Book Eleven Chapters 7-10

Chapter 7
I heard my two housemates come in Sunday night, not too late. Hooligans wasn’t open on Sunday, and I tried not to wonder what they’d been
doing all day. They were still asleep when I made my coffee on Monday morning. I moved around the house as quietly as I could, getting dressed
and checking my e-mail. Amelia was on her way, she said, and she added cryptically that she had something important to tell me. I wondered if she
had found out information about my “c.d.” already.
Tara had sent out a group e-mail with an attached picture of her huge belly, and I reminded myself that the baby shower I was giving her was the
next weekend. Yikes! After a moment of panic, I calmed myself. The invitations were sent, I’d bought her gift, and I’d planned the food. I was as
ready as I could be, aside from the last-minute flurry of cleaning.
I was working the early shift today. As I put on my makeup, I took out the cluviel dor and held it to my chest. Touching it seemed important,
seemed to make it more vital. My skin warmed it quickly. Whatever lay at the heart of that smooth pale greenness seemed to quicken. I felt more
alive, too. I took a deep, shaky breath and returned it to the drawer, again dusting it with powder to make it look like it had been there forever. I shut
the drawer with something like regret.
My grandmother felt very close to me that day. I thought about her on the drive to work, during my prep work, and in odd moments as I fetched and
carried. Andy Bellefleur was eating lunch with Sheriff Dearborn. I was a little surprised Andy wanted to sit down in Merlotte’s again after the invasion
of two days before.
But my new favorite detective seemed happy enough to be there, joking with his boss and eating a salad with low-fat dressing. Andy was looking
slimmer and younger these days. Married life and impending fatherhood agreed with him. I asked him how Halleigh was doing.
“She says her stomach’s huge, but it’s not,” he said with a smile. “I think she’s glad school’s out. She’s making curtains for the baby’s room.”
Halleigh taught at the elementary school.
“Miss Caroline would be so proud,” I said. Andy’s grandmother, Caroline Bellefleur, had died just weeks before.
“I’m glad she knew before she passed,” he said. “Hey, did you know my sister’s pregnant, too?”
I tried not to look too astonished. Andy and Portia had had a double wedding in their grandmother’s garden, and though it hadn’t been a surprise
to hear that Andy’s wife was pregnant, somehow the older Portia had never struck me as someone who’d welcome motherhood. I told Andy how
glad I was, and that was the truth.
“Would you tell Bill?” Andy asked, a little shyly. “I still feel a little weird about calling him.”
My neighbor and former flame, Bill Compton, who happened to be a vampire, had finally told the Bellefleurs that he was their ancestor right
before Miss Caroline died. Miss Caroline had reacted beautifully to the startling news, but it had been a little harder for Andy, who was both proud
and not too fond of the undead. Portia had actually gone out with Bill a few times before he’d figured out the relationship—awkward, huh? She and
her husband had sucked up their reservations about their newly acquired living ancestor, and they’d surprised me with their dignity in
acknowledging Bill.
“I’m always glad to pass along good news, but he’d be glad to hear from you.”
“I, ah, I hear he’s got a vampire girlfriend?”
I made myself look cheerful. “Yeah, she’s been there for a few weeks,” I said. “I haven’t talked to him much about it.” Like, not ever.
“You’ve met her.”
“Yeah, she seems nice.” In fact, I’d been responsible for their reunion, but that wasn’t something I wanted to share. “If I see him, I’ll tell him for you,
Andy. I know he’ll want to know when the baby’s born. Do you know what you and Halleigh are having?”
“It’s a girl,” he said, and his smile almost split his face in two. “We’re gonna name her Caroline Compton Bellefleur.”
“Oh, Andy! That’s so nice!” I was ridiculously pleased, because I knew Bill would be.
Andy looked embarrassed. I could tell he was relieved when his cell phone chirped.
“Hey, honey,” he said, having glanced at the caller number before he flipped his phone open. “What’s up?” He smiled as he listened. “Okay, I’ll
bring you a milkshake,” he said. “See you in a few.”
Bud was coming back to the table, and Andy glanced at the check and slapped a ten down. “There’s my part,” he said. “Keep the change. Bud, I
got to go run by the house. Halleigh needs me to put up the curtain rod in the baby’s room, and she’s dying for a butterscotch milkshake. I won’t be
but ten minutes.” He grinned at us and was out the door.
Bud resumed his seat while he slowly got his own money out of his worn old wallet.
“Halleigh’s having one, Portia’s having one, Tara’s having two, I hear. Sookie, you need to get you one of those little ’uns,” he said, and took a
drink. “Good iced tea.” He set his empty glass down with a little thump.
“I don’t need to have a baby just because other women are doing it,” I said. “I’ll have one when I’m ready.”
“Well, you ain’t having one at all if you keep dating that deader,” Bud said bluntly. “What do you think your gran would say?”
I took the money, turned on my heel, and walked away. I asked Danielle if she’d take Bud his change. I didn’t want to talk to Bud anymore.
Stupid, I know. I had to be thicker-skinned than that. And Bud had only spoken the truth. Of course, he had the perspective that all young women
wanted to have children, and he was pointing out to me that I was on the wrong track. As if I didn’t know that! What would Gran have said?
I would have answered without a pause a few days ago. Now, I wasn’t so sure. There’d been so much I hadn’t known about her. But my best
guess was that she would have told me to go with my heart. And I loved Eric. As I picked up a burger basket and took it to Maxine Fortenberry’s
table (she was having lunch with Elmer Claire Vaudry), I found myself anticipating the moment of dark when he would wake. I looked forward to
seeing him with a kind of desperation. I needed the reassurance of his presence, the assurance that he loved me, too, the passionate connection
we felt when we touched each other.
As I waited for an order at the hatch, I watched Sam pull a draft. I wondered if he felt the same way about Jannalynn as I felt about Eric. He’d
dated her longer than he’d dated anyone since I’d known him. Maybe I figured he was more serious because he was arranging for nights off so he
could see her more often, something he’d never done before. Sam smiled at me when his eyes caught mine. It was sure nice to see him happy.
Though Jannalynn was not good enough for him.
I almost clapped a hand over my mouth. I felt as guilty as though I’d said that out loud. Their relationship wasn’t any of my business, I told myself
sternly. But a softer voice inside me said that Sam was my friend and that Jannalynn was too ruthless and violent to make him happy in the long run.
Jannalynn had killed people, but I had, too. Maybe I judged her as violent because she sometimes seemed to enjoy the killing. The idea that I
might be like Jannalynn at heart—how many people did I want dead?—was another downer. Surely the day had to get better?
Pretty much always a fatal thought.
Sandra Pelt strode into the bar. It had been a long time since I’d seen her—and she’d been trying to kill me then, too. She’d been a teenager
then, and she still had yet to turn twenty, I figured; but she looked a little older, her body more mature, and she had a cute shag hairdo that
contrasted oddly with the snarl on her face. She brought with her an aura of rage. Though her slim body was appropriately dressed in jeans and a
tank top, a loose shirt open and flapping, you could see the crazy in her face. She enjoyed dealing out the damage. You couldn’t see into her head
and miss that. Her movements were jerky with tension, and her eyes roved from one person to another until they found mine. They lit up like Fourth
of July fireworks. I could see right inside her brain, and I saw she had a gun tucked in the back of her jeans.
“Uh-oh,” I said, very quietly.
“What more do I have to do?” Sandra screamed.
Conversations all over the bar dwindled to silence. From the corner of my eye, I saw Sam reach down under the bar. He wouldn’t make it in time.
“I try to burn you up, and the fire goes out.” She was still at full volume. “I give those jerks free drugs and sex, and send them to grab you, and they
bungle it. I try your house, and the magic won’t let me enter. I’ve tried to kill you over and over, and you just won’t die!”
I almost felt like apologizing.
At the same time, it was a good thing that Bud Dearborn had heard all this. But he was standing facing Sandra, his table between them, and I
knew it would be much better if he were behind her. Sam began to move to his left, but the pass-through was to his right, and I didn’t see how he
could get across the bar and behind her before she worked herself up to killing me. But that wasn’t Sam’s plan. While Sandra was focused on me,
he passed the wooden bat to Terry Bellefleur, who’d been playing darts with another vet. Terry was a little crazy at times and awfully scarred, but I’d
always liked him and gotten along with him well. Terry put his hand on the bat, and I was glad the jukebox was playing because it covered the little
sounds.
In fact, the jukebox was playing the old Whitney Houston ballad “I Will Always Love You,” which was kind of funny, actually.
“Why are you always sending other people to do your jobs?” I asked, to cover the sound of Terry’s quiet advance. “You some kind of coward? You
think a woman can’t do the job right?”
Maybe taunting Sandra hadn’t been such a good idea, because her hand darted to her back with shifter speed, and then the gun was out and
pointing at me, and then I saw her finger begin to tighten in a moment that seemed to stretch forever. And then I saw the bat swing and connect, and
Sandra went down like someone had cut her strings, and there was blood everywhere.
And Terry went crazy. He crouched, screaming, and dropped the bat as if it had burned him. No matter what anyone said (the most popular thing
was “SHUT UP, TERRY!”), he howled.
I never thought I’d end up sitting on the floor cradling Terry Bellefleur in my arms, rocking him and murmuring to him. But that was where I was,
since he seemed to get worse if anyone else approached him. Even the ambulance people got nervous when Terry shrieked at them. He was still
crouched on the balls of his feet, speckled with blood, after Sandra Pelt had gone to the hospital in Clarice.
I was beholden to Terry, who had always been kind to me even when he was having one of his bad spells. He’d come to clear away the debris
when an arsonist had set fire to my kitchen. He’d offered me one of his puppies. Now he’d damaged his fragile mind to save my life. As I rocked
him and patted him on the back while he wept, I listened to the steady stream of his words as the few people left in Merlotte’s did their best to stay a
decent distance away.
“I done what he told me,” Terry said, “the shining man, I kept track of Sookie and I tried to keep her from harm, no one should hurt Sookie, I tried
to watch out for her, and then today that bitch come in here and I knew she was going to kill Sook, I knew it, I never wanted to take blood again in my
life but I couldn’t let her hurt the gal, I couldn’t do it, and I never wanted to kill another person in my whole existence, I never did.”
“She’s not dead, Terry,” I said, kissing him on the head. “You didn’t kill anyone.”
“Sam passed me the bat,” Terry said, sounding a little more alert.
“Sure, because he couldn’t get out from behind the bar in time. Thanks so much, Terry, you’ve been a friend to me always. God bless you for
saving my life.”
“Sookie? You knew they wanted me to watch out for you? They come to my trailer at night, for months, that big blond one and then the shining
one. They always wanted to know about you.”
“Sure,” I said, thinking, What?
“They wanted to know how you were doing and who was you hanging with and who hated you and who loved you. . . .”
“That’s okay,” I said. “It was okay to tell them.”
Eric and my great-grandfather, I guessed. Picking the damaged one, the one easiest to persuade. I’d known Eric had had someone watching me
while I dated Bill and while I was on my own later. I’d guessed that my great-grandfather had had some source of knowledge, too. Whether he’d
gotten the name from Eric or had discovered Terry on his own, it was very like Niall to use the handiest tool, whether or not the tool snapped during
use.
“I met Elvis in your woods one night,” Terry said. One of the EMTs had given him a shot, and I thought it was beginning to work. “I knew I was nuts
then. He was telling me how much he liked cats. I told him I was a dog person, myself.”
The vampire formerly known as Elvis had not translated well because his system had been so saturated with drugs when he’d been brought over
by an ardent fan in the Memphis morgue. Bubba, as he preferred to be called now, had a preference for feline blood, luckily for Terry’s beloved
Catahoula, Annie.
“We got along real well,” Terry was saying, and his voice was getting slower and sleepier. “I guess I better go home now.”
“We’re gonna take you out back to Sam’s trailer,” I said. “That’s where you’ll wake up.” Didn’t want Terry waking up in a panic. God, no.
The police had taken my statement, in a sketchy kind of way, and at least three people had heard Sandra say she’d firebombed the bar.
Of course, I’d been at the bar much later than I’d planned, and it was now dark. I knew that Eric was outside waiting for me, and I wanted more
than anything to get up and foist the problem of Terry on someone else, but I simply couldn’t. What he’d done for me had damaged Terry even
more, and I had no way to pay him back. It didn’t bother me that he’d been keeping track of me—okay, spying on me—for Eric before Eric was my
lover, or for my great-grandfather. It hadn’t done me any harm. Since I knew Terry, I knew there had to have been pressure involved, of one kind or
another.
Sam and I helped Terry to his feet, and we began to move, going down the hall that led to the back of the bar and across the employee parking lot
to Sam’s trailer.
“They promised they wouldn’t let nothing happen to my dog,” Terry whispered. “And they promised the dreams would stop.”
“Did they keep their promises?” I asked back, my voice just as quiet.
“Yes,” he said gratefully. “No more dreams, and I got my dog.”
That didn’t seem to be so much to ask. I should be angrier at Terry, but I couldn’t scrape up the emotional energy. I was all worn out.
Eric was standing in the shadow of the trees. He stayed back so his presence wouldn’t agitate Terry. From the sudden stiffness in Sam’s face, I
knew he was aware Eric was there, but Sam didn’t say anything.
We got Terry settled on Sam’s couch, and when he drifted away into the stream of sleep, I hugged Sam. “Thanks,” I said.
“For what?”
“For passing Terry the bat.”
Sam stepped back. “It was all I could think of to do. I couldn’t clear the bar without alerting her. She had to be surprised or it was all over.”
“She’s that strong?”
“Yeah,” he said. “And she’s convinced her world would be okay if it weren’t for you, sounded like. Fanatics are hard to beat down. They keep
coming.”
“Are you thinking about the people who are trying to get Merlotte’s closed?”
His smile was bitter. “Maybe I am. I can’t believe this is happening in our country, and me a veteran. Born and bred in the USA.”
