Chapter 11
Because Merlotte’s was almost empty, my lateness wasn’t an issue. In fact, Sam was so preoccupied I wasn’t sure he noticed. His abstraction
made me feel a little better. I’d wondered if Jannalynn had spun Sam some kind of tale to cover her malice, in case I complained to him about her
shoving another man into my bed. Sam didn’t seem to have any idea that Jannalynn had done her best to embarrass me by advising her boss to
play peek-a-boo with my bedsheets.
Though it was easy to be angry at Jannalynn because I didn’t like her, when I thought about it, Alcide should have known better than to take such
bad advice. If Alcide had been stupid for giving her idea credence, Jannalynn had been mean for thinking of it in the first place. I understood now
that we were enemies. It was my day for unpleasant realizations.
Sam was absorbed in going over the books. When I discerned from his thoughts that he was trying to figure out how he could manage to pay his
bill with our beer distributor, I decided that today he had more problems than he could handle. He didn’t need to hear that his girlfriend had
embarrassed me.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was between Jannalynn and me, no matter how tempted I might be to inform Sam about
his girlfriend’s true character. I felt like a smarter and better person after getting my head straight on that, and I hustled food and drinks with a smile
and a pleasant word the whole shift. I had some good tip money in consequence.
I worked late to make up my time, and that was okay because Holly was late in turn. It was after six when I went into the office to fetch my purse.
Sam was slumped at his desk, looking pretty bleak. “You need to talk about something?” I offered.
“With you? I figure you already know whatever I’m thinking about,” he said, but not as if that bothered him. “The bar’s in a slump, Sook. This is the
worst patch I’ve ever been through.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t be completely stale or practically untrue. Something always turns up. It always seems darkest
before the dawn. When God closes a door, he opens a window. All things happen for a reason. Into every life a little rain must fall. What doesn’t
kill us makes us stronger. In the end, I just bent and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You call me if you need me,” I said, and went out to the car
feeling troubled. I put my subconscious to work on a plan to help Sam.
I loved summer, but sometimes I hated daylight saving time. Though I’d worked late and was going home, it was still glaring sunlight and would be
for maybe another hour and a half. Even after darkfall, when Eric and Pam could come to the house, we’d still have to wait for Colton to get off work.
As I got into my car, I noticed there was a chance it would be dark earlier than usual. An ominous mass of dark clouds seethed to the west . . .
really dark clouds, moving fast. The day would not end as beautifully and brightly as it had begun. I’d just been remembering my gran saying, “Into
every life a little rain must fall.” I wondered if I’d been prophetic.
I’m not scared of storms. Jason once had a dog that’d dashed upstairs to hide under Jason’s bed every time he heard a crack of thunder. I
smiled at the memory. My grandmother hadn’t approved of dogs in the house, but she hadn’t been able to keep Rocky out. He’d always found a
way when the weather turned bad, though that way had less to do with the dog’s cleverness than with Jason’s soft heart. That was one good thing
about my brother; he’d always been kind to animals. And now he is one, I thought. At least once a month. I didn’t know what to think about that.
While I’d been looking up at the sky, the clouds had been moving in closer, and I needed to get home and make sure my departed guests had left
all the windows closed.
Despite my anxiety, after I looked at my gas gauge I realized I had to fill up the car. While the pump was working, I stepped out from under the
awning at the Grabbit Kwik to look up. The sky was ominous, and I wondered if we were under a tornado watch. I wished I’d listened to the Weather
Channel that morning.
The wind picked up, and bits of trash whipped across the parking lot. The air was so heavy and damp that the pavement smelled. When the gas
pump cut off, I was glad to hang up the nozzle and climb in the car. I saw Tara going by, and she glanced my way and waved. I thought of her
impending baby shower and her impending babies, with a little guilt. Though I had put everything in line for the shower, I hadn’t thought about it all
week, and it was only two days away! Surely I ought to be concentrating on the social event rather than a murder plot?
It was a moment when my life seemed . . . complex. A few drops of rain splashed on my windshield as I pulled out of the parking lot. I hoped I had
enough milk for breakfast, because I sure hadn’t checked before I left the house. Did I have some bottled blood to offer the vampires? Just in case, I
stopped at the Piggly Wiggly and got some. Grabbed up some milk, too. And some bacon. I hadn’t had a bacon sandwich in ages, and Terry
Bellefleur had brought me some early fresh tomatoes.
I slung my plastic bags into the front seat of the car and dove in after them, because the rain abruptly slammed down in earnest. The back of my
T-shirt was soaked, and my ponytail hung sodden on my neck. I reached in the backseat and pulled my umbrella into the front. It was an old one my
gran had used to cover her head when she’d come to watch me playing softball, and when I looked at the faded stripes of black and green and
cerise, I felt a smile on my face.
I drove home slowly and carefully. The rain drummed on the car and bounced up from the pavement like tiny jackhammers. My headlights hardly
seemed to make a dent in the rain and the gloom. I glanced at the dashboard clock. It was already after seven. Of course I had plenty of time before
the Victor Murder Committee met, but it would be a relief just to get to the house. I considered the dash I’d have to make from the car to the house. If
Dermot had gone out already, he would have left the door to the back porch locked. I’d be completely exposed to the rain while I fumbled with the
keys and my two heavy bags of milk and blood. Not for the first or last time, I thought of spending my savings—the money from Claudine’s estate
and the lesser sum of Hadley’s legacy (Remy hadn’t called, so I had to assume he’d meant he truly didn’t want her money)—in getting a carport
attached to the house.
I was thinking of how I’d situate such a structure, and wondering how much it would take to build it, as I pulled up behind the house. Poor Dermot!
By asking him to go out tonight I’d doomed him to a miserable, wet time in the woods. At least, I assumed he’d think it would be miserable. Fairies
had a whole different scale than I did. I could lend him my car, and he could drive to Jason’s, maybe.
I peered through the windshield, hoping I’d see a light on in the kitchen signaling Dermot’s presence.
But the door to the back porch was hanging open over the steps. I couldn’t see well enough through the gloom to tell if the house door was open,
too. My first reaction was indignation. That’s so careless of Dermot, I thought. Maybe I should have told him he had to leave, too. But then I thought
again. Dermot had never been so careless, and there was no reason to think he would be today. Instead of being irritated, maybe I should be
worried.
Maybe I should listen to that alarm bell clanging away in my head.
You know what would be smart? Reversing the car and getting the hell out of here. I yanked my gaze away from that ominous open door.
Galvanized, I threw the car into reverse and backed up. I put the car in drive and turned the wheel to rocket down the driveway.
From the woods a sizable young tree crashed down across the gravel, and I slammed on the brakes.
I knew a trap when I saw one.
I turned the car off and threw open my door. While I was scrambling out, a figure lurched from the trees and ran toward me. The only weapon to
hand was the quart of milk in its plastic jug, and I grabbed the handles of the plastic bag and swung it high. To my amazement, I connected, and the
jug burst, and milk went everywhere. Absurdly, I had a flash of fury at the waste, and then I was scrambling for the trees, my feet slipping on the wet
grass. Thank God I’d worn sneakers. I ran for my life. He might be down, but he wouldn’t stay down, and maybe there would be more than one. I was
sure I’d caught a flicker of movement on the periphery of my vision.
I didn’t know if the ambushers intended to kill me, but they weren’t going to invite me to play Monopoly.
I was soaking wet within seconds from the rain and the water I knocked off the bushes as I blundered through the woods. If I lived through this, I
swore, I’d start running at the high school track again, because my breath was sawing in and out of my lungs. The summer undergrowth was thick,
and the vines snaked everywhere. I didn’t fall, but it was only a matter of time.
I was trying hard to think—that would be a good thing—but I seemed to be possessed by a rabbit mentality. Run and hide, run and hide. If I was
being abducted by Weres, it was all over, because they could track me through the woods in a jiffy even if they were in human form, though the
weather might slow them down.
Couldn’t be vampires, the sun hadn’t set.
Fairies would have been much more subtle.
Humans, then. I dashed around the edges of the cemetery, since I’d be so easy to spot on the open ground.
I heard noise in the woods behind me, and I headed for the only other sanctuary that might offer me a good hiding place. Bill’s house. I didn’t have
enough time to climb a tree. It seemed I’d leaped out of my car an hour ago. My purse, my phone! Why hadn’t I grabbed my phone? I could picture
my purse sitting on the car seat. Crap.
Now I was running uphill, so I was close. I paused at the huge old oak, about ten yards from the front porch, and peered around it. There was Bill’s
house, dark and silent in the pouring rain. When Judith had been in residence, I’d left my copy of Bill’s key in his mailbox one day. It had only
seemed right. But that night he’d left a message on my answering machine telling me where the spare key was. We’d never said a word to each
other about that.
I pelted up onto the porch, found the key taped under the armrest of the wooden outdoor chair, and unlocked the front door. My hands were so
tremulous it was amazing I didn’t drop the key and that I got it into the lock correctly the first time. I was about to step in when I thought, Footprints.
I’d leave wet footprints everywhere I went in the house. I’d advertise my location like a blue light Kmart special. Crouching down by the railing
around the porch, I pulled off my clothes and shoes, and dropped them behind the thick azalea bushes surrounding the house. I squeezed out my
ponytail. I shook myself briskly like a dog, to rid myself of as much water as I could. Then I stepped into the quiet dimness of the old Compton
house. Though I didn’t have time to mull it over, it felt decidedly weird to be standing in the foyer naked.
I looked down at my feet. One splash of water. I rubbed my foot over it and took a big step onto the worn runner lying in the hall that led back to the
kitchen. I didn’t even glance into the living room (which Bill sometimes called the parlor) or venture into the dining room.
Bill had never told me exactly where he slept during the day. I understood that such a piece of knowledge was a huge vampire secret. But I’m
reasonably alert, and I’d had a while to figure it out while we were dating. Though I was sure there was more than one such secret place, one lay
somewhere off the pantry in the kitchen. He’d remodeled the kitchen and installed a hot tub to create sort of a spa area rather than a place to cook
—which he didn’t need—but he’d left a small separate room intact. I didn’t know if it had been a pantry or a butler’s room. I opened the new
louvered door and stepped in, shutting it behind me. Today the oddly high shelves contained only a few six-packs of bottled blood and a
screwdriver. I knocked on the floor, on the wall. In my panic, and the noise of the storm outside, I couldn’t detect any difference in the sound. I said,
“Bill, let me in. Wherever you are, let me in,” like a character in a grim ghost story.
I didn’t hear a thing, naturally, though I listened for a few seconds in utter stillness. We hadn’t shared blood in a long time, and it was still daylight,
though it wouldn’t be for long.
Crapola, I thought. Then I spied a thin line in the boards, right by the doorsill. I looked very carefully and realized the thin line continued around the
sides. I didn’t have the time to examine any closer. My heart thudding, out of sheer instinct and sheer desperation I dug the screwdriver into the line
and levered up. There was a hole, and into it I dove, taking the screwdriver with me and closing the trap behind me. I realized the shelves must be
set high to allow the door to swing up. I didn’t know where the hinges were hidden and I didn’t care.
For a long, long moment I just sat naked in a heap on the packed dirt and panted, trying to catch up with myself. I hadn’t moved that fast, that long,
since . . . since the last time I’d been running from someone who wanted to kill me.
I thought, I’ve got to change my way of life. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought that, the first time I’d resolved to find a safer way to live.
It wasn’t any occasion for deep thinking. It was time for praying that whoever it had been knocking trees down across my driveway, that selfsame
“whoever” wouldn’t find me in this house stark naked and defenseless, hiding in the crawl space with . . . Where was Bill? Of course, it was very
dark with the hatch shut, and since there weren’t any lights on in the house, nothing was coming through the outline of the opening because of the
pantry door and the rain-dark day. I patted around in the dark looking for my unwitting host. Maybe he was in another hiding spot? I was surprised at
how big a space this was. While I searched, I had time to imagine all sort of bugs. Snakes. When you’re buck naked, you don’t like the idea of stuff
touching areas that rarely meet bare ground. I crawled and patted, and every now and then jumped as I felt (or imagined) tiny feet against my skin.
