Amelia looked guilty and offended simultaneously. “We’ll get this to work,” she said, tight-lipped. “You just see.”
“I aim to.”
I spent the rest of the day doing my laundry, redoing my nails, changing my sheets—all those tasks you save up for your day off. I went by the library to swap books and absolutely nothing happened. One of Barbara Beck’s part-time assistants was on duty, which was good. I didn’t want to experience the horror of the attack all over again, as I surely would in every encounter with Barbara for a long time to come. I noticed the stain was gone from the library floor.
After that, I went to the grocery store. No Weres attacked, no vampires rose. No one tried to kill me or anyone I knew. No secret relatives revealed themselves, and not a soul tried to involve me in his or her problems, marital or otherwise.
I was practically reeking with normality by the time I got home.
Tonight was my cooking night, and I’d decided to fix pork chops. I have a favorite homemade breading mix that I make in a huge batch, so I soaked the chops in milk and then dredged them with the mix so they were ready for the oven. I fixed baked apples stuffed with raisins and cinnamon and butter and popped them in to bake and I flavored some canned green beans and some canned corn and put them on low heat. After a while, I opened the oven to put in the meat. I thought about making biscuits, but there seemed to be more than enough calories on board.
While I cooked, the witches were doing stuff in the living room. They seemed to be having a good old time. I could hear Octavia’s voice, which sounded very much like it was in teaching mode. Every now and then, Amelia would ask a question.
I did a lot of muttering to myself while I cooked. I hoped this magical procedure worked, and I was grateful to the witches for being so willing to help. But I was feeling a little sideswiped on the domestic front. My brief mention to Amelia that Octavia could stay with us for a little while had been a spur of the moment thing. (I could tell I was going to have to be more careful in conversations with my roomie from now on.) Octavia hadn’t said she’d be in my house for a weekend, or a month, or any measure of time. That scared me.
I could have cornered Amelia and told her, “You didn’t ask me if Octavia could stay
right now at this moment
, and it’s my house,” I supposed. But I
did
have a free room, and Octavia
did
need someplace to stay. It was a little late to discover that I wasn’t entirely happy at having a third person in the house—a third person I barely knew.
Maybe I could find a job for Octavia, because regular earnings would allow the older woman her independence and she’d move out of here. I wondered about the state of her house in New Orleans. I assumed it was unlivable. For all the power she had, I guess even Octavia couldn’t undo the damage a hurricane had done. After her references to stairs and increased bathroom needs, I’d revised her age upward, but she still didn’t seem any older than, say, sixty-three. That was practically a spring chicken, these days.
I called Octavia and Amelia to the table at six o’clock. I had the table set and the iced tea poured, but I let them serve their own plates from the stove. Not elegant, but it did save on dishes.
We didn’t talk a lot as we ate. All three of us were thinking about the evening to come. As much as I disliked her, I was a little worried about Tanya.
I felt funny about the idea of altering someone, but the bottom line was, I needed Tanya off my back and out of my life and the lives of those around me. Or I needed her to get a new attitude about what she was doing in Bon Temps. I couldn’t see any way around those facts. In line with my new practicality, I’d realized that if I had to choose between continuing my life with Tanya’s interference or continuing my life with Tanya altered, there was no contest.
I cleared the plates away. Normally, if one of us cooked, the other did the dishes, but the two women had magical preparations to make. It was just as well; I wanted to keep busy.
We heard the gravel crunching under the wheels of a truck at 7:05.
When we’d asked him to have her here at seven, I hadn’t realized he’d bring her as a parcel.
Calvin carried Tanya in over his shoulder. Tanya was compact, but no featherweight. Calvin was definitely working, but his breathing was nice and even and he hadn’t broken a sweat. Tanya’s hands and ankles were bound, but I noticed he’d wrapped a scarf under the rope so she wouldn’t get chafed. And (thank God) she was gagged, but with a jaunty red bandanna. Yes, the head werepanther definitely had a thing for Tanya.
Of course, she was mad as a disturbed rattler, wriggling and twisting and glaring. She tried to kick Calvin, and he slapped her on her butt. “You stop that now,” he said, but not as if he was particularly upset. “You’ve done wrong; you got to take your medicine.”