“I feel guilty, Sam. Some of this has happened because of me. The firebombing . . . Sandra wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t been there. And the
fight. Maybe you should let me go. I can work somewhere else, you know.”
“Do you want to?”
I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but at least it wasn’t relief.
“No, of course not.”
“Then you have a job. We’re a package deal.”
He smiled, and somehow it didn’t light up his blue eyes the way his smiles usually did, but he meant what he said. Shifter or not, snarly brained or
not, I could tell that much.
“Thanks, Sam. I better go see what my better half wants.”
“Whatever Eric is to you, Sook, he’s not your better half.”
I paused, my hand on the doorknob, and couldn’t think of anything to say to that. So I just left.
Eric was waiting, but not patiently. He took my face between his big hands and examined it under the harsh glare of the security lights on the
corners of the bar. India came out the back way, gave us a startled look, and got in her car and drove off. Sam stayed in the trailer.
“I want you to move in with me,” Eric said. “You can stay in one of the upstairs bedrooms if you want. The one we usually use. You don’t have to
stay down in the dark with me. I don’t want you to be alone. I don’t want to feel your fear one more time. It makes me crazy to know someone is
attacking you, and I’m not there.”
We had gotten into the habit of making love in the largest upstairs bedroom. (Waking up in the windowless room downstairs gave me the heebiejeebies.)
Now Eric was offering that room to me permanently. I knew this was a big deal for Eric, a major deal. And it was huge for me, too. But a
decision this big couldn’t be made at a moment when I was not myself, and tonight I wasn’t myself.
“We need to talk,” I said. “Do you have time?”
“Tonight, I’m making time,” he said. “Are the fairies at your house?”
I called Claude on my cell. When he answered, I could hear the noise of Hooligans in the background. “I’m just checking to see where you are
before Eric and I go to the house,” I said.
“We’re staying at the club tonight,” Claude answered. “Have a good time with your vampire hunk, Cousin.”
Eric followed me over to my house. He’d brought the car, because as soon as he’d known I was in danger, he’d known it had passed and he
could take the time to drive.
I poured myself a glass of wine—unusual for me—and I microwaved some bottled blood for Eric. We sat in the living room. I pulled up my legs
onto the couch and swung around with my back against the arm to face him. He angled toward me on the other end.
“Eric, I know you don’t ask people to stay in your house lightly. So, I want you to know how . . . touched and flattered I am that you invited me.”
Right away, I realized I’d said the wrong thing. That sounded way too impersonal.
Eric’s blue eyes narrowed. “Oh, think nothing of it,” he said coldly.
“I didn’t say that right.” I took a deep breath. “Listen, I love you. I . . . feel thrilled that you want us to live together.” He looked a little more relaxed.
“But before I make up my mind whether to do that, we need to get some stuff straight.”
“Stuff?”
“You married me to protect me. You hired Terry Bellefleur to spy on me, and you applied pressure where he couldn’t take it, to get him to comply.”
Eric said, “That happened before I knew you, Sookie.”
“Yeah, I get that. But it’s the nature of the pressure you applied to a man whose mental state is so wobbly. It’s the way you got me to marry you,
without knowing what I was doing.”
“You wouldn’t have done it otherwise,” Eric said. As always, practical and to the point.
“You’re right, I wouldn’t,” I said, trying to smile at him. But it wasn’t easy. “And Terry wouldn’t have told you things about me, if you’d offered him
money. I know you see this as the smart way to do business, and I’m sure a lot of people would agree with you.”
Eric was trying to follow my thinking, but I could tell he wasn’t making any sense of it. I kept struggling upstream. “We’re both living with this bond.
I’m sure sometimes you would rather I didn’t know what you’re feeling. Would you be wanting me to live with you if we didn’t have the bond? If you
didn’t feel it every time I was in danger? Or angry? Or afraid?”
“What a strange thing to say, my lover.” Eric took a swallow of his drink, set it down on the old coffee table. “Are you saying that if I didn’t know you
needed me, I wouldn’t need you?”
Was that what I was saying? “I don’t think so. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think you’d want me to live with you unless you felt like people
were out to get me.” Was that the same thing? Geez Louise, I hated conversations like this. Not that I’d ever had one before.
“What difference does that make?” he said, more than a trace of impatience in his voice. “If I want you with me, I want you. The circumstances
don’t matter.”
“But they do matter. And we’re so different.”
“What?”
“Well, there are so many things you take for granted that I don’t.”
Eric rolled his eyes. A total guy. “Like what?”
I groped around for an example. “Well, like Appius having sex with Alexei. It was not a big deal for you, even though Alexei was thirteen.” Eric’s
maker, Appius Livius Ocella, had become a vampire during the time when Romans ruled much of the world.
“Sookie, it was what you call a done deal long before I even knew I had a brother. In Ocella’s time, people were reckoned practically grown at
thirteen. They were even married that young. Ocella never understood some of the changes in society that came with the centuries. And Alexei and
Ocella are both dead now.” Eric shrugged. “There was another side of that coin, you remember? Alexei used his youth, his childlike looks, to
disarm all the vampires and humans around him. Even Pam was loath to put him down, though she knew how destructive he was, how insane. And
she’s the most ruthless vampire I know. He was a drain on all of us, sucking the will and force from us with the depth of his need.”
And with that unexpectedly poetic sentence, Eric was done talking about Alexei and Ocella. His whole face turned stony. I recalled my main point:
our irreconcilable differences. “What about the fact that you’re going to outlive me for, like, forever?”
“We can take care of that easily enough.”
I just stared at him.
“What?” Eric said, almost genuinely amazed. “You don’t want to live forever? With me?”
“I don’t know,” I said, finally. I tried to imagine it. The night, forever. Endless. But with Eric!
I said, “You know, Eric, I can’t . . .” And then I stopped dead. I’d almost insulted him unforgivably. I knew he felt the wave of doubt emanating from
me.
I’d almost said, “I just can’t imagine you sticking around after I start to look old.”
Though there were a few more topics I had hoped we’d cover in our rare tête-à-tête, I felt the conversation was teetering on the edge of Disaster
Canyon. Maybe it was lucky there was knocking at the back door. I’d heard the car coming, but my attention had been so focused on my companion
that I hadn’t really registered its meaning.
Amelia Broadway and Bob Jessup were at the back door. Amelia looked the same as ever: healthy and fresh faced, her short brown hair tousled
and her skin and eyes clear. Bob, not much taller than Amelia and equally lean, was a small-boned guy who looked kind of like a sexy Mormon
missionary. His black-framed glasses managed to look retro instead of geeky. He was wearing jeans, a black-and-white plaid shirt, and tasseled
loafers. He’d been a very cute cat, but his attraction as a guy escaped me—or rather it showed itself to me only now and then.
I beamed at them. It felt great to see Amelia, and I felt relieved that my conversation with Eric had been interrupted. We did have to talk about our
future, but I had a creepy feeling that finishing that conversation would make both of us unhappy. Postponing it probably wouldn’t change that
outcome, but both Eric and I had enough on our plates of problems. “Come on in!” I said. “Eric’s here, and he’ll be glad to see you both.”
Of course, that wasn’t true. Eric was completely indifferent about ever seeing Amelia again in his life—his long, long life—and Bob didn’t even
register on Eric’s radar.
But Eric smiled (though not a large smile) and told them how glad he was they’d come to visit me—though there was a bit of a question in his
voice, since he didn’t know why they were here. No matter how long a talk Eric and I had, we never seemed to cover enough ground.
With a huge effort, Amelia repressed a frown. She was not a fan of the Viking. And she was a very clear broadcaster, so I got that with as much
volume as if she’d yelled out loud. Bob eyed Eric with caution, and as soon as I’d explained the bedroom situation to Amelia (of course, she’d
assumed they’d be upstairs), Bob vanished into the room across from mine with their bags. After a few minutes fiddling around in there, he ducked
into the hall bathroom. Bob had gotten good at evasiveness while he was a cat.
“Eric,” Amelia said, stretching unself-consciously. “How are things going at Fangtasia? How’s the new management?” She couldn’t know she’d
hit a nerve. And when Eric’s eyes narrowed—I suspected that he thought she’d said that on purpose to rile him—Amelia was staring at her toes as
she touched them with the palms of her hands. I wondered if I could do that, and then my mind snapped back to the current moment.
“Business is going all right,” Eric said. “Victor has opened some new clubs close by.”
Amelia understood immediately that this was a bad development, but she was smart enough not to say anything. Honestly, it was like being in the
room with someone who was shouting her inmost thoughts. “Victor’s the smiley guy who was out in the yard the night of the takeover, right?” she
said, straightening and rotating her head from side to side.
“Yes,” Eric said, one corner of his mouth going up in a sardonic look. “The smiley guy.”
“So, Sook, what troubles do you have now?” Amelia asked me, evidently considering that she’d been polite enough to Eric. She was ready to
plunge into whatever problem I described.
“Yes,” Eric said, looking at me with hard eyes. “What troubles do you have now?”
“I was just going to get Amelia to reinforce the wards around the house,” I said casually. “Since so much stuff has happened at Merlotte’s I was
feeling kind of insecure.”
“So she called me,” Amelia said pointedly.
Eric looked from me to Amelia. He looked mighty displeased. “But now that the bitch has been cornered, Sookie, surely the threat’s been
removed?”
“What?” Amelia asked. It was her turn to look from face to face. “What happened tonight, Sookie?”
I told her, briefly. “I’d still feel better if you made sure the wards were in place, though.”
“That’s one of the things I’ve come to do, Sookie.” For some reason, she smiled broadly at Eric.
Bob sidled in then and took up a position beside Amelia but slightly behind her. “Those weren’t my kittens,” he told me, and Eric gaped. I’d
seldom seen him genuinely startled. It was all I could do to keep from laughing. “I mean, weres can’t breed with the animal they turn into. So I don’t
think those were my kittens. Especially since—think about it!—I was only a cat by magic, not a genetic were.”
Amelia said, “Honey, we’ve talked about this. You don’t need to be embarrassed. It was a perfectly natural thing to do. I admit I got a little snitty
about it, but, you know . . . the whole thing was my fault, anyway.”
“Don’t worry about it, Bob. Sam already spoke up in your defense.” I smiled at Bob, who looked relieved.
Eric decided to ignore this exchange. “Sookie, I need to get back to Fangtasia.”
We would never have a chance to say the things we needed to say, at this rate. “Okay, Eric. Tell Pam I said hello, if you two are back to
speaking.”
“She’s a better friend to you than you know,” Eric said darkly.
I didn’t know how to respond to that, and he turned so quickly my eyes couldn’t track him. I heard his car door slam outside, and then he was
driving down the driveway. No matter how many times I saw it, I still found it amazing that vamps could move so fast.
I’d hoped to have a chance to talk more to Amelia that night, but she and Bob were ready to turn in after their drive. They’d left New Orleans after
a full day’s work, Amelia at the Genuine Magic Shop and Bob at the Happy Cutter. After fifteen minutes or so of going to and fro between the
bathroom and the kitchen and the car, they became silent in the room across the hall. I’d taken off my shoes, and I padded into the kitchen to lock
up.
I was just expelling a sigh of relief at the end of the day when there was a very quiet knock at the back door. I jumped like a frog. Who could be
there at this time of night? I looked out across the back porch very cautiously.
Bill. I hadn’t seen him since his “sister” Judith had come to see him. I debated for a second, then decided to slip outside to talk to him. Bill was a
lot of things to me: neighbor, friend, first lover. I did not fear him.
“Sookie,” he said, his cool, smooth voice as relaxing as a massage. “You have guests?”
“Amelia and Bob,” I explained. “They just got here from New Orleans. The fairies aren’t here tonight. They stay in Monroe most nights, lately.”
“Shall we stay out here, so we won’t wake your friends?”
It was news to me that our conversation was going to last that long. Apparently, Bill hadn’t come over just to borrow a cup of blood. I waved my
hand toward the lawn furniture, and we sat in the chairs, already placed at a companionable angle. The warm night with its myriad small sounds
closed around us like an envelope. The security light gave the backyard strange patterns of dark and brightness.
When the silence had lasted long enough for me to realize I was sleepy, I said, “How’s things going at your house, Bill? Is Judith still staying with
you?”
“I’m fully healed from the silver poisoning,” he said.
“I, ah, I noticed you looked good,” I said. His skin had regained its pale clarity, and even his hair looked more lustrous. “Much better. So Judith’s
blood worked.”
“Yes. But now . . .” He looked off into the night forest.
Uh-oh. “She wants to keep on living with you?”
“Yes,” he said, sounding relieved he hadn’t had to spell it out. “She does.”
“I thought you admired her because she looked so much like your first wife. Judith told me that’s why crazy Lorena changed Judith over, to keep
you with her. I mean, sorry to bring up bad stuff.”
“It’s true. Judith does look like my first wife, in many respects. Her face is the same shape, her voice very like my wife’s. Her hair is the same
color my wife’s was when she was a child. And Judith was raised very gently, like my wife.”
“So, I would have predicted that would make you happy with Judith,” I said.
“But not.” He sounded rueful, and he kept his eyes on the trees, carefully averting his gaze from my face. “And in fact, that’s why I didn’t call Judith
when I realized how sick I was. I had to part with her the last time we were together because of her overwhelming obsession with me.”
“Oh,” I said, my voice very small.
“But you did the right thing, Sookie. She came to me and freely offered her blood. Since you invited her here without my knowledge, I’m at least
not guilty of using her. My fault lies in letting her stay after . . . after I healed.”
“And why’d you do that?”
“Because I hoped somehow my feelings for her had changed, that I could have a genuine love for her. That would have freed me from . . .” His
voice trailed off.
He might have finished the sentence, “loving you.” Or maybe, “freed me from the debt I owed her for healing me.”
