Dead Reckoning Read online

Chapter 2

   

  I stuffed my grimy, reeking clothes into the hamper in my bathroom. I'd have to presoak them in some Clorox 2 before I even tried to wash them, but of course I couldn't just toss them out before they were clean and I could assess the damage. I wasn't feeling too optimistic about the future of the black pants. I hadn't noticed they were a little scorched until I pulled them down over my tender thighs and found that my skin was pink. Only then did I remember looking down to see my apron on fire.

  As I examined my legs, I realized it could have been much worse. The sparks had caught my apron, not my pants, and Sam had been very quick with the extinguisher. Now I appreciated his checking the extinguishers every year; I appreciated his going down to the fire station to get them refilled; I appreciated the smoke alarms. I had a flash of what might have been.

  Deep breath, I told myself as I patted my legs dry. Deep breath. Think of how good it feels to be clean. It had felt wonderful to wash away the smell, to lather up my hair, to rinse out all the smell along with the shampoo.

  I couldn't stop worrying about what I'd seen when I'd looked out Merlotte's window: a short figure running toward the building, holding something in one hand. I hadn't been able to tell if the runner was a man or a woman, but one thing I was sure of: The runner was a supe, and I suspected he--or she--was a twoey. This suspicion gained more weight when I added in the speed and agility of the runner and the strength and accuracy of the throw--the bottle had come at the window harder than a human could have hurled it, with enough velocity to shatter the window.

  I couldn't be 100 percent sure. But vampires don't like to handle fire. Something about the vampire condition causes them to be extra flammable. It would take a very confident, or very reckless, fanger to use a Molotov cocktail as a weapon.

  For that reason alone, I was inclined to put my money on the bomber being a twoey--a shapeshifter or were of some variety. Of course, there were other sorts of supernatural creatures like elves and fairies and goblins, and they were all quicker than humans. To my regret, the whole incident had happened too swiftly for me to scope out the bomber's mind. That would have been decisive, because vampires are a big blank to me, a hole in the aether, and I also can't read fairies, though they register differently. Some twoeys I can read with fair accuracy, some I can't, but I see their brains as warm and busy.

  Normally, I'm not an indecisive person. But as I patted myself dry and combed through my wet hair (feeling how strange it was that my comb completed its passage much more quickly), I worried about sharing my suspicions with Eric. When a vampire loves you--even when he simply feels proprietary toward you--his notion of protection can be pretty drastic. Eric loved going into battle; often he had to struggle to balance the political savvy of a move with his instinct to leap in with a swinging sword. Though I didn't think he'd go charging off at the two-natured community, in his present mood it seemed wiser to keep my ideas to myself until I had some evidence one way or another.

  I pulled on sleep pants and a Bon Temps Lady Falcons T-shirt. I looked at my bed with longing before I left my room to rejoin the strange crowd in the kitchen. Eric and Pam were drinking some bottled synthetic blood I'd had in the refrigerator, and Immanuel was sipping on a Coke. I was stricken because I hadn't thought of offering them refreshment, but Pam caught my eye and gave me a level look. She'd taken care of it. I nodded gratefully and told Immanuel, "I'm ready now. " He unfolded his skinny frame from the chair and gestured to the stool.

  This time my new hairdresser unfolded a thin, shoulders-only plastic capelet and tied it around my neck. He combed through my hair himself, eyeing it intently. I tried to smile at Eric to show this wasn't so bad, but my heart wasn't in it. Pam scowled at her cell phone. A text had displeased her.

  Apparently Immanuel had passed the time by combing Pam's hair. The pale golden mane, straight and fine, was pushed off her face with a blue headband. You just couldn't get any more Alice-like. She wasn't wearing a full-skirted blue dress and a white pinafore, but she was wearing pale blue: a sheath dress, perhaps from the sixties, and pumps with three-inch heels. And pearls.

  "What's up, Pam?" I asked, simply because the silence in my kitchen was getting oppressive. "Someone sending you a nasty text?"

  "Nothing's up," she snarled, and I tried not to flinch. "Absolutely nothing is happening. Victor is still our leader. Our position doesn't improve. Our requests go unanswered. Where is Felipe? We need him. "

  Eric glared at her. Whoa, trouble in paradise. I'd never seen them seriously at odds.

  Pam was the only "child" of Eric's I'd ever met. She'd gone off on her own after spending her first few years as a vampire with him. She'd done well, but she'd told me she was glad enough to return to Eric after he'd called her to help him out in Area Five when the former queen had appointed him to the position of sheriff.

  The tense atmosphere was getting to Immanuel, who was wavering in and out of his focus on his job . . . which was cutting my hair.

  "Chill out, guys," I said sharply.

  "And what is it with all the crap sitting out in your driveway?" Pam asked, her original British accent peeking through. "To say nothing of your living room and your porch. Are you having a garage sale?" You could tell she was proud of getting her terminology correct.

  "Almost finished," Immanuel muttered, his scissors snicking at a frantic rate in response to the growing tension.

  "Pam, that all came out of my attic," I said, glad to talk about something so mundane and (I hoped) calming. "Claude and Dermot are helping me clean it out. I'm going to go see an antiques dealer with Sam in the morning--well, we were going to go. I don't know if Sam'll be able to make it, now. "

  "There, see!" Pam said to Eric. "She lives with other men. She goes shopping with other men. What kind of husband are you?"

  And Eric launched himself across the table, hands extended toward Pam's throat.

  The next second the two were rolling on the floor in a serious attempt to damage each other. I didn't know if Pam could actually initiate the moves to hurt Eric, since she was his child, but she was defending herself vigorously; there's a fine line there.

  I couldn't scramble down from the stool fast enough to escape some collateral damage. It seemed inevitable that they would slam into the stool, and of course they did in a second. Over I went to join them on the floor, banging my shoulder against the counter in the process. Immanuel very intelligently leaped backward, and he didn't drop his scissors, a blessing to all of us. One of the vampires might have grabbed them as a weapon, or the gleaming scissors might have become embedded in some part of me.

