Wow...you guys are making me so happy with your comments on this fic! I really like seeing where you all think I'm taking this! If you have questions, shoot me a DM, or ask in a review and I'll get back to you the best I can!

Thanks to Missus T and Ethehunter!

Sookie

Octavia's home was down what seemed like an endless dirt road to the middle of nowhere. I'd grabbed Eric's truck, making some excuse about my car not having much gas when Amelia explained that it was a bit of a trek. I didn't want him thinking I'd jumped off the deep end. As we drove deeper and deeper into the woods, I wasn't exactly sure I hadn't.

We bounced along down the road, and I fired questions at her. I wasn't sure I believed any of the mumbo jumbo she was spewing about auras and evil. I did know though, unless there was some other explanation for what I'd felt last night, then I should, at best, go back on some sort of medication and at worst, check myself into a psych ward.

I didn't think that was the answer though. Deep in my gut I knew the problem wasn't with me. I'd never felt so sure about anything. Normally, I was willing to accept that things weren't quite right with me, but I'd made a decision that day that I wanted to live, and live well, as I was laying there having my stomach pumped, clinging to life like someone pulled drowning from the sea, almost reborn. Maybe I'd always wanted to live, but just needed a kick to realize it. The week spent under psychiatric evaluation after almost dying certainly solidified that. I wasn't willing to let myself slip again, to ignore the differences between my feelings and the ones that I seemed to absorb almost, from others.

"Sookie?" Amelia snapped her fingers in front of my face. "Hello? We're almost there."

I shook my head. "Sorry, focusing on the potholes." I glanced around. Still in the middle of nowhere. "We're almost where?"

"We have to walk in. It's a real bitch in the winter. Stop here."

I stopped the truck. "There's nowhere to park."

"No one else comes back here. Right here will be fine." She hopped out of the truck, and I joined her, walking another ten minutes until we reached a beautiful cabin on a pristine lake. "Here we are. She'll know if you're skeptical, and totally call you out on it, just so you know."

"I'm not skeptical. I just think the proof is in the pudding. Show me something I can hold onto. See."

"You're a Christian, right?"

I nodded. In some strange way, I still was. Years of church would do that.

"That's the whole fundamental backbone of your religion. Belief with nothing tangible, right?" She knocked on the door. "Just keep an open mind."

I could try and do that. I was the one sensing something evil, after all. "Fine." I smiled, as a warm, sixty-ish black woman with wild hair opened the door.

"Amelia. And this must be Sookie." She nodded at me, before moving aside. "Come in."

We sat down in an incredibly bright living room, with the most amazing birch furniture. Eric would have loved it. Octavia vanished for a minute and returned with tea and cookies. She was kind of like a grandmother, grey streaks lining her hair, her eyes kind. "So, Amelia tells me you've got a bit of darkness in you."

I shot Amelia a look. "Oh, I think I'm okay."

Octavia narrowed her eyes at me. "You've got some psychic abilities. Your aura is the right shade of blue. All except your head, which is odd."

"So I've been told. What do you mean psychic abilities?"

"You're sensitive." She leaned back in her chair, looking me over. "I don't know how that manifests itself with you. It's different with everyone, but your aura is just that perfect inky blue. You're strong."

"What's with my head?" I wanted to be skeptical. I did. However, it wasn't like she was telling me something I hadn't considered before, or even deep down known to be true.

"Someone drained you a bit. There's a hole in your aura." She stood up and tapped my forehead. "It's affecting your third eye. In the temporal lobe. It's a leak or a chink..."

"In her armour." Amelia finished her sentence. "I thought so too."

I leaned back, still trying to play the skeptic. "Now, if I were to believe what you're saying, how would I go about fixing this so called 'chink'?"

"Part of you believes, or you wouldn't be here." Octavia raised an eyebrow at me. "Now let's stop this hypothetical speak right now."

As much as I wanted to argue with her, I knew something was wrong, and it had been since I saw Bill in the restaurant. "Fine. How do we fix me?"

Octavia stood up and bustled into another room and came back with a huge, leather bound book. "I've never done this before, so you'll have to bear with me. I've seen it done, just never done it myself. You've been muddled for a long time, Sookie darlin'. You've managed to put a band aid over the problem, but you've never fixed it entirely. It's funny, how the people who are the most sensitive often carry the biggest burdens, and you my child, have a mighty big one you've been struggling with. It's a deep hole there, in a bad spot. Small at the surface, but very deep."

I furrowed my brow, wondering just how much Amelia had told her about me. Amelia didn't know everything, either. "What do you mean?"

"There's a loss, of self, and someone else. You lost control. You've got it back, kind of, but it's delicate. All the best psychics are a little bit crazy, but having control over your gift is of the utmost importance."

