July 7th meeting

July 7th
Despite the fans all through the antebellum house, it was still stifling hot. Good thing Vampires did not need to worry about heat and humidity, only open flames and bitter freezing cold. Otherwise, Jessica, in her light tight suite would be miserable. As time passed and we had little to do but wait for the next installment of this summer’s adventures, most of the gang had lent a hand at Bill’s house to finish the interior. Though I was dubious at the prospect, the boys had talked us Bill girls into waiting til next week when hopefully it would be cooler to begin painting the outside. I pointed out that Bill’s house was pretty shaded and it was probably as cool as it would get. Even the junebugs thought it was too hot to holler.

The mantle clock chimed on the hour. The clock smith had brought the ornate Victorian mantle clock the other day and as we worked, we could hear the delicate chimes playing Roslyn Castle on the hour. I was watching the plaster master putting up the medallion on the center of Bill’s ceiling in his bedroom. The big four poster bed was covered carefully in plastic. When he was finished we would paint the room, the wainscoting white and the rest of the wall the French imperial blue. Matching damask drapes would cover the windows.

We had taken the mantel down and God Speed and Barrister were stripping the wood of its many layers of paint, revealing good oak and it would be beautiful once it was sanded and stained and sealed. The bathroom was already refurbished and for that I was grateful. Bathrooms and kitchens are the hardest to do.

Sleeping below, in the newly remodeled under floor area were Eric and Pam. While normally they would not have deigned to sleep in Bill’s house, they made an exception. We were all here, after all, and there simply was not reason for all of us to pack up and go to the parlor when we had a perfectly fine place here. The garden was freshly mowed and a wrought iron gazebo had been found under a long dead wild Irish rose vine. Scarlett, Renee and I had worked on it sanding and cleaning the ornate Victorian bird cage style and we would paint it later with metal paint, embellishing the vine pattern with gold leaf paint and picking out the cast roses with pink paint to add to the beauty of it. It made a sizable place and I could see a couple of comfortable wicker fan back chairs sitting there for a moonlight chat.
As the sun came closer to setting, we went to shower off the grime and change clothes. Afterwards, we made a huge salad while the boys went to work grilling us some steaks. Something cool and light for supper, with French bread and cold wine, chilling in Bill’s fridge from Eric Northman, who always kept us in good wine and liquor and beer. He was a bar owner, after all.

We were all sitting in the cooling day, as the sun disappeared from view and the cooler temperatures come in. Jessica was the first to wake up and come out of the house to the back yard where we were sitting around, letting our suppers settle, knocking back another drink. Scarlett presented her a Tru:Blood and the girl, having long since given up protesting, obediently began drinking the synthetic blood. If she was feeding on anyone besides the occasional nip from God Speed or Sal or even Scarlett, we did not know anything about it. But, we were trying our best to keep her on the right path.

Butter stretched and rubbed her belly. She had been having contractions for a while and we suspected this weekend would be the bun’s coming out party. Of course Eric was helicoptering around her, hovering like a giant blonde mosquito, touching her and checking on her if she made the least peep. Don’t go into labor around the Viking chere, I don’t think he could get you in and out of his corvette without a shoe horn.

Speaking of blonde mosquitoes, Pam and Eric came out of the house and stood around looking at the yard. He seemed to approve of the basic clearing off and pruning we had been doing in Bill’s yard. It would take a long time for the garden to come up to par, but it was at least on its way from being disorderly to neat. Fairy presented him with a Tru:Blood and took a drink of it and sat down beside Butter, rubbing her belly. Pam, less interested in Butter’s condition, sat down next to Scarlett. The Kid handed her a bottle of T:B and sat back down with the young Vampire.

“So, have you any thoughts today on what you might see in the upcoming adventures?” asked Eric. We had managed to get a few tidbits from the news about what might be coming. We wondered about the ramifications of Sheriff Dearborn’s decision to quit in the light of the discovery of Mr. Body, the hapless trucker Jessica had accidentally drained. We also wondered about our new Vampire. Was Franklin Mott a friend or a foe? We had no idea. We knew he was looking for information about Bill and Sookie and we were afraid Tara was being sucked into the drama. Poor Tara could not get an even break as far as the supernatural world was concerned. What would this do to her?

“Was Bill on a secret mission?” asked Bella. This was the thing that bothered her, and the other Bill girls the most, was the notion that Bill was sent to procure Sookie under the orders of the queen. The knowledge he did this under orders barely took the sting out of the situation, and it hurt us to think this was the truth.
“Bill is a man of many secrets,” said Eric, gloomily. “Not that I don’t have my own secrets as well. Vampires enjoy exploiting each other to meet our individual ends.”
“But, keep in mind, regardless of what happens, Bill may have been sent to do that very thing, but he never counted on falling in love with her. He had been taught that very painful lesson by Lorena,” said Barrister. “I imagine he thought he was impervious to feeling anything for humans after what Lorena did to him to teach him that their world is theirs and the human world belongs to us and neither the two should meet.”
“True,” said Eric, still gloomy.

“Eric, do you agree with Lorena, that Vampires can only bring suffering to humans they love?” asked Westexan.

The Viking sat there motionless but I could see the brain inside the dead man’s head turning by watching his grey green eyes glitter. He was struggling too. We had seen that in the last episode, as he explained to Sookie he owed her something for staying with Godric when he met the sun. Eric would be ruthless and play upon Sookie’s doubts about Bill’s affections for her and the longevity of their relationship, but still, he too was experiencing things he had not experienced about humans in a long, long time.

