Dead Reckoning

 

Sunday morning I woke up worried.

I'd been too sleepy the night before, when I finally got home, to think much about what had happened at the bar. But evidently my subconscious had been chewing it over while I slept. My eyes flew open, and though the room was quiet and sunny, I gasped.

I had that panicky feeling; it hadn't taken me over yet, but it was just around the corner, physically and mentally. You know the feeling? When you think any second your heart's going to start pounding, that your breathing is picking up, that your palms will start sweating.

Sandra Pelt was after me, and I didn't know where she was or what she was plotting.

Victor had it in for Eric and, by extension, me.

I was sure I was the blonde the four thugs had been after, and I didn't know who'd sent them or what they would have done when they got me, though I had a pretty bad feeling about that.

Eric and Pam were on the outs, and I was sure that somehow I was involved in their dispute.

And I had a list of questions. At the top of the list: How had Mr. Cataliades known that I would need help at that particular time in that particular place? And how had he known to send the private investigators from Little Rock? Of course, if he had been the Pelts' lawyer, he might have known that they'd sent Lily and Jack Leeds to investigate their daughter Debbie's disappearance. He wouldn't have had to brief the Leeds as much, and he would have known they could handle themselves in a fight.

Would the four thugs tell the police why they'd come to the bar, and who'd put them up to it? And where they'd gotten the vampire blood--that would be helpful knowledge, also.

What would the things I'd gotten from the secret drawer tell me about my past?

"This is a fine kettle of fish," I said out loud. I pulled the sheet over my head and searched the house mentally. No one was here but me. Maybe Dermot and Claude were all talked out, after their big reveal. They seemed to have stayed in Monroe. Sighing, I sat up in bed, letting the sheet fall away. There was no hiding from my problems. The best I could do was to try to prioritize my crises and figure out what information I could gather about each one.

The most important problem was the one closest to my heart. And its solution was right to hand.

I gently extracted the pattern envelope and the worn velvet bag from the drawer of the bedside table. In addition to the practical contents (a flashlight, a candle, and matches), the drawer held the strange mementoes of my strange life. But I wasn't interested in anything today but the two new precious items. I carried them into the kitchen and laid them carefully back on the counter well away from the sink as I made my coffee.

While the coffeepot dripped, I almost pushed back the flap of the pattern envelope. But I pulled back my hand. I was scared. Instead I tracked down my address book. I'd charged my cell phone overnight, so I stowed the little cord away neatly--any delay would do--and at last, taking a deep breath, I punched in Mr. Cataliades's number. It rang three times.

"This is Desmond Cataliades," his rich voice said. "I'm traveling and unavailable at the moment, but if you'd like to leave a message, I may call you back. Or not."

Well, hell. I made a face at the telephone, but at the sound of the tone I dutifully recorded a guarded message that I hoped would convey my urgent need to talk to the lawyer. I crossed Mr. Cataliades--Desmond!--off my mental list and moved on to my second method of approach to the problem of Sandra Pelt.

Sandra was going to keep after me until either I was dead or she was. I had a real, true, personal enemy. It was hard to believe that every member of a family had turned out so rotten (especially since both Debbie and Sandra were adopted), but all the Pelts were selfish, strong willed, and hateful. The girls were fruits of the poisonous tree, I guess. I needed to know where Sandra was, and I knew someone who might be able to help me.

"Hello?" Amelia said briskly.

"How's life in the Big Easy?" I asked.

"Sookie! Gosh, it's good to hear your voice! Things are going great for me, actually."

"Do tell?"

"Bob showed up on my doorstep last week," she said.

After Amelia's mentor, Octavia, had turned Bob back into his skinny Mormonish self, Bob had been so angry with Amelia that he'd taken off like --well, like a scalded cat. As soon as he'd reoriented to being human, Bob had left Bon Temps to track down his family, who'd been in New Orleans during Katrina. Evidently Bob had calmed down about the whole transformation-into-a-cat issue.

"Did he find his folks?"

"Well, he did! His aunt and his uncle, the ones who raised him. They had gotten an apartment in Natchez just big enough for the two of them, and he could tell they didn't have any way to add him to the household, so he traveled around a bit checking on other coven members, and then he wandered back down here. He's got a job cutting hair in a shop three blocks away from where I work! He came in the magic shop, asked after me." Members of Amelia's coven ran the Genuine Magic Shop in the French Quarter. "I was surprised to see him. But real happy." She was practically purring on the last sentence, and I figured Bob had entered the room. "He says hey, Sookie."

"Hey back at him. Listen, Amelia, I hate to interfere in love's young dream, but I got a favor to ask."

"Shoot."

"I need to find out where someone is."

"Telephone book?"