Finally I located Bill over in a corner. He was still dead, of course. Somewhat more to my astonishment, my fingers informed me that he was
naked, too. Certainly that was practical. Why get your clothes dirty? I knew he’d slept that way outside on occasion. I was so relieved to make
contact with him that I really didn’t mind whether he was clothed.
I tried to figure out how long the whole trip back from Merlotte’s had taken, how long I’d dashed through the woods. My best estimate was that I
had about thirty or forty-five minutes before Bill woke.
I crouched by him, gripping the screwdriver, listening with every nerve to catch whatever sound I could. It could be that they—the mysterious
“they”—wouldn’t spot my track here, or my clothes. If my luck was consistent, of course they’d spot the clothes and shoes, and they’d know that
meant I’d come in the house, and they’d come in, too.
I spared a little disgust for the fact that I’d run to the nearest man for protection. However, I consoled myself, it wasn’t so much his muscles I
wanted as the shelter of his house. That was okay, right? I wasn’t overly concerned with political correctness at the moment. Survival was more at
the top of my list. And Bill wasn’t exactly at my disposal, assuming he’d be willing . . .
“Sookie?” he murmured.
“Bill, thank God you’re awake.”
“You’re unclothed.”
Trust a man to mention that first. “Absolutely, and I’ll tell you why—”
“Can’t get up yet,” he said. “Must be . . . overcast?”
“Right, big storm, dark as hell out there, and there’s people—”
“’Kay, later.” And he was out again.
Crap! So I huddled by his corpse and listened. Had I left the front door unlocked? Of course I had. And the second I realized that, I heard a
floorboard creak overhead. They were in the house.
“. . . no drips,” said a voice, probably from the foyer. I started to crawl to the hatch door so I could hear . . . but I paused. There was at least a
chance that if they found the hatch and flipped it open, they still wouldn’t see Bill and me. We were way back in a corner, and this was a very big
space. Maybe it had been sort of a cellar, as close to a cellar as you could get in a place that had such a high water table.
“Yeah, but the door was open. She must have come in here.” It was a nasal voice, and it was a little closer than it had been.
“And she flew across the floor, leaving no footprints? Raining as hard as it is out there?” The sarcastic voice was a bit deeper.
“We don’t know what she is.” Nasal guy.
“Not a vampire, Kelvin. We know that.”
Kelvin said, “Maybe she’s a werebird or something, Hod.”
“Werebird?” The snort of incredulity echoed in the dark house. Hod could really do sarcastic.
“Did you see the ears on that guy? That was pretty incredible. You can’t rule out nothing, these days,” Kelvin advised his buddy.
Ears? They were talking about Dermot. What had they done to him? I was ashamed. This was the first time I’d thought about what might have
befallen my great-uncle.
“Yeah, and? He must be one of those science fiction geeks.” Hod didn’t sound like he was paying much attention to what he was saying. I heard
cabinets open and close. No way I could have been in any of those places.
“Nah, man, I’m sure they were real. No scars or anything. Maybe I shoulda taken one.”
Taken one? I shivered.
Kelvin, who was closer to the pantry than Hod, added, “I’m gonna go upstairs, check out the rooms up there.” I heard the sound of his boots
diminish, heard the distant creak of the stairs, his muffled footfalls up the carpeted treads. Very faintly, I followed some of his movements on the
second floor. I knew when he was directly above me, in the room I figured was the master bedroom, where I’d slept when I was dating Bill.
While Kelvin was gone, Hod wandered to and fro, though he didn’t seem very purposeful to me.
“Right . . . there’s nobody here,” Kelvin announced when he returned to the former kitchen. “Wonder why there’s a hot tub in the house?”
“There’s a car outside,” Hod said thoughtfully. His voice was much closer, right outside the open pantry door. He was thinking about getting back
to Shreveport and taking a hot shower, putting on dry clothes, maybe having sex with his wife. Ew. A few too many details along with that. Kelvin
was more prosaic. He wanted to get paid, so he wanted to deliver me. To whom? Dammit, he wasn’t thinking about that. My heart sank, though I
would have sworn it was already down to my toes. My bare toes. I was glad I’d painted my toenails recently. Irrelevant!
A bright line of light suddenly appeared in the thin, thin outline of the hatch or trapdoor or whatever Bill called it. The light had been switched on in
the pantry. I held as still as a mouse, tried to breathe shallowly and silently. I thought how bad Bill would feel if they killed me right next to him.
Irrelevant!
He would, though.
I heard a creak and realized one of the men was standing right above me. If I could have switched my mind off, I would have. I was so conscious
of the life in other people’s minds that I had a hard time believing that anyone could ignore a conscious brain, especially one as jittery as mine.
“Just blood in here,” Hod said, so close that I jerked in surprise. “The bottled kind. Hey, Kelvin, this house must belong to a vampire!”
“Don’t make no difference as long as he’s not awake. Or she. Hey, you ever had a female vampire?”
“No, and don’t want to. I don’t like to hump dead people. Course, some nights, Marge ain’t much better.”
Kelvin laughed. “You better not let her hear you say that, bro.”
Hod laughed, too. “No danger of that.”
And he stepped out of the pantry. Didn’t switch off the light, wasteful asshole! Evidently the fact that Bill would know someone had been here was
not a concern of Hod’s. So he was really stupid.
And then Bill woke up. This time he was a little more alert, and the second I felt him move, I crouched on top of him and put my hand over his
mouth. His muscles tensed, and I had time to think Oh, no! before he smelled me, knew me. “Sookie?” he said, but not at full volume.
“Did you hear something?” said Hod above me.
A long moment of a lively, listening silence. “Shh,” I breathed, right into Bill’s ear.
A cold hand rose and ran down my leg. I could almost feel Bill’s surprise—again—as he realized I was naked . . . again. And I knew the second
the fact that he’d heard a voice overhead penetrated his awareness.
Bill was putting it all together. I didn’t know what he was coming up with, but he knew that we were in trouble. He also knew there was a barenaked
woman on top of him, and something else twitched. Simultaneously exasperated and amused, I had to clamp my lips shut on a giggle.
Irrelevant!
And then Bill went to sleep again.
Would the damn sun never set? His drifting in and out was making me nuts. It was like dating someone with short-term memory loss.
And I’d clean forgotten to listen and be terrified.
“Nah, I don’t hear nothing,” Kelvin said.
Lying on top of my involuntary host was like lying on top of a cold, hard cushion with hair.
And an erection. For what seemed like the tenth time, Bill had wakened.
I blew out a silent breath. This time Bill was completely awake. He put his arms around me, but he was gentlemanly enough not to move or
explore, at least for now. We were both listening; he’d heard Kelvin speak.
Finally, two sets of footsteps crossed the wooden floors, and we heard the front door open and close. I sagged in relief. Bill’s arms tightened and
he rolled me over so he was on top.
“Is it Christmas?” he asked, pressed against me. “Are you an early present?”
I laughed, but I still kept it quiet. “I’m sorry to intrude, Bill,” I said, very low. “But they were after me.” I explained very briefly, being careful to tell him
where my clothes were and why they were there. I could feel his chest heave a little, and I knew he was laughing silently. “I’m really worried about
Dermot,” I said. I’d been talking almost in a whisper, which made the darkness curiously intimate, to say nothing of the large area of skin we were
sharing.
“You’ve been down here a while,” he said, his voice at normal level.
“Yes.”
“I’m going out to make sure they’re gone, since you’re not going to let me ‘open’ early,” Bill said, and it took me a minute to understand. I caught
myself smiling in the darkness. Bill gently eased away from me, and I saw his whiteness moving silently through the gloom. After a second’s
listening, he opened the hatch. Harsh electric light flooded down. It was such a contrast that I had to close my eyes to let them adjust. By the time
they did, Bill had slithered out into the house.
I didn’t hear anything no matter how hard I listened. I got tired of waiting—I felt like I’d crouched on the bare ground forever—and I hauled myself
out of the hatch with a lot less grace and a lot more noise than Bill. I turned off the lights Hod and Kelvin had left on, at least in part because the light
made me feel about twice as naked. I peered cautiously out of a window in the dining room. In the dark it was hard to be sure, but I thought the trees
weren’t tossing in the wind anymore. The rain continued unabated. I saw lightning off to the north. I didn’t see kidnappers or bodies or anything that
didn’t belong in the soaked landscape.
Bill didn’t seem to be in any hurry to return to tell me what was happening. The old dining table was covered with a sort of shawl with fringe, and I
pulled it off the table and wrapped myself in it. I hoped it wasn’t some kind of Compton heirloom. It had holes in it and a large flowery pattern, so I
wasn’t too terribly concerned.
“Sookie,” Bill said at my back, and I shrieked and jumped.
“Would you please not do that?” I said. “I’ve had enough bad surprises today.”
“Sorry,” he said. He had a kitchen towel in his hand and he was rubbing his hair. “I came in through the back door.” He was still naked, but I felt
ridiculous making any kind of thing out of it. I’d seen Bill naked many times before. He was looking me up and down, a sort of puzzled expression
on his face. “Sookie, are you wearing my Aunt Edwina’s Spanish shawl?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said. “Really, Bill. It was there, and I was cold and damp and feeling like I wanted to be covered. I do apologize.” I thought of
unwrapping it and handing it over, but I reconsidered in the same moment.
“Looks better on you than it does on the table,” he said. “Besides, it has holes. Are you ready to go over to your house to find out what’s
happened to your great-uncle? And where are your clothes? Surely . . . Did those men take them off? Have they . . . Are you harmed?”
“No, no,” I said hastily. “I told you I had to dump my clothes so they wouldn’t see the drips. They’re out front behind the bushes. I couldn’t leave
them in sight, of course.”
“Right,” Bill said. He looked very thoughtful. “If I didn’t know you better, I would think—and pardon me if I offend—that you’d concocted this whole
scenario to excuse yourself for wanting to bed me again.”
“Oh. You mean, you might almost imagine that I made up this story so I could appear naked and in need of help, the damsel in distress, needing
big strong equally naked Vampire Bill to rescue me from the evil kidnappers?”
He nodded, looking a little embarrassed.
“I wish I had enough free time to sit around and think of things like that.” I admired the mind that could conceive of such a circuitous way to get
what it wanted. “I think just knocking on your door and looking lonesome would probably get me where I wanted to be, if that was my goal. Or I could
just say, ‘How ’bout it, big boy?’ I don’t think I need to be naked and in danger to get you lusty. Right?”
“You’re absolutely right,” he said, and he was smiling a little. “And any time you’d like to try one of those other ploys, I’d be glad to play my part.
Shall I apologize again?”
I smiled back. “No need. I don’t suppose you have rain slickers?”
Of course he didn’t, but he did have an umbrella. In short order he’d fetched my clothes from behind the bushes. While I wrung them out and put
them in his dryer, he ran up the stairs to his bedroom, which he’d never slept in, to pull on jeans and a tank top—serious slumming, for Bill.
My clothes were going to take too long to dry, so clad in Aunt Edwina’s Spanish shawl and sheltered by Bill’s blue umbrella, I climbed into his car.
He drove out to Hummingbird Road and over to my house. Putting the car in park, Bill hopped out to remove the tree trunk from the driveway as
easily as if it had been a toothpick. We resumed our way to the house, pausing by my poor car, the driver’s door still open to the rain. The interior
was soaked, but my would-be abductors hadn’t done anything to it. The key was still in the ignition, my purse still on the front seat along with the
remaining groceries.
Bill eyed the broken plastic of the milk jug, and I wondered which one I’d hit, Hod or Kelvin.
We both pulled up to the back door, but while I was still gathering my grocery bag and my purse, Bill was out and into the house. I had a second’s
worth of worry about how I was going to dry out my car before I made myself focus on the crisis at hand. I thought about what had happened to the
fairy woman Cait, and concern about car upholstery left my head with gratifying speed.
