For the greater part of my life, I had felt on the fringes of society. Crazy Sookie had been the name for me in other human's minds since before I knew what crazy had meant. I was used to sticking out like a sore thumb—my unintentional family reunion with Eric and his progeny might be the place I'd felt most out of step than ever before. The reason was the opposite of what one might think. I was almost exactly like them. I was tallish, blue-eyed and naturally blonde—my shade matching Eric's and Alex's to a dye number. But I was alive—and tan. I'd been amongst more vampires, even amongst these vampires, but never quite like this.

Pam offered me a brief hug and a thorough sniff, while Karin winked at me with her wild eyes from across the room. The three new arrivals remained standing. They were all dressed in various shades of black leather, pants and boots including, as if they had come directly from a sleek, upscale biker bar. Eric's hair was pulled back in the same tight, wet bun as his daughters' hairstyles. That come and go nympho in me since my transformation wanted to find a whip and go full Dominatrix on him—the leather pants must have been designed with his ass in mind. I know it was in my mind.

Eric had acknowledged me by a cursory glance only, walking directly toward Alex to inspect the levels of his fluids and IV bags, while I inspected him from across the room. Everyone seemed to be waiting for Eric's cue to say or do anything—even me. The Viking finished his check and turned around, meeting my eye.

"Good," he said. "Cookie told me that you hadn't answered your phone or texted her back, but I'm glad she finally got through to you."

My face rumpled in confusion. "No, she didn't get through to me." I slid my phone out of my pocket—three missed calls and two unread texts. That's right. I'd turned it on silence after she'd woken me up from my nap.

"You came here on your own?"

I nodded as I looked up at Eric. "I wanted to ask Alex some follow-ups." An arching of those pure blue eyes convinced me I had surprised the vampire. Yeah, well, he had surprised me, too, today. Mr. Blood-Stasher tapped his two pointer fingers together, thinking about something. Perhaps all the other secret stores of his blood? Just then, Alex started having one of his fits—a particularly severe one: rabid frothing, eye quivering, muscle jerking.

I bounced my gaze from vampire face to vampire face, confirming a new-formed idea—Alex was not behaving like a normal drained vampire. Living for so many years and experiencing all the vicissitudes and upheavals of life over and over and over again, vampires tended to roll with the punches, remaining aloof and aggravatingly blasé about most everything—wars, pestilence, current pop-star crazes. Not much impressed or impacted them—but when it did, they could not hide their shock. Pam and Karin watched their brother seize up as if they had never seen anything as horrifying or pathetic. Clearly this was a first for both of them. Eric showed none of that. He'd obviously witnessed this before—a terrifying, thick layer of contempt sharpened his features.

When Alex had calmed, hunched over and gurgling, Eric swiped the towel from the medical counter and blotted it across his son's stained chin and mouth. "Karin," he barked. "You first."

In a blink the delicate, deadly vampire stood before her brother, with her wrist under his lips. Feeling as if I was spying on an intimate moment between siblings, I started to get up. Maybe I could come back in an hour or so. I had to get more out of Alex (and Eric) but now was not the time. It had to be tonight, though. The Winter Solstice was tomorrow.

"Where are you going?" I was almost at the door, the knob within my reach. I looked back at Eric, his expression was thunderous.

"I'm just going to step out for a moment. Come back in a bit."

Eric flicked his gaze to Pam and spoke her name. Faster than light, her doll face smiled up at me, blocking my exit. "Pam, I don't think I should be here for this."

"You're not going anywhere," Eric replied. I scowled back at him, but he'd already focused his attention on Karin and Alex, his daughter removing her arm and stroking her brother on the cheek.

"I came here of my own choosing, and I will leave here by the same right," I said.

"Pam, if her eyes begin to shine, distract her. Otherwise, she'll burn you and you'll want to hump her." He spoke this with his back to me still, not decent enough to look at me. Damn right I would burn her—and him, too. I faced Pam, fuming, attempting to call up my flame, but when I saw her round, worried expression—it all fizzled away. Alex had begun spazzing out again, more violently than ever before. I spun on my heel and sank back into my chair. This was not a hill I would die on—or even attack for.

