"Go see," Andre said.

"If I go ask for it, he'll get fired. You need to get the queen to ask Mr. Baruch point-blank if she can see the security tape for the lobby outside during the time the bomb was planted. Gum on the camera or not, that tape will show something."

"Leave first, so he won't connect you to this." In fact, the hotelier had been absorbed in the queen and her conversation, or his vampire hearing would have tipped him off that we were talking about him.

Though I was exhausted, I had the gratifying feeling that I was earning the money they were paying me for this trip. And it was a load off my mind to feel that the Dr Pepper thing was solved. Christian Baruch would not be doing any more bomb planting now that the queen was on to him. The threat the splinter group of the Fellowship posed... well, I'd only heard of that from hearsay, and I didn't have any evidence of what form it would take. Despite the death of the woman at the archery place, I felt more relaxed than I had since I'd walked into the Pyramid of Gizeh, because I was inclined to attribute the killer archer to Baruch, too. Maybe when he saw that Henrik would actually take Arkansas from the queen, he'd gotten greedy and had the assassin take out Henrik, so the queen would get everything. There was something confusing and wrong about that scenario, but I was too tired to think it through, and I was content to let the whole tangled web lie until I was rested.

I crossed the little lobby to the elevator and pressed the button. When the doors dinged open, Bill stepped out, his hands full of order forms.

"You did well this evening," I said, too tired to hate him. I nodded at the forms.

"Yes, we'll all make a lot of money from this," he said, but he didn't sound particularly excited.

I waited for him to step out of my way, but he didn't do that, either.

"I would give it all away if I could erase what happened between us," he said. "Not the times we spent loving each other, but... "

"The times you spent lying to me? The times you pretended you could hardly wait to date me when it turns out you were under order to? Those times?"

"Yes," he said, and his deep brown eyes didn't waver. "Those times."

"You hurt me too much. That's not ever gonna happen."

"Do you love any man? Quinn? Eric? That moron JB?"

"You don't have the right to ask me that," I said. "You don't have any rights at all where I'm concerned."

JB? Where'd that come from? I'd always been fond of the guy, and he was lovely, but his conversation was about as stimulating as a stump's. I was shaking my head as I rode down in the elevator to the human floor.

Carla was out, as usual, and since it was five in the morning the chances seemed good that she'd stay out. I put on my pink pajamas and put my slippers beside the bed so I wouldn't have to grope around for them in the darkened room in case Carla came in before I awoke.

Chapter 17

My eyes snapped open like shades that were wound too tight.

Wake up, wake up, wake up! Sookie, something's wrong.

Barry, where are you?

Standing at the elevators on the human floor.

I'm coming. I pulled on last night's outfit, but without the heels. Instead, I slid my feet into my rubber-soled slippers. I grabbed the slim wallet that held my room key, driver's license, and credit card, and stuffed it in one pocket, jammed my cell phone into the other, and hurried out of the room. The door slammed behind me with an ominous thud. The hotel felt empty and silent, but my clock had read 9:50.

I had to run down a long corridor and turn right to get to the elevators. I didn't meet a soul. A moment's thought told me that was not so strange. Most humans on the floor would still be asleep, because they kept vampire hours. But there weren't even any hotel employees cleaning the halls.

All the little tracks of disquiet that had crawled through my brain, like slug tracks on your back doorstep, had coalesced into a huge throbbing mass of uneasiness.

I felt like I was on the Titanic, and I'd just heard the hull scrape against the iceberg.

I finally spotted someone, lying on the floor. I'd been woken so suddenly and sharply that everything I did had a dreamlike quality to it, so finding a body in the hall was not such a jolt.

I let out a cry, and Barry came bounding around the corner. He crouched down with me. I rolled over the body. It was Jake Purifoy, and he couldn't be roused.

Why isn't he in his room? What was he doing out so late? Even Barry's mental voice sounded panicked.

Look, Barry, he's lying sort of pointing toward my room. Do you think he was coming to see me?

Yes, and he didn't make it.

What could have been so important that Jake wasn't prepared for his day's sleep? I stood up, thinking furiously. I'd never, ever heard of a vampire who didn't know instinctively that the dawn was coming. I thought of the conversations I'd had with Jake, and the two men I'd seen leaving his room.

"You bastard," I hissed through my teeth, and I kicked him as hard as I could.

"Jesus, Sookie!" Barry grabbed my arm, horrified. But then he got the picture from my brain.

"We need to find Mr. Cataliades and Diantha," I said. "They can get up; they're not vamps."

"I'll get Cecile. She's human, my roommate," Barry said, and we both went off in different directions, leaving Jake to lie where he was. It was all we could do.

We were back together in five minutes. It had been surprisingly easy to raise Mr. Cataliades, and Diantha had been sharing his room. Cecile proved to be a young woman with a no-nonsense haircut and a competent way about her, and I wasn't surprised when Barry introduced her as the king's new executive assistant.

I'd been a fool to discount, even for a minute, the warning that Clovache had passed along. I was so angry at myself I could hardly stand to be inside my own skin. But I had to shove that aside and we had to act now.

"Listen to what I think," I said. I'd been putting things together in my head. "Some of the waiters have been avoiding Barry and me over the past couple of days, as soon as they found out what we were."

Barry nodded. He'd noticed, too. He looked oddly guilty, but that had to wait.

"They know what we are. They didn't want us to know what they're about to do, I'm assuming. So I'm also assuming it must be something really, really bad. And Jake Purifoy was in on it."

Mr. Cataliades had been looking faintly bored, but now he began to look seriously alarmed. Diantha's big eyes went from face to face.

"What shall we do?" Cecile asked, which earned her high marks in my book.

"It's the extra coffins," I said. "And the blue suitcase in the queen's suite. Barry, you were asked to bring up a suitcase, too, right? And it didn't belong to anyone?"

Barry said, "Right. It's still sitting in the foyer of the king's suite, since everyone passes through there. We thought someone would claim it. I was going to take it back to the luggage department today."

I said, "The one I went down for is sitting in the living room of the queen's suite. I think the guy who was in on it was Joe, the manager down in the luggage and delivery area. He's the one who called me down to get the suitcase. No one else seemed to know anything about it."

"The suitcases will blow up?" Diantha said in her shrill voice. "The unclaimed coffins in the basement, too? If the basement goes, the building will collapse!" I'd never heard Diantha sound so human.

"We have to wake them up," I said. "We have to get them out."

"The building's going to blow," said Barry, trying to process the idea.

"The vamps won't wake up." Cecile the practical. "They can't."

"Quinn!" I said. I was thinking of so many things at once that I was standing rooted in place. Fishing my phone from my pocket, I punched his number on speed dial and heard his mumble at the other end. "Get out," I said. "Quinn, get your sister and get out. There's going to be an explosion." I only waited to hear him sound more alert before I shut the phone.