Dead Reckoning (17 page)

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.

I heard my two housemates come in Sunday night, not too late. Hooligans
wasn’t open on Sunday, and I tried not to wonder what they’d been doing all day. They were still asleep when I made my coffee on Monday morning. I moved around the house as quietly as I could, getting dressed and checking my e-mail. Amelia was on her way, she said, and she added cryptically that she had something important to tell me. I wondered if she had found out information about my “c.d.” already.

Tara had sent out a group e-mail with an attached picture of her huge belly, and I reminded myself that the baby shower I was giving her was the next weekend. Yikes! After a moment of panic, I calmed myself. The invitations were sent, I’d bought her gift, and I’d planned the food. I was as ready as I could be, aside from the last-minute flurry of cleaning.

I was working the early shift today. As I put on my makeup, I took out the cluviel dor and held it to my chest. Touching it seemed important, seemed to make it more vital. My skin warmed it quickly. Whatever lay at the heart of that smooth pale greenness seemed to quicken. I felt more alive, too. I took a deep, shaky breath and returned it to the drawer, again dusting it with powder to make it look like it had been there forever. I shut the drawer with something like regret.

My grandmother felt very close to me that day. I thought about her on the drive to work, during my prep work, and in odd moments as I fetched and carried. Andy Bellefleur was eating lunch with Sheriff Dearborn. I was a little surprised Andy wanted to sit down in Merlotte’s again after the invasion of two days before.

But my new favorite detective seemed happy enough to be there, joking with his boss and eating a salad with low-fat dressing. Andy was looking slimmer and younger these days. Married life and impending fatherhood agreed with him. I asked him how Halleigh was doing.

“She says her stomach’s huge, but it’s not,” he said with a smile. “I think she’s glad school’s out. She’s making curtains for the baby’s room.” Halleigh taught at the elementary school.

“Miss Caroline would be so proud,” I said. Andy’s grandmother, Caroline Bellefleur, had died just weeks before.

“I’m glad she knew before she passed,” he said. “Hey, did you know my sister’s pregnant, too?”

I tried not to look too astonished. Andy and Portia had had a double wedding in their grandmother’s garden, and though it hadn’t been a surprise to hear that Andy’s wife was pregnant, somehow the older Portia had never struck me as someone who’d welcome motherhood. I told Andy how glad I was, and that was the truth.

“Would you tell Bill?” Andy asked, a little shyly. “I still feel a little weird about calling him.”

My neighbor and former flame, Bill Compton, who happened to be a vampire, had finally told the Bellefleurs that he was their ancestor right before Miss Caroline died. Miss Caroline had reacted beautifully to the startling news, but it had been a little harder for Andy, who was both proud and not too fond of the undead. Portia had actually gone out with Bill a few times before he’d figured out the relationship—awkward, huh? She and her husband had sucked up their reservations about their newly acquired living ancestor, and they’d surprised me with their dignity in acknowledging Bill.

“I’m always glad to pass along good news, but he’d be glad to hear from you.”

“I, ah, I hear he’s got a vampire girlfriend?”

I made myself look cheerful. “Yeah, she’s been there for a few weeks,” I said. “I haven’t talked to him much about it.” Like, not ever.

“You’ve met her.”

“Yeah, she seems nice.” In fact, I’d been responsible for their reunion, but that wasn’t something I wanted to share. “If I see him, I’ll tell him for you, Andy. I know he’ll want to know when the baby’s born. Do you know what you and Halleigh are having?”

“It’s a girl,” he said, and his smile almost split his face in two. “We’re gonna name her Caroline Compton Bellefleur.”

“Oh, Andy! That’s so nice!” I was ridiculously pleased, because I knew Bill would be.

Andy looked embarrassed. I could tell he was relieved when his cell phone chirped.

“Hey, honey,” he said, having glanced at the caller number before he flipped his phone open. “What’s up?” He smiled as he listened. “Okay, I’ll bring you a milkshake,” he said. “See you in a few.”

Bud was coming back to the table, and Andy glanced at the check and slapped a ten down. “There’s my part,” he said. “Keep the change. Bud, I got to go run by the house. Halleigh needs me to put up the curtain rod in the baby’s room, and she’s dying for a butterscotch milkshake. I won’t be but ten minutes.” He grinned at us and was out the door.

Bud resumed his seat while he slowly got his own money out of his worn old wallet.

“Halleigh’s having one, Portia’s having one, Tara’s having two, I hear. Sookie, you need to get you one of those little ’uns,” he said, and took a drink. “Good iced tea.” He set his empty glass down with a little thump.

“I don’t need to have a baby just because other women are doing it,” I said. “I’ll have one when I’m ready.”

“Well, you ain’t having one at all if you keep dating that deader,” Bud said bluntly. “What do you think your gran would say?”

I took the money, turned on my heel, and walked away. I asked Danielle if she’d take Bud his change. I didn’t want to talk to Bud anymore.

Stupid, I know. I had to be thicker-skinned than that. And Bud had only spoken the truth. Of course, he had the perspective that all young women wanted to have children, and he was pointing out to me that I was on the wrong track. As if I didn’t know that! What
would
Gran have said?

I would have answered without a pause a few days ago. Now, I wasn’t so sure. There’d been so much I hadn’t known about her. But my best guess was that she would have told me to go with my heart. And I loved Eric. As I picked up a burger basket and took it to Maxine Fortenberry’s table (she was having lunch with Elmer Claire Vaudry), I found myself anticipating the moment of dark when he would wake. I looked forward to seeing him with a kind of desperation. I needed the reassurance of his presence, the assurance that he loved me, too, the passionate connection we felt when we touched each other.

As I waited for an order at the hatch, I watched Sam pull a draft. I wondered if he felt the same way about Jannalynn as I felt about Eric. He’d dated her longer than he’d dated anyone since I’d known him. Maybe I figured he was more serious because he was arranging for nights off so he could see her more often, something he’d never done before. Sam smiled at me when his eyes caught mine. It was sure nice to see him happy.

Though Jannalynn was
not
good enough for him.

I almost clapped a hand over my mouth. I felt as guilty as though I’d said that out loud. Their relationship wasn’t any of my business, I told myself sternly. But a softer voice inside me said that Sam was my friend and that Jannalynn was too ruthless and violent to make him happy in the long run.