I did feel a little better now that I knew he was glad to be well, even though the price was that he had to deal with Judith. And I could understand
how awkward and unpleasant it would be to be saddled with a houseguest who adored you when you didn’t return the emotion. Who was the one
who’d saddled him? Well, that would be me. Of course, I hadn’t known any of the emotional background. Distressed by Bill’s condition, I’d reasoned
that someone of Bill’s bloodline could heal him, and I’d found that there was such a person and tracked her down. I’d further assumed Bill hadn’t
done that himself from some perverse pride or perhaps even from a suicidal depression. I’d underestimated Bill’s desire to live.
“What do you plan to do about Judith?” I asked anxiously, scared to hear his answer.
“He need not do anything,” a quiet voice said from the trees.
I came up out of my chair like someone had just shot a few volts through it, and Bill had a big reaction. He turned his head and his eyes widened.
That was it, but for a vampire, that indicates major surprise.
“Judith?” I said.
She stepped out of the tree line, far enough for me to recognize her. The security light in the backyard didn’t extend that far, and I could only just
be sure it was her.
“You keep breaking my heart, Bill,” she said.
I eased away from the chair. Maybe I could slink back into the house. Maybe I could avoid witnessing another major scene—because honestly,
the day had been chock-full of them.
“No, stay, Miss Stackhouse,” Judith said. She was a short, round woman with a sweet face and an abundance of hair, and she carried herself as
if she were six feet tall.
Dammit. “You two obviously need to talk,” I said cravenly.
“Any conversation with Bill about love has to include you,” she said.
Oh . . . poop. I so did not want to be present for this. I stared down at my feet.
“Judith, stop,” Bill said, his voice as calm as ever. “I came over to talk to my friend, whom I haven’t seen for weeks.”
“I heard your conversation,” Judith said simply. “I followed you here for the express purpose of listening to whatever you had to say to her. I know
that you’re not making love to this woman. I know that she’s claimed by another. And I also know that you want her more than you ever wanted me. I
will not have sex with a man who pities me. I will not live with a man who doesn’t want me. I’m worth more than that. I’ll stop loving you if it takes me
the rest of my existence. If you’ll remain here a few moments, I’ll return to your house and pack my things and be gone.”
I was impressed. That was a damn fine speech, and I hoped she meant every word. Even as I had the thought, Judith was gone—whoosh!—and
Bill and I were alone together.
Suddenly he was right in front of me, and he put his cold arms around me. It didn’t seem like a betrayal of Eric to let Bill simply hold me for a
moment.
“You had sex with her?” I said, trying to sound neutral.
“She had saved me. She seemed to expect it. I felt it was the right thing to do,” he said.
As if Judith had sneezed so he’d lent her a handkerchief. I really couldn’t think of what to say. Men! Dead or alive, they could be exactly the same.
I stepped back, and he dropped his arms instantly.
“Do you really love me?” I said, out of either insanity or sheer curiosity. “Or have we just been through so much that you think you ought to?”
He smiled. “Only you would say that. I love you. I think you’re beautiful and kind and good, and yet you stand up for yourself. You have a lot of
understanding and compassion, but you’re not a pushover. And to descend a few levels to the carnal, you have a pair of breasts that should win the
Miss America Tit Competition, if there were such a thing.”
“That’s an unusual bunch of compliments.” I had a hard time suppressing my own smile.
“You’re an unusual woman.”
“Good night, Bill,” I said. Just then my cell phone rang. I jumped a mile. I’d forgotten it was in my pocket. When I looked at the number, it was a
local one I didn’t recognize. No call at this hour of the night was a good one. I held up a finger to ask Bill to wait for a moment, and I answered it with
a cautious “Hello?”
“Sookie,” said Sheriff Dearborn, “I thought you oughta know that Sandra Pelt escaped from the hospital. She snuck out the window while Kenya
was talking to Dr. Tonnesen. I don’t want you to be worried. If you need us to send a car out to your house, we will. You got someone with you?”
I was so shocked I couldn’t reply for a second. Then I said, “Yes, I have someone with me.”
Bill’s dark eyes were serious now. He stepped closer and put one hand on my shoulder.
“You want me to send a patrol car? I don’t think that crazy woman will head out to find you. I think she’ll find somewhere to hole up and recover.
But it seemed like the right thing, telling you, even though it’s the middle of the night.”
“Definitely the right thing to do, Sheriff. I don’t think I need more help out here. I’ve got friends here. Good friends.” And I met Bill’s eyes.
Bud Dearborn said the same things all over again several times, but eventually I got to hang up and think about the implications. I’d thought one
line of troubles was closed, but I’d been wrong. While I was explaining to Bill, the weariness that had manifested itself earlier began to sweep over
me like a blanket of gray. By the time I’d finished answering his questions, I could barely put two words together.
“Don’t worry,” Bill said. “Go to bed. I’ll watch tonight. I’ve already fed, and I wasn’t busy. It doesn’t feel like a good night for work, anyway.” Bill had
created and maintained a CD called The Vampire Directory, which was a catalog of all “living” vampires. It was in popular demand not only among
the undead but also among the living, particularly marketing groups. However, the version sold to the public was limited to vampires who’d given
their permission to be included, a much shorter list. There were still vampires who didn’t want to be known as vampires, odd as that seemed to me.
It was easy to forget, in today’s vampire-saturated culture, that there were still holdouts, vampires who didn’t want to be known to the public in
general, vampires who preferred to sleep in the earth or in abandoned buildings rather than in a house or apartment.
And why I was thinking of this . . . Well, it was better than thinking about Sandra Pelt.
“Thanks, Bill,” I said gratefully. “I warn you, she’s vicious to the nth degree.”
“You’ve seen me fight,” he said.
“Yep. But you don’t know her. She’s completely underhanded and she won’t give you any warning.”
“I’m a few jumps ahead of her, then, since I know that about her.”
Huh? “Okay,” I mumbled, putting one foot in front of the other in more or less a straight line. “Night, Bill.”
“Night, Sookie,” he said quietly. “Lock the doors.”
I did, and I went into my room and put on my nightshirt, and then I was in bed and under that gray blanket.
Chapter 8
Schools are always more or less the same, aren’t they? There’s always the smell: a mixture of chalk, school lunches, floor wax, books. The echo of
children’s voices, the louder voices of teachers. The “art” on the walls and the decorations on each room’s door. The little Red Ditch kindergarten
was no different.
I held Hunter’s hand while Remy trailed behind us. Every time I saw Hunter, he seemed to look a bit more like my cousin Hadley, his dead mother.
He had her dark eyes and hair, and his face was losing its baby roundness and growing more oval, like hers.
Poor Hadley. She’d had a tough life, mostly of her own making. In the end she’d found true love, become a vampire, and been killed for jealousy’s
sake. Hadley’s life had been eventful, but short. That was why I was standing in for her, and for a moment I wondered how she’d have felt about that.
This should be her job, taking her son to his first school, the kindergarten he’d be attending in the fall. The purpose of the visit was to help the
incoming kindergartners become a little familiar with the idea of school, with the look of the rooms and the desks and the teachers.
Some of the little people going through the building were looking around with curiosity, not fear. Some of them were silent and wide-eyed. That
was the way my “nephew” Hunter would look to other people—but in my head Hunter was chattering away. Hunter was telepathic, as I was. This was
the most closely guarded secret I held. I wanted Hunter to grow up as normally as possible. The more supes who knew about Hunter, the higher the
likelihood someone would snatch him away because telepaths were useful. There was sure to be someone ruthless enough to take such a terrible
action. I don’t think Remy, his father, had even considered that yet. Remy was worried about Hunter’s acceptance among the humans around him.
And that was a big deal, too. Kids could be incredibly cruel when they sensed you were different. I knew that all too well.
It’s kind of obvious when people are having a mind-to-mind conversation, if you know the cues. Their faces change expression when they look at
other, much as they would if the conversation were out loud. So I was looking away from the child frequently and keeping my smile steady. Hunter
was too little to learn how to conceal our communication, so I’d have to do it.
Will all these kids fit in one room? he asked.
“Out loud,” I reminded him quietly. “No, you’ll be divided into groups, and then you’ll hang out with one group all day, Hunter.” I didn’t know if the
Red Ditch kindergarten had the same schedule as the higher grades, but I was sure it would last past lunch, anyway. “Your dad will bring you in the
morning, and someone will come get you in the afternoon.” Who? I wondered, and then remembered Hunter was listening to me. “Your dad will fix
that,” I said. “Look. This room is the Seal Room. See the big picture of the seal? And that room is the Pony Room.”
“Is there a pony?” Hunter was an optimist.
“I don’t think so, but I bet there are lots of pictures of ponies in the room.” All the doors were open, and the teachers were inside, smiling at the
children and their parents, doing their best to seem welcoming and warm. Some of them, of course, had more of a struggle doing this than others.
The Pony Room teacher, Mrs. Gristede, was a nice enough woman, or at least that was what my quick look told me. Hunter nodded.
We ventured into the Puppy Room and met with Miss O’Fallon. We were back in the hall after three minutes.
“Not the Puppy Room,” I told Remy, speaking very quietly. “You can designate, right?”
“Yeah, we can. Once. I can say one room I definitely don’t want my kid to be in,” he said. “Most people use that option in case the teacher is too
close to the family, like a relative, or if the families have had some quarrel.”
“Not the Puppy Room,” Hunter said, looking scared.
Miss O’Fallon looked pretty on the outside, but she was rotten on the inside.
“What’s wrong?” Remy asked, his voice also on a confidential level.
“Tell you later,” I murmured. “Let’s go see something else.”
Trailed by Remy, we made visits to the other three rooms. All the other teachers seemed okay, though Mrs. Boyle seemed a little burned-out. Her
thoughts were brisk and had an edge of impatience, and her smile was just a bit brittle. I didn’t say anything to Remy. If he could turn down only one
teacher, Miss O’Fallon was the most dangerous.
We went back to Mrs. Gristede’s room because Hunter definitely liked the ponies. There were two other parents there, both towing little girls. I
squeezed Hunter’s hand gently to remind him of the rules. He looked up at me, and I nodded, trying to encourage the boy. He let go of my hand and
went over to a reading area, picking up one of the books and turning the pages.
“Do you like to read, Hunter?” Mrs. Gristede asked.
“I like books. I can’t read yet.” Hunter put the book back where it belonged, and I gave him a mental pat on the back. He smiled to himself and
picked up another book, this one a Dr. Seuss about dogs.
“I can tell Hunter’s been read to,” the teacher said, smiling at Remy and me.
Remy introduced himself. “I’m Hunter’s dad, and this is Hunter’s cousin,” he said, inclining his head toward me. “Sookie’s standing in for Hunter’s
mom tonight, since she’s passed away.”
Mrs. Gristede absorbed that. “Well, I’m glad to see both of you,” she said. “Hunter seems like a bright little boy.”
I noticed the girls were approaching him. They were longtime friends, I could tell, and their parents went to church together. I made a mental note
to advise Remy to pick a church and start attending. Hunter was going to need all the backup he could get. The girls began picking up books, too.
Hunter smiled at the girl with the dark Dutchboy bob, giving her that sideways look shy children use to evaluate potential playmates.
She said, “I like this one,” and pointed to Where the Wild Things Are.
“I never read it,” Hunter said doubtfully. It looked a little scary to him.
“Do you play with blocks?” the girl with the light brown ponytail asked.
“Yeah.” Hunter walked over to the carpeted play area that was for construction, I decided, because there were all sizes of blocks and puzzles
around it. In a minute the three were building something that took on life in their minds.
Remy smiled. He was hoping this was the way every day would go. Of course, it wouldn’t. Even now, Hunter was glancing dubiously at the
ponytail girl because she was getting angry about the brunette’s grabbing all the alphabet blocks.
The other parents looked at me with some curiosity, and one of the mothers said, “You don’t live here?”
“No,” I said. “I live over in Bon Temps. But Hunter wanted me to go around with him today, and he’s my favorite little cousin.” I’d almost called him
my nephew, because he called me “Aunt Sookie.”
“Remy,” the same woman said. “You’re Hank Savoy’s great-nephew, right?”
Remy nodded. “Yeah, we came up here after Katrina, and we stayed,” he said. He shrugged. Nothing you could do about losing everything to
Katrina. She was a bitch.
There was a lot of headshaking, and I felt the sympathy roll over Remy. Maybe that goodwill would extend to Hunter.
While they were all bonding, I drifted back to Miss O’Fallon’s door.
The young woman was smiling at two children who were wandering around her brightly decorated classroom. One set of parents was staying
right beside their little one. Maybe they were picking up on the vibe, or maybe they were just protective.
I drifted close to Miss O’Fallon, and I opened my mouth to speak. I would have said, “You keep those fantasies to yourself. Don’t even think of
such things when you’re in the same room with kids.” But I had a second thought. She knew I’d come with Hunter. Would he become a target for her
evil imagination if I threatened her? I couldn’t be around to protect him. I couldn’t stop her. I couldn’t think of a way to take her out of the equation.
She hadn’t yet done anything wrong in the eyes of the law or morality . . . yet. So what if she imagined taping children’s mouths shut? She hadn’t
done it. Haven’t all of us fantasized about awful things we haven’t done? she asked herself, because the answer made her feel that she was still . .
. okay. She didn’t know I could hear her.
Was I any better than Miss O’Fallon? That awful question ran through my mind more quickly than it takes to write the sentences. I thought, Yeah,
I’m not as scary because I’m not in charge of kids. The people I want to hurt are adults and they’re killers themselves. That didn’t make me any
better—but it made O’Fallon a lot worse.
I’d been staring at her long enough to spook her. “Did you want to ask something about the curriculum?” she asked finally, a little edge to her
voice.
“Why did you become a teacher?” I asked.
“I thought it would be a wonderful thing to teach little ones the first things they needed to know to get along in the world,” she said, as if she’d
pressed the button on a recording. She meant, I had a teacher who tortured me when no one was looking, and I like the small and helpless.
“Hmmm,” I murmured. The other visitors left the room, and we were alone.
