Book Nine 13-15

Chapter 13
“Amelia, what works against fairies?” I asked. I’d gotten a full night’s sleep, and I was feeling much better in consequence. Amelia’s boss was out of town, so she had the afternoon off.
“You mean something that’ll act as a fairy repellent?” she asked.
“Yeah, or cause fairy death even,” I said. “That’s preferable to me getting killed. I need to defend myself.”
“I don’t know too much about fairies, since they’re so rare and secretive,” she said. “I wasn’t sure they still existed until I heard about your great-grandfather. You need something like Mace for fairies, huh?”
I had a sudden idea. “I’ve already got some, Amelia,” I said, feeling happier than I had in days. I looked in the racks on the door of the refrigerator. Sure enough, there was a bottle of ReaLemon. “Now all I got to do is buy a water pistol at Wal-Mart,” I said. “It’s not summer, but surely they’ve got some over in the toy department.”
“That works?”
“Yeah, a little-known supernatural fact. Just contact with it is fatal. I understand if it’s ingested, the result’s even quicker. If you could squirt it in a fairy’s open mouth, that would be one dead fairy.”
“Sounds like you’re in big trouble, Sookie.” Amelia had been reading, but now she laid her book on the table.
“Yeah, I am.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“It’s complicated. Hard to explain.”
“I understand the definition of ‘complicated.’”
“Sorry. Well, it might not be safe for you to learn the ins and outs of it. Can you help? Will your wards work against fairies?”
“I’ll check my sources,” Amelia said in that wise way she had when she didn’t have a clue. “I’ll call Octavia if I have to.”
“I’d appreciate it. And if you need some kind of spell-casting ingredients, money is no object.” I’d gotten a check in the mail that very morning from Sophie-Anne’s estate. Mr. Cataliades had come through with the money she’d owed me. I was going to run it to the bank this afternoon, since the drive-through would be open.
Amelia took a deep breath, stalled. I waited. Since she’s an exceptionally clear broadcaster, I knew what she wanted to talk about, but to keep our relationship on an even keel, I simply held out until she spoke out loud.
“I heard from Tray, who’s got a couple friends on the police force—though not many—that Whit and Arlene are denying up and down that they killed Crystal. They . . . Arlene says they planned on making you an example of what happens to people who hang around with the supernatural; that it was Crystal’s death that gave them the idea.”
My good mood evaporated. I felt a profound depression settle on my shoulders. Hearing this spoken out loud made it seem even more horrible. I could think of no comment to offer. “What does Tray hear about what might happen to them?” I said finally.
“Depends on whose bullet hit Agent Weiss. If it was Donny’s—well, he’s dead. Whit can say he was being shot at, so he shot back. He can say he didn’t know anything about a plan to harm you. He was visiting his girlfriend and happened to have some pieces of wood in the back of his pickup.”
“What about Helen Ellis?”
“She told Andy Bellefleur she just came to the trailer to pick up the kids because they’d done really well on their report cards, and she’d promised to take them to the Sonic for an ice cream treat. Any more than that, she doesn’t know diddly squat.” Amelia’s face expressed extreme skepticism.
“So Arlene is the only one talking.” I dried the baking sheet. I’d made biscuits that morning. Baking therapy, cheap and satisfying.
“Yeah, and she may recant any minute. She was real shaken up when she talked, but she’ll wise up. Maybe too late. At least we can hope so.”
I’d been right; Arlene was the weakest link. “She gotten a lawyer?”
“Yeah. She couldn’t afford Sid Matt Lancaster, so she hired Melba Jennings.”
“Good move,” I said thoughtfully. Melba Jennings was only a couple of years older than me. She was the only African-American woman in Bon Temps who’d been to law school. She had a hard-as-nails facade and was confrontational in the extreme. Other lawyers had been known to take incredible detours to dodge Melba if they saw her coming. “Makes her look less of a bigot.”
“I don’t think it’s going to fool anyone, but Melba’s like a pit bull.” Melba had been in Amelia’s insurance agency on behalf of a couple of clients. “I better go make my bed,” Amelia said, standing and stretching. “Hey, Tray and I are going to the movies in Clarice tonight. Want to come?”
“You’ve really been trying to include me on your dates. You’re not getting bored with Tray already, I hope?”
“Not a bit,” Amelia said, sounding faintly surprised. “In fact, I think he’s great. Tray’s buddy Drake has been pestering him, though. Drake’s seen you in the bar, and he wants to get to know you.”
“He a Were?”
“Just a guy. Thinks you’re pretty.”
“I don’t do regular guys,” I said, smiling. “It just doesn’t work out very well.” It “worked out” disastrously, as a matter of fact. Imagine knowing what your date thinks of you every single minute.
Plus, there was the issue of Eric and our undefined but intimate relationship.
“Keep the possibility on the back burner. He’s really cute, and by cute, I mean hotter than a steam iron.”
After Amelia had tromped up the stairs, I poured myself a glass of tea. I tried to read, but I found I couldn’t concentrate on the book. Finally, I slid my paper bookmark in and stared into space, thinking about a lot of things.
I wondered where Arlene’s children were now. With Arlene’s old aunt, who lived over in Clarice? Or still with Helen Ellis? Did Helen like Arlene enough to keep Coby and Lisa?
I couldn’t rid myself of a nagging feeling of responsibility for the kids’ sad situation, but it was going to have to be one of those things I simply suffered. The person really responsible was Arlene. There was nothing I could do for them.
As if thinking of children had triggered a nerve in the universe, the phone rang. I got up and went to the wall-mounted unit in the kitchen. “Hello,” I said without enthusiasm.
“Ms. Stackhouse? Sookie?”
“Yes, this is she,” I said properly.
“This is Remy Savoy.”
My dead cousin Hadley’s ex, father of her child. “I’m glad you called. How’s Hunter?” Hunter was a “gifted” child, God bless him. He’d been “gifted” the same way I had been.
“He’s fine. Uh, about that thing.”
“Sure.” We were going to talk telepathy.
“He’s going to need some guidance soon. He’ll be starting kindergarten. They’re going to notice. I mean, it’ll take a while, but sooner or later . . .”
“Yeah, they’ll notice all right.” I opened my mouth to suggest that Remy bring Hunter over on my next day off or that I could drive to Red Ditch. But then I remembered that I was the target of a group of homicidal fairies. Not a good time for a young ’un to come visiting, and who’s to say they couldn’t follow me to Remy’s little house? So far none of them knew about Hunter. I hadn’t even told my great-grandfather about Hunter’s special talent. If Niall himself didn’t know, maybe none of the hostiles had uncovered the information.
On the whole, better to take no risks.
“I really want to meet with him and get to know him. I promise I’ll help him as much as I can,” I said. “Right now, it just isn’t possible. But since we have a little time to spare before kindergarten . . . maybe in a month or so?”
“Oh,” Remy said in a nonplussed way. “I was hoping to bring him over on my day off.”
“I have a little situation here that I have to resolve.” If I was alive after it was resolved . . . but I wasn’t going to imagine that. I tried to think of a palatable excuse, and of course, I did have one. “My sister-in-law just died,” I told Remy. “Can I call you when I’m not so busy with the details of . . .” I couldn’t think of a way to wrap up that sentence. “I promise
it’ll be soon. If you don’t have a day off, maybe Kristen could bring him?” Kristen was Remy’s girlfriend.
“Well, that’s part of the problem,” Remy said, and he sounded tired but also a little amused. “Hunter told Kristen that he knew she didn’t really like him, and that she should stop thinking about his daddy without any clothes on.”
I drew a deep breath, tried not to laugh, didn’t manage it. “I am sorry,” I said. “How did Kristen handle that?”
