Book Eight 3-5

Chapter 3
I knew Amelia had returned and was standing by the wing-back chair
where her father sat, and I knew she was frozen in place. I knew I didn’t
breathe for a second.
“I never met him,” I said. I felt as if I’d been walking in a jungle and fallen
into a concealed pit. I was sure glad I was the only telepath in the house. I
hadn’t told anyone, anyone at all, about what I’d found in Hadley’s lockbox
when I’d cleaned it out that day at a bank in New Orleans. “They’d been
divorced for a while before Hadley died.”
“You should take the time to meet him someday. He’s an interesting man,”
Cope said, as if he wasn’t aware he was dropping a bombshell on me. Of
course he was waiting for my reaction. He’d hoped I hadn’t known about
the marriage at all, that I’d be taken completely by surprise. “He’s a skilled
carpenter. I’d love to track him down and hire him again.”
The chair he was sitting on had been upholstered in a cream-colored
material with lots of tiny blue flowers on green arching stems embroidered
on it. It was still pretty, if faded. I concentrated on the pattern of the chair so
I wouldn’t show Copley Carmichael how very angry I was.
“He doesn’t mean anything to me, no matter how interesting he is,” I said in
a voice so level you could’ve played pool on it. “Their marriage was over
and done. As I’m sure you know, Hadley had another partner at the time
she died.” Was murdered. But the gov ernment hadn’t gotten around to
taking much notice of vampire deaths unless those deaths were caused by
humans. Vampires did most of their own self-policing.
“I’d think you’d want to see the baby, though,” Copley said.
Thank God I picked this out of Copley’s head a second or two before he
actually spoke the words. Even knowing what he was going to say, I felt his
oh-so-casual remark hit me like a blow to the stomach. But I didn’t want to
give him the satisfaction of letting him see that. “My cousin Hadley was
wild. She used drugs and people. She wasn’t the most stable person in the
world. She was really pretty, and she had a way about her, so she always
had admirers.” There, I’d said everything pro and con about my cousin
Hadley. And I hadn’t said the word “baby.” What baby?
“How’d your family feel when she became a vampire?” Cope said.
Hadley’s change was a matter of public record. “Turned” vampires were
supposed to register when they entered their altered state of being. They
had to name their maker. It was a kind of governmental vampire birth
control. You can bet the Bureau of Vampire Affairs would come down like a
ton of bricks on a vampire who made too many other little vampires. Hadley
had been turned by Sophie-Anne Leclerq herself.
Amelia had put her father’s wineglass down within his reach and resumed
her seat on the sofa beside me. “Dad, Hadley lived upstairs from me for
two years,” she said. “Of course we knew she was a vampire. For
goodness sake, I thought you’d want to tell me all the hometown news.”
God bless Amelia. I was having a hard time holding myself together, and
only years of doing that very thing when I telepathically overheard
something awful was keeping me glued.
“I need to check on the food. Excuse me,” I murmured, and rose and left
the room. I hoped I didn’t scurry. I tried to walk normally. But once in the
kitchen, I kept on going out the back door and across the back porch, out
the screen door and into the yard.
If I thought I’d hear Hadley’s ghostly voice telling me what to do, I was
disappointed. Vampires don’t leave ghosts, at least as far as I know. Some
vampires believe they don’t possess souls. I don’t know. That’s up to God.
And here I was babbling to myself, because I didn’t want to think about
Hadley’s baby, about the fact that I hadn’t known about the child.
Maybe it was just Copley’s way. Maybe he always wanted to demonstrate
the extent of his knowledge, as a way of showing his power to the people
he dealt with.
I had to go back in there for Amelia’s sake. I braced myself, put my smile
back on—though I knew it was a creepy, nervous smile—and back I went. I
perched by Amelia and beamed at both of them. They looked at me
expectantly, and I realized a conversational lull had fallen.
“Oh,” said Cope suddenly. “Amelia, I forgot to tell you. Someone called the
house for you last week, someone I didn’t know.”
“Her name?”
“Oh, let me think. Mrs. Beech wrote it down. Ophelia? Octavia? Octavia
Fant. That was it. Unusual.”
I thought Amelia was going to faint. She turned a funny color and she
braced her hand against the arm of the couch. “You’re sure?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m sure. I gave her your cell phone number, and I told her you were
living in Bon Temps.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Amelia croaked. “Ah, I’ll bet supper’s done; let me go
check.”
“Didn’t Sookie just look at the food?” He wore the broad tolerant smile a
man wears when he thinks women are being silly.
“Oh, sure, but it’s in the end stage,” I said while Amelia shot out of the room
as swiftly as I’d just done.
“It would be awful if it burned. Amelia worked so hard.”
“Do you know this Ms. Fant?” Cope asked.
“No, I can’t say as I do.”
“Amelia looked almost scared. No one’s trying to hurt my girl, right?”
He was a different man when he said that, and one I could almost like. No
matter what else he was, Cope didn’t want anyone hurting his daughter.
Anyone except him, that is.
“I don’t think so.” I knew who Octavia Fant was because Amelia’s brain had
just told me, but she herself hadn’t spoken it out loud, so it wasn’t a thing I
could share. Sometimes the things I hear out loud and the things I hear in
my head become really tangled and con fused—one of the reasons why I
have a reputation for being borderline crazy. “You’re a contractor, Mr.
Carmichael?”
“Cope, please. Yes, among other things.”
“I guess your business must be booming right now,” I said.
“If my company was twice as big, we couldn’t keep up with the jobs there
are to do,” he said. “But I hated to see New Orleans all torn up.”
Oddly enough, I believed him.
Supper went smoothly enough. If Amelia’s father was disconcerted at
eating in the kitchen, he didn’t give a sign of it. Since he was a builder, he
noticed that the kitchen portion of the house was new and I had to tell him
about the fire, but that could have happened to anyone, right? I left out the
part about the arsonist.
Cope seemed to enjoy his food and complimented Amelia, who was mighty
pleased. He had another glass of wine with his meal, but no more than that,
and he ate moderately, too. He and Amelia talked about friends of the
family and some relatives, and I was left alone to think. Believe me, I had a
lot of thinking to do.
Hadley’s marriage license and divorce decree had been in her lockbox at
her bank when I’d opened it after her death. The box had contained some
family things—a few pictures, her mother’s obituary, several pieces of
jewelry. There’d also been a lock of fine hair, dark and wispy, with a bit of
Scotch tape to keep it together. It had been placed in a little envelope. I’d
wondered when I’d noticed how fine the hair was. But there hadn’t been a
birth certificate or any other scrap of evidence that Hadley had had a baby.
Up until now, I’d had no clearly defined reason to contact Hadley’s former
husband. I hadn’t even known he existed until I’d opened her lockbox. He
wasn’t mentioned in her will. I’d never met him. He hadn’t shown up while I
was in New Orleans.
Why hadn’t she mentioned the child in her will? Surely any parent would do
that. And though she’d named Mr. Cataliades and me as the joint
executors, she hadn’t told either of us— well, she hadn’t told me—that she
had relinquished her rights to her child, either.
“Sookie, would you pass the butter?” Amelia asked, and I could tell from
her tone it wasn’t the first time she’d spoken to me.
“Of course,” I said. “Can I get either of you any more water or another glass
of wine?”
They both declined.
After supper, I volunteered to do the dishes. Amelia accepted my offer after
a brief pause. She and her father had to have some time alone, even if
Amelia didn’t relish the prospect.
I washed and dried and put away the dishes in relative peace. I wiped
down the counters and whipped the tablecloth off the table and popped it
into the washer on the enclosed back porch. I went into my room and read
for a while, though I didn’t take in much of what was happening on the
page. Finally, I laid the book aside and got a box out of my underwear
drawer. This box contained everything I’d retrieved from Hadley’s lockbox. I
checked the name on the marriage certificate. On impulse, I called
information.
“I need a listing for a Remy Savoy,” I said.