“You need therapy,” I said, quietly and quickly. “If you act on what you see in your head, you’ll hate yourself. And you’ll ruin the lives of other people
just the same way yours was ruined. Don’t let her win. Get help.”
She gaped at me. “I don’t know . . . What on earth . . .”
“I’m so serious,” I said, answering her next unspoken question. “I’m so serious.”
“I’ll do it,” she said, as if the words were ripped from her mouth. “I swear, I’ll do it.”
“You’d be better off,” I said. I gave her some more eye-to-eye. Then I left the Puppy Room.
Maybe I’d frightened her enough, or jolted her enough, that she’d actually do what she’d promised. If not, well, I’d have to think of another tactic.
“My job here is done, Grasshopper,” I said to myself, earning a nervous look from a very young father. I smiled at him, and after a bit of hesitation,
he smiled back. I rejoined Remy and Hunter, and we completed our kindergarten tour without any further incident. Hunter gave me a questioning
look, a very anxious look, and I nodded. I took care of her, I said, and I prayed that was true.
It was really too early for supper, but Remy suggested we go to Dairy Queen and treat Hunter to some ice cream, and I agreed. Hunter was halfanxious,
half-excited after the school expedition. I tried calming him with a little head-to-head conversation. Can you take me to school the first day,
Aunt Sookie? he asked, and I had to steel myself to answer.
No, Hunter, that’s your daddy’s job, I told him. But when that day comes, you call me when you get home and tell me all about it, okay?
Hunter gave me a big-eyed soulful look. But I’m scared.
I gave him Skeptical. You may be nervous, but everyone else will feel the same way. This is your chance to make friends, so remember to
keep your mouth closed until you’ve gotten everything straight in your head.
Or they won’t like me?
No! I said, wanting to be absolutely clear. They won’t understand you. There’s a big difference.
You like me?
“You little rascal, you know I like you,” I said, smiling at him and brushing his hair back. I glanced over at Remy, standing in line at the counter to
order our Blizzards. He waved to me and made a face at Hunter. Remy was making a huge effort to take all this in stride. He was growing into his
role as father of an exceptional child.
I figured he might get to relax in twelve years, give or take a few.
You know your dad loves you, and you know he wants what’s best for you, I said.
He wants me to be like all the other kids, Hunter said, half-sad, halfresentful.
He wants you to be happy. And he knows that the more people who know about this gift you have, the chances are you won’t be happy. I know
it’s not fair to tell you that you have to keep a secret. But this is the only secret you have to keep. If anyone talks to you about it, tell your dad or
call me. If you think someone’s weird, you tell your dad. If someone tries to bad-touch you, you tell.
I’d just scared him now. But he swallowed and said, I know about bad touching.
You’re a smart boy, and you’re going to have lots of friends. This is just a thing about you they don’t need to know.
Because it’s bad? Hunter’s face looked pinched and desperate.
Heck, no! I said, outraged. Nothing wrong with you, buddy. But you know what we are is different, and people don’t always understand different.
End of lecture. I gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“Hunter, you get us some napkins,” I said in the regular way, as Remy picked up the plastic tray with our Blizzards. I’d gotten a chocolate chip one,
and my mouth was watering when we’d distributed the napkins and dug into our separate cups of sinful goodness.
A young woman with chin-length black hair came into the restaurant, spotted us, and waved in an uncertain way.
“Look, Sport, it’s Erin,” Remy said.
“Hey, Erin!” Hunter waved back enthusiastically, his hand moving like a little metronome.
Erin came over, still looking as though she weren’t sure of her welcome.
“Hi,” she said, looking around the table. “Mr. Hunter, sir, it’s good to see you this fine afternoon!” Hunter beamed back at her. He liked being
called “Mr. Hunter.” Erin had cute round cheeks, and her almond eyes were a rich brown.
“This is my Aunt Sookie!” Hunter said with pride.
“Sookie, this is Erin,” Remy said. I could tell from his thoughts that he liked the young woman more than a little.
“Erin, I’ve heard so much about you,” I said. “It’s nice to put a face with the name. Hunter wanted me to come over to go around the kindergarten
rooms with him.”
“How did that go?” Erin asked, genuinely interested.
Hunter started to tell her all about it, and Remy jumped up to pull over a chair for Erin.
We had a good time after that. Hunter seemed to be really fond of Erin, and Erin returned the feeling. Erin was also quite interested in Hunter’s
dad, and Remy was on the verge of being nuts about her. All in all, it wasn’t a bad afternoon to be able to read minds, I figured.
Hunter said, “Miss Erin, Aunt Sookie says she can’t go with me to the first day of school. Would you?”
Erin was both startled and pleased. “If your dad says it’s okay, and if I can get off work,” she said, careful to put some conditions on it in case
Remy had some objection . . . or they’d quit dating by late August. “You’re so sweet to ask me.”
While Remy took Hunter to the men’s room, Erin and I were left to regard each other with curiosity.
“How long have you and Remy been seeing each other?” I asked. That seemed safe enough.
“Just a month,” she said. “I like Remy, and I think we might have something, but it’s too soon to tell. I don’t want Hunter to start depending on me in
case it doesn’t work out. Plus . . .” She hesitated for a long minute. “I understand that Kristen Duchesne thought there was something wrong with
Hunter. She told everyone that. But I really care about that little boy.” The question was clear in her eyes.
“He’s different,” I said, “but there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s not mentally ill, he doesn’t have a learning disability, and he’s not possessed by
the devil.” I was smiling, just a little, when I got to the end of the sentence.
“I’d never seen any signs of that,” she agreed. She was smiling, too. “I don’t think I’ve seen the whole picture, though.”
I wasn’t about to tell Hunter’s secret. “He needs special love and care,” I said. “He’s never really had a mom, and I’m sure having someone stable
in his life, filling that role, would help.”
“And that’s not going to be you.” She said that as if she were half asking a question.
“No,” I said, relieved to get a chance to set the record straight. “That’s not going to be me. Remy seems like a nice guy, but I’m seeing someone
else.” I scraped up one more spoonful of chocolate and sugar.
Erin looked down at her glass of Pepsi, thinking her own thoughts. Of course, I was thinking them right along with her. She’d never liked Kristen
and didn’t think much of her mental ability. She did like Remy, more and more. And she loved Hunter. “Okay,” she said, having reached an inner
conclusion. “Okay.”
She looked up at me and nodded. I nodded right back. It seemed we’d arrived at an understanding. When the menfolk came back from their trip
to the restroom, I said good-bye to them.
“Oh, wait, Remy, can you step outside for a minute with me, if Erin wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on Hunter?”
“I’d love to,” she said. I hugged Hunter again and gave him a pat and a smile as I moved toward the door.
Remy followed me, an apprehensive expression on his face. We stood a little away from the door.
“You know Hadley left the rest of her estate to me,” I said. This had been weighing on me.
“The lawyer told me.” Remy’s face wasn’t giving anything away, but of course I have other methods. He was calm through and through.
“You aren’t mad?”
“No, I don’t want nothing of Hadley’s.”
“But for Hunter . . . his college. There wasn’t much cash, but there was some good jewelry, and I could sell it.”
“I got a college fund started for him,” Remy said. “One of my great-aunts says she’s going to leave what she’s got to him since she doesn’t have
any kids of her own. Hadley put me through hell, and she didn’t even care enough about Hunter to plan for him. I don’t want it.”
“In all fairness, she didn’t expect to die young. . . . In fact, she didn’t expect to die ever,” I said. “It’s my belief she didn’t put Hunter in her will
because she didn’t want anyone to know about him and come looking for him to use him as a hostage for her good behavior.”
“I hope that’s the case,” Remy said. “I mean, I hope she thought about him. But taking her money, knowing how she turned out, how she earned it .
. . that would make me feel sick.”
“All right,” I said. “If you think it over and change your mind, call me by tomorrow night! You never know when I might go on a spending spree or put
that jewelry down on the table at one of the casinos.”
He smiled, just a little. “You’re a good woman,” he said, and returned to his girlfriend and his son.
I started the drive home with a clear conscience and a happier heart.
I’d worked half of the early shift that day (Holly had taken my half and her own shift), so I was free. I thought of brooding over Gran’s letter a little
more. Mr. Cataliades’s visit to us when we were babies, the cluviel dor, the deceptions Gran’s lover had practiced on her . . . Because surely when
Gran had thought she smelled Fintan when she was seeing her husband, she was seeing Fintan in disguise. It was hard to absorb.
Amelia and Bob were busy casting spells when I got back. They were walking around the perimeter of the house in opposite directions, chanting
and swinging incense like the priests in the Catholic Church.
Some days I realized it was all to the good that I lived out in the country.
I didn’t want to break their concentration, so I wandered off into the woods. I wondered where the portal was, if I could recognize it. “A thin place,”
Dermot had called it. Could I spot a thin place? At least I knew the general direction, and I started east.
It was a warm afternoon, and I began sweating the minute I started to make my way through the woods. The sun broke through the branches in a
thousand patterns, and the birds and the bugs made the thousand noises that left the woods anything but silent. It wouldn’t be long until evening
closed in and the light would fracture and slant, making the footing uncertain. The birds would fall silent, and the night creatures would make their
own harmony.
I picked my way through the undergrowth, thinking of the night before. I wondered if Judith had packed all her things and left, as she’d said she
would. I wondered if Bill felt lonely now that she was gone. I assumed nothing and no one had popped up in my yard the night before, since I’d slept
through the hours of the dark and into the morning.
Then all I had left to wonder about was when Sandra Pelt would try to kill me again. Just as I began to suspect that being alone in the woods
wasn’t a good idea, I stepped into a tiny clearing about a quarter of a mile, or less, slightly southeast of my back door.
I was pretty sure this was the thin place, this little clearing. For one thing, there was no reason for it to be clear that I could see. There were wild
grasses growing thickly, but there were no bushes, nothing above calf-high. No vines stretched across the area, no branches drooped over it.
Before I stepped out of the trees, I gave the ground a very careful examination. The last thing I needed was to be caught in some kind of fairy
booby trap. But I couldn’t see anything extraordinary, except perhaps . . . a slight wavering in the air. Right in the middle of the clearing. The odd
spot—if I was even seeing it right—hovered at the height of my knees. It was the shape of a small and irregular circle, perhaps fifteen inches in
diameter. And in just that spot, the air seemed to distort, a little like a heat illusion. Was it actually hot? I wondered.
I knelt in the weeds about an arm’s length from the wobbly air. I plucked a long blade of grass and very nervously poked it into the distorted area.
I let go of it, and it vanished. I snatched my fingers back and yipped with surprise.
I’d established something. I wasn’t sure what. If I’d doubted Claude’s word, here was verification he’d been telling me the truth. Very carefully, I
moved a little closer to the wavery patch. “Hi, Niall,” I said. “If you’re listening, if you’re there. I miss you.”
Of course, there came no answer.
“I have a lot of troubles, but I expect you do, too,” I said, not wanting to sound whiny. “I don’t know how Faery fits into this world. Are you all walking
around us, but invisible? Or do you have a whole’nother world, like Atlantis?” This was a pretty weak and one-sided conversation. “Well, I better go
back to the house before it gets dark. If you need me, come see me. I do miss you,” I said again.
Nothing continued to happen.
Feeling both pleased that I’d found the thin spot and disappointed that nothing had changed as a result, I made my way back through the woods
to the house. Bob and Amelia had finished their magical doings in the yard, and Bob had fired up the grill. He and Amelia were going to cook
steaks. Though I’d had ice cream with Remy and Hunter, I couldn’t turn down grilled steak rubbed with Bob’s secret seasoning. Amelia was cutting
up potatoes to wrap in foil to go on the grill, too. I was pleased as punch. I volunteered to cook some crookneck squash.
The house felt happier. And safer.
While we ate, Amelia told us funny stories about working in the Genuine Magic Shop, and Bob unbent enough to imitate some of his odder
colleagues in the unisex hair salon where he worked. The hairdresser Bob replaced had become so discouraged by the complications of life in
post-Katrina New Orleans that she’d loaded up her car and left for Miami. Bob had gotten the job by being the first qualified person to walk in the
door after the previous one had walked out. In answer to my question about whether that had been sheer coincidence, Bob just smiled. Every now
and then, I saw a flash of what fascinated Amelia about Bob, who otherwise looked like a skinny, rough-haired encyclopedia salesman. I told him
about Immanuel and my emergency haircut, and he said Immanuel had done a wonderful job.
“So, the work on the wards is all done?” I asked anxiously, trying to sound casual about the change of topic.
“You bet,” Amelia said, looking proud. She cut another bite of steak. “They’re even better now. A dragon couldn’t get through ’em. No one who
means you harm will make it.”
“So if a dragon was friendly . . .” I said, half teasing, and she swatted me with her fork.
“No such thing, the way I hear tell,” Amelia said. “Of course, I’ve never seen one.”
“Of course.” I didn’t know whether to feel curious or relieved.
Bob said, “Amelia’s got a surprise for you.”
“Oh?” I tried to sound more relaxed than I felt.
“I found the cure,” she said, half-proudly and half-shyly. “I mean, you did ask me to when I left. I kept looking for a way to break the blood bond. I
found it.”
“How?” I scrambled to conceal how flustered I was.
“First I asked Octavia. She didn’t know, because she doesn’t specialize in vampire magic, but she e-mailed a couple of her older friends in other
covens, and they scouted around. It all took time, and there were some dead ends, but eventually I came up with a spell that doesn’t end in the
death of one of the . . . bondees.”
“I’m stunned,” I said, which was the absolute truth.
“Shall I cast it tonight?”
“You mean . . . right now?”
“Yes, after supper.” Amelia looked slightly less happy because she wasn’t getting the response she’d anticipated. Bob was looking from Amelia
to me, and he, too, looked doubtful. He’d assumed I’d be both delighted and effusive, and that wasn’t the reaction he was seeing.
“I don’t know.” I put my fork down. “It wouldn’t hurt Eric?”
“As if anything can hurt a vampire that old,” she said. “Honestly, Sook, why you’re worrying about him . . .”