I stepped into my house clumsily. I was having trouble managing my wrapping, the umbrella, my purse, the bag containing the bottled blood, and
my bare feet. I could hear Bill moving through the house, and I knew when he found something because he called, “Sookie!” in an urgent voice.
Dermot was unconscious on the attic floor by the sander he’d rented, which was on its side and switched off. He had fallen forward, so I figured
he’d had his back to the door with the sander running when they’d come in the house. When he’d realized he wasn’t alone and switched off the
sander, it had been too late. His hair was clotted with blood, and the wound looked horrible. They’d been carrying at least one weapon, then.
Bill was hunched stiffly over the still figure. Without turning to me he said, “I can’t give him my blood,” as if I’d demanded it.
“I know,” I said, surprised. “He’s fae.” I circled around to kneel on Dermot’s other side. I was in a position to see Bill’s face.
“Back away,” I said. “Back away. Go downstairs now.” The odor of fairy blood, intoxicating to a vampire, must seem as though it were filling the
attic to Bill.
“I could just lick it clean,” Bill said, his dark eyes fixed on the wound with yearning.
“No, you wouldn’t stop. Back off, Bill! Leave!” But his face dipped lower, closer to Dermot’s head. I hauled off and slapped Bill as hard as I could.
“You have to go,” I said, though I wanted to apologize so badly it made me shake. The look on Bill’s face was awful. Anger, craving, the struggle
for self-control . . .
“I’m so hungry,” he whispered, his eyes swallowing me. “Feed me, Sookie.”
For a second, I was sure Bad Choice time was upon me. The worst choice would have been letting Bill bite Dermot. The next worst would have
been letting Bill bite me, because with the intoxicating scent of fairy in the air I wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop in time. As all this flashed through my
mind, Bill was struggling to master himself. He managed . . . but only by the thinnest of threads.
“I’m going to check to see if they’ve left,” he said, lurching toward the stairs. Even his body was at war with itself. Clearly, his every instinct was
telling him to drink blood somehow, some way, from the two tasty, tempting donors at hand, while his mind was telling him to get the hell away
before something awful happened. If I’d had a spare person around, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have thrown him to Bill, I felt so sad for him.
But he made it down the stairs, and I heard the door slam behind him. In case he lost his control, I hurried down the stairs to lock both back doors
so at least I’d have a little warning if he returned. I glanced through the living room to make sure the front door was locked, as I’d left it. Yes. Before I
returned upstairs to Dermot, I went to fetch my shotgun from my front closet.
It was still there, and I let myself savor a moment of relief. I was lucky the men hadn’t stolen it. Their search must have been cursory. I’m sure they
would have spied something as valuable as the shotgun if they hadn’t been looking for something much larger—me.
With the Benelli in my hand I felt much better, and I grabbed the first aid kit to take up with me. I hobbled up the stairs to kneel again by my greatuncle.
I was getting pretty damn sick of coping with the huge shawl, which unwound at the most inconvenient moments. I wondered briefly how Indian
women coped, but I just couldn’t take the time to dress until I’d helped Dermot.
With a wad of sterile wipes, I cleaned away the blood on his head so I could inspect the damage. It looked bad, but I had expected that; head
wounds always do. At least this wasn’t bleeding much at all anymore. While I was working on Dermot’s head, I was having a fierce inner debate
about calling an ambulance. I wasn’t sure the ambulance crew would be able to get in without Hod and Kelvin’s interference—no, that couldn’t be a
concern. Bill and I had gotten over here without being stopped.
More important, I wasn’t sure how compatible fairy physiology was with human medical techniques—enough that humans and fairies could crossbreed,
I knew, which argued that human first aid would be all right, but still . . . Dermot groaned and rolled over to his back. I put a towel under his
head just in time. He winced.
“Sookie,” he said. “Why are you wearing a tablecloth?”
Chapter 12
“You have both your ears,” I assured him, feeling a wave of relief so strong I almost fell over. I touched the points lightly so he could be certain.
“Why would I not?” Dermot was confused, and considering the amount of bleeding he’d had, I was sure that was understandable. “Who attacked
me?”
I looked down at him and couldn’t decide what to do. I had to bite the bullet. I called Claude.
“Claude’s phone,” said a deep voice I pegged as belonging to Bellenos, the elf.
“Bellenos, it’s Sookie. I don’t know if you remember me, but I was there the other day with my friend Sam?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Here’s the deal. Someone attacked Dermot, and he’s hurt, and I need to know if there’s anything I should or shouldn’t do to an injured fairy.
Anything besides what you do for a human.”
“Who has hurt him?” Bellenos’s voice was sharper.
“Two human guys who broke into the house coming for me. I wasn’t here, but Dermot was, and there was machinery running, and he couldn’t hear
too well, and they seem to have hit him on the head. I don’t know what with.”
“Has the bleeding stopped?” he asked, and I could hear Claude’s voice in the background.
“Yes, it’s clotted.”
There was a buzz of voices while Bellenos consulted with various people, or at least that was what it sounded like.
“I’m coming,” Bellenos said at last. “Claude tells me he’s not welcome in your home right now, so I’m coming in his stead. It’ll be nice to get out of
this building. No other humans around besides you? I can’t pass.”
“No one else besides me, at least now.”
“I’ll be there soon.”
I relayed this information to Dermot, who was simply looking puzzled. He told me a couple of times he didn’t understand why he was on the floor,
and I began to get worried about him. At least he seemed content to stay there.
“Sookie!” Before it had started raining, Dermot had opened the windows because of the sanding. I could hear Bill clearly.
I trailed over to the window with my fringe swaying.
“How is he?” Bill asked, staying well away. “How can I help?”
“You’ve been wonderful,” I said, meaning it. “One of the fae from Monroe is coming over, Bill, so you better go back to your house. When my
clothes get dry, could you just leave them on my back steps sometime when it’s not raining? Or if you just put them on your front porch, I can pick
’em up any time.”
“I feel I’ve failed you,” he said.
“How come? You gave me a place to hide; you cleared my driveway; you checked out the house so no one could ambush me again.”
“I didn’t kill them,” he said. “I’d like to.”
I didn’t feel hardly creepy at all at his admission. I was getting used to drastic pronouncements. “Hey, don’t worry about it,” I assured him.
“Someone will, if they keep doing stuff like this.”
“Did you form any idea of who had hired them?”
“I’m afraid not.” I really regretted that. “They were going to tie me on some vehicle and take me somewhere.” I hadn’t seen the vehicle in their
thoughts, so that part was fuzzy.
“Where was their car parked?”
“I don’t know. I never saw one.” I hadn’t exactly had time to think about it.
Bill stared up at me longingly. “I feel useless, Sookie. I know you need help getting him down the stairs. But I don’t dare try to approach him
again.”
Bill’s head turned with a suddenness that made me blink. Then he was gone.
“I’m here,” called a voice from the back door. “I am Bellenos the elf, vampire. Tell Sookie I’m here to see my friend Dermot.”
“An elf. I haven’t seen one of you in over a hundred years,” I heard Bill’s voice, much fainter.
“And you won’t again for another hundred,” Bellenos’s deep voice responded. “There aren’t many of us left.”
I went down the stairs again, as fast as I could without breaking my neck. I unlocked the back door and stepped across the porch to unlock the
porch door. I could see both the elf and the vampire through the glass.
“Since you’re here, I’ll be on my way,” Bill said. “I can’t be of any help.” He was out in the yard. The harsh security light mounted on the pole made
him look whiter than white, truly alien. The rain was only dripping now, but the air smelled pregnant with moisture. I didn’t think it would hold off for
long.
“Fairy intoxication?” Bellenos said. He was pale, too, but no one could be more washed out than a vamp. Bellenos’s light brown freckles looked
like little shadows on his face, and his smooth hair seemed an even darker auburn. “Elves smell different from fairies.”
“Yes, you do,” Bill said, and I could hear the distaste in his voice. Bellenos’s smell seemed to repel at least one vampire. Maybe I could scrape
some skin cells from Bellenos to scatter over my great-uncle so I could have vampires over. Oh, gosh, what was I going to do about the meeting
with Eric and Pam?
“Are you two through swapping how-de-dos?” I called. “Because Dermot could use some help.”
Bill vanished into the woods, and I opened the door for the elf. He smiled at me, and it was hard not to twitch when I saw the long, pointed teeth.
“Come in,” I said, though I knew he could enter without being invited.
As I led him through the kitchen, he was looking around him with some curiosity. I hoisted my trailing wrapper to precede him up the stairs, and I
hoped Bellenos wasn’t getting too much of an eyeful. When we reached the attic, before I could say anything the elf was on his knees beside
Dermot. After a quick survey, Bellenos rolled the fairy onto his side to examine the wound. The curiously slanted brown eyes were intent on his
wounded friend.
Well, he might have glanced at my bare shoulders a little.
More than a little.
“You need to cover up,” Bellenos said bluntly. “That’s too much human skin for me.”
Okay, I’d totally misread that, to my embarrassment. Just as Bill had been repelled by Bellenos’s scent, Bellenos was repelled by the sight of me.
“I’ll be glad to put on real clothes now that there’s someone to stay with Dermot.”
“Good,” Bellenos said.
As blunt as Claude could be, Bellenos had him beat. It was actually almost entertaining. I asked Bellenos to carry Dermot down to the guest room
on the ground floor, and I preceded them to make sure the room was okay. After a cursory look to make sure the bedspread was pulled up over the
sheets, I moved aside for Bellenos, who was carrying Dermot as easily as he would a child, though Dermot was certainly less maneuverable on the
narrow staircase.
While Bellenos settled Dermot on the bed, I zipped into my room to dress. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to unwind the fringed and flowered
shawl and put on some jeans (not shorts, out of deference to Bellenos’s human skin aversion). It was too hot to even think of a longsleeved shirt, but
my offensive shoulders were properly covered with a striped T-shirt.
Dermot was fully conscious when I returned to check on him. Bellenos was kneeling by the bed, stroking Dermot’s golden hair and talking to him
in a language I didn’t know. My great-uncle was alert and lucid. My heart settled into a happier rhythm when Dermot even smiled at me, though it
was a shadow of his usual grin.
“They didn’t hurt you,” he said, obviously relieved. “So far, Niece, it seems living with you is more dangerous than staying with my own kind.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed and taking his hand. “I don’t know how they were able to get into the house with the wards in
place. People who mean me harm aren’t supposed to be able to enter, whether I’m here or not.”
Despite his blood loss, Dermot flushed. “That would be my fault.”
“What?” I stared down at him. “Why?”
“It was human magic,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “Your little witch friend, she’s quite good for a human, but fae magic is much, much better.
So I deconstructed her spells, and I intended to put my own around your house as soon as I finished sanding the floor.”
I really couldn’t think of a thing to say.
There was a sticky little moment of silence.
“We’d better tend to your head,” I said briskly. I cleaned it some more and dabbed the wound with Neosporin. I certainly wasn’t going to try to sew
it up, though it seemed to me that someone should. When I mentioned stitches, both of the fae seemed utterly disgusted by the idea. I put some
butterfly bandages on the wound to hold it shut. I figured that was the best I could do.
“Now I’ll treat him,” Bellenos said, and I was pleased to hear that he intended to do something more active than carry Dermot down the stairs to
the bed. Not that that hadn’t been a help, but I’d expected a bit more, somehow. “Of course the blood of the one who harmed him would be best,
and maybe we can do something about that, but for now . . .”
“What will you do?” I hoped I could watch and learn.
“I will breathe into him,” Bellenos said, as if I were a fool not to know that. My amazement startled him. He shrugged, as if I were too ignorant for
words. “You can watch if you want.” He looked down at Dermot, who nodded, then winced.
Bellenos stretched out on the bed beside Dermot and kissed him.
I’d certainly never thought of curing a head wound that way. If my lack of knowledge of fae ways had been a surprise to him, this was a surprise to
me.
After a second I understood that though their mouths were together, the elf was breathing the air in his own lungs into Dermot. After detaching to
take in another lungful, Bellenos repeated the procedure.