“What city?”
“New Orleans.”
“That number’s been disconnected.”
“Try Metairie.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Of course, a lot of people had moved since Katrina, and a lot of those
moves were permanent. People who had fled the hurricane had no reason
to come back, in many cases. There was nowhere to live and no job to go
to, in all too many cases.
I wondered how to search for Hadley’s ex-husband.
A very unwelcome solution crept into my head. Bill Compton was a
computer whiz. Maybe he could track down this Remy Savoy, find out
where he was now, discover if the child was with him.
I rolled the idea around in my head like a mouthful of doubtful wine. Given
our exchange of the night before at the wedding, I could not imagine myself
approaching Bill to ask for a favor, though he’d be the right man for the job.
A wave of longing for Quinn almost took me to my knees. Quinn was a
smart and well-traveled man, and he would surely have a good piece of
advice for me. If I ever saw him again.
I shook myself. I could just hear a car pulling into the parking area by the
sidewalk at the front of the house. Tyrese Marley was returning for Cope. I
straightened my back and left my room, my smile fixed firmly on my face.
The front door was open, and Tyrese was standing in it, pretty much filling
it up from side to side. He was a big man. Cope was leaning over to give
his daughter a peck on the cheek, which she accepted without a hint of a
smile. Bob the cat came through the door and sat down beside her. The cat
was looking up at Amelia’s father with his wide-eyed stare.
“You have a cat, Amelia? I thought you hated cats.”
Bob switched his gaze to Amelia. Nothing can stare like a cat.
“Dad! That was years ago! This is Bob. He’s great.” Amelia picked up the
black-and-white cat and held him to her chest. Bob looked smug and began
purring.
“Hmmm. Well, I’ll be calling you. Please take care. I hate to think about you
being up here at the other end of the state.”
“It’s just a few hours’ ride away,” Amelia said, sounding all of seventeen.
“True,” he said, trying for rueful but charming. He missed by a foot or two.
“Sookie, thanks for the evening,” he called over his daughter’s shoulder.
Marley had gone to Merlotte’s to see if he could scope out any information
on me, I heard clearly from his brain. He’d picked up quite a few odds and
ends. He’d talked to Arlene, which was bad, and to our current cook and
our busboy, which was good. Plus assorted bar patrons. He’d have a mixed
report to convey.
The moment the car pulled away, Amelia collapsed onto the sofa with
relief. “Thank God he’s gone,” she said. “Now do you see what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I said. I sat beside her. “He’s a mover and a shaker, isn’t he?”
“Always has been,” she said. “He’s trying to maintain a relationship, but our
ideas don’t match.”
“Your dad loves you.”
“He does. But he loves power and control, too.”
That was putting it conservatively.
“And he doesn’t know you have your own form of power.”
“No, he doesn’t believe in it at all,” Amelia said. “He’ll tell you he’s a devout
Catholic, but that’s not the truth.”
“In a way, that’s good,” I said. “If he believed in your witch power, he’d try to
make you do all kinds of things for him. You wouldn’t want to do some of
them, I bet.” I could have bitten my tongue, but Amelia didn’t take offense.
“You’re right,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to help him advance his agenda.
He’s capable of doing that without my assistance. If he’d just leave me
alone, I’d be content. He’s always trying to improve my life, on his terms.
I’m really doing okay.”
“Who was that who had called you in New Orleans?” Though I knew, I had
to pretend. “Fant, her name was?”
Amelia shuddered. “Octavia Fant is my mentor,” she said. “She’s the
reason I left New Orleans. I figured my coven would do something awful to
me when they found out about Bob. She’s the head of my coven. Or what’s
left of it. If anything’s left of it.”
“Ooops.”
“Yeah, no shit. I’m going to have to pay the price now.”
“You think she’ll come up here?”
“I’m only surprised she’s not here already.”
Despite her expressed fear, Amelia had been worried sick about the
welfare of her mentor after Katrina. She had made a huge effort to track the
woman, though she didn’t want Octavia to find her.
Amelia feared being discovered, especially with Bob still in his cat form.
She’d told me that her dabbling in transformational magic would be
considered all the more reprehensible because she was still an intern, or
something along those lines . . . a step above novice, anyway. Amelia
didn’t discuss the witch infrastructure.
“You didn’t think of telling your father not to reveal your location?”
“Asking him to do that would have made him so curious he’d have torn up
my entire life to find out why I’d asked. I never thought Octavia would call
him, since she knows how I feel about him.”
Which was, to say the least, conflicted.
“I have something to tell you that I forgot,” Amelia said abruptly. “Speaking
of phone calls, Eric called you.”
“When ?”
“Ah, last night. Before you got home. You were so full of news when you
got here, I just forgot to tell you. Plus, you’d said you were going to call him
anyway. And I was really upset about my dad coming. I’m sorry, Sookie. I
promise I’ll write a note next time.”
This was not the first time Amelia had neglected to tell me about a caller. I
wasn’t pleased, but it was water under the bridge, and our day had been
stressful enough. I hoped Eric had found out about the money the queen
owed me for my services in Rhodes. I hadn’t gotten a check yet, and I
hated to bug her since she’d been hurt so badly. I went to the phone in my
room to call Fangtasia, which should be in full blast. The club was open
every night except Monday.
“Fangtasia, the bar with a bite,” Clancy said.
Oh, great. My least favorite vampire. I phrased my request carefully.
“Clancy, it’s Sookie. Eric asked me to return his call.”
There was a moment of silence. I was willing to bet that Clancy was trying
to figure out if he could block my access to Eric. He decided he couldn’t.
“One moment,” he said. A brief pause while I listened to “Strangers in the
Night.” Then Eric picked up the phone.
“Hello?” he said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back before now. I just got your message. Did
you call about my money?”
A moment of silence. “No, about something else entirely. Will you go out
with me tomorrow night?”
I stared at the telephone. I couldn’t manage a coherent thought.
Finally I said, “Eric, I’m dating Quinn.”
“And how long has it been since you’ve seen him?”
“Since Rhodes.”
“How long has it been since you heard from him?”
“Since Rhodes.” My voice was wooden. I was unwilling to talk to Eric about
this, but we had shared blood often enough to have a much stronger tie
than I liked. In fact, I loathed our bond, one we’d been compelled to forge.
But when I heard his voice, I felt content. When I was with him, I felt
beautiful and happy. And there was nothing I could do about it.
“I think you can give me one evening,” Eric said. “It doesn’t sound as
though Quinn has you booked.”
“That was mean.”
“It’s Quinn who’s cruel, promising you he’d be here and then not keeping
his word.” There was a dark element in Eric’s voice, an undertone of anger.
“Do you know what’s happened to him?” I asked. “Do you know where he
is?”
There was a significant silence. “No,” Eric said very gently. “I don’t know.
But there is someone in town who wants to meet you. I promised I would
arrange it. I’d like to take you to Shreveport myself.”
So this wasn’t a date date.
“You mean that guy Jonathan? He came to the wedding and introduced
himself. I’ve got to say, I didn’t much care for the guy. No offense, if he’s a
friend of yours.”
“Jonathan? What Jonathan?”
“I’m talking about the Asian guy; he’s maybe Thai? He was at the Bellefleur
wedding last night. He said he wanted to see me because he was staying
in Shreveport and he’d heard a lot about me. He said he’d checked in with
you, like a good little visiting vampire.”
“I don’t know him,” Eric said. His voice was much sharper. “I’ll ask here at
Fangtasia to see if anyone has seen him. And I’ll prompt the queen about
your money, though she is . . . not herself. Now, will you please do what I’m
asking you to do?”
I made a face at the telephone. “I guess,” I said. “Who’m I meeting? And
where?”
“I’ll have to let the ‘who’ remain a mystery,” Eric said. “As to where, we’ll go
to dinner at a nice restaurant. The kind you’d call casual dressy.”
“You don’t eat. What will you do?”