Fucking Bill. I wasn't really sure what she meant exactly, by my gift, but I continued to ask questions. "So you can fix this, make it right?"

"I can sure try, and if I can't, we'll drive three hours north to my mentor, but you don't want to do that. He's a real pain in the ass, Niall is. Now, Amelia get up, and Sookie, you go lay down on the couch."

I followed her directions, lying down. "How will I know if it works?"

"Sugar, you'll know. It'll feel like a weight off. Relax now, and look at me."

I kept my eyes open, watching Octavia do all sorts of one handed gestures around my head, while Amelia looked on, enthralled. "You can actually see the colours changing."

Octavia shushed her. "Come now. Don't interrupt." I watched as she stood up and grabbed a hunk of quartz off a side table and placed it on my forehead. "Now Sookie, I want you to envision yourself bathed in white light. God's light, if you believe in that stuff."

I thought about it as hard as I could, and gasped when I actually felt a shift, as an invisible weight that I hadn't even realized was there dissipated. I pulled the rock off my forehead and sat up. "Holy shit."

A huge grin came over Octavia's face. "Skeptics into believers."

"I don't know about that, but I do feel better." I turned my hand over and looked at it. "Even my hand feels better."

Octavia turned her attention to my hand, sitting down beside me and examining my bandaged hand. "This, I don't know about."

"What?"

She shook her head, and looked down. "Nothin'. You should both get home before dark. These woods are odd at night if you aren't used to them."

What the hell did that mean? Amelia stood up. "I should get back to work the dinner shift. Don't want the boss getting mad."

I hadn't decided if I was going to tell Eric about this little trip down the rabbit hole. "Thanks, I think." I extended my good hand towards Octavia.

She responded by hugging me. "You come on back if you have any more problems. I'll try to sort you out. Pay attention to your gift Sookie. It's strong, even though you've been ignoring it."

She stood on her porch and waved us off, a crow sitting on the railing beside her. "That's Lester, her son. I went to high school with him." Amelia smiled. "He was killed by a drunk driver when we were seventeen. Believe parts of what she says, or all of it, but if you're feeling better, then something was accomplished."

I shrugged. "You're right." She'd sort of made a believer out of me, about what though, I wasn't exactly sure. I believed that I felt better. "What's the dinner special tonight?"

"Buffaloaf. Like meatloaf..."

I wrinkled up my nose. "...But made of buffalo?"

She shrugged. "Lafayette wanted to try it. It's very lean. I'll pack some up for you guys."

We pulled in the yard and went our separate ways, Amelia in the backdoor towards the restaurant and me in the other backdoor which lead to Eric's workshop.

I found him sanding a giant log, in a flimsy white tanktop and a pair of old tattered jeans. I loved working Eric. I sat beside him on his bench. "Hey."

He smiled, setting the log down. "Hey. How was your day?"

I didn't lie to Eric. I never had. "We ended up going to visit one of Amelia's friends way out in the woods for tea."

"How's your hand?" He reached for it and gave it a look, well, as much as anyone could through the bandage. "Are you going back to work tomorrow?"

I nodded. "I really should. What are you making?"

"A bench. This is one of the beams from the barn."

I never would have even recognized it. It was smooth and looked like new wood. "Impressive."

He smiled, and then his face darkened slightly. "What were you talking about last night?"

I wanted to shrug it off, blame it on the meds, but I couldn't. "I felt something. Like an evil of some sort. And someone watching us."

He sat back on his bench, leaning against the wall, his brow furrowed. "Like a ghost?"

I tried to laugh it off. "I don't know. Maybe it was just the meds. It sounds so silly."

He straddled the bench. "Turn around for a sec."

I did, so my back was facing him. He pulled my shirt up a bit, examining my back. The scratches. Right. I'd almost forgotten about them. "When Pam first died, when I was in our house still, this is going to sound ridiculous, but I could smell her, everywhere. She always wore this Dior perfume. I used to buy her a bottle at Christmas every year. Anyway, it was her smell, since we met when we were kids. She convinced her mother to get her a bottle for her sixteenth birthday. Ridiculous, I know, but that was Pam. She loved that stuff. That smell nearly drove me nuts in that house after she died. I washed the bedding, and the curtains, and had the furniture cleaned, but it was still there, strong as ever, stronger than when she'd lived there."

"What does that have to do with the scratches?"

"I smelled the perfume today." He pulled my shirt down, and I turned to face him, seeing the sadness in his eyes. "Upstairs, in our room. As strong as it had been in our house."

I wasn't a big perfume girl. Never had been. I certainly didn't own Dior anything. "Oh."

"And then I remembered your scratches. I was pretty happy to just dismiss them, but combined the smell, and how you're feeling, I don't know if I can." He ran a hand over his scruff, his face tense.