I tried to imagine a human doctor treating a patient this way. Lawsuit! Though I could tell it wasn’t sexual—well, not overtly—this was a little too
personal for me. This might be a good time to clean up. I collected the used sterile wipes and bandage wrappers to pitch into the kitchen trash can,
and while I was by myself, I took the time to have a snit.
Yeah, fae magic was probably great, when you used it. Amelia’s spells might have been human and therefore inferior, but they’d been in place to
protect me. Until Dermot had removed them . . . and left me with nothing at all. “Jackass,” I muttered, and scrubbed the counter with enough
pressure to kill any germs by force. That was about as mad as I could get, since Dermot’s mistaken sense of superiority had ended with his
incurring a severe head injury.
“He’s resting and healing. Very soon, he and I have things we must do,” Bellenos said. He’d come into the kitchen behind me without my sensing
so much as a change in the air. He really enjoyed watching me jump. He laughed, which was weird, because he did it with his mouth wide as if he
were panting. His laugh was more a breathy “heeheehee” than the human guffaw.
“He’s able to move?” I was delighted, but surprised.
“Yes,” Bellenos said. “Besides, he tells me you have vampires coming later, and he would need to be elsewhere, anyway.”
At least Bellenos didn’t chide me for expecting vampire guests, and he also didn’t ask me to cancel my plans to accommodate Dermot’s injury.
I’d considered calling Eric’s cell phone to postpone our powwow. But I thought that it was entirely possible that Hod and Kelvin were part and
parcel of the same struggle, albeit a clumsy part.
“Wait here for a minute, please,” I said politely, and I went to talk to Dermot. He was propped up on the bed, and I spared a second to thank
Amelia for making it before she left, though I needed to change the sheets, but I could do that at my leisure—okay, time to stop making
housekeeping notes, since Dermot was looking all pale and brave. When I sat by him, he took me in a surprisingly strong embrace. I returned it with
interest.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” I said. I bypassed the whole warding issue. “Are you sure you want to go to Monroe? Will they really take care of
you? I can cancel the thing for tonight. I’d be glad to nurse you.”
Dermot was silent for a moment. I could feel him breathing in my arms, and the smell of his skin surrounded me. Naturally he didn’t smell like
Jason, though they could have been twins.
“Thanks for not ripping me a new one,” he said. “See, I’ve mastered modern human speech.” He managed a real smile. “I’ll see you later.
Bellenos and I have an errand to complete.”
“You need to take it easy. You were hurt pretty bad. How are you feeling?”
“Better by the moment. Bellenos has shared his breath with me, and I’m excited about the hunt.”
Okay, I didn’t quite understand that, but if he was pleased, I was pleased. Before I could ask him questions, he said, “I failed you about the wards,
and I didn’t stop the intruders. While I lay there, I feared they’d found you.”
“You shouldn’t have worried about me,” I said, and I was sincere, though I was sure grateful he had. “I hid over at Bill’s and they didn’t find me.”
While Dermot and I were hugging each other, an embrace that was lasting a bit too long, I could hear Bellenos outside. He was circling the house
in the rain (which had begun again) and darkness, and his voice rose and fell. I could only catch snatches of what he was saying, but it was in that
other language and its meaning was lost on me. Dermot seemed satisfied, and that was reassuring.
“I’ll make this up to you,” Dermot said, releasing me gently.
“No need,” I said. “I’m good, and since you didn’t have any permanent damage, we’ll just say that was a learning experience.” As in, Don’t erase
wards without putting in new ones.
Dermot stood, and he seemed very steady on his feet. His eyes were shining. He looked . . . excited, as if he were going to a birthday party or
something.
“Don’t you need a raincoat?” I suggested.
Dermot laughed, put his hands on my shoulders, and kissed me. My heart leaped in shock, but I recognized the stance. He was breathing into
me.
For a few seconds I thought I’d strangle or suffocate, but somehow I didn’t, and then it was over.
He smiled down at me and then he was gone. I heard the back doors slam after him, and I turned to the window to see a blur as he and Bellenos
disappeared into the dark woods.
I couldn’t think of anything to do after such a crisis. I got the blood off the floor in the attic, I put the shawl in the kitchen sink to soak in some
Woolite, and I changed the sheets in the guest bedroom.
After that I showered. I needed to wash the fairy scent off me before Eric and Pam got here. Besides, after being rain soaked, my hair was just a
mass of nastiness. I got dressed—again—and sat down for a minute or two in the living room, to watch the Weather Channel gloating over the big
storm.
The next thing I knew, I was waking up with sand in my mouth. The Weather Channel was still on, and Eric and Pam were knocking at the front
door.
I staggered over to unlock it, as stiff as though someone had kicked me while I slept. I was feeling the result of my desperate run through the rain.
“What’s happened?” Eric asked, holding my shoulders and giving me a narrow-eyed look. Pam was sniffing the air, her blond head thrown back
dramatically. She gave me a sideways grin. “Ooooh, who’s been entertaining . . . Wait . . . An elf, a fairy, and Bill?”
“You been taking tracking lessons from Heidi?” I asked weakly.
“As a matter of fact, I have,” she said. “There’s an art to drawing in air to sample it, since we no longer need to breathe.”
Eric was still waiting, and not patiently.
I remembered I’d bought them some bottled blood, and I went to the kitchen to heat it up with the two vampires trailing behind. While I was taking
care of the hospitality portion of the evening, I gave them the Reader’s Digest version of my adventure.
Someone knocked on the back door.
The air turned electric. Pam glided over to the door onto the porch, unlocked it, went out to the back door. “Yes?” I heard her say.
There was a muffled answer in a deep voice. Bellenos.
“Sookie, you’re wanted!” Pam sang out. She seemed very amused by something.
I was curious as I stepped out on the porch, Eric right behind me.
“Oh, she’ll be so impressed,” Pam was saying, sounding as pleased as I did when someone brought me some fresh produce from his garden.
“How very thoughtful.” She stepped aside so I could appreciate my presents.
Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea.
My great-uncle Dermot and Bellenos were standing in the dripping rain, each holding a severed head.
Let me just say here that normally I have quite a strong stomach, but the rain wasn’t the only thing that was dripping, and the heads were face
forward so I got a good look at each face. The sight overcame me in a very drastic way. I turned and dashed for my bathroom, slamming the door
behind me. I retched and ralphed and panted until I’d recovered a bit of my equilibrium. Naturally, I needed to brush my teeth and wash my face and
comb my hair after losing everything in my stomach . . . though it hadn’t been much, because I simply couldn’t remember how long it had been since
I’d eaten. I’d had the biscuit for breakfast. . . . Oh. No wonder I’d been sick. I hadn’t eaten anything since then. I’m a girl who likes her meals, so it
hadn’t been a weight-loss tactic. I’d just been too busy bumping from crisis to crisis. Go on the Sookie Stackhouse Narrow Avoidance of Death
Diet! Run for your life, and miss meals, too! Exercise plus starvation.
Pam and Eric were waiting in the kitchen.
“They left,” Pam said, holding up a bottle of blood in a toast. “They were sorry it was too much for your human sensibility. I’m assuming you didn’t
want to keep the trophies?”
I felt a need to defend myself, but I bit it back. I refused to be ashamed of getting sick after seeing something so horrible. I’d seen a detached
vampire head, but it hadn’t had the ghastly touches. I took a deep breath. “No, I didn’t want to keep the heads. Kelvin and Hod, rest in peace.”
“Those were their names? That’ll help in finding out who hired them,” Pam said, looking pleased.
“Um. Where are they?” I asked, trying not to look too anxious.
“Do you mean your great-uncle and his elf buddy, or do you mean the heads, or do you mean the bodies?” Eric asked.
“Both. All three.” I got myself some ice and poured some Diet Coke over it. People had told me for years that carbonated drinks settled your
stomach. I was hoping they were right.
“Dermot and Bellenos have left for Monroe. Dermot got to anoint his wound with the blood of his enemies, which is a tradition among the fae.
Bellenos, of course, got to take the heads off, which is an elf tradition. They were both very happy in consequence.”
“I’m glad for them,” I said automatically, and thought, What the hell am I saying? “I should tell Bill. I wonder if they found the car?”
“They found four-wheelers,” Pam said. “I think they had an excellent time driving them.” Pam looked envious.
I was almost able to smile, imagining that. “So, the bodies?”
“They’ve been dealt with,” Eric said. “Though I think the two of them took the heads back to Monroe to show the other fae. But they’ll destroy them
there.”
“Oh,” Pam said suddenly, and leaped up. “Dermot left their papers.” She returned with two wet wallets and some odds and ends heaped in her
hands. I spread a kitchen towel out on the table, and she dumped the items onto it. I tried not to notice the bloodstains on the bits of paper. I opened
the leather billfold first and extracted a driver’s license. “Hod Mayfield,” I said. “From Clarice. He was twenty-four.” I pulled out a picture of a woman,
presumably the Marge they’d been talking about. She was definitely queen-sized, and she was wearing her dark hair up in a teased style that was
what you might call dated. Her smile was open and sweet.
No pictures of children, thank God.
A hunter’s license, a few receipts, an insurance card. “That means he had a regular job,” I said to the vampires, who never needed hospitalization
or life insurance. And Hod had three hundred dollars.
“Gosh,” I said. “That seems like a lot.” All crisp twenties, too.
“Some of our employees don’t have a checking account,” Pam said. “They cash their paychecks every time and live on a cash basis.”
“Yeah, I know people who do that, too.” Terry Bellefleur, for example, who thought banks were run by a Communist cartel. “But this money is all
twenties, right from the machine. Might be a payoff.”
Kelvin turned out to be a Mayfield, too. Cousin, brother? Kelvin was also from Clarice. He was older, twenty-seven. His billfold did contain
pictures of children, three of them. Crap. Without comment, I laid the school shots out with the other items. Kelvin also had a condom, a free drink
card for Vic’s Redneck Roadhouse, and a card for an auto body shop. A few worn dollar bills, and the same crisp three hundred that Hod had had.
These were guys I could have passed dozens of times when I’d been shopping in Clarice. I might have played softball against their sisters or
wives. I might have served them drinks at Merlotte’s. What were they doing trying to kidnap me? “I guess they could have taken me up to Clarice
through the woods, on the four-wheelers,” I said out loud. “But what would they have done with me then? I thought one of them . . . Through his
thoughts I caught a glimpse of an idea about a car trunk.” It had only been fleeting, but I shuddered. I’d been in a car trunk before, and it hadn’t
ended well for me. It was a memory I blocked out resolutely.
Possibly Eric was thinking about the same event because he glanced out the window toward Bill’s house. “Who do you think sent them, Sookie?”
he asked, and he made a huge effort to keep his voice calm and patient.
“I sure can’t question them to find out,” I muttered, and Pam laughed.
I gathered my thoughts, such as they were. The fog of my two-hour nap had finally lifted, and I tried to make some sense out of the evening’s
strange occurrences. “If Kelvin and Hod had been from Shreveport, I’d think that Sandra Pelt had hired them after she escaped from the hospital,” I
said. “She doesn’t mind using up the lives of others, not a bit. I’m sure she hired the guys who came to the bar last Saturday. And I’m also sure
she’s the one who threw the firebomb at Merlotte’s before that.”
“We’ve had eyes looking for her in Shreveport, but no one’s spotted her,” Eric said.
“So this Sandra’s goal,” Pam said, pulling her straight pale hair behind her shoulders to braid it, “is to destroy you, your place of work, and
anything else that gets in her way.”
“That sounds about right. But evidently she’s not behind this. I have too many enemies.”
“Charming,” Pam said.
“How’s your friend?” I asked. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask before.”
Pam gave me a straight look. “She’s going to pass soon,” she said. “I’m running out of options, and I’m running out of hope that the process can
be legal.”
Eric’s cell phone rang, and he got up to walk into the hall to take it. “Yes?” he said curtly. Then his voice changed. “Your Majesty,” he said, and he
walked quickly into the living room so I couldn’t hear.
