Dead Reckoning

 

I rose the next day feeling pretty grim in general, but I brightened when I saw that Claude and Dermot had returned to the house the night before. The evidence was clear. Claude's shirt was tossed over the back of a kitchen chair, and Dermot's shoes were at the foot of the stairs. Plus, after I'd had my coffee and my shower, and emerged from my room in shorts and a green T-shirt, the two were waiting for me in the living room.

"Good morning, guys," I said. Even to my own ears, I didn't sound too perky. "Did you remember that today was the day the antiques dealers come? They should be here in an hour or two." I braced myself for the talk we had to have.

"Good, then this room will not look like a junk shop," Claude said in his charming way.

I just nodded. Today, we had Obnoxious Claude, as opposed to the more rarely seen Tolerable Claude.

"We did promise you a talk," Dermot said.

"And then you didn't come home that night." I sat back in an old rocker from the attic. I didn't feel particularly ready for this conversation, but I was also anxious for some answers.

"Things were happening at the club," Claude said evasively.

"Uh-huh. Let me guess, one of the fairies is missing."

That made them sit up and take notice. "What? How did you know?" Dermot recovered first.

"Victor has him. Or her," I added. I told them the story about last night.

"It's not enough that we have to handle our own race's problems," Claude said. "Now we're sucked into the fucking vampire struggles, too."

"No," I said, feeling I was walking uphill in this conversation. "You as a group weren't sucked into the vampire struggles. One of you was taken for a specific purpose. Different scenario. Let me point out that at the very least, that fairy who was taken has been bled, because that was what the vamps needed, the blood. I'm not saying your missing comrade couldn't be alive, but you know how the vamps lose control when a fairy is around, much less a bleeding fairy."

"She's right," Dermot told Claude. "Cait must be dead. Are any of the fairies at the club her kin? We need to ask if they've had a death vision."

"A female," Claude said. His handsome face was set in stone. "One we couldn't afford to lose. Yes, we have to find out."

For a second I was confused, because Claude didn't think that much about women in terms of his personal life. Then I remembered that there were fewer and fewer female fairies. I didn't know about the rest of the fae, but it seemed the fairies were on the wane. It wasn't that I lacked concern about the missing Cait (though I didn't think there was a snowball's chance in hell that she was alive), but I had other, selfish questions to ask, and I was not going to be diverted. As soon as Dermot had called Hooligans and asked Bellenos to call the fae together to ask about Cait's kin, I got back on my own track.

"While Bellenos is busy, you have some free time, and since the appraisers are coming soon, I really need you to answer my questions," I said.

Dermot and Claude looked at each other. Dermot seemed to lose the conversational coin toss, because he took a deep breath and began, "You know when one of your Caucasians marries one of your Negroes, sometimes the babies turn out looking much more like one race than another, seemingly at random. That likeness can vary even between children of the same couple."

"Yes," I said. "I've heard that."

"When Jason was a baby, our great-grandfather Niall checked on him."

I felt my mouth drop open. "Wait," I said, and it came out in a hoarse croak. "Niall said he couldn't visit because his half-human son Fintan guarded us from him. That Fintan was actually our grandfather."

"This is why Fintan guarded you from the fae. He didn't want his father interfering in your lives the way he had interfered in his own. But Niall had his ways, and nonetheless, he found that the essential spark had passed Jason by. He became . . . uninterested," Claude said.

I waited.

He continued, "That's why he took so many years to make your acquaintance. He could have evaded Fintan, but he assumed you would be the same as Jason . . . attractive to humans and supernaturals, but other than that, essentially a normal human."

"But then he heard you weren't," Dermot said.

"Heard? From who? Whom?" My grandmother would have been proud.

"From Eric. They had a few business dealings together, and Niall thought to ask Eric to alert him to events in your life. Eric would tell Niall from time to time what you were up to. There came a time when Eric thought you needed the protection of your great-grandfather, and of course you were withering."

Huh?

"So Grandfather sent Claudine, and then when she grew worried she couldn't take care of you, he decided to meet you himself. Eric arranged that, too. I suppose he thought that he would get Niall's goodwill as kind of a finder's fee." Dermot shrugged. "That seems to have worked for Eric. Vampires are all venal and selfish."

The words "pot" and "kettle" popped into my mind.

I said, "So Niall appeared in my life and made himself known to me, via Eric's intervention. And that precipitated the fairy war, because the water fairies didn't want any more contact with humans, much less a minor royal who was only one-eighth fairy." Thanks, guys. I loved hearing that a whole war was my fault.

