Disclaimer: I own nothing of True Blood.

...

Dawn is only a couple of hours away, and Fangtasia has closed for the night. This is why I can leave my room without anyone seeing or caring. I have to pass by Eric's office to do so, and maybe he hears me, but he won't care, because all the things I'm not supposed to see are done and gone. Until tomorrow night.

Except there might be one thing I'm not supposed to see. The thing I'm going to see right now. But it might not even be there. He. He might not even be there. The man in the basement. I've had visions that were wrong before. Nonsensical, even. Or irrelevant. Actually, a lot of them are irrelevant to me. But even some of those seem relevant to Eric, which is what matters.

This one would be relevant to both of us, if it's real.

I don't have to go into the club part of the club to get to the basement. I just slip down a hallway, tiptoeing, even though I know it doesn't help much. Sneaking around behind Eric's back, or Pam's for that matter, isn't about hoping they don't hear you, because they always can. It's about hoping the sounds you're making are some of the sounds they're filtering out.

I reach the basement door.

I'm not supposed to go into the basement.

But there's a sudden pull in my gut, a yank, really, that makes me gasp. And then the man flashes through my head again. Alone in the basement, shirtless, black, slumped against a wall, chained to it, and – it's too dark to be certain – I think there's blood on his face.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Then I open them and open the door.

The smell is horrible. Like sewage and something rotting. A dozen concrete steps stretch down before me. The staircase makes a sharp right at that point and finishes itself in five more steps.

You can still turn back.

There's the yank in my gut again.

I step forward and ease the door closed, as much as I can. It still makes a hard, loud closing noise. And then it's very dark. But there are small lantern-like lights above the door. That's enough for me to see by. I reach for the staircase rail, rusted and pipe-like, and begin to descend.

It only takes five steps for me to see the entire basement clearly. Which is when my chest dips and I have to swallow really hard. There are dim yellow lights along the wall, not doing a lot, but enough for me to see what I wasn't supposed to see.

There's a man sitting in the far left corner of the big concrete room. Shirtless. Chained to the wall by a collar around his neck. Most certainly bloody. And staring at me.

"Oh, shit," he mutters, I think to himself, before straightening up against the wall. "Hey, there, sweet pea. What's yo' name?"

My hands are tight around the rail. Somehow it never crossed my mind that he would speak. His voice is deep, but quivering and breathy. Ragged. There's a hint of the too-nice, condescending tone people use with children, which I would normally immediately dislike him for, but not now. It's not important now.

Don't answer him. If you answer him, it's real.

"I'm Annika."

Shit.

"Annika." He has a thick southern accent, a lot of people around here do, but there's something extra about his. Smoother. "Ain't heard dat one be-fo'. I like it, though. It's real pretty. My name's Lafayette . . . You a human, ain't choo, Annika?"

"How can you tell?" Me, I can spot a vampire a mile away. But I've grown up with them. A lot of humans don't seem to have any sense of it all. Not that I spend much time around humans.

"You kiddin' me? Just look atchoo, girl. You full of life. You don't belong down here, nah . . . and I don't, neither."

I don't say anything. I've noticed something, some sort of pale shape below me, right where I would land if I jumped over the rail, and I'm trying to let my eyes adjust so I can see it.

"But if you ain't a vampire, and you ain't in chains, whatchoo doin' in this place, hm?"

"I live here."

"What? Like a, a pet or somethin'?"

But I don't answer him this time, because I've made out that thing hidden down in the shadows. It's a leg, white as paper. And not far from it, there's an arm. It still has a watch on its wrist. And – the middle part of the body. Why don't I know the word? Torso. That's it.

"Hey, hey," Lafayette says. "Hey, you look at me, a'ight? You talk to me. Little girls don't need to be seein' dat. Hell, I don't need to be seein' dat . . ."

"What'd he do?"

"Silver. Stuck Eric with a piece of it."

"Well . . ." My heart's pounding, but my voice is controlled. "That was stupid." I clear my throat and glare at Lafayette. "I'm not a pet. I'm Eric's human."

Lafayette doesn't say anything for a couple of seconds. I can hear his breathing from all the way over here – rough, quick. Panicked. "Jesus . . ." he finally says. "What's he do to you?"

"He doesn't do anything to me. I'm his. He takes care of me. And sometimes . . ."

Stop talking, Annika. Stop talking right now.

But how strange it is to be talking to a human. To be talking to someone who doesn't know me. I so rarely do that.

