"Excuse me, Alcide, Colonel," I said as politely as I could. "Maybe Alcide could run me back to my car? Since you all seem to have plans to carry out."
"Of course," the colonel said, and I could read that he was glad to be getting me out of the way. "Alcide, I'll see you back here in, what? Forty minutes or so? We'll talk about it then."
Alcide glanced at his watch and reluctantly agreed. "I might stop by Adabelle's house while I'm taking Sookie to her car," he said, and the colonel nodded, as if that were only pro forma.
"I don't know why Adabelle isn't answering the phone at work, and I don't believe she'd go over to the coven," Alcide explained when we were back in his truck. "Adabelle lives with her mother, and they don't get along too well. But we'll check there first. Adabelle's Flood's second in command, and she's also our best tracker."
"What can the trackers do?"
"They'll go to Fangtasia and try to follow the scent trail the witches left there. That'll take them to the witches' lair. If they lose the scent, maybe we can call in help from the Shreveport covens. They have to be as worried as we are."
"At Fangtasia, I'm afraid any scent might be obscured by all the emergency people," I said regretfully. That would have been something to watch, a Were tracking through the city. "And just so you know, Hallow has contacted all the witches hereabouts already. I talked to a Wiccan in Bon Temps who'd been called in to Shreveport to meet with Hallow's bunch."
"This is bigger than I thought, but I'm sure the pack can handle it." Alcide sounded quite confident.
Alcide backed the truck out of the colonel's driveway, and we began making our way through Shreveport once again. I was seeing more of the city this day than I'd seen in my whole life.
"Whose idea was it for Bill to go to Peru?" Alcide asked me suddenly.
"I don't know." I was startled and puzzled. "I think it was his queen's."
"But he didn't tell you that directly."
"No."
"He might have been ordered to go."
"I suppose."
"Who had the power to do that?" Alcide asked, as if the answer would enlighten me.
"Eric, of course." Since Eric was sheriff of Area Five. "And then the queen." That would be Eric's boss, the queen of Louisiana. Yeah, I know. It's dumb. But the vampires thought they were a marvel of modern organization.
"And now Bill's gone, and Eric's staying at your house." Alcide's voice was coaxing me to reach an obvious conclusion.
"You think that Eric staged this whole thing? You think he ordered Bill out of the country, had witches invade Shreveport, had them curse him, began running half-naked out in the freezing cold when he supposed I might be near, and then just hoped I'd take him in and that Pam and Chow and my brother would talk to each other to arrange Eric's staying with me?"
Alcide looked properly flattened. "You mean you'd thought of this?"
"Alcide, I'm not educated, but I'm not dumb." Try getting educated when you can read the minds of all your classmates, not to mention your teacher. But I read a lot, and I've read lots of good stuff. Of course, now I read mostly mysteries and romances. So I've learned many curious odds and ends, and I have a great vocabulary. "But the fact is, Eric would hardly go to this much trouble to get me to go to bed with him. Is that what you're thinking?" Of course, I knew it was. Were or not, I could see that much.
"Put that way . . ." But Alcide still didn't look satisfied. Of course, this was the man who had believed Debbie Pelt when she said that I was definitely back with Bill.
I wondered if I could get some witch to cast a truth spell on Debbie Pelt, whom I despised because she had been cruel to Alcide, insulted me grievously, burned a hole in my favorite wrap and—oh—tried to kill me by proxy. Also, she had stupid hair.
Alcide wouldn't know an honest Debbie if she came up and bit him in the ass, though backbiting was a specialty of the real Debbie.
If Alcide had known Bill and I had parted, would he have come by? Would one thing have led to another?
Well, sure it would have. And there I'd be, stuck with a guy who'd take the word of Debbie Pelt.
I glanced over at Alcide and sighed. This man was just about perfect in many respects. I liked the way he looked, I understood the way he thought, and he treated me with great consideration and respect. Sure, he was a werewolf, but I could give up a couple of nights of month. True, according to Alcide it would be difficult for me to carry his baby to term, but it was at least possible. Pregnancy wasn't part of the picture with a vampire.
Whoa. Alcide hadn't offered to father my babies, and he was still seeing Debbie. What had happened to her engagement to the Clausen guy?
With the less noble side of my character—assuming my character had a noble side—I hoped that someday soon Alcide would see Debbie for the bitch she truly was, and that he'd finally take the knowledge to heart. Whether, consequently, Alcide turned to me or not, he deserved better than Debbie Pelt.
Adabelle Yancy and her mother lived in a cul-de-sac in an upper-middle-class neighborhood that wasn't too far from Fangtasia. The house was on a rolling lawn that raised it higher than the street, so the driveway mounted and went to the rear of the property. I thought Alcide might park on the street and we'd go up the brick walkway to the front door, but he seemed to want to get the truck out of sight. I scanned the cul-de-sac, but I didn't see anyone at all, much less anyone watching the house for visitors.
Attached to the rear of the house at a right angle, the three-car garage was neat as a pin. You would think cars were never parked there, that the gleaming Subaru had just strayed into the area. We climbed out of the truck.
"That's Adabelle's mother's car," Alcide was frowning. "She started a bridal shop. I bet you've heard of it—Verena Rose. Verena's retired from working there full-time. She drops in just often enough to make Adabelle crazy."
I'd never been to the shop, but brides of any claim to prominence in the area made a point of shopping there. It must be a real profitable store. The brick home was in excellent shape, and no more than twenty years old. The yard was edged, raked, and landscaped.
When Alcide knocked at the back door, it flew open. The woman who stood revealed in the opening was as put-together and neat as the house and yard. Her steel-colored hair was in a neat roll on the back of her head, and she was in a dull olive suit and low-heeled brown pumps. She looked from Alcide to me and didn't find what she was seeking. She pushed open the glass storm door.
"Alcide, how nice to see you," she lied desperately. This was a woman in deep turmoil.
Alcide gave her a long look. "We have trouble, Verena."
If her daughter was a member of the pack, Verena herself was a werewolf. I looked at the woman curiously, and she seemed like one of the more fortunate friends of my grandmother's. Verena Rose Yancy was an attractive woman in her late sixties, blessed with a secure income and her own home. I could not imagine this woman down on all fours loping across a field.
And it was obvious that Verena didn't give a damn what trouble Alcide had. "Have you seen my daughter?" she asked, and she waited for his answer with terror in her eyes. "She can't have betrayed the pack."
"No," Alcide said. "But the packmaster sent us to find her. She missed a pack officer's meeting last night."
"She called me from the shop last night. She said she had an unexpected appointment with a stranger who'd called the shop right at closing time." The woman literally wrung her hands. "I thought maybe she was meeting that witch."