Sookie sat on the porch swing drinking her morning cup of coffee. Dermot waved at her as he made his way down the driveway to go to Shreveport. After he fixed up the attic to function as his new bedroom, Dermot had become listless again. Sookie had mentioned wanting to put in a carport then and Dermot had run with the idea. He had even started suggesting other improvements to the property he could work on after he finished the garage. Sookie was all for it. The farm house was slowly crumbling around her and it broke Sookie's heart to see her family home turning into a ruin, but she didn't have the money to hire a repair crew to renovate the entire house. Trading room and board for Dermot fixing up her beloved family home seemed like a great deal to Sookie, especially since Dermot seemed so gifted and enthusiastic about building things. So on sunny days he was building a full on two car garage attached to the side of the house and on rainy days he would stay in the house building furniture from fallen trees he found on the Stackhouse land. The carving he had done on his new dresser were so beautiful Sookie had suggested that he could sell pieces like that if he wanted. She had put him in touch with the people from Splendide and they had taken one look at what Dermot had made for his room and agreed to sell anything Dermot could carve. It gave Dermot money to buy any supplies he needed, although most of the tools he needed were sitting in the shed out back. Grandpa Stackhouse had loved woodworking and had at least one of almost every tool you could imagine. Dermot had just finished another piece and was on his way to drop it off at Splendide and then he was going to the Home Depot to get some more supplies for the garage. Sookie waved back to him until he turned onto Hummingbird Lane.

Sookie inhaled the delicious aroma rising from her steaming cup of coffee. This was her favorite time with a cup of coffee, when it was too hot to just drink down so she had to slowly take small sips between long periods of simply inhaling the blissful, rich smell. Sookie reveled in being completely alone on the property and completely let go of her shields, relaxing in a way she rarely was able to.

It had been a rare non-violent month in Sookie's life. No one had come looking for Sandra Pelt and Sookie was beginning to truly relax into the idea that the chaos the Pelts brought to her life was finally and completely over. Jannalyne had been keeping an ear out for any Were's looking for Sandra. She had even used Sookie's Friend of the Pack status to let her make some inquiries about who Sandra's remaining relatives or associates might be. Sookie was sure she was doing all this more to make sure no one was going to come after Jannalyne or Sam than to make sure no one was going to come after Sookie, but Sookie was grateful all the same. So far all Jannalyne was able to find out was that the Pelts were universally disliked, even by their own pack, and they had no relatives that anyone knew about. As a bonus Sandra was wanted for questioning about the death of her parents both by local police and the local packmaster. It seemed there were a lot of suspicious circumstances around their deaths.

Claude and the rest of the riffraff at Hooligan's had mostly stayed away. Bellonos stopped by every once in a while to speak to Dermot in hushed tones and sometimes to help Dermot bring home a felled tree that was too big for just one of them to carry. Sookie had made them leave it at the edge of the woods for Dermot to work on so it wouldn't kill the lawn by shading it for too long or take up the entire driveway. It had turned out that Victor had more self control than was previously believed or was just smarter than most vampires. Instead of getting blood from Cait himself or having one of the other vampires do it, Victor had kept Cait in an environmentally controlled environment with an air filtration system that prevented her sent from escaping, then he made one of his human staff draw blood from her. He had been intending to keep her as a permanent supply of fairy blood. Eric found her enclosure when he was searching Vampire's Kiss for the Kingdom's paperwork on de Castro's orders. Colton knew how to access her enclosure and directed Sookie on how to release her. Dermot and Sookie freed her during the day so their was no chance of vampires being around. She was incredibly anemic when they got to her and so weak they couldn't even get her to stand on her own. Dermot had to carry her out to Sookie's car. Sookie had dropped them off at Hooligan's and called Claude to make sure Cait would have the care she needed. Claude assured her he would call Dr. Ludwig. He actually thanked Sookie for rescuing "one of our females" and then tried to get her to let him move back into the farmhouse. Sookie wasn't interested in letting him come back to fuck with her life again and refused to listen to his pathetic attempt to get back in her good graces. She hadn't heard from him since.

Since their was no one left on Victor's side to claim he had been set up, Fillipe de Castro had accepted that Victor had attacked first and they had merely defended themselves. It had helped their case a great deal that the search of Victor's homes and businesses to obtain records for the kingdom revealed evidence that he had multiple plans to kill Eric and everyone associated with him. It had really helped when there was also evidence that Victor had been embezzling from the Kingdom, purposefully driving down profits (and therefore taxes) for vampire owned businesses by opening competing businesses with the money he embezzled, and had been working to amass power so that he could either seize Louisiana or just kill de Castro and take all his territories. de Castro actually issued an official statement commending Eric, Pam, Thalia, and Indiria for ridding the Kingdom of a traitor. As a reward for his loyal service, de Castro gave Eric all Victor's businesses in his area. Eric kept Vampire's Kiss open, but removed all images of Bubba from the property, rechristened it Fangtasia and added his throne to the new bar. He made it all sound very logical as to why he had moved the location of Fangtasia, the new location was better for business, it was larger, there was better parking, it had more office space, and everything was new and in good condition, while the old location was in need of some upgrades. All his reasoning sounded good but Sookie suspected the real reason was that it was closer to Bon Temps and therefor her.

