"But that was fun." Pam was practically pouting.

"This isn't, for you?"

"No, I like my pleasures more personal and private."

"Oh, me, too," I said. "Why is Eric back here instead of out there?"

"I don't know. I just came back from a liquor run," she said briefly. "Mustapha insisted we needed some more rum."

She was doing Mustapha's bidding now? But I pressed my lips shut. It was no business of mine.

By that time we'd reached the door of the bedroom I used at Eric's, since I didn't want to be shut downstairs with him all day in his light-tight sleeping room. Pam, a step ahead of me, pushed open the door and stiffened. Eric was there, and he was sitting on the bed, but he was feeding off someone-a dark-haired woman. She was sprawled across his lap, her bright summer dress twisted around her body, one hand gripping his shoulder and kneading it while he sucked from her neck. Her other hand was ... she was pleasuring herself.

"You asshole," I said, and I reversed on the spot. Getting the hell out of there was my all-consuming desire. Eric raised his head, his mouth bloody, and his eyes met mine. He was ... drunk.

"You can't go," Pam said. She gripped my arm now, and I could tell it would break before she'd release me. "If you run out now, we'll look weak, and Felipe will react. We'll all suffer. Something's wrong with Eric."

"I really don't give a damn," I told her. My head felt oddly light and distant from the shock. I wondered if I would faint or throw up or leap on Eric and choke him.

"You need to leave," Eric told the woman. His words were slurred. What the hell?

"But we were just getting around to the good part," she said, in what she thought was a seductive voice. "Don't make me go, baby, before the big payoff. If you want her to join in, that's all right with me, sugar." It took all her effort to get the words out. She was white as a sheet. She'd lost a lot of blood.

"You must go," Eric said, a bit more clearly. His voice had the shove in it vampires use to get humans moving.

Though I refused to look at the brunette, I knew when she got off the bed, and Eric. I knew when she staggered and almost fell. Now I can keep my car, she thought.

I was so startled to hear this that I turned to look at her. She was younger than me, and she was skinny. Somehow that made Eric's offense worse. After a second I could glimpse, past my agitation, that she had a lot of sickness in her head. The stuff churning around in her mind was both awful and confusing. Self-loathing made her thoughts all tinged with gray, as if she were rotting from her core out. The surface still looked pretty, but it wouldn't be for long.

The girl also had twoey blood, though I couldn't tell what kind ... maybe werewolf. One of her parents was the real deal. That made sense, given Eric's condition. Twoey blood packed a punch for vampires, and she'd amped it up somehow to make herself more intoxicating.

Pam said, "I don't know who you are or how you got in here, girl, but you must leave now."

The girl laughed, which neither Pam nor I had expected. Pam jerked, and I felt a solar flare go off in my head. I'd added rage to disgust. Laughing! My eyes met the girl's. The smirk vanished from her lips, and she blanched.

I was no vampire, but I guess I looked pretty threatening.

"All right, all right, I'm going. I'll be out of Shreveport by dawn." She was lying. She decided to make one last attempt to ... what? She sneered at me and said deliberately, "It ain't my fault that your man was hungry ..." Before I could move, Pam backhanded her. The girl lurched against the wall, then slid to the ground.

"Get up," Pam said, her voice deadly.

With visible effort, the girl rose to her feet. There were no more smiles or provocative statements. She passed close to me as she left the room, and I smelled her; not only a trace of twoey, but another scent, blood with a sweet undertone. She made her way down the hall and out to the living room, supporting herself with one hand against the wall.

After she'd cleared the door, Pam shut it. The room was oddly quiet.

My brain was running in a hundred different directions. From my late arrival, to the new guard at the gate, to the strange thoughts I'd read from the girl, the odd scent I'd caught when she was near ... and then my whole focus fell on a different subject.

My "husband."

Eric still remained sitting on the side of the bed.

The bed I thought of as mine. The bed where we had sex. The bed where I slept.