“I’ll introduce you and stay as long as you need me to.”
A crowded restaurant should be all right. “Okay,” I said, not very graciously.
“I’ll get off work about six or six thirty.”
“I’ll be there to pick you up at seven.”
“Give me till seven thirty. I need to change.” I knew I sounded grumpy, and
that was exactly how I felt. I hated the big mystery around this meeting.
“You’ll feel better when you see me,” he said. Dammit, he was absolutely
right.
Chapter 4
I checked my Word of the Day calendar while I was waiting for my hairstraightening
iron to heat up. “Epicene.” Huh.
Since I didn’t know what restaurant we were going to, and I didn’t know
who we’d meet there, I picked my most comfortable option and wore a sky
blue silk T-shirt that Amelia had said was too big for her, and some black
dress slacks with black heels. I don’t wear a lot of jewelry, so a gold chain
and some little gold earrings did the decorating for me. I’d had a tough day
at work, but I was too curious about the evening ahead to feel tired.
Eric was on time, and I felt (surprise) a rush of pleasure when I saw him. I
don’t think that was entirely due to the blood bond between us. I think any
heterosexual woman would feel a rush of pleasure at the sight of Eric. He
was a tall man and must have been seen as a giant in his time. He was
built to swing a heavy sword to hew down his enemies. Eric’s golden blond
hair sprang back like a lion’s mane from a bold forehead. There was
nothing epicene about Eric, nothing ethereally beautiful, either. He was all
male.
Eric bent to kiss me on the cheek. I felt warm and safe. This was the effect
Eric had on me now that we’d swapped blood more than three times. The
blood sharing hadn’t been for pleasure but a necessity—at least I’d thought
so—every time, but the price I paid was steep. We were bonded now, and
when he was near, I was absurdly happy. I tried to enjoy the sensation, but
knowing it wasn’t completely natural made that hard to do.
Since Eric had come in his Corvette, I was extra glad I’d worn pants.
Getting into and out of a Corvette modestly was a very difficult procedure if
you were wearing a dress. I made small talk on the way to Shreveport, but
Eric was uncharacteristically silent. I tried to question him about Jonathan,
the mysterious vampire at the wedding, but Eric said, “We’ll talk about that
later. You haven’t seen him again, have you?”
“No,” I said. “Should I expect to?”
Eric shook his head. There was an uncomfortable pause. From the way he
was gripping the wheel, I could tell that Eric was building up to saying
something he didn’t want to say.
“I’m glad for your sake that it appears Andre didn’t survive the bombing,” he
said.
The queen’s dearest child, Andre, had died in the bombing in Rhodes. But
it hadn’t been the bomb that had killed him. Quinn and I knew what had
done the deed: a big splinter of wood that Quinn had driven into Andre’s
heart while the vampire lay disabled. Quinn had killed Andre for my sake,
because he knew Andre had plans for me that made me sick with fear.
“I’m sure the queen will miss him,” I said carefully.
Eric shot me a sharp glance. “The queen is distraught,” he said. “And her
healing will take months more. What I was beginning to say...” His voice
trailed off.
This wasn’t like Eric. “What?” I demanded.
“You saved my life,” he said. I’d turned to look at him, but he was looking
straight ahead at the road. “You saved my life, and Pam’s, too.”
I shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, well.” Miss Articulate. The silence
lengthened until I felt I had to say something else. “We do have the blood
tie thing going.”
Eric didn’t respond for a stretch of time. “That’s not why you came to wake
me, first of all, the day the hotel blew up,” he said. “But we won’t talk further
about this now. You have a big evening ahead.”
Yes, boss, I said snippily, but only to myself.
We were in a part of Shreveport I didn’t know too well. It was definitely out
of the main shopping area, with which I was fairly familiar. We were in a
neighborhood where the houses were large and the lawns were groomed.
The businesses were small and pricey ... what retailers called “boutiques.”
We pulled into a group of such shops. It was arranged in an L, and the
restaurant was at the rear of the L. It was called Les Deux Poissons. There
were maybe eight cars parked there, and each one of them represented my
yearly income. I looked down at my clothes, feeling suddenly uneasy.
“Don’t worry, you’re beautiful,” Eric said quietly. He leaned over to unbuckle
my seat belt (to my astonishment), and as he straightened he kissed me
again, this time on the mouth. His bright blue eyes blazed out of his white
face. He looked as if a whole story was on the tip of his tongue. But then he
swallowed it back and unfolded himself from the car to walk around to my
side to open the door for me. Maybe I wasn’t the only one this blood bond
worked on, huh?
From his tension I realized that some major event was coming at me fast,
and I began to be afraid. Eric took my hand as we walked across to the
restaurant, and he ran his thumb absently across my palm. I was surprised
to find out there was a direct line from my palm to my, my, hootchie.
We stepped into the foyer, where there was a little fountain and a screen
that blocked the view of the diners. The woman standing at the podium was
beautiful and black, her hair shaved very close to her skull. She wore a
draped dress of orange and brown and the highest heels I had ever seen.
She might as well have been wearing toe shoes. I looked at her closely,
and I sampled the signature of her brain, and I found she was human. She
smiled brilliantly at Eric and had the sense to give me a share of that smile.
“A party of two?” she said.
“We’re meeting someone,” Eric said.
“Oh, the gentleman . . .”
“Yes.”
“Right this way, please.” Her smile replaced by a look almost of envy, she
turned and walked gracefully into the depths of the restaurant. Eric
gestured for me to follow her. The interior was fairly dark, and candles
flickered on the tables, which were covered with snowy white cloths and
elaborately folded napkins.
My eyes were on the hostess’s back, so when she came to a halt, I didn’t
immediately recognize that she’d stopped at the table where we were to sit.
She stepped aside. Seated facing me was the lovely man who’d been at
the wedding two nights before.
The hostess spun on her high heel, touched the back of the chair to the
man’s right to indicate I should sit there, and told us our server would be
with us. The man rose to pull out my chair and hold it for me. I glanced
back at Eric. He gave me a reassuring nod. I slipped in front of the chair
and the man pushed it forward with perfect timing.
Eric didn’t sit. I wanted him to explain what was happening, but he didn’t
speak. He looked almost sad.
The beautiful man was looking at me intently. “Child,” he said to get my
attention. Then he pushed back his long, fine golden hair. None of the other
diners were positioned to see what he was showing me.
His ear was pointed. He was a fairy.
I knew two other fairies. But they avoided vampires at all costs, because
the smell of a fairy was as intoxicating to a vampire as honey is to a bear.
According to a vampire who was particularly gifted in the scent sense, I had
a trace of fairy blood.
“Okay,” I said, to let him know the ears had registered.
“Sookie, this is Niall Brigant,” Eric said. He pronounced it “Nye-all.” “He’s
going to talk to you over supper. I’ll be outside if you need me.” He inclined
his head stiffly to the fairy and then he was gone.
I watched Eric walk away, and I was bowled over with a rush of anxiety.
Then I felt a hand on top of my own. I turned to meet the eyes of the fairy.
“As he said, my name is Niall.” His voice was light, sexless, resonant. His
eyes were green, the deepest green you can imagine. In the flickering
candlelight, the color hardly mattered—it was the depth you noticed. His
hand on mine was light as a feather but very warm.
“Who are you?” I asked, and I wasn’t asking him to repeat his name.
“I’m your great-grandfather,” Niall Brigant said.
“Oh, shit,” I said, and covered my mouth with my hand. “Sorry, I just ...” I
shook my head. “Great-grandpa?” I said, trying out the concept. Niall
Brigant winced delicately. On a real man, the gesture would have looked
effeminate, but on Niall it didn’t.
Lots of kids in our neck of the woods call their grandfathers “Papaw.” I’d
love to see his reaction to that. The idea helped me recover my scattered
sense of self.
“Please explain,” I said very politely. The waiter came to inquire after our
drink orders and recite the specials of the day. Niall ordered a bottle of wine
and told him we would have the salmon. He did not consult me. Highhanded.