"Sometimes I help him make decisions. I'm . . . psychic. All sorts of psychic. Really powerful. Or I will be, at least. When I'm older. Eric bought me before I was even born because he was looking for a psychic as powerful as me for decades and the people he hired to find one found me. Or, my mother. But she was pregnant with me. And she let Eric buy me."

I think Lafayette's eyes have gotten even wider. He starts to say something, stops, then starts again. "That's . . . messed up, Annika. You know dat, right? People ain't s'posed to be sold to other – to no one. Dat makes you a slave. And dat's wrong, you see? What they doin' to you? It's wrong."

When Eric's angry, he often slips into a very low, gravel-filled voice that chills me to the bone. That's what I try to do now. "I'm not a slave." My voice doesn't sound as scary as Eric's, but it's not bad. "I'm Eric's human. At least until I'm grown. Then he's going to turn me."

Lafayette leans his head against the wall. "Motherfucker . . ." he murmurs, flinching. I watch him breathe for a minute. There's not a single smooth breath.

I can feel his terror. It's seeping into my stomach like an icy fog.

His head turns my way again. "You ain't one of 'em," he tells me. "You hear? You ain't one of 'em. You's one of me. You is a human. And you gots to help me, a'ight?" He rolls onto his knees. "You's my only hope, Annika, you hear me? I gon' die, if you don't do this for me. What you gots to do – you gots to get me the key to these chains." He jiggles them for emphasis. They bang around heavily.

I decide to ignore everything he just said. "Why do they have you here, anyway?"

"They – they want information. And I gave it to 'em. I gave 'em everything I know, but yo' boy Eric, he don't believe it."

He should. Lafayette's telling the truth. But I don't say that to him.

"You get me the key. You just get me the key, and I'll do all the rest. Eric, he don't ever gotta know how I did it. He'll never know. You just –"

The door swings open above me, flooding the steps and me with light and all but stabbing my eyes. But that's hardly my biggest problem.

"Well, well, well," I hear Pam drawl. "Annika Northman. You're a little young to be sneaking away to see boys Eric wouldn't approve of, don't you think? I am looking forward to those years, believe me, but . . . come now, puberty first."

"Pam." I talk fast, squinting up at her curving shape, trying to walk the line between speaking like an adult and utterly pleading. "I was just curious. I barely even spoke to him. And I was just about to leave."

"Mm-hmm."

"I was." I run up the stairs to her, as if that might prove something. I can see her more clearly now. Her head is tilted down, one eyebrow is a mile in the air. "I was only in there for a minute, I swear. Please don't tell Eric. Please."

She gives me the driest look anyone, human or vampire or anything else, could ever possibly give. Because we both know how this goes. Given the choice between protecting me or serving Eric, she'll go with Eric every time.

She jerks her head back and moves out of the way. I step out into the artificial light, into the sort-of fresh air. As Pam closes the door behind her, I hear, "Annika, you remember what I said!"

Pam shuts the door soundly and narrows her eyes at me. "What did he say, Annika? This man you barely even spoke to?"

"That he didn't have anything else to tell Eric. And he's not lying, he doesn't."

"Hm. Should probably mention that to Eric, I suppose." She starts off down the hall, but adds, over her shoulder. "You know. When he's done skinning you alive."

...

Eric has a glare unlike anyone else I've ever met. More powerful by far. I don't think it's a vampire thing. It might be a Viking thing. But I suspect it's just something he was born with or something he learned over his one thousand years. A way to cripple the enemy without lifting a finger.

I'm the enemy at the moment.

I sit in a chair in front of his desk. I'm little for my age, so my feet only barely touch the ground. It makes me uncomfortable, and I want to kick my feet, but I also don't want to look childish. So I put all my nervous energy into gripping the wooden armrests, using them to ground me as I work very hard not to break Eric's gaze.

But of course, eventually, I do.

"I like your hair," I say to my shoes.

"We are not talking about my hair right now."

It seems like we should. At least a little. For as long as I can remember, Eric's had hair at least down to his neck, but sometime in the last six hours he's cut it short and slicked it back. I don't know why. But I think it looks very nice. I also think talking about his hair would be a more enjoyable conversation than the one we're about to have.

Which he starts now.

"I have, on numerous occasions, expressly forbidden you from entering the basement." He's using that awful low voice I tried to imitate earlier with Lafayette. "So I am certain you know better."

"I'm sorry."

"And I am not one to tolerate disobedience."

"I'm sorry."

"So what shall we do about this?"

"Eric, I'm –"

"Do not tell me you're sorry," he growls. My hands constrict on the armrests. "You are not sorry. You are scared. Because you are smart."

I watch the floor. A moment passes. Another, and another. Finally, he speaks again.

"Tell me why you were down there."

