CHAPTER 36
Since I had been at Fangtasia most of the night before, I didn't emerge from my bedroom downstairs until almost noon. Today was the day to go to Bon Temps, so I got ready quickly. I gathered together what clothes and make up I thought I'd need for an overnight, and packed a bag for Eric. Being optimistic, I packed some tanning oil and my roomiest bikini. I was tired of being vampire pale. Even if it meant being a little self conscious in front of the guards, tomorrow I was going to sunbathe!
As I hauled my bags up and opened the door, the most wonderful aroma hit me and my mouth started watering. I would just about trade my soul for fresh baked corn muffins I thought. Then I slapped myself and asked God to forgive me that last thought. I might trade a body part though.
I stepped into the kitchen and was greeted by Grace. "Good morning, dear, I made you some breakfast," she said.
"Good morning, Grace. This smells wonderful and I'm starving," I said as I plopped myself in front of a plate teeming with food. A cheese omelet, fresh fruit salad and yummy corn muffins, hot and just waiting for the butter and honey must have been what the doctor ordered because I wasted no time in finishing it all off. Washing everything down with a second cup of coffee, I decided I had died and gone to heaven.
Grace busied herself with the washing up and with packing up a large picnic basket. Did we even have a picnic basket? Picnicking was not a vampire's idea of fun I was sure. Amelia must have let Grace know that I was going out today and she must have brought a basket with her.
"You and your men may want something for the afternoon," Grace said as she added a thermos of iced tea, no lemon. I had strictly been avoiding lemons since I found out that I was pregnant. There was no way to know how lemons might affect Baby Claudine. I had seen what they could do to full blown fairies, and it wasn't pretty. I shivered and tried to put that memory back away.
"You must have been sent by an angel," I said to Grace and on impulse, I gave her a hug. Her body was petite, but she felt strong and warm as I wrapped my arms around her. She smelled like fresh cut grass.
"Perhaps I was," she said and putting her hands on my shoulders she moved me back just a bit. "May I?" she asked, looking at my belly.
I smiled and nodded. I knew this was part of being pregnant. I felt the same urge whenever I was in a room with a pregnant woman. Everyone wanted to feel the promise of life; it was such a wondrous thing, a hopeful thing. I didn't mind. It made me feel proud and special that I could be part of that miracle. And Eric wasn't around to have some kind of fit because someone touched me. Delicately placing the palm of her small hand against my belly, Grace closed her eyes and stood very still.
"The prince's blood will be strong in this one," she stated surely. "The Viking will have his hands full." Then she laughed merrily and went about the business of cleaning up the kitchen.
It was like setting out on an expedition just going to my house in Bon Temps. The weres would be staying at Bill's tonight, so they had odds and ends of things packed in the back of the Escalade for their comfort and of course, they carried an assortment of weapons. I guess Bill's house had been volunteered by Mr. High and Mighty. I probably wouldn't find out what Bill thought of that, since I didn't plan on seeing him. There was too much potential for trouble in that direction.
I had my small suitcase, Eric's bag and my computer. I hadn't gotten a carrying case for it yet, but the computer and charger were snug in one of my zip-up totes. I planned to do some ordering with Amelia today.
The picnic basket was sitting on the back seat between Mark and me. The weres had noticed the smell of the muffins right away and Mark began eyeing the basket before we had hit the highway. I had just had breakfast and I was eyeing the basket too. It smelled so good. I didn't have to ask twice before I was handing out food to everyone. We all thought the muffins were the best ever. Did life get any better than this? As I had that thought, I wondered if it wasn't always a mistake to think things like that.
Amelia threw her arms around me in a big hug as soon as I'd climbed out of the car, even though I'd seen her only the day before. Maybe she was getting a little lonely out here in the country. What the hell was up with her and Bob? I hadn't managed to get to the bottom of it yet, but maybe we could talk about it today.
"Hi hon," Amelia said. "Terry finished the painting, what do you think?" Amelia had a pleased look on her face as if it was her own personal accomplishment that the place was looking so good.
I took a good look around while the guys unloaded the car. It really did look nice. The construction equipment was all gone and the yard had been graded and cleaned up. The fresh coat of paint, now on all sides of the building took one hundred years off the house!
"Oh Amelia, it looks so nice." It did look nice and I wished that Gran had lived to see it. She had been so proud of her home, its long history and the care she took to keep it clean and ready for company. But the house had gotten old along with Gran and she hadn't had the strength or money to keep the deterioration at bay.
It was bittersweet to see the house transformed, much like it had been when the new kitchen had been built over the ruins of the old after the fire – or like the way the floor had gleamed so brightly after I had scrubbed away my grandmother's blood.
