I felt the tension whoosh out of me like the air out of a punctured tire.

Eric said, "Victor, call your people off. I want to hear you tell them."

Victor, beaming harder than ever, whipped a tiny cell phone from his pocket and called someone named Delilah to give her his orders. Eric used his own cell to phone Fangtasia. Eric told Clancy about the change in leadership.

"Don't forget to tell Pam," Eric said very clearly, "lest she kill off a few more of Victor's people."

There was an awkward pause. Everyone was wondering what came next.

Now that I was pretty sure I was going to live, I hoped Quinn would change back to his human form so I could talk to him. There was a lot to talk about. I wasn't sure I had a right to feel this, but I felt betrayed.

I don't think the world is about me. I could see he'd been forced into this situation.

There was always a lot of forcing around vampires.

As I saw it, this was the second time his mother had set Quinn up, quite inadvertently, to take her fall with the vamps. I got that she wasn't responsible; truly, I did. She'd never wanted to be raped, and she hadn't chosen to become mentally ill. I'd never met the woman and probably never would, but she was surely a loose cannon. Quinn had done what he could. He'd sent his sister ahead to warn us, though I wasn't exactly sure that had ended up helping so very much.

But points for trying.

Now, as I watched the tiger nuzzle Frannie, I knew I'd made mistakes all the way down the line with Quinn. And I felt the anger of betrayal; no matter how I reasoned with myself, the image of seeing my boyfriend on the side of vampires I had to regard as enemies had lit a fire in me. I shook myself, looking around the room.

Amelia had made a dash for the bathroom as soon as she could decently let go of Frannie, who was still crying. I suspected the tension had been too much for my witchy roommate, and sounds from the hall bathroom confirmed that. Eric was still on the phone with Clancy, pretending to be busy while he absorbed the huge change in his circumstances. I couldn't read his mind, but I knew that. He walked down the hall, maybe wanting some privacy to reassess his future.

Victor had gone outside to talk to his cohorts, and I heard one of them say, "Yeah! Yes!" as if his team had scored a winning goal, which I supposed was the case.

As for me, I felt a little weak in the knees, and my thoughts were in such a tumult they could scarcely be called thoughts. Bill's arm went around me, and he lowered me to the chair Eric had vacated. I felt his cool lips brush my cheek. I would have to possess a heart of stone not to be affected by his little speech to Victor - I hadn't forgotten it, no matter how terrifying the night had been - and my heart is not made of stone.

Bill knelt by my feet, his white face turned up to me. "I hope someday you'll turn to me," he said. "I'll never force myself or my company on you." And he got up and walked outside to meet his new vampire kin.

Okey-dokey.

God bless me; the night wasn't over yet.

I trudged back to my bedroom and pushed the door open, intending to wash my face or brush my teeth or make some stab at smoothing my hair, because I thought it might make me feel a little less trampled.

Eric was sitting on my bed, his face buried in his hands.

He looked up at me as I entered, and he looked shocked. Well, no wonder, what with the very thorough takeover and traumatic changing of the guard.

"Sitting here on your bed, smelling your scent," he said in a voice so low I had to strain to hear it. "Sookie... I remember everything."

"Oh, hell," I said, and went in the bathroom and shut the door. I brushed my hair and my teeth and scrubbed my face, but I had to come out. I was being as cowardly as Quinn if I didn't face the vampire.

Eric started talking the minute I emerged. "I can't believe I - "

"Yeah, yeah, I know, loved a mere human, made all those promises, was as sweet as pie and wanted to stay with me forever," I muttered. Surely there was a shortcut we could take through this scene.

"I can't believe I felt something so strongly and was so happy for the first time in hundreds of years," Eric said with some dignity. "Give me some credit for that, too."

I rubbed my forehead. It was the middle of the night, I'd thought I was going to die, the man I'd been thinking of as my boyfriend had just turned my whole picture of him upside down. Though now "his" vamps were on the same side as "my" vamps, I'd emotionally aligned myself with the vampires of Louisiana, even if some of them had been terrifying in the extreme. Could Victor Madden and his crew be any less scary? I thought not. This very night they'd killed quite a few vamps I'd known and liked.

Coming on top of all these events, I didn't think I could cope with an Eric who'd just had a revelation.

"Can we talk about this some other time, if we have to talk about it?" I asked.

"Yes," he said after a long pause. "Yes. This isn't the right moment."

"I don't know that any time will be right for this conversation."

"But we're going to have it," Eric said.

"Eric... oh, okay." I made an "erase" movement with my hand. "I'm glad the new regime wants to keep you on."

"It would hurt you if I died."

"Yeah, we're blood bound, yadda yadda yadda."

"Not because of the bond."

"Okay, you're right. It would hurt me if you died. Also I would have died, too, most likely, so it wouldn't have hurt for long. Now can you please scoot?"

"Oh, yes," he said with a return of the old Eric flare. "I'll scoot for now, but I'm going to see you later. And rest assured, my lover, we'll come to an understanding. As for the vampires of Las Vegas, they'll be well-suited to running another state that relies heavily on tourism. The King of Nevada is a powerful man, and Victor is not one you can take lightly. Victor is ruthless, but he won't destroy something he may be able to use. He's very good at reining in his temper."

"So you're not really that unhappy with the takeover?" I couldn't keep the shock out of my voice.

"It's happened," Eric said. "There's no goal to be met in being 'unhappy' now. I can't bring anyone back to life, and I can't defeat Nevada by myself. I won't ask my people to die in a futile attempt."

