“I love your courage,” Niall said unexpectedly. “But you are very frail—mortal, breakable, and short-lived. I don’t want to lose you just when I finally became able to speak to you.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I muttered.
“You don’t want me to stop you from doing anything. You won’t change. How can I protect you?”
“I don’t think you can, not a hundred percent.”
“Then what use am I to you?”
“You don’t have to be of use to me,” I said, surprised. He didn’t seem to have the emotional set I had. I didn’t know how to explain it to him. “It’s enough for me—it’s wonderful—just knowing you exist. That you care about me. That I have living family, no matter how distant and different. And you don’t think I’m weird or crazy or embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing?” He looked puzzled. “You’re far more interesting than most humans.”
“Thank you for not thinking I’m defective,” I said.
“Other humans think you’re
defective
?” Niall sounded genuinely outraged.
“They can’t be comfortable sometimes,” Sam said unexpectedly. “Knowing she can read their minds.”
“But you, shapeshifter?”
“I think she’s great,” Sam said. And I could tell he was absolutely sincere.
My back straightened. I felt a flush of pride. In the emotional warmth of the moment, I almost told my great-grandfather about the big problem I’d uncovered today, to prove I could share. But I had a pretty good feeling that his solution to the Sandra Pelt-Tanya Grissom Axis of Evil would be to cause their deaths in a macabre way. My sort-of cousin Claudine might be trying to become an angel, a being I associated with Christianity, but Niall Brigant was definitely from another ethos entirely. I suspected his outlook was, “I’ll take your eye ahead of time, just in case you want mine.” Well, maybe not that preemptive, but close.
“There is nothing I can do for you?” He sounded almost plaintive.
“I’d really like it if you’d just come spend some time with me at the house, when you have some to spare. I’d like to cook you supper. If you want to do that?” It made me feel shy, offering him something I wasn’t sure he’d value.
He looked at me with glowing eyes. I could not read his face, and though his body was shaped like a human body, he was not. He was a complete puzzle to me. Maybe he was exasperated or bored or repulsed by my suggestion.
Finally Niall said, “Yes. I’ll do that. I’ll tell you ahead of time, of course. In the meantime, if you need anything of me, call the number. Don’t let anyone dissuade you if you think I can be of help. I will have words with Eric. He’s been useful to me in the past, but he can’t second-guess me with you.”
“Has he known I was your kin for very long?” I held my breath, waiting for the answer.
Niall had turned to go. Now he turned back a little, so I saw his face in profile. “No,” he said. “I had to know him better, first. I told him only before he brought you to meet me. He wouldn’t help me until I told him why I wanted you.”
And then he was gone. It was like he’d walked through a door we couldn’t see, and for all I knew, that was exactly what he’d done.
“Okay,” Sam said after a long moment. “Okay, that was really . . . different.”
“Are you all right with all this?” I waved a hand toward the spot where Niall had been standing. Probably. Unless what we’d seen had been some astral projection or something.
“It’s not my place to be okay with it. It’s your thing,” Sam said.
“I want to love him,” I said. “He’s so beautiful and he seems to care so much, but he’s really, really . . .”
“Scary,” Sam finished.
“Yeah.”
“And he approached you through Eric?”
Since apparently my great-grandfather thought it was okay if Sam knew about him, I told Sam about my first meeting with Niall.
“Hmmm. Well, I don’t know what to make of that. Vampires and fairies don’t interact, because of the vampire tendency to eat fairies.”
“Niall can mask his scent,” I explained proudly.
Sam looked overloaded with information. “That’s another thing I’ve never heard of. I hope Jason doesn’t know about this?”
“Oh, God, no.”
“You know he’d be jealous and that would make him mad at you.”
“Since I know Niall and he doesn’t?”
“Yep. Envy would just eat Jason up.”
“I know Jason’s not the world’s most generous person,” I began, to be cut off when Sam snorted. “Okay,” I said, “he’s selfish. But he’s still my brother anyway, and I have to stick by him. But maybe it’s better if I never tell him. Still, Niall didn’t have any problem showing himself to
you
, after telling me to keep him a secret.”