"What shall we do first?" Amelia's question pulled me out of my reverie, and I tried to refocus as she began rattling off all the things that were planned. We would set up the lair for the vamps, get on the computer and shop, go see Sam, and of course go through the attic.
"Let's work on the lair since we will need it tonight," I suggested. I was glad that Eric had agreed to stay at the Bon Temps house for the night. I was missing my vampire already and wishing it was closer to sunset. Shreveport wasn't that far from Bon Temps, but I could feel the distance between us even while he was sleeping.
"I have all the stuff in the house. I stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home yesterday and got all the toiletries they'll need. Have you had lunch?"
Amelia was already heading into the house, animated with the excitement of a new project. She was wearing an outfit that cried out to be paired with a minivan, and she looked every inch the soccer mom. Her energy was infectious and before long we were chattering away like a bunch of magpies as we started hauling sheets and towels under the garage and into the vampire's lair.
After we had made up the three beds and stocked the bathroom with supplies for bathing, I looked around to see what else we should do.
"We should have gotten some little bedside tables and lamps," Amelia said, voicing my own thoughts. "You think there's anything up in the attic we could use?"
"I doubt it," I said. "The furniture from my folk's house all ended up with Jason, and he's hardly changed a thing over at his place. I don't think Gran ever changed the house here much, at least not since Jason and I came to live. We could look though. Anything like lamps would have old wiring, wouldn't it? It might not be safe. There might be some little tables though."
"Oh let's go look. It will be fun to see what's squirreled away. I don't want to wait for tomorrow. I bet it's filthy up there. Maybe we should take up some cleaning supplies."
"It's an attic, Amelia, of course it will be dusty. Even Gran wasn't that good of a housekeeper." Actually I was a little surprised that Amelia hadn't gotten up there already, since she cleaned pretty obsessively. Maybe she thought it would be intruding, although that didn't usually stop her. Or she might just be afraid of spiders, although knowing Amelia, she would just hex them or something. Amelia was pretty intrepid (a good calendar word!).
The attic was reached by a stairway at the end of the upstairs hall. We had grabbed a bucket filled with rags for dusting things off and two flashlights for any dark corners. There should be a light up there that still worked, if I remembered correctly, but it would just be a single bulb hanging on a wire in the middle of the room. After the fire I'd opened the door when I'd aired out the house from the smoke, but I hadn't really looked around. I went up first and sure enough, the light was working.
"You can still smell the faintest hint of smoke up here," I said as I walked in. Only part of the house was two-story, so the attic wasn't that big. It was tall enough for me to stand in under the central beam, but just barely. The sides were low and very dark. Amelia had been right. It was very dusty. It was also crammed to the gills with stuff.
"Gads! What is all this stuff?" I said, as I moved a pair of old rotten waders aside, my grandfather's probably. I recognized an old bicycle of Jason's and a few broken fishing poles.
"A treasure hunt! I bet there's something good up here," Amelia said. "You know how people find stuff in their attics and take it to Antiques Roadshow? Maybe there's some civil war stuff."
"Gran would have had that out and shown it at the Descendents of the Glorious Dead meetings. It looks more like everything that ever broke and no one wanted to fix."
Thinking of the Glorious Dead meeting brought the night of Gran's death to the forefront of my mind again. And Bill. He would be sleeping just across the cemetery from here, in his old house. Maybe he could feel me here, the way I could feel Eric when he was close. This place held too many memories, and though not all of them were bad, I was strangely disquieted.
"Aren't you creeped out up here, Amelia?" I said through the cloud of dust she was making. She had taken a rag to the top of an old cardboard box.
"This is full of books, Sook. We can look at those later," she answered, ignoring my remark as she flicked on a flashlight. "Is that a trunk in the back there? We have to see what's in there."
Figuring there weren't any ghosts up here or I would have heard them rattling around years ago, I flicked on my light and started moving things around. Amelia was the one to find the cradle.
"It's a little beat up, but it's a beauty, Sook, so old fashioned. If I can just get to it without falling through the ceiling or something. Yuck! There's still an old blanket in it and it is really gross. Hand me that bucket."
I grabbed the bucket and began to clear a path. The cradle was beautiful, with spindled wood and thick wooden rockers. It would definitely need some cleaning, maybe even refinishing. We would have to get it downstairs into better light.
"The trunk is locked. Do you think there are keys for this stuff anywhere?" Amelia had burrowed further into the back and was fiddling with the latch of an old footlocker.
"We had a drawer full of keys in the kitchen, before the fire. Most of them were melted. Maybe we can break it open with a pry bar or something. There might be one in the shed."