I wouldn’t have thought so much about it if I hadn’t seen Pam’s face. She was looking at me, and her expression was clearly one of . . . pity.
“What?” I said, the hair on the back of my neck rising. “What’s up? If he said ‘Your Majesty,’ that’s Felipe calling, huh? That should be good . . .
right?”
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “He’d kill me. He doesn’t even want you to know there’s anything to know, if you can pick up what I’m putting down.”
“Pam. Tell me.”
“I can’t,” she repeated. “You need to be looking out for yourself, Sookie.”
I looked at her with fierce intensity. I couldn’t will her mouth to open, and I didn’t have the strength to hold her down on the kitchen table and
demand the facts from her.
Where could reason get me? Okay, Pam liked me. The only people she liked better were Eric and her Miriam. If there was something she
couldn’t tell me, it had to be associated with Eric. If Eric had been human, I would’ve thought he had some dread disease. If Eric had lost all his
assets in the stock market or some such financial calamity, Pam knew that money was not my ruling concern. What was the only thing I valued?
His love.
Eric had someone else.
I stood up without knowing I was standing, the chair clattering to the floor behind me. I wanted to reach into Pam’s brain and yank out the details.
Now I understood very clearly why Eric had gone for her in this same room the night he’d brought Immanuel over. She’d wanted to tell me then and
he’d forbidden her to speak.
Alarmed by the noise of the chair bouncing on the floor, Eric came running into the room, the phone still held to his ear. I was standing with my
fists clenched, glaring at him. My heart was lurching around in my chest like a frog on a griddle.
“Excuse me,” he said into the phone. “There is a crisis. I’ll return your call later.” He snapped his phone shut.
“Pam,” he said. “I am very angry with you. I am seriously angry with you. Leave this house now and remain silent.”
With a posture I had never seen before, hunched and humbled, Pam scrambled up from her chair and out the back door. I wondered if she’d see
Bubba in the woods. Or Bill. Or maybe there’d be fairies. Or some more kidnappers. A homicidal maniac! You never knew what you’d find in my
woods.
I didn’t say a word. I waited. I felt like my eyes were shooting flames.
“I love you,” he said.
I waited.
“My maker, Appius Livius Ocella”—the dead Appius Livius Ocella—“was in the process of making a match for me before he died,” Eric said. “He
mentioned it to me during his stay, but I didn’t realize the process had gone as far as it had when he died. I thought I could ignore it. That his death
canceled it out.”
I waited. I could not read his face, and without the bond, I could only see that he was covering his emotion with a hard face.
“This isn’t much done anymore, though it used to be the norm. Makers used to find matches for their children. They’d receive a fee if it was an
advantageous union, if each half could supply something the other lacked. It was mostly a business arrangement.”
I raised my eyebrows. At the only vampire wedding I’d witnessed, there’d been plenty of evidence of physical passion, though I’d been told the
couple wouldn’t be spending all their time together.
Eric looked abashed, an expression I’d never thought to see on his face.
“Of course, it has to be consummated,” he said.
I waited for the coup de grace. Maybe the ground would open up and swallow him first. It didn’t.
“I’d have to put you aside,” he admitted. “It’s not done, to have a human wife and a vampire wife. Especially if the wife is the Queen of Oklahoma.
The vampire wife must be the only one.” He looked away, his face stiff with a resentment he’d never expressed before. “I know you’ve always
insisted that you weren’t my true wife, so presumably that would not be so difficult for you.”
Like hell.
He looked at my face as if he were reading a map. “Though I believe it would be,” he said softly. “Sookie, I swear to you that since I received the
letter, I have done everything I could to stop this. I have pleaded that Ocella’s death should cancel the arrangement; I have said that I’m happy where
I am; I have even put forward our marriage as a bar. And as my regent, Victor could plead that his wishes supersede those of Ocella, and that I’m
too useful to him to leave the state.”
“Oh, no.” I found myself finally able to speak, though only in a whisper.
“Oh, yes,” Eric said bitterly. “I’ve appealed to Felipe, but I haven’t heard from him. Oklahoma is one of the rulers eyeing his throne. He may want to
placate her. In the meantime, she calls me every week, offering me a share of her kingdom if I’ll come to her.”
“So, she’s met you face-to-face.” My voice was a little stronger.
“Yes,” he said. “She was at the summit in Rhodes to make a deal with the King of Tennessee about a prisoner exchange.”
Did I remember her? When I was calmer, I might. There’d been several queens there, and not an ugly one among ’em. There were a thousand
questions crowding to get out of my head and into my mouth, but I clamped my lips shut. This was not a time to speak, but a time to listen.
I believed this arrangement hadn’t been his idea. And now I understood what Appius had told me when he was about to die. He’d told me I’d
never keep Eric. He’d died happy about that, that he’d arranged such an advantageous connection for his beloved son, one that would take Eric
away from the lowly human he loved. If he’d been in front of me, I’d have killed Appius again and enjoyed it.
In the middle of this brooding, and while Eric was saying everything all over again, a white face peered in the kitchen window. Eric could see from
my face that something was behind him, and he whipped around so quickly I didn’t see him move. To my relief, the face was familiar.
“Let him in,” I said, and Eric went to the back door.
Bubba was in the kitchen a second later, bending over to kiss my hand. “Hey, pretty lady,” he said, beaming at me. Bubba had one of the most
recognizable faces in the world, though his heyday had been fifty years before.
“Good to see you,” I said, and I meant it. Bubba had some bad habits, because he was a bad vampire; he’d been too soaked in drugs when he’d
been brought over, and the spark of life had been almost extinct. Two seconds later, it would have been too late. But a morgue attendant in
Memphis, a vampire, had been so overwhelmed at seeing him that he’d brought the King over. Then, vampires had been secret creatures of the
night, not on the cover of every other magazine the way they are now. Under the name “Bubba” he’d been passed around from kingdom to
kingdom, given simple tasks to do to earn his keep, and every now and then on memorable nights, he wanted to sing. He was very fond of Bill, less
attached to Eric, but Bubba understood the protocol well enough to be polite.
“Miss Pam is outside,” Bubba said, looking sideways at Eric. “You and Mr. Eric doing okay in here?”
Bless his heart, he suspected Eric was hurting me, and he’d come in to check. Bubba was right; Eric was hurting me but not physically. I felt as
though I were standing on the edge of a cliff, narrowly avoiding taking the step off the edge. I was pretty numb, but that wasn’t going to last.
At this interesting moment a knock at the front door announced the arrival of (I hoped) Audrina and Colton, our co-conspirators. I went to the door,
the two vampires behind me. Feeling absolutely secure in doing so, I opened the front door. Sure enough, the human couple was standing on the
front porch waiting, and each of them was gripped by a dripping, grim Pam. Pam’s blond straight hair was darker with rain and hanging in rattails.
She looked like she could spit nails.
“Please come in,” I said politely. “And you, too, Pam.” After all, it was my house and she was my friend. “We need to put our heads together.” I
thought of adding, “Though not literally,” when I flashed on the heads of Hod and Kelvin, but Audrina and Colton looked pretty frightened already. It
was one thing to talk big in your trailer all alone. It was another thing to meet with desperate and terrifying people in a lonely house out in the woods.
As I turned away to lead them to the kitchen, I decided to put out some drinks, a bucket of ice, and maybe a bowl of chips and dip.
It was time to get this assassination party started.
I’d think about other deaths later.
Chapter 13
Audrina and Colton obviously couldn’t decide what was more amazing: the threat of a sodden and beautiful (but menacing) Pam or the ruin of
glory that was Bubba. They’d expected Eric, but Bubba was a complete surprise.
They were entranced. Though I whispered to them on our way through the living room not to call him by his real name, I didn’t know if they’d have
enough self-control. Luckily for us all, they did. Bubba really, really, didn’t like being reminded of his past life. He had to be in a remarkable mood to
sing.
Wait. Ha! Finally, I had a real idea.
They all sat around the table. Absorbed in figuring out my scheme, I got out the refreshments and pulled up a chair by Bubba. I had a floaty,
surrealistic feeling. I simply couldn’t think about the crash and burn I’d just experienced. I had to think about this moment and this purpose.
Pam sat behind Eric so they wouldn’t meet each other’s eyes. They both looked miserable, and it was a look I’d seldom seen either of them
wear. It didn’t look good on them. I felt somehow guilty about the breach between them, though it certainly wasn’t my fault. Or was it? I ran it through
my mind. Nope, it wasn’t.
Eric proposed that he infiltrate his vampires into Vampire’s Kiss one night in disguise, and that they wait until the club was about to close and the
crowds were thin. Then we would attack. And, of course, kill them all.
If Victor hadn’t been an employee of Felipe, king of three states, Eric’s scheme would have been workable, though there were some definite
weak points. But surely killing a bunch of his vampires would piss off Felipe mightily, and I really couldn’t blame him.
Audrina had a plan, too, involving discovering Victor’s sleeping place and getting him while he was out for the day. Wow, that was fresh and
original. However, it was a classic for a reason. Victor would be helpless.
“Except we don’t know where he sleeps,” I said, trying to slide the objection in there without sounding snooty.
“I do,” Audrina said proudly. “He sleeps in a big stone mansion. It’s set back from a parish road between Musgrave and Toniton. There’s one lone
road in, and that’s it. There aren’t any trees around the house. It’s just grass.”
“Wow.” I was impressed. “How’d you track him down?”
“I know the guy who mows the yard,” she said. She grinned at me. “Dusty Kolinchek, remember him?”
“Sure,” I said, feeling a stir of interest. Dusty’s dad owned a fleet—okay, a small fleet—of lawn tractors and weed eaters, and every summer a
group of Bon Temps high school boys earned their walking-around money working for Mr. Kolinchek. Dusty was inheriting the lawn-mowing empire,
sounded like.
“He says that the house is almost empty during the day because Victor is paranoid about having anyone come in while he’s sleeping. He just has
two bodyguards there, Dixie and Dixon Mayhew, and they’re some kind of wereanimals.”
“I know them,” I said. “They’re werepanthers. They’re good.” The Mayhew twins were tough and professional. “They must be strapped for cash to
work for a vampire.” Now that my sister-in-law was dead and Calvin Norris had married Tanya Grissom, I didn’t see many of the werepanthers with
any frequency. Calvin didn’t come into the bar much, and Jason seemed to see his former in-laws only at the full moon, when he became one of
them . . . in a limited way, since he’d been bitten, not born, as a were.
“So maybe I could bribe the Mayhews if they’re that hard up,” Eric said. “You wouldn’t need to kill them, then. Less mess. But you humans would
have to do the job, since Pam and I will be down for the day.”
“We’d have to search the house, because I bet the Mayhews don’t know exactly where he sleeps,” I said. “Though I’m sure they have to have a
pretty good idea.” The vampire smell alone should help the twoeys zone in on where Victor slept, but it seemed kind of tacky to say that out loud.
Pam kind of waved her hand. Eric half turned, catching the motion out of the corner of his eye. “What?” he said. “Oh, you can speak.”
Pam looked relieved. She said, “I think when he leaves the club in the morning would be a good time. His attention is on whoever he’s going to
feed on, and we might be able to attack then.”
These were all pretty straightforward plans, and maybe that was both their strength and their weakness. They were simple. And that meant they
were predictable. Eric’s plan was the bloodiest, of course. There would certainly be loss of life. Audrina and Colton’s plan was the most human,
since it depended on a day attack. Pam’s was possibly the best, since it was a night attack but not in a heavily peopled area, though the club exit
was so obviously the weakest point that I felt sure whatever vampires Victor used as bodyguards—maybe the toothsome Antonio and Luis?—
would be extra vigilant at such a moment.
“I have a plan,” I said.
It was like I’d suddenly stood up and unhooked my bra. They all looked at me simultaneously, with a combination of surprise and skepticism. I will
say that most of the skepticism came from Audrina and Colton, who hardly knew me. Bubba had been sitting on the high stool beside the counter,
sipping a TrueBlood with an unsatisfied air. He looked pleased when I pointed to him and said, “He’s the way.”