"Yes," Claude said judiciously. "That's a fair summary. And so the war came, and after many deaths Niall made the decision to seal off Faery." He sighed heavily. "I was left outside, and Dermot, too."

"And by the way, I'm not withering," I pointed out with some sharpness. "I mean, do I look withered to you?" I knew I was ignoring the big picture, but I was getting angry. Or maybe, even angrier.

"You have only a little fae blood," Dermot said gently, as if that would be a crushing reminder. "You are aging."

I couldn't deny that. "So why am I feeling more and more like one of you, if I have such a little dab of fairy in me?"

"Our sum is more than our parts," Dermot said. "I'm half-human, but the longer I'm with Claude, the stronger my magic is. Claude, though a full- blooded fairy, has been in the human world for so long he was getting weak. Now he's stronger. You only have a dash of fae blood, but the longer you're with us, the more prominent an element it is in your nature."

"Like priming a pump?" I said doubtfully. "I don't get it."

"Like--like--washing a new red garment with the whites," said Dermot triumphantly, who had done that very thing the week before. Everyone in our house had pink socks now.

"But wouldn't that mean Claude was getting less red? I mean, less fae? If we're absorbing some of his?" "No," Claude said, with some complacence. "I am redder than I was."

Dermot nodded. "Me, too."

"I haven't really noticed any difference," I said.

"Are you not stronger than you were?"

"Well . . . yeah. Some days." It wasn't like ingesting vampire blood, which would give you increased strength for an indeterminate period, if it didn't make you batshit crazy. It was more like I felt increased vigor. I felt, in fact . . . younger. And since I was only in my twenties, that was just unnerving.

"Don't you long to see Niall again?" Claude asked.

"Sometimes." Every day.

"Are you not happy when we sleep in the bed with you?"

"Yeah. But just so you know, I think it's kind of creepy, too."

"Humans," Claude said to Dermot, with a blend of exasperation and patronage in his voice. Dermot shrugged. After all, he was half-human.

"And yet you chose to stay here," I said.

"I wonder every day if I made a mistake."

"Why are you two still here, if you're so nuts about Niall and your life in Faery? How did you get the letter from Niall that you gave me a month ago, the one where he told me he'd used all his influence to make the FBI leave me alone?" I glared at them suspiciously. "Was that letter a forgery?"

"No, it was genuine," Dermot said. "And we're here because we both love and fear our prince."

"Okay," I said, ready to change subjects because I couldn't get into a debate about their feelings. "What's a portal, exactly?"

"It's a thin place in the membrane," Claude said. I looked at Claude blankly, and he elaborated. "There's a sort of magical membrane between our world--the supernatural world--and yours. At a thin place, that membrane is permeable. The fae world is accessible. As are the parts of your world that are normally invisible to you."

"Huh?"

Claude was on a roll. "Portals usually stay in the same vicinity, though they may shift a little. We use them to get from your world to ours. At the site of the portal in your woods, Niall left an aperture. The slit isn't big enough for one of us to pass through standing up, but objects can be transferred."

Like a mail slot in a door. "See? Was that so hard?" I said. "Can you think of some more honest things to tell me?"

"Like what?"

"Like why all those fae are at Hooligans, acting as strippers and bouncers and whatnot. They're not all fairies. I don't even know what they are. Why would they end up with you two?"

"Because they have nowhere else to go," Dermot said simply. "They were all shut out. Some on purpose, like Claude, and some not . . . like me."

"So Niall closed off access to Faery and left some of his people outside?"

"Yes. He was trying to keep all those fairies who still wanted to kill humans inside, and he was too hasty," Claude said. I noticed that Dermot, whom Niall had bespelled in a cruel way, looked dubious at this explanation.

"I understood that Niall had good reasons for closing the fae off," I said slowly. "He said experience had taught him that there's always trouble when fairies and humans mix. He didn't want the fairies to crossbreed with humans anymore because so many of the fae hate the consequence-- half-breeds." I looked apologetically at Dermot, who shrugged. He was used to it. "Niall never intended to see me again. Are you two really so anxious to go into the world of the fae and stay there?"

There was a pause that might be called "pregnant." It was clear that Dermot and Claude weren't going to respond. At least they weren't going to lie. "So explain why you're living with me and what you want from me," I said, hoping they'd answer that one.

"We're living with you because it seemed like a good idea to be with the kin we could find," Claude said. "We felt weak cut off from our homeland, and we had no notion that there were so many fae left out here. We were surprised when the other stranded fae in North America began to arrive at Hooligans, but we were happy. As we told you, we're stronger when we're together."