“I love him,” I said. They both stared at me.
“For real?” Amelia said in a small voice.
“I told you that before you left, Amelia.”
“I guess I just didn’t want to believe you. You sure you’ll feel that way when the bond is dissolved?”
“That’s what I want to find out.”
She nodded. “You need to know. And you need to be free of him.”
The sun had just set, and I could feel Eric rising. His presence was with me like a shadow: familiar, irritating, reassuring, intrusive. All those things
at once.
“If you’re ready, do it now,” I said. “Before I lose all courage.”
“This is actually a good time of day to do it,” she said. “Sunset. End of the day. Endings, in general. It makes sense.” Amelia hurried to the
bedroom. She returned in a couple of minutes with an envelope and three little jars: jelly jars in a chrome rack, like the kind a waitress in a diner
puts on the table at breakfast. The jars were half-full of a mixture of herbs. Amelia was now wearing an apron. I could see that there were objects in
one of the pockets.
“All right,” she said, and handed the envelope to Bob, who extracted the paper and scanned it quickly, a frown on his narrow face.
“Out in the yard,” he suggested, and we three left the kitchen, crossed the back porch, and went down into the yard, smelling the steak all over
again as we passed my old grill. Amelia positioned me in one spot, Bob in another, and then positioned the jelly jars, too. Bob and I each had one
on the ground behind us, and there was one at the spot where she would stand. We’d form a triangle. I didn’t ask any questions. I probably wouldn’t
have believed the answers, anyway.
She gave me a book of matches and handed one to Bob, too. She kept a third for herself. “When I tell you, set fire to your herbs. Then walk
counterclockwise around your jar three times,” she said. “Stop at your station again after the third time. Then we’ll say some words—Bob, you got
’em in your head? Sookie’ll need the paper.”
Bob looked at the words again, nodded, and passed me the paper. I could just read the script by the security light, because the evening was
closing in fast now that the sun was down.
“Ready?” Amelia asked sharply. She looked older and colder in the twilight.
I nodded, wondering if I was being truthful.
Bob said, “Yes.”
“Then turn and light your fire,” Amelia said, and like a robot I did as I was told. I was scared to death, and I wasn’t sure why. This was what I
needed to do. My match struck and I dropped it in the jelly jar. The herbs flared up with a sharp smell, and then we three were upright again and
moving counterclockwise.
Was this a bad thing for a Christian to be doing? Probably. On the other hand, it had never occurred to me to ask the Methodist minister if he had
a ritual in place to sever a blood bond between a woman and a vampire.
And when we’d been around three times and stopped again, Amelia pulled a ball of red yarn from her apron. She held one end and passed the
ball to Bob. He measured out some and took hold and then passed the ball to me. I did the same and returned the ball to Amelia, because that
seemed to be the program. I held the yarn with one hand and gripped the paper with the other. This was busier than I had counted on. Amelia also
had a pair of shears, and she extracted those from a pocket, too.
Amelia, who had been chanting the whole time, pointed at me and then at Bob, to indicate that we should join in. I peered down at the paper,
picked my way through the words that made no sense to me, and then it was over.
We stood in silence, and the little flames in the jars died out, and the night had set in hard.
“Cut,” Amelia said, handing me the shears. “And mean it.”
Feeling a little ridiculous and a lot scared, but sure that I needed to do this, I snipped the red yarn.
And I lost Eric.
He wasn’t there.
Amelia rolled up the cut yarn and handed it to me. To my surprise, she was smiling; she looked fierce and triumphant. I took the length of yarn
automatically from her hand, all my senses stretching out to seek Eric. Nothing.
I felt a rush of panic. It wasn’t entirely pure: There was some relief mixed in, which I had expected. And there was grief. As soon as I was sure he
was okay, that he hadn’t been hurt, I knew I would relax and feel the full measure of the success of the spell.
In the house, my phone rang, and I sprinted for the back door.
“Are you there?” he said. “Are you there, are you all right?”
“Eric,” I said, my breath coming out in a great ripping sigh. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re all right! You are, aren’t you?”
“What have you done?”
“Amelia found a way to break the bond.”
There was a long silence. Before, I would have known if Eric was anxious, furious, or thoughtful. Now, I couldn’t imagine. Finally, he spoke.
“Sookie, the marriage gives you some protection, but the bond is what is important.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I am so angry with you.” He really meant it.
“Come here,” I said.
“No. If I see Amelia, I’ll break her neck.” He meant that, too. “She’s always wanted you to get rid of me.”
“But . . .” I began, not knowing how to end the sentence.
“I’ll see you when I’ve got control of myself,” he said. And he hung up.
Chapter 9
I should have foreseen this, I told myself for the tenth, or twentieth, time. I’d rushed into something that I should have prepared for. At the least, I
should have called Eric and warned him what was about to happen. But I’d been afraid he’d talk me out of it, and I had to know what my true feeling
for him was.
Just at the moment, Eric’s true feeling for me was anger. He was mighty pissed off. On the one hand, I didn’t blame him. We were supposed to
be in love, and that meant we were supposed to consult one another, right? On the other hand, I could count the times Eric had consulted me
without even using up all my fingers. On one of my hands. So at other moments, I did blame him for his reaction. Of course he wouldn’t have let me
do it, and I would never have known something I had to know.
So I was hopping from foot to foot mentally when it came to deciding whether I’d done the right thing.
But I was upset and worried pretty much nonstop, no matter which foot I was standing on at the moment.
Bob and Amelia had a consultation in their bedroom, as a result of which they decided to stay another day to “see what happens.” I could tell
Amelia was worried. She thought she ought to have eased into the idea a little more slowly before encouraging me to take the plunge. Bob thought
we were both being silly, but he was smart enough not to say so. However, he couldn’t help but think it, and though he wasn’t as clear a broadcaster
as Amelia, I could hear him.
I did go to work the next day, but I was so distracted and miserable, and business was so light, that Sam told me to go home early. India kindly
patted me on the shoulder and told me to take it easy, a concept I had a lot of trouble understanding.
That night, Eric came an hour after sundown. He drove up, so we’d have warning. I’d hoped he would come, and I’d been pretty sure he would
have cooled off enough. Right after supper, I’d asked Amelia and Bob if they’d like to go to a movie in Clarice.
“You sure you’ll be all right?” Amelia had asked. “Because we’re ready to stay with you if you think he’s still angry.” If she’d been pleased before, it
had vanished now.
“I don’t know how he feels,” I said, and I was still a little giddy at the thought. “But I do think he’ll come tonight. It’d probably go better if he didn’t
have you here to make him madder.”
Bob had bristled a little at that, but Amelia had nodded understandingly. “I hope you still think of me as your friend,” she said, and for once I didn’t
see her thoughts coming. “I mean, I think I’ve screwed you up, but that wasn’t my intention. I intended to free you.”
“I understand, and I still think of you as one of my best friends,” I said as reassuringly as I could manage. If I was weak-willed enough to go along
with Amelia’s impulses, then it was my problem.
I was sitting alone on my front porch in that gloomy kind of mood where you remember all of your mistakes and none of your good decisions when
I saw the headlights of Eric’s car zooming up the driveway.
I didn’t expect that he would hesitate when he got out of the car.
“Are you still mad?” I said, trying not to cry. Weeping would be craven, and I was forcing some steel into my backbone.
“Do you still love me?” he asked.
“You first.” Childish.
“I’m not angry,” he said. “At least, not anymore. At least, not right now. I should have encouraged you to find a way to break the bond, and in fact
we have a ritual for it. I should have offered it to you. I was afraid that without it we would be parted, whether because you didn’t want to be dragged
into my troubles or because Victor found out you were vulnerable. If he chooses to ignore the marriage, without the bond I won’t know that you are in
danger.”
“I should have asked you what you thought, or at least warned you what we were going to do,” I said. I took a deep breath. “I do love you, all on my
own.”
And he was up on the porch with me, and then he was picking me up and kissing me, my lips, my neck, my shoulders. He held my feet off the
ground and lifted me high enough that his mouth could find my breasts through my bra and T-shirt.
I gave a little shriek and swung my legs until they latched around him. I rubbed against him as hard as I could. Eric loved monkey sex.
He said, “I’m going to tear your clothes.”
“Okay.”
And he was as good as his word.
After an exciting few minutes, he said, “I’m tearing mine, too.”
“Sure,” I mumbled, before I bit his earlobe. He growled. There was nothing civilized about sex with Eric.
I heard more ripping, and then there was nothing at all between me and him. He was inside me, deep inside me, and he staggered backward to
land on the porch swing, which began rocking back and forth erratically. After a moment of surprise we began working with its motion. It went on
and on until I could feel the increased tension, the almost-there feeling of impending release.
“Go hard,” I said urgently. “Go go go . . .”
“Is . . . this . . . hard . . . enough?”
And I shrieked out loud, my head falling back.
“Come on, Eric,” I said, when my aftershocks were still rippling through me. “Come on!” And I moved faster than I’d imagined I was able.
“Sookie!” he gasped, and gave me one last huge thrust followed by a sound that I might have thought was primal pain if I hadn’t known much
better.
It was magnificent, it was exhausting, and it was completely excellent.
We stayed on the swing for at least thirty minutes, recovering, cooling off, and holding each other. I was so happy and relaxed I didn’t want to
move, but of course I needed to go inside to clean myself up and to put on some clothes that didn’t have the seams ripped out. Eric had only
popped the button off his jeans, and he could hold them closed with his belt, which he’d managed to unbuckle before we’d gotten to the tearing
stage. His zipper was still workable.
While I arranged myself, he heated up some blood and fixed an ice pack and a glass of iced tea for me. He applied the ice pack himself while I
lay on the couch. I thought, I was right to break the bond. And it was a relief not to know how Eric was feeling, though simultaneously I was afraid
there was something wrong about my relief.
For a few minutes, we talked about little things. He brushed my hair, which was in a terrible tangle, and I brushed his. (Monkeys searched each
other for salt crystals, I believed. We groomed each other.) When I’d made his hair all smooth and shiny he draped my legs over his lap. His hand
ran up and down them, from the hem of my shorts to my toes, over and over.
“Has Victor said anything to you?” I wasn’t looking forward to reopening the conversation about what I’d done, though we’d opened our meeting
with a bang.
“Not about the bond, so he doesn’t know yet. He would have been on the phone instantly.” Eric leaned his head against the back of the couch, his
blue eyes at half mast. Postcoital relaxation.
That was a relief. “How’s Miriam? Did she recover?”
“She recovered from the drugs Victor gave her, but she’s sicker in body. Pam is as close to despair as I’ve ever seen her.”
“Did their relationship come on kind of slowly? Because I didn’t have a clue until Immanuel told me about it.”
“Pam doesn’t often care for anyone as much she cares about Miriam,” he said. His head turned slowly, and his eyes met mine. “I only found out
when she asked for some time off from the club to visit Miriam in the hospital. And she gave the girl blood, too, which is the only reason Miriam’s
lasted this long.”
“Vampire blood can’t cure her?”
“Our blood is good for healing open wounds,” Eric said. “For illnesses, it can offer relief, but seldom a cure.”
“I wonder why?”
Eric shrugged. “I’m sure one of your scientists would have a theory, but I don’t. And since some people go crazy when they take our blood, the
risk is considerable. I was happier when the properties of our blood were secret, but I suppose that couldn’t be kept quiet for long. Victor certainly
isn’t concerned about Miriam’s survival or the fact that Pam has never asked to create a child before. After all these years of service, Pam
deserves to be granted the right.”
“Victor’s not letting Pam have Miriam out of sheer cussedness?”
Eric nodded. “He has a bullshit excuse about there being enough vampires in my sheriffdom, when actually my numbers are low. The truth is that
Victor will block us any way he can for as long as he can, in the hope that I’ll do something injudicious enough to warrant being removed as sheriff,
or killed.”
“Surely Felipe wouldn’t let that happen.”
Eric hoisted me onto his lap and held me to his cool chest. His shirt was still open. “Felipe would judge in Pam’s favor if he were on the spot, but
I’m sure he wants to stay out of the situation if he can. It’s what I’d do. He’s setting up Red Rita in Arkansas and she’s never ruled, he knows Victor
is sulking about being appointed regent rather than king in Louisiana, and he is busy himself in Las Vegas, which he’s running on a skeleton crew
since he’s sent people out to both his new states. Consolidating this big an empire hasn’t been done in hundreds of years—and the last time it was
done, the population was only a fraction of what it is today.”
“So Felipe’s still in complete control of Nevada?”
“Yes. For now.”
“That sounds kind of ominous.”
“When leaders are spread thin, the sharks gather round to see if they can take a bite.”
Unpleasant mental image.
“What sharks? Anyone we know?”
Eric looked away. “Two other monarchs in Zeus. The Queen of Oklahoma, for one. And the King of Arizona.” The vampires had split America into
four territories, all named after ancient religions. Pretentious, huh? I lived in Amun Territory in the kingdom of Louisiana.
“I wish you were just an average vampire,” I said, completely out of the blue. “I wish you weren’t a sheriff, or anything.”
“You mean you wish I were like Bill.”
Ouch. “No, because he’s not average, either,” I snapped. “He’s got the whole database thing going, and he’s taught himself all about computers.
He’s sort of reinvented himself. I guess I mean I wish you were more like . . . Maxwell.”
Maxwell was a businessman. He wore suits. He turned up for his duty at the club without enthusiasm, and he flashed his fangs without the drama
the tourists had come to see. He was boring, and he had a stick up his ass, though from time to time I’d had a hint that his personal life was exotic.
However, not interested in learning more about that.
Eric rolled his eyes at me. “Of course, I’m so much like Maxwell. Let me start carrying a pocket calculator with me, and putting people to sleep
with things like ‘variable annuities,’ or whatever the hell it is he talks about.”
“I get your point, Mr. Subtle,” I said. The ice pack had done all the good it was going to, and I removed it from my yahoo palace and put it on the
table.