"I'm going to get one of the guys to carry the cradle down. You shouldn't be lifting stuff in your condition. Keep looking for some lamps while I go down." Amelia said.
I was about to answer that I was pregnant, not disabled, but decided it wasn't worth arguing about. While Amelia went to fetch one of the weres, I worked my way back to the other side of the attic. It really was mostly just old rotting junk. One box was filled with old clothes, long since mildewed and no doubt moth ridden. I spied a lamp in the farthest corner, and even with the flashlight, I could see that the shade was stained and torn. I wasn't going to put that next to Eric's bed. Better to make a trip to Wal-Mart.
"You need some help up here, Ma'am?" Mark called, and startled, I straightened up and whacked my head against a beam.
"Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea! That hurt!" Rubbing my head where I would no doubt have a lump the size of an egg, I sat down on the dirty floor. "Low clearance, be careful Mark," I called out.
"Yes, Ma'am, you okay?" Again with the Ma'am thing, what was with these guys!
"Maybe a minor concussion, but otherwise fine. We have a cradle that needs to be carried down, and if I can find a pry bar, we wanted to break into a trunk."
"Let me take a look," Mark said.
Amelia came in behind Mark and showed him the cradle and the trunk. Taking the flashlight, and pulling a small case from his pants pocket, he sat down in front of the trunk and started poking things into the lock. In less than a minute he had it opened. Wow! I wonder what his background was. Maybe I didn't want to know.
"It looks like old pictures and paperwork," he said. "You want me to bring it down?"
After whacking my head once, it seemed like it might be a good idea to have a little more room to go through things downstairs, so I told him to go ahead. He picked up the cradle effortlessly and headed down with that, returning a short while later with Jim. The two men, almost bent double with the low ceiling, managed to haul the trunk to the door and down the stairs. It looked heavy.
"The only lamp I found is pretty nasty, Amelia, and there's just a bunch of old rotting stuff back here. Oh, here's some horseshoes, pretty rusty though."
"I think it will take hours and hours to go through all of this stuff, Sook. Let's leave it for another day. We have the cradle and the vamps will be fine with just the ceiling fixture in the lair. They're only here one night. We can be better prepared next time. I want to see what's in the trunk."
"I could use some coffee," I said as I headed downstairs and into the kitchen, leaving dusty footprints. "And I wanted to order that book for Eric, but we can do that tomorrow. Do you want to make something for dinner here or go to Merlotte's? When does Bob get home from work?"
Amelia went a little still at the mention of Bob, but then busied herself with making the coffee.
"Okay, spill!" I said. "What's going on?"
"I guess he's gone, Sook. There wasn't much point in him hanging around here. I told him he could stay in my place in New Orleans until he gets settled, but he says he has something lined up. He packed up his stuff this morning, he didn't have much stuff anyway."
"Oh Amelia, I'm sorry." I threw my arms around her and for a moment she accepted what comfort I could give and then she bustled over to the cradle and started wiping it down.
"It was just a rebound thing I think. I missed Trey and Bob was having trouble adjusting after the 'incident'. He's still angry about that I think and he's played on my guilt long enough. He's not really a very nice person, Sookie. He was much better as a cat! I don't want to talk about it."
Since Amelia usually wanted to talk about everything, even stuff better left unsaid, I figured she was pretty upset. I had only known Bob as a cat, except for a few hours after he was turned back. I had cooked him dinner and taken him to Wal-Mart to buy clothes. I had no idea what kind of person he was. He'd thrown up hairballs on Amelia's bed when she'd gone out with another guy, but I didn't think you could hold that against him now.
"Let's stay in tonight then," I offered. "We can go see Sam for lunch tomorrow. I'll send one of the guys out for something and then you can get yourself drunk and we won't have to worry about getting you home!"
"Yeah, I guess you can't join me in that, but that might be a good plan, and maybe Mr. Drop Dead Gorgeous will come with Eric." Amelia was trying to put her best face on, and while I knew it would do her good to talk it all out, now was not the time.
"Okay, then, that's settled," I said and poured us each a cup of coffee. Amelia was still polishing. She had gotten out the Pledge and was rubbing each spindle of the cradle until it shone. It really looked pretty good now that it was clean. I thought we might be able to use it just the way it was.
"I can't wait for the baby," Amelia said. "We'll need to get a little mattress made for this. We can match the fabric with the crib bedding. Eric's going to go crazy with all the pink in the house."
"I don't think he will care," I said. "But Pam and Thalia will love it if he does. Especially Pam, she is such a brat when it comes to Eric."
