I couldn’t think of any response that wouldn’t sound lame. Bob glared at me over Amelia’s head. He wanted me to say something to make this all right. There simply wasn’t any way to do that.
“I’m going to do everything I can to help you out,” Amelia said. “That’s why I came up here in the first place. But I’ll try even harder now.”
I took a deep breath. “I know you will, Amelia,” I said. “You’re truly a great witch, and I’m sure we’re going to get through this.” And that was the best I could do, just at this moment.
Amelia gave me a watery smile, and Quinn gave her a pat on the arm, and Diantha looked totally bored. (Not big with the emotional dialogue, Diantha.) Mr. Cataliades may have felt the same way, because he said, “We seem to have gotten over that bump in the road, so let me move on to something else of interest.”
We all tried to look attentive.
“There’s much more to talk about, but as I look around me, I see people who are tired and need recovery time,” he said unexpectedly. “Let’s resume tomorrow. A couple of us have little tasks to perform this evening or tonight.”
Amelia and Bob went into their bedroom and shut the door, which was a relief to everyone. Barry asked if he could use my computer since he’d come away without his laptop, and I said yes, providing he didn’t give anyone his location. I was feeling double paranoid, and I thought I had good reason. Mr. Cataliades and Diantha retreated upstairs to make phone calls about Mr. Cataliades’s law practice.
Quinn and I took a walk, just so we could have some time by ourselves. He said he’d thought of resuming his dating life, after Tijgerin had given him the word that she wouldn’t see him for a long time, but he just couldn’t do it. He was going to have a child with Tij, and that gave him the feeling he was bound to her, even if she told him to stay away. It was galling that she wouldn’t let him share in the upbringing of the baby, that she clung to the old ways with such determination and ferocity.
“You heard from your sister, Frannie?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t bringing up another doleful subject. My heart lightened when he smiled.
“She’s married,” he said. “Can you believe it? I thought I’d lost her forever when she ran off. I thought she’d take drugs and whore around. But once she got away from us, from me and Mom, she got a job as a waitress in a café in New Mexico. She met a guy at the café who does something in the tourist industry. Next thing you know, they went to a wedding chapel. So far, so good. How’s your brother?”
“He’s getting married to a woman who’s not a supe,” I said. “But she seems to love him for what he is, and she doesn’t expect more than he can give.” My brother’s emotional and intellectual ranges were limited, though they were expanding bit by bit. Like Frannie, Jason had grown up a lot recently. After being bitten and becoming a werepanther, Jason’s life had gotten chaotic, but now he was getting it together.
Besides our families, Quinn and I didn’t really talk about anything in particular. It was a relaxing walk, even in the steamy heat that had followed the end of the rain.
He didn’t ask me any questions about my situation with Eric, and that was a relief.
“After I do a tour through your woods, what else can I do for you, Sookie?” Quinn asked. “I want to do something besides sit around and hear stuff that’s just embarrassing.”
“Yeah, that was pretty awful. No matter how hard Amelia and I try to be friends, something always happens.”
“It happens because she can’t keep her mouth shut,” Quinn said, and I shrugged. That was the way Amelia was. To my surprise, Quinn put his arm around me and pulled me close, and I wondered if I’d sent out the wrong signal.
“Listen, Sookie,” he murmured, smiling down at me in a fond way, “I don’t want to scare you or anything, but someone’s in the woods and they’re walking along the driveway parallel to us. You got any ideas who it might be? If they’re armed?” His voice was not agitated, and I did my best to match his ease. It was incredibly hard not to turn to stare into the woods.
I made myself smile up at Quinn. “I sure don’t. Not a human, or I’d get the brain signature. Can’t be a vamp, it’s daylight.”
Quinn expelled all the breath in his lungs and drew in a chestful of air. “Ask me, it might be a fairy,” he whispered. “I’m just getting a touch of fae. There are so many scents in the air after the rain.”
“But the fae are all gone,” I said, reminding myself to let my expression change. After all, I wouldn’t be beaming at Quinn for five minutes while we strolled down the road. “That’s what my great-grandfather told me.”
“I think he was wrong,” Quinn said. “Let’s casually turn to head back to the house.”
