Annika Northman: Part Two

Chapter 32: Conversations and an Empty Space

I.

"I should have known," I mutter. "I should have seen it."

Eric takes one hand from the steering wheel and lets that arm drop onto the console like an exhausted man. "Annika, I am not taking you to eat so you can bask in self-loathing all night," he says, managing to sound exasperated and patient at the same time.

No, I think as strangers' headlights play on Eric's face, changing the shadows by the second, you're taking me to eat to bribe me.

But that isn't fair. Eric takes me to diners all the time – well, regularly enough – with no ulterior motive. None that I notice, anyway. Also, that hypothetical bribe would be for the purpose of getting me to talk about what happened this morning with Godric's . . . ghost? I don't know. The point is, Eric doesn't need to bribe me to get me to talk about that, he can just tell me to . . . Following that logic, he doesn't need to bribe me for anything. He's Eric. So if not bribe . . . Put me at ease, then. Yes – Eric might be taking me to eat to put me at ease so I'm more likely to talk freely. Only, being at ease is a lot to ask of me at the moment. Thanks to Bill Compton.

Who I'll never have to force myself to hate again.

Eric and Bill and Alcide, they took Edgington somewhere to bury him in concrete. Soft concrete, obviously – and is bury the right word? It's not important – what's important is that that's how Eric planned to deal with Edgington, and that an hour or two after he and the others set out, Pam and I both felt something. Different somethings, of course. My something was an out-of-nowhere-panic, an alarm bell ringing in my head with no explanation as to why it was doing so; Pam's something was . . . well, I can't say for sure how it felt, but it's called being summoned. It's something a maker can do with his progeny. Something Eric can do with Pam.

Pam didn't tell me she got this feeling until later, because she left the instant she felt it. Which is why the vampire Bill sent to kill her attacked in the parking lot, not in the bar. This means I wasn't around for it, but Ginger happened to be taking out the trash when the fight occurred, and she told me afterwards – inside the safety of the club, once she'd stopped screaming – that Pam had used the vampire's own stake on him and disappeared.

When Pam came back, she was coated in drying cement. Eric arrived in the same state not too long after, having made a detour to Sookie's, and – possibly because he realized this incident would be very difficult for him to brush off with a Don't worry about it – he actually gave me some details about what had happened. More, I think, than was probably his instinct, and I appreciated that. Well, I appreciate it now. In the moment, I was rather distracted.

Eric told me how he put Edgington, still alive, in a pit under cement – although he didn't tell me where – and explained that he and Bill were left alone once Alcide's part of things was finished. As a truck piled the cement over Edgington, Bill distracted Eric, distracted him long enough to push him into the pit, too. To try and bury Eric, too.

And then Bill sent that vampire – who, by the way, was Eric's own assassin – to kill Pam (Eric didn't tell me it was his assassin, but he had a quick conversation with Pam about it, and I overheard, and then I decided not to think about that too much, so I'll stop now), because – Eric thinks – Bill wanted to kill, or bury forever, every vampire who knows Sookie has fairy blood. To protect her.

I didn't ask, and Eric didn't say, if Bill told the vampire to kill me, too.

I'm so sorry this is your life.

Yeah, right.

I suppose Eric went to Bon Temps to tell Sookie what had happened, but he also – and I quote – offered her some interesting details relating to the character of Mr. Compton. Eric specified no further than that, but when I asked if he had killed Bill, and then why he hadn't, he told me, "Bill has lost Sookie. It's far better to let him live so he can suffer through that than to end his misery just as it's beginning." So . . . those interesting details must have been quite telling.