“I think there will be pain and suffering between humans and Vampires as we begin to learn to…feel things for you,” he said carefully. “You” being humans in general. It was obvious Eric already had feelings for not only Sookie but the rest of us. “We are not used to having deep feelings for humans.”

“Jason is going to be interesting,” said Tiff. “Wonder what he is going to do if Andy makes him a police officer?”
“I don’t know, and I think Andy is going to start being aggravated with Jason. He is not the brightest color in the crayon box and I think the town is going to notice something has to be up with those two because there is just no way Stackhouse could be smart enough to get on the force,” said God Speed. “Do you think anyone besides Tara and Jessica knows about Franklin?”

“Well, with Bill away, and Jessica the only Vampire in residence, some fingers are going to point at her because the body they found. It was very obvious he was at least…desecrated…by a Vampire,” said Dude. “The only body I wanted to find headless was Lorena.”

We all murmured agreement about that. If there was a Vampire who deserved being staked, it was Lorena. But the body was out in the open, and there were fingers to be pointed. I sighed. I stole a look at Jessica and saw her worried face. I decided to change directions.

“Okay, who stole the money off Sam?” I asked. “Of course it is his family but who was the planner and the executioner of the plot?”
“I was thinking about that,” said Renee. “You know how we read about Quinn and how Sookie learns that he was a pit fighter and that he did it to pay back some Vampires but he also became big enough of a draw and made enough money to bet on himself?”
We all nodded. We were careful about gathering clues from the Connection to look into what might happen with the Source. It was a tricky thing to do, but it sometimes came that AB would borrow details of other adventures from CH to layer in on the action we saw every summer.

“What if they stole that money and decided to parlay that money into a high stakes bet and that is how we find out how Tommy got his scars. We do, after all suspect Tommy is a pit fighter himself, considering his ‘go to’ shift is a pit bull and he is scarred up in his human form,” said Renee.
“Great thinking Renee,” said Pam. “Of course it is simple casual interest on my part with the goings on in Sam Merlotte’s life, but that makes for interesting reasoning.”

“And perhaps in addition to drug dealing, dog fighting is also a big activity in Hot Shot?” asked Sal. We nodded. That would work too, and it would pull Jason back into that strange community where Jason might actually see the mysterious girl he had seen when he rode along with Andy.

“Pam,” said Dude. “How much trouble are you all in with the Queen and the Magister?”
“More than you can help us with,” said the Viking. We hated when he did that. Of course he knew we were powerless in the world AB had created but his discounting our concern for him was underestimating us. Barrister was thoughtful, his legal mind going over things he knew about the Vampire world and their laws. The Queen was the blame for all of this and she was placing Pam and Eric in jeopardy.

“And Bill’s defection will have placed us in even more jeopardy,” said Pam. “He knows the Queen is selling Vampire blood and he knows Eric and I are doing it with the help of Lafayette.”
“And now Tara is the mix as well, peripherally, but in the mix,” said Dude. “How much does she know?”
“She knows that Lafayette is selling V…though that was from poor old Eddie Fournier,” I said. “And that is a Vampire Eric has overlooked for the time being…” I looked at Eric. “Or have you?”

“Don’t ask me questions Aslinn, you may not like my answers,” he said. His voice was calm, and his look chilly. I had never known the Viking to look so…Vampire…in our midst in a long while. If this were the case, this could become more complicated than we liked for our good friends in Bon Temps, pulling Jason back into the mix for the hapless Vampire’s death at the hands of his psychopathic V addicted girlfriend, Amy Burley.

“Well, whose blood is the queen selling?” asked God Speed. “It can’t be from just one Vampire?”
“Perhaps it is Pussy Lover,” said Minnie. I was getting a feeling Pussy Lover was someone or no one, a red herring, though I couldn’t imagine Lafayette playing such a dangerous bluff when he had been held by the Sheriff of Area Nine.
“Lafayette said his contact was in the Dallas area, but I can’t imagine that being true. I think Pussy Lover is the queen, that is how she is coming into all that V,” said Linzy.
“Maybe Pussy Lover is just her main contact for the large amounts of V she would need,” said Lina. “Maybe they really are in Dallas.”

“Could be,” said Scarlett. “What will happen to the queen if she is caught? Would you guys be able to turn ‘state’s evidence’ on the queen to take your part out of it as simply doing your duty to your queen? Would you tell on her to save yourselves?”
“Of course we would,” said Pam. “Vampires may owe fealty to a king or queen, but we will do whatever we must to preserve our existence.”
“This of course would leave Louisiana without a ruler. Who would be the likely person to take her place?” asked Sweet and Wild.

“None other than the King of Mississippi. He would be strong enough to step in, perhaps even broker a deal with Nan Flanagan and the Magister,” said Barrister. “Vampire royal positions are not hereditary unless they can be passed from maker to progeny.”
“Does Sophie Anne have any children Eric?” I asked.
“That I do not know,” said Eric. “But, I am inclined to believe this is a solution to Edgington’s problem in acquiring the state of Mississippi.”
“Would you swear fealty to him if this was the case?” asked Fairy.

“I would do whatever was necessary to protect my interests,” said Eric. “That does not mean Edgington would be out of danger. Where one monarch is deposed, the Vampire wearing the crown should grow eyes in the back of his head.”
“It’s an old story,” I said. I looked up at the starry night. So many things to ponder til next Sunday, so many mysteries and I feared we would not have many simple answers. Who was Franklin working for? How long had he been at it? What was the King of Mississippi hoping to get from Bill? What would happen to the Queen of Louisiana?

I suppose it would all come out in the wash…But with Vampires, you just have to remember to presoak…