I told her all about the onesies at Fangtasia and all about Thomas and Thalia's little romance. Before long the sorrow had left her countenance and she was my cheerful Amelia once again.
"So aren't you dying to see what's in the trunk?" Amelia said when we had finished our coffee. "Let's look at some of the pictures."
Opening the trunk entailed another bout of dusting and polishing. We were both going to need showers by the time we'd finished handling all of this old stuff. While Amelia busied herself with that, I went out and arranged to have the guards pick up some supper for all of us. They could leave after supper when the vampires arrived to take over.
The inside of the trunk was not quite as dusty as the outside, but a musty smell of old paper poured out of it and overwhelmed the smell of coffee in the kitchen. I wondered if it had even been opened in my lifetime. The inside had originally been lined in fabric, which was now coming unglued and hung slightly in tatters. The top compartment was like a tray, divided into two sections, each one filled to overflowing with photographs and documents.
"Look at this, Amelia," I exclaimed, pulling out a newspaper clipping from the top. "It looks like an obituary notice, my grandfather."
Amelia already was pulling out photos and handed one to me. "Is this your Gran? She looks so young. She was beautiful, Sookie."
I set down the news clipping and took up the picture. Yes, it was definitely Gran, and she was beautiful. It was a posed picture, and her hair was swept up off her face in a chignon. She looked young, maybe my age. She looked a lot like me.
"There's some pictures of you and Jason as kids here, too. Lots of old bills and receipts. We should sort those by date I suppose." Amelia was in her element, and I knew that she would have the whole trunk sorted and categorized and no doubt filed with sticky notes if I didn't stop her.
"What's in the bottom part, Amelia, more photos?"
"I'll get a box and we can move some of the pile on top, then we can pick up the tray."
While Amelia went to find a box, I sifted through some of the stuff on top. One picture caught my eye.
"Look at this!" I said as Amelia came in with a box. "It's Gran again, when she was pregnant, with my dad or my aunt. Do you see it?"
"Wow, Sook, it's just like yours. What do you think it means?"
"I don't know." Above her left shoulder was the same reflection that had been in my pictures. We had thought it meant there was an angel. My dad and my gran had both been murdered. So what did having an angel mean for them?
"I think we need to sort these, Amelia. Maybe we can see when the reflection starts appearing and when it leaves. It isn't in any of the photos Gran had up in the house. Help me lift the tray."
The bottom of the trunk was in a little better shape, but the smell here was even mustier. Mottled gray and black spots peppered the surface of notebooks of different sizes and styles. There were stacks of paper, darkened to a pale russet color around the edges, tied with fraying ribbon. Antiques Roadshow might not agree, but I thought we had found our treasure.
Picking up one that looked like an old school composition book, I opened the cover.
"It's like a diary, but it isn't dated. Oh wait, some of the entries are," I told Amelia as I flipped through a few of the pages. "There's no names either, just initials. It looks like Gran's writing, but different, stronger and finer."
"Well, it would have been different when she was younger. What year is it?"
"No year, just dates. Here's Sunday, March 15." I read aloud the short entry for some March in my grandmother's past, my past too I supposed."
March 15
B for supper last night. Fried chicken. He brought L some blue ribbon and she's in heaven. A penny for C. The Rev. harped on the collection plate again. C wouldn't stop kicking the seat and I made him put his penny in the plate. God grant me patience. B, M and C went fishing. Catfish for supper tonight.
"So who do you think B. is? C. and L. are kids, your dad and his sister? So when was your dad born, the forties? Okay, so late forties maybe."
I couldn't even answer as Amelia speculated, probably pretty accurately, on who and when. I could guess who B was, Uncle Bartlett, my gran's brother. Coming to supper and bringing ribbons for my Aunt Linda. Uncle Bartlett liked little girls. A lot. I felt sick.
"Amelia, I don't feel so good. Let's just put this away for now." I put the old journal back into the trunk and Amelia, looking worried, helped me put everything back on top. Except the picture of Gran, with her angel. I wanted to show that to Eric.
"I bet you're just hungry. Come on, hon, why don't you go lay down on the couch and I'll see if the guys have left to get supper. You look pale."
"I'm fine. I think you're right and I just need to eat. And you'd look pale too if you lived with a vampire. Tomorrow is sunbathing for sure!"
I took Amelia's suggestion, though and lay down on the couch for the short time that it took Jim to go to Merlotte's and pick up chicken baskets for all of us. The familiar food and Amelia's cheerful bustle made me put things in perspective. If Amelia could smile when she had just had a break up, I could certainly smile and let go of something that happened twenty years ago, at least for tonight.