The young man nodded vigorously. “Great choice,” he said. He was a
Were, and though I would have expected him to be curious about Niall
(who after all was a supernatural being not often encountered), I seemed to
be of more interest. I attributed that to the waiter’s youth and my boobs.
See, here’s the weird thing about meeting my self-proclaimed relative: I
never doubted his truthfulness. This was my true great-grandfather, and the
knowledge just clicked into place as if it fit into a puzzle.
“I’ll tell you all about it,” Niall said. Very slowly, telegraphing his intention,
he leaned over to kiss my cheek. His mouth and eyes crinkled as his facial
muscles moved to frame the kiss. The fine cobweb of wrinkles did not in
any way detract from his beauty; he was like very old silk or a crackled
painting by an ancient master.
This was a big night for getting kissed.
“When I was still young, perhaps five or six hundred years ago, I used to
wander among the humans,” Niall said. “And every now and then, as a
male will, I’d see a human woman I found appealing.”
I glanced around so I wouldn’t be staring at him every second, and I
noticed a strange thing: no one was looking at us but our waiter. I mean,
not even a casual glance strayed our way. And no human brains in the
room were even registering our presence. My great-grandfather paused
while I did this, and resumed speaking when I’d finished evaluating the
situation.
“I saw such a woman in the woods one day, and her name was Einin. She
thought I was an angel.” He was silent for a moment. “She was delicious,”
he said. “She was lively, and happy, and simple.” Niall’s eyes were fixed on
my face. I wondered if he thought I was like Einin: simple. “I was young
enough to be infatuated, young enough to be able to ignore the inevitable
end of our connection as she aged and I did not. But Einin got pregnant,
which was a shock. Fairies and humans don’t crossbreed often. Einin gave
birth to twins, which is quite common among the fae. Einin and both boys
lived through the birthing, which in those times was far from certain. She
called our older son Fintan. The second was Dermot.”
The waiter brought our wine, and I was jerked out of the spell Niall’s voice
had laid on me. It was like we’d been sitting around a campfire in the
woods listening to an ancient legend, and then snap! We were in a modern
restaurant in Shreveport, Louisiana, and there were other people around
who had no idea what was going on. I automatically lifted my glass and
took a sip of wine. I felt I was entitled.
“Fintan the Half Fairy was your paternal grandfather, Sookie,” Niall said.
“No. I know who my grandfather was.” My voice was shaking a little, I
noticed, but it was still very quiet.
“My grandfather was Mitchell Stackhouse and he married Adele Hale. My
father was Corbett Hale Stackhouse, and he and my mom died in a flash
flood when I was a little girl. Then I was raised by my grandmother Adele.”
Though I remembered the vampire in Mississippi who’d told me he
detected a trace of fairy blood in my veins, and I believed this was my
great-grandfather, I just couldn’t adjust my inner picture of my family.
“What was your grandmother like?” Niall asked.
“She raised me when she didn’t have to,” I said. “She took me and Jason
into her home, and she worked hard to raise us right. We learned
everything from her. She loved us. She had two children herself and buried
them both, and that must have about killed her, but still she was strong for
us.”
“She was beautiful when she was young,” Niall said. His green eyes
lingered on my face as if he were trying to find some trace of her beauty in
her granddaughter.
“I guess,” I said uncertainly. You don’t think about your grandmother in
terms of beauty, at least in the normal way of things.
“I saw her after Fintan made her pregnant,” Niall said. “She was lovely. Her
husband had told her he could not give her children. He’d had mumps at
the wrong time. That’s a disease, isn’t it?” I nodded. “She met Fintan one
day when she was beating a rug out on the clothesline, in back of the
house where you now live. He asked her for a drink of water. He was
smitten on the spot. She wanted children so badly, and he promised her he
could give them to her.”
“You said fairies and people weren’t usually fertile when they crossbreed.”
“But Fintan was only half fairy. And he already knew that he was able to
give a woman a child.” Niall’s mouth quirked. “The first woman he loved
died in childbirth, but your grandmother and her son were more fortunate,
and then two years later she was able to carry Fintan’s daughter to
completion.”
“He raped her,” I said, almost hoping it was so. My grandmother had been
the most true-blue woman I’d ever met. I couldn’t picture her cheating
anyone out of anything, particularly since she’d promised in front of God to
be faithful to my grandfather.
“No, he did not. She wanted children, though she didn’t want to be
unfaithful to her husband. Fintan didn’t care about the feelings of others,
and he wanted her desperately,” Niall said. “But he was never violent. He
would not have raped her. However, my son could talk a woman into
anything, even into something against her moral judgment.... And if she
was very beautiful, so was he.”
I tried to see the woman she must have been, in the grandmother I’d
known. And I just couldn’t.
“What was your father like, my grandson?” Niall asked.
“He was a handsome guy,” I said. “He was a hard worker. He was a good
dad.”
Niall smiled slightly. “How did your mother feel about him?” That question
cut sharply into my warm memories of my father. “She, ah, she was really
devoted to him.” Maybe at the expense of her children.
“She was obsessed?” Niall’s voice was not judgmental but certain, as if he
knew my answer.
“Real possessive,” I admitted. “Though I was only seven when they died,
even I could see that. I guess I thought it was normal. She really wanted to
give him all her attention. Sometimes Jason and I were in the way. And she
was really jealous, I remember.” I tried to look amused, as if my mother
being so jealous of my father was a charming quirk.
“It was the fairy in him that made her hold on so strongly,” Niall said. “It
takes some humans that way. She saw the supernatural in him, and it
enthralled her. Tell me, was she a good mother?”
“She tried hard,” I whispered.
She had tried. My mother had known how to be a good mother
theoretically. She knew how a good mother acted toward her children.
She’d made herself go through all the motions. But all her true love had
been saved for my father, who’d been bemused by the intensity of her
passion. I could see that now, as an adult. As a child, I’d been confused
and hurt.
The red-haired Were brought our salad and set it down in front of us. He
wanted to ask us if we needed anything else, but he was too scared. He’d
picked up on the atmosphere at the table.
“Why did you decide now to come meet me?” I asked. “How long have you
known about me?” I put my napkin in my lap and sat there holding the fork.
I should take a bite. Wasting was not part of the way I’d been raised. By my
grandmother. Who’d had sex with a half fairy (who’d wandered into the
yard like a stray dog). Enough sex over enough time to produce two
children.
“I’ve known about your family for the past sixty years, give or take. But my
son Fintan forbade me seeing any of you.” He carefully put a bit of tomato
into his mouth, held it there, thought about it, chewed it. He ate the way I
would if I was visiting an Indian or Nicaraguan restaurant.
“What changed?” I said, but I figured it out. “So your son is dead now.”
“Yes,” he said, and put down the fork. “Fintan is dead. After all he was half
human. And he’d lived for seven hundred years.”
Was I supposed to have an opinion about this? I felt so numb, as though
Niall had shot Novocain into my emotional center. I probably should ask
how my—my grandfather had come to die, but I couldn’t bring myself to do
it.
“So you decided to come tell me about this—why?” I was proud of how
calm I sounded.
“I’m old, even for my kind. I would like to know you. I can’t atone for the
way your life has been shaped by the heritage Fintan gave you. But I will
try to make your life a little easier, if you’ll permit me.”
“Can you take the telepathy away?” I asked. A wild hope, not unmixed with
fear, flared in me like a sunspot.
“You are asking if I can remove something from the fiber of your being,”
Niall said. “No, I can’t do that.”
I slumped in my chair. “Thought I’d ask,” I said, fighting away tears. “Do I
get three wishes, or is that with genies?”
Niall regarded me with no humor at all. “You wouldn’t want to meet a
genie,” he said. “And I’m not a figure of fun. I am a prince.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m having a little trouble coping with all this ... Greatgrandfather.”
