Time refused to move. The night circled around me. The shadows stretched as phantoms on my unlit entryway floor. The house hummed with the rhythms of dark; the back porch door creaked as if someone had forgotten to close it completely. None of the Christmas lights had been turned on. I don't know how long I slouched stone-faced and numb against my front door, but I know what finally shook me out of it—a long, soprano yawn from the living room. My heart somersaulted and I scrambled up, grabbing my bags in case I needed to pummel someone with my purse—very classy-like. I was so overwhelmed, I didn't pay attention to the mind's familiar voice. I must have looked a sight because as I stormed into the room with my pillowy weapons raised high above my head, my granddaughter let out a scream worthy of the hosts of teenage hell.
Immediately I let go of the bags. They plunked heavily onto the floor. I flipped on the lamp and rushed over to soothe my mess.
"Riley, sweetie. I didn't know you were here." I pet her round face, her chocolate eyes wide. "I think we both gave each other a decent fright."
She was slowing her breathing as she adjusted to the light. "Sweet Mother was that scary. Gran looked ready to kill me." She smiled then, her hand dangling over her heart. "I didn't recognize you Grannie—for a minute I'd forgotten you'd changed."
My own knees faltered and I plopped down beside her. "Understandable. I forget sometimes too."
"Are you happy you changed?" No one had asked me that. I hadn't asked me that. I took a moment to respond; I remembered the contentment I had woken up with this morning—before the vampire dramas. Debbie Downers? More like the Dead-Be-Downers. (Har-har.)
"You know, I think so. I think I could begin to be happy." The realization cheered me like I'd just discovered a talisman for joy. I would need to remind myself of this, carry it with me. Happiness is so often a matter of choice. Since Sam's passing, I had forgotten this. "Are you happy I changed, bunny?"
Riley studied me, her mind as open as her eyes. She had been scared at first when she had seen me, but later that night when she had been crying about losing her grandfather, she had realized that my transformation meant she wouldn't have to lose me, too. That I might lose her first.
"Yes, Grannie." She giggled all of a sudden and pinched my shirt—the way-too-tight red chemise. "We can share clothes practically!"
I wrapped my arm around her and tugged her ponytail, asking her about the others. She told me that her sister had decided to work late and crash at their parents house—a sigh escaped me then—and that Uncle Jennings had left right after I had told him I was on my way. He had met somebody on the fairway, and hadn't been very sly in hiding his enthusiasm from Riley that he had been asked to go on a date. "He was like—well, he was as goofy as me when I'm asked out. He squealed." We laughed at his expense, and laughed some more until my stomach hurt—which made me realize how starving I was. I'd been filled with saline and hydrated, but hadn't had a real meal or proper drink in over a day. No wonder I was feeling weightless.
Riley and I slapped together some grilled cheese sandwiches and heated up some tomato soup, rounding out the meal by plundering my goodie cupboard. We porked out on cookies and chips and coke, watched a dating reality show about vampire and human duos, and chatted about her most recent crush on the polo team—Kirk Bellefleur, apparently a real "Rock Hudson." I hoped she meant in looks only, or he may be more my son's type—in several years.
A night of blissful distraction with my blissfully content Riley was everything I had needed and hadn't realized I had wanted. For three hours I didn't think about vampires or witches or weres—or even shifters. I allowed myself a break from it all. I even left the dishes in the sink (although I did shut that pesky back door.) Around midnight we traipsed up the stairs, and Riley pulled her phone out of her pocket.
"A new i-water?" I asked. Neal must really want her back and unmad at him if he'd shelled out the cash for that thing. Maybe he'd buy me one too.
"Yeah," Riley held it up. "It was crazy. I won it."
"Whoa! How?" We were at the top of the landing now, and I scratched my head. My greasy head. My shower couldn't come fast enough. I wasn't being a good Gran and listening to her explain to me how she'd claimed the jackpot on newest phones. I realized she had finished and was beaming—at her phone—not at me. I hugged her goodnight and went into my room. I caught a flash of a face in her mind as I shut the door—but dismissed it. I must be delirious to think of something so bizarre.