"Ha-ha. Not that simple. Sandra Pelt is out of jail and gunning for me, literally. The bar's been firebombed, and yesterday four druggedup goons came in to get me, and I think Sandra might be behind both things. I mean, how many enemies can I have?"

I heard Amelia take a long breath. "Don't answer that," I said hastily. "So, she's failed twice, and I'm afraid that soon she'll pick up the pace and send someone here to the house. I'll be alone, and it won't end good for me."

"Why didn't she start there?"

"I finally figured out I should have asked myself that a few days ago. Do you think your wards are still active?"

"Oh . . . sure. They very well could be." Amelia sounded just a shade pleased. She was very proud of her witchy abilities, as well she ought to be.

"Really? I mean, think about it. You haven't been here in . . . gosh, almost three months." Amelia had packed up her car the first week in March.

"True. But I reinforced them before I left."

"They work even when you aren't around." I wanted to be sure. My life depended on it. "They will for a while. After all, I was out of the house for hours each day and left it guarded. But I do have to renew them, or they'll fade. You know, I got three days in a row I don't have to work. I think I'll come up there and check out the situation."

"That would be a huge relief, though I hate to put you out."

"Nah, no problem. Maybe me and Bob'll have a road trip. I'll ask a couple of other coven members how they find people. We can take care of the wards and give finding the bitch a shot."

"You think Bob'll be willing to come back here?" Bob had spent almost his whole sojourn in my house in feline form, so I was doubtful.

"I can only ask him. Unless you hear from me, I'm coming."

"Thanks so much." I hadn't realized my muscles were so tense until they began to relax. Amelia said she was coming.

I wondered why I didn't feel safer with my two fairy guys around. They were my kin, and though I felt happy and relaxed when they were in the house, I trusted Amelia more.

On the practical side, I never knew when Claude and Dermot would actually be under my roof. They were spending more and more nights in Monroe.

I'd have to put Amelia and Bob in the bedroom across the hall from mine, since the guys were occupying the upstairs. The bed in my old room was narrow, but neither Bob nor Amelia were large people.

This was all just make-work for my head. I poured a mug of coffee and picked up the envelope and the bag. I sat down at the kitchen table with the objects in front of me. I had a terrible impulse to open the garbage can and drop them both in it unopened, the knowledge in them unlearned.

But that was not something you did. You opened things that were meant to be opened.

I opened the flap and tipped the envelope. The flouncy-skirted bride in the picture stared at me blandly as a yellowed letter slid out. It felt dusty somehow, as though its years in the attic had soaked into the microscopic crevices in the paper. I sighed and closed my eyes, bracing myself. Then I unfolded the paper and looked down at my grandmother's handwriting.

It was unexpectedly painful to see it: spiky and compressed, poorly spelled and punctuated, but it was hers, my gran's. I had read God knows how many things she'd written in our life together: grocery lists, instructions, recipes, even a few personal notes. There was a bundle of them in my dressing table still.

Sookie, I'm so proud of you graduating from high school. I wish your mom and dad had been here to see you in your cap and gown.

Sookie, please pick up your room, I can't vacuum if I can't see the floor.

Sookie, Jason will pick you up after softball practice, I have to go to a meeting of the Garden Club.

I was sure this letter would be different. I was right. She began formally.

Dear Sookie,

I think you'll find this, if anyone does. There's nowhere else I can leave it, and when I think you're ready I'll tell you where I put it.

Tears welled up in my eyes. She'd been murdered before she thought I was ready. Maybe I never would have been ready.

You know I loved your grandfather more than anything.

I'd thought I'd known that. They'd had a rock-solid marriage . . . I'd assumed. The evidence suggested that might not have been the case.

But I did want chilren so bad, so bad. I felt if I had chilren my life would be perfect. I didn't realize asking God for a perfect life was a stupid

thing to do. I got tempted beyond my ability to resist. God was punishing me for my greed, I guess.

He was so beautiful. But I knew when I saw him that he wasn't a real person. He told me later he was part human, but I never saw much

humanity in him. Your grandfather had left for Baton Rouge, a long trip then. Later that morning we'd had a storm that knocked down a big

pine by the driveway so it was blocked. I was trying to saw up the pine so your grandfather would be able to bring the truck back up the

driveway. I took a break to go to the back yard to see if the clothes on the line were dry, and he walked out of the woods. When he helped

me move the tree--well, he moved it all by himself--I said Thank You, of course. I don't know if you know this, but if you say Thank You to

one of them you're obligated. I don't know why, that's just good manners.

Claudine had mentioned that in passing when I'd first met her, but I believed she'd told me it was simply a fairy etiquette thing. Mindful of my manners, I'd tried to be sure to never explicitly thank Niall, even when we'd swapped gifts at Christmas. (It had taken every bit of self-control I'd had not to say "Thank you." I'd said, "Oh, you thought of me! I know I'll enjoy it," and clamped my lips together.) But Claude . . . I'd been around him so often, I knew I'd thanked him for taking out the garbage or passing me the salt. Crap!