He’d come in the front door, and now he dumped Tanya on the couch.
The witches had drawn some things in chalk on the floor of the living room, a process that hadn’t found much favor with me. Amelia had assured me she could clean it all up, and since she was a champion cleaner, I’d let them proceed.
There were various piles of things (I really didn’t want to look too closely) set around in bowls. Octavia lit the material in one bowl and carried it over to Tanya. She wafted the smoke toward Tanya with her hand. I took an extra step back, and Calvin, who was standing behind the couch and holding Tanya by the shoulders, turned his head. Tanya held her breath as long as she could.
After breathing the smoke, she relaxed.
“She needs to be sitting there,” Octavia said, pointing to an area circled by chalky symbols. Calvin plonked Tanya down on a straight-backed chair in the middle. She stayed put, thanks to the mysterious smoke.
Octavia started chanting in a language I didn’t understand. Amelia’s spells had always been in Latin, or at least a primitive form of it (she’d told me that), but I thought Octavia was more diverse. She was speaking something that sounded entirely different.
I’d been very nervous about this ritual, but it turned out to be pretty boring unless you were one of the participants. I wished I could open the windows to get the smell of the smoke out of the house, and I was glad Amelia had thought to take the batteries out of the smoke detectors. Tanya was clearly feeling something, but I wasn’t sure it was the removal of the Pelt effect.
“Tanya Grissom,” Octavia said, “yank the roots of evil out of your soul and remove yourself from the influence of those who would use you for evil ends.” Octavia made several gestures over Tanya while holding a curious item that looked awfully like a human bone wound around with a vine. I tried not to wonder where she’d gotten the bone.
Tanya squealed beneath her gag, and her back arched alarmingly. Then she relaxed.
Amelia made a gesture, and Calvin bent over to untie the red bandanna that had made Tanya look like a small bandit. He pulled another handkerchief, a clean white one, out of Tanya’s mouth. She’d definitely been abducted with affection and consideration.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!” Tanya shrieked the second her mouth would work. “I can’t believe you kidnapped me like a caveman, you big jerk!” If her hands had been free, Calvin would have taken a pummeling. “And what the hell is up with this smoke? Sookie, are you trying to burn your house down? Hey, woman, would you get that crap out of my face?” Tanya batted at the vine-wrapped bone with her bound hands.
“I’m Octavia Fant.”
“Well, goody, Octavia Fant. Get me out of these ropes!”
Octavia and Amelia exchanged glances.
Tanya appealed to me. “Sookie, tell these nuts to let me go! Calvin, I was halfway interested in you before you tied me up and dumped me here! What did you think you were doing?”
“Saving your life,” Calvin said. “You ain’t gonna run now, are you? We got some talking to do.”
“Okay,” Tanya said slowly, as she realized (I could hear her) that something serious was afoot. “What’s all this about?”
“Sandra Pelt,” I said.
“Yeah, I know Sandra. What about her?”
“What’s your connection?” Amelia asked.
“What’s your interest, Amy?” Tanya countered.
“Amelia,” I corrected, sitting on the big ottoman in front of Tanya. “And you need to answer this question.”
Tanya gave me a sharp look—she had a repertoire of them—and said, “I used to have a cousin who was adopted by the Pelts, and Sandra was my cousin’s adopted sister.”
“Do you have a close friendship with Sandra?” I said.
“No, not especially. I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“You didn’t make a bargain with her recently?”
“No, Sandra and I don’t see each other too much.”
“What do you think of her?” Octavia asked.
“I think she’s a double-barreled bitch. But I sort of admire her,” Tanya said. “If Sandra wants something, she goes after it.” She shrugged. “She’s kind of extreme for my taste.”
“So if she told you to ruin someone’s life, you wouldn’t do it?” Octavia was eyeing Tanya intently.
“I got better fi sh to fry than that,” Tanya said. “She can go around ruining lives on her own, if she wants to do it so bad.”
“You wouldn’t be a part of that?”
“No,” Tanya said. She was sincere, I could tell. In fact, she was beginning to get anxious at our line of questioning. “Ah, have I done something bad to somebody?”