“She started crying. Then she told me she loved me but my kid was a freak, and she left.”
“Worst possible scenario,” I said. “Ah . . . do you think she’ll tell other people?”
“Don’t see why she wouldn’t.”
This sounded depressingly familiar: shades of my painful childhood. “Remy, I’m sorry,” I said. Remy had seemed like a nice guy on our brief acquaintance, and I had been able to see he was devoted to his son. “If it makes you feel any better, I survived that somehow.”
“But did your parents?” There was a trace of a smile in his voice, to his credit.
“No,” I said. “However, it didn’t have anything to do with me. They got caught by a flash flood when they were driving home one night. It was pouring rain, visibility was terrible, the water was black like the road, and they just drove down onto the bridge and got swept away.” Something buzzed in my brain, some kind of signal that this thought was significant.
“I’m sorry, I was just joking,” Remy was saying in a shocked voice.
“No, no problem. Just one of those things,” I said, the way you do when you don’t want the other person to fuss about your feelings.
We left it that I would call him when I had “some free time.” (That actually meant “when no one’s trying to kill me,” but I didn’t explain that to Remy.) I hung up and sat on the stool by the kitchen counter. I was thinking about my parents’ deaths for the first time in a while. I had some sad memories, but that was the saddest of all. Jason had been ten, and I had been seven, so my recollection wasn’t precise, but we’d talked about it over the years, of course, and my grandmother had recounted the story many times, especially as she grew older. It never varied. The torrential rain, the road leading down into the little
hollow where the creek ran, the black water . . . and they’d been swept away into the dark. The truck had been found the next day; their bodies, a day or two after that.
I got dressed for work automatically. I slicked my hair up in an extra-tight ponytail, making sure any stray hairs were gelled into place. As I was tying my shoes, Amelia dashed downstairs to tell me that she’d checked her witch reference books.
“The best way to kill fairies is with iron.” Her face was lit with triumph. I hated to rain on her parade. Lemons were even better, but it was kind of hard to slip a fairy a lemon without the fairy realizing it.
“I knew that,” I said, trying not to sound depressed. “I mean, I appreciate the effort, but I need to be able to knock them out.” So I could run away. I didn’t know if I could stand to have to hose down the driveway again.
Of course, killing the enemy beat the alternative: letting them catch me and do what they wished with me.
Amelia was ready for her date with Tray. She was wearing high heels with her designer jeans, an unusual look for Amelia.
“What’s with the heels?” I asked, and Amelia grinned, displaying her excellent white teeth.
“Tray likes ’em,” she said. “With the jeans on or off. You should see the lingerie I’m wearing!”
“I’ll pass,” I said.
“If you want to meet us after you get off work, I’m betting Drake will be there. He’s seriously interested in getting to know you. And he’s cute, though his looks may not exactly appeal to you.”
“Why? What’s this Drake look like?” I asked, mildly curious.
“That’s the freaky part. He looks a lot like your brother.” Amelia looked at me doubtfully. “That might weird you out, huh?”
I felt all the blood drain out of my face. I’d gotten to my feet to leave, but I sat down abruptly.
“Sookie? What’s the matter? Sookie?” Amelia was hovering around me anxiously.
“Amelia,” I croaked, “you got to avoid this guy. I mean it. You and Tray get away from him. And for God’s sake, don’t answer any questions about me!”
I could see from the guilt on her face she had already answered quite a few. Though she was a clever witch, Amelia couldn’t always tell when people weren’t really people . Evidently, neither could Tray—though the sweet smell of even a half fairy should have alerted a Were. Maybe Dermot had the same scent-masking ability that his father, my great-grandfather, did.
“Who is he?” Amelia asked. She was scared, which was good.
“He’s . . .” I tried to formulate the best explanation. “He wants to kill me.”
“Does this have something to do with Crystal’s death?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. I tried to give the possibility some rational consideration, found my brain simply couldn’t deal with the idea.
“I don’t get it,” Amelia said. “We have months—well, weeks—of nothing but plain old life, and then, all of a sudden, here we are!” She threw up her hands.
“You can move back to New Orleans if you want to,” I said, my voice faltering. Of course, Amelia knew she could leave anytime she wanted, but I wanted to make it clear I wasn’t sucking her into my problems unless she chose to be sucked. So to speak.
“No,” she said firmly. “I like it here, and my house in New Orleans isn’t ready, anyway.”
She kept saying that. Not that I wanted her to leave, but I couldn’t see what the delay was. After all, her dad was a builder.
“You don’t miss New Orleans?”
“Of course I do,” Amelia said. “But I like it here, and I like my little suite upstairs, and I like Tray, and I like my little jobs that keep me going. And I also like—a hell of a lot—being out of my dad’s line of sight.” She patted me on the shoulder. “You go off to work and don’t worry. If I haven’t thought of anything by morning, I’ll call Octavia. Now that I know the deal about this Drake, I’ll stonewall him. And Tray will, too. No one can stonewall like Tray.”
“He’s very dangerous, Amelia,” I said. I couldn’t impress that on my roommate emphatically enough.
“Yeah, yeah, I get that,” she said. “But you know, I’m not any little honey myself, and Dawson can fight with the best of ’em.”
We gave each other a hug, and I allowed myself to immerse in Amelia’s mind. It was warm, busy, curious, and . . . forward-looking. No brooding on the past for Amelia Broadway. She gave me a pat on the back to signal she was letting go, and we stepped back from each other.
I ran by the bank, then I stopped at Wal-Mart. After a bit of searching, I found one little rack of water guns. I got a two-pack of the clear plastic version, one blue and one yellow. When I thought of the ferocity and strength of the fairy race, and the fact that it took all I had to open the damn blister pack and extricate the water pistols, my chosen method of defense seemed ludicrous. I’d be armed with a plastic water pistol and a trowel.
I tried to clear my mind of all the worries that were plaguing me. There was so much to think about. . . . Actually, there was so much to fear. It might be time to take a leaf from Amelia’s book and look forward. What did I need to do tonight ? Which one of my ongoing worries could I actually do something to solve? I could listen in the bar tonight for clues about Crystal’s death, as Jason had asked me to do. (I would have done it anyway, but it seemed even more important to track down her killers now that danger seemed to be piling up from all directions.) I could arm myself against fairy attack. I could be alert for any more Fellowship gangs. And I could try to arrange some more defense.
After all, I was supposed to be under the protection of the Shreveport Were pack because I’d helped them out. I was also under the protection of the new vampire regime because I’d saved their leader’s ass. Felipe de Castro would have been a pile of ash if not for me; for that matter, so would Eric. Wasn’t this the best time in the world to call in those markers?
I got out of my car behind Merlotte’s. I looked up at the sky, but it was cloudy. I thought it was only a week after the new moon. And it was definitely full dark. I pulled my cell phone out of my purse. I’d discovered Eric’s cell number scrawled on the back of one of his business cards, tucked halfway under my bedside phone. He answered on the second ring.
“Yes,” he said, and I was able to tell by that one word that he was with others.
A little shiver went down my spine at the sound of his voice.
“Eric,” I said, and then wished I’d spent a little time framing my request. “The king said he owed me,” I continued, realizing this was a little bald and bold. “I’m in real danger. I wonder what he could do about that.”
“The threat involving your older kin?” Yes, he was definitely with other people.
“Yes. The, ah, enemy has been trying to get Amelia and Tray to introduce him to me. He doesn’t seem to realize I would recognize him, or maybe he’s very good at pretending. He’s supposed to be on the anti-human side, but he’s half human. I don’t understand his behavior.”
“I see,” Eric said after an appreciable pause. “So protection is necessary.”
“Yes.”
