Toward the end of my shift, Copley Carmichael walked in.

He looked funny alone. I assumed Marley was waiting in the car.

In his beautiful suit and with his expensive haircut, he didn't exactly fit in, but I got to give him credit: he acted like he came into places like Merlotte's all the time. I happened to be standing by Sam, who was mixing a bourbon and Coke for one of my tables. I explained to Sam who the stranger was.

I delivered the drink and nodded at an empty table. Mr. Carmichael took the hint and settled in.

"Hey! Can I get you a drink, Mr. Carmichael?" I said.

"Please get me a single malt scotch," he said. "Whatever you've got will be fine. I'm meeting someone here, Sookie, thanks to your phone call. You just tell me the next time you need anything, and I'll do everything in my power to make it happen."

"Not necessary, Mr. Carmichael."

"Please, call me Cope."

"Um-hmmm. Okay, let me get your scotch."

I didn't know a single malt scotch from a hole in the ground, but Sam did, of course, and he gave me a shining clean glass with a very respectable shot of it. I serve liquor, but I seldom drink it. Most folks around here drink the real obvious stuff: beer, bourbon and Coke, gin and tonic, Jack Daniel's.

I set the drink and cocktail napkin on the table in front of Mr. Carmichael, and I returned with a little bowl of snack mix.

Then I left him alone, because I had other people to tend to. But I kept track of him. I noticed Sam was keeping a careful eye on Amelia's dad, too. But everyone else was too involved in their own conversations and their own drinking to give much mind to the stranger, one not nearly as interesting as Claude and Claudine.

In a moment when I wasn't looking, a vampire joined Cope. I don't think anyone else knew what she was. She was a real recent vamp, by which I mean she'd died in the past fifty years, and she had prematurely silver hair that was cut in a modest chin-length style. She was small, maybe five foot two, and she was round and firm in all the right places. She was wearing little silver-rimmed glasses that were sheer affectation, because I'd never met a vampire whose eyesight wasn't absolutely perfect and in fact sharper than any human's.

"Can I get you some blood?" I asked.

Her eyes were like lasers. Once she was really giving you her attention, you were sorry.

"You're the woman Sookie," she said.

I didn't see any need to affirm what she was so sure of. I waited.

"A glass of TrueBlood, please," she said. "Quite warm. And I'd like to meet your boss, if you would fetch him."

Like Sam was a bone. Nonetheless, she was a customer and I was a barmaid. So I heated a TrueBlood for her and told Sam he was wanted.

"I'll be there in a minute," he said, because he was getting a tray of drinks ready for Arlene.

I nodded and took the blood over to the vampire.

"Thank you," she said civilly. "I'm Sandy Sechrest, the new area rep for the King of Louisiana."

I had no idea where Sandy had grown up, but it had been in the United States and had not been in the south. "Pleased to meet you," I said, but not with a whole lot of enthusiasm. Area rep? Wasn't that what sheriffs were, among their other functions? What did that mean for Eric?

At that moment Sam came to the table, and I left because I didn't want to look inquisitive. Besides, I could probably pick it up from his brain later if Sam chose not to tell me what the new vampire wanted. He was good at blocking, but he had to make a special effort to do it.

The three engaged in a conversation for a couple of minutes, then Sam excused himself to get back behind the bar.

I glanced at the vampire and the mogul from time to time in case they needed something more to drink, but neither of them indicated a thirst. They were talking very seriously, and both of them were adept at maintaining a poker face. I didn't care enough to try to latch onto Mr. Carmichael's thoughts, and of course Sandy Sechrest was a blank to me.

The rest of the night was the usual stuff. I didn't even notice when the new king's rep and Mr. Carmichael left. Then it was time to close everything out and get my tables ready for Terry Bellefleur to come in and clean early in the morning. By the time I really looked around me, everyone was gone but Sam and me.

"Hey, you through?" he said.

"Yeah," I said after another look around.

"You got a minute?"

I always had a minute for Sam.

Chapter 16

He sat in the chair behind his desk and tilted it back at the usual dangerous angle. I sat in one of the chairs in front of the desk, the one with the most padding in the seat. Most of the lights in the building were out except the one that stayed on over the bar area and the one in Sam's office. The building rang with silence after the cacophony of voices rising over the jukebox and the sounds of cooking, washing, footsteps.

"That Sandy Sechrest," he said. "She's got a whole new job."

"Yeah? What the king's rep supposed to do?"

"Well, as far as I can tell, she'll travel the state pretty much constantly, seeing if the citizens have problems with any vampires, seeing if the sheriffs have everything in order and under control in their own fiefs, and reporting in to the king. She's like an undead troubleshooter."

"Oh." I thought that over. I couldn't see that the job would detract from Eric's. If Eric was okay, his crew would be okay. Other than that, I didn't care what the vampires did. "So, she decided to meet you because...?"

"She understood I had associations in the regional supernatural community," Sam said dryly. "She wanted me to know she was available to consult in the event ‘problems arose.' I have her business card." He held it up. I don't know if I expected it to drip with blood or what, but it was only a regular business card.

"Okay." I shrugged.

"What did Claudine and her brother want?" Sam asked.

I was feeling very bad about concealing my new great-grandfather from Sam, but Niall had told me to keep him a secret. "She hadn't heard from me since the fight in Shreveport," I said. "She just wanted to check up, and she got Claude to come with her."

Sam looked at me a little sharply but he didn't comment. "Maybe," he said after a minute, "this will be a long era of peace.

Maybe we can just work in the bar and nothing will happen in the supe community. I'm hoping so, because the time is coming closer and closer when the Weres are going to go public."

"You think it's soon?" I had no idea how America would react to the news that vampires were not the only things out there in the night. "You think all the other shifters will announce the same night?"

"We'll have to," Sam said. "We're talking on our website about it."

Sam did have a life that was unknown to me. That sparked a thought. I hesitated, then plowed ahead. There were too many questions in my own life. I wanted to get at least some of them answered.

"How'd you come to settle here?" I asked.

"I'd passed through the area," he said. "I was in the army for four years."

"You were?" I couldn't believe I hadn't known that.

"Yeah," he said. "I didn't know what I wanted to do in my life, so I joined when I was eighteen. My mom cried and my dad swore since I'd been accepted to a college, but I'd made up my mind. I was about the stubbornest teenager on the planet."

"Where'd you grow up?"

"At least partly in Wright, Texas," he said. "Outside of Fort Worth. Way outside of Fort Worth. It wasn't any bigger than Bon Temps. We moved around all during my childhood, though, because my dad was in the service himself. He got out when I was about fourteen, and my mom's family was in Wright, so that's where we went."