I didn’t remember my human great-grandfathers. My
grandfathers—okay, I guess one of them hadn’t truly been my
grandfather—hadn’t looked or acted a thing like this beautiful creature. My
grandfather Stackhouse died sixteen years ago, and my mother’s parents
had died before I was into my teens. So I’d known my grandmother Adele
much better than any of the others, actually much better than I’d known my
true parents.
“Hey,” I said. “How come Eric fetched me for you? You’re fairy, after all.
Vampires go nuts when they smell fairies.”
In fact, most vampires lost their self-control when they were around fairies.
Only a very disciplined vampire could behave when a fairy got within
smelling distance. My fairy god-mother, Claudine, was terrified of being
anywhere around a bloodsucker.
“I can suppress my essence,” Niall said. “They can see me but not smell
me. It’s a convenient magic. I can keep humans from even noticing me, as
you have observed.”
The way he said this let me know that he was not only very old and very
powerful, but he was also very proud. “Did you send Claudine to me?” I
said.
“Yes. I hope she’s been of use. Only people of part-fae blood can have
such a relationship with a fairy. I knew you needed her.”
“Oh, yes, she’s saved my life,” I said. “She’s been wonderful.” She’d even
taken me shopping. “Are all fairies as nice as Claudine, or as beautiful as
her brother?”
Claude, male stripper and now entrepreneur, was as handsome as a man
could get, and he had the personality of a self-absorbed turnip.
“Dear one,” Niall said, “we are all beautiful to humans; but some fairies are
very nasty indeed.”
Okay, here came the downside. I had a strong feeling that finding out I had
a great-grandfather who was a full-blooded fairy was supposed to be good
news, from Niall’s point of view—but that it wasn’t a completely iced
cupcake. Now I would get the bad news.
“You went many years without being found,” Niall said, “in part because
that was what Fintan wanted.”
“But he watched me?” I almost felt warmth in my heart at hearing that.
“My son was remorseful that he’d condemned two children to the half-in,
half-out existence he’d experienced as a fairy who wasn’t truly a fairy. I’m
afraid the others of our race weren’t kind to him.” My great-grandfather’s
gaze was steady. “I did my best to defend him, but it wasn’t enough. Fintan
also found he wasn’t human enough to pass as human, at least not for
more than a short time.”
“You don’t look like this normally?” I asked, very curious.
“No.” And just for a split second, I saw an almost blinding light, with Niall in
the middle of it, beautiful and perfect. No wonder Einin had thought he was
an angel.
“Claudine said she was working her way up,” I said. “What does that
mean?” I was floundering through this conversation. I felt like I’d been
knocked down to my knees by all this information, and I was struggling to
get to my emotional feet. I wasn’t having a very successful time doing it.
“She shouldn’t have told you that,” Niall said. He debated with himself for a
second or two before continuing. “Shifters are humans with a genetic twist,
vampires are dead humans transformed into something different, but the
fae have only a basic shape in common with humans. There are many
kinds of fae—from the grotesque, like goblins, to the beautiful, like us.” He
said this quite unself-consciously.
“Are there angels?”
“Angels are yet another form, and one which has undergone an almost
complete transformation, physical and moral. It can take hundreds of years
to become an angel.”
Poor Claudine.
“But enough about this,” Niall said. “I want to know about you. My son kept
me from your father and your aunt, and then from their children. His death
came too late for me to know your cousin Hadley. But now I can see you
and touch you.” Which, incidentally, Niall was doing in a way that wasn’t
exactly human: if his hand wasn’t holding mine, it was placed flat against
my shoulder, or my back. This wasn’t exactly the way humans related, but
it wasn’t hurting me. I wasn’t as freaked out as I might have been, since I’d
noticed Claudine was very touchy-feely, too. Since I couldn’t get telepathic
vibes from fairies, this much contact was tolerable. With a regular human
being, I’d be bombarded with thoughts, since touch increased my sensitivity
to telepathic contact.
“Did Fintan have any other children or grandchildren?” I asked. It would be
nice to have more family.
“We’ll talk of that later,” Niall said, which sent up an immediate red flag.
“Now that you know me a little,” he said, “please tell me what I can do for
you.”
“Why should you do anything for me?” I said. We’d had the genie
conversation. I wasn’t going to revisit that.
“I can tell that your life has been hard. Now that I am allowed to see you, let
me help you in some way.”
“You sent me Claudine. She’s been a big help,” I repeated. Without the
crutch of my sixth sense, I was having trouble understanding my greatgrandfather’s
emotional and mental set. Was he grieving for his son? What
had their relationship really been? Had Fintan thought he was doing us all a
good deed in keeping his dad away from the Stackhouses all these years?
Was Niall evil, or did he have bad intentions toward me? He could have
done something awful to me from afar without going to the trouble of
meeting me and paying for an expensive dinner.
“You wouldn’t want to explain any more, huh?”
Niall shook his head, his hair brushing his shoulders like strands of gold
and silver spun out to incredible fineness.
I had an idea. “Can you find my boyfriend?” I asked hopefully.
“You have a man? Besides the vampire?”
“Eric is not my man, but since I’ve had his blood a few times, and he’s had
mine ...”
“That’s why I approached you through him. You have a tie to him.”
“Yes.”
“I have known Eric Northman for a long time. I thought you would come if
he asked you to. Did I do wrong?”
I was startled at this appeal. “No, sir,” I said. “I don’t think I’d have come if
he hadn’t told me it was okay. He wouldn’t have brought me if he hadn’t
trusted you.... At least, I don’t think so.”
“Do you want me to kill him? End the tie?”
“No!” I said, getting kind of excited in a bad way. “No!”
A few people actually glanced at us for the first time, hearing my agitation
despite my great-grandfather’s don’t-look influence.
“The other boyfriend,” Niall said, and took another bite of his salmon. “Who
is he and when did he vanish?”
“Quinn the weretiger,” I said. “He’s been gone since the explosion in
Rhodes. He was hurt, but I saw him afterward.”
“I heard about the Pyramid,” Niall said. “You were there?”
I told him about it, and my newly discovered great-grandfather listened with
a refreshing lack of judgment. He was neither horrified nor appalled, and he
didn’t feel sorry for me. I really liked that.
While I talked, I had a chance to regroup my emotions. “You know what?” I
said when there was a natural pause. “Don’t look for Quinn. He knows
where I am, and he’s got my number.” In more ways than one, I thought
sourly. “He’ll show up when he feels like he can, I guess. Or not.”
“But that leaves me with nothing to do as a gift for you,” my greatgrandfather
said.
“Just give me a raincheck,” I said, smiling, and then had to explain the term
to him. “Something’ll come up. Am I ... Can I talk about you? To my
friends?” I asked. “No, I guess not.” I couldn’t imagine telling my friend Tara
that I had a new great-grandfather who was a fairy. Amelia might be more
understanding.
“I want to keep our relationship a secret,” he said. “I am so glad to know
you finally, and I want to know you better.” He laid his hand against my
cheek. “But I have powerful enemies, and I wouldn’t want them to think of
harming you to get at me.”
I nodded. I understood. But it was kind of deflating to have a brand-new
relative and be forbidden to talk about him. Niall’s hand left my cheek to
drift down to my own hand.
“What about Jason?” I asked. “Are you gonna talk to him, too?”
“Jason,” he said, his face showing distaste. “Somehow the essential spark
passed Jason by. I know he is made of the same material as you, but in
him the blood has only shown itself in his ability to attract lovers, which
after all is not much recommendation. He wouldn’t understand or
appreciate our connection.”
Great-grandfather sounded pretty snotty when he said that. I started to say
something in Jason’s defense, but then I closed my mouth. I had to admit
to my most secret self that Niall was almost certainly right. Jason would be
full of demands, and he would talk.
“How often are you going to be around?” I said instead, striving hard to
sound nonchalant. I knew I was expressing myself clumsily, but I didn’t
know how else to establish some framework for this new and awkward
relationship.