“And you ask this as . . . ?”
If he’d been with his own underlings, he’d have told them to leave so he could talk to me frankly. Since he hadn’t done that, he was probably with one of the Nevada vamps: Sandy Sechrest, Victor Madden, or Felipe de Castro himself, though that was unlikely. Castro’s far more lucrative business ventures in Nevada required his presence most of the time. I finally realized Eric was trying to find out if I was asking as his bed buddy and “wife,” or as someone he owed big-time.
“I ask this as someone who saved Felipe de Castro’s life,” I said.
“I’ll present this petition to Victor, since he’s here at the bar,” Eric said smoothly. “I’ll get back to you this night.”
“Great.” Mindful of vamps’ extreme hearing, I added, “I appreciate that, Eric,” as if we were friendly acquaintances.
Mentally dodging the question of what we actually were to each other, I tucked away the cell phone and went into work, hustling because I was a couple of minutes late. Now that I’d talked to Eric, I felt much more optimistic about my chances of survival.
Chapter 14
I kept my mental ears open that night, so it was a hard evening for me. After years of practice and some help from Bill, I’d learned to block out most of the thoughts of the humans around me. But tonight was just like the bad old days, when I’d smiled all the time to cover the confusion in my head caused by the constant bombardment of mental mutterings.
When I walked past the table where Bud Dearborn and his ancient crony Sid Matt Lancaster were having chicken baskets and beers, I heard, Crystal’s no great loss, but no one gets crucified in Renard Parish. . . . We gotta solve that case, and Got me some genuine werewolves for clients. I wish Elva Deane had lived to see this; she woulda loved it . But mostly Sid Matt was thinking about his hemorrhoids and his spreading cancer.
Oh, gosh, I hadn’t known. My next pass by his table, I patted the venerable lawyer on the shoulder. “Let me know if you need anything,” I said, and met his turtlelike stare with a blank face. He could take it any way he chose, as long as he knew I was willing to help.
When you throw out your net that wide, you come up with a lot of trash. I found out over the course of the evening that Tanya thought she might be settling down permanently with Calvin, that Jane Bodehouse thought she had chlamydia and wondered who was responsible, and that Kevin and Kenya, police officers who always requested the same shift, were actually living together now. Since Kenya was black and Kevin couldn’t be whiter, this was causing Kevin’s folks some problems, but he was standing firm. Kenya’s brother wasn’t too happy about her living situation, either, but he wasn’t going to beat up Kevin or anything like that. I gave them a big smile when I brought them bourbon and Cokes, and they smiled back. It was so rare to see Kenya crack a grin that I almost laughed. She looked about five years younger when she smiled.
Andy Bellefleur came in with his new wife, Halleigh. I liked Halleigh, and we hugged each other. Halleigh was thinking she might be pregnant, and it would be mighty early in the marriage for them to start a family, but Andy was quite a bit older than her. This maybe-pregnancy hadn’t been planned, so she was pretty worried about how Andy would take the news. Since I was laying myself out there tonight, I tried something new. I sent my extra sense down into Halleigh’s belly. If she really was pregnant, it was too soon for the little brain to be registering.
Andy was thinking Halleigh had been quiet the past couple of days, and he was worried something was wrong with her. He was also worried about the investigation of Crystal’s death, and when he felt Bud Dearborn’s eyes on him, he wished he’d picked any other place in Bon Temps for his evening out. The gunfight at Arlene’s trailer was haunting his dreams.
Other people in the bar were thinking about typical stuff.
What are the all-time most popular thoughts? Well, they’re really, really boring.
Most people think about their money problems, what they need from the store, what housework they have to do, how their jobs are going. They worry about their kids . . . a lot. They brood over issues with their bosses and their spouses and their coworkers and other members of their churches.
On the whole, 95 percent of what I hear is nothing anybody’d want to write down in her diary.
Every now and then the guys (less often, the women) think about sex with someone they see in the bar—but honestly, that’s so common I can brush it aside, unless they’re thinking about me. That’s pretty disgusting. The sex ideas multiply with the drinks consumed; no surprise there.
The people thinking about Crystal and her death were the law enforcement people charged with finding out who’d killed her. If one of the culprits was in the bar, he was simply not thinking about what he’d done. And there had to be more than a single person involved. Setting up a cross was not something a man on his own could handle; at least not without a lot of preparation and some elaborate arrangement of pulleys. You’d have to be some kind of supernatural to pull it off by yourself.
This was Andy Bellefleur’s train of thought while he waited for his crispy chicken salad.
I had to agree with him. I’d bet Calvin had already considered that scenario. Calvin had sniffed the body, and he hadn’t said he’d smelled another wereanimal of any kind. But then I recalled that one of the two men who’d been wheeling the body out had been a supe.
As far as learning anything new, I was drawing a blank until Mel came in. Mel, who lived in one of Sam’s rental duplexes, looked like a reject from the cast of Robin Hood, the Musical tonight. His longish light brown hair, neat mustache and beard, and tight pants gave him a theatrical air.
Mel surprised me by giving me a half hug before he sat down, as if I were a good buddy of his.
If this behavior was because he and my brother were both panthers . . . but that still didn’t make a lot of sense. None of the other werepanthers got cozy with me because of Jason—far from it. The Hotshot community had been a lot warmer toward me when Calvin Norris had been thinking of asking me to be his mate. Did Mel have a secret yearning to go out with me? That would be . . . unpleasant and unwelcome.
I took a little trip into Mel’s head, where I saw no lusty thoughts about me. If he’d been attracted, he’d have been thinking them, since I was right in front of him. Mel was thinking about the things Catfish Hennessy, Jason’s boss, had been saying about Jason in Bon Temps Auto Parts that day. Catfish’s tolerance balloon had burst, and he’d told Mel he was thinking about firing Jason.
Mel was plenty worried about my brother, bless his heart. I’d wondered my whole life how someone as selfish as my brother could attract such faithful friends. My great-grandfather had told me that people with a trace of fairy blood were more attractive to other humans, so maybe that explained it.
I went behind the bar to pour some more tea for Jane Bodehouse, who was trying to be sober today because she was trying to compile a list of the guys who might have given her chlamydia. A bar is a bad place to start a sobriety program—but Jane had hardly any chance of succeeding, anyway. I put a slice of lemon in the tea and carried it to Jane, watched her hands shake as she picked up the glass and drank from it.
“You want something to eat?” I asked, keeping my voice low and quiet. Just because I’d never seen a drunk reform in a bar, that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.
Jane shook her head silently. Her dyed brown hair was already escaping the clip that held it back, and her heavy black sweater was covered with bits of this and that. Her makeup had been applied with a shaky hand. I could see the lipstick caked in the creases in her lips. Most of the area alcoholics might stop in Merlotte’s every now and then, but they based themselves at the Bayou. Jane was our only “resident” alkie since old Wil lie Chenier had died. When Jane was in the bar, she always sat on the same stool. Hoyt had made a label for it when he’d had too much to drink one night, but Sam had made him take it off.
I looked in Jane’s head for an awful minute or two, and I watched the slow shifting of thoughts behind her eyes, noticed the broken veins in her cheeks. The thought of becoming like Jane was enough to scare almost anyone sober.
I turned away to find Mel standing beside me. He was on his way to the men’s room, because that’s what was in his head when I looked.
“You know what they do in Hotshot with people like that?” he asked quietly, nodding his head toward Jane as if she couldn’t see or hear him. (Actually, I thought he was right about that. Jane was turned so inward that she didn’t seem to be acknowledging the world much today.)
“No,” I said, startled.
“They let them die,” he said. “They don’t offer them food or water or shelter, if the person can’t seek it for himself or herself.”
