfway from his post to figure out what I was doing. "Where you going with that, beautiful?" he called.

"I work for the Queen of Louisiana. She sent me down to get it," I said.

"Your name?"

"Sookie Stackhouse."

"Hey, Joe!" he called to a fellow employee, a heavy guy who was sitting behind a really ugly desk on which sat a battered computer. "Check out the name Stackhouse, will ya?"

"Sure thing," Joe said, wrenching his gaze from the young Iowan, who was just barely visible over on the other side of the cavernous space. Joe regarded me with the same curiosity. When he saw that I'd noticed, he looked guilty and tapped away at the keyboard. He eyed the computer screen like it could tell him everything he needed to know, and for the purposes of his job, maybe he was right.

"Okay," Joe called to the guard. "She's on the list." His was the gruff voice that I remembered from the phone conversation. He resumed staring at me, and though all the other people in the cavernous space were having blank, neutral thoughts, Joe's were not blank. They were shielded. I'd never encountered anything like it. Someone had put a metaphysical helmet on his head. I tried to get through it, around, under it, but it stayed in place. While I fumbled around, trying to get inside his thoughts, Joe was looking at me with a cross expression. I don't think he knew what I was doing. I think he was a grouch.

"Excuse me," I asked, calling so my question could reach Joe's ears. "Is my picture by my name on your list?"

"No," he said, snorting as if I'd asked a strange question. "We got a list of all the guests and who they brought with them."

"So, how do you know I'm me?"

"Huh?"

"How do you know I'm Sookie Stackhouse?"

"Aren't you?"

"Yeah."

"Then what you bitching about? Get outta here with the damn suitcase." Joe looked down at his computer, and the guard swung around to face the elevator. This must be the legendary Yankee rudeness, I thought.

The bag didn't have a roller mechanism; no telling how long the owner had had it. I picked it up and marched back over to the door to the stairs. There was another elevator close to the door, I noticed, but it wasn't half as large as the huge one that had access to the outside. It could take up coffins, true, but perhaps only one at a time.

I'd already opened the stair door when I realized that if I went up that way I'd have to pass through the service corridor again. What if Eric, Andre, and Quinn were still there? What if they'd ripped each other's throats out? Though just at the moment such a scenario wouldn't have devastated me, I decided to forgo the chance of an encounter. I took the elevator instead. Okay, cowardly, but a woman can handle only so much in one night.

This elevator was definitely for the peons. It had pads on the walls to prevent cargo from being damaged. It serviced only the first four floors: basement levels, lobby, mezzanine, human floor. After that, the shape of the pyramid dictated that to rise, you had to go to the center to catch one of elevators that went all the way up. This would make taking the coffins around a slow process, I thought. The staff of the Pyramid worked hard for their money.

I decided to take the suitcase straight to the queen's suite. I didn't know what else to do with it.

When I stepped off at Sophie-Anne's floor, the lobby area around the elevator was silent and empty. Probably all the vampires and their attendants were downstairs at the soiree. Someone had left a discarded soda can lying in a large, boldly patterned urn holding some kind of small tree. The urn was positioned against the wall between the two elevators. I think the tree was supposed to be some kind of short palm tree, to maintain the Egyptian theme. The stupid soda can bothered me. Of course, there were maintenance people in the hotel whose job it was to keep everything clean, but the habit of picking up was ingrained in me. I'm no neat freak, but still. This was a nice place, and some idiot was strewing garbage around. I bent over to pick the darn thing up with my free right hand, intending to toss it into the first available garbage can.