Anyway, I asked him if he wanted a drink and he was thirsty, and I was so lonely and I wanted a baby. Your grandpa and me had been

married five years by then and not a sign of a baby on the way. I figured something was wrong, though we didn't find out what until later

when a doctor said the mumps had . . . well. Poor Mitchell. Was not his fault, it was the sickness. I just told him it was a miracle we'd had

the two, we didn't need the five or six he'd hoped for. He never even looked at me funny about that. He was so sure I'd never been with

someone else. It was coals of fire on my head. Bad enough I did it once, but two years later Fintan came back and I did it again, and

those weren't the only times. It was so strange. Sometimes I would think I smelled him! I would turn around and it was Mitchell.

But having your dad and Linda was worth the guilt. I loved them so much, and I hope it wasn't my sin that made them both die so young.

At least Linda had Hadley, wherever she may be, and at least Corbett had you and Jason. Watching you grow up has been a blessing

and a privlege. I love you both more than I can say.

Well, I've been writing for a long time. I love you, honey. Now I have to tell you about your grandfather's friend. He was a dark-headed

man, real big, talked real fancy. He said he was sort of like yall's sponsor, like a sort of godfather, but I didn't trust him any farther than I

could throw him. He didn't look like a man of God. He dropped by after Corbett and Linda were born. After you two came along, I thought

maybe he might come around again. Sure enough, he showed up all of a sudden, once while I was keeping Jason, and once while I was

keeping you, when you were both in the cradle. He gave each of you a gift, he said, but if so it wasn't one I could put in the bank account,

which would have been useful when you came to live with me.

Then he came by one more time, a few years ago. He gave me this green thing. He said fairys give it to each other when they're in love,

and Fintan had given it to him to bring here to me if Fintan died before I did. It's got a magical spell in it, he said. You won't ever need to

use it, I hope, he said. But if you do he said to remember that it was a one time thing, not like a lamp, like in the story, with a lot of wishes.

He called this thing a cluviel dor, and showed me how to spell it. So I guess Fintan is dead, though I was scared to ask the man any questions. I haven't seen Fintan since after your dad and Linda were

born. He held them both and then he left. He said he couldn't come again ever, that it was too dangerous for me and the kids, that his

enemys would follow him here if he kept visiting, even if he came in disguise. I think maybe he was saying he'd come in disguise before,

and that worries me. And why would he have enemys? I guess the fairys don't always get along, just like people. To tell you the truth, I'd

been feeling worse and worse about your grandpa every single time I saw Fintan, so when he said he was going for good, it was more or

less a relief. I still feel plenty guilty, but when I remember raising your daddy and Linda I'm so glad I had them, and raising you and Jason

has been a joy to me.

Anyway, this letter is yours now since I'm leaving you the house and the cluviel dor. It may not seem fair that Jason didn't get anything

magical, but your grandfather's friend said Fintan had watched both of you, and you were the one it should go to. I guess I hope you won't

ever need to know any of this. I always wondered if your problem came from you being a little bit fairy, but then, how come Jason wasn't

the same? Or your dad and Linda, for that matter? Maybe you being able to "know things" just happened. I wish I could have cured it so

you could have had a normal life, but we have to take what God gives us, and you've been real strong handling it.

Please be careful. I hope you're not mad at me, or think the worse of me. All God's children are sinners. At least my sinning led to life

for you and Jason and Hadley.


Adele Hale Stackhouse (Grandmother)

There was so much to think about that I didn't know where to start.

I was simultaneously stunned, startled, curious, and confused. Before I could stop myself, I picked up my other relic, the worn velvet bag. I loosened the drawstring, which crumbled in my fingers. I opened the bag and let the hard thing inside--the cluviel dor, the gift from my fairy grandfather--fall into my palm.

I loved it instantly.

It was a creamy light green, trimmed in gold. It was like one of the snuffboxes at the antiques store, but nothing in Splendide had been this beautiful. I could see no catch, no hinge, nothing; it didn't pop open when I gently pressed and twisted the lid--and there was definitely a lid, trimmed in gold. Hmmm. The round box wasn't ready to yield its secret.

Okeydokey. Maybe I had to do some research. I put the object to one side and sat with my hands folded on the table, staring into space. My head was crowded with thoughts.

Gran had obviously been very emotional when she wrote the letter. If our "godfather" had given Gran more information about this gift, either she'd neglected to mention it or she simply hadn't remembered anything else. I wondered when she'd forced herself to set down this confession. Obviously, it had been written after Aunt Linda died, which had happened when Gran was in her seventies. My birth grandfather's friend--I was pretty sure I recognized the description. Surely the "godfather" was Mr. Cataliades, demon lawyer. I knew it must have cost her plenty to say-- on paper--that she'd had sex with someone other than her husband. My grandmother had been a strong individual, and she'd also been a devout Christian. Such an admission must have haunted her.