He spoke directly to me. "You know I take blood ..." he began, but I held up a hand.

"Don't speak," I said. He looked indignant, and his mouth opened, and I said again, "Don't. Speak."

Seriously, if I could have gotten away by myself for thirty minutes (or thirty hours or thirty days), I could have dealt with the situation. As it was, I had to do a speed speech in my head.

I knew I wasn't Eric's only drinking fountain. (One person could not be the sole food source for a vampire; or rather, not for a vampire who doesn't supplement with synthetic.)

Not his fault he needed food, blah blah.

When it's freely offered, why not take it, blah blah.

But.

He knew I was due to arrive.

He knew I would let him drink.

He knew the fact that he chose to drink from another woman would hurt me deeply. And he did it, anyway. Unless there was something I didn't know about this woman, or something she'd done to Eric that had triggered this reaction, this signaled that he didn't care about me as deeply as I'd always thought.

I could only think, Thank God I broke the blood bond. If I'd felt his enjoyment while he was sucking on her, I'd have wanted to kill him.

Eric said, "If you hadn't broken our blood bond, this would never have happened."

I had another solar flare in my head. "This is why I don't carry a stake," I muttered, and swore long and fluently to myself.

I hadn't told Pam not to speak. After eyeing me intently to assess my mood, she said, "You know that in a while, you'll adjust. This was a question of timing, not of unfaithfulness."

After I took a long moment to resent the hell out of her conviction that I was going to accommodate Eric's behavior, I had to nod. I wasn't necessarily agreeing with the premise behind her words-that when I'd calmed down I wouldn't mind what Eric had done. I was simply acknowledging the fact that she had a point. Though it made me scream inside, I pushed aside all the things I wanted to say to Eric, because something more urgent was happening here. Even I could see that.

"Listen, here's the important stuff," I said, and Pam nodded. Eric looked surprised, and his back stiffened. He looked more like himself, more alert and intelligent.

"That girl didn't just wander in here out of the blue; she was sent," I said.

The vampires looked at each other. They shrugged simultaneously. "I'd never seen her before," Eric said.

"I thought she came in with Felipe's pickups," Pam said.

"There's a new guy at the gate." I looked from one to the other. "Where'd Dan Shelley go, tonight of all nights? And after Pam called me and told me to be here at nine, Mustapha called me right back and told me to be here an hour later. Eric, I'm sure that girl tasted different to you?"

"Yes," he said, nodding slowly. "I'm still feeling the effects. She was extra ..."

"Like she'd had some kind of supplement?" I suppressed another surge of hurt and anger.

"Yes," he agreed. He got up, but I could see that standing wasn't easy. "Yes, as if she'd had a Were-and-fairy cocktail." His eyes closed. "Delicious."

Pam said, "Eric, if you hadn't been hungry, you would have questioned such an opportune arrival."

"Yes," he agreed. "My mind isn't yet clear, but I see the sense of your words."

"Sookie, what did you get from her thoughts?" Pam asked.

"She was earning money. But she was excited that she might die." I shrugged.

"But she didn't."

"No, I got here in time to interrupt what would have been a fatal feeding. Right, Eric? Could you have stopped?"

He looked profoundly embarrassed. "Maybe not. My control was almost gone. It was her smell. When she came up to me, she seemed so ordinary. Well, attractive because of the Were blood, but nothing really special. And I certainly didn't offer her money. Then, suddenly ..." He shook his head and gulped.

"Why did her attraction suddenly increase?" Pam was nothing if not pragmatic. "Wait. I apologize. We don't have time to get lost in the whys and wherefores. We must get through this tonight, us three," she said, looking at me and at Eric in turn. I nodded again. Eric gave a jerk of his head. "Good," she said. "Sookie, you got here just in time. She wasn't here by accident. She didn't smell and taste that way by accident. A lot of things happened here tonight that reek of a plot. My friend, I'm going to repeat myself-you have to put aside personal pain for tonight."

