Charlaine Harris - All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Series #7)

I know there are many worse things than waking up naked in a bed with someone you don't know very well. But when my eyes fluttered open the next day, I couldn't think of any, for five long minutes. I knew Barry was awake. You can tell when a brain pops into awareness. To my relief, he slipped out of the bed and into the bathroom without speaking, and I heard the drumming of the water in the shower stall soon after.

Our clean clothes were in a bag hanging on our inside doorknob, and there was a USA Today, too. After hastily donning my clothes, I spread the newspaper out on the small table while I brewed a pot of the free coffee. I also extended the bag with Barry's clothes in it into the bathroom and dropped it on the floor, waving it a little first to attract his attention.

I'd looked at the room service menu, and we didn't have enough cash to get anything on it. We had to reserve some of our funds for a cab, because I didn't know what our next move would be. Barry came out, looking as refreshed as I'd been last night. To my surprise, he kissed me on the cheek, and then sat opposite me with his own insulated cup that contained something that bore a faint relationship to brewed coffee.

"I don't remember much about last night," he said. "Fill me in on why we're here."

I did.

"That was good thinking on my part," he said. "I'm in awe of myself."

I laughed. He might be feeling a little male chagrin that he had wilted before I did, but at least he could make fun of himself.

"So, I guess we need to call your demon lawyer?"

I nodded. It was eleven by then, so I called.

He answered right away. "There are many ears here," he said without preamble. "And I understand these phones aren't too secure. Cell phones."

"All right."

"So I will come to you in a while, bringing some things you'll need. You are where?"

With a twinge of misgiving, since the demon was a guy people would notice, I told him the name of the hotel and our room number, and he told me to be patient. I'd been feeling fine until Mr. Cataliades said that, and all of a sudden I began to twitch inwardly. I felt like we were on the run now, when we in no way deserved to be. I'd read the newspaper, and the story about the Pyramid said the catastrophe was due to "a series of explosions" that Dan Brewer, head of the state terrorist task force, attributed to several bombs. The fire chief was less committal: "An investigation is underway." I should damn well hope so.

Barry said, "We could have sex while we wait."

"I liked you better unconscious," I said. I knew Barry was only trying not to think about stuff, but still.

"You undress me last night?" he said with a leer.

"Yeah, that was me, lucky me," I said. I smiled at him, surprising myself.

A knock at the door had us both staring at it like startled deer.

"Your demon guy," said Barry after a second of mental checking.

"Yep," I said, and got up to answer it.

Mr. Cataliades hadn't had the kindness of a maid, so he was still in the soiled clothes of the day before. But he managed to look dignified, anyway, and his hands and face were clean.

"Please, how is everyone?" I asked.

"Sophie-Anne has lost her legs, and I don't know if they'll come back," he said.

"Oh, geez," I said, wincing.

"Sigebert fought free of the debris after dark," he continued. "He'd hidden in a safe pocket in the parking garage, where he landed after the explosions. I suspect he found someone to feed off, because he was healthier than he ought to have been. But if that's the case, he shoved the body into one of the fires, because we would have heard if a drained body had been found."

I hoped the donor had been one of the Fellowship guys.

"Your king," Mr. Cataliades said to Barry, "is so injured it may take him a decade to recover. Until the situation is clear, Joseph leads, though he'll be challenged soon. The king's child Rachel is dead; perhaps Sookie told you?"

"Sorry," I said. "I just had too much bad news to finish getting through it all."

"And Sookie has told me the human Cecile perished."

"What about Diantha?" I asked, hesitating to do so. It had to be significant that Mr.Cataliades hadn't mentioned his niece.

"Missing," he said briefly "And yet that piece of filth, Glassport, has only bruises."

"I'm sorry for both things," I said.

Barry seemed numb. All traces of his flippant mood had vanished. He looked smaller, sitting on the edge of the bed. The cocky sharp dresser I'd met in the lobby of the Pyramid had gone underground, at least for a while.

"I told you about Gervaise," Mr. Cataliades said. "I identified his woman's body this morning. What was her name?"

"Carla. I can't remember her last name. It'll come to me."

"The first name will probably be enough for them to identify her. One of the corpses in hotel uniform had a computer list in his pocket."

"They weren't all in on it," I said with some certainty.

"No, of course not," Barry said. "Only a few."

We looked at him.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"I overheard them."

"When?"

"The night before."

I bit the inside of my mouth, hard.

"What did you hear?" Mr. Cataliades asked in a level voice.

"I was with Stan in the, you know, the buy-and-sell thing. I had noticed the waiters and so on were dodging me, and then I watched to see if they were avoiding Sookie as well. So I thought, ' They know what you are, Barry, and there's something they don't want you to know. You better check it out.' I found a good place to sort of skulk behind some of those fake palm trees, close by the service door, and I could get a reading on what they were thinking inside. They didn't spell it out or anything, okay?" He had gotten an accurate reading on our thoughts, too. "It was just, like, 'Okay, we're gonna get those vamps, damn them, and if we take some of their human slaves, well, that's just too bad, we'll live with it. Damned by association.'"

I could only sit there and look at him.

"No, I didn't know when or what they were going to do! I went to bed finally kind of worrying about them, what the plan was, and when I couldn't settle into a good sleep, I finally quit trying and called you. And we tried to get everyone out," he said, and began crying.

I sat beside him and put my arm around him. I didn't know what to say. Of course, he could tell what I was thinking.

"Yes, I wish I'd said something before I did," he said in a choked voice. "Yes, I did the wrong thing. But I thought if I spoke up before I knew something for sure, the vamps would fall on them and drain them. Or they'd want me to point out who knew and who didn't. And I couldn't do that."

There was a long silence.

"Mr. Cataliades, have you seen Quinn?" I asked to break the silence.

"He's at the human hospital. He couldn't stop them from taking him."

"I have to go see him."

"How serious is your fear that the authorities will try to coerce you into doing their bidding?"

Barry raised his head and looked at me. "Pretty serious," we said simultaneously.

"It's the first time I've ever shown anyone, aside from local people, what I can do," I said.

"Me, too." Barry wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "You should have seen that guy's face when he finally believed that we could find people. He thought we were psychics or something, and he couldn't understand that what we were doing was registering a live brain signature. Nothing mystical about it."

"He was all over the idea once he believed us," I said. "You could hear in his head that he was thinking of the hundred different ways we could be of use to rescue operations, to the government at conferences, police interrogations."

Mr. Cataliades looked at us. I couldn't pick out all his snarly demon thoughts, but he was having a lot of them.