A moan of delight fluttered from me as I shed the constricting clothes. Littering them behind me, I walked toward my bathroom. I ignored looking at my scary self in the mirror. Soon the hot water sloughed off the scales of fatigue and fright from my soul. It rained down upon me as a health tonic. I scrubbed and shaved and sang. I could have thought about the winter solstice and Bill's heart-wrenching proposition, or how there were witches who wanted to kill me, or vampires who wanted to bed me and eat me and own me. I could have thought about any of those crushing things. But I didn't.
Sam ruled my mind. His warmth. His passion. His peace. That talisman from earlier hung secretly from me, because for the first, it didn't hurt to remember my husband. I tried to sort out the why, scared it had something to do with what Bill had described as possible. Was this feeling of gladness because I had already decided to take the King up on his proposition? The allure to behold my Sam again—to simply say goodbye—tugged at me as a rope lassoed round my navel, but even on the edge of succumbing to its potency, to run toward the pressure of those tugs, a stronger force within me urged caution, and that rope tied around my core became a noose knotted around my neck. Sam would tie the noose knot himself should I give in to the temptation. And that was it—right there—Sam still existed. Bill's words had moved me, but not in the direction he had intended. A soulless vampire believed that somewhere Sam was still Sam. I believed that too.
Somehow with my transformation I had forgotten what that really meant to me. Sam was already promised to me. Someday he would see me in the Summerlands, and at that future reunion, his first question would be the same one Riley had asked me tonight—was I happy? Well, I had woken up happy. I could find happiness again. I could let my sorrow go. I would never stop missing my companion of fifty years, but the bitterness of missing him could be replaced by the sweetness of remembering him. This was the power of grieving—it was meant as a process of dying, and rebirth. Sometimes that rebirth never came. Sadly, some griefs buried a person so deep they could never claw their way to the surface. My grief for Sam was not that kind; I could dig myself free. I was already on my way. I could almost feel the sun.
And I wouldn't risk the sunlight for a counterfeit moon at night.
Refreshed, renewed, I turned off the shower. In my haste, I'd forgotten to flip on the fan. A watery smoke misted over the bathroom, obscuring everything in a screen of white. I opened the shower door, wiping the vapor from my shut eyes, and reaching for my towel on the hook. I'd hardly extended my hand when the fuzz of the towel brushed into my knuckles. Strange. Blind still, I grabbed at it and pressed my face into the folds. The steam tickled my nostrils as I breathed in through the towel. Luxuriating, I slid it down my face, opened my eyes, and instantly flattened my towel against my body and myself against the wall.
This was the second time I had been startled since coming home. Karma wasn't grand—it wasn't even a bitch—it was a fanging vampire. That bizarre image must not have been so random.
"What the hell, Eric?"
"Hello, Sookie."
"It was you I saw in her mind—that mustached, curly-haired UPS man." The devil-may-care grin wouldn't be tolerated. I fixed my towel with angry jerks so that it was wrapped tightly around my body, cursing him with a flare that would have impressed any sailor. "No one listens to me. I say don't do this, and they go ahead and do it anyway!"
Wicking the condensation from my face, I flipped back my dripping hair. If eyes could stake, he'd be a pile of ash. He stood there nonchalant, with his hands in his jeans pockets and the fog from the shower clouding his features into vague lines. Those blue eyes danced even through the haze.
"To her credit. I had to actually show her the free phone before she would open the door and she tried her best not to look me in the eye—"
There would be a word to share with my granddaughter—don't take candy or smart phones from strangers. Fortunately, this was not a mistake I had to live with.
"Eric, I re—"
His hand covered my mouth, the chill of it tingling on my lips. He leaned against me, his tall body arching over me, and his gaze intent. My heart beat as a hummingbird's wings. My breaths rebounded hotly in my nose. I resisted the urge to bite down hard on his vice of fingers—wouldn't he just love for me to draw blood. Uselessly I squirmed and wriggled and bucked against him (my towel miraculously holding true), until I realized how much he was enjoying my futile attempts to break free, how much my own body ached for the wild release and sweet escape of intimacy, the thrills of abandoning to unchecked desires. In every way, I was a trapped hummingbird, and he a golden cage. And a piece of me craved to be his prisoner. Defeated, panting, I sunk against the wall.
"Well, that was a warmer welcome than I expected," Eric laughed.