  Immanuel's hand gripped my arm with surprising strength, and he yanked me up and away. We scuttled out of the kitchen and into the living room. We stood, panting, in the middle of the cluttered room, staring down the hall in case the fight followed us.

  I could hear crashing and banging, and a persistent snarly noise I finally identified as growling.

  "Sounds like two pit bulls going at each other," Immanuel said. He was handling this with amazing calm. I was glad to have some human company.

  "I don't know what's wrong with them," I said. "I've never seen them act like this. "

  "Pam's frustrated," he said with a familiarity that surprised me. "She wants to make her own child, but there's some vampire reason she can't. " I couldn't curb my surprise. "And you know all this--how? I'm sorry, that sounds rude, but I hang around with Pam and Eric a fair bit, and I haven't seen you before. "

  "Pam's been dating my sister. " Immanuel didn't seem offended by my frankness, thank goodness. "My sister Miriam. My mom's religious," he explained. "And kind of crazy. The situation is, my sister is sick and getting sicker, and Pam really wants to bring her over before Mir gets any worse. She'll be skin and bones forever if Pam doesn't hurry. "

  I hardly knew what t
o say. "What illness does your sister have?" I said.

  "She has leukemia," Immanuel said. Though he maintained his casual facade, I could read the pain underneath, and the fear and worry.

  "So that's how Pam knows you. "

  "Yeah. But she was right. I am the best hairstylist in Shreveport. "

  "I believe you," I said. "And I'm sorry about your sister. I don't guess they told you why Pam wasn't able to bring Miriam over?"

  "Nope, but I don't think the roadblock is Eric. "

  "Probably not. " There was a shriek and a clatter from the kitchen. "I wonder if I ought to intervene. "

  "If I were you, I'd leave them to it. "

  "I hope they plan on paying to have my kitchen set to rights," I said, doing my best to sound angry rather than frightened.

  "You know, he could order her to be still and she'd have to do it. " Immanuel sounded almost casual.

  He was absolutely right. As Eric's child, Pam had to obey a direct order. But for whatever reasons, Eric wasn't saying the magic word. In the meantime, my kitchen was getting wiped out. When I realized he could make the whole thing stop at any time he chose, I lost my own temper.

  Though Immanuel made an ineffective grab at my arm, I stomped on my bare feet into the hall bathroom, got the handled pitcher Claude used when he cleaned the bathtub, filled it with cold water, and went into the kitchen. (I was walking a little wonky after the fall from the stool, but I managed. ) Eric was on top of Pam, punching away at her. His own face was bloody. Pam's hands were on his shoulders, keeping him from getting any closer. Maybe she feared he would bite.

  I stepped into position, estimating trajectory. When I was sure I had it right, I pitched cold water on the battling vampires.

  I was putting out a different kind of fire, this time.

  Pam shrieked like a teakettle as the cold water drenched her face, and Eric said something that sounded vile in a language I didn't know. For a split second, I thought they'd both launch themselves at me. Standing with my feet braced, empty pitcher in my hand, I gave them glare for glare. Then I turned on my heel and walked away.

  Immanuel was surprised to see me return in one piece. He shook his head. Obviously, he didn't know whether to admire me or think me an idiot.

  "You're nuts, woman," he said, "but at least I got your hair looking good. You should come in and get some highlights. I'll give you a break on the price. I charge more than anybody else in Shreveport. " He added that in a matter-of-fact way.

  "Oh. Thanks. I'll think about it. " Exhausted by my long day and my burst of anger--anger and fear, they wear you out--I perched on an empty corner of my couch and waved Immanuel to my recliner, the only other chair in the room that wasn't covered with attic fallout.

  We were silent, listening for renewed combat in the kitchen. To my relief, the noise didn't resume. After a few seconds Immanuel said, "I'd leave, if Pam wasn't my ride. " He looked apologetic.

  "No problem," I answered, stifling a yawn. "I'm just sorry I can't get into the kitchen. I could offer you more to drink or something to eat if they'd get out of there. "

  He shook his head. "The Coke was enough, thanks. I'm not a big eater. What do you think they're doing? Fucking?"

  I hoped I didn't look as shocked as I felt. It was true that Pam and Eric had been lovers right after he turned her. In fact, she'd told me how much she'd enjoyed that phase of their relationship, though over the decades she'd found she preferred women. So there was that; also, Eric was married to me now, in a sort of nonbinding vampire way, and I was pretty sure that even a vampire-human marriage precluded the having of sex with another partner in the wife's kitchen?

  On the other hand . . .

  "Pam usually prefers the ladies," I said, trying to sound more certain than I actually was. When I thought of Eric with someone else, I wanted to rip out all his beautiful blond hair. By the roots. In clumps.

  "She's sort of omnisexual," Immanuel offered. "My sister and Pam have had another man in the bed with them. "

  "Ah, okay. " I held up a hand in a "stop" gesture. Some things I didn't want to imagine.

  "You're a little prudish for someone who goes with a vampire," Immanuel observed.

  "Yes. Yes, I am. " I'd never applied that adjective to myself, but compared to Immanuel--and Pam--I was definitely straightlaced.

  I preferred to think of it as having a more evolved sense of privacy.

  Finally, Pam and Eric came into the living room, and Immanuel and I sat forward on the edge of our seats, not knowing what to expect. Though the two vampires were expressionless, their defensive body language let me know that they were ashamed of their loss of control.

  They'd begun healing already, I noticed with some envy. Eric's hair was disheveled and one shirt sleeve was torn off. Pam's dress was ripped, and she was carrying her shoes because she'd broken a heel.

  Eric opened his mouth to speak, but I jumped in first.

  "I don't know what that was about," I said, "but I'm too tired to care. You two are liable for anything you broke, and I want you to leave this house right now. I'll rescind your invitation, if I have to. "

  Eric looked rebellious. I was sure he'd planned on spending the night at my place. This night, though, that was not gonna happen.