“I think you got in a little over your head,” Calvin said. “These nice ladies have intervened. Amelia and Miss Octavia are, ah, wise women. And you know Sookie already.”
“Yeah, I know Sookie.” Tanya gave me a sour look. “She won’t make friends with me no matter what I do.”
Well, yeah, I didn’t want you close enough to stab me in the back,
I thought, but I didn’t say anything.
“Tanya, you’ve taken my sister-in-law shopping a little too much lately,” I said.
Tanya burst into laughter. “Too much retail therapy for the pregnant bride?” she said. But then she looked puzzled. “Yeah, it does seem like we went to the mall in Monroe too many times for my checkbook. Where’d I get the money? I don’t even like shopping that much. Why’d I do that?”
“You’re not going to do it anymore,” Calvin said.
“You don’t tell me what I’m going to do, Calvin Norris!” Tanya shot back. “I won’t go shopping because I don’t want to go, not because you tell me not to.”
Calvin looked relieved.
Amelia and Octavia looked relieved.
We all nodded simultaneously. This was Tanya, all right. And she seemed to be minus the destructive guidance of Sandra Pelt. I didn’t know if Sandra had whipped up some witchcraft of her own, or if she’d just offered Tanya a lot of money and talked her into thinking Debbie’s death was my fault, but the witches appeared to have been successful in excising the tainted Sandra portion of Tanya’s character.
I felt oddly deflated at this easy—easy to me, that is—removal of a real thorn in my side. I found myself wishing we could abduct Sandra Pelt and reprogram her, too. I didn’t think she’d be as easy to convert. There had been some big pathology going on in the Pelt family.
The witches were happy. Calvin was pleased. I was relieved. Calvin told Tanya he was going to take her back to Hotshot. The somewhat-puzzled Tanya made her departure with a lot more dignity than her entrance. She didn’t understand why she’d been in my house and she didn’t seem to remember what the witches had done. But she also didn’t seem upset about that confusion in her memory.
The best of all possible worlds.
Maybe Jason and Crystal could work things out now that Tanya’s pernicious influence was gone. After all, Crystal had really wanted to marry Jason, and she had seemed genuinely pleased that she was pregnant again. Why she was so discontented now . . . I simply didn’t get it.
I could add her to the long list of people I didn’t understand.
While the witches cleaned up the living room with the windows open—though it was a chilly night, I wanted to get rid of the lingering smell of the herbs—I sprawled on my bed with a book. I found I wasn’t focused enough to read. Finally, I decided to go outside, and I threw on a hoody and called to Amelia to let her know. I sat in one of the wooden chairs Amelia and I had bought at Wal-Mart at end-of-summer clearance-sale prices, and I admired the matching table with its umbrella all over again. I reminded myself to take the umbrella down and cover the furniture for the winter. Then I leaned back and let go of my thoughts.
For a while it was nice to simply be outside, smelling the trees and the ground, hearing a whip-poor-will give its enigmatic call from the surrounding woods. The security light made me feel safe, though I knew that was an illusion. If there’s light, you can just see what’s coming for you a little more clearly.
Bill stepped out of the woods and strolled silently over to the yard set. He sat in one of the other chairs.
We didn’t speak for several moments. I didn’t feel the surge of anguish I’d felt over the past few months when he was around. He barely disturbed the fall night with his presence, he was so much a part of it.
“Selah has moved to Little Rock,” he said.
“How come?”
“She got a position with a large firm,” he said. “It was what she told me she wanted. They specialize in vampire properties.”
“She hooked on vamps?”
“I believe so. Not my doing.”
“Weren’t you her first?” Maybe I sounded a little bitter. He’d been my first, in every way.
“Don’t,” he said, and turned his face toward me. It was radiantly pale. “No,” he said finally. “I was not her first. And I always knew it was the vampire in me that attracted her, not the person who was a vampire.”
I understood what he was saying. When I’d learned he’d been ordered to ingratiate himself with me, I’d felt it was the telepath in me that had gotten his attention, not the woman who was the telepath. “What goes around, comes around,” I said.