Deadlocked recap

Felipe de Castro comes to Shreveport with his retinue, still curious about the regent who vanished, and at a party at Eric's house a young half-fairy named Kym Rowe offers Eric her blood in front of Sookie. Hours later Kym is found dead in Eric's yard, and Eric is the obvious suspect in front of the one vampire he cannot afford to look guilty to. Sookie investigates while her marriage collapses under the contract pledging Eric to the vampire queen of Oklahoma, while her fairy cousin Claude behaves more and more strangely, and while Sandra Pelt makes one final attempt on her life. The trail behind Kym leads to Jannalynn Hopper, the werewolf enforcer dating Sam, who arranged the whole display to ruin Eric. The confrontation that ends it kills Sam, and Sookie spends her one fairy wish on bringing him back rather than on freeing Eric from Oklahoma. Niall returns to take Claude away for treachery, Dermot goes home to Faery with him, and Sookie and Eric are finished.

Sookie Stackhouse is a telepathic waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana, where vampires and shapeshifters both live openly. She is married by vampire custom to Eric Northman, sheriff of Area Five, whose territory belongs to Felipe de Castro, king of Nevada; Eric, Pam, Sookie and several allies recently killed the king's regent Victor Madden in secret, and nobody knows whether that will stay hidden. Sookie is part fairy through her great-grandfather Prince Niall Brigant, who ended a fairy war fought over his human-blooded descendants and then closed Faery permanently, stranding her cousin Claude and her great-uncle Dermot on this side; both live in her house. Sorting her grandmother's things, Sookie learned that her real grandfather was the fairy Fintan and found the gift he left behind: a cluviel dor, which grants its holder a single wish. She also found papers showing that Eric's dead maker promised him in marriage to Freyda, the vampire queen of Oklahoma, an obligation Eric knew about and hid from her.

Felipe de Castro arrives in Shreveport with his companions for a stay of several days, ostensibly social, in fact an inquiry into what became of Victor Madden. Eric has to entertain him, which means a party at his house with Sookie present and every vampire in the area on display. Sookie and Eric are barely speaking about the Oklahoma contract and are pretending otherwise in public. During the party a young woman named Kym Rowe, carrying were and fairy blood, walks in and offers Eric her throat in front of everyone, and he takes it. Sookie leaves in a fury. Later that night Kym Rowe is found dead in Eric's yard, strangled, with the king of Louisiana on the premises and Eric the last person known to have fed from her.

The death has to be solved quickly, because Felipe cannot ignore a human murdered on his sheriff's property and Eric cannot afford any scrutiny at all with Victor Madden's disappearance still unexplained. Sookie starts working out who Kym Rowe was and who sent her: the girl's approach was staged, her blood was chosen to be irresistible, and someone paid for the performance. The investigation takes Sookie to Hooligans, Claude's club in Monroe, now a colony of stranded fae including the elf Bellenos, where she is welcomed with an enthusiasm that unsettles her. Claude himself has been absent a great deal and answers questions about it badly.

The trail behind Kym Rowe leads into werewolf circles and toward the Long Tooth pack's enforcer, Jannalynn Hopper, whose motive for humiliating Eric is not obvious and whose relationship with Sam is looking more calculated the closer Sookie looks at it. At the same time Sookie learns she is being watched by people acting for Copley Carmichael, Amelia's father, who has worked out that her family owns a fairy object of real power and intends to have it. The cluviel dor becomes a liability rather than a comfort. Eric, cornered between the king's suspicion and the Oklahoma contract, withdraws further, and Sookie realizes he has been treating the marriage as already lost.

Sandra Pelt, out of custody and past all restraint, makes her final attempt on Sookie's life, and Sookie kills her; the body is disposed of quietly, ending a feud that has followed her for years. The pressure around the cluviel dor keeps rising, with Copley Carmichael's people, the fae at Hooligans and Sookie's own household all circling it, and Sookie increasingly certain that Claude is not simply curious. The Kym Rowe investigation closes on Jannalynn, and Sookie has to decide how to tell Sam that the woman he is with arranged a killing to serve pack politics.

Jannalynn is exposed: she arranged for Kym Rowe to be sent to Eric's party to disgrace him in front of the king and to break up his marriage, and Kym's death followed from it. The confrontation turns into a fight, Jannalynn does not survive it, and neither does Sam, who is killed in front of Sookie. Sookie uses the cluviel dor on him, spending her single wish to bring him back to life, and it works. Eric knows immediately what she could have used it for instead, and their marriage does not survive the knowledge, even though the Oklahoma contract still stands over him. Niall Brigant comes back through the closed door, reveals that Claude has been working against Sookie and after the cluviel dor for himself, and takes him away to be judged; Dermot chooses to go home to Faery with them. Felipe de Castro leaves Louisiana with his questions about Victor Madden unanswered. Sookie is left with Merlotte's, a resurrected friend who does not know what his life cost, and no husband.

Jannalynn Hopper is exposed as the person who arranged for Kym Rowe to be sent to Eric's party, a scheme meant to discredit Eric in front of the visiting king and clear Sookie out of Sam's life; Kym's death was part of the machinery. Jannalynn does not survive the confrontation that follows, and neither, briefly, does Sam: he is killed in the fighting, and Sookie uses her one wish, the cluviel dor, to bring him back to life. It works, and it costs her everything the token might have been saved for. Eric, whose freedom from the Oklahoma marriage contract was the obvious use for a single wish, understands exactly what she chose and cannot forgive it; their marriage is effectively over from that moment even though neither of them says so outright. Niall Brigant returns from Faery and reveals that Claude has been working against Sookie and after the cluviel dor himself; he takes Claude back through the door for judgment, and Dermot chooses to go home with him, leaving Sookie's house empty of fairies. Felipe de Castro leaves Louisiana without proving anything about Victor Madden's disappearance but without being satisfied either. Sam is alive, changed by having died, and does not yet know what Sookie spent to bring him back.