Sookie Stackhouse 6
Charlaine Harris
As promised to her fairy godmother’s brother, Claude, Sookie is posing with him for his romance novel cover portfolio. She is really uncomfortable and it shows. She tries thinking about someone else, but most of the men she tries to think about lead her down a bad path. She eventually stops on Quinn and enjoys fantasizing about him.
Bill comes into the bar without his new girlfriend, Selah Pumphrey. He asks to go with Sookie when she goes down to New Orleans to claim the inheritance her cousin, Hadley, left her when she died. The two local priests call Sookie over to their table. One asks if she is willing to speak with the Pelt family about their daughter, Debbie. She tells them that there is nothing more to talk about and he agrees to pass that message along to the Pelts.
Quinn comes into the bar just before closing, looking for Sookie. He asks if they can talk at her house and after some thought, she agrees. He follows her home after work. His first order of business is to ask her out, which she agrees to. The next is that the Queen sent him to request her services at the vampire summit. She explains that Eric had already asked her to attend. Quinn explains that the Queen’s request trumps Eric’s and that Sookie will have to inform him. He then changes the subject back to their first date. They decide on dinner and going to the theater to see the Producers.
Pam calls the next night informing Sookie that Eric requests her presence Friday night. She tells Pam that she can’t go because she has a date. Pam thinks that it is a joke at first, but Sookie tells her it is the truth and she won’t give up her time for Eric, especially if he can’t even be bothered to call her.
Andy comes into the bar with his girlfriend, Halleigh, and asks Sookie to hide an engagement ring in her chicken basket. She agrees. Sookie is interested in the results and listens in. She is very proud of the girl when she says that they have to move out on their own for her to agree to a marriage.
Later that night, there is something outside of Sookie’s house. She locks the doors and windows, closes the curtains and forces herself to go about her normal routine. When the normal creatures around her house start making noises again, she is finally able to go to sleep.
Sookie calls Jason and he asks if he can come see her in a couple of hours. She agrees and starts running some errands before he comes over. He goes to Tara’s shop and listens as Portia orders stuff for her wedding. She tries to inform Sookie that she wants the barmaid to work during the event, but Sookie plays stupid and takes it as an invitation. After Portia leaves, Sookie gets an outfit from Tara for her date.
Jason arrives a little late, giving Sookie time to make hamburgers for lunch. He tells her that Crystal had a miscarriage and is refusing to go to the doctor. Jason is afraid of moving her because he thinks that bouncing around in his truck will make it worse. Sookie agrees to call the supernatural doctor, Ludwig. She waits with Jason. When Dr. Ludwig and her driver, a were named Amanda, arrive, Jason leads them to his house.
At work, Sookie is confronted by a priest and the Pelts in Sam’s office. Sookie is upset as the introductions go around. She realizes that Debbie’s sister, Sandra, is a full Were. She realizes that the two girls were adopted. She tells the Pelts that she can’t give them any more information. They leave and Sookie goes out into the bar to start her shift to find that Holly’s son, Cody, is missing.
Sookie takes off and goes to the school to see if she can find anything out. It turns out that Halleigh, Andy’s fiancé, was with the kids as they were going to their respective parents’ cars. Cody said that he forgot something and ran back inside, but he never came back out. Sookie gets the okay from Andy to look around so that she can listen to people’s minds. She finds out that the janitor, Maddy Pepper, had yelled at Cody for running through the slippery, wet hallway. He fell and hit his head. Afraid that she would get in trouble, the janitor shoved Cody in a trash can. Officer Kenya comes up to Sookie and Sookie tells her to look in the trashcan. Cody is rushed off to the hospital. Andy wants to use Sookie to solve more crimes, but she tells him to back off.
Back at the bar, Sam has already sent Holly and Danielle to the hospital, and called in a replacement, Tanya. There is something that Sookie finds unsettling about Tanya, aside from the fact that she is a shifter.
Calvin is at the house when Sookie gets home. He tells her that Crystal is alright and she and Jason are planning to get married. Calvin asks why Sookie isn’t interested in him and she explains that the Hotshot dynamic is too strange for her. When a pack gets too small, its members sleep around to produce more weres. She doesn’t want to be married to someone who has several children by several women running around. Sookie also realizes that this is something she’d have to deal with if she dated Alcide.