“I’m guessing he did some checking up,” Sam said mildly. He hugged me, which was a welcome surprise. I felt like I needed a hug after Niall’s drop-in. I hugged Sam back. He felt warm, and comforting, and human.
But neither of us was 100 percent human.
In the next instant, I thought,
We are, too.
We had more in common with humans than with the other part of us. We lived like humans; we would die like humans. Since I knew Sam pretty well, I knew he wanted a family and someone to love and a future that contained all the things plain humans want: prosperity, good health, descendants, laughter. Sam didn’t want to be a leader of any pack, and I didn’t want to be princess of anybody—not that any pureblood fairy would ever think I was anything other than a lowly by-product of their own wonder-fulness. That was one of the big differences between Jason and me. Jason would spend his life wishing he was more supernatural than he was; I had spent mine wishing I was less, if my telepathy was indeed supernatural.
Sam kissed me on the cheek, and then after a moment’s hesitation, he turned to go into his trailer, walking through the gate in the carefully trimmed hedge and up the steps to the little deck he’d built outside his door. When he’d inserted the key, he turned to smile at me.
“Some night, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Some night.”
Sam watched while I got in my car, made a pressing gesture to remind me to lock my car doors, waited while I complied, and then went into his trailer. I drove home preoccupied with deep questions and shallow ones, and it was lucky there wasn’t any traffic on the road.
Chapter 17
Amelia and Octavia were sitting at the kitchen table the next
day when I shambled out. Amelia had used up all the coffee, but at least she’d washed the pot and it took only a few minutes to make myself a much-needed cup. Amelia and her mentor kept a tactful conversation going while I bumbled around getting some cereal, adding some sweetener, pouring milk over it. I hunched over the bowl because I didn’t want to dribble milk down my tank top. And by the way, it was getting too cold to wear a tank top around the house. I pulled on a cheap jacket made of sweats material and was able to finish my coffee and cereal in comfort.
“What’s up, you two?” I asked, signaling I was ready to interact with the rest of the world.
“Amelia told me about your problem,” Octavia said. “And about your very kind offer.”
Ah-oh. What offer?
I nodded wisely, as if I had a clue.
“I’ll be so glad to be out of my niece’s house, you have no idea,” the older woman said earnestly. “Janesha has three little ones, including one toddler, and a boyfriend that comes and goes. I’m sleeping on the living room couch, and when the kids get up in the morning, they come in and turn on the cartoons. Whether or not I’m up. It’s their house, of course, and I’ve been there for weeks, so they’ve lost the sense that I’m company.”
I gathered that Octavia was going to be sleeping in the bedroom opposite me or in the extra one upstairs. I was voting for the one upstairs.
“And you know, now that I’m older, I need quicker access to a bathroom.” She looked at me with that humorous deprecation people show when they’re admitting to a passage-of-time condition. “So downstairs would be wonderful, especially since my knees are arthritic. Did I tell you Janesha’s apartment is upstairs?”
“No,” I said through numb lips. Geez, this had happened so fast.
“Now, about your problem. I’m not a black witch at all, but you need to get these young women out of your life, both Ms. Pelt’s agent and Ms. Pelt herself.”
I nodded vigorously.
“So,” Amelia said, unable to keep quiet any longer, “we’ve come up with a plan.”
“I’m all ears,” I said, and poured myself a second cup of coffee. I needed it.
“The simplest way to get rid of Tanya, of course, is to tell your friend Calvin Norris what she’s doing,” Octavia said.
I gaped at her. “Ah, that seems likely to result in some pretty bad things happening to Tanya,” I said.
“Isn’t that what you want?” Octavia looked innocent in a real sly way.
“Well, yeah, but I don’t want her to die. I mean, I don’t want anything she can’t get over to happen to her. I just want her away and not coming back.”
Amelia said, “ ‘Away and not coming back’ sounds pretty final to me.”
It sounded that way to me, too. “I’ll rephrase. I want her to be off somewhere living her life but far away from me,” I said. “Is that clear enough?” I wasn’t trying to sound sharp; I just wanted to express myself.
