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It’s been maybe half an hour of dress-up when Tara feels her phone go off. To her great lack of surprise, there’s shit service in this half-underground house of theirs; the first floor’s just blacked out windows and all that, but all the bedrooms are in the “finished basement,” like they say on the real estate shows, which is really just a floor of its own, and given that all the makeover fun is going on in the bedrooms (the one she shares with Pam, mostly, though Jessica keeps ducking out to her own to raid the closet) the phone’s saying it’s a voicemail when she looks at it.
Must have gone straight there.
She leaves Pam and Jessica arguing over exactly how dramatic they should do Willa up (it’s not like we’re going anywhere tonight, Jessica argues, and Pam turns right back around and points out, if she’s gonna feed like a big girl she oughta look like one) and goes upstairs to check her voicemail. It’s not like hardly anyone even has this number, so she more or less knows who it’ll be, and she’s not particularly looking forward to it. But it also isn’t filling her with total rage. That’s probably progress.
She sits on one of the barstools at the counter and makes the call, discovering it’s two messages, actually.
The first:
Hey, hooker. Sookie told me to keep an eye out for any sorta suspicious whatever goin’ down at Merlotte’s when she ain’t working, and tonight a couple of police were sayin’ there’s been more looting and shit down at Vampire Bill’s plantation house. In case you and your buddies wanna know.
Despite still being mad at him, Tara realizes it’s sorta nice to hear Lafayette’s voice. He’s trying to sound businesslike, or as businesslike as he’s gonna anyway, like if he hides behind pleasantries she’s gonna jump through the phone and smack him. He’s not treating her with kid gloves or something.
And it is useful information. Apparently what she and Pam saw nights ago was just the start, either that or someone else has figured out Big Daddy’s away and has decided to make off with some of his goods.
The second message:
Tara? Hi, it’s Sookie. Uh, so I took the girls to the fairy club tonight, and Claude – he’s my godfather or something close enough, it’s kind of a long story, but anyway – he told me a few things. I don’t wanna get into all of it on a voicemail, but the good news is I think we figured out sorta what to do with Jason? The other stuff I’d rather tell face-to-face, if that’s okay, so maybe call me back and we can plan something out?
Sookie’s still in nicety mode. Tara’s not sure whether this is ‘cause she’s Sookie and she’s always on her so-called best behavior or ‘cause she actually realizes she sorta fucked up. The cynic in her (which is most of her) is leaning toward the first, but she’s sort of hoping it’s the second, too. It would make things easier. And not that it didn’t turn out as okay as it was gonna, but she did fuck up and it’d be nice to see Sookie Stackhouse take responsibility for her shit once in a while.
Before Tara can actually make to call either of them back, the front door slams, and before Tara can wonder who it is, Nora hurries into the kitchen, grabbing one of the brightly patterned dish towels (Tara assumes they were either free or supposed to be ironic) and viciously begins to squeeze water out of her hair, frowning.
“Guess it started raining again,” Tara comments.
“Hm?” Nora looks slightly startled when she turns her head – not like she didn’t realize there was someone there, but like she sort of just expected to be left to her business – and it takes her a second to recover enough for politeness. “Yes, it did.” She touches the fabric of her jacket – just as drenched as her hair – and makes a face. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Mind what?” Tara asks, but before she’s done answering Nora’s stripped her jacket off and tossed it on the counter, leaving her standing there in her leather pants and bustier-bra thing (it’s kinda cute, Tara guesses, she’s got one that’s almost the same color actually) and prompting Tara to suggest, “I’m pretty sure it’d go faster if you put it through the dryer.”
“Right, yes,” Nora mutters, and she speeds down to do just that. It seems for a second like maybe she’s going to just stay down there with the others, but once Tara hears the machine kick up, Nora’s back up the stairs, asking, “Have they been at that this whole time?”
“What, makeover time?” Tara asks slyly. “Yeah, it’s some Style Network shit down there.”
“Why aren’t you with them?” Nora asks, because she’s pretty sure she hasn’t seen Tara not at Pam’s side since they were reunited back at the Authority.
Tara shrugs. “I had to check my voicemail,” she says. “Service down there’s pretty awful, it bein’ a basement and all.”
Nora pushes herself up onto the counter, nodding. “Anything important?”
“Sookie says her fairy whoevers explained some shit to her, but she was bein’ all vague about it,” Tara explains (she knows she’s going to have to get into this later anyway). “An’ there’s more mischief goin’ on at Bill’s house according to my cousin.”
“Mischief?” Nora echoes.
“Like Pam and I saw the other night,” Tara says. “I guess he left something important back there. Either that, or he’s just tryin’ to redecorate his burned-out lair.”