I just couldn't match Eric's pragmatism. I could see his points, and in fact when I'd had some rest, I might agree with him. But not here, not now; he seemed way too cold for me. Of course, he'd had a few hundred years to get that way, and maybe he'd had to go through this process many times.

What a bleak prospect.

Eric paused on his way out the door to bend down to kiss me on the cheek. This was another evening for collecting kisses. "I'm sorry about the tiger," he said, and that was the final cap to the night as far as I was concerned. I sat slumped in the little chair in the bedroom corner until I was sure everyone was out of the house. When only one warm brain remained, Amelia's, I peered out of my room to get a visual. Yep, everyone else was gone.

"Amelia?" I called.

"Yeah," she answered, and I went to find her. She was in the living room, and she was as exhausted as I was.

"Are you going to be able to sleep?" I asked.

"I don't know. I'm going to try." She shook her head. "This changes everything."

"Which this?" Amazingly, she understood me.

"Oh, the vampire takeover. My dad had lots of dealings with the New Orleans vampires. He was going to be working for Sophie-Anne, repairing her headquarters in New Orleans. All her other properties, too. I better call him and tell him. He's going to want to get in there early with the new guy."

In her own way Amelia was being as practical as Eric. I felt out of tune with the whole world. I couldn't think of anyone I could call who would feel the least bit mournful over the loss of Sophie-Anne, Arla Yvonne, Cleo... And the list went on. It made me wonder, for the first time, if vampires might not get inured to loss. Look at all the life that passed them by and then vanished. Generation after generation went to their graves, while still the undead lived on. And on.

Well, this tired human - who would eventually pass on - needed some sleep in the worst possible way. If there was another hostile takeover tonight, it would have to proceed without me. I locked the doors all over again, called up the stairs to Amelia to tell her good night, and crawled back into my bed. I lay awake for at least thirty minutes, because my muscles twitched just when I was about to drift off. I would start up into full wakefulness, thinking someone was coming in the room to warn me about a great disaster.

But finally even the twitching couldn't keep me awake any longer. I fell into a heavy sleep. When I woke, the sun was up and shining in the window, and Quinn was sitting in the chair in the corner where I'd slumped the night before while I was trying to deal with Eric.

This was an unpleasant trend. I didn't want a lot of guys popping in and out of my bedroom. I wanted one who would stay.

"Who let you in?" I asked, propping myself up on one elbow. He looked good for someone who hadn't gotten much sleep. He was a very large man with a very smooth head and huge purple eyes. I had always loved the way he looked.

"Amelia," he said. "I know I shouldn't have come in; I should have waited until you were up. You might not want me in the house."

I went in the bathroom to give myself a minute, another ploy that was getting all too familiar. When I came out, a little neater and more awake than when I'd entered, Quinn had a mug of coffee for me. I took a sip and instantly felt better able to cope with whatever was coming. But not in my bedroom.

"Kitchen," I said, and we went to the room that had always been the heart of the house. It had been dated when the fire had gotten it. Now I had a brand-new kitchen, but I still missed the old one. The table where my family had eaten for years had been replaced with a modern one, and the new chairs were lots more comfortable than the old ones, but regret still caught at me every now and then when I thought of what had been lost.

I had an ominous feeling that "regret" was going to be the theme of the day. During my troubled sleep, apparently I'd absorbed a dose of the practicality that had seemed so sad to me the night before. To stave off the conversation we were going to have to have, I stepped to the back door and looked to see that Amelia's car was gone. At least we were alone.

I sat down opposite the man I'd hoped to love.

"Babe, you look like someone just told you I was dead," Quinn said.

"Might as well have," I said, because I had to plow into this and look to neither the right nor the left. He flinched.

"Sookie, what could I have done?" he asked. "What could I have done?" There was an edge of anger in his voice.

"What can I do?" I asked in return, because I had no answer for him.

"I sent Frannie! I tried to warn you!"

"Too little, too late," I said. I second-guessed myself immediately: Was I being too hard, unfair, ungrateful? "If you'd called me weeks ago, even once, I might feel different. But I guess you were too busy trying to find your mother."

"So you're breaking up with me because of my mother," he said. He sounded bitter and I didn't blame him.

"Yes," I said after a moment's inner testing of my own resolve. "I think I am. It's not your mom as much as her whole situation. Your mother will always have to come first as long as she's alive, because she's so damaged. I've got sympathy for that, believe me. And I'm sorry that you and Frannie have a hard row to hoe. I know all about hard rows."

Quinn was looking down into his coffee mug, his face drawn with anger and weariness. This was probably the worst possible moment to be having this showdown, and yet it had to be done. I hurt too bad to let it last any longer.

"Yet, knowing all this, and knowing I care for you, you don't want to see me anymore," Quinn said, biting each word out. "You don't want to try to make it work."

"I care for you, too, and I had hoped we'd have a lot more," I said. "But last night was just too much for me. Remember, I had to find out your past from someone else? I think maybe you didn't tell me about it from the start because you knew it would be an issue. Not your pit fighting - I don't care about that. But your mom and Frannie... Well, they're your family. They're... dependent. They have to have you. They'll always come first." I stopped for a moment, biting the inside of my cheek. This was the hardest part. "I want to be first. I know that's selfish, and maybe unattainable, and maybe shallow. But I just want to come first with someone. If that's wrong of me, so be it. I'll be wrong. But that's the way I feel."

"Then there's nothing left to talk about," Quinn said after a moment's thought. He looked at me bleakly. I couldn't disagree. His big hands flat on the table, he pushed to his feet and left.

I felt like a bad person. I felt miserable and bereft. I felt like a selfish bitch.

But I let him walk out the door.