Friday night rolls around and Sookie gets ready for her date with Quinn. There is a knock on the door 15 minutes early and she is surprised to see Eric on the other side. He is angry because she refused to answer her call by coming to Shreveport. Eric is still upset that Sookie was requested for the summit by the queen. Quinn shows up and straightens out the situation. He asks Sookie if she is Eric’s. She says no and they are on their way.
They go to dinner and then the show. They are enjoying each other’s company so much that they lag behind the crowd exiting the theater. They are attacked in the parking lot by two newly bitten weres. Quinn fights them off, but this causes a scene in front of the humans, so the police are called. They are taken to the station and Sookie is questioned by Detective Coughlin, who was there at the dress shop when Sookie and Alcide said they were engaged. She answers all of the questions she can and he lets her go. She warns him not to trust his partner and leaves.
Quinn takes Sookie to the Hair of the Dog. There is a strong ward up that makes humans stay away from the bar. He carries Sookie over the ward. The shifters are surprised that Quinn got her in. He then informs the Shreveport pack of what happened. He is holding them responsible because the attack was by weres in their territory on a friend of their pack.
Sookie learns of the deaths of her attackers from the newspaper. They died in jail.
Back at work, Sookie is irritated to see Bill and Selah in the bar again, but she is glad that she can make him a little miserable with her feminine problems. A female vampire comes into the bar to talk to Sookie. She introduces herself as Felicia, the new Fangtasia bartender, and says that Pam sent her to beg for Sookie’s mercy. Sookie realizes that this is a joke Pam has played on the other vampire and explains this to her, as well as her record with the previous bartenders. Felicia tells Sookie that the queen is marrying Peter Threadgill, the king of Arkansas. Later, Arlene tells Sookie that she has been going to the Fellowship of the Sun church.
The next morning, Tanya, the fill in waitress, shows up at Sookie’s house looking to be friendly. Sookie becomes even more suspicious of her and sends her away. Shortly after, Quinn calls and they set up a date for a few nights later.
The night before Sookie and Quinn’s at-home date, Mr. Cataliades, the queen’s lawyer who sorted out Hadley’s estate, shows up. Sookie is surprised to see him and he is surprised that she didn’t know he was coming. He said that he sent his niece, Gladiola, as a messenger and that she should have been there to tell her that he was coming and to help her pack so that Sookie could clean out her cousin’s apartment. Sookie explains that she heard something in her woods. They search around and Mr. Cataliades’ other niece, Diantha finds Gladiola’s body cut in half in the woods. They have to burn the body in the driveway because she is part demon and will not decompose She goes over to Sam’s to make sure she can get the time off of work. Sookie calls Bill to inform him that they are leaving for New Orleans if he wants to tag along. She then calls Quinn to let him know that she has to postpone their date.
On the way down to New Orleans, Mr. Cataliades, Bill, and Sookie speculate the attack on her and Quinn. They wonder if there is a rebellion against Patrick Furnan (the new pack master) rising and Quinn was informing them of the attack on them for fuel. When they arrive in New Orleans, they drop Sookie off at Hadley’s apartment, which the queen has been paying the rent on (as Hadley was her lover). Sookie goes in, gets as settled as possible and goes to sleep.
Sookie is woken up the next morning by Hadley’s landlord, Amelia. After Sookie gets out of bed they start talking. Amelia is a witch and decided that Hadley would be a good vampire tenant because she was the queen’s girlfriend. She laid a spell on the apartment when Hadley died to preserve the place. Hadley was killed (the second time) by a jealous vamp, Waldo, that felt that Hadley was taking his place with the queen. Sookie figured this out and informed the queen, who had him killed.
Going through the apartment, Sookie finds some towels soaked in dried up blood. She looks around the apartment and finds a body in the closet. She decides to tell Amelia about it. She identifies the body as Jake Purifoy, a were that did security at the queen’s wedding. Jake had come to pick up Hadley that night, the night before she died. Sookie tells Amelia to call the queen because the body is rising. Jake ends up attacking them and hurts them both pretty badly before help arrives.
In the hospital, Sookie has some visitors. Bill and Eric are both there. Eric tells Sookie that Bill needs to tell her the truth. Bill admits that he was sent to Sookie by the queen—interested in her from Hadley’s stories—to check her out. Realizing that the whole relationship was a sham, Sookie send s the vampires away. She decides to leave the hospital and wanders around the streets of New Orleans until she finds Hadley’s apartment.