I put my good hand in his, and squeezed gently, my eyes meeting his. "What about the scratches?"

He sighed. "When I decided to stop drinking, it was because Pam's back looked like yours, and I couldn't remember if I'd done it. Turned out I hadn't."

My eyes went wide. "Pam had a ghost too?"

He chuckled. "No, a lover. I guess it's good I'm laughing about that now, because I sure as hell wasn't then."

I'd known she cheated on him. The whole idea just seemed so absurd, disconnected from the Eric I knew that was so all consuming that I'd hardly noticed another man since we'd met. "So that was the beginning of the end?"

"I should have kicked her out. Moved out. Ended things. Done something." He shook his head. "Her and I though, there was something. We just couldn't let go. I'm not the kind of man that puts up with that shit."

I had a thought, and I felt my eyes start to well up. "Did you think that I..."

He shook his head, pulling me to his chest. "Shhh. No. You're not that kind of girl. I wouldn't have married someone like that again."

Just like I wouldn't have gotten involved with a man with so much ugliness inside him again. Eric was quiet, his emotions uncluttered with ulterior motives. I'd known that somehow, the minute I laid eyes on him. "Okay."

"I don't know what any of this means. Maybe it's all a string of coincidences."

"Maybe."

He ran his hand over my hair. "We have to wait and see. I don't know what else we can do. Really, this whole thing is quite absurd."

He was right. A smell, some scratches, and a bad feeling weren't anything to act on. "Why now?"

"That's what I don't understand either. Actually, I don't understand any of it."

"Amelia's friend Octavia said I'm sensitive."

Eric smirked. "You did cry during Garden State the other day."

I pulled away and punched him gently. "It reminded me of you and me."

He cracked a grin. "Right."

"And I love Natalie Portman. She's got such fantastic range. But she didn't mean that kind of sensitive."

He narrowed his eyes. "What did she mean then?"

"She didn't know exactly. I think she meant in a spiritual sense."

Eric snorted. "That's a nice thing to tell someone, and then send them on their way."

"I know, right?" I ran my fingers through his scruffy blond hair, which was ever lightening as summer kicked in. It had been much longer when we first met, almost to his shoulders. It seemed like every time he got it cut, he went a bit shorter.

I liked it short. It suited him. He was far too serious to have such wild hair. I wondered if Pam would even recognize him today. Somehow I doubted it.

"Does she mean like psychic? Can you read my thoughts, Mrs. Northman?" His lips curled up into a smile. He sure knew how to turn things around. I had no control, not when it came to him. Then again, he didn't push things either.

"If I could, I think I'd probably like what I heard." I got up on my knees so we were face to face, and kissed him, softly at first, smiling into his mouth as he pulled me to him, his hand gently wrapped in my hair.

Eric was a hair puller, but not really a scratcher. Not in my experience, anyway. I leaned into his kiss, my hands still in his hair as he unbuttoned my cardigan, dropping it into a pile of sawdust from the piece he was working on. I'd just gone for his belt, when the bell in the front of the shop indicated that someone had come in. He groaned, tilting his forehead to mine. "Shit. I meant to lock up."

He kept odd hours, usually opening a few hours a day and for appointments. Most of his things weren't bought by walk-ins. I sat back on my heels, as he went to front, the door to his shop swinging behind him, as I shook out my sweater, and listened to some gushing about Eric's work, and the storefront, and all of that. Eventually, I walked out to find Eric leaning against the doorframe, speaking to a well-dressed couple examining a huge coffee table he'd made a while ago. "It's fifteen hundred. I can arrange to ship it if you want."

The man smiled. "How much for the end table as well?"

He thought about it. Eric usually made up his prices on the spot, and a lot of the time it depended on how he felt about the customer. "Twenty-five hundred."

Clearly, he wasn't impressed. I guess they had stood in the way of him getting some. Not that he didn't get some quite often. We were newlyweds, after all. "Twenty-three?" The woman asked, running her hands over the wood, smiling slightly at Eric.

He sighed. "Fine. Let me calculate the shipping, and I'll give you a total."

He moved behind the antique register that had come with the shop and turned on his laptop. "It's going to Florida," the woman practically exclaimed.

Eric looked unimpressed. "Zip code?"

She gave it to him and continued going on and on about his pieces and how nice they were, all the while looking at him like he was sex on a stick.

Which he was. I could hardly blame her. But he was taken. I moved out, sticking my hands in his back pocket. "Hey. It's buffaloaf over at Salty's tonight."

He turned around and gave me a wink, and mouthed, 'thank you.' "Great. I'm just finishing up here, and then we'll head home."

"I'll go pick some up and meet you there." I winked back, and headed out through the shop. About twenty minutes later, I heard his heavy steps on the stairs.