“I’ll try to visit you like any other relative would,” he said.
I tried hard to picture that. Niall and I eating at the Hamburger Palace?
Sharing a pew at church on a Sunday? I didn’t think so.
“I feel like there’s a lot you’re not telling me,” I said bluntly.
“Then we’ll have something to talk about next time,” he said, and one sea
green eye winked at me. Okay, that was unexpected. He handed me a
business card, another thing I didn’t anticipate. It said simply, “Niall
Brigant,” with a telephone number centered beneath. “You can reach me at
that number any time. Someone will answer.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I guess you know my phone number?” He nodded. I’d
thought he was ready to leave, but he lingered. He seemed as reluctant to
part as I was. “So,” I began, clearing my throat. “What do you do all day?” I
can’t tell you how strange and neat it felt to be with a family member. I only
had Jason, and he wasn’t exactly a close brother, the kind you told
everything to. I could count on him in a pinch, but hanging out together?
Not going to happen.
My great-grandfather answered my question, but when I tried to recall it
afterward, I couldn’t come up with anything specific. I guess he did secret
fairy-prince stuff. He did tell me he had part ownership in a bank or two, a
company that made lawn furniture, and—and this seemed odd to me—a
company that created and tested experimental medicine.
I looked at him doubtfully. “Medicine for humans,” I said, to be sure I
understood.
“Yes. For the most part,” he responded. “But a few of the chemists make
special things for us.”
“For the fae.”
He nodded, fine corn-silk hair falling around his face as his head moved.
“There is so much iron now,” he said. “I don’t know if you realize that we
are very sensitive to iron? And yet if we wear gloves every moment, we’re
too conspicuous in today’s world.” I looked at his right hand as it lay over
mine on the white tablecloth. I extracted my fingers, stroked his skin. It felt
oddly smooth.
“It’s like an invisible glove,” I said.
“Exactly.” He nodded. “One of their formulas. But enough about me.”
Just when it was getting interesting, I thought. But I could see that my
great-grandfather had no real reason to trust me with all his secrets yet.
Niall asked me about my job, and my boss, and my routine, like a real
great-grandfather would. Though he clearly didn’t like the idea of his greatgranddaughter
working, the bar part of it didn’t seem to disturb him. As I’ve
said, Niall wasn’t easy to read. His thoughts were his own as far as I was
concerned; but I did notice that every now and then he stopped himself
from speaking.
Eventually, dinner got eaten, and I glanced at my watch, astounded at how
many hours had passed. I needed to go. I had to work the next day. I
excused myself, thanking my great-grandfather (it still made me shiver,
thinking of him that way) for the meal and very hesitantly leaning forward to
kiss his cheek as he’d kissed mine. He seemed to hold his breath while I
did so, and his skin felt soft and lustrous as a silky plum under my lips.
Even though he could look like a human, he didn’t feel like one.
He stood when I left, but he remained at the table—to take care of the bill, I
assumed. I went outside without registering anything my eyes saw along
the way. Eric was waiting for me in the parking lot. He’d had some
TrueBlood while he was waiting, and he’d been reading in the car, which
was parked under a light.
I was exhausted.
I didn’t realize how nerve-wracking my dinner with Niall had been until I
was out of his presence. Though I’d been sitting in a comfortable chair the
whole meal, I was as tired as if we’d been talking while we were running.
Niall had been able to mask the fairy odor from Eric in the restaurant, but I
saw from the flare of Eric’s nostrils that the intoxicating scent clung to me.
Eric’s eyes closed in ecstasy, and he actually licked his lips. I felt like a Tbone
just out of reach of a hungry dog.
“Snap out of it,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood.
With a huge effort, Eric reined himself in. “When you smell like that,” he
said, “I just want to fuck you and bite you and rub myself all over you.”
That was pretty comprehensive, and I won’t say I didn’t have a second
(split evenly between lust and fear) of picturing such activity. But I had
larger issues to think about.
“Hold your horses,” I said. “What do you know about fairies? Aside from
how they taste?”
Eric looked at me with clearer eyes. “They’re lovely, male and female both.
Incredibly tough and ferocious. They aren’t immortal, but they live a very
long time unless something happens to them. You can kill them with iron,
for example. There are other ways to kill them, but it’s hard work. They like
to keep to themselves for the most part. They like moderate climates. I
don’t know what they eat or drink when they’re by themselves. They
sample the food of other cultures; I’ve even seen a fairy try blood. They
have a higher opinion of themselves than they have any right to. When they
give their word, they keep it.” He thought for a moment. “They have
different magics. They can’t all do the same things. And they are very
magical. It’s their essence. They have no gods but their own race, for
they’ve often been mistaken for gods. In fact, some of them have taken on
the attributes of a deity.”
I gaped at him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t mean they’re holy,” Eric said. “I mean that the fairies who
inhabit the woods identify with the woods so strongly that to hurt one is to
hurt the other. So they’ve suffered a great drop in numbers. Obviously, we
vampires are not going to be up on fairy politics and survival issues, since
we are so dangerous to them . . . simply because we find them
intoxicating.”
I’d never thought to ask Claudine about any of this. For one thing, she
didn’t seem to enjoy talking about being a fairy, and when she popped up, it
was usually when I was in trouble and therefore sadly self-absorbed. For
another thing, I’d imagined there were maybe a small handful of fairies left
in the world, but Eric was telling me there once were as many fairies as
there were vampires, though the fairy race was on the wane.
In sharp contrast, vampires—at least in America—were definitely on the
increase. There were three bills wending their way through Congress
dealing with vampire immigration. America had the distinction (along with
Canada, Japan, Norway, Sweden, England, and Germany) of being a
country that had responded to the Great Revelation with relative calm.
The night of the carefully orchestrated Great Revelation, vampires all over
the world had appeared on television, radio, in person, whatever the best
means of communication in the area might be, to tell the human population,
“Hey! We actually exist. But we’re not life threatening! The new Japanese
synthetic blood satisfies our nutritional requirements.”
The six years since then had been one big learning curve. Tonight I’d
added a huge amount to my store of supernatural lore.
“So the vampires have the upper hand,” I said.
“We’re not at war,” Eric said. “We haven’t been at war for centuries.”
“So in the past the vampires and the fairies have fought each other? I
mean, like, pitched battles?”
“Yes,” Eric said. “And if it came to that again, the first one I’d take out is
Niall.”
“Why?”
“He’s very powerful in the fairy world. He is very magical. If he’s sincere in
his desire to take you under his wing, you’re both very lucky and very
unlucky.” Eric started the car and we pulled out of the parking lot. I hadn’t
seen Niall come out of the restaurant. Maybe he’d just poofed out of the
dining room. I hoped he’d paid our bill first.
“I guess I have to ask you to explain that,” I said. But I had a feeling I didn’t
really want to know the answer.
“There were thousands of fairies in the United States once,” Eric said. “Now
there are only hundreds. But the ones that are left are very determined
survivors. And not all of those are friends of the prince’s.”
“Oh, good. I needed another supernatural group who dislikes me,” I
muttered.
We drove through the night in silence, wending our way back to the
interstate that would carry us east to Bon Temps. Eric seemed heavily
thoughtful. I also had plenty of food for thought; more than I’d eaten at
supper, that was for sure.
I found that on the whole, I felt cautiously happy. It was good to have a kind
of belated great-grandfather. Niall seemed genuinely anxious to establish a
relationship with me. I still had a heap of questions to ask, but they could
wait until we knew each other better.
Eric’s Corvette could go pretty damn fast, and Eric wasn’t exactly sticking
to the speed limit on the interstate. I wasn’t awfully surprised when I saw
the blinking lights coming up behind us. I was only astonished the cop car
could catch up with Eric.
“A-hum,” I said, and Eric cursed in a language that probably hadn’t been
spoken out loud in centuries. But even the sheriff of Area Five has to obey
human laws these days, or at least he has to pretend to. Eric pulled over to
the shoulder.