  I'd seen headlights coming up the drive, and I was sure Claude and Dermot were here. I couldn't have fairies and vampires in the same house at the same time. Both were strong and ferocious, but vampires literally found fairies irresistible, like cats and catnip. I wasn't up to another struggle.

  "Out the front door," I said, when they didn't move immediately. "Shoo! Thanks for the haircut, Immanuel. Eric, I appreciate your thinking about my hair care needs. " (I might have said this with more than a touch of sarcasm. ) "It would have been nice if you had thought a little longer before you trashed my kitchen. "

  Without more ado, Pam beckoned to Immanuel, and they went out the door together, Immanuel looking very faintly amused. Pam gave me a long look as she passed me. I knew it was meant to be significant, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what she was trying to tell me.

  Eric said, "I would hold you while you sleep. Were you hurt? I'm sorry. " He seemed oddly nonplussed.

  At another time I would have accepted this rare apology, but not tonight. "You need to go home now, Eric. We'll talk when you can control yourself. "

  That was a huge rebuke to a vampire, and his back stiffened. For a moment I thought I'd have another fight on my hands. But Eric stepped out the front door, finally. When he was on the porch, he said, "I'll talk to you soon, my wife. " I shrugged. Whatever. I was too tired and too aggravated to summon up any kind of loving expression. I think Eric got in the car with Pam and the hairdresser for the drive back to Shreveport. Possibly he was too battered to fly. What the hell was up with Pam and Eric?

  I tried to tell myself it was not my problem, but I had a sinking feeling that it really, really was.

  Claude and Dermot came in the back a moment later, ostentatiously sniffing the air.

  "The smell of smoke and vampires," Claude said, with a pronounced rolling of the eyes. "And your kitchen looks like a bear came in search of honey. "

  "I don't know how you stand it," Dermot said. "They smell bitter and sweet at the same time. I don't know if I like it or hate it. " He held his hand over his nose dramatically. "And do I detect a trace of burned hair?"

  "Fellas, chill," I said wearily. I gave them the condensed version of the firebombing at Merlotte's and the fighting in my kitchen. "So just give me a hug and let me go to bed without any more vampire comments," I said.

  "Do you want us to sleep with you, Niece?" Dermot asked, in the flowery way of the old fae, the ones who didn't spend that much time with humans. The nearness of one fairy to another is both healing and soothing. Even
with as little fairy blood as I had, I found the proximity of both Claude and Dermot comforting. I hadn't realized that when I'd first met Claude and his sister Claudine, but the longer I'd known them and the more they'd touched me, the better I'd felt when they were near. When my great-grandfather Niall had embraced me, I'd felt sheer love. And no matter what Niall had done, or how dubious his decisions were, I felt that love all over again when I was near him. I had a moment's regret that I might not ever see Niall again, but I just didn't have any remaining emotional energy. "Thanks, Dermot. But I think I better fall into bed by myself tonight. You guys sleep well. "

  "And you, too, Sookie," Claude told me. Dermot's courtesy was rubbing off on my grumpy cousin.

  I woke in the morning to the sound of knocking at the door. Rumple-headed and bleary, I dragged myself through the living room and looked through the peephole. Sam.

  I opened the door and yawned in his face. "Sam, what can I do for you? Come on in. "

  His glance flickered over the crowded living room, and I could see him struggling with a smile. "Aren't we still going to Shreveport?" he asked.

  "Oh my gosh!" Suddenly I felt more awake. "My last thought when I fell asleep last night was that you wouldn't be able to go because of the fire at the bar. You can? You want to?"

  "Yep. The fire marshal talked to my insurance company, and they've started the paperwork. In the meantime, Danny and I hauled out the burned table and the chairs, Terry's been working on the floor, and Antoine's been checking that the kitchen's in good shape. I've already made sure we've got more fire extinguishers ready to go. " For a long moment, his smile faltered. "If I have any customers to serve. People aren't likely to want to come to Merlotte's if they think they might get incinerated. "

  I didn't exactly blame folks for worrying about that. We hadn't needed the incident of the night before, not at all. It might hasten the decline of Sam's business.

  "So they need to catch whoever did it," I said, trying to sound positive. "Then people will know it's safe to come back, and we'll be busy again. "

  Claude came downstairs then, giving us Surly. "Noisy down here," he muttered as he passed on his way to the hall bathroom. Even slouching around in rumpled jeans, Claude walked with a grace that drew attention to his beauty. Sam gave an unconscious sigh and shook his head slightly as his eyes followed Claude, gliding down the hall as though he had ball bearings in his hip joints.

  "Hey," I said, after I heard the bathroom door shut. "Sam! He doesn't have anything on you. "

  "Some guys," Sam began, looking abashed, and then he stopped. "Aw, forget it. "

  I couldn't, of course, not when I could tell directly from Sam's brain that he was--not exactly envious, but rueful, about Claude's physical attraction, though Sam knew as well as anyone that Claude was a pain in the butt.

  I've been reading men's minds for years, and they're more like women than you would think, really, unless you're talking trucks. I started to tell Sam that he was plenty attractive, that women in the bar mooned over him more than he thought; but in the end, I kept my mouth shut. I had to let Sam have the privacy of his own thoughts. Because of his shifter nature, most of what was in Sam's head remained in Sam's head . . . more or less. I could get the odd thought, the general mood, but seldom anything more specific.

  "Here, I'll make some coffee," I said, and when I stepped into the kitchen, Sam close on my heels, I stopped dead. I'd forgotten all about the fight the night before.

  "What happened?" Sam said. "Did Claude do this?" He looked around with dismay.

  "No, Eric and Pam," I said. "Oh, zombies. " Sam looked at me oddly, and I laughed and began to pick things up. I was abbreviating one of Pam's curses, because I wasn't that horrified.

  I couldn't help reflecting that it would have been really, really nice if Claude and Dermot had straightened the room up before they turned in the night before. Just as lagniappe.

  Then again, it wasn't their kitchen.

