Remy looked as if a load had just dropped back onto his shoulders. “I’m sorry about that,” he said, and I could have—well, kicked myself.

“No, it was only normal stuff, the kind of thing you brought him here so I could help with,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. My cousin Claude was here, and he played with Hunter at the park, though I was there all the time, of course.” I didn’t want Remy to think I’d farmed Hunter out to any old person. I tried to think of what else to tell the anxious father. “He ate real good, and he slept just fine. Not long enough,” I said, and Remy laughed.

“I know all about that,” he told me.

I started to tell Remy that Eric was asleep in the closet and that Hunter had seen him for a few minutes, but I had the confused feeling that Eric would be one man too many. I’d already introduced the idea of Claude, and Remy hadn’t been totally delighted to hear about that. A typical dad reaction, I guessed.

“Did the funeral go okay? No last-minute hitches?” You never know what to ask about funerals.

“No one threw themselves into the grave or fainted,” Remy said. “That’s about all you can hope for. A few skirmishes over a dining room table that all the kids wanted to load into their trucks right then.”

I nodded. I’d heard many brooding thoughts through the years about inheritances, and I’d had my own troubles with Jason when Gran died. “People don’t always have their nicest face on when it comes to dividing up a household,” I said.

I offered Remy a drink, but he smilingly turned me down. He was obviously ready to be alone with his son, and he peppered me with questions about Hunter’s manners, which I was able to praise, and his eating habits, which I was able to admire, too. Hunter wasn’t a picky kid, and that was a blessing.

Within a few minutes, Hunter had returned to the living room with all his stuff, though I did a quick patrol and found two Duplos that had escaped his notice. Since he’d liked The Poky Little Puppy so much, I stuck it in his backpack for him to enjoy at home. After a few more thank-yous, and an unexpected hug from Hunter, they were gone.

I watched Remy’s old truck go down the driveway.

The house felt oddly empty.

Of course, Eric was asleep underneath it, but he was dead for a few more hours, and I knew I could rouse him only in the direst of circumstances. Some vampires couldn’t wake in the daytime, even if they were set on fire. I pushed that memory away, since it made me shiver. I glanced at the clock. I had part of the sunny afternoon to myself, and it was my day off.

I was in my black-and-white bikini and lying out on the old chaise before you could say, “Sunbathing is bad for you.”

Chapter 7

The minute the sun sank, Eric was out of the compartment below the guest-bedroom closet. He picked me up and kissed me thoroughly. I’d already warmed up some TrueBlood for him, and he made a face but gulped it down.

“Who is the child?” he asked.

“Hadley’s son,” I said. Eric had met Hadley when she’d been going with Sophie-Anne Leclerq, the now-finally-deceased Queen of Louisiana.

“She was married to a breather?”

“Yes, before she met Sophie-Anne,” I said. “A very nice guy named Remy Savoy.”

“Is that him I smell? Along with a big scent of fairy?”

Uh-oh. “Yes, Remy came to pick up Hunter this afternoon. I was keeping him because Remy had to go to a family funeral. He didn’t think that would be a good place to take a kid.” I didn’t bring up Hunter’s little problem. The fewer who knew about it, the better, and that included Eric.

“And?”

“I meant to tell you this the other night,” I said. “My cousin Claude?”

Eric nodded.

“He asked if he could stay here for a while, because he’s lonely in his house with both his sisters dead.”

“You are letting a man live with you.” Eric didn’t sound angry—more like he was poised to be angry, if you know what I mean? There was just a little edge in his voice.

“Believe me, he’s not interested in me as a woman,” I said, though I had a guilty flash of him walking in on me in the bathroom. “He is all about the guys.”

“I know you are fully aware of how to take care of a fairy who gives you trouble,” Eric said, after an appreciable silence.

I’d killed fairies before. I hadn’t particularly wanted to be reminded of that. “Yes,” I said. “And if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll keep a squirt gun loaded with lemon juice on my bedside table.” Lemon juice and iron—the fairy weaknesses.

“That would make me feel better,” Eric said. “Is it this Claude that Heidi scented on your land? I felt you were very worried, and that’s one reason I came over last night.”

The blood bond was hard at work. “She says neither of the fairies she tracked was Claude,” I said, “and that really worries me. But—”

“It worries me, too.” Eric looked down at the empty bottle of TrueBlood, then said, “Sookie, there are things you should know.”

“Oh.” I’d been about to tell him about the fresh corpse. I was sure he would have led off the discussion with the body if Heidi had mentioned it, and it seemed pretty important to me. I may have sounded a little peeved at being interrupted. Eric gave me a sharp look.

Okay, I was at fault, excuse me. I should have been longing to be chock-full of information that Eric felt would help me negotiate the minefield of vampire politics. And there were nights I’d have been delighted to learn more about my boyfriend’s life. But tonight, after the unusual stresses and strains of Hunter care, what I’d wanted was (again, excuse me) to tell him about the body-in-the-woods crisis and then have a good long screw.

Normally, Eric would be down with that program.

But not tonight, apparently.

We sat opposite each other at the kitchen table. I tried not to sigh out loud.

“You remember the summit at Rhodes, and how a sort of strip of states from south to north were invited,” Eric began.

I nodded. This didn’t sound too promising. My corpse was way more urgent. Not to mention the sex.

“Once we had ventured from one side of the New World to another, and the white breathing population migrated across, too—we were the first explorers—a large group of us met to divide things up, for better governing of our own population.”

“Were there any Native American vampires here when you came? Hey, were you on the Leif Ericson expedition?”

“No, not my generation. Oddly enough, there were very few Native American vampires. And the ones that were here were different in several ways.”

Now, that was pretty interesting, but I could tell Eric wasn’t going to stop and fill in the blanks.

“At that first national meeting, about three hundred years ago, there were many disagreements.” Eric looked very, very serious.

“No, really?” Vampires arguing? I could yawn.

And he didn’t appreciate my sarcasm, either. He raised blond eyebrows, as if to say, “Can I go on and get to the point? Or are you going to give me grief?”

I spread my hands: “Keep on going.”

“Instead of dividing the country the way humans would, we included some of the north and some of the south in every division. We thought it would keep the cross-representation going. So the easternmost division, which is mostly the coastal states, is called Moshup Clan, for the Native American mythical figure, and its symbol is a whale.”

Okay, maybe I looked a little glazed at that point. “Look it up on the Internet,” Eric said impatiently. “Our clan—the states that met in Rhodes compose this one—is Amun, a god from the Egyptian system, and our symbol is a feather, because Amun wore a feathered headdress. Do you remember that we all wore little feather pins there?”

Ah. No. I shook my head.

“Well, it was a busy summit,” Eric conceded.