"I had a vision."

"Please don't mumble."

I swallow hard and look up. "I had a vision," I say loudly, with almost no tremble in my voice. "I saw Lafayette –"

"He told you his name?"

"Yes."

"Did you tell him yours?"

". . . Yes."

"Do you often do that with strangers? I feel that is something I should know about."

"Of course not."

"Just the strangers chained up in forbidden basements, then?"

I find myself biting my tongue. Literally. I lift my chin and stare back at him.

"You saw Lafayette?" he prods politely.

"In a vision. I saw him, chained up like he was. So I went to see if he was really there."

"You're supposed to come to me when you sense these things."

"This was different."

"How so?"

"Because you were the one who put him there in the first place. There was nothing new to tell you. Except that I knew he was there. Which I couldn't be sure of until I saw him."

"You could have asked me."

"Would you have told me the truth?"

He gives a wistful half-shake of his head. "We will never know."

I know. You wouldn't have.

"What did he say to you?"

"That he'd told you everything he knew. Which is the truth."

"You sense that?"

"Yes. I'm certain of it." My abilities aren't foolproof by a long shot, but I've been able to detect lies since I was a toddler. From humans, at least. And young vampires. "I think you should let him go."

"Why? You don't know this man. Perhaps he is a child-killer or a serial rapist."

"No. He isn't."

"It seems reasonable to think that my judgement would be better than yours in complicated situations such as these, yes? You are human. You are eleven years old. Your emotions get the better of you. You know this."

"But your emotions never get the better of you. I'm sure tearing that man downstairs limb-from-limb was a perfectly level-headed decision."

I don't think about those words before they come streaming from my mouth. I think about them while they're doing so, regretting each syllable more than the last, but somehow I can't make them stop. And then they're out. And the room is far too still.

Until there's a rush of air and Eric is right in front of me, his hands pinning my arms to the armrests, his face inches from mine. I shrink back and take my head as low as it will go. His palms are icy against my forearms. "Do not speak to me like that again," he breathes. "Do you understand?"

"Yes."

He hovers over me for a few more seconds, then lets go and stands. I watch him the way I imagine a mouse would watch a cat. Not a hungry cat. A cat who has just fed, who could take or leave a mouse – a cat who could do anything, depending on how he feels.

But that's not fair. Eric wouldn't do anything. He'd never hurt me. Not seriously.

Still, I don't breathe as he makes his way back around his desk, slowly this time. He sighs heavily and sinks into his chair, rubbing his jaw. I think the circles under his eyes are even darker than normal. Suddenly he gives a half-shrug. "Ah. You're not wrong. That man came at me with a bit of silver. I . . . overreacted."

I'm silent. Well, speechless. I can count on one hand the number of times Eric has admitted to me that he was wrong about something. My disbelief must show on my face, in spite of my intentions, because the corner of Eric's mouth tilts up. "It cost me my hair," he says. "Too much blood splatter."

"I really do like it."

He sighs again. "Thank you." He just looks at me for a minute, and I watch him turn serious again right before my eyes. But it's not the same sort of serious. There's no edge to his words this time. Not the kind of edge that could cut me. "Annika, Lafayette could have been someone dangerous. I do occasionally keep dangerous things in that basement. Or at the very least things I do not wish for you to see."

I've seen bodies. I've seen vampires die, exploding into piles of blood and gore. How many worse things can there be? But I say nothing. He seems to read my mind anyway.

"Believe it or not, there are still things I would rather spare you from. That is why I did not bring you in for Lafayette's interrogation in the first place. You should have . . . some semblance of a childhood."

"I'm not a child."

"Yes, you are," he says, not unkindly. I huff out a breath, but let that be the extent of my disagreement. His eyes – so tired, I can't help but notice it now – search mine. "I have a great many things on my mind at the moment, dear. Do I have to punish you for this?"

"No."

"Think about it, now."

"No. I won't go in the basement. I'll do as you say. I promise."

He nods. "Then we will not speak of this again." He reaches for a file on top of a stack of many other files. "Have you eaten?"

"Yes."

"Then get ready for bed."

But right as I'm about to open the door, I'm hit with a thought – notion, that's a more fitting word. It's strong and it's certain and I can't tell if it's my idea or something I'm picking up from wherever such things come from, but it's enough to make me turn back to Eric.

"You're not going to let him go, are you?" There's a sadness in my tone that I had no intention of putting there, that I'm not even sure should be there, because why should I care? Who is Lafayette to me?

He's a human.

Eric twirls a pen in his fingers. "I said we would not speak of it again." He nods at the door. "Off you go."