  I set a chair on its legs, and Sam dragged the table back into position. I got the broom and dustpan, and swept up the salt, pepper, and sugar that crunched under my feet, and made a mental note to go to Wal-Mart to replace my toaster if Eric didn't send one today. My napkin holder was broken, too, and it had survived the fire of a year and a half ago. I double-sighed.

  "At least the table is okay," I said.

  "And only one broken leg on one of the chairs," Sam said. "Eric going to get this stuff fixed or replaced?"

  "I expect he will," I said, and found that the coffeepot was intact, as were the mugs that had been hanging on a mug tree next to it; no, wait, one of them had broken. Well, five good ones. That was plenty.

  I made some coffee. While Sam was carrying the garbage bag outside, I ducked into my room to get ready. I'd showered the evening before, so I only needed to brush my hair and my teeth and pull on some jeans and a "Fight Like a Girl" T-shirt. I didn't fool with makeup. Sam had seen me under all sorts of conditions.

  "How's the hair?" he asked, when I emerged. Dermot was in the kitchen, too. Apparently, he'd made a quick run into town, since he and Sam were sharing some fresh doughnuts. Judging from the sound of running water, Claude was in the shower.

  I eyed the bakery box longingly, but I was all too aware that my jeans were feeling tight. I felt like a martyr as I poured a bowl of Special K and sprinkled Equal on the cereal and added some 2 percent milk. When Sam looked as though he wanted to make a comment, I narrowed my eyes at him. He grinned at me, chewing a mouthful of jelly-filled.

  "Dermot, we're off to Shreveport in a few minutes. If you need my bathroom . . . " I offered, since Claude was terrible about hogging the one in the hall. I rinsed my bowl in the sink.

  "Thanks, Niece," Dermot said, kissing my hand. "And your hair still looks glorious, though shorter. I think Eric was right to bring someone to cut it last night. " Sam shook his head as we were getting into his truck. "Sook, that guy treats you like a queen. "

  "Which guy do you mean? Eric or Dermot?"

  "Not Eric," Sam said, trying his best to look neutral. "Dermot. "

  "Yeah, too bad he's related! And also, he looks way too much like Jason. "

  "That's no obstacle to a fairy," Sam said seriously.

  "You've got to be joking. " I felt serious in a hurry. From Sam's expression, he wasn't joking one little bit. "Listen, Sam, Dermot has never even looked at me like I was a woman, and Claude is gay. We're strictly family. " We'd all slept in the same bed, and there'd never been anything but the comfort of their presence in that, though of course I'd felt a little weird about it the first time. I'd been sure that was just my human hang-up. Due to Sam's words, now I was second-guessing myself like crazy, wondering if I'd picked up on a vibe. After all, Claude did like to run around nude, and he'd told me he'd actually had sex with a female before. (I figured there'd been another man involved, frankly. )

  "And I'm saying again, weird things happen in fae families. " Sam glanced over at me.

  "I don't mean to sound rude, but how would you know?" If Sam had spent a lot of time with fairies, he had kept it a close secret.

  "I read up on it after I met your great-grandfather. "

  "Read up on it? Where?" It would be great to learn more about my dab of fairy heritage. Dermot and Claude, having decided to live apart from their fairy kin (though I wasn't sure how voluntary those decisions had been), remained closemouthed about fairy beliefs and customs. Aside from making derogatory comments from time to time about trolls and sprites, they didn't talk about their race at all . . . at least, around me.

  "Ah . . . the shifters have a library. We have records of our history and what we've observed about other supes. Keeping track has helped us survive. There's always been a place we could go on each continent to read and study about the other races. Now it's al
l electronic. I'm sworn not to show it to anyone. If I could, I'd let you read it all. "

  "So it's not okay for me to read it, but it's okay for you to tell me about it?" I wasn't trying to be snarky; I was genuinely curious.

  "Within limits. " Sam flushed.

  I didn't want to press him. I could tell that Sam had already stretched those limits for me.

  We were each preoccupied with our own thoughts for the rest of the drive. While Eric was dead for the day, I felt alone in my skin, and usually I enjoyed that feeling. It wasn't that being bonded to Eric made me feel I was possessed, or anything like that. It was more like during the dark hours, I could feel his life continuing parallel to mine--I knew he was working or arguing or content or absorbed in what he was doing. A little trickle of awareness, rather than a book of knowledge.

  "So, the bomber yesterday," Sam said abruptly.

  "Yeah," I said. "I think maybe a twoey of some kind, right?"

  He nodded without looking at me.

  "Not a hate crime," I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

  "Not a human hate crime," Sam said. "But I'm sure it's some kind of hatred. "

  "Economic?"

  "I can't think of any economic reason," he said. "I'm insured, but I'm the only beneficiary if the bar burns down. Of course, I'd be out of business for a while, and I'm sure the other bars in the area would take up the slack, but I can't see that as an incentive. Much of an incentive," he corrected himself. "Merlotte's has always been kind of a family bar, not a wild place. Not like Vic's Redneck Roadhouse," he added, a little bitterly.

  That was true. "Maybe someone doesn't like you personally, Sam," I said, though it came out sounding harsher than I'd intended. "I mean," I added quickly, "maybe someone wants to hurt you through damaging your business. Not you as a shapeshifter, but you as a person. "

  "I don't recall anything that personal," he said, genuinely bewildered.

  "Ah . . . Jannalynn have a vengeful ex, anything like that?"

  Sam was startled by the idea. "I really haven't heard of anyone who resented me dating her," he said. "And Jannalynn's more than capable of speaking her mind. It's not like I could coerce her into going out with me. "

  I had a hard time repressing a snort of laughter. "Just trying to think of all possibilities," I said apologetically.

  "That's okay," he said. He shrugged. "Bottom line is, I can't remember when I've made anyone really mad. "

  I couldn't remember any such incident myself, and I'd known Sam for years.

  Pretty soon we were pulling up to the antiques shop, which was located in a former paint store in a down-sliding older business street in Shreveport.

