Normally, I’m not an indecisive person. But as I patted myself dry and combed through my wet hair (feeling how strange it was that my comb completed its passage much more quickly), I worried about sharing my suspicions with Eric. When a vampire loves you—even when he simply feels proprietary toward you—his notion of protection can be pretty drastic. Eric loved going into battle; often he had to struggle to balance the political savvy of a move with his instinct to leap in with a swinging sword. Though I didn’t think he’d go charging off at the two-natured community, in his present mood it seemed wiser to keep my ideas to myself until I had some evidence one way or another.

I pulled on sleep pants and a Bon Temps Lady Falcons T-shirt. I looked at my bed with longing before I left my room to rejoin the strange crowd in the kitchen. Eric and Pam were drinking some bottled synthetic blood I’d had in the refrigerator, and Immanuel was sipping on a Coke. I was stricken because I hadn’t thought of offering them refreshment, but Pam caught my eye and gave me a level look. She’d taken care of it. I nodded gratefully and told Immanuel, “I’m ready now.” He unfolded his skinny frame from the chair and gestured to the stool.

This time my new hairdresser unfolded a thin, shoulders-only plastic capelet and tied it around my neck. He combed through my hair himself, eyeing it intently. I tried to smile at Eric to show this wasn’t so bad, but my heart wasn’t in it. Pam scowled at her cell phone. A text had displeased her.

Apparently Immanuel had passed the time by combing Pam’s hair. The pale golden mane, straight and fine, was pushed off her face with a blue headband. You just couldn’t get any more Alice-like. She wasn’t wearing a full-skirted blue dress and a white pinafore, but she was wearing pale blue: a sheath dress, perhaps from the sixties, and pumps with three-inch heels. And pearls.

“What’s up, Pam?” I asked, simply because the silence in my kitchen was getting oppressive. “Someone sending you a nasty text?”

“Nothing’s up,” she snarled, and I tried not to flinch. “Absolutely nothing is happening. Victor is still our leader. Our position doesn’t improve. Our requests go unanswered. Where is Felipe? We need him.”

Eric glared at her. Whoa, trouble in paradise. I’d never seen them seriously at odds.

Pam was the only “child” of Eric’s I’d ever met. She’d gone off on her own after spending her first few years as a vampire with him. She’d done well, but she’d told me she was glad enough to return to Eric after he’d called her to help him out in Area Five when the former queen had appointed him to the position of sheriff.