"Charlaine Harris - Sookie Stackhouse 4.5 - One Word Answer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harris Charlaine)

"Yes," said Bill. He shot the two strangers a significant glance. "This is Bubba. The past upsets him very
much." He waited until the two had nodded in understanding. Then he looked down at me. His dark
brown eyes looked black in the stark shadows cast by the overhead lights. His skin had the pale gleam
that said vampire. "Sookie, what's happened?"


I gave him a condensed version of Mr. Cataliades's message. Since Bill and I had broken up when he
was unfaithful to me, we'd been trying to establish some other workable relationship. He was proving to
be a reliable friend, and I was grateful for his presence.


"Did the queen order Hadley's death?" Bill asked my visitors.


Mr. Cataliades gave a good impression of being shocked. "Oh, no!" he exclaimed. "Her Highness would
never cause the death of someone she held so dear."


Okay, here came another shock. "Ah, what kind of dear how dear did the queen hold my cousin?" I
asked. I wanted to be sure I was interpreting the implication correctly.


Mr. Cataliades gave me an old-fashioned look. "She held Hadley dearly," he said.


Okay, I got it.


Every vampire territory had a king or queen, and with that title came power. But the queen of Louisiana
had extra status, since she was seated in New Orleans, which was the most popular city in the United
States if you were one of the undead. Since vampire tourism now accounted for so much of the city's
revenue, even the humans of New Orleans listened to the queen's wants and wishes, in an unofficial way.
"If Hadley was such a big favorite of the queen's, who'd be fool enough to stake her?" I asked.


"The Fellowship of the Sun," said Waldo, and I jumped. The vampire had been silent so long, I'd
assumed he wasn't ever going to speak. The vampire's voice was as creaky and peculiar as his
appearance. "Do you know the city well?"
I shook my head. I'd only been to the Big Easy once, on a school field trip.


"You are familiar, perhaps, with the cemeteries that are called the Cities of the Dead?"


I nodded. Bill said, "Yes," and Bubba muttered, "Uh-huh." Several cemeteries in New Orleans had
above-ground crypts because the water table in southern Louisiana was too high to allow ordinary
below-ground burials. The crypts look like small white houses, and they're decorated and carved in some
cases, so these very old burial grounds are called the Cities of the Dead. The historic cemeteries are
fascinating and sometimes dangerous. There are living predators to be feared in the Cities of the Dead,