I’m sure my horror showed on my face.
“It’s kindest in the end,” he said. He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Hotshot has its ways of getting rid of the weak.”
He went on his way, his back stiff.
I patted Jane on the shoulder, but I’m afraid I wasn’t really thinking about her. I was wondering what Mel had done to deserve his exile to a duplex in Bon Temps. If it had been me, I would have been happy to be rid of the multiple ties of kinship and the microscopic hierarchy of the little cluster of houses huddled around the old crossroads, but I could tell that wasn’t the way Mel felt about it.
Mel’s ex-wife had a margarita in Merlotte’s from time to time. I thought I might do a little research on my brother’s new buddy the next time Ginjer dropped by.
Sam asked me a couple of times if I was okay, and I was surprised by the strength of my desire to talk to him about everything that had happened lately. I was astonished to realize how often I confided in Sam, how much he knew about my secret life. But I knew that Sam had enough on his plate right now. He was on the phone with his sister and his brother several times during the evening, which was really unusual for him. He looked harassed and worried, and it would be selfish to add to that load of worry.
The cell phone in my apron pocket vibrated a couple of times, and when I had a free moment, I ducked into the ladies’ room and checked my text messages. One from Eric. “Protection coming,” it said. That was good. There was another message, and this one was from Alcide Herveaux, the Shreveport pack leader. “Tray called. Trouble Ur way?” it read. “We owe U.”
My chances of survival had risen considerably, and I felt much more cheerful as I finished out my shift.
It was good to have stockpiled favors with both vampires and werewolves. Maybe all the shit I’d gone through last fall would prove to have been worth it after all.
All in all, though, I had to say my project for the evening had been a washout. Sure, after asking Sam for permission, I’d filled both the plastic water guns with juice from the lemons in the refrigerator (intended for iced tea). I thought maybe real lemons would somehow be more potent than the bottled lemon juice at home. So I felt a little safer, but the sum total of my knowledge about the death of Crystal had not increased by one fact. Either the murderers hadn’t come in the bar, weren’t fretting over the evil thing they’d done, or weren’t thinking about it at the moment I was looking inside their heads. Or, I thought, all of the above .
Chapter 15
I had vampire protection, of a sort, waiting for me after work. Bubba was standing by my car when I left Merlotte’s. He grinned when he saw me, and I was glad to give him a hug. Most people wouldn’t have been pleased to see a mentally defective vampire with a penchant for cat blood, but I’d become fond of Bubba.
“When did you get back in town?” I asked. Bubba had gotten caught in New Orleans during Katrina, and he’d required a long recovery. The vampires were willing to accommodate him, because he had been one of the most famous people in the world until he’d been brought over in a morgue in Memphis.
“’Bout a week ago. Good to see you, Miss Sookie.” Bubba’s fangs slid out to show me how glad. Just as quickly, they snicked back into concealment. Bubba still had talent. “I’ve been traveling. I’ve been staying with friends. But I was in Fangtasia tonight visiting Mr. Eric, and he asked if I’d like the job of keeping watch over you. I told him, ‘Miss Sookie and me, we’re real good friends, and that would suit me just fine.’ Have you gotten another cat?”
“No, Bubba, I haven’t.” Thank God.
“Well, I got me some blood in a cooler in the back of my car.” He nodded toward a huge old white Cadillac that had been restored with time and trouble and lots of cash.
“Oh, the car’s beautiful,” I said. I almost added, “Did you own it while you were alive?” But Bubba didn’t like references to his former state of existence; they made him upset and confused. (If you put it very carefully, from time to time he’d sing for you. I’d heard him do “Blue Christmas.” Unforgettable.)
“Russell give that to me,” he said.
“Oh, Russell Edgington? The King of Mississippi?”
“Yeah, wasn’t that nice? He said since he was king of my home state, he felt like giving me something special.”
“How’s he doing?” Russell and his new husband, Bart, had both survived the Rhodes hotel bombing.
“He’s feeling real good now. He and Mr. Bart are both healed up.”
“I’m so glad to hear it. So, are you supposed to follow me home?”
“Yes’m, that’s the plan. If you’ll leave your back door unlocked, close to morning I’ll get into that hidey-hole in your guest bedroom; that’s what Mr. Eric said.”
Then it was doubly good that Octavia had moved out. I didn’t know how she would have reacted if I’d told her that the Man from Memphis needed to sleep in her closet all day long.
When I got home, Bubba pulled in right behind me in his amazing car. I saw that Dawson’s truck was there, too. I wasn’t surprised. Dawson worked as a bodyguard from time to time, and he was in the area. Since Alcide had decided he wanted to help, Tray Dawson was an obvious choice, regardless of his relationship with Amelia.
Tray himself was sitting at my kitchen table when Bubba and I came in. For the first time since I’d known him, the big man looked seriously startled. But he was smart enough not to blurt anything out.
“Tray, this is my friend Bubba,” I said. “Where’s Amelia?”
“She’s upstairs. I got some business to talk with you.”
“I figured. Bubba’s here for the same reason. Bubba, this is Tray Dawson.”
“Hey, Tray!” Bubba shook hands, laughing because he’d made a rhyme. He hadn’t translated real well. The spark of life had been so faint by the time a morgue attendant of the fanged persuasion had gotten hold of him, and the drugs in his system so pervasive, that Bubba had been lucky to survive the bringing over as well as he had, which wasn’t too well.
“Hey,” Tray said cautiously. “How are you doing . . . Bubba?”
I was relieved Tray’d picked up on the name.
“I’m real good, thank you. Got me some blood in the cooler out there, and Miss Sookie keeps some TrueBlood in the refrigerator, or at least she used to.”
“Yes, I have some,” I said. “You want to sit down, Bubba?”
“No, ma’am. I think I’ll just grab me a bottle and settle down out in the woods. Bill still live across the cemetery?”
“Yes, he does.”
“Always good to have friends close.”
I wasn’t sure I could call Bill my friend; our history was too complicated for that. But I was absolutely sure that he’d help me if I was in danger. “Yes,” I said, “that’s always good.”
Bubba rummaged around in the refrigerator and came out with a couple of bottles. He raised them to me and Tray, and took his leave smiling.
“Good God Almighty,” Tray said. “That who I think it is?”
I nodded and took a seat opposite him.
“Explains all the sightings,” he said. “Well, listen, you got him out there and me in here. That okay with you?”
“Yes. I guess you’ve talked to Alcide?”
“Yeah. I’m not trying to get in your business, but it would have been better to hear all this from you directly. Especially since you talked to Amelia about this guy Drake, and Amelia’s all upset because apparently she’s been blabbing to the enemy. If we’d known about your troubles, she would have kept her mouth shut. I would have killed him when he first introduced himself. Saved all of us a lot of trouble. You think about that?”
Bluntness was the way to go with Tray. “I think you are kind of getting in my business, Tray. When you’re here as my friend and Amelia’s boyfriend, I tell you what I think I can without endangering you or Amelia. It never occurred to me that Niall’s enemies would think of getting information through my roommate. And it was news to me that you couldn’t tell a fairy from a human.” Tray winced. “You may not want to be responsible for guarding me, with the personal complication of having your girlfriend under the same roof as the woman you’re supposed to protect. Is this too big a conflict of interest for you?”
Tray regarded me steadily. “No, I want the job,” he said, and even though he was a Were, I could tell that his real goal was keeping Amelia safe. Since she lived with me, he could kill two birds with one stone by getting paid for protecting me. “For one thing, I owe that Drake payback. I never knew he was a fairy, and I don’t know how he managed that. I got a good nose.”