Sweat and water streamed down my face; droplets of the mist dotted his skin. One rivulet trailed down my cheek, running over Eric's hand. His eyes locked with mine, as if to dare me, while he flicked his tongue out to taste the fugitive trickle on his own knuckle. It was a strange sensation. His nose bumped against mine, the pressure of his tongue pushing his cold palm against my lips, as if we kissed through glass.
"You remember how it was between us," he whispered in my ear. "We could continue this here or on your bed, Sookie."
I twisted in his grip. As if I would let him in my marriage bed? What was wrong with him? Maybe I was moving on, or burrowing my way up from mourning—but that did not mean I was ready to throw back the blankets and let some bloodsucking Viking into the sheets I'd shared with Sam. I twisted again. I might as well be a wisp in the wind, caught in a steel trap. I glared at the smiling vampire, since it was all I could do.
"So tetchy these days, Sookie."
Smoothly his hand slicked away from my lips. He moved away, stepping back, the image of control and calm. The steam from the shower was dissipating. We stared at each other in the fading swelter, me naked but for my thin, knotted towel. Who could say what he was thinking? For my part, I was trying to figure out how to speak faster than his hand could cover my face.
He preempted me again from rescinding his hoodwinked invitation—this time with his words not his hand. I didn't know which was preferred.
"You gave Bill five minutes," he said. "I should at least get six. And then you can kick me out of your home forever."
If anything could worsen my mood, it was this. Controlling. Peeping. Conniving. The whole stinking lot of them. And so much more. Lest I forget again—this one had donned one of his stupid disguises and tricked my granddaughter into inviting him inside and then had apparently been lurking around upstairs. The other one had wanted sex in exchange for spirit voodoo. And even the other, other one had twisted me all up inside with partial truths and assassination plots. And nothing I did made a dent.
"You've been hanging out here since Bill was here?" I asked waspishly.
"I was here because Bill was here."
Not knowing what to say to that, I chose to say nothing at all. I spun away from him and walked out into my bedroom, heading for my closet. Eric strolled behind me. The door slamming in his face was perhaps message enough. My hands went straight for one of Sam's LSU sweatshirts and a pair of my grannie stretchy pants—both of the under and over sort. No chance to give into my worst impulses in these lacey bloomers.
When I opened the door, Eric was relaxing on the slipper chair, his long legs stretched and crossed at the ankles, his eyes closed. Sometimes vampires slipped into a state of complete stillness, meditative even. That was when I liked them best. I finished drying my hair with my towel and tossed it into the hamper. The soft thump stirred my unwelcome companion.
"What does that mean? You were here because Bill was?"
"It means I had an appointment with the King to tour his home for clues."
I scrutinized Eric's expression to no avail—it was two parts impish to several parts sinister.
"And this was before or after your little costume romp?"
"After, and while we are on the tangent of the cunning Mr. Compton," that impish glee cleared away, "Don't do it Sookie. If not for your sake—or mine, frankly—don't go for your children's well-being. The shifter would not want you to indenture yourself to Bill, even for one night in bed."
So he had heard everything Bill had said. A frigid coil sprung up from my stomach to my throat at the reference to my last few exchanges with the King. I wanted to ask Eric if he knew any more about the upcoming Winter Solstice—as much as I didn't want to ask at all. I was two parts curious to several parts terrified about how he might answer. I decided to go a safer route than what had been spoken between Bill and me, and focus on something a little more concrete.
"Did you really do all of those things he said you'd done?"
"Never knew the King was such a gossip," Eric said with a fresh smirk.
"Yeah, well, never knew you were such a creeper." The image of Eric snooping through my personal effects screamed into my mind, curdling my blood. "What have you been doing up here all night anyway?"
"Charming as your home is, I only entered it minutes ago. After my tour and your conversation with the king, I went to feed Alex." I guess that explained the unlatched back door. His eyes were running up and down me, as if plucking off my clothes article by article —the suave seducer encore. "The timing of my late visit was mere serendipity."
His absence made things marginally better. I still needed to know what exactly he had done to Riley earlier. I glanced at my bedside clock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. My gaze shot right back to Eric, who still lounged on my chair.
"Did you glamour Riley?"
