"Oddly enough, a few things have happened to his cameras already," Rasul said. "In fact, two of them have been smashed beyond repair. What's one more accident? I'm not guaranteeing anything, but we'll do our best, lovely lady."
"Thank you so much," I said. "Anything you can do will be much appreciated. After tonight, I can talk to a witch who could maybe take care of that problem for you. Maybe she could make all the pictures turn out overexposed, or something. You should give her a call."
"That's an excellent idea. Here is Melanie," he said, as we reached the main doors. "I'll pass you on to her, and return to my post. I'll see you when you exit, get the witch's name and address?"
"Sure," I said.
"Did anyone ever tell you that you smell enchantingly like a fairy?" Rasul said.
"Oh, I've been with my fairy godmother," I explained. "She took me shopping."
"And the result was wonderful," he said gallantly.
"You flatterer." I couldn't help but smile back at him. My ego had taken a blow to the solar plexus the night before (but I wasn't thinking about that), and a little thing like the guard's admiration was just what I needed, even if it was really Claudine's smell that had triggered it.
Melanie was a delicate woman, even in the SWAT gear. "Yum, yum, you do smell like fairy," she said. She consulted her own clipboard. "You are the Stackhouse woman? The queen expected you last night."
"I got hurt." I held my arm out, showing the bandage. Thanks to a lot of Advil, the pain was down to a dull throb.
"Yes, I heard about it. The new one is having a great night tonight. He received instructions, he has a mentor, and he has a volunteer donor. When he feels more like his new self, he may tell us how he came to be turned."
"Oh?" I heard my voice falter when I realized she was talking about Jake Purifoy. "He might not remember?"
"If it's a surprise attack, sometimes they don't remember for a while," she said, and shrugged. "But it always comes back, sooner or later. In the meantime, he'll have a free lunch." She laughed at my inquiring look. "They register for the privilege, you know. Stupid humans." She shrugged. "There's no fun in that, once you've gotten over the thrill of feeding, in and of itself. The fun was always in the chase." Melanie really wasn't happy with the new vampire policy of feeding only from willing humans or from the synthetic blood. She clearly felt the lack of her former diet.
I tried to look politely interested.
"When the prey makes the first advance, it's just not the same," she grumped. "People these days." She shook her little head in weary exasperation. Since she was so small that her helmet almost wobbled on her head, I could feel myself smiling.
"So, he wakes up and you all herd the volunteer in? Like dropping a live mouse into a snake's tank?" I worked to keep my face serious. I didn't want Melanie to think I was making fun of her personally.
After a suspicious moment, Melanie said, "More or less. He's been lectured. There are other vampires present."
"And the volunteer survives?"
"They sign a release beforehand," Melanie said, carefully.
I shuddered.
Rasul had escorted me from the other side of the street to the main entrance to the queen's domain. It was a three-story office building, perhaps dating from the fifties, and extending a whole city block. In other places, the basement would have been the vampires' retreat, but in New Orleans, with its high water table, that was impossible. All the windows had received a distinctive treatment. The panels that covered them were decorated in a Mardi Gras theme, so the staid brick building was pepped up with pink, purple, and green designs on a white or black background. There were iridescent patches on the shutters, too, like Mardi Gras beads. The effect was disconcerting.
"What does she do when she throws a party?" I asked. Despite the shutters, the prosaic office rectangle was simply not festive.
"Oh, she owns an old monastery," Melanie said. "You can get a brochure about it before you go. That's where all the state functions are held. Some of the old ones can't go into the former chapel, but other than that… it's got a high wall all around, so it's easy to patrol, and it's decorated real nice. The queen has apartments there, but it's too insecure for year-round living."
I couldn't think of anything to say. I doubted I would ever see the queen's state residence. But Melanie seemed bored and inclined to chat. "You were Hadley's cousin, I hear?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Strange, to think of having living relatives." For a moment, she looked far away, and as wistful as a vampire can look. Then she seemed to kind of shake herself mentally. "Hadley wasn't bad for one so young. But she seemed to take her vampire longevity a little too much for granted."
Melanie shook her head. "She should never have crossed someone as old and wily as Waldo."
"That's for damn sure," I said.
"Chester," Melanie called. Chester was the next guard in line, and he was standing with a familiar figure clothed in the (what I was coming to think of as) usual SWAT garb.
"Bubba!" I exclaimed, as the vampire said, "Miss Sookie!" Bubba and I hugged, to the vampires' amusement. Vampires don't shake hands, in the ordinary course of things, and hugging is just as outre in their culture.
I was glad to see they hadn't let him have a gun, just the accoutrements of the guards. He was looking fine in the military outfit, and I told him so. "Black looks real good with your hair," I said, and Bubba smiled his famous smile.
"You're mighty nice to say so," he said. "Thank you very much."
Back in the day, everyone in the world had known Bubba's face and smile. When he'd been wheeled into the morgue in Memphis, a vampire attendant had detected the tiniest flicker of life. Since the attendant was a huge fan, he had taken on the responsibility for bringing the singer over, and a legend had been born. Unfortunately, Bubba's body had been so saturated with drugs and physical woes that the conversion hadn't been entirely successful, and the vampire world passed Bubba around like the public relations nightmare he was.
"How long have you been here, Bubba?" I asked.
"Oh, a couple of weeks, but I like it real well," he said. "Lots of stray cats."
"Right," I said, trying not to think about that too graphically. I really like cats. So did Bubba, but not in the same way.
"If a human catches a glimpse of him, they think he's an impersonator," Chester said quietly. Melanie had gone back to her post, and Chester, who'd been a sandy-haired kid from the backwoods with poor dentition when he was taken, was now in charge of me. "That's fine, most often. But every so now and then, they call him by his used-to-be name. Or they ask him to sing."
Bubba very seldom sang these days, though every now and then he could be coaxed into belting out a familiar song or two. That was a memorable occasion. Most often, though, he denied he could sing a note, and he usually got very agitated when he was called by his original name.
He trailed along after us as Chester led me further into the building. We had turned, and gone up a floor, encountering more and more vampires—and a few humans—heading here or there with a purposeful air. It was like any busy office building, any weekday, except the workers were vampires and the sky outside was as dark as the New Orleans sky ever got. As we walked, I noticed that some vampires seemed more at ease than others. I observed that the wary vamps were all wearing the same pins attached to their collars, pins in the shape of the state of Arkansas. These vamps must be part of the entourage of the queen's husband, Peter Threadgill. When one of the Louisiana vampires bumped into an Arkansas vampire, the Arkansan snarled and for a second I thought there would be a fight in the corridor over a slight accident.