Eric had been almost obsessively attentive toward Sookie for the last month. Sookie was convinced he was living at the new Fangtasia by how quickly he got to her after sunset every day. It was like he wouldn't be able to function if he didn't make absolutely certain that she had survived the day. If she was working that night he tried to stay at one of her tables watching her work but, after two nights, Sookie insisted that he was scaring people from her section and reducing her tips and demanded he leave. After that he would check on her then leave her to go work at Fangtasia until she finished her shift and then she would find him waiting for her at her car. He would stay with her till almost dawn on those nights even if she was so tired that he merely watched her sleep. There was more than once where she woke in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and discovered him staring at her as if he were trying to memorize every bit of her. He didn't even seem to notice if Dermot was in the house and seemed to feel no compulsion to approach him. To be safe Dermot had installed a very serious door at the top of the stairs. He said it had a sheet of silver in the middle of it and had put weather stripping around the edges so his scent wouldn't drift down to the lower floor. On nights she wasn't working, Eric blew off work all together to spend all his time with her. He would take her on magnificent dates, some lavish to the point where Sookie started objecting to the amount of money they must cost and others were so sweet and perfectly suited to Sookie's personality that Sookie had to fight back tears at how much Eric loved her.

After about a week of this attention, Pam came into Merlotte's and pleaded with Sookie to get Eric to pay more attention to business. Pam was frazzled trying to run the transition to the new Fangtasia on her own, plus she was still stricken with grief over Miriam's death. Eric had been completely neglecting his Sheriff's duties, so Pam, as his second, had been saddled with trying to run the area as well. Without Victor in charge of the area de Castro was spread even thinner than he had been before and was in desperate need of a regent for Louisiana and allies among other royals. In his current position he was weak and a takeover was extremely likely. Pam didn't outright say it but she gave Sookie enough significant looks for Sookie to understand that the marriage with Oklahoma was still a very real possibility.

Pam's visit did as she had hoped and Sookie insisted that Eric spend more time at Fangtasia tending to at least his Sheriff's duties. They had a huge fight about that. Eric refused to loose even a second of time with her and refused to discuss what was going on with the marriage to Oklahoma. This made Sookie even more nervous than Pam's veiled warning. Eventually Sookie insisted on a compromise that she would go to Fangtasia on nights she had off so he could be with her and work. She would sit in his office and read or sometimes just sleep on his couch, which he had replaced with a very comfortable futon a week after she started spending time in his office. Every once in a while she would go out into the club and point out all the undesirables to Pam (underage people who had got in past the bouncers, drug dealers, drainers, undercover cops). It worried Sookie a lot that Eric was putting her ahead of politics. She had always wanted someone to put her first but if Eric wasn't dealing with de Castro and the situation with Oklahoma they were all in danger. She was constantly trying to ignore the feeling that Eric was only being so attentive because he knew they didn't have much time left.

Sookie was just finishing up her coffee when she felt a consciousness enter into her range. She pulled up her shields it was likely just another truck headed over to Bill's. Odd that they're working on a Sunday. The work Dermot had been doing seemed to have inspired Bill to continue working on his house. He was even talking about having light tight shutters placed in the house for guests as well as sprucing up his hidey hole to be a little more comfortable for "anyone who needed to shelter there in a storm."

Sookie got up to head into the house and get ready for church. She had gotten back into the habit of attending church on Sundays again. Regular church attendance made Sookie feel like she was returning to the woman Gran raised her to be again. Reverend Joe had greeted her back with open arms and she had responded that she really wanted to get to church every Sunday from now on. Reverend Joe had told her that was good and that, "The soul needs a tune up every so often to keep it in tip top shape, just like her car, and once every seven days seems to be the right interval." She had even overheard a conversation between her minister and a recently returned veteran from Iraq that did a lot to set her mind at ease about her involvement in all the murders that had happened since she met Bill. Sookie was looking forward to a good day of church, lunch with Tara, J.B., and their beautiful new twins (it was her turn to bring the new family a casserole), and then a long talk with her Gran as she tidied up her grave.

Sookie was almost to the front door when she noticed that the brains she had sensed earlier weren't part of a crew doing construction at Bill's. Apparently they belonged to a sky blue Prius that was pulling into her driveway. There was a woman Sookie had never seen in the driver's seat. She looked to be about Sookie's age and had a similar figure, maybe a little taller and a little plumper but just as amply endowed where it counted. The woman had a tan to rival Sookie's but with the olive tones that betray a Mediterranean ancestry. Her eyes were a clear brown and her hair was long, straight, and a chestnut brown with natural red and blond highlights throughout. Behind her were twins, about four years old, tall for their ages with blond hair and skin a few shades lighter than their mother's. The girl had the same big, clear brown eyes as her mother and the boy had big blue eyes and a cleft chin. There was something very familiar about the look of the children to Sookie but she was sure she had never seen them before.

Assuming that the woman had gotten lost, Sookie turned from her front door and started down her porch steps to offer directions to wherever the woman was heading to. The woman parked the car right in front of Sookie's house and got out. Just as she was about to speak an urgent voice sounded from the back of the car.

"Mommy I have to go potty!"

"He's welcome to come in and use the bathroom," said Sookie.

"Thank you. Come on Leif. There's a potty inside you can use." Leif jumped out of the car and ran at the door. "Do you need any help?" his mother called after him.

"No! I'm a big boy I can do it myself," shouted Leif as he ran through the door Sookie had opened and ran to the bathroom she pointed at.

"Lilja, do you need to go to the potty, too?" the woman asked the little girl.

"No Mommy but can I get out, please?"

"Of course, but stay within the wards that surround the house."

"Okay Mommy." Lilja bounced out of the car and started exploring around the house with a doll in her arms.

"How do you know about the wards around the house? Who are you?" Sookie was starting to panic and was trying to reassure herself that this woman couldn't come within the wards if she meant any harm except Sookie wasn't exactly sure what kind of wards Bellenos had placed on the property or what exactly they were supposed to do. She made a mental note to ask Dermot about that.

"I can feel the wards. They're really very good. They won't let anyone who means you harm pass. I think they might seriously harm anyone who tried."

"Who are you?"

"I'm sorry; I should have started with that. I'm Brighid Northman. I believe we share a husband."