"It was the most remarkable thing. I had planned on it, but discovered that a new phone in the hands of a young human acts as its own type of mind-control. I waved the device at her and asked if she required my assistance setting it up—and she hollered me right inside."
I crossed my arms. "And then?"
"And then I helped her set up her phone." He shrugged. I could see it now—Mr. Bushy-Mouthed Eric sitting politely on the sofa, downloading apps with a teenager. That image was more jarring than him plundering through my panty drawer.
"And what else? Unlike my granddaughter, I'm not buying what you're selling."
"And then I left."
"Just like that."
"Just like that."
"After all that trouble—you leave? What? You were scared Jennings or I was going to come home and figure out why the UPS guy looked so familiar?"
"I knew your whereabouts—Cookie was waiting in the clinic parking lot to text me when you left, since you prefer public transportation to private hovercars. And as for Jennings, my simplest advise: Don't wait up for him."
I scowled. "Why?" My tired brain hunkered down, ready for another shock. This day had been endless, the shocks, silly, scary, somber or sensual—and above all, unceasing. Boom. Alex. Boom Bill. Boom Eric.
"No need to frown at me, Sookie. The lesser-you is enjoying himself far more than you or I at present."
"Did you glamour some guy to ask out my son? Just to get him out of the house?"
"So pedestrian. You disappoint. I didn't glamour anyone. You do realize that there are humans who for a fair price are willing to entertain other humans for an evening?"
My eyes bugged. "You set my son up with a gigolo?"
"I believe male escort is more PC. He came from a top-notch agency, Cookie assures me."
"Well, if Cookie recommends it. Sure, why not have your day flunky arrange a date for me tomorrow?" I dragged a hand through my wet hair. "Where'd you find Cookie, anyway? You've never hired a female day worker that I've known about it."
"Sookie, I have lived lifetimes that you know nothing about." Eric stood up, easy like a human. "I am answering your questions on good faith, because I have questions of my own."
I debated for a minute, spying the hour again. Tick-tock, tick-tock indeed. "You can talk for five minutes, just like Bill, and you can talk outside my house, just like Bill."
"I have a better idea."
"Whatever it is, best wait until the timer starts and we're downstairs. Else I'll deduct it double from your five minutes." I pivoted and marched to my door, blasting it open. A whir buzzed past me and Eric suddenly leaned against the frame, cutting me off. I glowered at him, my gaze flicking past his shoulder to the room across the way. The door was closed and I could tell by the soft lull of her mind that Riley had blessedly fallen asleep.
"We are not having any longer of a conversation in my bedroom—or in the upstairs hallway," I whispered in a fury.
"I said six minutes, and why don't we try your kitchen. I could use at least a TrueBlood, unless you're—"
"You just better hope someone brought the half a six-pack in from the shed last night and refrigerated it. Otherwise, you're out of luck in the drink department."
He knew me. I was too southern to deny a guest—even one as annoying as this one—a beverage. Well played, Viking. After a swift jaunt down the stairs and into the kitchen, the vampire perched idly on the countertop by the time I made my entrance, I opened the fridge to find that someone had remembered to bring it in—hiding it behind the milk as if it was a shameful fridge item. Guess that's why I hadn't spotted it on the shelf while making my late supper. Popping the lid, I heated it in the microwave and handed it to Eric. He downed it in about two gulps.
"Another, if you please."
"Really?"
He nodded, and I complied, heating the third and last bottle just in case. I set the timer on the microwave and pressed start—granting him a few minutes' cushion. Eric swilled down the second TrueBlood in the same fashion as the first, but after taking the third with a thanks, only sipped on it.
"Sorry I don't have more," I yawned, drooping down into a kitchen chair. The waves of my exhaustion were beginning to roll over me as evening tide. I'd only been young again for less than a week. These late nights took some getting used to.
"I can't stomach more than a couple bottles at a time of the synthetic stuff." Eric set the half-finished bottle beside him. "But I didn't get a chance to feed between visits at your house and visits with Alex—which dovetails nicely into the topic at hand." He matched my sleepy gaze with his shrewd one. "What exactly did my son tell you, Sookie?"
Suddenly I was wide-awake. Eric took a swig, and waited, but not for long. "If I'm on a countdown, then shall we skip the denials? I smelled you in his room as if you'd rubbed yourself all over it. So keep your answers honest—and pithy."