"Are you telling me the whole truth?" I got up and began pacing back and forth. "You could have told me all this before, and you didn't. Maybe you're lying." I held out my arms to either side, palms up. Well?

"What?" Claude looked affronted. Well, it was about time I served him up what he'd been dishing out. "Fairies don't lie. Everyone knows that."

Right. Sure. Common knowledge on the street. "You may not lie, but you don't always tell the whole truth," I pointed out. "You certainly have that in common with vampires. Maybe you have some other reason for being here? Maybe you want to be around to see who comes through the portal."

Dermot shot to his feet.

Now we were all three angry, all three agitated. The room was full of accusation.

"I want to get back into Faery because I want to see Niall once more," Claude said, picking his words. "He's my grandfather. I'm tired of receiving the occasional message. I want to visit our sacred places, where I can be close to my sisters' spirits. I want to come and go between the worlds, as is my right. This is the closest portal. You're our closest relative. And there's something about this house. We belong here, for now."

Dermot went to look out the front window at the warm morning. There were butterflies outside and blooming things and lots of gorgeous sunshine. I felt a wave of intense longing to be outside with things I understood rather than in here, engaged in this bizarre conversation with relatives I didn't understand or wholly trust. If reading his body language was a reliable gauge, Dermot seemed to share the same mixed and unhappy feelings.

"I'll think about what you've said," I told Claude. Dermot's shoulders seemed to relax just a hair. "I have something else on my mind, too. I told you about the firebombing at the bar." Dermot turned around and leaned against the open window. Though his hair was longer than my brother's and his expression was more (sorry, Jason) intelligent, it was scary how much they looked alike. Not by any means identical, but they could certainly be mistaken for one another, at least briefly. But there were darker tones in Dermot than I'd ever seen in Jason.

Both the fairies nodded when I mentioned the firebombing. They looked interested, but uninvolved--a look I was used to seeing from vampires. They didn't really care a whole hell of a bunch about what happened to humans they didn't know. If they'd ever read John Donne, they would have disagreed with his idea that no man is an island. Most humans were on one big island, to the fairies, and that island was adrift on a sea called I Totally Don't Care.

"People talk in bars, so I'm sure they talk in strip clubs. Please let me know if you hear anything about who did it. This is important to me. If you could ask the staff at Hooligans to listen for talk about the bombing, I'd sure appreciate it."

Dermot said, "Is business bad at Sam's, Sookie?"

"Yes," I said, not completely surprised at this turn of conversation. "And the new bar up off the highway is making inroads into our clientele. I don't know if it's the novelty of Vic's Redneck Roadhouse and Vampire's Kiss pulling people away, or if folks are turned off because Sam's a shifter, but it's not going so good at Merlotte's."

I was trying to decide how much I wanted to tell them about Victor and his evilness when Claude suddenly said, "You'd be out of a job," and closed his mouth, as if that had sparked a chain of thoughts.

Everyone was mighty interested in what I'd be doing if Merlotte's closed. "Sam would be out of his living," I pointed out, as I half turned to go to the kitchen to get another cup of coffee. "Which is way more important than my job. I can find another place to work."

"He could run a bar somewhere else," Claude said, shrugging.

"He'd have to leave Bon Temps," I said sharply.

"That wouldn't suit you, would it?" Claude looked thoughtful in a way that made me distinctly uneasy.

"He's my best friend," I said. "You know that." Maybe that was the first time I had said that aloud, but I guess I'd known it for quite a while. "Oh, by the way, if you want to know what happened to Cait, you might try contacting a human guy with gray eyes who works at Vampire's Kiss. The name on his uniform was Colton." I knew some places just handed out name tags every night, without any worries about who actually owned the name. But at least it was a start. I started back to the kitchen.

"Wait," Dermot said, so abruptly that I turned my head to look at him. "When are the antiques people coming to look at your junk?"

"Should be here in a couple hours."

Dermot said, "The attic is more or less empty. Didn't you plan to clean it?"

"That's what I was thinking of doing this morning."

"Do you want us to help?" Dermot asked.

Claude was clearly appalled. He glared at Dermot.

We were back on more familiar ground, and I, for one, was grateful. Until I'd had a chance to think all this new information through, I couldn't even guess at the right questions to ask. "Thanks," I said. "It would be great if you could carry up one of the big garbage cans. Then after I sweep and pick up all the bits and pieces, you could tote it down." Having relatives who are superhumanly strong can be very handy.