  The big front windows were sparkling clean, and the pieces that had been positioned there were beautiful. The largest was what my grandmother had called a hunt sideboard. It was heavy and ornate and just about as tall as my chest. The other window featured a collection of jardini?res, or vases, I wasn't sure which to call them. The one in the center, positioned to show that it was the cream of the crop, was sea green and blue and had cherubs stuck on it. I thought it was hideous, but it definitely had style.

  Sam and I looked at the display for a moment in thoughtful silence before we went in. A bell--a real bell, not an electronic chime--jangled as we pushed open the door. A woman sitting on a stool behind a counter to the right looked up. She pushed her glasses up on her nose.

  "Nice to see you again, Mr. Merlotte," she said, smiling with just the right intensity. I remember you, I'm glad you came back, but I'm not personally interested in you as a man. She was good.

  "Thanks, Ms. Hesterman," Sam said. "This is my friend, Sookie Stackhouse. "

  "Welcome to Splendide," Ms. Hesterman said. "Please call me Brenda. What can I do for you today?"

  "We've got two errands," Sam said. "I'm here to look at the pieces you called me about. . . . "

  "And I've just cleaned out my attic and I have some things I wondered if you could take a look at," I said. "I need to get rid of some of the odds and ends I brought down. I don't want to put it all back. " I smiled, to show general goodwill.

  "So you've had a family place a long time?" she asked, encouraging me to give her a clue about what sort of possessions my family might have accumulated.

  "We've lived in the same house for about a hundred and seventy years," I told her, and she brightened. "But it's an old farm, not a mansion. Might be some things you'd be interested in, though. "

  "I'd love to come take a look," she said, though clearly "love" was overstating it a little. "We'll set up a time as soon as I help Sam pick out a gift for Jannalynn. She's so modern, who would have thought she'd be interested in antiques? She's such a little cutie!"

  I had a hard time keeping my mouth from dropping open. Did we know the same Jannalynn Hopper?

  Sam poked me in the ribs when Brenda turned her back to fetch a ring of small keys. He made a significant face, and I smoothed out my expression and batted my eyelashes at him. He looked away, but not before I caught a reluctant grin.

  "Sam, I've put together some things Jannalynn might like," Brenda said, and led us over to a display case, keys jingling in her hand. The case was full of little things, pretty things. I couldn't identify most of them. I leaned over the glass top to look down.

  "What are those?" I pointed at some lethal sharp-pointed objects with ornate heads. I wondered if you could kill a vampire with one

  "Hat pins and stickpins, for scarves and cravats. "

  There were also earrings and rings and brooches, plus enamel boxes, beaded boxes, painted boxes. All these little containers were carefully arranged. Were they snuffboxes? I read the price tag discreetly peeking out from under a tortoiseshell and silver oval box, and had to clamp my lips together to restrain my gasp.

  While I was still wondering about the items I was examining, Brenda and Sam were comparing the merits of art deco pearl earrings versus a Victorian pressed-glass hair receiver with an enameled brass lid. Whatever the hell that was.

  "What do you think, Sookie?" he asked, looking from one item to another.

  I examined the art deco earrings, pearl drops dangling from a rose gold setting. The hair receiver was pretty, too, though I couldn't imagine what it was for or what Jannalynn would do with it. Did anyone need to receive hair anymore?

  "She'll wear the earrings to show them off," I said. "It's harder to brag about getting a hair receiver. " Brenda gave me a veiled look, and I understood from her thoughts that this opinion branded me as a philistine. So be it.

  "The hair receiver's older," Sam said, wavering.

  "But less personal. Unless you're Victorian. "

  While Sam compared the two smaller items to the beauties of a seventy-year-old New Bedford police badge, I wandered around the store, looking at the furniture. I discovered I was not an antiques appreciator. This was just one more flaw in my mundane character, I decided. Or maybe it was because I was surrounded by antiques all the day long? Nothing in my house was new except the kitchen, and that only because the old one had been destroyed by fire. I'd still be using Gran's ancient refrigerator if the flames hadn't eaten it up. (That refrigerator was one antique I didn't miss, for sure. )

  I slid open a long, narrow drawer on what the tag described as a "map chest. " There was a sliver of paper left in it.

  "Look at that," Brenda Hesterman's voice said from behind me. "I'd thought I'd gotten that thoroughly clean. Let that be a lesson, Miss Stackhouse. Before we come to look at your things, be sure to go through them and remove all papers and other objects. You don't want to sell us something you didn't intend to part with. "

  I turned around to see that Sam was holding a wrapped package. While I'd been lost in exploration, he'd made his purchase (the earrings, to my relief; the hair rec
eiver was back in its spot in the case).

  "She'll love the earrings. They're beautiful," I said honestly, and for a second Sam's thoughts got snarled, almost . . . purple. Strange, that I would think of colors. Lingering effect of the shaman drug I'd taken for the Weres? I hoped to hell not.

  "I'll be sure to look over everything real carefully, Brenda," I said to the antiques dealer.

  We made an appointment for two days later. She assured me that she could find my isolated house with her GPS, and I warned her about the long driveway through the woods, which had led several visitors to believe they'd become lost. "I don't know if I'll come, or my partner, Donald," Brenda said. "Maybe both of us. "

  "I'll be glad to see you," I said. "If you run into any trouble or need to change the date, please let me know. "

  "Do you really think she'll like them?" Sam asked when we were in the truck and buckled up. We'd reverted to the topic of Jannalynn.

  "Sure," I said, surprised. "Why wouldn't she?"

  "I can't shake the feeling I'm on the wrong track with Jannalynn," Sam said. "You want to stop and get something to eat at the Ruby Tuesday's on Youree?"

  "Sure," I said. "Sam, why do you think that?"

  "She likes me," he said. "I mean, I can tell. But she's always thinking about the pack. "

  "You think maybe she's more focused on Alcide than on you?" That was what I was getting from Sam's head. Maybe I was being too blunt, though. Sam flushed.

  "Yeah, maybe," he admitted.

  "She's a great enforcer, and she was real excited to get the job," I said. I wondered if that had come out neutral enough.