When Sookie wakes up after her whole ordeal, Claudine is there beside her in Hadley’s bed. Sookie asks why she is there. Claudine explains that she is trying to become an Angel and was assigned to protect Sookie. However, she is not allowed to say anymore. Sookie and Amelia start wondering if Hadley killed Jake or was hiding the body. Amelia says that she might be able to get a group of witches together to replay what happened that night. Sookie agrees to pay Amelia and the other witches involved if the queen won’t agree to it. After that is arranged, Claudine takes Sookie shopping for her visit to the queen’s home.
Sookie arrives at the queen’s place and is used as an example to tourists of how one should dress to see the queen. She is escorted into the building (which has a Fellowship of the Sun spy watching it) by Rasul. She is then passed off to Melanie and then to Chester, both vampires who say she smells like fairy. Eventually she comes to a door guarded by Sigebert and Wybert. She waits for the queen to permit her to enter.
Sookie meets the queen and her husband, Peter (king of Arkansas). When the queen asks about what happened to Jake in Hadley’s apartment, Sookie explains that Amelia is planning and ectoplasmic reconstruction to find out. The queen agrees to fund the event and also to attend. They go through the night before the pre-wedding party and find that after the party, Jake brought Hadley back home. Jake tried to talk her out of making a scene and embarrassing the queen. Jake is grabbed out of reach of the spell and killed. Hadley pulls him in and there is a gaping wound on his neck. Hadley turns him to save him. She calls Waldo because she needs to get advice from the ghost of the voodoo queen he suggested they call from the dead.
Everyone starts speculating who killed Jake and Sookie gets overwhelmed. Quinn pulls up to the apartment. He asks what happened at Sookie’s house and she explains about Gladiola. The queen takes Sookie and her guard, Andre, back to Hadley’s apartment. The queen tells Sookie her story of how she was molested and eventually was turned. She has a soft spot for others who have been molested, such as Hadley. She then asks Sookie to find the bracelet from her husband that Hadley hid. As it turns out, Hadley hid it out of anger, but the marriage contract forbids either party from giving gifts received from the other to their lovers. As cover, the queen has Sookie agree to say that she had sex with Andre and let her watch.
Sookie convinces Quinn that she didn’t really sleep with Andre. They start having a good time, but Quinn is called to talk to Jake (who was his employee).
The next morning, he shows up at the apartment with food. They start going through the stuff in the apartment and eventually start fooling around. They are attacked by a bunch of Weres and tied up and put into a van. Quinn is all tied up and cannot change without hurting Sookie. However, only her hands are bound and are in front of her. Quinn is able to communicate that his cell phone is in his pocket. Sookie is able to get it and call the queen’s home, but the drivers notice and through the phone into a field. Sookie tells Quinn to use his teeth to cut her restraints. He does. Sookie is able to free his legs and stab a screw driver into one of the Were’s cheeks. They get free and run into a swamp.
Sookie realizes that the Pelts are behind the attacks and kidnapping. She finds the little shack that they Weres were taking her to and find them there with instruments to torture her. With Quinn waiting as a tiger, Sookie goes in. She takes out one guy with a stun-gun she got out of the van, but is caught fighting Sandra Pelt. Eric comes to the rescue.
Sookie tells Eric that his attraction to her is because she has some fairy blood in her. She then gives the Pelts the whole truth. The parents are satisfied, but Sandra is not. However, if the Mississippi pack found out that she was creating weres, she would be punished severely. They agree to make reparations with the Shreveport pack. They also admit that they sent Tanya to Bon Temps.
Sookie borrows a dress from Amelia to attend the party held by the queen of Louisiana and the king of Arkansas. Before she goes, she calls gas stations between New Orleans and Bon Temps. Jade Flower, the king’s body guard, was sent to kill Gladiola. She found the missing bracelet in a sealed coffee can (resealed with hot glue) and sneaks it in. When she greats the queen, she returns the bracelet. However, when the king doesn’t have a reason to call out the queen, one of his servants starts an attack. The king is killed by Andre with Sookie and the queen being the only witnesses.
A driver takes Sookie and Quinn back to Hadley’s apartment. She agrees to let him stay the night, but with the promise of no funny business. Amelia has turned her “date,” Bob into a cat accidently. Sookie agrees to have Amelia come back to Bon Temps with her for a while.