Tray’s pride had been bruised. I could understand that. “Drake’s dad can mask his smell, even from vampires. Maybe Drake can, too. Also, he’s not completely fae. He’s half-human, and his real name is Dermot.”
Tray absorbed this, nodded. I could tell he felt a little better. I was trying to figure out if I did.
I had misgivings about the arrangement. I thought of calling Alcide and explaining why Tray might be a less than perfect bodyguard, but I decided against it. Tray Dawson was a great fighter and would do his best for me . . . up to the point where he had to make a choice between Amelia and me.
“So?” he said, and I realized I’d been quiet for too long.
“The vampire can take the nights and you can take the days,” I said. “I should be okay while I’m at the bar.” I pushed back my chair and left the kitchen without saying anything else. I had to admit that instead of feeling relieved, I was even more worried. I’d thought I’d been so clever asking for an extra layer of protection; instead, now I was going to worry about the safety of the men providing that layer.
I got ready for bed slowly, finally admitting to myself that I was hoping Eric would put in an appearance. I’d love to have his brand of relaxation therapy to help me sleep. I expected to lie awake anticipating the next attack. As it turned out, I was so tired from the night before that I drifted off to sleep very quickly.
Instead of my usual boring dreams (customers calling me constantly while I hurried to catch up, mold growing in my bathroom), that night I dreamed of Eric. In my dream, he was human and we walked together under the sun. Oddly enough, he sold real estate.
When I looked at the clock the next morning, it was very early, at least for me: not quite eight o’clock. I woke up with a feeling of alarm. I wondered if I’d had another dream, one I didn’t remember. I wondered if my telepathic sense had caught something even while I slept, something wrong, something askew.
I took a moment to scan my own house, not my favorite way to start the day. Amelia was gone, but Tray was here and in trouble.
I put on a bathrobe and slippers and stepped out into the hall. The moment I opened my door, I could hear him being sick in the hall bathroom.
There are some moments that should be completely private, and the moments when you’re throwing up are at the top of that list. But werewolves are normally completely healthy, and this was the guy who’d been sent to guard me, and he was obviously (excuse me) sick as a dog.
I waited until a lull in the sound. I called, “Tray, is there anything I can do for you?”
“I’ve been poisoned,” he said, choking and gagging.
“Should I call the doctor? A human one? Or Dr. Ludwig?”
“No.” That sounded definite enough. “I’m trying to get rid of it,” he gasped, after another bout of retching. “But it’s too late.”
“You know who gave it to you?”
“Yeah. That new girlfriend . . .” He faded out for a few seconds. “Out in the woods. Vampire Bill’s new fuck.”
I had an instinctive reaction. “He wasn’t with her, right?” I called.
“No, she—” More awful noises. “She came from the direction of his house, said she was his . . .”
I knew, without a doubt, that Bill didn’t have a new girlfriend. Though it embarrassed me to admit it to myself, I was so sure because I knew he wanted me back. I knew he wouldn’t jeopardize that by taking someone else to his bed or by permitting such a woman to roam in the woods where I might encounter her.
“What was she?” I said, resting my forehead against the cool wood of the door. I was getting tired of yelling.
“She was some fangbanger.” I felt Tray’s brain shift around through the fog of sickness. “At least, she felt like a human.”
“The same way Dermot felt human. And you drank something she handed you.” It was kind of mean of me to sound incredulous, but honestly!
“I couldn’t help it,” he said very slowly. “I was so thirsty. I had to drink it.”
He’d been under some kind of compulsion spell. “And what was it? The stuff you drank?”
“It tasted like wine.” He groaned. “Goddammit, it must have been vampire blood! I can taste it in my mouth now!”
Vampire blood was still the hot drug on the underground marketplace, and human reactions to it varied so widely that drinking the blood was very much like playing Russian roulette, in more ways than one. Vampires hated the Drainers who collected the blood because the Drainers often left the vampire exposed to the day. So vampires also loathed the users of the blood, since they created the market. Some users became addicted to the ecstatic sensation that the blood could offer, and those users sometimes tried to take the blood right from the source in a kind of suicide attack. But every now and then, the user went berserk and killed other humans. Either way, it was all bad press for the vamps who were trying to mainstream.
“Why would you do that?” I asked, unable to keep the anger out of my voice.
“I couldn’t help it,” he said, and the bathroom door finally opened. I took a couple of steps back. Tray looked bad and smelled worse. He was wearing pajama pants and nothing else, and a vast expanse of chest hair was right at my eye level. It was covered in goose pimples.
“How come?”
“I couldn’t . . . not drink it.” He shook his head. “And then I came back here and got in bed with Amelia, and I tossed and turned all night. I was up when the K—when Bubba came in and went to bed in your closet. He said something about a woman talking to him, but I was feeling really bad by then, and I don’t remember what he said. Did Bill send her over here? Does he hate you that bad?”
I looked up then and met his eyes. “Bill Compton loves me,” I said. “He would never hurt me.”
“Even now that you’re screwing the big blond?”
Amelia couldn’t keep her mouth shut.
“Even now that I’m screwing the big blond,” I said.
“You can’t read vampire minds, Amelia says.”
“No, I can’t. But some things you just know.”
“Right.” Though Tray didn’t have enough energy to look skeptical, he gave it a good shot. “I have to go to bed, Sookie. I can’t take care of you today.”
I could see that. “Why don’t you go back to your own house and try to get some rest in your own bed?” I said. “I’m going to work today, and I’ll be around someone.”
“No, you gotta be covered.”
“I’ll call my brother,” I said, surprising even myself. “He’s not going to work now, and he’s a panther. He should be able to watch my back.”
“Okay.” It was a measure of Tray’s wretchedness that he didn’t argue, though he wasn’t a Jason fan by any means. “Amelia knows I’m not feeling good. If you talk to her before I do, tell her I’ll call her tonight.”
The werewolf staggered out to his truck. I hoped he was good to drive home, and I called after him to make sure, but he just waved a hand at me and drove down the driveway.
Feeling oddly numb, I watched him go. I’d done the prudent thing for once; I’d called in my markers and gotten protection. And it hadn’t done me a bit of good. Someone who couldn’t attack me in my home—because of Amelia’s good magic, I had to assume—had arranged to attack me in other ways. Murry had turned up outside, and now some fairy had met up with Tray in the woods, compelling him to drink vampire blood. It might have sent him mad; he might have killed all of us. I guess, for the fairies, it was a win-win situation. Though he hadn’t gone crazy and killed me or Amelia, he’d gotten so sick that he was effectively out of the bodyguard business for a while.
I walked down the hall to go into my room and pull on some clothes. Today was going to be a hard day, and I always felt better when I was dressed while handling a crisis. Something about putting on my underwear makes me feel more capable.
I got my second shock of the day when I was about to turn into my room. There was a movement in the living room. I stopped dead and took a huge, ragged breath. My great-grandfather was sitting on the couch, but it took me an awful moment to recognize Niall. He got up, regarding me with some astonishment while I stood gasping, my hand over my heart.
“You look rough today,” he said.
“Yeah, well, not expecting visitors,” I said breathlessly. He wasn’t looking so great himself, which was a first. His clothes were stained and torn, and unless I was much mistaken, he
was sweating. My fairy prince great-grandfather was actually less than gorgeous for the very first time.
I moved into the living room and looked at him more closely. Though it was early, I had my second stab of anxiety for the day. “What’s up?” I asked. “You look like you’ve been fighting.”
He hesitated for a long moment, as if he was trying to pick among several items of news. “Breandan has retaliated for the death of Murry,” Niall said.
“What has he done?” I scrubbed my dry hands across my face.
“He caught Enda last night, and now she is dead,” he said. I could tell from his voice that her death had not been a quick one. “You didn’t meet her; she was very shy of humans.” He pushed back a long strand of his pale hair so blond it looked white.