I took Quinn’s hand and swung it enthusiastically. I felt like an idiot, but I needed something physical to do while I sent out my other sense. I finally found the brain signature of whatever creature lurked in the woods, which provided easy concealment due to the natural effects of summer (rain and light) and the benefits of Niall’s blessing on the land. The closer to my house we got, the thicker the vegetation became. The area right at the edge of the yard might almost be a jungle.
“You think he’s going to shoot?” I said with a smile. I swung Quinn’s hand like I was a child walking with her grandpa.
“I don’t smell a gun,” he said. “Enough with the hand swinging. I need to be able to move quick.”
I let go, somewhat embarrassed. “Let’s try to get into the house. Without getting killed.”
But whoever was stalking us didn’t make a move. It was almost an anticlimax to walk across the enclosed back porch, wondering every second if something terrible would happen, and then to make it in the door and shut it behind us . . . and nothing happened. Nothing at all.
Barry had decided to make hamburgers to cook on the grill in the backyard. He was putting chopped onion and seasoned salt and green peppers in the meat and forming the patties, and he was mighty startled when we bolted into the kitchen and ducked.
“What the hell?” he said.
“Someone was out there,” I said.
He crouched, too. He closed his eyes and concentrated. “I have no idea,” he said, after a moment. “Whoever it was, he’s left, Sookie.”
“Smelled like a fairy,” Quinn told Barry.
“They’re all gone,” Barry said. “That’s what the Texas vampires told me. Said they’d cleaned out lock, stock, and barrel.”
“They are all gone,” I said. “I know that for a fact. So either Quinn’s nose is wrong or we have a rogue.”
“Or a reject,” Barry said quietly.
“Or an escapee. Whatever he is, why is he skulking in the woods?” Quinn asked.
But I didn’t have any answer. And when nothing else happened, we three began to think nothing would. Quinn decided to delay his search of the woods until the evening. There wasn’t any point going out there now.
Though it felt anticlimactic, I began slicing tomatoes for the hamburgers, and then I cut up a watermelon. Quinn volunteered to make some home fries. Since he’d put a ten-pound bag of potatoes in the cart today, I was glad he had a plan to use them up.
With all three of us working in the kitchen, supper came together. I pretended not to see when Quinn ate one burger before it was cooked, and Barry hastily volunteered to take the others out to the grill. I put together a baked bean casserole, and Quinn began frying the potatoes. I set the table and washed the preparation dishes.
It was almost like running a boardinghouse, I thought, when I called everyone down for dinner.
Amazingly, the meal went well. There was just enough room for us
at the kitchen table when I opened two folding chairs my gran had kept in the living room closet.
Amelia had obviously been crying, but she was calm now. Bob touched her every chance he got. Mr. Cataliades explained that he and Diantha had recalled an errand in town, and after we’d shared hamburgers and French fries and beans and watermelon, they took off.
We all helped clear away the kitchen. After dinner, Barry sat in a living room armchair with his feet propped up, focusing on his e-reader. Bob and Amelia cuddled on the couch watching a rebroadcast of
The Terminator.
Cheerful. After consuming three cooked hamburgers and a quart of French fries, Quinn loped outside to conduct a fruitless search of the woods. After an hour, discouraged and filthy, he returned to the house to tell me that he had smelled two vampires (presumably Bill and Karin) and a faint trace of fairy in the place we’d been when we were followed. But there was nothing else to find. He was leaving for a motel by the interstate.
I felt hostess guilt over not having a bed to offer him. I did tell him I’d be glad to pay for his hotel room, and he gave me a look that would’ve made paint peel.
The two part-demons returned after dark, while I was reading, and they didn’t look happy. They said good night very politely and clattered up the stairs to their room. With everyone in for the night, I decided my day could officially come to a close. It had been a pretty damn long one.
It’s always possible for human beings to spoil their own peace of mind, and I did a good job of it that night. Despite the friends who had shown up with no expectation of reward, the friends who’d come a long way to help me, I worried about the friend who hadn’t tried. I just couldn’t figure Sam out any more than I could figure out why Eric had posted my bail when I was no longer his wife, or even his girlfriend.
I was sure he’d had some reason for doing me that large good turn.