He collapsed on the couch. "Ugh. You should have heard them. They caught a glimpse of the chairs I started for the deck. Wanted a set just like them. I don't do sets of things. I hate people like that. So fucking self-entitled."

"So artistic." I unwrapped the food that Amelia had set aside for us. "But you got rid of them?"

"Eventually." He eyed the buffaloaf. "This actually looks good."

"Can you still smell the perfume?" I looked at him, a small smile on my face. It was more fun to make this seem ridiculous than acknowledge that we perhaps had some sort of problem. I hadn't noticed a thing. No bad feelings, no nothing.

And I felt fantastic. Maybe I could talk Octavia into doing some sort of aura fixing thing every month or so. Or buy some quartz and learn how to do it myself. I had no idea what she'd done, but I felt clearer than I ever remembered feeling. I'd felt fine before, but I hadn't realized that I was able to feel this great.

"No. No perfume. Only buffaloaf." He grinned, taking a big bite before groaning loudly. "This is going on the menu."

He was right. It was damn good. "So about our house problem. What do we do now?"

"Like I said. We wait and see, I guess. Can we make a deal though?"

I nodded.

He looked down, before meeting my eyes. "If you feel anything, tell me, and I'll do the same. I don't want us both going crazy here, Sook, and both of us have the tendency to be a bit neurotic. Let's be neurotic together."

"I can do that." I smiled. I wasn't quite sure what I'd done to deserve Eric. I guess maybe we'd put up with a lot individually to end up with each other. "Maybe we should keep a log."

"Tuesday, May third. Call Ghostbusters? That kind of thing?"

I punched him playfully in the arm. "At least we're laughing."

"We're eating buffaloaf and laughing, and I made $2,300 bucks today, from some furniture that I didn't even like. That doesn't sound like a bad day at all." He winked, eating the last of his dinner. "Have I told you lately how much I love you, and how incredibly happy you make me?"

I tapped my chin, a huge grin on my face. "Probably, but I do like to hear it."

He leaned over and whispered in my ear, his arm around my waist, "You make me so fucking happy I can hardly believe my luck sometimes. I pinch myself on a daily basis. You make me feel alive, in a way I didn't even know was possible"

I grinned, as he kissed my ear. "Ditto."

He stopped, pulling away slightly. "Wait. Isn't that a line from that ghost movie?"

I giggled. "You mean Ghost, the movie?"

"Yea," he whispered, his lips back on my ear. "Maybe you shouldn't say ditto."

"How about I say, all of those things you just said, and then I add this. I can't imagine my life without you in it, and I never want to."

"Perfect," he whispered, "Now, I think we were interrupted earlier."

"Why, Mr. Northman, I believe we were." I squealed, as he tossed me over his shoulder, carried me into the bedroom and dumped me on the bed. "Close the curtains, huh?" Our bedroom was on the main street.

He nodded, pulling them shut, before joining me on the bed. In a split second, his lips were on mine, and I relished the feeling of his weight on top of me; his strong hands, rough and calloused, set my skin on fire. No matter how many times we'd fucked, one thing was certain. No one ever made me feel like he did.

"Tell me what you want," he whispered, his lips wet on my ear. My eyes met his, and the playful look in his eyes made my heart skip a beat.

The first time he'd said those words to me, was the first time we'd been together, in his tiny apartment in New Orleans, after I'd been in town a couple of weeks. I wanted him so badly then, I had since the minute I'd laid eyes on him. Wanted that connection, needed to ensure it was there, because everything else was. We'd kissed the second night and every night after that, and he'd been a perfect gentleman, walking me back to my hotel each night.

That night though, was different. He'd invited me into his space, and I'd accepted, both of us knowing what the result would be. It had been weird, knowing so much about someone you'd never really set eyes on, and quickly finding that they were everything that you hoped desperately that they would be, maybe even needed them to be. We'd gone slow that first night, learning each other's bodies hoping to maybe someday know as much about how we felt physically as we did about one another emotionally.

That night, as I came screaming Eric's name, grateful that the restaurant had closed a half an hour ago, since that the windows were open, I realized that we we'd reached that point, physically, knowing each other as well as we did emotionally. We probably had been for a while. I hooked my thighs around his hips as he came, his face buried in the crook of my neck muffling his groans. He was always a bit more reserved.

"Perfect," he whispered, leering at me as I crawled out of bed a few minutes later to clean up and take my painkiller. He stood beside me a few minutes later, waiting for the remnants of his hard on to go away so he could pee. "Let's always be newlyweds." He grinned beside me.

"Deal." I winked, tipping the glass of water back and choking down the huge pill.

I slept like the dead that night. Evil, smells, scratches, none of them were any match for painkillers, a huge hunk of buffaloaf, and an incredible screw, courtesy of my fucktacular husband.