“Breanden killed a fairy woman? There aren’t that many fairy women, right? So doing that . . . isn’t that extra awful?”
“It was intended to be,” Niall said. His voice was bleak.
For the first time, I noticed that my great-grandfather’s slacks were soaked with blood around the knees, which was probably why he hadn’t come closer to hug me.
“You need to get out of those clothes,” I said. “Please, Niall, go climb in the shower, and I’ll put your stuff in the washing machine.”
“I have to go,” he said, and I could tell my words hadn’t registered. “I came here to warn you in person, so you would take the situation very seriously. Powerful magic surrounds this house. I could appear here only because I’d been in here before. Is it true that the vampires and the Weres are looking out for you? You have extra protection; I can feel it.”
“I have a bodyguard night and day,” I lied, because he didn’t need to be worrying about me. He was hip-deep in alligators himself. “And you know that Amelia is a strong witch. Don’t worry about me.”
He stared at me, but I didn’t think he was seeing me at all. “I have to go,” he said abruptly. “I wanted to be sure of your well-being.”
“Okay . . . thanks a lot.” I was trying to think of an improvement on this limp response when Niall poofed right out of my living room.
I’d told Tray I was going to call Jason. I wasn’t sure how sincere I’d been about that, but now I knew I had to. The way I saw it, Alcide’s favor to me had expired; he’d asked Tray to help, and now Tray was out of commission in the course of duty. I sure wasn’t going to request that Alcide himself come guard me, and I wasn’t close to any of his pack members. I took a deep breath and called my brother.
“Jason,” I said when he answered the phone.
“Sis. What’s up?” He sounded oddly jazzed, as if he’d just experienced something exciting.
“Tray had to leave, and I think I need some protection today,” I said. There was a long silence. He didn’t rush into questioning me, which was strange. “I was hoping you could go around with me? What I plan on doing today,” I began, and then tried to figure out what that was. It was hard to have a good crisis when real life kept asking to be lived. “Well, I need to go to the library. I need to pick up a pair of pants at the dry cleaners.” I hadn’t checked the label before that particular purchase. “I have to work the day shift at Merlotte’s. I guess that’s it.”
“Okay,” Jason said. “Though those errands don’t sound exactly urgent.” There was a long pause. Suddenly he said, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said cautiously. “Should I not be?”
“The weirdest thing happened this morning. Mel slept at my place last night, since he was the worse for wear after he met me at the Bayou. So early this morning, there was a knock at the door. I answered it, and this guy was there, and he was, I don’t know, nuts or something. The strangest part was, this guy looked a lot like me.”
“Oh, no.” I sat on the stool abruptly.
“He wasn’t right, sis,” Jason said. “I don’t know what was wrong with him, but he wasn’t right. He just started talking when Mel answered the door, like we knew who he was. He was saying crazy stuff. Mel tried to get between him and me, and he threw Mel clear across the room and called him a killer. Mel might’ve broken his neck if he hadn’t landed on the couch.”
“Mel’s okay, then.”
“Yeah, he’s okay. Pretty mad, but you know . . .”
“Sure.” Mel’s feelings were not the most important issue here. “So what did he do next?”
“He said some shit about now that he was face-to-face with me he could see why my great-grandfather didn’t want me around, and crossbreeds should all die, but I was clearly blood of his blood, and he’d decided I should know what’s going on around me. He said I was ignorant. I didn’t understand a lot of it, and I still don’t get what he was. He wasn’t a vamp, and I know he wasn’t a shifter of any kind or I’d’ve smelled him.”
“You’re okay—that’s the big thing, right?” Had I been wrong all along about keeping Jason out of the fairy loop?
“Yeah,” he said, his voice abruptly going all cautious and wary. “You’re not going to tell me what this is all about, are you?”
“Come over here, and we’ll talk about it. Please, please, don’t open the door unless you know who’s there. This guy is bad, Jason, and he’s not picky about who he hurts. I think you and Mel were real lucky.”
“You got someone there with you?”
“Not since Tray left.”
“I’m your brother. I’ll come over if you need me,” Jason said with unexpected dignity.
“I really appreciate that,” I said.
I got two for the price of one. Mel came with Jason. This was awkward, because I had some family stuff to tell Jason, and I couldn’t with Mel around. With unexpected tact, Mel told Jason that he had to run home and get an ice pack for his shoulder, which was badly bruised. While Mel was gone, I sat Jason down on the other side of the kitchen table, and I said, “I got some things to tell you.”
“About Crystal?”
“No, I haven’t heard anything about that yet. This is about us. This is about Gran. You’re going to have a hard time believing this.” I’d given him fair warning. I remembered how upset I’d been when my great-grandfather had told me about how my half-fairy grandfather, Fintan, had met my grandmother, and how she’d ended up having two children with him, our dad and our aunt Linda.
Now Fintan was dead—murdered—and our grandmother was dead, and our father and his sister were dead. But we were living, and just a small part fairy, and that made us a target for our great-grandfather’s enemies.
“And one of those enemies,” I said after I’d told him our family history, “is our half-human great-uncle, Fintan’s brother, Dermot. He told Tray and Amelia that his name was Drake, I guess because it sounded more modern. Dermot looks like you, and he’s the one who showed up at your house. I don’t know what his deal is. He joined up with Breandan, Niall’s big enemy, even though he’s half-human himself and, therefore, exactly what Breandan hates. So when you said he was crazy, I guess there’s your explanation. He seems to want to connect with you, but he hates you, too.”
Jason sat staring at me. His face was completely vacant. His thoughts had gotten caught in a traffic jam. Finally he said, “You tell me he was trying to get Tray and Amelia to introduce you? And neither of them knew what he was?”
I nodded. There was some more silence.
“So why did he want to meet you? Did he want to kill you? Why’d he need to meet you first?”
Good question. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he just wanted to see what I was like. Maybe he doesn’t know what he really wants.” I couldn’t figure this out, and I wondered if Niall would come back to explain it to me. Probably not. He had a war on his hands, even if it was a war being fought mostly away from human view. “I don’t get it,” I said out loud. “Murry came right here to attack me, and he was all fairy. Why is Dermot, who’s on the same side, being all . . . indirect?”
“Murry?” Jason asked, and I closed my eyes. Shit.
“He was a fairy,” I said. “He tried to kill me. He’s not a problem now.”
Jason gave me an approving nod. “You go, Sookie,” he said. “Okay, let me see if I’m getting this straight. My great-grandfather didn’t want to meet me because I look a lot like Dermot, who’s my . . . great-uncle, right?”
“Right.”
“But Dermot apparently likes me a little better, because he actually came to my house and tried to talk to me.”
Trust Jason to interpret the situation in those terms. “Right,” I said.
Jason hopped to his feet and took a turn around the kitchen. “This is all the vampires’ fault,” he said. He glared at me.
“Why do you think so?” This was unexpected.
“If they hadn’t come out, none of this would be happening. Look at what’s happened since they went on TV. Look at how the world has changed. Now we’re out. Next, the fucking fairies. And the fae are bad news, Sookie; Calvin warned me about ’em. You think they’re all pretty and sweetness and light, but they’re not. He’s told me stories about them that would make your hair curl. Calvin’s dad knew a fairy or two. From what he’s said, it would be a good thing if they died out.”
I couldn’t decide if I was surprised or angry. “Why are you being so mean, Jason? I don’t need you arguing with me or saying bad things about Niall. You don’t know him. You don’t . . . Hey, you’re part fairy, remember!” I had an awful feeling that some of what he’d said was absolutely true, but it sure wasn’t the time to have this discussion.