  "She was," he said.

  "You seem to like strong women. "

  He smiled. "I do like strong women, and I'm not afraid of the different ones. Run-of-the-mill just doesn't cut it with me. "

  I smiled back at him. "I can tell. I don't know what to say about Jannalynn, Sam. She'd be an idiot not to appreciate you. Single, self-supporting, good looking? And you don't even pick your teeth at the table! What's not to love?" I took a deep breath, because I was about to change the subject and I didn't want to offend my boss. "Hey, Sam, about that website you visit? You think you could find out about why I'm feeling more fairy after hanging out with my fairy relatives? I mean, I couldn't actually be changing into more of a fairy, right?"

  "I'll see what I can find," Sam said, after a fraught moment. "But let's try asking your bunk buddies. They ought to cough up any information that would help you. Or I could beat it out of them. "

  He was serious.

  "They'll tell me. " I sounded more sure of that than I felt.

  "Where are they now?" he asked.

  "By this time, they've gone to the club," I said, after a glance at my watch. "They get all their business done before the club opens. "

  "Then that's where we'll go," Sam said. "Kennedy was opening for me today, and you're not on until tonight, right?"

  "Right," I said, discarding my plans for the afternoon, which hadn't been very urgent to start with. If we ate lunch at Ruby Tuesday's, we couldn't reach Monroe until one thirty, but I could make it home in time to change for work. After I'd ordered, I excused myself. While I was in the ladies' room, my cell phone rang. I don't answer my phone while I'm in a bathroom. I wouldn't like to be talking to someone and hear a toilet flush, right? Since the restaurant was noisy, I stepped outside to return the call after a wave at Sam. The number seemed faintly familiar.

  "Hey, Sookie," said Remy Savoy. "How you doing?"

  "Good. How's my favorite little boy?" Remy had been married to my cousin Hadley, and they'd had a son, Hunter, who would be starting kindergarten in the fall. After Katrina, Remy and Hunter had moved to the little town of Red Ditch, where Remy had gotten a job working at a lumberyard through the good services of a cousin.

  "He's doing good. He's trying hard to follow your rules. I wonder if I could ask a favor?"

  "Let's hear it," I said.

  "I've started dating a lady here name of Erin. We were thinking about going to the bass fishing tournament outside Baton Rouge this weekend. We, ah, we were kind of hoping you could keep Hunter? He gets bored if I fish more than an hour. " Hmmm. Remy moved pretty fast. Kristen hadn't been too long ago, and she'd already been replaced. I could kind of see it. Remy was not bad- looking, he was a skilled carpenter, and he had only one child--plus, Hunter's mom was dead, so there weren't any custody issues. Not too shabby a prospect in the town of Red Ditch. "Remy, I'm on the road right now," I said. "Let me call you back in a little while. I gotta check my work schedule. "

  "Great, thanks a lot, Sookie. Talk to you later. "

  I went back inside to find that our food had been served.

  "That was Hunter's dad calling," I told my boss after the server left. "Remy's got a new girlfriend, and he wanted to know if I could keep Hunter this weekend. "

  I got the impression that Sam believed Remy was trying to take advantage of me--but Sam also felt he could hardly tell me what to do about it. "If I remember the schedule right, you're working this Saturday night," he pointed out.

  And Saturday night was when I made my biggest tips.

  I nodded, both to Sam and myself. While we ate, we talked about Terry's negotiations with a breeder of Catahoulas in Ruston. Terry's Annie had gotten out of her pen last time she'd been in heat. This time, Terry had a more planned pregnancy in mind, and the talks between the two men had nearly reached prenup status. A question rose to my mind, and I wasn't quite sure how to phrase it to Sam. My curiosity got the better of me.

  "You remember Bob the cat?" I asked.

  "Sure. That guy Amelia turned into a cat by accident? Her friend Octavia turned him back. "

  "Yeah. Well, the thing is, while he was a cat, he was black and white. He was a really cute cat. But Amelia found a female cat in the woods with a litter, and there were some black-and-white kittens among 'em, so she got--okay, I know this is weird--she got pissed off at Bob because she thought he'd, you know, become a dad. Sort of. "

  "So your question is, is that a common thing?" Sam looked disgusted. "Naw, Sookie. We can't do that, and we don't want to. None of the two- natured. Even if there were a sexual encounter, there wouldn't be a pregnancy. I think Amelia was accusing Bob falsely. On the other hand, he isn't --wasn't--really two-natured. He was completely transformed by magic. " Sam shrugged. He looked very embarrassed.

  "Sorry," I said, feeling mortified. "That was tacky of me. "

  "It's a natural thing to wonder about, I guess," Sam said dubiously. "But when I'm in my other skin, I'm not out making puppies. "

  Now I was horribly embarrassed. "Please, accept my apology," I said.

  He relaxed when he saw how uncomfortable I was. He patted me on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it. " Then he asked me what plans I had for the attic now that I'd emptied it, and we talked of trivial things until we were back to feeling okay with each other.

  I called Remy back when we were on the interstate. "Remy, this weekend won't work for me. Sorry!" I explained that I had to work.

  "Don't worry about it," Remy said. He sounded calm about my refusal. "It was just a thought. Listen, here's the thing. I hate to ask for another favor. But Hunter has to visit the kindergarten next week, just a thing the school does every year so the kids will have a mental picture of the place they're going in the fall. They tour the classrooms, meet the teachers, and see the lunchroom and the bathrooms. Hunter asked me if you could go with us. "

  My mouth fell open. I was glad Remy couldn't see me. "This is during the day, I'm assuming," I said. "What day of the week?"

  "Next Tuesday, two o'clock. "

  Unless I was on for the lunch shift, I could do it. "Again, let me check my work schedule, but I think th
at's going to be doable," I said. "I'll call you back tonight. " I snapped my phone shut and told Sam about Remy's second request.

  "Seems like he waited to ask you the more important thing second, so you'd be more likely to come," Sam asked.

