Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris Page A

the blue, with no warning.”
    Pam didn’t look offended, but Chow tried to make the effort.
    “You two did something, didn’t you? You messed up. What did you do?” Both Eric’s arms wrapped around my legs, so I was pinned in place. I suppressed a little ripple of panic. He was just insecure.
    “Chow lost his temper with the witch,” Pam said, after a significant pause.
    I closed my eyes. Even Jason seemed to grasp what Pam was saying, because his eyes got bigger. Eric turned his face to rub his cheek along my thigh. I wondered what he was making of this.
    “And the minute she was attacked, Eric vanished?” I asked.
    Pam nodded.
    “So she was booby-trapped with a spell.”
    “Apparently,” Chow said. “Though I had never heard of such a thing, and I can’t be held responsible.” His glare dared me to say anything.
    I turned to Jason and rolled my eyes. Dealing with Chow’s blunder was not my responsibility. I was pretty sure that if the whole story was told to the queen of Louisiana, Eric’s overlord, she might have a few things to say to Chow about the incident.
    There was a little silence, during which Jason got up to put another log on the fire. “You’ve been in Merlotte’s before, haven’t you?” he asked the vampires. “Where Sookie works?”
    Eric shrugged; he didn’t remember. Pam said, “I have, but not Eric.” She looked at me to confirm, and after some thought, I nodded.
    “So no one’s going to instantly associate Eric with Sookie.” Jason dropped that observation casually, but he was looking very pleased and almost smug.
    “No,” Pam said slowly. “Maybe not.”
    There was definitely something I ought to be worrying about right now, but I couldn’t quite see the shape of it.
    “So you’re clear as far as Bon Temps goes,” Jason continued. “I doubt if anyone saw him out last night, except Sookie, and I’m damned if I know why he ended up on that particular road.”
    My brother had made a second excellent point. He was really operating on all his batteries tonight.
    “But lots of people from here do drive to Shreveport to go to that bar, Fangtasia. I’ve been myself,” Jason said. This was news to me, and I gave him a narrow-eyed glare. He shrugged and looked just a tad embarrassed. “So what’s gonna happen when someone tries to claim the reward? When they call the number on the poster?”
    Chow decided to contribute more to the conversation. “Of course, the ‘close friend’ who answers will come right away to talk to the informant firsthand. If the caller can convince the ‘close friend’ that he saw Eric after the whore witch worked her spell on him, the witches will begin looking in a specific area. They’re sure to find him. They’ll try to contact the local witches, too, get them working on it.”
    “No witches in Bon Temps,” Jason said, looking amazed that Chow would even suggest the idea. There my brother went again, making assumptions.
    “Oh, I’ll bet there are,” I said. “Why not? Remember what I told you?” Though I’d been thinking of Weres and shifters when I’d warned him there were things in the world he wouldn’t want to see.
    My poor brother was getting overloaded with information this evening. “Why not?” he repeated weakly. “Who would they be?”
    “Some women, some men,” Pam said, dusting her hands together as if she were talking about some infectious pest. “They are like everyone else who has a secret life—most of them are quite pleasant, fairly harmless.” Though Pam didn’t sound too positive when she said that. “But the bad ones tend to contaminate the good.”
    “However,” Chow said, staring thoughtfully at Pam, “this is such a backwater that there may well be very few witches in the area. Not all of them are in covens, and getting an unattached witch to cooperate will be very difficult for Hallow and her followers.”
    “Why can’t the Shreveport witches just cast a spell to find Eric?” I