Jason looked grim, every plane of his face tense. “I’m not claiming kin to any fairy,” he said. “He don’t want me; I don’t want him. And if I see that crazy half-and-half again, I’ll kill the son of a bitch.”
I don’t know what I would have said, but at that moment Mel came in without knocking, and we both turned to look at him.
“I’m sorry!” he said, obviously flustered and disturbed by Jason’s anger. He seemed, for a second, to think Jason had been talking about him. When neither of us gave him a guilty reaction, he relaxed. “Excuse me, Sookie. I forgot my manners.” He was carrying an ice bag in his hand, and he was moving a little slowly and painfully.
“I’m sorry you got hurt by Jason’s surprise visitor,” I said. You’re always supposed to put your company at ease. I hadn’t put a whole lot of thought into Mel, but right at that second I realized I would have been happier if Jason’s former BFF, Hoyt, had been here instead of the werepanther. It wasn’t that I disliked Mel, I thought. It was just that I didn’t know him very well, and I didn’t feel an automatic trust in him the way you feel about people from time to time. Mel was different. Even for a werepanther, he was hard to read, but that didn’t mean he was impossible.
After offering Mel something to drink, which was only polite, I asked Jason if he was going to stay the day, run around on my errands with me. I had serious doubts he would say yes. Jason was feeling rejected (by a fairy great-grandfather he’d never met and didn’t want to acknowledge), and that was a state of affairs Jason didn’t handle well.
“I’ll go around with you,” he said, unsmiling and stiff. “First, let me run over to the house and check out my rifle. I’ll need it, and it hasn’t been sighted in a coon’s age. Mel? You
coming with me?” Jason simply wanted to be out of my presence to calm down. I could read it as easily as if he’d written it on the grocery list pad by the telephone.
Mel rose to go with Jason.
“Mel, what did you make of Jason’s visitor this morning?” I asked.
“Aside from the fact that he could throw me across the room and looked enough like Jason to make me turn to make sure your brother was coming out of his bedroom? Not much,” Mel said. Mel had managed to dress in his usual khakis and polo shirt, but the blue bruises on his arms kind of ruined his neat appearance. He shrugged on a jacket with great care.
“See you in a while, Sookie. Come around to get me,” Jason said. Of course, he’d want to ride in my car and burn up my gas, since we were running my errands. “In the meantime, you got my cell number.”
“Sure. I’ll see you in an hour or so.”
Since being alone hadn’t been a normal state of affairs for me lately, I would have actually enjoyed the feeling of having the house to myself if I hadn’t been worried that a supernatural killer was after me.
Nothing happened. I ate a bowl of cereal. Finally, I decided to risk taking a shower despite my Psycho memories. I made sure all the outside doors were locked, and I locked the bathroom door, too. I took the quickest shower on record.
Nobody had tried to kill me yet. I dried off, put on some makeup, and dressed for work.
When it was time to go, I stood on the back porch and eyeballed the distance between the steps and my car door, over and over. I figured I’d have to take ten steps. I unlocked the car with the keypad. I took a few deep breaths and unlocked the screen door. I pushed it open and fairly leaped off the porch, bypassing the steps entirely. In an undignified scramble, I yanked open the car door, slid inside, and slammed and locked the door. I looked around me.
Nothing moved.
I laughed a little breathlessly. Silly me!
Being so tense was making all the scary movies I’d ever seen pop into my head. I was thinking of Jurassic Park and dinosaurs—maybe my thought link was that fairies were the
dinosaurs of the supernatural world—and I half expected a piece of goat to fall on my windshield.
That didn’t happen, either. Okay . . .
I inserted the key and turned it, and the motor turned over. I didn’t blow up. There was no Tyrannosaurus in my rearview mirror.
So far, so good. I felt better once I’d begun going slowly down the driveway through the woods, but I was sure keeping my eyes busy. I felt a compulsion to get in touch with someone, to let someone know where I was and what I was doing.
I whipped my cell phone out of my purse and called Amelia. When she answered, I said, “I’m driving over to Jason’s. Since Tray is so sick, Jason’s going around with me today. Listen, you know Tray was spelled by a fairy into drinking rotten vampire blood?”
“I’m at work here,” Amelia said, caution in her voice. “Yes, he called ten minutes ago, but he had to go throw up. Poor Tray. At least the house was okay.”
Amelia’s point was that her wards had held. Well, she had a right to be proud of that.
“You’re great,” I said.
“Thanks. Listen, I’m really worried about Tray. I tried calling him back after a few minutes, but he didn’t answer. I hope he’s just sleeping it off, but I’m going over there after I leave work. Why don’t you meet me there? We can figure out what to do about getting you some more security.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll come over right after I get off work, probably around five.” Phone in my hand, I jumped out and grabbed the mail from my mailbox, which sat up on Hummingbird Road. Then I got back in my car quick as I could.
That had been stupid. I could have gone without checking the mail for one day. Habits are very hard to break, even when they’re unimportant habits. “I really am lucky you live with me, Amelia,” I said. That might have been spreading it on a little thick, but it was the absolute truth.
But Amelia had gone off on another mental path. “You’re speaking to Jason again? You told him? About things ?”
“Yeah, I had to. Great-grandfather can’t have everything his own way. Stuff has happened.”
“It always does, around you,” Amelia said. She didn’t sound angry, and she wasn’t condemning me.
“Not always,” I said after a sharp moment of doubt. In fact, I thought, as I turned left at the end of Hummingbird Road to go to my brother’s, that point Jason made about everything changing when the vamps came out . . . that just might have been something I really agree with .
Prosaically, I realized my car was almost out of gas. I had to pull into Grabbit Quik. While I was pumping the liquid gold into my car, I fell back to puzzling over what Jason had told me. What would be urgent enough to bring a reclusive and human-hating half fairy to Jason’s door? Why would he tell Jason . . . ? I shouldn’t be thinking about this.
This was stupid, and I should be watching out for myself instead of trying to solve Jason’s problems.
But after a few more seconds of turning the conversation over in my head, I began to have a sneaking suspicion that I understood it a little better.
I called Calvin. At first he didn’t get what I was saying, but then he agreed to meet me at Jason’s house.
I caught a glimpse of Jason in the backyard when I pulled into the circular driveway of the neat, small house my dad had built when he and my mother were first married. It was out in the country, out farther west than Arlene’s trailer, and though it was visible from the road, it had a pond and several acres lying behind it. My dad had loved to hunt and fish, and my brother did, too. Jason had recently put in a makeshift range, and I could hear the rifle.
I decided to come through the house, and I took care to yell when I was at the back door.
“Hey!” Jason called back. He had a 30-30 in his hands. It had been our father’s. Mel was standing behind him, holding a box of ammo. “We decided we better get in some practice.”
“Good idea. I wanted to be sure you didn’t think I was your crazy caller, come back to yell some more.”
Jason laughed. “I still don’t understand what good Dermot thought he’d do, coming up to the front door like that.”
“I think I do,” I said.
Jason held out his hand without looking, and Mel gave him some bullets. Jason opened the rifle and began loading. I looked over at the sawhorse he’d set up, noted all the empty milk jugs lying on the ground. He’d filled them with water so they’d sit steady, and thanks to the bullet holes, the water was flowing out onto the ground.
“Good shooting,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Hey, Mel, you want to tell me about Hotshot funerals? I haven’t ever been to one, and Crystal’s will take place as soon as the body comes back, I reckon.”
Mel looked a little surprised. “You know I haven’t lived out there for years,” he protested. “It’s just not for me.” Except for the fading bruises, he didn’t look like he’d been thrown across the room by anyone, much less a crazed half fairy.
