“A werewolf or vampire could have snapped it,” I said. “So Mustapha’s not necessarily guilty of opening the gate, anyway.” He’d done something wrong, though. You don’t vanish unless you’ve done something wrong. “What did you smel ? Anything?”
“Even Heidi could not say for certain who’d been there,” Bil said. “Many humans, sweaty humans … the yard workers. A dash of fairy, but that could have been a very faint trace of the vial around the girl’s neck. And a stronger trace of twoey. That could have been from the girl herself.” He leaned back and looked up into the night sky … the only sky he’d seen in more than a hundred and thirty years.
“What do you think happened?” I asked him, after we’d been quiet for a few calm moments. I’d been looking up, along with Bil . Though Bon Temps was close, it only cast a faint glow upward, especial y this late. I could see the stars, vast and cold and distant. I shivered.
“Look, Sookie,” he said, and held out something smal . I took it and held it up to my nose to try to make it out in the patchy light.
“It’s true, then,” I said. It was a rubber stopper, the kind that would close a smal vial. “Where did you find it?”
“In the living room. It rol ed under the dining table and landed right by a chair leg. I think the woman Kym took out the stopper when she knew she was going to see Eric face-to-face,” he said. “She dropped it while she drank the blood. She tucked the vial down into her bra in case the lingering scent would attract him further. And when I found her on the lawn, I could smel that she was two-natured. That would have added to her … al ure.”
“The dad’s two-natured, a Were, I think. The Rowes showed up here at my house yesterday with a reporter, to try to make something quotable happen.”
Bil wanted to hear al about it. “You have the reporter’s card?” he asked when I’d finished.
I went into the house and found it on the kitchen counter. Now that I took a moment to look at it, I discovered that Harp Powel was based in Terre Sauvage, a smal town that lay north of the interstate between Bon Temps and Shreveport. “Huh,” I said, handing it to Bil , “I assumed he was based in Shreveport or Baton Rouge or Monroe.”
Bil said, “I met this man at Fangtasia. He’s been published by a smal regional press. He’s written several books.”
Bil sounded quite respectful; he had great admiration for the written word.
“What was he doing at Fangtasia?” I asked, diverted.
“He interviewed me and Maxwel Lee, since we’re both native Louisianans. He was hoping to do a col ection of Louisiana vampires’ histories. He wanted to listen to our recol ections of the times we grew up in, the historical events we’d witnessed. He thought that would be interesting.”
“So, a ripoff of Christina Sobol?” I tried not to sound sarcastic. Sobol’s
Bil nodded. “I’m trying to remember if he asked questions about Eric. I believe that he wanted Eric’s phone number in case he needed to get in touch with him…. I didn’t give it to him, of course, but he could have discovered Eric’s address online.” Bil was one of the computer-savvy vampires.
“Okay, so he could have found out where Eric lives, but why would a writer have any reason to send Kym Rowe into the house, or to murder her afterward?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea,” Bil said. “But we can surely go ask him. I’m trying to think of some other avenue of investigation, one that doesn’t lead back to someone in Eric’s house.”
“I’m not saying that Harp Powel isn’t fishy, showing up with Kym’s parents. But it seems more likely that he’s just riding the publicity train. To me, it appears a lot more likely that Mustapha let Kym Rowe in so she could find Eric and offer herself. I just don’t know why. Why did someone prep her and send her in to do that? Why did they get Mustapha to delay my arrival? I guess so that she’d have time to hook Eric … but then, why have me come in? Mustapha could have told me that the meeting had been canceled or that I should go to Fangtasia instead … a hundred different things.”
“His role in this is a mystery,” Bil said, shrugging. “She was obviously bait for Eric, designed to arouse his lust.” Bil looked at me and blinked.
“His bloodlust,” he added hastily. “But she must have had some piece of information, if only the name of who hired her to do this. When you argued with Eric and he sent the girl away, someone went after her and seized her head and twisted.” Bil made a very graphic motion with his hands. No stranger to the seizing and twisting, he.
“Disregarding why she was kil ed,” I said, “why was she sent there in the first place? Getting me mad at Eric doesn’t seem to be much of a reason.”
Bil looked down at his hands. “There are a couple of theories that fit the few facts we’re sure of,” he said slowly. “And these theories are what I’l tel Eric. The first is that Eric himself or Pam or Mustapha fol owed the Rowe woman out of the house and kil ed her out of sheer anger at the trouble she’d caused. Perhaps—if the kil er was Eric— he wanted to erase the memory of the offense he’d committed against you.”
I stiffened. This was nothing I hadn’t thought of myself, but hearing it out loud made it seem more likely.
“The other theory … wel , that’s more complex.” Bil shifted his gaze to the dark woods. “Since a Were let the girl in, I have to assume she was part of some Were plot. I should suspect Alcide, since he’s the packleader. But I don’t believe that Alcide would plan such a convoluted method of discrediting Eric. Alcide’s a relatively straightforward man and an intel igent one … at least in some respects. Evidently, women are a huge blind spot for him.” Bil raised an eyebrow.
That was a pretty good evaluation of Alcide’s character. “But what Were would do this without Alcide’s say- so?” I said.
“Mustapha is a lone wolf.” Bil shrugged. Obvious.
“But Mustapha didn’t bring Kym Rowe to the house,” I argued. “You said the scent trail didn’t tel you that.”