I gave Pam a very direct look. If I hadn't gone into the bedroom, Eric might have drained the woman, and the woman herself had considered that result. I had a hunch something had been set in motion to catch Eric red-handed-red-fanged, more appropriately.

"Go brush your teeth," I told him. "Really scrub. Wash your face; rinse out the sink with lots and lots of water."

Eric didn't like being told what to do, but he understood expediency very well. He went into the bathroom, leaving the door open. Pam said, "Let me go check on what's happening with our special guests," and disappeared down the hall into the living room, where the low music had continued without a break.

Eric stepped back into the bedroom, drying his face with a towel. He looked more alert, more present. He hesitated when he saw I was by myself. Eric was pretty much a stranger to relationship problems. From little clues and reminiscences he'd let drop, I'd gotten the picture that during literally centuries of sexual adventures he'd called the shots and the women had said, "Whatever you want, you big handsome Viking." He'd had a fling or two with other vampires. Those had been more balanced connections, but brief. That was all I knew. Eric was not one to brag; he simply took sexual relationships for granted.

I was already feeling calmer. That was all to the good, since I was alone in a room with a man I'd wanted to shoot a few minutes before. Though we weren't bonded anymore, Eric knew me well enough to realize that he could now speak.

"It was only blood," he said. "I was anxious and hungry, you were late, and I didn't want to just bite into you the moment I saw you. She came in while I was waiting, and I thought I'd have a quick drink. She smelled so intoxicating."

"So you were trying to spare me," I said, letting sarcasm drip off my words. "I see." Then I made myself shut up.

"I acted impulsively." And his mouth compressed into a straight line.

I considered him. I acted on impulse sometimes, myself. For example, the few previous times I'd been this angry or this hurt, I'd walked out of the situation-not because I wanted the last word or because I wanted to make a dramatic statement, but because I needed alone time to cool off. I took a deep breath. I looked Eric in the eye. I realized we both had to make a huge effort to move past this, at least for tonight. Without conscious thought, I had identified the subtle scent that must have screamed out at Eric's senses.

"She's already part Were, and she was doused in the scent of fairy blood to make you want her more," I said. "I believe you'd have had better sense, if not for that. She was a trap. She came here because she expected to make a lot of money if you fed from her, and maybe to flirt with her death wish."

"Can you manage to carry on with the evening as if we were in harmony?" Eric asked.

"I'll do my best," I said, trying not to sound bitter.

"That's all I can ask."

"You don't seem to have any doubt that you can cope," I observed. But then I closed my eyes for a moment, and I used every bit of my self-control to pull myself together into a coherent person. "So if I'm here to officially greet Felipe and he's supposed to be talking to us about the 'disappearance' of Victor, when's all the whoopee out in the great room going to stop? And just so you know, I'm seriously mad about the table."

"Me, too," he said, with unmistakable relief. "I'll tell Felipe that we must talk tonight. Now." He looked down at me. "My lover, don't let your pride get the better of you."

"Well, me and my pride would be delighted to get back in my car and go home," I said, struggling to keep my voice quiet. "But I guess me and my pride will make the effort to stay here and get through this evening, if you could get everyone to stop screwing around long enough to get down to business. Or you can kiss me and my pride good-bye."

With that, I went into the bathroom and shut the door, very quietly and deliberately. I locked it. I was through talking, at least for a while. I had to have a few seconds when no one was looking at me.

From outside the door, there was silence. I sat down on the toilet lid. I felt so full of conflicting emotions that it was like walking through a minefield in my high-heeled black sandals with the silly flowers on them. I looked down at my bright toenails.

"Okay," I said to those toes. "Okay." I took a deep breath. "You knew he took blood from other people. And you knew 'other people' might mean other women. And you knew that some women are younger and prettier and skinnier than you." If I kept repeating that, it would sink in.