Does it sound like I was labeling Eric as ungenerous, uncaring? In some respects, and to some people, he was never those things. But he was a practical vampire, and he was a vampire about to become the consort of a true queen. Since dismissing me as his wife apparently was one of Freyda’s conditions for marrying Eric (and frankly, I could sure understand that), I couldn’t
imagine
her accepting Eric’s decision to put up an awfully large amount of money to secure my freedom. Maybe that had been part of some negotiation? “If you’ll let me bail out my former wife, I’ll take a decreased allowance for a year,” or something like that. (For all I knew, they negotiated how many times they would have sex.) And I had the most depressing mental image of the beautiful Freyda and my Eric . . . my former Eric.
Somewhere in the midst of wandering through a mental maze, I fell asleep.
I slept twenty minutes too late the next day and woke up to the awareness that my house was full of guests. I threw myself out of bed, aware of other brains firing into thought all over the house. I was showered and out in the kitchen quicker than greased lightning, and I fixed pancakes and bacon, put the coffeepot on, and got out the juice glasses. I listened to Amelia being sick in the hall bathroom and sent a groggy Diantha into mine to speed up the shower process.
As the pancakes came off the griddle, I slid them right onto plates so my guests could eat them while they were hot. I put out all the fruit I had, for the healthy minded.
Mr. Cataliades
loved
pancakes, and Diantha was not far behind him in pancake consumption. I had to make up some more batter in a hurry. Then there were dishes to wash (Bob helped) and my bed to make. So I had plenty to do, but throughout the busyness of my hands and thoughts, I was unhappily aware that I hadn’t heard from Sam.
I e-mailed him.
I chose that format so I could say exactly what I wanted to say without having to restate it several times. I worked on my composition for a while.
Sam, I don’t know why you don’t want to talk to me, but I wanted you to know that I’m ready to come to work any day you need me. Please let me know how you’re feeling.
I read this message over several times and decided it put the ball in Sam’s court pretty firmly. It was perfect until I impulsively typed, “I miss you.” And then I clicked Send.
After years of having what I considered a happy relationship with Sam—for the most part—with no effort at all, now that I’d actually made a sacrifice for him, we were down to e-mails and mysterious silences.
It was hard to understand.
I was trying to explain this to Amelia a few minutes later. She’d come upon me staring at the computer as if I were trying to will the screen to talk to me.
“What did you sacrifice?” she asked, her clear blue eyes intent on my face. When Amelia was in the right mood, she could be a good listener. I knew that Bob was shaving in the hall bathroom, Barry was out in the yard doing yoga stuff, and Mr. C and Diantha were having an earnest conversation at the edge of the woods. So it was safe to be frank.
“I sacrificed my chance to keep Eric,” I said. “I gave it up to save Sam’s life.”
She bypassed the big important part of that to go straight to the painful questions. “If you have to use big magic to keep someone with you, was it really meant to be?”
“I never thought about it as an either/or,” I said. “But Eric did. He’s a proud guy, and his maker began the process of hitching him to Freyda without consulting Eric at all.”
“And you know this how?”
“When he finally told me about it, he seemed . . . genuinely desperate.”
Amelia looked at me like I was the world’s biggest idiot. “Right, ’cause it’s nobody’s dream to go from managing a backwater area of Louisiana to being consort of a beautiful queen who’s hot for you. And why did he end up telling you?”
“Well, Pam insisted,” I admitted, feeling doubts overwhelm me. “But he hadn’t told me because he was trying to think of a way to stay with me.”
“I’m not saying anything different,” she said. Amelia has never been tactful, and I could tell she was making a huge effort. “You’re pretty great. But you know, honey . . . Eric is all about Eric. That’s why I was so willing to encourage Alcide. I figured Eric would break your heart.” She shrugged. “Or turn you,” she added as an afterthought.
I jerked, involuntarily.
“He
did
mean to turn you! That asshole! He would have taken you away from us. I guess we’re lucky all he did is break your heart!” She was absolutely furious.
“In all honesty, I don’t know that my heart is broken,” I said. “I’m depressed and sad. But I don’t feel as bad as I did when I found out about Bill’s big secret.”