This was the most relaxed conversation we’d had in forever.
“See, isn’t this fun?” I said, trying to get Eric to admit I’d done the right thing, though I’d gone about it wrong.
“Yes, so much fun. Until Victor snatches you up and drains you dry and then says, ‘But, Eric, she was no longer bonded to you, so I did not think
you still wanted her!’ And then he’ll turn you against your will, and I’ll have to watch you suffer being bound to him for the rest of your life. And mine.”
“You really know how to make a girl feel special,” I said.
“I love you,” he said, as if he were reminding himself of a painful fact. “And this situation with Pam has to end. If this girl Miriam dies, Pam may
decide to leave, and I won’t be able to stop her. In fact, I shouldn’t. Though she’s very useful.”
“You’re fond of her,” I said. “Come on, Eric. You love her. She’s your kid.”
“Yes, I am very fond of Pam,” he said. “I made a great choice. You were my other great choice.”
“That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me,” I told him, choking up just a little.
“Don’t cry!” He waved his hands in front of him as if to ward off my tears.
I swallowed hard. “So, do you have a plan about Victor?” I used Eric’s shirttail to dab at my eyes.
Eric looked grim. Well, grimmer. “Every time I make one, I run up against an obstacle so large I have to discard the plan. Victor is very good at
self-protection. I may have to openly attack him. If I kill him, if I win, then I’ll have to stand trial.”
I shivered. “Eric, if you fought with Victor alone, bare-handed, in an empty room, what do you think the outcome would be?”
“He’s very good,” Eric said. And that was all he said.
“He might win?” I said, testing the idea out loud.
“Yes,” Eric said. He met my eyes. “And what would happen to you and Pam afterward . . .”
“I’m not trying to bypass the fact that you would be dead, which would be the most important thing to me in that scenario,” I said. “But I’m
wondering why he would be so sure to hurt Pam and me afterward. What would be the point?”
“The point would be the lesson he’d be making to other vampires who might be thinking of trying to overthrow him.” Eric’s eyes focused on the
mantelpiece, crowded with Stackhouse family pictures. He didn’t want to look into my face when he said what he was going to tell me next. “Heidi
told me that two years ago, when Victor was still a sheriff in Nevada, in Reno . . . a new vampire named Chico talked back to him. Chico’s father
was dead, but his mother was still living, and in fact had married again and had other children. Victor had her abducted. To correct Chico’s
manners, he cut out the mother’s tongue while Chico watched. He made Chico eat it.”
There was so much disturbing about that, that I had a hard time thinking it through. “Vampires can’t eat,” I said. “What . . . ?”
“Chico was violently ill, and in fact threw up blood,” Eric said. He still didn’t meet my eyes. “He became too weak to move. While he lay on the
floor, his mother bled to death. He couldn’t crawl to her to give her blood to save her.”
“Heidi volunteered this story?”
“Yes. I had asked her why she was so pleased she’d been sent to Area Five.”
Heidi, a vamp who specialized in tracking, had become part of Eric’s crew courtesy of Victor. Of course she was supposed to spy on Eric, and
because that was not a secret, no one seemed to mind. I didn’t know Heidi well, but I knew she had a living child, a drug addict in Reno, so I wasn’t
at all surprised that she’d taken Victor’s lesson to heart. Learning this would indeed cause any vampire with living relatives, or any human loved
ones, to fear Victor. But they’d also loathe him and want him dead—and this was the aspect Victor hadn’t thought of, I guessed, when he’d taught
that lesson.
“Victor’s either shortsighted or super cocky,” I concluded out loud, and Eric nodded.
“Maybe both,” he said.
“How’d you feel when you heard that story?” I asked.
“I . . . didn’t want that to happen to you,” he said. He gave me a puzzled face. “What are you looking for, Sookie? What answer shall I give?”
Though I knew it was futile—knew I was barking up the wrong tree—I was looking for moral repugnance. I was looking for “I would never be so
cruel to a woman and her son.”
At the same time I was wanting a thousand-year-old vampire to be upset about the death of a human woman he hadn’t known—a death he
couldn’t have prevented—I knew it was crazy, wrong, and bad that I myself was plotting to kill Victor. His complete absence was what I longed for. I
had no doubt that if Pam called to say a safe had fallen on top of Victor, I would dance around with glee.
“That’s okay,” I said. “Never mind.”
Eric gave me a dark look. He couldn’t see the depth of my unhappiness—not now, not since the bond was severed. But he certainly knew me well
enough to see that I wasn’t content. I forced myself to address the problem at hand. “You know who you should talk to,” I said. “Remember the night
we went to Vampire’s Kiss, that server who tipped me off about the fairy blood by just a look and a thought.”
Eric nodded.
“I hate to pull him in any further. But I don’t see we have another choice. We have to do this with everything we’ve got, or we’re going down.”
“Sometimes,” Eric said, “you astonish me.”
Sometimes—and not always in a good way—I astonished myself.
Eric and I drove to Vampire’s Kiss again. The parking lot was crowded, maybe not as much as it had been on our previous visit. We parked out
back behind the club. If Victor was actually in the club that night, there’d be no reason for him to check out the employee parking lot, and there’d be
no reason for him to remember which car was mine. While we waited, I got a text from Amelia telling me that they were back at the house, and how
was I doing?
“Am ok,” I texted back. “We’re good. C & D there?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Sniffing porch, don’t know why. Fairies! Got ur keys?”
I told her I did, but that I wasn’t sure I’d be home that night. We were a little closer to Shreveport than Bon Temps, and I’d need to take Eric home
unless he flew. But his car would be . . . Oh, well, that was why he always had a daytime guy.
“Did you replace Bobby yet?” I asked. I hated to bring up a sore subject, but I wanted to know.
“Yes,” Eric said. “I hired a man two days ago. He came highly recommended.”
“By whom?”
There was a silence. I looked over at my honeybun, instantly curious. For the life of me, I couldn’t see why that was a critical question.
“By Bubba,” Eric said.
I could feel the smile all over my face. “He’s back! Where’s he staying?”
“Right now, he’s staying with me,” Eric said. “When he asked after Bobby, I had to tell him what had happened. The next night Bubba brought me
this person. He’s teachable, I suppose.”
“You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”
“He’s a Were,” Eric said, and I instantly understood Eric’s attitude. The Weres and the vampires really don’t get along. You’d think that as the two
largest supernatural groups they could form an alliance, but that doesn’t happen. They’re capable of cooperating on some mutually beneficial
project for a short period of time, but after that they revert to distrust and dislike.
“Tell me about him,” I said. “Your assistant, that is.” We didn’t have anything else to do, and lately we hadn’t had much time for general
conversation.
“He’s a black man,” Eric said, as if he were saying the new assistant had brown eyes. Eric could remember, vividly, the first black man he ever
saw . . . centuries before. “He’s a lone wolf, unaffiliated. Alcide has already made overtures to him about joining the Long Tooth pack, but I don’t
think he’s interested, and of course now that he’s taken the job with me, they won’t be so anxious to have him.”
“And this is the guy you hired? A Were, whom you don’t trust and have to train? A guy who’ll automatically piss off Alcide and the Long Tooth
pack?”
“He has an outstanding attribute,” Eric said.
“Good! What is it?”
“He can keep his mouth shut. And he hates Victor,” Eric said.
That made it a whole different shooting match. “Why?” I asked. “I’m assuming he has a good reason.”
“I don’t know what it is yet.”
“But you’re convinced he’s not pulling some elaborate double whammy? That Victor didn’t cleverly realize you’d hire someone who hated him, so
he primed this guy and shot him over to you?”
“I’m convinced,” Eric said. “But I want you to sit with him a while tomorrow.”
“If I can get some sleep,” I said, yawning wide enough for my jaws to be in danger of cracking. It was after two in the morning, and we’d seen
signs the bar was closing, but many of the employee cars were still waiting for their owners. “Oh, Eric, there he is!” I hardly recognized the server
named Colton because he was wearing long khaki cargo shorts, flip-flops, and a green T-shirt with a pattern I couldn’t discern. I kind of missed the
loincloth. I started my car after Colton did, and when he pulled out of the parking lot, I waited a discreet moment and followed him. He turned right
onto the access road and drove west toward Shreveport. However, he didn’t go that far. He exited the interstate at Haughton.
“We’re looking pretty damn conspicuous,” I said.
“We need to talk to him.”
“So, we’re giving up on stealth, huh?”
Eric said, “Yes.” He didn’t sound happy about it, but we didn’t have that many choices.
Colton’s car, a Dodge Charger that had seen better days, turned into a narrow drive off a narrow road. He stopped in front of a goodsized trailer.
He got out and stood by the car. His hand was down by his side, and I was pretty sure in that hand was a gun.
“Let me get out first,” I said, as I pulled up beside the man.
Before Eric could argue, I opened my car door and called, “Colton! It’s Sookie Stackhouse. You know who I am! I’m standing up now, and I’m not
armed.”
“Go slow.” His voice was wary, and I couldn’t blame him.
“Just so you know, Eric Northman is with me, but he’s still in the car.”
“Good.”
My hands reaching for the sky, I stepped away from the car so he could have a good look at me. The front porch light of the trailer was all he had
to see by, but he gave me a thorough scan. While he was trying to pat me down with his eyes, the trailer door opened and a young woman stepped
out on the added-on porch.
“Colton, what’s going on?” she asked in a nasal voice with a very “country” accent.
“We got some company. Don’t worry about it,” he said automatically.
“Who’s she?”
“The Stackhouse woman.”
“Sookie?” The voice sounded startled.
“Yeah,” I said. “Do I know you? I can’t see you that well.”
“It’s Audrina Loomis,” she said. “You remember? I went out with your brother for a while in high school.”
So did half the girls in Bon Temps, so that didn’t really narrow my memory down. “It’s been a while,” I said carefully.
“He still single?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Oh, by the way, can my boyfriend get out now?” Since we were all being just folks here.
“Who’s he?”
“His name’s Eric; he’s a vampire.”
“Cool. Sure, let’s have a look.” Audrina seemed to be a little more reckless than Colton. On the other hand, Colton had warned me about the fairy
blood.
Eric got out of my car, and there was a moment of impressed silence while Audrina absorbed Eric’s magnificence.
“Well, okay,” Audrina said, clearing her throat as though it had gone suddenly dry. “You two wanna come in and let us know what you’re doing
here?”
“You think that’s smart?” Colton asked her.
“He coulda killed us about six times already.” Audrina was not as dumb as she sounded.
When we were all in the trailer and Eric and I were sitting on the couch, which had been covered with an old chenille bedspread and was missing
several crucial springs, I got a good look at Audrina. Her roots were dark. The rest of her shoulder-length hair was platinum blond. She was wearing
a nightgown that hadn’t really been designed for sleeping in. It was red and mostly sheer. She’d been waiting up for Colton with more on her mind
than conversation.
Now that I wasn’t distracted by a leather loincloth and his startling eyes, Colton was much more of an average guy. Some men just can’t radiate
sexual attraction unless they take their clothes off, and Colton was such a man. But his eyes were definitely unusual, and he was practically giving
me a laser treatment with them now, though not in a sexy way.
“We don’t have any blood,” Audrina said. “Sorry.” She didn’t offer me anything to drink. She was doing this on purpose, her brain told me. She
didn’t want this to seem in any way like a social occasion.
Okay. “Eric and I want to know why you warned us,” I said to Colton. And I wanted to know why I’d thought about him when Eric had told me the
story of Chico and his mother.
“I heard about you,” he said. “Heidi told me.”
“You and Heidi are friends?” Eric was intent on Colton, but he spared one of his best smiles for Audrina.
“Yeah,” Colton said. “I worked for Felipe at a club in Reno. I knew Heidi from there.”
“You moved from Reno to take a low-paying job in Louisiana?” That didn’t make any sense.
“Audrina was from here, and she wanted to try living here again,” Colton explained. “Her grandma lives in the trailer down the road, and she’s
pretty frail. Audrina works at Vic’s Redneck Roadhouse during the day as a bookkeeper. I work at night at Vampire’s Kiss. And the cost of living is
a lot cheaper here. But you’re right, there’s more to the story.” He glanced at his girlfriend.
“We came for a reason,” Audrina said. “Colton is Chico’s brother.”
Eric and I both took a second to work that out. “So it was your mom,” I said to the young man. “I’m so sorry.” Though I hadn’t heard any more of the
story, the name had been enough to snag in my brain.
“Yeah, it was my mom,” Colton said. He gave us an entirely blank stare. “My brother Chico is an asshole who didn’t think twice about becoming a
vampire. He gave up his life like some lesser asshole would get a tattoo. ‘It’s cool, let’s do it!’ And then he kept on being an asshole, talking shit to
Victor, not understanding. Not getting it.” Colton put his head in his hands and shook it from side to side. “Until that night. Then he got it. But our
mom was dead. And Chico wishes he was, but he won’t ever be.”
“And how come Victor doesn’t know who you are, know to be leery of you?”
“Chico had a different dad, so he had a different last name,” Audrina said, to give Colton time to recover. “And Chico wasn’t a family type guy. He
hadn’t lived at home for ten years. He only called his mom once every couple of months, never went to see them. But that was enough to give Victor
the bright idea of reminding Chico he hadn’t signed a contract with the California Angels.”
“More like Hell’s Angels,” Colton said, straightening.
If the comparison bothered Eric, he didn’t let on. I was sure it wasn’t the worst he’d heard. “So thanks to Victor’s employee,” Eric began, “you
knew about my Sookie. And you knew how to warn her when Victor was going to poison us.”
Colton looked angry. Shouldn’t have, he thought.
“Yes, you did what you ought to do,” I said, maybe a little huffily. “We’re people, too.”
“You are,” Eric said, reading Colton’s expression as accurately as I read his thoughts. “But Pam and I aren’t. Colton, I want to thank you for your
warning, and I want to reward you. What can I do for you?”
“You can kill Victor,” Colton said immediately.