“With a vanity plate like BLDSKR, what do you expect?” I asked, not so
secretly enjoying the moment. I saw the dark shape of the trooper
emerging from the car behind us, walking up with something in his hand—
clipboard, flashlight?
I looked harder. I reached out. A snarled mass of aggression and fear met
my inner ear.
“Were! There’s something wrong,” I said, and Eric’s big hand shoved me
down into the floorboard, which would have provided a little more
concealment if the car had been anything other than a Corvette.
Then the patrolman came up to the window and tried to shoot me.
Chapter 5
Eric had turned to fill the window and block the rest of the car from the
shooter’s aim, and he got it in the neck. For an awful moment, Eric slumped
back in the seat, his face blank and dark blood flowing sluggishly down his
white skin. I screamed as if noise would protect me, and the gun pointed at
me as the gunman leaned into the car to aim past Eric.
But he’d been a fool to do that. Eric’s hand clamped on the man’s wrist,
and Eric began squeezing. The “patrolman” started doing a little shrieking
of his own, flailing uselessly at Eric with his empty hand. The gun fell on top
of me. I’m just lucky it didn’t discharge when it fell. I don’t know much about
handguns, but this one was big and lethal-looking, and I scrambled to an
upright position and aimed it at the shooter.
He froze in place, half in and half out of the window. Eric had already
broken his arm and had kept a tight grip. The fool should have been more
afraid of the vampire who had a hold on him than the waitress who hardly
knew how to fire the gun, but the gun commanded his attention.
I was sure I would have heard if the highway patrol had decided to start
shooting speeders instead of ticketing them.
“Who are you?” I said, and no one could blame me if my voice wasn’t too
steady. “Who sent you?”
“They told me to,” the Were gasped. Now that I had time to notice details, I
could see he wasn’t wearing a proper highway patrol uniform. It was the
right color, and the hat was right, but the pants weren’t uniform pants.
“They, who?” I asked.
Eric’s fangs clamped into the Were’s shoulder. Despite his wound, Eric was
pulling the faux patrolman into the car inch by inch. It seemed only fair that
Eric got some blood since he’d lost so much of his own. The assassin
began crying.
“Don’t let him turn me into one of them,” he appealed to me.
“You should be so lucky,” I said, not because I actually thought it was so
darn great to be a vampire but because I was sure Eric had something
much worse in mind.
I got out of the car because there was no point in trying to get Eric to
release the Were. He wouldn’t listen to me with the bloodlust on him so
strong. My bond to Eric was the crucial factor in this decision. I was happy
that he was enjoying himself, getting the blood he needed. I was furious
that someone had tried to hurt him. Since both of these feelings would not
normally be colors in my emotional palette, I knew what was to blame.
Plus, the inside of the Corvette had gotten unpleasantly crowded, what with
me, Eric, and most of the Were.
Miraculously, no cars passed while I trotted along the shoulder to our
attacker’s vehicle, which (not so much to my surprise) turned out to be a
plain white car with an illegal flashing attachment. I turned out the car’s
lights and, by punching or disconnecting every wire and button I could find,
managed to kill the flashers, too. Now we were not nearly so conspicuous.
Eric had shut down the Corvette’s lights moments into the encounter.
I looked over the inside of the white car quickly but didn’t see an envelope
marked “Revelation of who hired me, in case I get caught.” I needed a clue.
There should at least have been a phone number on a scrap of paper, a
phone number I could look up in a reverse directory. If I knew how to do
such a thing. Rats. I trudged back to Eric’s car, noticing in the lights of a
passing semi that there weren’t any legs sticking out of the driver’s window
anymore, which rendered the Corvette a lot less conspicuous. But we
needed to get out of there.
I peered into the Corvette and found it empty. The only reminder of what
had just happened was a smear of blood on Eric’s seat, and I pulled a
tissue out of my purse, spat on it, and rubbed the drying blood off; not a
very elegant solution, but practical.
Suddenly, Eric was beside me, and I had to stifle a shriek. He was still
excited by the unexpected attack, and he pinned me against the side of the
car, holding my head at the correct angle for a kiss. I felt a lurch of desire
and came very close to saying, “What the hell, take me now, you big
Viking.” It was not only the blood bond inclining me to accept his tacit offer,
but my memory of how wonderful Eric was in bed. But I thought of Quinn
and detached myself from Eric’s mouth with a great effort.
For a second, I didn’t think he was going to let go, but he did. “Let me see,”
I said in an unsteady voice, and pulled his shirt collar aside to look at the
bullet wound. Eric had almost finished healing, but of course his shirt was
still wet with blood.
“What was that about?” he asked. “Was that an enemy of yours?”
“I have no idea.”
“He shot at you,” Eric said, as if I was just a wee bit slow. “He wanted you
first.”
“But what if he did that to hurt you? What if he would have blamed my
death on you?” I was so tired of being the object of plots that I suspected I
was trying to will Eric into being the target. Another idea struck me, and I
veered into it. “And how’d they find us?”
“Someone who knew we’d be driving back to Bon Temps tonight,” Eric
said. “Someone who knew what car I was in.”
“It couldn’t have been Niall,” I said, and then rethought my flash of loyalty to
my brand-new, self-proclaimed great-grandfather. After all, he might have
been lying the whole time we were at the table. How would I know? I
couldn’t get in his head. The ignorance of my position felt strange to me.
But I didn’t believe Niall had been lying.
“I don’t think it was the fairy, either,” Eric said. “But we’d better talk about it
on the road. This isn’t a good place for us to linger.”
He was right about that. I didn’t know where he’d put the body, and I
realized that I didn’t really care. A year ago it would have torn me up,
leaving a body behind as we sped away along the interstate. Now I was
just glad it was him and not me who was lying in the woods.
I was a terrible Christian and a decent survivalist.
As we drove through the dark, I pondered the chasm yawning right in front
of me, waiting for me to take that extra step. I felt stranded on that brink. I
found it harder and harder to stick to what was right, when what was
expedient made better sense. Really, my brain told me ruthlessly, didn’t I
understand that Quinn had dumped me? Wouldn’t he have gotten in touch
if he still considered us a couple? Hadn’t I always had a soft spot for Eric,
who made love like a train thundering into a tunnel? Didn’t I have beaucoup
evidence that Eric could defend me better than anyone I knew?
I could hardly summon the energy to be shocked at myself.
If you find yourself considering who to take for a lover because of his ability
to defend you, you’re getting pretty close to selecting a mate because you
think he has desirable traits to pass along to future generations. And if
there’d been a chance I could have had Eric’s child (a thought that made
me shiver), he would have been at the top of the list, a list I hadn’t even
known I’d been compiling. I pictured myself as a female peacock looking for
the male peacock with the prettiest display of tail, or a wolf waiting for the
leader (strongest, smartest, bravest) of the pack to mount her.
Okay, I’d yucked myself out. I was a human woman. I tried to be a good
woman. I had to find Quinn because I had committed myself to him . . . sort
of.
No, no quibbling!
“What are you thinking about, Sookie?” Eric asked out of the darkness.
“Your face has had thoughts rippling across it too fast to follow.”
The fact that he could see me—not only in the dark, but while he was
supposed to be watching the road—was exasperating and scary. And proof
of his superiority, my inner cave-woman said.
“Eric, just get me home. I’m in emotional overload.”
He didn’t speak again. Maybe he was being wise, or maybe the healing
was painful.
“We need to talk about this again,” he said when he pulled into my
driveway. He parked in front of the house, turned to me as much as he
could in the little car. “Sookie, I’m hurting.... Can I ...” He leaned over,
brushed his fingers over my neck.
At the very idea, my body betrayed me. A throbbing started down low, and
that was just wrong. A person shouldn’t get excited at the idea of being
bitten. That’s bad, right? I clenched my fists so tightly my fingernails made
my palms hurt.