I laid out my idea, trying hard to sound confident, and when I was through, they began trying to poke holes in it. And Bubba was reluctant, at least
initially.
In the end, Bubba said he would do it if Mr. Bill said it was a good idea. I phoned Bill. He was over in a flash, and the look he gave me when I let
him in told me he was enjoying remembering how I looked wrapped in a tablecloth. Or even before I’d found the tablecloth. With an effort, I
swallowed my confusion and explained everything to him. And after a few embellishments had been added, he agreed.
We went over the order of events again and again, trying to allow for every contingency. By three thirty in the morning, we were all in agreement. I
was so tired I was asleep on my feet, and Audrina and Colton were barely able to stifle their yawns. Pam, who’d been stepping out of the room to
call Immanuel periodically, preceded Eric out the door. She was anxious to get to the hospital. Bill and Bubba had departed for Bill’s house, where
Bubba would spend the day. I was alone with Eric.
We looked at each other, both at a loss. I tried to put myself in his place, feel what he must feel, but I simply couldn’t do it. I couldn’t imagine that,
say, my grandmother had decided who I should marry and then passed away, fully expecting me to carry out her wishes. I couldn’t imagine that I had
to follow directions from beyond the grave, leave my home and go to a new place with people I didn’t know, have sex with a stranger, simply
because someone else had wanted me to.
Even, a little voice said inside me, if the stranger was beautiful and wealthy and politically astute?
No, I told myself stoutly. Not even then.
“Can you put yourself in my place?” Eric asked, chiming in on my thoughts. We knew each other pretty well, without the bond. He took my hand
and held it between his cold ones.
“No, actually, I can’t,” I said, as evenly as I could manage. “I’ve been trying. But I’m not used to that sort of long-distance manipulation. Even after
death, Appius is controlling you, and I just can’t picture myself in that position.”
“Americans,” Eric said, and I couldn’t decide if he said it admiringly or with a mild exasperation.
“Not just Americans, Eric.”
“I feel very old.”
“You are very old-fashioned.” He was ancient-fashioned.
“I can’t ignore a signed document,” he said, almost angrily. “He made an agreement for me, and I was his to order. He created me.”
What could I say, in the face of such conviction? “I’m so glad he’s dead,” I told Eric, not caring that my bitterness was written on my face. Eric
looked sad, or at least regretful, but there was nothing else to say. Eric didn’t mention spending what was left of the night with me, which was smart
on his part.
After he left, I began checking all the windows and doors in the house. Since so many people had been in and out that day and night, it seemed a
good idea. I wasn’t too surprised to see Bill out in the yard when I was locking the kitchen window over the sink.
Though he didn’t beckon to me, I took my weary self outside.
“What has Eric done to you?” he said.
I condensed the situation into a few sentences.
“What a dilemma,” Bill said, not totally displeased.
“So you’d feel the way Eric does?”
In an eerie echo, Bill took my hand just as Eric had earlier. “Not only did Appius already enter negotiations, so there are presumably legal
documents on the table, but also I would have to give my maker’s wishes some consideration—as much as I hate to acknowledge that. You have no
idea how strong the bond is. The years spent with one’s maker are the most important years of a vampire’s existence. As loathsome as I found
Lorena, I have to admit that she did her best to teach me to be an effective vampire. Looking back on her life now—Judith and I talked about this, of
course—Lorena betrayed her own maker, and then had years and years to regret it. The guilt drove her mad, we think.”
Well, I was glad Bill and Judith had gotten to talk over fun times in the old days with Mama Lorena—murderess, prostitute, torturer. I couldn’t really
hold the prostitute part against her, since there hadn’t been that many ways for a woman alone to make a living in the old times, even a vampire
woman. But the rest—no matter what her circumstances had been, no matter how hard her life before and after her first death, Lorena had been an
evil bitch. I pulled my hand away from Bill.
“Good night,” I said. “I’m overdue for bed.”
“Are you angry with me?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I’m just tired and sad.”
“I love you,” Bill said helplessly, as if he wished those magic words would heal me. But he knew they wouldn’t.
“That’s what you all keep saying,” I answered. “But it doesn’t seem to get me any happier.” I didn’t know if I had a valid point or if I was simply
being self-pitying, but it was too late at night—no, too early in the morning—to have the clarity of mind to decide that. A few minutes later, I crawled
into my bed in an empty house, and being alone felt pretty damn good.
I woke up at noon on Friday with two pressing thoughts. The first was, Did Dermot renew my wards? And the second was, Oh my God, the baby
shower is tomorrow!
After some coffee and pulling on my clothes, I called Hooligans. Bellenos answered.
“Hi,” I said. “Can I speak to Dermot? Is he better?”
“He’s well,” Bellenos said. “But he’s on his way to your house.”
“Oh, good! Listen, maybe you’ll know this. . . . Did he renew the wards on the house, or am I unprotected?”
“God forbid you should be with a fairy unprotected,” Bellenos said, trying to sound serious.
“No double entendres!”
“Okay, okay,” he said, and I could tell he was flashing that sharptoothed smile. “I myself put wards around your house, and I assure you they will
hold.”
“Thanks, Bellenos,” I said, but I wasn’t completely happy that someone I trusted as little as Bellenos had been in charge of my protection.
“You’re welcome. Despite your doubts, I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“That’s good to know,” I said, keeping all expression out of my voice.
Bellenos laughed. “If you get too lonely out there in the woods, you can always call me,” he said.
“Hmmm,” I said. “Thanks.” Was the elf coming on to me? That made no sense. More likely he wanted to eat me, and not in the fun way.
Maybe better not to know. I wondered how Dermot was getting here but not enough to call Bellenos again.
Reassured that Dermot was returning, I studied my list of shower preparations. I’d asked Maxine Fortenberry to make the punch, because hers
was famous. I was picking up the cake from the bakery. I didn’t have to work today or tomorrow, which meant a big loss in tips, but it was turning out
real convenient. So my to-do list was like: Today, complete all preparations for the baby shower. Tonight, kill Victor. Tomorrow, guests arrive for
shower.
In the meantime, like any incipient hostess, I was going to be all about the cleaning. My living room was still below par since the attic stuff had
been sitting in it, and I started from the top down: dust the pictures, then the furniture, then the baseboards. Then vacuum. I worked my way down the
hall, visiting my bedroom, the guest bedroom, and the hall bathroom. I got a squirt bottle of all-purpose cleaner and attacked the kitchen surfaces. I
was about to mop the floors when I saw Dermot in the backyard. He’d driven back in a battered Chevy compact.
“Where’d you get the car?” I called from the back porch.
“I bought it,” he said proudly.
I hoped he hadn’t used fairy enchantment or something. I was scared to ask. “Let me see your head,” I said, when he got into the house. I looked
at the back of his skull where the gash had been. A thin white line, that was all. “Amazing,” I said. “How do you feel?”
“Better than I did yesterday. I’m ready to get back to work.” He went into the living room. “You’re cleaning,” he said. “Is there a special occasion?”
“Yes,” I said, smacking myself on the forehead. “I’m so sorry I forgot to tell you. I’m giving Tara Thornton—Tara du Rone—a baby shower
tomorrow. She’s expecting twins, Claude believes. Oh, she got that confirmed.”
“Can I come?” he asked.
“It’s all right with me,” I said, taken aback. Most human guys would rather have their toenails painted than come to such a party. “You’ll be the only
man there, but I assume that won’t bother you?”
“Sounds great,” he said, smiling that beautiful smile.
“You’ll have to keep your ears covered and listen to about a million comments about how much you look like Jason,” I said. “We’ll need to explain
you.”
“Just tell them I’m your great-uncle,” he said.
For one fun moment, I envisioned doing just that. I had to give it up, though with some regret. “You look much too young to be my great-uncle, and
everyone here knows my family tree. The human part of it,” I added hastily. “But I’ll think of something.”
While I vacuumed, Dermot looked at the big box of pictures and the smaller one of printed material that I hadn’t yet had a chance to go over. He
seemed fascinated by the pictures. “We don’t use this technology,” he said.
I sat beside him when I’d put the vacuum away. I’d tried to arrange the images in chronological order, but it had been a hasty task, and I was sure
I’d have to redo it.
The pictures at the front of the box were very old. People sitting in stiff groups, their backs rigid, their faces, too. If the backs were labeled, it was
in spidery formal handwriting. Many of the men were bearded or mustached, and they wore hats and ties. The women were confined in long sleeves
and skirts, and their posture was amazing.
Gradually as the Stackhouse family rolled along in time, the pictures became less posed, more spontaneous. The clothing morphed along with
attitudes. Color began to tint faces and scenery. Dermot seemed genuinely interested, so I explained the background on some of the more recent
snapshots. One was of a very old man holding a baby swathed in pink. “That’s me and one of my great-grandfathers; he died when I was little bitty,”
I said. “That’s him and his wife when they were in their fifties. And this is my grandmother Adele and her husband.”
“No,” Dermot said. “That’s my brother Fintan.”
“No, this is my grandfather, Mitchell. Look at him.”
“He is your grandfather. Your true grandfather. Fintan.”
“How can you tell?”
“He’s made himself to look like Adele’s husband, but I can tell it’s my brother. He was my twin, after all, though we were not identical. Look here at
his feet. His feet are smaller than those of the man who married Adele. Fintan was always careless that way.”
I spread out all the pictures of Grandmother and Grandfather Stackhouse. Fintan was in about a third of them. I’d suspected from her letter that
Fintan had been around more than she’d realized, but this was just creepy. In every picture of Fintan-as-Mitchell, he was smiling broadly.
“She didn’t know about this, for sure,” I said. Dermot looked dubious. And I had to admit to myself that she had suspected. It was there, in her
letter.
“He was playing one of his jokes,” Dermot said fondly. “Fintan was a great one for jokes.”
“But . . .” I hesitated, not sure how to phrase what I wanted to say. “You get that this was really wrong?” I said. “You understand that he was
deceiving her on a couple of different levels?”
“She agreed to be lovers with him,” Dermot said. “He was very fond of her. What difference does it make?”
“It makes a lot of difference,” I said. “If she thought she was with one man when she was with another, that’s a huge deception.”
“But a harmless one, surely? After all, even you agree she loved both men, had sex with both of them willingly. So,” he asked again, “what
difference does it make?”
I stared at him doubtfully. No matter how she felt about her husband or her lover, I still thought there was a moral issue here. In fact, I knew there
was. Dermot didn’t seem to be able to discern that. I wondered if my great-grandfather would agree with me or with Dermot. I had a sinking feeling I
knew.
“I better get back to work,” I said, with a tight smile. “Got to mop the kitchen. You going to get back to work in the attic?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “I love the machinery,” he said.
“Please close the attic door, then, because I’ve dusted down here and I don’t want to have to do that again before tomorrow afternoon.”
“Sure, Sookie.”
Dermot went up the stairs whistling. It was a tune I’d never heard before, which figured.
I gathered up the pictures, keeping separate the ones that Dermot had earmarked as featuring his brother. I was considering building a little fire
with them. Up in the attic, the sander started up. I looked at the ceiling as if I could see Dermot through the boards. Then I shook myself and went
back to work, but in an abstracted and uneasy mood.
When I was standing on a stepladder hanging the WELCOME BABY sign from the light fixture, I remembered I had to iron my greatgrandmother’s
tablecloth. I hate ironing, but it had to be done, and better today than tomorrow. When the stepladder was put away, I opened the
ironing board—there’d been a built-in one in the previous kitchen—and set to work. The tablecloth was not exactly white anymore. It had aged to
ivory. I soon had it smooth and beautiful, and touching it reminded me of high occasions in the past. I’d seen pictures including this very piece of
cloth today; it had been on the kitchen table or the old sideboard for Thanksgivings and Christmases and wedding showers and anniversaries. I
loved my family, and I loved those memories. I only regretted that there were so few of us to recall them.
