“I guess he wanted to earn it himself,” Ham said miserably. (Misery, I learned, was deep purple.) “He thought he’d meet with the fairy again, find out exactly what the fairy wanted him to do, get a body from a mortuary or a drunk’s body from some alley, and plant it on Sookie’s land. That would fulfill the letter of what the fairy wanted. No harm would have been done. But instead, I decided . . .” He began sobbing, and his color turned all washed-out gray, the color of faded faith.

“Where were you going to meet him?” I asked. “To get your money? Which you had earned, I’m not saying you didn’t.” I was proud of how fair I was being. Fairness was blue, of course.

“I was going to meet him at the same spot in your woods,” he said. “On the south side by the cemetery. Later tonight.”

“Very good,” I murmured. “Don’t you feel better now?”

“Yes,” he said, without a trace of irony in his voice. “I do feel better, and I’m ready to accept the judgment of the pack.”

“I’m not,” Patricia cried. “I escaped death in the pack war by surrendering. Let me surrender again!” She fell to her knees, like Annabelle. “I beg forgiveness. I’m only guilty of loving the wrong man.” Like Annabelle. Patricia bowed her head, and her dark braid fell over one shoulder. She put her clasped hands to her face. Pretty as a picture.

“You didn’t love me,” Ham said, genuinely shocked. “We screwed. You were upset with Alcide because he didn’t pick you to bed. I was upset with Alcide because he didn’t pick me as his second. That was the sum total of what we had in common!”

“Their colors are certainly getting brighter now,” I observed. The passion of their mutual accusation was perking up their auras to something combustible. I tried to summarize to myself what I’d learned, but it all came out a jumble. Maybe Jason could help me sort it out later. This shaman stuff was kind of taxing. I felt that soon I would be depleted, as if the end of a race were in sight. “Time to decide,” I said, looking at Alcide, whose brilliant red glow was still steady.

“I think Annabelle should be disciplined but not cast out of the pack,” Alcide said, and there was a chorus of protest.

“Kill her!” said Jannalynn, her fierce little face determined. She was so ready to do the killing. I wondered if Sam really understood what he’d bitten off in going out with such a ferocious thing. He seemed so far away now.