  I laughed. "I didn't think of that until you said it. My brain is wired in a straighter line than that. But now that it's crossed my mind, that seems . . . not unlikely. " I shrugged. "It's not like I object, exactly. I want Hunter to be happy. And I've spent time with him, though not as much as I should have. " Hunter and I were alike in a hidden way; we were both telepathic. But that was our secret because I feared Hunter might be in danger if his ability was known. It sure hadn't improved my life any.

  "So why are you worried? Because I can tell you are," Sam said.

  "Just . . . it'll look funny. People in Red Ditch will think Remy and I are dating. That I'm sort of--close to being Hunter's mom. And Remy just told me he's seeing a woman named Erin, and she may not like it. . . . " My voice trailed off. This visit seemed like a mildly bad idea. But if it would make Hunter happy, I supposed I ought to do it.

  "You have that sucked-in feeling?" Sam's smile was wry. It was our day to talk about awkward things.

  "Yeah," I admitted. "I do. When I got involved in Hunter's life, I didn't ever imagine he'd really depend on me for anything. I guess I've never been around kids that much. Remy's got a great-aunt and great-uncle in Red Ditch. That's why he moved there after Katrina. They had an empty rental house. But the aunt and uncle are too old to want to keep a kid Hunter's age for more than an hour or two, and the one cousin is too busy to be much help. "

  "Hunter a good kid?"

  "Yes, I think he is. " I smiled. "You know what's weird? When Hunter stayed with me, he and Claude got along great. That was a big surprise. "

  Sam glanced over at me. "But you wouldn't want to leave him with Claude for hours, would you?"

  After a moment's thought, I said, "No. "

  Sam nodded, as if I'd confirmed something he'd been wondering about. "Cause after all, Claude's a fairy?" He put enough question into his voice to ensure that I knew he was genuinely asking me.

  The words sounded very unpleasant said out loud. But they were the truth. "Yes, because Claude's a fairy. But not because he's a different race from us. " I struggled with how to express what I wanted to say. "Fairies, they love kids. But they don't have the same frame of reference as most humans. Fairies'll do what they think will make the child happy, or will benefit the child, rather than what a Christian adult would do. " It made me feel small and provincial to admit all this, but those were my true feelings. I felt like adding a series of disclaimers--Not that I think I'm such a great Christian, far from it. Not that non-Christians are bad people. Not that I think Claude would hurt Hunter. But Sam and I had known each other long enough that I was sure he'd understand all that.

  "I'm glad we're on the same page," Sam said, and I felt relieved. But I was far from comfortable. We might be on the same page, but I wasn't happy about reading it.

  Spring was verging on summer, and the day was beautiful. I tried to enjoy it all the way east to Monroe, but my success was limited.

  My cousin Claude owned Hooligans, a strip club off the interstate outside Monroe. On five nights a week, it featured the conventional entertainment offered at strip clubs. The club was closed on Mondays. But Thursday night was Ladies Only, and that was when Claude stripped. Of course, he wasn't the only male who performed. At least three other male strippers came in on a rotating basis pretty regularly, and there was usually a guest stripper, too. There was a male strip circuit, my cousin had told me.

  "You ever come here to watch him?" Sam asked as we pulled up to the back door.

  He was not the first person to ask me that. I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me, that I hadn't felt the need to rush over to Monroe to watch guys take off their clothes.

  "No. I've seen Claude naked. I've never come over to watch him do his thing professionally. I hear he's good. "

  "He's naked? At your house?"

  "Modesty is not one of Claude's priorities," I said.

  Sam looked both displeased and startled, despite his own earlier warning about the fae not thinking kin were off-limits sexually. "What about Dermot?" he said.

  "Dermot? I don't think he strips," I said, confused.

  "I mean, he doesn't go around the house naked, does he?"

  "No," I said. "That seems to be a Claude thing. It would be really icky if Dermot did that, since he looks so much like Jason. "

  "That's just not right," Sam muttered. "Claude needs to keep his pants on. "

  "I dealt with it," I said, the edge in my voice reminding Sam that the situation was not his to worry about.

  It was a weekday, so the place didn't open until four in the afternoon. I hadn't ever been to Hooligans before, but it looked like any other small club; set apart in a fair-sized parking lot, electric-blue siding, a jazzy shocking-pink sign. Places for selling alcohol or flesh always look a little sad in the daytime, don't they? The only other business close to Hooligans, now that I was looking, was a liquor store.

  Claude had told me what to do in case I ever dropped in. The secret signal was knocking four times, keeping the raps evenly spaced. After that was done, I gazed out across the fields. The sun beat down on the parking lot with just a hint of the heat to come. Sam shifted uneasily from foot to foot. After a few seconds, the door opened.

  I smiled and said hello automatically, and began to step into the hall. It was a shock to realize the doorman wasn't human. I froze.

  I'd assumed that Claude and Dermot were the only fairies left in modern-day America since my great-grandfather had pulled all the fairies into their own dimension, or world, or whatever they called it, and closed the door. Though I'd also known that Niall and Claude communicated at least occasionally, because Niall had sent me a letter via Claude's hands. But I'd deliberately refrained from asking a lot of questions. My experiences with my fairy kin, with all the fae, had been both delightful and horrible . . . but toward the end, those experiences had come down far heavier on the horrible side of the scale.

  The doorman was just as startled to see me as I was to see him. He wasn't a fairy--but he was fae. I'd met fairies who'd filed their teeth to look the way this creature's did naturally: an inch long, pointed, curved slightly inward. The doorman's ears weren't pointed, but I didn't think it was surgical alteration that had made them flatter and rounder than human ears. The alien effect was lessened by his thick, fine hair, which was a rich auburn color and lay smooth, about three inches long, all over his head. The effect was not that of a hairstyle, but of an animal's coat.

  "What are you?" we asked each other simultaneously.

  It would have been funny . . . in another universe.

  "What's happening?" Sam said behind me, and I jumped. I stepped all the way inside the club with Sam right on my heels, and the heavy metal door clanged shut behind us. After the dazzling sunlight, the long fluorescent bulbs that lit the hall looked doubly bleak.