She might have judged herself, but now that I'd gotten over the shock of seeing my grandmother as a woman, I didn't judge her. Who was I to throw stones? The preacher had told me that all sins were equal in the eyes of God, but I couldn't help but feel (for example) that a child molester was worse than a person who cheated on his income tax or a lonely woman who'd had unsanctioned sex because she wanted a baby. I was probably wrong, because we also weren't supposed to pick and choose which rules we obeyed, but that was the way I felt.

I shoved my confused thoughts back into a corner of my head and picked up the cluviel dor again. Touching its smoothness was pure pleasure, like the happiness I'd felt when I'd hugged my great-grandfather--but times about two hundred. The cluviel dor was about the size of two stacked Oreo cookies. I rubbed it against my cheek and felt like purring.

Did you have to have a magic word to open it?

"Abracadabra," I said. "Please and thank you."

Nope, didn't work, plus I felt like an idiot. "Open sesame," I whispered. "Presto change-o." Nope.

But thinking of magic gave me an idea. I e-mailed Amelia, and it was a difficult message to phrase. I know e-mail isn't totally secure, but I also had no reason to think anyone considered my few messages of any importance. I wrote, "I hate to ask, but besides doing that research on the blood bond for me, can you find out something about a fae thing? Initials c.d.?" That was as subtle as I could get.

Then I returned to my admiration of the cluviel dor. Did you have to be pure fairy to open it? No, that couldn't be the case. It had been a gift to my grandmother, presumably to use in case of dire need, and she had been completely human.

I wished it hadn't been far away in the attic when she'd been attacked. Whenever I remembered how she'd been discarded on the kitchen floor like offal, soaking in her own blood, I felt both sick and furious. Maybe if she'd had time to fetch the cluviel dor, she could have saved herself.

And with that thought, I'd had enough. I returned the cluviel dor to its velvet bag, and I returned Gran's letter to the pattern envelope. I'd had as much upset as I could handle for a while.

It was necessary to hide these items. Unfortunately, their previous excellent hideaway had been removed to a store in Shreveport.

Maybe I should call Sam. He could put the letter and the cluviel dor in the safe at Merlotte's. But considering the attacks on the bar, that wouldn't be the best place to stow something I valued. I could drive over to Shreveport and use my key to enter Eric's house to find someplace there. In fact, it was highly possible that Eric had a safe, too, and had never had occasion to show it to me. After I'd mulled it over, that didn't seem like a good idea, either.

I wondered if my desire to keep the items here was simply because I didn't want to be parted from the cluviel dor. I shrugged. No matter how the conviction had come into my head, I was sure the house was the safest place, at least for now. Perhaps I could put the smooth green box into the sleeping hole for vampires in my guest bedroom closet . . . but that wasn't much more than a bare box, and what if Eric needed to spend the day there?

After racking my brain, I put the pattern envelope into the box of unexamined paper items from the attic. These would be uninteresting to anyone but me. The cluviel dor was a little more difficult to stow away, at least partly because I kept having to resist an impulse to pull it out of the bag again. That struggle made me feel very--Gollum-esque.

"My precioussss," I muttered. Would Dermot and Claude be able to sense the nearness of such a remarkable item? No, of course not. It had been in the attic all the time and they hadn't found it.

What if they'd come to live here in hopes of finding it? What if they knew or suspected I had such a thing? Or (more likely) what if they were staying here because they were made happy by its proximity? Though I was sure there were holes in that idea, I couldn't shake it. It wasn't my fairy blood that drew them; it was the presence of the cluviel dor.

Now you're just being paranoid, I told myself sternly, and I risked one more glimpse of the creamy green surface. The cluviel dor, I thought, looked like a miniature powder compact. With that idea, the right hiding place came to me. I took the cluviel dor out of its velvet pouch and slid it into the makeup drawer of my dressing table. I opened my box of loose powder and sprinkled just a little over the gleam of creamy green. I added a hair from my brush. Ha! I was pleased with the result. As an afterthought, I stuffed the disintegrating velvet bag into my hose-and-belt drawer. My reason told me the ratty object was just a decaying old bag, but my emotions told me it was something important because my grandmother and my grandfather had touched it.

I had so many thoughts ricocheting in my brain that it shut down for the day. After I'd done a little bit of housework, I watched the college softball world series on ESPN. I love softball, because I played in high school. I loved seeing the strong young women from all over America; I loved watching them play a game as hard as they could, full tilt, nothing held in reserve. I realized while I was watching that I knew two other young women like that: Sandra Pelt and Jannalynn Hopper. There was a lesson there, but I wasn't sure what it was.