And I was aware of another truth, another real thing. I realized I really didn’t appreciate the fairy sense of fun that had made a lie out of some of
those memories.
By three that afternoon, the house was as close to ready as I could get it. The sideboard was draped with the tablecloth, the paper plates and
napkins were out, the plastic forks and spoons. I’d polished the silver nut dish and a little tray for the cheese straws, which I’d made and frozen a
couple of weeks before. I ran down my checklist. I was as ready as I could possibly be.
If I didn’t survive tonight, I was afraid that the baby shower would be a bust. I had to assume that my friends would be too jangled to go ahead with
the shower if I got killed. Just in case, I left detailed notes about the location of everything that wasn’t already out. I even brought out my present for
the babies, matching wicker baskets that could be used as traveling cribs. They were decorated with big gingham bows and packed full of useful
stuff. I’d accumulated the items for the gift baskets on sale, bit by bit. Bottles for supplemental feeding, a baby thermometer, a few toys, a few
receiving blankets, some picture books, bibs, a package of cloth diapers for use as spit-up rags. It felt strange to think that I might not be around to
see the babies grow up.
It also felt strange that paying for the shower hadn’t been such a financial hardship, thanks to the money in my savings account.
Suddenly, I had an amazing idea. That made two in two days. As soon as I’d worked it out in my head, I was in my car and on my way to town. It
felt weird walking into Merlotte’s on my day off. Sam looked surprised but pleased to see me. He was in his office with a stack of bills in front of him.
I put another piece of paper on his desk. He looked at it. “What is this?” he said in a low voice.
“You know what it is. Don’t you give me that, Sam Merlotte. You need money. I’ve got money. You put this in your account today. You use it to pull
the bar through until times are better.”
“I can’t take this, Sookie.” He didn’t meet my eyes.
“The hell you can’t, Sam. Look at me.”
Finally, he did.
“I’m not kidding. You put it in the bank today,” I said. “And if anything might happen to me, you can repay my estate within, say, five years.”
“Why would anything happen to you?” Sam’s face darkened.
“Nothing will. I’m just saying. It’s irresponsible to loan money without making arrangements to pay it back. I’m calling my lawyer and telling him all
this, and he’ll draw up a paper. But right now, right this minute, you go to the bank.”
Sam looked away. I could feel the emotions sweeping over him. Truly, it felt wonderful to do something nice for him. He’d done so many nice
things for me. He said, “All right.” I could tell it was hard for him, as it would be for almost any man, but he knew it was the sensible thing to do, and
he knew it wasn’t charity.
“It’s a love offering,” I said, grinning at him. “Like we took up at church last Sunday.” That love offering had been for the missionaries in Uganda,
and this one was for Merlotte’s Bar.
“I’d believe that,” he said, and met my eyes.
I kept my smile, but I began to feel a little self-conscious. “I have to go get ready,” I said.
“What for?” His reddish eyebrows drew together.
“Tara’s baby shower,” I said. “It’s an old-fashioned gals-only party, so you didn’t get invited.”
“I’ll try to contain my misery,” he said. He didn’t move.
“Are you getting up to go to the bank?” I asked sweetly.
“Uh, yeah, getting up right now.” He did get out of the chair and call down the hall to let the servers know he was running a quick errand. I got in my
car at the same time he got in his truck. I don’t know about Sam, but I was feeling really good.
I did stop by my lawyer’s to tell him what I’d done. This would be my human, local lawyer, not Mr. Cataliades. Whom, by the way, I hadn’t heard
from.
I swung by Maxine’s house to get the punch, thanked her profusely, left her a list of what I was going to do and had done for the shower
arrangements (to her puzzlement), and took the frozen containers back to my house to pop in the little chest freezer on my back porch. I had the
ginger ale set out on the counter to mix with the frozen juices.
I was as prepared as I could be for the baby shower.
Now I had to get ready to kill Victor.
Chapter 14
Sam called me as I was putting on my makeup.
“Hi, I said. “You got the check to the bank, yes?”
“Yes,” he said. “Since you told me like a million times. No problem there. I’m calling to tell you I just got a very weird phone call from your friend
Amelia. She said she was calling me because you wouldn’t want to talk to her. She said it was about that thing you found. She looked it up. The
cluviel dor?” He sounded it out very carefully.
“Yeah?”
“She didn’t want to talk over the phone to me about it, but she said to tell you urgently to check your e-mail. She said you were pretty bad about
forgetting to do that. She didn’t seem to think you’d answer your phone if you knew from your caller ID that it was her on the phone.”
“I’ll go look at my e-mail right now.”
“Sookie?”
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
Almost certainly not. “Sure, Sam. Thanks for standing in place of the answering machine.”
“No problem.”
Amelia had certainly figured out how to get my attention. I took the cluviel dor out of the drawer and took it with me to the little desk in the living
room where I’d put the computer. Yes, I had a lot of mail.
Most of it was junk, but there was one from Amelia, sure enough, and one from Mr. Cataliades that had come two days before. Color me
surprised.
I was so curious I opened his message first. Though he wasn’t brief, he was to the point.
Miss Stackhouse,
I got your message on my answering machine. I have been traveling so certain individuals cannot find me. I have many friends, but also
many enemies. I am watching you closely, but I hope not intrusively. You’re the only person
I know who has as many enemies as I. I’ve done the best I can to keep you a step ahead of that hellspawn Sandra Pelt. She’s not dead
yet, though. Beware.
I don’t believe you knew that I was a great friend of your grandfather, Fintan. I knew your grandmother, though not well. In fact, I met your
father and his sister, and your brother Jason, though he will never remember it since he was quite small. So were you when I first saw you.
They were all disappointments except you.
I think you must have found the cluviel dor, since I plucked the term out of Miss Amelia’s head when I saw her at the shop. I don’t know
where your grandmother hid it, I only know she was given one, because I gave it to her. If you have discovered it, I advise you to be very
careful about its use. Think once, and twice, and three times before you expend its energy. You can change the world, you know. Any
series of events you alter by magic can have unexpected repercussions in history. I’ll contact you again when I can, and perhaps stop by
to explain more fully. Best wishes for your survival.
Desmond Cataliades, attorney-at-law, your sponsor
As Pam might say, “Fuck a zombie.” Mr. Cataliades was indeed my sponsor, the dark stranger who’d visited Gran. What did that mean? And he
said he had read Amelia’s mind. Was he a telepath, too? Wasn’t that quite a coincidence? I had a feeling there was a lot to know about this, and
though he’d only warned me about Sandra Pelt and using the cluviel dor, I got the distinct impression he was paving the way for a Big Bad Talk. I
read over the message two more times hoping to extract some solid piece of information about the cluviel dor from it, but I had to conclude I got
zilch.
I opened Amelia’s e-mail, not without a deep feeling of misgiving and a residue of indignation. Her brain was open for the picking, apparently.
Amelia had a lot of information in her head about me and my doings. Though this wasn’t exactly her fault, I resolved not to tell her any more secrets.
Sookie,
I’m sorry for everything. You know I don’t think before I act, and I didn’t this time. I just wanted you to be as happy as I am with Bob, I guess,
and I didn’t think about how you’d feel. I was trying to manage your life. Again, sorry.
After we got back home, I did some more research and found the cluviel dor. I guess one of your fairy kin must have been talking about
this? There hadn’t been one on the earth for hundreds of years. They’re fairy love tokens, and they take a year to make, at least. The
cluviel dor gives the beloved one wish. That’s why it’s so romantic, I guess. The wish has to be personal. It can’t be for world peace, or an
end to hunger, or something global like that. But on an individual level, apparently this magic is so potent it can really change a life in a
drastic way. If someone gives a loved one a cluviel dor, it’s really a serious gesture. It’s not like flowers or candy. It’s more on the level of a
diamond necklace or a yacht, if the jewelry or the boat had magical powers. I don’t know why you need to know about fairy love tokens, but
if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen something amazing. I don’t think the fae can even make them anymore.
I hope some day you can forgive me, and maybe then I’ll hear the story.
Amelia
I ran a finger over the smoothness of this very dangerous object I had, and I shivered.
Warning, warning, and some more warning.
I sat at the desk for a few more minutes, lost in thought. The more I knew about fairy nature, the less I trusted fairies. Period. Including Claude and
Dermot. (And especially Niall, my great-grandfather; it seemed I was always on the verge of remembering something about him, something really
tricky.) I shook my head impatiently. Not the time to worry about that.
Though I’d put off admitting it as long as I could, I had to face unpleasant facts. Mr. Cataliades, through his friendship with my birth grandfather,
had had more to do with my life than I’d ever guessed, and he was only revealing that to me now for reasons I couldn’t fathom. When I’d met the
demon lawyer, he hadn’t quivered an eyelash in recognition.
It was all tied together somehow, and it all added up to a deep misgiving about my fairy kin. I believed that Claude, Dermot, Fintan, and Niall
loved me as much as they could (for Claude, this would be quite a small amount, because he loved himself most of all). But I didn’t feel that it was a
wholesome love. Though that adjective made me wince and think of Wonder Bread, it was the only one that fit.
As a sort of corollary to my increased understanding of fairy nature, I no longer doubted Gran’s word. Instead, I believed that Fintan had loved my
grandmother Adele more than she’d ever realized, and in fact he’d adored her beyond the bounds of human imagination. He’d been with her much
more often than she knew, sometimes taking on the guise of her husband to be in her presence. He’d taken family photos with her; he’d watched
her go about her daily business; he’d probably (wince!) had sex with her while disguised as Mitchell. Where had my real grandfather been while all
of this was going on? Had he still been present in his body, but unconscious? I hoped not, but I’d never know. I wasn’t sure I truly wanted to.
Because of Fintan’s devotion, he’d given my grandmother a cluviel dor. Perhaps it could have saved her life, but I didn’t believe she’d ever
thought of using it. Perhaps her faith had precluded sincere belief in the power of a magical object.
Gran had stowed her letter of confession and the cluviel dor in the concealed drawer years ago to keep them safe from the prying eyes of the two
grandchildren she was raising. I was sure that after she’d hidden the items that made her feel so guilty, she’d almost forgotten about them. I figured
the relief of unburdening herself was so great, she’d quit worrying about the memory altogether. It must have seemed outlandish, contrasted with the
daily difficulties of being a widow raising two grandchildren.
Maybe (I conjectured) from time to time she’d thought, I really should tell Sookie where those things are. But of course, she’d always supposed
she’d have more time. We always do.
I looked down at the smooth object in my hand. I tried to imagine the things I could do with it. It was supposed to grant one wish, a wish for
someone you loved. Since I loved Eric, presumably I could wish Victor would die, which would definitely benefit my loved one. It seemed awful to
me, using a love token to kill someone, whether or not it benefited Eric. An idea came to me that made my eyes widen. I could take away Hunter’s
telepathy! He could grow up normal! I could counteract Hadley’s unintentional burdensome gift to her abandoned son.
That seemed like such a fabulous idea. I was delighted for all of thirty seconds. Then, of course, doubt set in. Was it right to change someone’s
life that much simply because I could? On the other hand, was it right to let Hunter suffer his way through a difficult childhood?
I could change myself.
That was so shocking an idea that it almost made me black out. I simply couldn’t think about it just now. I had to prepare for Operation Victor.
After thirty minutes, I was ready to go.
I drove to Fangtasia, trying to keep my mind empty and my spirit fierce. (Emptying my mind was maybe too easy. I’d learned so much in the past
few days that I hardly knew who I was anymore. And that made me pretty angry, so fierce was easy, too.) I sang along with every song on the radio,
and because I have an awful voice I was glad I was alone. Pam can’t sing, either. I was thinking about her a lot as I drove, wondering if her Miriam
was alive or dead, feeling sorry for my best vampire friend. Pam was so tough and so strong and so ruthless that I hadn’t ever considered her more
delicate emotions until the past few days. Maybe that was why Eric had chosen Pam when he’d wanted a child; he’d sensed they were kindred
spirits.
