“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 fairies 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.
Chapter 3
Okay, I’ve been stupid in the past. Not consistently stupid, but occasionally
stupid. And I’ve made mistakes. You bet, I’ve made mistakes.
But during the ride back to Bon Temps, with my best guy friend driving and giving me the silence I needed, I thought hard. I felt a tear trickle from each eye. I looked away and blotted my face with a tissue from my purse, not wanting Sam to offer sympathy.
When I’d composed myself, I said, “I’ve been a fool.”
To his credit, Sam looked startled. “What are you thinking of?” he said, so he wouldn’t say, “Which time?”
“Do you think people really change, Sam?”
He took a moment to line up his thoughts. “That’s a pretty big question, Sookie. People can turn themselves around to some extent, sure. Addicts can be strong enough to stop using whatever they’re addicted to. People can go to therapy and learn how to manage behavior that’s been out of control. But that’s an external . . . system. A learned management technique imposed on the natural order of things, on what the person really is—an addict. Does that make sense?”