Nora snorts out a laugh at that. “My money would be on the second,” she offers. “Unless he was hiding things from all of us, there would be nothing at his house that would be even remotely relevant. He didn’t even take Lilith seriously until – well.”
“Until y’all brought him to the Authority,” Tara supplies.
“Yes,” Nora says. “Not as if there’s any great pride in being early to that party, but he... well, I’m still not sure why she chose him.”
“She meanin’ Lilith,” Tara prompts. She hadn’t really expected the conversation to take this turn, to be honest, but she’s not blind. She can see it’s gonna happen either way.
“Sure, he’s blown up the TruBlood factories,” Nora continues. “And sure, he’s got a gang of miscreants terrorizing the people of Louisiana. But it’s a bit low-level.”
“That’s a good thing, though,” Tara interrupts. “Means we might have a little time to figure out how to stop him ‘fore it goes all apocalyptic.”
“Yes,” Nora repeats. “But I… if it had been…” She pauses, leans back against the side of the refrigerator. “I’d know what to look for, how to stop it, if…”
She doesn’t have a chance to finish her thought, though, as Eric comes sauntering through the door, followed by a dazed-looking human fellow. “Where’s the rest of the family?” he asks cheerfully. “I tracked down a choice blood donor.”
“Real cute way of puttin’ it,” Tara rolls her eyes.
“Come, come,” Eric says. “The whole point here is that we’re not going to kill him.”
“No, I won’t!” Willa exclaims chipperly, appearing with Pam and Jessica on her heels. In addition to Tara’s skirt, she’s got a pair of Tara’s Converse and this flowery sweater of Jessica’s on, so it’s a fair compromise.
“That’s the spirit,” Eric declares, waving her over. “Komma hit, min dotter.”
Willa scrunches up her nose. “Maybe don’t use, uh –”
“Swedish,” Pam supplies with a smirk.
“Don’t use Swedish when you’re teachin’ me stuff,” Willa finishes sheepishly. “At least till I have a chance to learn it. I mean, that was okay ‘cause I had context clues and cognates, but, you know.”
“Of course,” Eric says. Really, he didn’t expect her to know it, but it’s instinct for him to slip into his native tongue in moments like this. “All things in time.”
“Do you have another language, then?” Nora asks, and it’s the first time the others even take notice of her, still curled up on the counter as she is.
“Well, well, does Auntie wanna play dolls too?” Pam asks wryly, noticing that Nora’s halfway undressed as she is.
“My top’s in the dryer,” Nora retorts, “I got caught in the rain outside and I’m just waiting on it.”
“Spanish,” Willa offers, because she’s always willing to brag – or not brag, but talk about her trifling academic accomplishments. “I speak Spanish. I did a semester in Barcelona in high school.”
“Así que usted no habla el español de España,” Nora says, eyes lighting up a bit.
“Lo hablo tan bien como yo hago el español de México,” Willa shrugs.
“Great,” Pam mutters.
“Exciting as this all is,” Eric cuts in, “I think we have a few other things to do right now.”
“Right,” Nora and Willa chorus.
So Willa finally steps over to Eric and the man, fangs distended, and apparently he hasn’t been glamoured at all (Tara could swear he looked like he had, but maybe he was just dazed with excitement) because once he lays eyes on Willa he starts to freak out.
“You’re the governor’s daughter,” he exclaims.
“Looks like we’re getting two lessons out of the way at once,” Nora observes. “Hold his gaze, Willa, slip into a glamour.”
“Like I’d done,” Eric says, though it’s not like she’d consciously remember it.
“Now tell him what you want him to do,” Jessica chimes in, lolling against the wall.
Glamouring was something that the scientists had gotten into studying, of course, so Willa kind of knows how it works. “Don’t remember me,” she says. “Don’t remember any of this. You’re just gonna be perfectly still while I bite you, and then you’re gonna open the door and walk on outta here.”
“Okay,” the man says.
“Now make good on that promise,” Eric says. “Bite him – there are several places that will work just as well, but the neck is a standby for a reason, so that ought to do nicely.”
So Willa does. It’s not as weird as she sort of thought it would be the first time, which is probably just because of biological changes, and it’s… sort of fun, actually.
“Pay attention to his pulse,” Jessica calls out. “Like, seriously, that saves you a lot of trouble.”
Willa nods, and then the others all nod too, even Tara, who hasn’t been watching; Pam, who by now has leaned up beside Jessica, can’t help but tease, “Glad I taught you something.”
“Too little too late,” Jessica counters archly.
“Now pull away once his pulse starts to slow,” Eric instructs.
And grudgingly, Willa does that as well. “I don’t feel full,” she complains.
“You won’t,” Eric says. “Newborns are especially insatiable. But you’ve taken as much from the nice man as he can give, so now it’s time to send him on his way.”