I went to the back porch to gather up my cleaning supplies, and when I trudged upstairs with laden arms, I saw that Claude's door was closed. My previous tenant, Amelia, had turned one upstairs bedroom into a pretty little boudoir with a cheap (but cute) dressing table, chest of drawers, and bed. Amelia had used another bedroom as her living room, complete with two comfortable chairs, a television, and a large desk, which now stood empty. The day we'd cleaned out the attic, I'd noticed that Dermot had set up a cot in the former living room.

Before I'd had time to say "Jack Robinson," Dermot appeared at the attic door carrying the garbage can. He set it down and looked around him. "I think it looked better with the family things in it," he said, and I had to agree. In the daylight streaming through the filthy windows, the attic looked sad and shabby.

"It'll be fine when it's clean," I said with determination, and I set to with the broom, sweeping down all the cobwebs, and then started in on the dust and debris on the planks of the floor. To my surprise, Dermot picked up a few rags and the glass cleaner, and began to work on the windows.

It seemed wiser not to comment. After Dermot finished the windows, he held the dustpan while I swept the accumulated dirt into it. When we'd completed that task and I'd brought up the vacuum to take care of the last of the dust, he said, "These walls need paint."

That was like saying the desert needs water. Maybe there had once been paint, but it had long ago chipped or worn away, and the indeterminate color remaining on the walls had been scuffed and stained by the many items leaning against them. "Well, yes. Sanding and painting. The floor needs it, too." I tapped with my foot. My forebears had gone crazy with whitewash when the second story had been added to the house.

"You'll only need part of this space for storage," Dermot said, out of the blue. "Assuming the antiques dealers buy the larger pieces and you don't move them back up here."

"That's true." Dermot seemed to have a point, but it was lost on me. "What are you saying?" I asked bluntly.

"You could make a third bedroom up here if you only used that end as your storage," Dermot said. "See, that part?"

He was pointing to a place where the slope of the roof formed a natural area, about seven feet deep and the width of the house. "It wouldn't be hard to partition that off, hang some doors," my great-uncle said.

Dermot knew how to hang doors? I must have looked astonished because he told me, "I've been watching HGTV on Amelia's television."

"Oh," I said, trying to think of a more intelligent remark. I still felt at sea. "Well, we could do that. But I don't think I need another room. I mean, who's going to want to live here?"

"Aren't more bedrooms always a good thing? On the television, the hosts say they are. And I could move into such a room. Claude and I could share the television room as a sitting room. We would each have our own room."

I felt humiliated that I hadn't ever thought of asking if Dermot minded sharing a room with Claude. Obviously, he did. Sleeping on a cot in the little sitting room . . . I'd been a bad hostess. I looked at Dermot with more attention than I'd given him before. He had sounded . . . hopeful. Maybe my new tenant was underemployed. I realized that I didn't know exactly what Dermot did at the club. I'd taken it for granted that he'd leave with Claude when Claude went to Monroe, but I'd never been curious enough to ask what Dermot did when he got there. What if being part fairy was the only thing he had in common with the self-centered Claude?

"If you think you have the time to do the work, I'd be glad to buy the materials," I said, not quite sure where the words came from. "In fact, if you could sand, prime, and paint the whole thing, and build the partition, I'd sure appreciate it. I'd be glad to pay you for the job. Why don't we go to the lumberyard in Clarice on my next day off? If you could figure out how much lumber and paint we need?"

Dermot lit up like a Christmas tree. "I can try, and I know how to rent a sander," he said. "You trust me to do this?"

"I do," I said, not sure I really meant that. But after all, what could make the attic look worse than it did now? I began to feel enthusiastic myself. "It would be great to have this room redone. You need to tell me what you think would be a fair wage."

"Absolutely not," he said. "You have given me a home and the reassurance of your presence. This is the least I can do for you."

I couldn't argue with Dermot when he put it that way. There's such a thing as being too determined not to accept a gift, and I assessed this as just such a situation.

This had been a morning chock-full of information and surprises. As I was washing my hands and face to get rid of the attic dust, I heard a car coming up the driveway. The Splendide logo, in Gothic lettering, filled the side of a big white van.

Brenda Hesterman and her partner climbed out. The partner was a small, compact man wearing khakis and a blue polo shirt and polished loafers. His salt-and-pepper hair was clipped short.

I went out onto the front porch.

"Hello, Sookie," Brenda called, as if we were old friends. "This is Donald Callaway, the co-owner of the shop."

"Mr. Callaway," I said, nodding. "You two come on in. Can I get you all a drink?"

They both declined on their way up the steps. Once inside, they looked around the crowded room with an appreciation my fairy guests hadn't shown.

"Love the wooden ceiling," Brenda said. "And look at the plank walls!"

