The closer I got to the vampire bar, the more my pulse picked up; this was the downside to the blood bond I had with Eric Northman. I knew I was going to see him, and I was simply happy about it. I should have been worried, I should have been apprehensive about what he wanted, I should have asked a million questions about the velvet-wrapped bundle, but I just drove with a smile on my face.

Though I couldn’t help how I felt, I could control my actions. Out of sheer perversity, since no one had told me to come around to the employees’ entrance, I entered through the main door. It was a busy night at Fangtasia, and there was a crowd waiting on benches inside the first set of doors. Pam was at the hostess podium. She smiled at me broadly, showing a little fang. (The crowd was delighted.)

I’d known Pam for a while now, and she was as close to a friend as I had among the vampires. Tonight the blond vampire was wearing the obligatory filmy black dress, and she’d camped it up with a long, sheer black veil. Her fingernails were polished scarlet.

“My friend,” Pam said, and came out from behind the podium to hug me. I was surprised but pleased and gladly hugged her back. She’d spritzed on a little perfume to eclipse the faint, rather dry smell of vampire. “Have you got it?” she whispered in my ear.

“Oh, the bundle? It’s in my purse.” I lifted my big brown shoulder bag by its straps.

Pam gave me a look I couldn’t interpret through the veil. It appeared to be an expression that compounded exasperation and affection. “You didn’t even look inside?”

“I haven’t had time,” I said. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been curious. I simply hadn’t had the leisure to think about it. “Sam had to leave because his mom got shot by his stepdad, and I’ve been managing the bar.”

Pam gave me a long look of appraisal. “Go back to Eric’s office and hand him the bundle,” she said. “Leave it wrapped. No matter who’s there. And don’t handle it like it was a garden tool he left outside, either.”

I gave her the look right back. “What am I doing, Pam?” I asked, jumping on the cautious train way too late.

“You’re protecting your own skin,” Pam said. “Never doubt it. Now go.” She gave me a get-along pat on the back and turned to answer a tourist’s question about how often vampires needed to get their teeth cleaned.

“Would you like to come very close and look at mine?” Pam asked in a sultry voice, and the woman shrieked with delighted fear. That was why the humans came to vampire bars, and vampire comedy clubs, and vampire dry cleaners, and vampire casinos . . . to flirt with danger.