A/N: This is a sequel to The Queen's Telepath. I'd love it if you could enjoy this one as a standalone piece, but in all honesty, there's going to be a lot of stuff you won't get if you haven't already read TQT.

If you haven't read The Queen's Telepath, seriously, please go read it before you read this. It's only 10 chapters, and it's pretty awesome. I know I'm biased, but it really doesn't suck. Promise.

For those of you who have read it, some of your questions will soon be answered... and more will come up to take their place. Mwahah.

Clad only in my knickers and a matching bra, I frowned at the contents of my closet. I had no idea what to wear. Sophie-Anne breezed in—without knocking, of course; she never knocked—carrying a garment bag.

"Here, Sookie. Wear this," she said, holding it out to me.

"Good evening to you, too," I said, letting just a little snark out in my tone. I took it, hung it up on the closet door and unzipped the bag.

Once I saw what was inside, I blinked and asked, "Where's the rest of it?"

Sophie-Anne laughed. "That's the whole of it, ma fifille."

I raised my eyebrows at her most recent nickname for me. Ever since I'd turned eighteen, she'd become enamored of the fact that I looked even the tiniest bit older than her, even though she was more than a thousand years my senior. For that reason, she got some strange kick out of referring to me as her "little girl."

Over the years, Sophie-Anne had a number of pet names she'd used for me. Sometimes the names stuck for a year or more, but just as often as not, she would forget them or find another one she liked better after a week or so. She'd been calling me her fifille for well over a month, which meant it was likely to stick around a while.

Taking another look at the outfit she'd brought me, I protested, "I'm going to get more coverage from what I've already got on."

Sophie-Anne eyed my underwear appreciatively. "We're vampires, fifille. We don't care about coverage, so as charming as your knickers are, they'll just have to go."

With a sigh of resignation, I shed my bra and panties, pulled the "dress" out of the garment bag, and carefully put it on.

It was a simple, flowing red dress with no real waistline to speak of. It was almost completely see-through, and left nothing to the goodness the palace wasn't too chilly; I didn't want to put anyone's eyes out.

From what I understood of the outside world, humans were far more modest than vampires. I knew my Gran, may she rest in peace, wouldn't have approved of my current lack of modesty; I just wasn't certain if that was a human thing or a generational thing. Having been raised around vampires, I tended to be on the less-modest side. Everyone has a body; the question isn't necessarily whether or not we have pink bits, but rather: it's what we do with them.

Since everyone knew me as the Queen's favorite pet, my body was treated as if it were a museum piece: look, but don't touch. Sometimes even looking was frowned upon. Knowing that no one could touch me—not without some seriously dire consequences—went a long way to make it fairly easy for me to let others see me mostly naked. Being able to hear the thoughts of humans, I knew that even if I was bundled up in a parka, people were going to mentally undress me. While I couldn't read vampire minds, I had trouble imagining that they were any different in that regard.

Hell, if anything, they were probably worse.

"Sit," Sophie-Anne ordered, pointing to the seat in front of my vanity. I sat and watched in the mirror while she did my hair.

Anyone watching would be shocked. Even humans — who had known about vampires since the Great Revelation, but were also aware that Sophie-Anne was specifically amongst the fanged folk — would be surprised to see a vampire waiting on her pet, not the other way around.

Publicly, we maintained the expected appearances: I was mostly invisible, always compliant, and ever eager to bare a neck or wrist for Sophie-Anne. She maintained that she was a jealous lover, and wouldn't let anyone else see me in flagrante delicto. Fact of the matter was, she and I didn't have that kind of relationship.

Privately, the only people who had more leeway than I did were Sophie-Anne's children: Andre, Wybert, and Siegbert.

Most people knew that the Queen had a telepath, but they didn't know that it was me. I'd been living with and working for Sophie-Anne for thirteen years.

When I was eight years old, my Gran and I came to live at the palace; Gran was taken on as the cook for the human donors who lived there. The official explanation for my presence wasn't a complete lie: as the sole survivor of an accident that had killed the rest of my family, I was under my Gran's care.

Of course, the real reason we were both there was because of me and my unique ability. As best as we could figure, I was the only known telepath. I had reason to suspect that there were others, but I kept that information to myself. The older I grew, the more secrets I had. It was something I was still coming to terms with, and Sophie-Anne was not only understanding, but encouraging in that regard. She felt, as I suppose most vampires did, that one's ability to keep their own secrets was a sign of emotional maturity. Or perhaps a better way of putting it would be that the longer you kept your mouth closed, the longer you lived.