“How interesting. That’s exactly what I want to do,” Eric said.
Chapter 10
As dramatic statements go, Eric’s had a high impact. Both Audrina and Colton tensed up. But I’d ridden this pony before.
I puffed out my cheeks in exasperation and looked away.
“You’re bored, my lover?” Eric asked, in a voice that could have taught icicles something about chilly.
“We’ve been saying that for months.” That might have been a slight exaggeration, but not much. “All we’ve done is talk smack. If we’re going to
do something bad, let’s go on and do it—not talk it to death! You think he doesn’t know he’s on our hit list? You think he’s not waiting for us to try?”
(Apparently, this was a speech I’d kept secret even from myself, for way too long.) “You think he’s not doing all this shit to you and Pam to provoke
you into something, so he’ll be justified in smacking you down? This is a win-win situation for him!”
Eric looked at me as though I’d turned into a nanny goat. Audrina and Colton were openmouthed.
Eric started to say something, then closed his mouth. I had no idea if he was going to yell at me or walk out silently.
“So what’s your solution?” he said, his voice quiet and steady. “Do you have a plan?”
“Let’s meet with Pam tomorrow night,” I said. “She should be in on this.” Also, it would give me a time to think of something so that I wouldn’t
embarrass myself.
“All right,” he said. “Colton, Audrina. Are you both sure you want to risk this?”
“Without a doubt,” Colton said. “Audie, baby. You don’t have to do this.”
Audrina snorted. “Too late, buddy! Everyone at work knows we live together. If you rebel, I’m dead anyway. My only chance is to join in so we can
do this thing right.”
I like a practical woman. I looked at her outside and I looked at her inside. I came up with sincerity. However, I would’ve been naïve not to see that
it would be extremely practical if Audrina went to Victor and turned us in. That would be the most practical course of all. “How do we know you won’t
be on the phone the minute we’re out of the trailer?” I asked, deciding I might as well be blunt.
“How do I know you won’t do the same?” Audrina retorted. “Colton done you a good turn in letting you know about the fairy blood. He believed
what Heidi said about you. And I guess you want to live through this as bad as we do.”
“‘Survival’ is my middle name. See you tomorrow night at my house,” I said. I’d written directions down on an old grocery list. Since my house was
isolated and warded, we’d at least have some warning if anyone was following Eric and Pam or Colton and Audrina.
It had been a very long night, and I was yawning hard enough to crack my jaw. I let Eric drive us to Shreveport, since we were closer to his house
than mine. I was so sleepy (and sore) that another bout of sex was out of the question, unless Eric had suddenly developed an interest in
necrophilia. He laughed when I said as much.
“No, I like you alive and warm and wiggling,” he said, and kissed my neck in his favorite spot, the one that always made me shiver. “I think I could
wake you up enough,” he said. Confidence is attractive, but I still couldn’t summon any energy. I yawned again, and he laughed. “I’m going to find
Pam and bring her up to date. I should ask about her friend Miriam, too. In the morning, Sookie, go home when you get up. I’ll leave a note for
Mustapha about the car.”
“Who?”
“My new daytime man’s name is Mustapha Khan.”
“Seriously?”
Eric nodded. “Plenty of attitude,” he said. “Be advised.”
“’Kay. I think I’ll stay in the upstairs bedroom since I have to get up,” I said. I was standing in the doorway of the largest ground-level bedroom, the
one Eric wanted me to move into. The one Eric used had formerly been a walk-out game room downstairs. Eric had gotten some builders to make
the wall solid, and he had the protection of a very heavy door that double-locked to bar the stairs. It made me just a wee tad claustrophobic to spend
the night in there, though I had done it a few times if I knew I could sleep late. The upstairs bedroom had shutters and heavy curtains installed to
make it light-tight for visiting vampires, but I left the shutters open and that made the room tolerable.
After the catastrophic visit of Eric’s maker, Appius, and his “son” Alexei, I’d imagined I could still see blood everywhere when I came to Eric’s
house; and I smelled it, too. But a decorator with a big budget had swapped the carpets and repainted. Now it was hard to tell anything violent had
occurred, and the house had a sort of pecan pie smell. That homely fragrance was underlain with the faint dry scent of vampires, a smell not at all
unpleasant.
I locked the bedroom door after Eric left (on the theory that you never knew) and had a quick shower. I kept a nightgown here, something nicer
than my usual Tweety sleep shirt. I thought I heard Pam’s voice in the living room as I relaxed on the excellent mattress. I groped around in the night
table drawer, found my clock and my box of Kleenex, and placed them close to hand.
That was the last thing I remembered for a few hours. I dreamed about Eric and Pam and Amelia; they were in a house that was on fire, and I had
to pull them out or they’d be consumed. Didn’t need a shrink to figure out that one. I only questioned why I’d put Amelia in the house. If dreams were
more true to life, Amelia would have started the fire herself by some strange accident.
I stumbled out of the house at eight in the morning, having had maybe five hours’ sleep. It didn’t feel like enough. I stopped at a Hardee’s and got
a sausage biscuit and a cup of coffee. My day got a little brighter after that. A little.
Aside from a brand-new pickup parked at the front by Eric’s car, my house looked sleepy and normal in the warm morning light. It was a
dazzlingly clear day. The flowers blooming around the front steps lifted their faces to the morning sunshine. I drove around back, wondering who
was visiting and what bed they were in.
Amelia’s car and Claude’s car were in the graveled area at the back door, leaving just enough room for mine. I found it very strange to walk into
my house when there were so many people there already. No one was stirring yet, somewhat to my relief. I started a pot of coffee and went into my
room to change clothes.
There was someone in my bed.
“Excuse me?” I said.
Alcide Herveaux sat up. He was bare-chested. The rest of him I couldn’t see under the sheet.
“This is pretty fucking weird,” I said, riding a rising swell of anger. “Let’s have an explanation.”
Alcide dropped his slight smile, which was pretty much the wrong expression to be wearing if you’re in my bed without asking me first. He looked
serious and embarrassed, which was far more appropriate.
“You’ve broken the bond with Eric,” the Shreveport packmaster said. “I’ve been wrong in my timing on every single occasion we could get
together. This time I didn’t want to miss my chance.” His eyes steady, he waited for my reaction.
I collapsed onto the old flowered chair in the corner. I often toss my discarded clothes on it at night. Alcide had tossed his there, too. I hoped my
rear end was mashing wrinkles in his shirt that would never come out.
“So who let you in?” I asked. He must have good intentions toward me or the wards wouldn’t have let him in, or so Amelia had told me. But just at
the moment I didn’t care.
“Your cousin, the fairy. What does he do, exactly?”
“He’s a stripper,” I said, oversimplifying in the heat of the moment. I was not aware this would be big news until I saw Alcide’s face. “So, what, you
just decided to sack out here and seduce me when I walked in the door? Home from spending the night at my boyfriend’s? After having sex with
him that could go in the Guinness Book of Records?”
Oh, God, where had that come from?
Alcide was laughing now. He couldn’t seem to help it. I relaxed, because as snarly as Were brains are, I could see that he was also laughing at
himself.
“It didn’t seem like a good idea to me, either,” he said frankly. “But Jannalynn thought this would be like a shortcut, and we could draw you into the
pack.”
Huh. That explained a lot. “You did this on Jannalynn’s advice? Jannalynn just wanted me to feel uncomfortable,” I said.
“Seriously? What does she have against you? I mean, why would she want to do that? Especially when she must have realized that would mean
making me uncomfortable, too.”
Him being her boss and all, and pretty much the center of Jannalynn’s universe. I understood what he meant, and I agreed with his assessment of
Jannalynn. However, in my opinion Alcide wasn’t uncomfortable enough. I was convinced that he hoped if he sat in my bed and looked rumpled and
handsome, I might reconsider. But looking good wasn’t all it took with me. I wondered when Alcide had turned into the kind of guy who thought it
might.
“She’s been dating Sam for a while,” I said. “You know that, right? I went to a family wedding with Sam, and I think Jannalynn had expected to go.”
“So Sam’s not as crazy about Jannalynn as she is about him?”
I held out my hand and wobbled it to and fro. “He likes her a lot. But he’s older and more cautious.” Why were we sitting in my bedroom talking
about this? “So, Alcide, do you think you could get dressed and go home now?” I glanced at my watch. Eric had left me a note to say that Mustapha
Khan was supposed to be here at ten, just an hour from now. Since he was a lone wolf, he wouldn’t want a meet’n’ greet with Alcide.
“I’d still be glad if you joined me,” he said, and he sounded both sincere and self-mocking.
“It’s always nice to be wanted. And you’re plenty hunky, of course.” I tried not to sound like I’d thrown that in as an afterthought. “But I’m going with
Eric, bond or no bond. Plus, you went about trying to court me the completely wrong way, thanks to Jannalynn. Who told you we weren’t bonded,
anyway?”
Alcide slid out of bed and held out a hand for his clothes. I got up and handed them to him, keeping my eyes raised to his. He did have on
underwear, kind of a monokini. Manakini? As he shrugged into his shirt, he said, “Your buddy Amelia. She and her boyfriend came into Hair of the
Dog last night to have a drink. I was pretty sure I’d met her, so I started talking to them. When she heard my name, she already knew that you and I’d
been friendly. She got pretty chatty.”
Oversharing was one of Amelia’s flaws. I began to have a darker suspicion. “Did Amelia know you were going to do this?” I asked, waving my
hand toward the rumpled bed.
“I followed her and her boyfriend back here,” Alcide said, which was not exactly a denial. “They consulted with your cousin—the stripper. Claude?
He thought me waiting for you in here was a really great idea. In fact, I think he would’ve joined us for about fifty cents.” Alcide paused in zipping up
his jeans to raise an eyebrow.
I tried not to let my distaste show. “That Claude! What a kidder!” I said with a ferocious smile. I had never felt less amused. “Alcide, I think
Jannalynn was having a big joke at my expense. I think Amelia needs to keep my business quiet, and I think Claude just wanted to see what would
happen. He’s like that. Besides, you got good-looking Were women hanging all over you, you big ole packmaster, you!” I punched him on a brawny
shoulder playfully—more or less—and I saw him flinch just a little. Maybe I was stronger with my fairy kin around me.
Alcide said, “I’ll drive back to Shreveport, then. But put me on your dance card, Sookie. I want a chance with you, still.” He gave me a big white
smile.
“Haven’t found a shaman for your pack yet?”
He was buckling his belt and his fingers froze. “Do you think that’s why I want you?”
“I think that might have something to do with it,” I said, my voice dry. Having a pack shaman had gone out of style in modern times, but the Long
Tooth pack was trying to find one. Alcide had induced me to take one of the drugs that shamans took to enhance their vision, and it had been both
deeply creepy and weirdly empowering. I never wanted to do that again. I had liked it too much.
“We do need a shaman,” Alcide admitted. “And you did a great job that night. Obviously you’ve got the aptitude for the job.” Gullibility and poor
judgment must be prerequisites. “But you’re wrong if you think that’s the only reason I’d like us to have a relationship.”
“I’m glad to hear that, because otherwise I wouldn’t think much of you,” I said. This exchange completely slammed the door shut on my good
nature. “Let me reemphasize that I don’t like the way you went about this, and I’m not nuts about the way you’ve changed since you became
packmaster.”
Alcide was genuinely amazed. “I’ve had to change,” he said. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You’re way too used to being king of everybody,” I said. “But I’m not here to judge you or tell you that you ought to change because that’s just my
opinion. God knows, I’ve been through plenty of changes myself, and I’m sure some of them haven’t done my character any good.”
“You don’t even like me.” He sounded almost dismayed, but with an edge of incredulity that enforced my feeling.
“Not so much anymore.”
“Then I’ve made a fool of myself.” Now he was a little angry. Well, join the club.
“An ambush is not the way to my heart. Or any other part of me.”
Alcide left without another word. He hadn’t been listening until I’d said the same thing in several different ways. Maybe that was key? Saying
things three times?
I watched his truck on its way back out to the road to be sure he was really gone. I looked at my watch again. Not yet nine thirty. I changed the
sheets on my bed with lightning speed, stuffing the removed bedding into the washing machine and starting it. (I could not imagine Eric’s reaction if
he climbed into bed with me and found it smelling like Alcide Herveaux.) I opted to use my remaining minutes before Mustapha Khan arrived to do
some much-needed grooming rather than wake up Amelia or Claude and lay into them. As I brushed my hair and pulled it into a ponytail, I heard a
motorcycle on the driveway.
Mustapha Khan, punctual lone werewolf. He had a small passenger clinging to him. I watched out the front window as he swung off the Harley and
sauntered to the front door to knock. His companion stayed on the motorcycle.
I opened the door and looked up. Khan was about six feet tall with his head shaved close, leaving a mosslike burr. He was wearing dark glasses,
trying for a “Blade” look, I figured. He was the golden brown of a chocolate chip cookie. When he took off the glasses, I saw that his eyes would be
the actual dark chips. And that was the only thing remotely sweet about him. I took a deep breath, inhaled the smell of something wild. I heard my
fairy kin come down the stairs behind me.
“Mr. Khan?” I said politely. “Please come in. I’m Sookie Stackhouse, and these two guys are Dermot and Claude.” From Claude’s avid
expression, I was not the only one who’d thought of chocolate chip cookies. Dermot only looked wary.
Mustapha Khan glanced at them and dismissed them, which showed he wasn’t as bright as he might be. Or maybe he just didn’t think they were
pertinent to his errand.
“I’m here to get Eric’s car,” he said.
“Could you come in for a minute? I made coffee.”
“Oh, good,” Dermot muttered, and headed for the kitchen. I heard him talking to someone and deduced that Amelia and/or Bob were staggering
around. Good. I wanted a word with my buddy Amelia.
“I don’t drink coffee,” Mustapha said. “I don’t take stimulants of any kind.”
“Then would you like a glass of water?”
“No, I’d like to head back to Shreveport. I got a long list of things to do for Mr. High and Mighty Dead Guy.”