"He wanted to apologize." True but not the whole of it.
Eric's eyes slanted at me. "Anything else?"
"He told me about his chair—about the UV security belt." Also true. Also irrelevant. I began picking nonexistent piling off Sam's sweatshirt. Anything to avoid those laser blue eyes. I heard the bottle clink hollowly onto the countertop and next I knew I was staring at Eric's waist.
"Funny thing about eavesdroppers," he said, sitting beside me, "apart from our tendency to hear only bad things spoken about ourselves—although as Bill knew I was listening in, I'm not sure any of what he said about me counts as bad—is our likelihood of learning only truthful things about others. For instance, I now know that you don't give a damn that I tore Heidi's hands off, that you condone my punishment of Chuck for his disloyalty, and that you somehow linked the winter solstice with Bill's rather uncouth offer to resurrect the shifter, without any outside prompting."
His comment about my disregard for Heidi rankled, but the others, I could only swallow in acceptance. Time for a show. I flicked at one more imaginary lint ball, set my face to placid, and met his sharp eyes. The inability of vampires to glamour me into divulging my secrets had always been my greatest shield against them. And even a shield is a weapon.
"Alex could barley string two sentences together without suffering some sort of spasm while we spoke. What do you think he told me? And as for the winter solstice—it's not exactly a secret when it happens. I'm pretty sure it's printed on my word of the day calendar."
Eric drummed his fingers on the table, the wheels in his head rotating so loudly I swear I could almost hear the churning, his expression filled with unbearable judgement. "Would you care to know what Alex said when I asked him what you two had discussed?"
Whoops. I should have seen that one coming. My powers to deceive had worn a bit rusty. And the jolt from a moment ago was shorting out as a frayed wire; my exhaustion trundling toward me with a decisive conclusion—a whimper in lieu of a bang. "We talked here and there about other things," I hedged, stubbornly training my gaze on Eric.
"He said you spoke of your fairy nature."
"Well, we did, in a way."
"Freyda believes Alex remembers more from his abduction than he is letting on," drum, drum his fingers went, "I tend to agree with my Queen."
"Where is your wife? What does she think of where you are now?"
"I had hoped your answers would allay our suspicions," he pushed on, ignoring my distraction bait. "Sadly they have not." The drumbeat ended.
That part of me that wanted to confide couldn't hold his glittering gaze, and I chose to find my table top very fascinating. My head was starting to throb, just as it had last night from my concussion, just as it had yesterday morning from my drug withdrawal. I was sick of not knowing what was going on, sick of the intrigue and innuendo and interference. This particular ship of mine was sinking; a life raft was nowhere to be found. Raise the white flag? Go down into the depths? Why had Alex asked me to hide what I knew from Eric? Why had he warned me about inviting Eric into my home? Clearly I couldn't do a damn thing about keeping the Viking out if he chose to enter.
Greater than all this was my fatigue. Right then my body was so thinly stretched it could have melted into a puddle. Eyes on the table still, I rested my chin on my fist, deciding to say something just to say something, simply because it was close in my mind and I didn't enjoy the echo of his frustration in the room—or know how much to come clean. "Well, you didn't answer my question. Where's Freyda? Can't imagine your wife's a-okay with this little gathering."
"Freyda is with Alex. She knows I am here, and that your grandchild is here with us," he said with a softness that cut.
Bewildered by his frankness, dulled by exhaustion, I blinked my eyes to one side and blinked them to the other. "I don't see Riley," I blinked them to Eric, "do you?" As far as I could tell, he hadn't moved his body or breathed since his drumming had fallen silent, and at the moment, was staring at me as if he had never seen me before. The words, tinted in confusion, tumbled out of my mouth.
"You're being honest with me."
"And you're lying to me."
Just then, the buzzer went off. Saved by the microwave bell. It was a good thing, too. I straightened up, not wanting to waste time. I'd think about what and how to tell him that what tomorrow during the daylight. "Eri—"
That iron hand didn't even let me get his name out this time. His frozen fingers suctioned across my lips as he lifted me bodily from the chair and pinned me against the kitchen wall, not harshly, but not gently either. A picture frame rattled off its nail and crashed onto the floor. It was the last photo of my entire family—kids, grandkids, Sam.