I didn’t doubt Eric loved me, just as I knew Pam loved her ailing Miriam. But I didn’t know if Eric loved me enough to defy all his maker’s
arrangements, enough to forgo the leap in power and status and income he’d gain as consort of the Queen of Oklahoma. Would Eric enjoy being a
Sooner? As I navigated through Shreveport, I wondered if Oklahoma vampires wore cowboy boots and knew all the songs from the musical. I
wondered why I was thinking such idiotic thoughts when I should be preparing for a very grim evening, an evening I might not survive.
Judging from the parking lot, Fangtasia was jam-packed. I went to the employee entrance and knocked, using a special pattern. Maxwell opened
the door, looking positively suave in a beautiful summer-weight tan suit. Dark-skinned vampires undergo an interesting change a few decades after
they’re turned. If they were a very dark shade in life, they become a light brown, sort of a milk chocolate. Those who were lighter skinned become a
sort of creamy ecru. Maxwell Lee hadn’t been dead long enough for that, though. He was still one of the darkest men I had ever seen, the color of
ebony, and his mustache was as precise as if he’d shaved with a ruler at hand. We’d never been especially fond of each other, but this evening his
smile was almost manic in its cheerfulness.
“Miss Stackhouse, we’re so glad you stopped by tonight,” he said loudly. “Eric will be pleased to see you looking so—so tasty.”
I take my compliments where I can get them, and “tasty” wasn’t bad. I was wearing a strapless dress in sky blue with a broad white belt and white
sandals. (I know white shoes are supposed to make your feet look big, but mine aren’t, so I didn’t care.) My hair was down. I felt pretty damn good. I
held out a foot so Maxwell could admire my self-administered pedicure. Spicy Pink Carnation.
“Fresh as a daisy,” Maxwell said. He pulled aside his jacket to show me that he was carrying a gun. I gave him big eyes of admiration. Carrying a
firearm was not a vampire norm, and it might be a bit unexpected. Colton and Audrina came in on my heels. Audrina had put up her hair with what
looked like chopsticks, and she was carrying a large purse, almost as large as mine. Colton was armed, too, because he was wearing a jacket,
and on a sultry evening like this one, humans just didn’t wear jackets if they could help it. I introduced them to Maxwell, and after a polite exchange
they sauntered down the hall to go out into the club.
I found Eric in his office sitting behind the desk. Pam was sitting on it, and Thalia was on the couch. Oh, boy! I felt more confident when I saw the
tiny ancient Greek vampire. Thalia had been turned so long ago that no trace of humanity remained. She was simply a cold killing machine. She’d
reluctantly joined the vampires that came out, but she despised humans with a thoroughness and ferocity that had made her a sort of cult figure.
One website had offered five thousand dollars to the man or woman who could get a picture of Thalia smiling. No one had ever collected, but they
could have tonight. She was smiling now. It was creepy as hell.
“He accepted the invitation,” Eric said without preamble. “He was uneasy, but he couldn’t resist. I told him he was welcome to bring as many of
his own people as he wished so that they could share the experience.”
“That was the only way to do it,” I said.
“I think you’re right,” Pam said. “I think he’ll bring only a few, because he’ll want to show us how confident he is.”
Mustapha Khan knocked on the door frame. Eric beckoned him in.
“Bill and Bubba are making a stop in the alley two blocks over,” he said, barely glancing at the rest of us.
“What for?” Eric was surprised.
“Ah . . . something about cats.”
We all looked away, embarrassed. Bubba’s perversion was not anything vampires wanted to talk about.
“But he’s cheerful? In a good mood?”
“Yes, Eric. He’s happy as a minister on Easter Sunday. Bill took him for a drive in an antique car, then horseback riding, and then to the alley.
They should be here right on time. I told Bill I’d call him when Victor arrived.”
By then, Fangtasia would be closed to the public. Though the happy and free-spending crowd out on the floor didn’t know it, tonight the king of
rock ’n’ roll would sing again for the Regent of Louisiana. Who could turn down an invitation to such an event?
Not fanboy Victor, that was for sure. The cardboard cutout at Vampire’s Kiss had been a big clue. Of course Victor had tried to get Bubba to
come to his own club, but I’d known Bubba wouldn’t want to go to Vampire’s Kiss. He’d want to stay with Bill, and if Bill said Fangtasia was the
place to be, that was what Bubba would insist on.
We sat in silence, though Fangtasia is never really silent. We could hear the music from the bar area, and the hum of voices. It was almost as if
the customers could sense that tonight was a special night, that they all had cause to celebrate . . . or to have a last hurrah before they perished.
Though I felt it put me one step closer to catastrophe, I’d brought the cluviel dor. It was tucked into my belt behind the huge buckle. It pressed into
my flesh insistently.
Mustapha Khan had taken up a stance against the wall. He was deep into his Blade fantasy that night, with dark glasses, a leather jacket, and a
great haircut. I wondered where his buddy Warren was. Finally, out of sheer desperation for some conversation, I asked.
“Warren, he’s outside the club on the roof of the Bed Bath & Beyond.” Mustapha Khan didn’t turn his face to me when he spoke.
“What for?”
“He’s a shooter.”
“We refined your idea a bit,” Eric said. “Anyone gets out the door, Warren will take care of them.” He’d been slumped back in his chair with his
feet on the desk. Pam hadn’t looked at me since I’d come in. Suddenly, I wondered why.
“Pam?” I said. I got up and took a step toward her.
She shook her head, her face averted.
I can’t read vampire minds, but I didn’t have to. Miriam had died today. Looking at the set of Pam’s shoulders I knew better than to say anything. It
went against my nature to resume my seat on the couch without offering her comfort, a Kleenex, a few words of solace. But it would be Pam’s
nature to strike out if I offered those things.
I touched my belt, where the cluviel dor made a hard impression on my stomach. Could I wish Miriam back alive? I wondered if that would satisfy
the requirement that the wish be for someone I loved. I was very fond of Pam, but wouldn’t that be too indirect?
I felt like I had a bomb strapped to me.
I heard the shimmery sound of the gong. Eric had installed one in the bar, and the bartender rang it fifteen minutes before closing. I didn’t even
know who’d taken over the bartending duties since Felicia had been killed by Alexei. Maybe I hadn’t been interested enough in Eric’s business
lately. On the other hand, he himself had been abstracted from his normal absorption in his little kingdom by Victor’s predations. I realized that lack
of conversation about ordinary things was one of our problems. I hoped we’d get to correct it.
I got up and went down the hall to the main area of the bar. I couldn’t stand sitting in Eric’s office anymore, not with Pam suffering the way she
was.
I spotted Colton and Audrina dancing on the tiny floor, arms around each other. Immanuel was sitting at the bar, and I climbed onto the stool next
to him. The bartender came to stand across from me. He was a brawny fellow with ringlets cascading down his back, total eye candy. A vampire, of
course.
“What can I get you, wife of my sheriff?” he asked ceremoniously.
“You can get me a tonic and lime, please. Sorry I haven’t had a chance to meet you before. What’s your name?”
“Jock,” he said, as if daring me to make a joke. I wouldn’t dream of it.
“When did you start work, Jock?”
“I came from Reno when the last bartender died,” he said. “I worked for Victor there.”
I wondered which way Jock would jump tonight. Interesting to see.
I didn’t know Immanuel well—in fact, I barely knew him. But I patted his shoulder and asked him if I could buy him a drink.
He turned and gave my hair a long look, finally nodding his approval. “Sure,” he said. “I’d like another beer.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, after I’d asked Jock to bring Immanuel a beer. I wondered where Miriam’s body was now; at the undertaker’s, I
assumed.
“Appreciated,” he replied. After a moment, he said, “Pam was going to do it tonight, without permission. Turn Miriam, that is. But Mir just . . .
breathed out one last time, and then she was gone.”
“Your mom and dad . . . ?”
He shook his head. “It was just us.”
There was really nothing else to say about that.
“Maybe you should go home?” I suggested. He didn’t look like much of a fighter to me.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
I couldn’t make him leave, so I drank my tonic and lime while all the human customers left. The bar grew quiet and relatively empty. Indira, one of
Eric’s vamps, came in, wearing a full sari. I’d never seen her in traditional clothing before, and the pink and green of the pattern was really fetching.
Jock gave her an admiring look. Thalia and Maxwell came out of the back and moved around the club along with the human staff, busy cleaning the
place up for the after-party. I helped, too. This was work I was used to. The tables circling the little dance floor and stage were moved away, and two
lines of chairs were arranged instead. Maxwell brought in an elaborate sort of boom box. Bubba’s music. After I swept the dance floor and stage, I
got out of the way by resuming my stool at the bar.
Heidi, whose specialty was tracking, came in, her hair in narrow braids. Lean and plain, Heidi always carried an air of grief around with her like a
cloud. I had no idea what she’d do tonight when the shit hit the fan.
While Jock was cleaning up the supplies on his side of the counter, Colton and Audrina came over. Jock looked surprised to see humans he
didn’t know. Their presence had to be explained; I didn’t want Jock becoming suspicious. I said, “Colton, Audrina, meet Jock. Jock, these two
lovely people have agreed to donate in case Victor wants local hospitality. Of course, we’re hoping that won’t happen on the premises, but Eric
doesn’t want to fail in his welcome.”
“Good idea,” Jock said, eyeing Audrina appreciatively. “We can’t give the regent less than he expects.”
“No.” Or less than he deserves.
After forty-five minutes, the place looked pretty good again, and the last of the human employees went out the back door. The only breathers
remaining were Colton, Audrina, Immanuel, Mustapha Khan, and me. (I definitely had that conspicuous feeling.) The Shreveport vamps I’d known
since I’d started dating Bill had assembled: Pam, Maxwell Lee, Thalia, Indira. I knew all of them to some extent. Victor would be instantly alert if all
Eric’s vampires were there, or if they were all Eric’s heavy hitters. So Eric had called in the little Minden nest: Palomino, Rubio Hermosa, and
Parker Coburn, the Katrina exiles. They trailed in looking unhappy but resigned. They stood against the wall, holding hands. It was kind of sweet, but
sad, too.
The jukebox cut off. The near silence was instantly oppressive.
Though Fangtasia sits in a busy shopping and dining area of Shreveport, at this hour—even on a weekend—there was not much city sound
outside. None of us felt like talking. I didn’t know what thoughts occupied other heads, but I was considering the fact that I might die that very night. I
was sorry about the baby shower, but I’d gotten things as ready as I could get them. I was sorry I hadn’t gotten to have a conference with Mr.
Cataliades to get everything straight in my head, all this new information I’d hardly had time to assimilate. I was glad I’d given the money to Sam,
and sorry I couldn’t have been frank with him about why it needed to be done this very day. I hoped if I died, Jason would move back into the old
house, that he would marry Michele, that they would raise kids there. My mother, Michelle-with-two- ls, had been completely different from Jason’s
Michele-withone- l, at least judging by my childhood memory of her, but they were alike in loving Jason. I was sorry I hadn’t told him I loved him the
last time we’d spoken.
I was sorry about a lot of things. My mistakes and offenses crowded around me.
Eric drifted over and turned me on the stool so he could put his arms around me. “I wish you didn’t have to be here,” he said. That was all the
conversation we could have with Jock in earshot. I leaned against Eric’s cool body, my head resting on his silent chest. I might not ever get to do
this again.
Pam came to sit by Immanuel. Thalia scowled, which was her fallback expression, and turned her back on all of us. Indira sat with her eyes shut,
the graceful folds of her sari making her look like a statue at Pier 1. Heidi looked from one to the other of us very seriously, and her mouth became
set in a grim line. If she was worrying about Victor, I figured she’d go to stand by Jock, but I never saw her speak to him.
Maxwell apparently heard a knock at the back door, inaudible to my human ears. He jetted away and returned to tell Eric that Bill and Bubba had
arrived. They were staying in the office until the moment came.
Very soon after that, I heard cars pull in front of the club.
“Showtime,” Pam said, and for the first time that evening she smiled.
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