  "I'm Sookie," I said, to break the awkward silence.

  "What are you?" the creature asked again. We were still standing awkwardly in the narrow hallway.

  Dermot's head popped out of a doorway. "Hey, Sookie," he said. "I see you've met Bellenos. " He stepped out into the hall and took in my expression. "Haven't you ever seen an elf before?"

  "I haven't, thanks for asking," muttered Sam. Since he was much more knowledgeable about the supe world than I was, I realized that elves must be pretty rare.

  I had a lot of questions about Bellenos's presence, but I wasn't sure if I had any right to ask them, especially after my faux pas with Sam. "Sorry, Bellenos. I did meet a half elf once with teeth like yours. Mostly, though, I know fairi
es who file their teeth to look that way. Pleased to meet you," I said with a huge effort. "This is my friend Sam. "

  Sam shook hands with Bellenos. The two were much the same height and build, but I noticed that Bellenos's slanted eyes were dark brown, matching the freckles on his milky skin. Those eyes were curiously far apart, or perhaps his face was broader across the cheekbones than normal? The elf smiled at Sam, and I caught a glimpse of the teeth again. I shuddered and looked away.

  Through an open door I glimpsed a large dressing room. There was a long counter running along one wall, which was lined with a brightly lit mirror. The counter was strewn with cosmetics, makeup brushes, blow-dryers, hair curlers and hair straighteners, bits of costume, razors, a magazine or two, wigs, cell phones . . . the assorted debris of people whose jobs depended on their appearance. Some high stools were set haphazardly around the room, and there were tote bags and shoes everywhere.

  From farther down the hall Dermot called, "Come into the office. "

  We went down the hall and crowded into a small room. Somewhat to my disappointment, the exotic and gorgeous Claude had a completely prosaic office--cramped, cluttered, and windowless. Claude had a secretary, a woman dressed in a JCPenney women's business suit. She could not have looked more incongruous in a strip club. Dermot, who was evidently the master of ceremonies today, said, "Nella Jean, this is our dear cousin Sookie. "

  Nella Jean was dark and round, and her bitter-chocolate eyes were almost a match for Bellenos's, though her teeth were reassuringly normal. Her little cubbyhole was right next door to Claude's office; in fact, I conjectured that it had been converted from a storage closet. After a disparaging look at Sam and me, Nella Jean seemed more than ready to retreat to her own space. She shut her office door with an air of finality, as if she knew we were going to do something unsavory and she wanted nothing to do with us.

  Bellenos shut Claude's office door, too, closing us in a room that would have been crowded with two of us, much less five. I could hear music coming from the club proper (or rather, the club improper), and I wondered what was happening out there. Did strippers rehearse? What did they make of Bellenos?

  "Why the surprise visit?" Claude asked. "Not that I'm not delighted to see you. "

  He wasn't delighted to see me at all, though he'd invited me to drop by Hooligans more than once. It was clear from his sulky mouth that he'd never believed I'd come to see him at the club unless he was onstage stripping. Of course, Claude's sure everyone in the world wants to see him take off his clothes, I thought. Did he just not enjoy visitors, or was there something he didn't want me to know?

  "You need to tell us why Sookie's feeling more and more fae," Sam said abruptly.

  The three fae males turned to look at Sam simultaneously.

  Claude said, "Why do we need to tell her that? And why are you concerning yourself with our family affairs?"

  "Because Sookie wants to know why, and she's my friend," Sam said. His face was hard, his voice very level. "You should be educating her about her mixed blood instead of living in her house and leeching off her. "

  I didn't know where to look. I hadn't known Sam was so opposed to my cousin and my great-uncle staying with me, and he really didn't need to give his opinion. And Claude and Dermot weren't leeching off me; they bought groceries, too, and they cleaned up after themselves very carefully. Sometimes. It was true that my water bill had jumped (and I had said something to Claude about that), but nothing else had cost me money.

  "In fact," Sam said, when they continued to glare at him in silence, "you're staying with her to make sure she'll be more fae, right? You're encouraging that part of her to strengthen. I don't know how you're doing that, but I know you are. My question is: Are you doing this just for the warmth of it, the companionship, or do you have a plan in mind for Sookie? Some kind of secret fairy plot?"

  The last words were more like an ominous rumble than Sam's normal voice.

  "Claude's my cousin and Dermot's my great-uncle," I said automatically. "They wouldn't try to . . . " And I let the thought trail off dismally. If I'd learned anything over the past few years, it was not to make stupid assumptions. The idea that family would not harm you was a stupid assumption of the first order.

  "Come see the rest of the club," Claude said suddenly. Before we could think about it, he'd hustled us out of the office and down the hall. He swung open the door to the club proper, and Sam and I went into it.

  I guess all clubs and bars look basically the same--tables and chairs, some attempt at decor or theme, an actual bar, a stage with stripper poles, and some kind of booth for sound. In those respects, Hooligans was no different.

  But all the creatures that turned to the door when we entered . . . all of them were fae. It came to me slowly and inevitably as I looked from face to face. No matter how human they looked (and most of them could "pass"), each one had a trace of fae blood of one kind or another. A beautiful female with flame red hair was part elf. She'd had her teeth filed down. A long, slim male was something I'd never encountered before.

  "Welcome, Sister," said a short blond . . . something. I couldn't even be sure of the gender. "Have you come to join us here?"

  I struggled to answer. "I hadn't planned on it," I said. I stepped back into the hall and let the door shut after me. I gripped Claude's arm. "What the hell is going on here?" When he didn't answer, I turned to my great-uncle. "Dermot?"

  "Sookie, our dearest," Dermot said, after a moment's silence. "Tonight when we come home we'll tell you everything you need to know. "

  "What about him?" I said, nodding at Bellenos.

  "He won't be with us," Claude said. "Bellenos sleeps here, as our night watchman. "

  You only needed a night watchman if you were afraid of an attack.

  More trouble.

  I could hardly stand the prospect of it.