According to a letter that my Gran had written before she'd died, my telepathy was an indirect gift. Many years before I was born, a demon named Mr Cataliades had told a friend of his, a fairy named Fintan, that any of his descendants who were born with the "essential spark" would be given the gift of telepathy. That same letter also explained how and why it was Fintan — and Gran's husband — who was my true biological grandfather. As far as anyone was aware, I was the first and only recipient of that gift.

I was still a little unclear on the whole fairy thing; I'd heard about them from the vampires, but the two races are very much like oil and water. Fairies are vicious and well-known for their fighting abilities, but for vampires specifically, they're somewhere between delicacy and drug. As such, I'd never met one and wasn't likely to ever do so, as surrounded as I was by vampires.

Supposedly, the smell of a fairy was to a vampire what the smell of chocolate was to me: completely irresistible. Even though I was technically one-eighth fairy, my blood had no scent or taste. Sophie-Anne had once told me that some demons had no scent or taste, and the best guess I had was that Mr Cataliades' gift somehow canceled out any odor or flavor that I might have otherwise had.

Whatever the reason, I was grateful for it. I don't want to imagine how my life would have been different if I'd smelled like vampire chocolate. It probably wouldn't have lasted very long, telepathy notwithstanding.

As it was, I spent my early years lurking behind one-way mirrors, spying on vampires and humans alike. After I'd gotten old enough, I started masquerading as Sophie-Anne's pet. At first, she took neither my blood nor my body, but just before the Great Revelation—when vampires announced their presence to the human world—Sophie-Anne and I were blood-bonded.

As a child, I looked up to Sophie-Anne; she was in her teens when she was turned, so to my young eyes she was one of the cool older kids. She was, in fact, thirteen-hundred years older, but I didn't really grasp that at the time. When I myself was a teenager, she was the only one nearby who looked like one of my peers. By the time I was an adult, she was my Queen, my boss, and my best friend—but she was not my lover.

Granted, it seemed like that was just about the only thing we didn't do. I sometimes got the impression that if I ever had the slightest inkling that I might be attracted to women, Sophie-Anne would be all over me like sugar on a beignet.

The look she was giving me as we were admiring her handiwork in the mirror was a shining example of that. It had only taken her a minute or two to put my hair into an elaborate up-do that left my neck bare, aside from a few wispy tendrils. While I'd never seen one, I'd heard that vampire nudie mags were less about genitalia and more about places on the body with especially juicy arteries or veins: neck, wrists, and inner thighs.

"Tell me again why I need to be there tonight?" I asked. It was entirely possible that I would be the only human there; since I couldn't read vampire minds, it didn't seem like my services would be required.

"Sookie, if I wanted to hear high-pitched noises from you, it wouldn't be in the form of whining. Even if you do pout adorably." Just because she could, she reached out and pinched the sides of my mouth together, making my lips look more fishy than pouty. I rolled my eyes, but grinned at her after I pulled away. "It would look odd if my favorite pet wasn't with me when I greet the latest delegation," she said, finally answering my question.

"Which state are we hearing tonight?" I asked. "Alabama?"

She snorted. "Arkansas. Not much better. Now that vampires have gone public, tourism in New Orleans has gone through the roof; everyone wants a piece of Louisiana because of it. If I'd known how much of a pain in the ass that was going to be, I would have made sure to kill Anne Rice's grandparents when they were still in their cradles."

"Please. You love the attention. You're just upset that it's not a more well-off state."

With a grin, she relented. "True. There's nothing in Arkansas. I'm surprised there's any vampires there at all."

"Maybe that's why they like it. What's the game plan tonight?"

"We show off a little; not so much that they get greedy, but enough that they realize we're way out of their league. Hopefully they'll go away on their own accord when they realize we're way out of their league. In the meantime, if there are any non-vampires there, you can listen in on their thoughts and let me know if you hear anything I need to know about this sham of a marriage proposal."

"Sounds like a plan," I said as I stood up. Without further discussion, Sophie-Anne and I left my room.

Neither of us could possibly know how the evening would turn out; I was telepathic, not psychic. There was no way to avoid what was coming, but if we'd had even the slightest inkling of what would take place, no doubt we would have taken a few more minutes to enjoy the last moments of peace and quiet that she and I would ever have together.

Disclaimer: these characters all belong to Charlaine Harris, not me. I just like to make them do my nefarious bidding from time to time