Outrage erupted in me at the thought of what that destroyed picture represented—the aggression, the carelessness, the constant, brutal taking and taking and taking. So he had been honest with me tonight. So what? One night or two nights or a hundred nights of truth wouldn't cover the centuries of lies. The embers of that inner fire ignited; I was beginning to recognize the heat, to control the burn. Abruptly Eric's hand lifted from my mouth, and he cuffed his long fingers around my neck, his thumbs roughly stroking from my temples to my jaw line, his eyes bright as the day sky.
"Don't shine for me tonight, Sookie. I may not be able to resist." He closed his eyes and tapped his forehead onto mine, his thumbs running up and down the curves of my face. Stunned, that blaze within me withered; I was left speechless, too overcome for a moment to appreciate that he no longer bound either my body or my mouth. Rescinding his invitation was possible again.
Only I didn't. I stood there, letting the vampire hold me by the neck and caress my cheeks, his ice-kissed brow bowed toward mine. A different kind of heat simmered in my belly. That bygone flame of my younger years. My god. I was a masochist.
"I miss the old you, Sookie," Eric's cool breath blew across my face, halting my own, "this new you is torture." He moved his head down, brushing his skin against my skin, sweeping his cold cheek against my cheek, skidding his nose down my nose, an animal nudging and nuzzling another, a lover retracing the past. He drew away, his hands falling to the side as his eyes slowly opened. For once his eyes weren't inscrutable mosaics, beautiful, inscrutable mosaics; they shone as stained glass. I guess Eric was a masochist, too.
"What happened to you last night when I shined?"
"You became the sun to me," he nearly whispered. "A sun I could look upon but not touch without getting burned. The feeling lingered. It distracted me. I should not have thrown you so roughly. It was difficult. During that fight with the were, I wanted nothing more than to throw myself on top of you and become as one."
"Even if you'd burn?"
"Especially because I would burn."
We looked at each other, wary of the other, wanting the other. Masochists. A human masochist and a vampire masochist. It was too dangerous for the both of us. I could hardly believe it. I was too dangerous for Eric. The untainted, tender moment was passing. A moment of shared vulnerabilities. I didn't want it to end. In some way, he was the only one I trusted to see me as I really was and stay. Despite my best attempts, he was still here.
I focused on the vampire's hand at his side, the long, pale fingers, the bloodless cuticles, the smooth, unblemished skin. That lethal hand. That loving hand. Without thought or reason, I reached out to touch the hand, skating my fingers from the wrist to the nail tips, the icy remembrance beneath my fingers tempting me to surrender in more than one way. I tucked my fingers underneath his palm. It felt good to hold another's hand. Honestly, it felt good to hold this other's hand. Eric's blue eyes glanced down at our connected flesh, the golden of mine warming the translucence of his, as the sun illuminates the moon.
"I promised you last night that I would not doubt you, and so I am honor-bound to believe that you are lying to me now for a good reason." He turned his ancient face back to mine. "All I ask in return, is that you do not doubt me."
In that moment, I knew the answer to the question I had been secretly asking myself all night. "I don't doubt you, Eric, not now, but more importantly, I don't doubt myself." I breathed in deeply, took back my hand, and told Eric everything his son had (and had not) revealed to me tonight. The Maker listened in silence, his expression and eyes as silent to me as his voice was.
"Thank you for telling me, Sookie," he said thoughtfully when I had finished. The small smile was all the "you're welcome" I could muster. I was so profoundly tired. There was more to be said, the unspoken words chaining us together. There would be other nights. Eric advanced on me then, his lips shaped for a kiss, a kiss I would not have denied. "Eric," I paused and he did nothing, "I rescind your invitation."
Note- Sorry I missed my update last night. I had the chapter just about finished but a zoom meeting went long and late, and when I came back to it, I realized I hated everything about the tone and flow of it. I like this version much better. I hope y'all do too. One long night for Sookie. Although even longer for us, as it's taken me now four days to post. And Cary1973–total wavelength moment. I wrote my whole passage where I used the term "golden cage" and then read your review where you use the term within like a couple hours, so that's fun. And agreed, vampirism is a form of servitude, to essentially the seven sins. As well as the moon. Thanks for the reviews.