“I wonder why that guy threw you around instead of Jason,” I said, and felt Mel’s thoughts ripple with fear. “Are you hurt?”
He moved his right shoulder a little. “I thought I’d broken something. But I guess it’s just going to be sore. I wonder what he was. Not one of us.”
He hadn’t answered my question, I noticed.
Jason looked proud that he hadn’t blabbed.
“He’s not entirely human,” I said.
Mel looked relieved. “Well, that’s good to know,” he said. “My pride was pretty much shot to hell when he threw me around. I mean, I’m a full-blood panther, and it was like I was kindling or something.”
Jason laughed. “I thought he’d come on in and kill me then, thought I was a goner. But once Mel was down, this guy just started talking to me. Mel was playing possum, and here’s this fella looks a lot like me, telling me what a favor he’s done me . . .”
“It was weird,” Mel agreed, but he looked uncomfortable. “You know I’d’ve been on my feet if he’d started punching on you, but he really rang my bell, and I figured I might as well stay down once it looked like he wasn’t going to go after you.”
“Mel, I hope you’re really okay.” I made my voice concerned, and I moved a little closer. “Let me have a look at that shoulder.” I extended my hand, and Jason’s eyebrows knit together.
“Why do you need to . . . ?” An awful suspicion was creeping over his face. Without another word, he stepped behind his friend and held him firm, his hands gripping Mel on either side right below Mel’s shoulders. Mel winced with pain, but he didn’t say anything, not a word; he didn’t even pretend to be indignant or surprised, and that was almost enough.
I put a hand on either side of Mel’s face, and I closed my eyes, and I looked in his head. And this time Mel was thinking about Crystal, not Jason.
“He did it,” I said. I opened my eyes and looked at my brother’s face across Mel’s shoulder. I nodded.
Jason screamed, and it wasn’t a human sound. Mel’s face seemed to melt, as if all the muscles and bones had shifted. He hardly looked human at all.
“Let me look at you,” Mel pleaded.
Jason looked confused, since Mel was looking at me; he couldn’t look anywhere else, the way Jason was holding him. Mel wasn’t struggling, but I could see every muscle under his skin standing out, and I didn’t think he’d be passive forever. I bent down and picked up the rifle, glad Jason had reloaded it.
“He wants to look at you, not me,” I told my brother.
“Goddammit,” Jason said. His breathing was heavy and ragged as if he’d been running, and his eyes were wide. “You have to tell me why .”
I stepped back and raised the rifle. At this distance, even I couldn’t miss. “Turn him around, since he wants to talk to you face-to-face.”
They were in profile to me when Jason spun Mel around. Jason’s grip refastened on the werepanther, but now Jason’s face was a foot from Mel’s.
Calvin walked around the house. Crystal’s sister, Dawn, was with him. There was also a boy of about fifteen trailing along. I remembered meeting the boy at the wedding. He was Jacky, Crystal’s oldest first cousin. Adolescents practically reek of emotion and confusion, and Jacky was no exception. He was struggling to conceal the fact that he was both nervous and excited. Maintaining a cool demeanor was just killing him.
The three newcomers took in the scene. Calvin shook his head, his face solemn. “This is a bad day,” he said quietly, and Mel jerked at the sound of his leader’s voice.
Some of the tension leaked out of Jason when he saw the other werepanthers.
“Sookie says he did it,” he said to Calvin.
“That’s good enough for me,” Calvin said. “But, Mel—you should tell us yourself, brother.”
“I’m not your brother,” Mel said bitterly. “I haven’t lived with you for years.”
“That was your own choice,” Calvin said. He walked around so he could see Mel’s face, and the other two followed him. Jacky was snarling; any pretense at being cool had vanished. The animal was showing through.
“There isn’t anyone else in Hotshot like me. I would have been alone.”
Jason looked blank. “There are lots of guys in Hotshot like you,” he said.
“No, Jason,” I said. “Mel’s gay.”
“We’re not okay with that?” my brother asked Calvin. Jason hadn’t yet gotten the party line on a few issues, apparently.
“We’re okay with people doing what they want to do in bed after they’ve done their duty to the clan,” Calvin said. “Purebred males have to father a young ’un, no matter what.”
“I couldn’t do it,” Mel said. “I just plain couldn’t do it.”
“But you were married once,” I said, and wished I hadn’t spoken. This was a matter for the clan now. I hadn’t called Bud Dearborn; I’d called Calvin. My word was good enough for Calvin, not for court.
“Our marriage didn’t work in that department,” Mel said. His voice sounded almost normal. “Which was okay with her. She had her own fish to fry. We never had . . . conventional sex.”
If I found this distressing, I could only imagine how hard it had been for Mel. But when I remembered what Crystal had looked like up on that cross, all my sympathy drained away in a hurry.
“Why did you do that to Crystal?” I asked. I could tell from the rage building in the brains around me that the time for talking was almost over.
Mel looked beyond me, past my brother, away from his leader, his victim’s sister and cousin. He seemed to be focused on the winter-bare limbs of the trees around the still,
brown pond. “I love Jason,” he said. “I love him. And she abused him and his child. Then she taunted me. She came here that day. . . . I’d stopped off to get Jason to help me build some shelves at the shop, but he wasn’t here. She drove up while I was out in the yard writing Jason a note. She began to say . . . she said awful things. Then she told me I had to have sex with her, that if I did, she’d tell them at Hotshot and I’d be able to go back to live there, and Jason could come live with me. She said, ‘His baby’s inside me; doesn’t that get you all hot?’ And it got worse and worse. The bed of the truck was down because the wood I’d bought was sticking out, and she kind of backed up to it and lay down, and I could see her. It was . . . she was . . . she kept telling me what a pussy I was and that Jason would never care about me . . . and I slapped her as hard as I could.”
Dawn Norris turned to one side as though she was going to throw up. But she pressed her lips together in a hard line and straightened up. Jacky wasn’t that tough.
“She wasn’t dead, though.” My brother forced the words between his clenched teeth. “She bled all down the cross. She lost the baby after she’d been hung up.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Mel said. His gaze returned from the pond and the trees and focused on my brother. “I thought the blow had killed her—I really did. I would never have left her to go in the house if I’d thought she was still alive. I would never have let someone else get her. What I did was bad enough, because I intended for her to die. But I didn’t crucify her. Please believe me. No matter what you think of me for hurting her, I would never have done that. I thought if I took her somewhere else, no one would think you did it. I knew you were going out that night, and I figured if I put her somewhere else, you’d have an alibi. I figured you’d end up spending the night with Michele.” Mel smiled at Jason, and it was such a tender look that my heart ached. “So I left her in the back of the truck, and I came in the house to have a drink. And when I came back out, she was gone. I couldn’t believe it. I thought she’d gotten up and walked away. But there wasn’t any blood, and the wood was gone, too.”
“Why Merlotte’s?” Calvin said, and his voice came out like a growl.
“I don’t know, Calvin,” Mel said. His face was almost sublime with his relief from the load of his guilt, with the release of confessing his crime and his love for my brother. “Calvin, I know I’m about to die, and I swear to you that I have no idea what happened to Crystal after I went into the house. I did not do that horrible thing to her.”
“I don’t know what to make of that,” Calvin said. “But we have your confession, and we’ll have to proceed.”
“I accept that,” Mel said. “Jason, I love you.”
Dawn turned her head just a fraction so her eyes could meet mine. “You better go,” she said. “We got things to do.”
I walked off with the rifle, and I didn’t turn to look even when the other panthers began to tear Mel apart. I could hear it, though.
He didn’t scream after a second.
I left Jason’s rifle on his back porch, and I drove to work. Somehow having a bodyguard didn’t seem important anymore.