“No,” said Eric. He was instantly brooding and emanating worry.
I waited for him to elaborate.
I waited some more.
“All right,” I said, trying hard to regain my sense of pleasure in being out on a date with a gorgeous man. “Okeydokey. Have it your way. But I think the sex will be a few degrees less spectacular if I’m worried about you and Pam.”
That bit of levity earned me a dark look.
“I know that Pam wants to make another vampire,” I said. “I understand there’s a time element involved.”
“Immanuel shouldn’t have talked,” Eric said.
“It was nice to have someone actually share information with me, information directly pertaining to people I care about.” Did I have to draw a picture?
“Sookie, Victor has said I can’t give permission for Pam to make a child.” Eric’s jaw snapped shut like a steel trap.
Oh. “Kings have control over reproduction, I guess,” I said cautiously.
“Yes. Absolute control. But you understand that Pam is giving me hell about this, and so is Victor.”
“Victor isn’t a king, really, is he? Maybe if you went directly to Felipe?”
“Every time I bypass Victor, he finds a way to punish me.”
There was no point in talking about it. Eric was being pulled in two different directions as it was.
So on the way to Victor’s club, which Eric said was called Vampire’s Kiss, we talked about the visit of the antiques dealers the next day. There were lots of things I would have liked to discuss, but in view of Eric’s overwhelmingly difficult position, I didn’t want to bring up my own problems. Plus, I still had the feeling that I didn’t know everything there was to know about Eric’s situation.
“Eric,” I said, and knew I was speaking too abruptly and with too much intensity. “You don’t tell me everything about your business, am I right?”
“You’re right,” he said, without missing a beat. “But that’s for many reasons, Sookie. Most important is that some of it you could only worry about, and the rest of it might put you in danger. Knowledge isn’t always power.” I pressed my lips together and refused to look at him. Childish, I know, but I didn’t completely believe him.
After a moment of silence, he added, “There’s also the fact that I’m not used to sharing my daily concerns with a human, and it’s hard to break the habit after a thousand years.”
Right. And none of those secrets involved my future. Right. Evidently, Eric read my stony self-possession as grudging acceptance, because he decided our tense moment was over.
“But you tell me everything, my lover, don’t you?” he asked teasingly.
I glared at him and didn’t answer.
That wasn’t what Eric had expected. “You don’t?” he asked, and I couldn’t figure out everything that was in his voice. Disappointment, concern, a touch of anger . . . and a dash of excitement. That was a lot to pack into a couple of words, but I swear it was all there. “That’s an unexpected twist,” he murmured. “And yet, we say we love each other.”
“We say we do.” I agreed. “And I do love you, but I’m beginning to see that being in love doesn’t mean sharing as much as I thought we would.”
He had nothing to say to that.
We passed Vic’s Redneck Roadhouse on the way to the new dance club, and even from the interstate I could see that the parking lot was packed. “Crap,” I said. “There sits all of Merlotte’s business. What do they have that we haven’t got?”
“Entertainment. The novelty of being the new place. Waitresses in hot pants and halter tops,” Eric began.
“Oh, stop,” I said, disgusted. “What with the trouble about Sam being a shapeshifter and all the other stuff, I don’t know how much longer Merlotte’s can hold out.”
There was a surge of pleasure from Eric. “Oh, then you would have no job,” he said, with faux sympathy. “You could work for me at Fangtasia.”
“No thank you.” I said it immediately. “I would hate to see the fangbangers come in night after night, always wanting what they shouldn’t have. It’s just sad and bad.”
Eric glanced over at me, not at all happy with my quick response. “That’s how I make my money, Sookie, on the perverse dreams and fantasies of humans. Most of those humans are tourists who visit Fangtasia once or twice and then go back to Minden or Emerson and tell their neighbors about their walk on the wild side. Or they’re people from the Air Force base who like to show how tough they are by drinking at a vampire bar.”