A Touch of Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

a bundle of my more mundane clothes rolled under my arm.
    “You look good, Sookie,” Pam said. Pam herself had elected to wear a tuxedo made out of silver lamé. She was a sight. My hair has some curl to it, but Pam’s is a paler blond and very straight. We both have blue eyes, but hers are a lighter shade and rounder, and she doesn’t blink much. “Eric will be very pleased.”
    I flushed. Eric and I have a History. But since he had amnesia when we created that history, he doesn’t
remember it. Pam does. “Like I care what he thinks,” I said.
    Pam smiled at me sideways. “Right,” she said. “You are totally indifferent. So is he.”
    I tried to look like I was accepting her words on their surface level and not seeing through to the sarcasm. To my surprise, Pam gave me a light kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for coming,” she said. “You may perk him up. He’s been very hard to work for these past few days.”
    “Why?” I asked, though I wasn’t real sure I wanted to know.
    “Have you ever seen It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown ?”
    I stopped in my tracks. “Sure,” I said. “Have you ?”
    “Oh, yes,” Pam said calmly. “Many times.” She gave me a minute to absorb that. “Eric is like that on Dracula Night. He thinks, every year, that this time Dracula will pick his party to attend. Eric fusses and plans; he frets and stews. He sent the invitations back to the printer twice so they were late going out. Now that the night is actually here, he’s worked himself into a state.”
    “So this is a case of hero worship gone crazy?”
    “You have such a way with words,” Pam said admiringly.
We were outside Eric’s office, and we could both hear him bellowing inside.
    “He’s not happy with the new bartender. He thinks there are not enough bottles of the blood the count is said to prefer, according to an interview in American Vampire .”
    I tried to imagine Vlad Tepes, impaler of so many of his own countrymen, chatting with a reporter. I sure wouldn’t want to be the one holding the pad and pencil. “What brand would that be?” I scrambled to catch up with the conversation.
    “The Prince of Darkness is said to prefer Royalty.”
    “Ew.” Why was I not surprised?
    Royalty was a very, very rare bottled blood. I’d thought the brand was only a rumor until now. Royalty consisted of part synthetic blood and part real blood—the blood of, you guessed it, people of title. Before you go thinking of enterprising vamps ambushing that cute Prince William, let me reassure you. There were plenty of minor royals in Europe who were glad to give blood for an astronomical sum.
    “After a month’s worth of phone calls, we managed to get two bottles.” Pam was looking quite grim. “They cost more than we could afford. I’ve never known my
maker to be other than business-wise, but this year Eric seems to be going overboard. Royalty doesn’t keep forever, you know, with the real blood in it . . . and now he’s worried that two bottles might not be enough. There is so much legend attached to Dracula, who can say what is true? He has heard that Dracula will only drink Royalty or . . . the real thing.”
    “Real blood? But that’s illegal, unless you’ve got a willing donor.”
    Any vampire who took a human’s blood—against the human’s will—was liable to execution by stake or sunlight, according to the vamp’s choice. The execution was usually carried out by another vamp, kept on retainer by the state. I personally thought any vampire who took an unwilling person’s blood deserved the execution, because there were enough fangbangers around who were more than willing to donate.
    “And no vampire is allowed to kill Dracula, or even strike him,” Pam said, chiming right in on my thoughts. “Not that we’d want to strike our prince, of course,” she added hastily.
    Right , I thought.
    “He is held in such reverence that any vampire
who assaults him must meet the sun. And we’re also