“How come you took the job if you think so little of Eric?”
“He ain’t bad, for a vamp,” Mustapha said grudgingly. “Bubba’s okay, too. The rest of ’em?” He spat. Subtle, but I got his drift.
“Who’s your buddy?” I asked, tilting my head at the Harley.
“You want to know a lot,” he said.
“Uh-huh.” I stared right back at him, not backing down.
“Come here a minute, Warren,” Mustapha called, and the small man hopped off the Harley and came over.
Warren proved to be about five foot seven, pale and freckled, and missing a few teeth. But when he took off his goggles, his eyes were clear and
steady, and I didn’t see any fang marks on his neck.
“Ma’am,” he said politely.
I reintroduced myself. Interesting that Mustapha had a real friend, a friend he didn’t want anyone (well, me) to know about. While Warren and I
were exchanging comments on the weather, the muscular Were was having a hard time reining in his impatience. Claude drifted away,
uninterested in Warren and losing hope of interesting Mustapha.
“Warren, how long have you been in Shreveport?”
“Oh my gosh, I been there all my life,” Warren said. “’Cept when I was in the army. Course, I was in the army fifteen years.”
Easy to find out about Warren, but Eric had wanted me to check out Mustapha. So far the Blade wannabe wasn’t cooperating. Standing in the
doorway was not a good way to have a relaxing conversation. Oh, well. “So you and Mustapha have known each other for a while?”
“Few months,” Warren said, glancing at the taller man.
“Twenty Questions over?” Mustapha said.
I touched his arm, which was like touching an oak branch. “KeShawn Johnson,” I said thoughtfully, after a little rummage in his head. “Why’d you
change your name?”
He stiffened, and his mouth was grim. “I have reinvented myself,” he said. “I am not the slave to a bad habit who was named KeShawn. I am
Mustapha Khan, and I am my own man. I own myself.”
“Okeydokey,” I said, doing my best to sound agreeable. “Nice to meet you, Mustapha. You and Warren have a safe trip back to Shreveport.”
I’d learned as much as I was going to today. If Mustapha Khan was going to be around Eric for a while, I’d gradually catch enough glimpses into
his head to piece him together. Oddly enough, I felt better about Mustapha after I’d met Warren. I was sure Warren had had some very hard times
and maybe done some very hard things, but I also thought at his core he was a reliable man. I suspected the same might be true of Mustapha.
I was willing to wait and see.
Bubba liked him, but that wasn’t necessarily such a recommendation. After all, Bubba drank cat blood.
I turned away from the door, bracing myself to face my next set of problems. In the kitchen, I found Claude and Dermot cooking. Dermot had found
a cylinder of Pillsbury biscuits in the refrigerator, and he’d mastered opening the can and putting them on a baking sheet. The oven had even
preheated. Claude was cooking eggs, which was kind of amazing. Amelia was getting out plates and Bob was setting the table.
I hated to interrupt such a domestic scene.
“Amelia,” I said. She’d been suspiciously focused on the plates. She looked up as sharply as if she’d heard me pump my shotgun. I met her eyes.
Guilty, guilty, guilty. “Claude,” I said even more sharply, and he glanced at me over his shoulder and smiled. No guilt there. Dermot and Bob simply
looked resigned.
“Amelia, you told my business to a werewolf,” I said. “Not just any werewolf, but the packmaster of Shreveport. And I’m sure you did that on
purpose.”
Amelia flushed red. “Sookie, I thought with the bond broken, maybe you’d want someone else to know about that, and you’d talked about Alcide,
so when I met him, I thought . . .”
“You went there on purpose to make sure he knew,” I said relentlessly. “Otherwise, why pick that bar out of all other bars?” Bob looked as though
he were about to speak, and I raised my index finger and pointed it at him. He subsided. “You told me you were going to the movies in Clarice. Not
to a werewolf bar in the opposite direction.” Having finished with Amelia, I turned to the other culprit.
“Claude,” I said again, and his back stiffened, though he kept on cooking eggs. “You let someone into the house, my house, without me here, and
you gave him permission to get in my bed. That’s inexcusable. Why would you do such a thing to me?”
Claude carefully moved the frying pan off the burner, turning it off as he did so. “He seemed like a nice guy,” Claude said, “and I thought you might
like to make love with something with a pulse for once.”
I actually felt something snap inside me. “Okay,” I said in a very level voice. “Listen up. I’m going to my room. You all eat the food you’ve cooked,
then you pack up and leave. All of you.” Amelia started crying, but I wasn’t going to soften my stance. I was royally pissed off. I looked at the clock on
the wall. “In forty-five minutes, I want this house empty.”
I went in my room, shutting the door with exquisite quietness. I lay on my bed with a book and tried to read. After a few minutes there was a knock
at the door. I ignored it. I had to be resolute. People staying in my home had done things they knew damn good and well they ought not to do, and
they needed to know I wouldn’t tolerate such interference, no matter how well intended (Amelia) or simply mischievous (Claude). I buried my face in
my hands. It was hard to keep up this level of indignation, especially since I wasn’t used to it—but I knew it would be very bad to give in to my craven
impulse to throw open the door and allow them all to stay.
When I tried to imagine myself doing that, it felt so wrong and bad that I knew I genuinely wanted them out of the house.
I’d been so happy to see Amelia. I’d been so pleased that she was willing to rush up from New Orleans to do magical repairs on my protection.
And I’d been so startled she’d actually found a way to break the bond that I’d let myself be rushed into actually doing it. I should have called Eric first,
warned him. No excuse for doing it so brutally, except I’d been sure he’d talk me out of it. That was just as poorly done as letting myself be
persuaded to take the shaman’s drugs at Alcide’s pack meeting.
Those two decisions were my fault. They were mistakes I had made.
But this impulse of Amelia’s to try to manipulate my love life had been a bad one. I was an adult woman, and I had earned the right to make my
own decisions about who I wanted to be with. I had wanted to remain Amelia’s friend forever, but not if she was going to manipulate events in an
attempt to try to turn my life into one she liked better.
And Claude had been playing a Claude sort of joke, a sly and naughty trick. I didn’t like that, either. No, he needed to go.
When the forty-five minutes were up and I emerged from my room, I was a bit surprised to find that they’d actually done what I’d told them to. My
houseguests were gone . . . except for Dermot.
My great-uncle was sitting on the back steps, his bulging sports bag beside him. He didn’t try to draw attention to himself in any way, and I guess
he’d have sat there until I opened the back door to leave for work if I hadn’t happened to go out on the back porch to move the sheets from the
washer to the dryer.
“Why are you here?” I asked in the most neutral voice I could summon.
“I’m sorry,” he said, words that had been sorely lacking until now.
Though a knot inside me relaxed when he said those magic words, I wasn’t totally won over. “Why’d you let Claude do that?” I said. I was holding
the door open, obliging him to twist around to talk to me. He stood and turned to face me.
“I didn’t think what he was doing was right. I didn’t think you could want Alcide when you seem tied to the vampire, and I didn’t think the outcome
would be good for you or either of them. But Claude is willful and headstrong. I didn’t have the necessary energy to argue with him.”
“Why not?” It seemed like an obvious question to me, but it surprised Dermot. He looked away, over the flowers and bushes and lawn.
After a thoughtful pause my great-uncle said, “I haven’t cared very much about anything since Niall enchanted me. Well, since you and Claude
broke the enchantment, more accurately. I can’t seem to achieve any sense of purpose, of what I want to be doing with the rest of my life. Claude
has a purpose. Even if he didn’t, I think he’d be content. Claude is very human in his nature.” Then he looked appalled, perhaps realizing that in my
clear-the-decks mood I might find his opinion a good reason to tell him to hit the road with the others.
“What’s Claude’s purpose?” I asked, because that seemed like a pretty interesting point. “Not that I don’t want to talk more about you, I do, but I
find the idea of Claude with an agenda pretty interesting.” Not to say alarming.
“I’ve already betrayed one friend,” he said. After a moment, I realized he meant me. “I don’t want to betray another.”
Now I was even more worried about Claude’s plans. However, that issue would have to wait. “Why do you think you’re feeling this inertia?” I said,
returning to the topic at hand.
“Because I have no allegiance. Since Niall made sure I was put out of Faery . . . since I roamed around crazy for so long . . . I don’t feel part of the
sky clan, and the water clan wouldn’t have me even though I allied with them. While I was cursed,” he added hastily. “But I’m not a human, and I don’t
feel like one. I can’t really pass for a man for more than a few minutes. The other fae at Hooligans, the cluster of them . . . they’re only united by
chance.” Dermot shook his golden head. Though his hair was longer than Jason’s, shoulder length to cover up his ears, he’d never looked more like
my brother. “I don’t feel like a fairy anymore. I feel . . .”
“Like a stranger in a strange land,” I said.
He shrugged. “Maybe so.”
“You still want to work up in the attic?”
He exhaled a long slow breath. He looked at me sideways. “Yes, very much. Can I . . . just do that?”
I went into the house and got my car keys and my secret stash of money. Gran had been a great believer in keeping a secret stash. Mine had
been hidden in the inner zip pocket of my weatherproof winter jacket at the back of my closet. “You can take my car to Home Depot in Clarice,” I
said. “Here. You can drive, can’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, looking from the money to the keys eagerly. “Yes, I even have a driver’s license.”
“How’d you get that?” I asked, absolutely taken aback.
“I went to the government office one day while Claude was busy,” he said. “I was able to make them think they were seeing the right papers. I had
enough magic for that. Answering the questions on the test was easy. I’d watched Claude, so taking the officer for a drive wasn’t too difficult, either.”
I wondered if a lot of drivers on the road had done the same thing. It would explain a lot. “Okay. Please be careful, Dermot. Ah, you know about
money?”
“Yes, Claude’s secretary taught me. I can count it. I know what the coins are, too.”
Aren’t you the big boy, I thought, but it would have been unkind to say. He really had adapted amazingly well for a driven-insane-by-magic fairy.
“Okay,” I said. “Have a good time, don’t spend all my money, and be back in an hour, ’cause I got to go to work. Sam said I could come in late
today, but I don’t want to push it.”
Dermot said, “You won’t regret this, Niece.” He opened the kitchen door to toss his gym bag into the house, leaped down the steps, and got in my
car, looking at the dashboard carefully.
“I hope not,” I said to myself as he buckled up and drove away (slowly, thank God). “I sincerely hope not.”
My departed guests had not felt obliged to do the dishes. I couldn’t say I was that surprised. I set to work and wiped down the counters afterward.
The spotless kitchen made me feel I was making progress.
As I folded the sheets, warm from the dryer, I told myself I was doing okay. I wish I could say I didn’t think about Amelia, feel sorry all over again,
decide all over again that I’d done the right thing.
Dermot returned within an hour. He was as happy and animated as I’d ever seen him. I hadn’t realized how depressed Dermot had been until I
saw him actually lit up with purpose. He’d rented a sander and bought paint and plastic sheeting, blue tape and scrapers, brushes and rollers and a
paint tray. I had to remind him he needed to eat something before he started work, and I also had to remind him that I needed to leave for work in
the not-too-distant future.
Also, there was the summit meeting here at the house. “Dermot, is there any friend you can hang around with tonight?” I asked cautiously. “Eric,
Pam, and two humans are coming over after I get off work. We’re kind of a planning committee, and we have some work to do. You know how it is
with you and vampires.”
“I don’t have to go anywhere with other people,” Dermot said, surprised. “I can be in the woods. That’s a happy place for me. The night sky is as
good as the day sky, as far as I’m concerned.”
I thought about Bubba. “It’s possible Eric may have stationed a vampire in the woods to watch the house at night,” I explained. “So could you be in
some other woods kind of away from here?” I felt awful about putting so many strictures on him, but he was the one who’d wanted to stay.
“I suppose so,” he said, in the voice of one trying hard to be tolerant and helpful. “I love this house,” he added. “There’s something amazingly
homelike about it.”
And seeing him smile as he looked around the old place, I was more than ever sure that the unseen presence of the cluviel dor was the reason
my two fairy kinsmen had come to stay with me, rather than my own little dash of fairy blood. I was willing to concede that Claude believed that my
fairy blood was the attraction. Though I knew he had a mellower side, I was also sure that if he realized I held a valuable fairy artifact, one that could
grant his most ardent wish—to be allowed passage into Faery—he’d tear the house apart looking for it. I felt instinctively that I would not like to
stand between Claude and the cluviel dor. And though I sensed something warmer and more genuine in Dermot, I wasn’t about to confide in him.
“I’m glad you’re happy here,” I said to my great-uncle. “And good luck with the attic project.” I didn’t actually need another bedroom up there now
that Claude was gone, but I’d made a snap decision to keep Dermot on task. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go get ready for work. You can sand away on
the floor.” He’d told me that would be his starting point. I had no idea if that was the right order or not, but I was content to leave it to him. After all,
considering the state of the attic before he and Claude had helped me clean it out, any work he did would be an improvement. I did check to make
sure Dermot had a face mask to wear while he used the sander. I knew that much from home improvement shows.
Jason dropped by on his lunch break while I was putting on my makeup. I came out of my room to find him surveying all of Dermot’s Home Depot
loot. “What you doing?” he asked his near twin. Jason obviously had very mixed feelings about Dermot, but I’d observed that he was much more
relaxed around our great-uncle when Claude wasn’t there. Interesting. They clattered up the stairs together to look at the empty attic, Dermot talking
all the way.
Though I was running seriously late, I fixed Jason and Dermot some sandwiches, putting the plate on the kitchen table with two glasses of ice and
two Cokes while I hurried into my Merlotte’s uniform. When I emerged, they were at the table having a lively conversation. I hadn’t had enough sleep,
I’d had to sweep my house clean of visitors, and I hadn’t gotten very far with Mustapha or his buddy. But seeing Jason and Dermot chattering away
about grout, spray painters, and weatherproof windows somehow made me feel that the world was on some kind of even keel.