“Yes, young lady, I think we can understand that,” said Octavia with frost in her voice.
“I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding here,” I said. “There’s a lot at stake. I think Calvin kind of likes Tanya. On the other hand, I bet he could scare her pretty effectively.”
“Enough to get her to leave forever?”
“You’d have to demonstrate that you were telling the truth,” Amelia said. “About her sabotaging you.”
“What do you have in mind?” I asked.
“Okay, here’s what we think,” Amelia said, and just like that, Phase One was in place. It turned out to be something I could have thought of myself, but the witches’ help made the planning run much more smoothly.
I called Calvin at home, and asked him to stop by when he had a minute to spare around lunchtime. He sounded surprised to hear from me, but he agreed to come.
He got a further surprise when he came into the kitchen and found Amelia and Octavia there. Calvin, the leader of the werepanthers who lived in the little community of Hotshot, had met Amelia several times before, but Octavia was new to him. He respected her immediately because he was able to sense her power. That was a big help.
Calvin was probably in his midforties, strong and solid, sure of himself. His hair was graying, but he was straight as an arrow in posture, and he possessed a huge calm that couldn’t fail to impress. He’d been interested in me for a while, and I’d only been sorry I couldn’t feel the same way. He was a good man.
“What’s up, Sookie?” he said after he’d turned down the offer of cookies or tea or Coke.
I took a deep breath. “I don’t like to be a tale-teller, Calvin, but we have a problem,” I said.
“Tanya,” he said immediately.
“Yeah,” I said, not bothering to hide my relief.
“She’s a sly one,” he said, and I was sorry to hear an element of admiration in his voice.
“She’s a spy,” Amelia said. Amelia could cut right to the chase.
“Who for?” Calvin tilted his head to one side, unsurprised and curious.
I told him an edited version of the story, a story I was extremely sick of repeating. Calvin needed to know that the Pelts had a big beef with me, that Sandra would hound me to my grave, that Tanya had been planted as a gadfly.
Calvin stretched out his legs while he listened, his arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing brand-new jeans and a plaid shirt. He smelled like fresh-cut trees.
“You want to put a spell on her?” he asked Amelia when I’d finished.
“We do,” she said. “But we need you to get her here.”
“What would the effect be? Would it hurt her?”
“She’d lose interest in doing harm to Sookie and all her family. She wouldn’t want to obey Sandra Pelt anymore. It wouldn’t hurt her physically at all.”
“Would this change her mentally?”
“No,” Octavia said. “But it’s not as sure a spell as the one that would make her not want to be here anymore. If we cast that one, she’d leave here, and she wouldn’t want to come back.”
Calvin mulled this over. “I kind of like that ole girl,” he said. “She’s a live one. I’ve been pretty concerned over the trouble she’s causing Crystal and Jason, though, and I’ve been wondering what steps to take about Crystal’s crazy spending. I guess this kind of brings the issue front and center.”
“You like her?” I said. I wanted all cards on the table.
“I said that.”
“No, I mean, you
like
her.”
“Well, her and me, we’ve had some good times now and then.”
“You don’t want her to go away,” I said. “You want to try the other thing.”
“That’s about the size of it. You’re right: she can’t stay and keep on going like she is. She either changes her ways, or she leaves.” He looked unhappy about that. “You working today, Sookie?”
I looked at the wall calendar. “No, it’s my day off.” I’d have two days in a row off.
“I’ll get aholt of her and bring her by tonight. That give you ladies enough time?”
The two witches looked at each other and consulted silently.
“Yes, that will be fine,” Octavia said.
“I’ll get her here by seven,” Calvin said.
This was moving with unexpected smoothness.
“Thanks, Calvin,” I said. “This is really helpful.”
“This’ll kill a lot of birds with one stone, if it works,” Calvin said. “Of course, if it don’t work, you two ladies won’t be my favorite people.” His voice was completely matter-of-fact.
The two witches didn’t look happy.
Calvin eyed Bob, who happened to stroll into the room. “Hello, brother,” Calvin said to the cat. He gave Amelia a narrowed-eye look. “Seems to me like your magic don’t work all the time.”