Now that I could see him better, now that the interior of the car was
illuminated with the harsh glare of the security light, I realized that Eric was
even paler than usual. As I watched, the bullet began exiting the wound,
and he leaned back against his seat, his eyes shut. Millimeter by millimeter,
the bullet was extruded until it dropped into my waiting hand. I remembered
Eric getting me to suck out a bullet in his arm. Ha! What a fraud he’d been.
The bullet would’ve come out on its own. My indignation made me feel
more like myself.
“I think you can make it home,” I said, though I felt an almost irresistible
urge to lean over to him and offer my neck or my wrist. I gritted my teeth
and got out of the car. “You can stop at Merlotte’s and get bottled blood if
you really need some.”
“You’re hard-hearted,” Eric said, but he didn’t sound truly angry or
affronted.
“I am,” I said, and I smiled at him. “You be careful, you hear?”
“Of course,” he said. “And I’m not stopping for any policemen.”
I made myself march into the house without looking back. When I was
inside the front door and had shut it firmly behind me, I felt an immediate
relief. Thank goodness. I’d wondered if I was going to turn around at every
step I took away from him. This blood tie thing was really irritating. If I
wasn’t careful and vigilant, I was going to do something I’d regret.
“I am woman, hear me roar,” I said.
“Gosh, what prompted that?” Amelia asked, and I jumped. She was coming
down the hall from the kitchen in her nightgown and matching robe, peach
with cream-colored lace trim. Everything of Amelia’s was nice. She’d never
sneer at anyone else’s shopping habits, but she’d never wear anything
from Wal-Mart, either.
“I’ve had a trying evening,” I said. I looked down at myself. Only a little
blood on the blue silk T-shirt. I’d have to soak it. “How have things gone
here?”
“Octavia called me,” Amelia said, and though she was trying to keep her
voice steady, I could feel the anxiety coming off her in waves.
“Your mentor.” I wasn’t at my brightest.
“Yep, the one and only.” She bent down to pick up Bob, who always
seemed to be around if Amelia was upset. She held him to her chest and
buried her face in his fur. “She had heard, of course. Even after Katrina and
all the changes it made in her life, she has to bring up the mistake.” (That
was what Amelia called it—the mistake.)
“I wonder what Bob calls it,” I said.
Amelia looked over Bob’s head at me, and I knew instantly I’d said a
tactless thing. “Sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking. But maybe it’s not too
realistic to think you can get out of this without being called to account,
huh?”
“You’re right,” she said. She didn’t seem too happy about my rightness, but
at least she said it. “I did wrong. I attempted something I shouldn’t have,
and Bob paid the price.”
Wow, when Amelia decided to confess, she went whole hog.
“I’m going to have to take my licks,” she said. “Maybe they’ll take away my
magic practice for a year. Maybe longer.”
“Oh. That seems harsh,” I said. In my fantasy, her mentor just scolded
Amelia in front of a room full of magicians and sorcerers and witches or
what-have-you, and then they transformed Bob back. He promptly forgave
Amelia and told her he loved her. Since he forgave her, the rest of the
assemblage did, too, and Amelia and Bob came back to my house and
lived here together ... for a good long while. (I wasn’t too specific about that
part.)
“That’s the mildest punishment possible,” Amelia said.
“Oh.”
“You don’t want to know the other possible sentences.” She was right. I
didn’t. “Well, what mysterious errand did Eric take you on?” Amelia asked.
Amelia couldn’t have tipped off anyone to our destination or route; she
hadn’t known where we were going. “Oh, ah, he just wanted to take me to a
new restaurant in Shreveport. It had a French name. It was pretty nice.”
“So, this was like a date?” I could tell she was wondering what place Quinn
played in my relationship with Eric.
“Oh, no, not a date,” I said, sounding unconvincing even to myself. “No
guy-girl action going on. Just, you know, hanging out.” Kissing. Getting
shot.
“He sure is handsome,” Amelia said.
“Yeah, no doubt about it. I’ve met some toothsome guys. Remember
Claude?” I’d shown Amelia the poster that had arrived in the mail two
weeks before, a blowup of the romance novel cover for which Claude had
posed. She’d been impressed— what woman wouldn’t be?
“Ah, I went to watch Claude strip last week.” Amelia couldn’t meet my eyes.
“And you didn’t take me!” Claude was a very disagreeable person,
especially when contrasted with his sister, Claudine, but he was beyond
gorgeous. He was in the Brad Pitt stratosphere of male beauty. Of course,
he was gay. Wouldn’t you know it? “You went while I was at work?”
“I thought you wouldn’t approve of my going,” she said, ducking her head. “I
mean, since you’re friends with his sister. I went with Tara. JB was working.
Are you mad?”
“Nah. I don’t care.” My friend Tara owned a dress shop, and her new
husband, JB, worked at a women’s exercise center. “I would like to see
Claude trying to act like he was enjoying himself.”
“I think he was having a good time,” she said. “There’s no one Claude loves
better than Claude, right? So all these women looking at him and admiring
him ... He’s not into women, but he’s sure into being admired.”
“True. Let’s go see him together sometime.”
“Okay,” she said, and I could tell she was quite cheerful again. “Now, tell
me what you ordered at this new fancy restaurant.” So I told her. But all the
while I was wishing I didn’t have to keep silent about my great-grandfather.
I wanted so badly to tell Amelia about Niall: how he looked, what he’d said,
that I had a whole history I hadn’t known. And it would take me a while to
process what my grandmother had endured, to alter my picture of her in
light of the facts I’d learned. And I had to rethink my unpleasant memories
of my mother, too. She’d fallen for my dad like a ton of bricks, and she’d
had his kids because she loved him ... only to find that she didn’t want to
share him with them, especially with me, another female. At least, this was
my new insight.
“There was more stuff,” I said, a yawn splitting my jaw in two. It was very
late. “But I’ve got to get to bed. I get any phone calls or anything ?”
“That Were from Shreveport called. He wanted to talk to you, and I told him
you were out for the evening and he should call you on your cell. He asked
if he could meet up with you, but I said I didn’t know where you were.”
“Alcide,” I said. “I wonder what he wanted.” I figured I’d call him tomorrow.
“And some girl called. Said she’d been a waitress at Merlotte’s before, and
she’d seen you at the wedding last night.”
“Tanya?”
“Yeah, that was her name.”
“What did she want?”
“Don’t know. She said she’d call back tomorrow or see you at the bar.”
“Crap. I hope Sam didn’t hire her to fill in or something.”
“I thought I was the fill-in bargirl.”
“Yeah, unless someone’s quit. I warn you, Sam likes her.”
“You don’t?”
“She’s a treacherous bitch.”
“Gosh, tell me what you really think.”
“No kidding, Amelia, she took a job at Merlotte’s so she could spy on me for
the Pelts.”
“Oh, that’s the one. Well, she won’t spy on you again. I’ll take steps.”
That was a scarier thought than working with Tanya. Amelia was a strong
and skillful witch, don’t get me wrong, but she was also prone to attempt
things beyond her experience level. Hence Bob.
“Check with me first, please,” I said, and Amelia looked surprised.
“Well, sure,” she said. “Now, I’m off to bed.”
She made her way up the steps with Bob in her arms, and I went to my
small bathroom to remove my makeup and put on my own nightgown.
Amelia hadn’t noticed the speckles of blood on the shirt, and I put it in the
sink to soak.
What a day it had been. I’d spent time with Eric, who always rattled my
chain, and I’d found a living relative, though not a human one. I’d learned a
lot of stuff about my family, most of it unpleasant. I’d eaten in a fancy
restaurant, though I could hardly recall the food. And finally, I’d been shot
at.
When I crawled into bed, I said my prayers, trying to put Quinn at the top of
the list. I thought the excitement of discovering a great-grandfather would
keep me awake that night, but sleep claimed me right when I was in the
middle of asking God to help me find my way through the moral morass of
being party to a killing.