"It's an old one," Donald Callaway said. "Congratulations, Miss Stackhouse, on living in such a lovely historic home." I tried not to look as astonished as I felt. This was not the reaction I normally got. Most people tended to pity me for living in such an outdated structure. The floors weren't really true and the windows weren't standard. "Thanks," I said doubtfully. "Well, here's the stuff that was in the attic. You all see if there's anything you want. Just give me a yell if you need something."

There didn't seem to be any point in hanging around, and it seemed kind of tacky to watch them at work. I went into my room to dust and straighten, and I cleaned out a drawer or two while I was at it. Normally I would have listened to the radio, but I wanted to keep an ear out for the partners in case they needed to ask questions. They talked to each other quietly from time to time, and I found myself curious about what they were deciding. When I heard Claude coming down the stairs, I thought it was a good idea to go out to tell him and Dermot good-bye as they left.

Brenda gaped at the two beautiful men as the fairies passed through the living room. I made them slow down long enough to be introduced because that was only polite. I wasn't a bit surprised to notice that Donald was thinking of me in a different light after he'd met my "cousins."

I was scrubbing on the hall bathroom floor when I heard Donald exclaim. I drifted into the living room, trying to look casually inquisitive.

He'd been examining my grandfather's desk, a very heavy and ugly object that had been the cause of much cursing and sweating on the part of the fairies when they carried it down to the living room.

The small man was crouched before it now, his head in the kneehole.

"You've got a secret compartment, Miss Stackhouse," he said, and he inched backward on his haunches. "Come, let me show you."

I squatted down beside him, feeling the excitement such a discovery naturally aroused. Secret compartment! Pirate treasure! Magic trick! They all trigger the happy anticipation of childhood.

With the help of Donald's flashlight I saw that at the back of the desk, in the area where your knees would fit, there was an extra panel. There were tiny hinges so high up a knee would never brush them; so the door would swing upward when it was open.

How to open it was the mystery.

After I'd had a good look, Donald said, "I'll try my pocketknife, Miss Stackhouse, if you have no objection."

"None at all," I said.

He retrieved the pocketknife, which was a businesslike size, from his pocket and opened the blade, sliding it gently into the seam. As I'd expected, in the middle of the seam he encountered a clasp of some kind. He pushed gently with the knife blade, first from one side and then another, but nothing happened.

Next, he began patting the woodwork all around the kneehole. There was a strip of wood at both points where the sides and top of the kneehole met. Donald pressed and pushed, and just when I was about to throw up my hands, there was a rusty click and the panel opened.

"Why don't you do the honors," Donald said. "Your desk."

That was both reasonable and true, and as he backed out, I took his place. I lifted the door and held it up while Donald held his flashlight steady, but since my body blocked a lot of the light, I had quite a time extracting the contents.

I gently gripped and pulled when I felt the contours of the bundle, and then I had it. I wriggled backward on my haunches, trying not to imagine what that must look like from Donald's viewpoint. As soon as I was clear of the desk, I rose and went over to the window with my dusty bundle. I examined what I held.

There was a small velvet bag with a drawstring top. The material had been wine red, I believed, once upon a time. There was a once-white envelope, about 6 ? 8, with pictures on it, and as I carefully flattened it, I realized it had held a dress pattern. Immediately a flood of memory came undammed. I remembered the box that had held all the patterns, Vogue and Simplicity and Butterick. My grandmother had enjoyed sewing for many years until a broken finger in her right hand hadn't "set" well, and then it had become more and more painful for her to manage the tissue-thin patterns and the materials. From the picture, this particular envelope had held a pattern that was full-skirted and nipped in at the waist, and the three drawn models had fashionably hunched shoulders, thin faces, and short hair. One model was wearing the dress as midlength, one was wearing it as a wedding dress, and one was wearing it as a square-dance costume. The versatile full-skirted dress!

I opened the flap and peered in, expecting to see the familiar brown flimsy pattern paper printed with mysterious black directions. But instead, there was a letter inside, written on yellowed paper. I recognized the handwriting.

Suddenly I was as close to tears as I could be. I held my eyes wide so the liquid wouldn't trickle, and I left the living room very quickly. It wasn't possible to open that envelope with other people in the house, so I stowed it in my bedside table along with the little bag, and I returned to the living room after I'd blotted my eyes.

The two antiques dealers were too courteous to ask questions, and I brewed some coffee and brought it to them on a tray with some milk and sugar and some slices of pound cake, because I was grateful. And polite. As my grandmother had taught me . . . my dead grandmother, whose handwriting had been on the letter inside the pattern envelope.