I felt Bill in the yard soon after dark, watching. I didn't go out. Within an hour, my vampires arrived. I felt him approaching and he was as eager as I to close the distance between us. He was driving his red corvette, with Jordun in the seat beside him and I ran out to meet him when he pulled up behind the house.
Without a word, he flung his arms around me and his mouth was on mine, greedy and harsh. I wrapped my arms around him and he held me close.
Jordun opened the trunk and pulled out his luggage. He passed us on the way into the house. "Get a room," he said, smiling and handed a bundle to Eric.
"Will you put this on, Kjære?" he asked as he unfolded a blanket and revealed my cranberry red coat. "It may be a little cool for you." He was smiling, the mischievous little boy smile he had when he wanted to surprise me. He held the coat out and I slipped it on.
"Stand still and close your eyes," he said and I complied, wondering what he was up to. He squatted down and wrapped my arms around his neck. Then, taking me by the waist he called, "Hold on," and he shot up into the air. I gasped and wrapped my legs around him as the ground disappeared below my feet.
"Open your eyes, Lover."
I could hear the slight strain in his voice and grabbed tighter, hoping my weight was not too much for him. But I opened my eyes and could see the roof of my house as we circled above it and then over the path towards Bill's. We were gliding it seemed, since his body seemed to have nothing to do with the process. He didn't whirl his arms, or kick his legs or sprout wings. It was sheer unadulterated magic and it felt wonderful.
We landed in the cemetery. He let out an audible "Whoomp!" sound as his legs hit the dirt, as if the air had been knocked out of his lungs, even though he didn't breathe. I think I had been holding my breath and I gasped, inflating my lungs with as much of the cool spring air as they would accommodate. I loosened my death grip from his neck and he lowered me gently to the ground.
"I thought it would be nice to have a little time to ourselves."
Glancing around at the tombstones, I figured that we would be undisturbed here. Although with the way my life was going, you could never tell what might pop up from one of the graves.
Eric spread out the blanket, which he had carried along with us, and beckoned for me to join him as he sat. I was glad he had thought of bringing my coat, as the air was cool and the ground lightly moist. I settled myself onto his lap and he wrapped the ends of the blanket around my legs, giving a sigh of relief. I echoed it.
"You were too far away from me today, My Love."
"Yes," I murmured against his chest.
"We are not two people anymore."
I thought about that for a moment. "No, I guess we are three."
He chuckled a bit and patted my belly. "Yes, we are that, but what I meant to say is, we are like one now."
"Does that bother you, Eric?"
"You might well ask if it bothers me that my leg is attached, Lover. It would bother me if it were missing, but while it is there, it is where it belongs. It is mine and it is part of me."
Now the fly in that ointment was that Eric could chop off his own leg and it would grow back, so it wouldn't bother him for long. Okay, that wasn't fair. It would be painful and maybe for a long time. And while it was missing, he would be vulnerable. I think I knew what he was saying though, since I had been feeling the same thing.
"We're attached at the hip, is that what you're saying? Like Siamese Twins?" I was sure that wasn't the politically correct term, but I'd be damned if I could think of what the correct term was. Oh, conjoined, that was it!
Eric was looking at me as if I'd grown an extra person out of the left side of my hip. He looked both baffled and amused.
"You have the most interesting way of expressing things."
"That's because I'm very well read," I countered. Yeah, I'd read most of the romance section at the library. I read some serious books too, just not very often. Eric's face was no longer baffled, just amused.
"Are you laughing at me?" I teased. "It's true, and I have a very good vocabulary."
"I'm not doubting your literary prowess, Love, I'm still thinking about your reference to twins," he said, his grin growing even larger. "The possibilities are endless."
Reaching down to my waist, he moved his hand slowly down my hip. "And hips, you said something about hips?"
Moving down from my hips, he cupped my bottom and moved me very deliberately over his lap. I squirmed against him in response. The hard bulge straining under the fabric of his pants pressed tightly against the silky fabric of my panties, bringing a moan to my lips.
"Bite me, Lover," he whispered into my ear as he opened the front of his shirt. He rocked me rhythmically against his lap and closed his eyes as I licked the smooth skin of his chest, then positioned my mouth over his nipple.
My teeth came down hard against his cool skin, breaking the surface and releasing his sweet, thick blood. I sucked hard and a low growl came from deep inside him as he pulled the weight of my body harder against him, rocking and moaning. I felt his body tense the moment before his release and when he bent his head down and bit my neck, my body spasmed in response.
We remained clutched in each other's arms, licking each other's wounds and I truly felt that we were one person. His blood in me, and mine in his, we were truly conjoined.