"Do you want me to try next, Eric?" Pam asked—she was right by my side again. Surrendered or not, she would follow her orders.

He shook his head. "It's getting worse. Your blood won't help."

That took me for such a loop, I actually said, "He acted loads better before you-all came in. Only had one episode during our entire conversation."

All shades and shapes of blue eyes, including Alex whose fit had finally passed, looked at me.

"How long was your conversation?" Eric asked, his intensity now more of the curious and not murderous variety. I didn't want to answer him—but as a fellow parent, found myself making allowances for his rudeness. I'd never been in my right mind when my kids had fallen very ill.

"I don't know. Maybe a half hour?"

"He had one seizure in thirty minutes?"

"Yeah. He was worse yesterday. Had two—a real bad one right before I left. That conversation lasted about the same."

The vampires sought each other's gazes, silent words and significance passing over my head, clouds in the midnight sky.

"You must be right," Pam said to her Maker.

"Makes me jealous," Karin said, now at my other side, giving my heart a minor wallop.

Eric flicked his eyes between his two daughters then directly at me. A sort of whining was beginning to ring in my ears, like the distant wail of storm sirens from the next town over, warning that a tornado was on its way.

"Sookie," he stared right through me, "I need you to feed Alex, please."

And the tornado had arrived.

"I can't Eric." I glanced at Alex. His tired, shredded face was unreadable. "You know I can't."

"Because he killed—"

"For so many reasons, but yes, that is a major one."

"He claims he tried not to do it. You appear to trust him. You have been able to overlook—"

Normally, I counted interruptions as impolite, but this was not a normal time. "I have wanted answers. That is all. He is the only one who knows why I am in danger, what this coven wants from me, and why Sam died instead of me being kidnapped."

If this series of revelations was news to the vampires, I was none the wiser.

"Alex cannot answer many of those questions," Pam said, resting a hand on my shoulder, "Eric tells me he is unable to give any specific information about Sam's death, Grace's involvement, or any identifying things about the coven. Your blood may change that."

I cast my friend a dubious eye. "I can't compete with a super witch's spell. Alex just told me himself how powerful she is."

"You are powerful, too, Sookie." It was the raspy voice of Alex that had cut in and drawn my attention, and called me by my name. "She would tell me how much you had grown, how much you had become the very thing she needed. She would caress my cheek and assure me that my suffering was temporary, and that my reward would be healing."

"You don't know if she meant for me to heal you—she may have been referring to herself." I was beginning to worry Alex had some Stockholm Syndrome going on. The timbre of his broken voice dipped into an elegant and almost sensual sound when he spoke of the witch, a kind of reverence.

"True, she never spoke your name then. It was only an assumption on my end." He licked his chapped lips. "You did save me before."

"One way to find out if you can save him again," chirped Karin.

My will was beginning to buckle. Not for any benefit to Alex—the thought of saving Sam's murderer filled my stomach with decay and ash, a bilious filth, even if I did kinda like the guy. But I had other lives to consider. My children's lives. My friends' lives. My own. If all supernatural creatures were at risk here—what choice did I really have?

And I hated that. I hated that it had come to this. This place of no real choice. My freedom swallowed up by the exigencies of the hour.

"He's so much better than when I found him," I said to no one in particular.

Eric spoke for the first time in minutes. "That's the were's treatment. It is only delaying the inevitable." His face softened, his eyes warmed. Damn. "My son is going to die Sookie. You are my last hope. I wish you were not."

"What about your contract? He hasn't tasted me."

"Freyda is aware. She has given permission for this purpose, if it came to it."

"Okay. Let me get this straight—you asked her first if Alex could drink from me—so your precious marriage contract wouldn't be invalidated?"

"Yes. Why would I do it any other way?"

"I don't know. Maybe because it's my blood? My body?"

"I had to choose one of you to approach first."

"Surprise. Surprise. You chose her first."

His eyes tinted red, but I could tell he was trying to keep his temper in check. He needed me too badly. I didn't know if my blood would do any good, although I understood why he might think so. Years ago when Bill had silver poisoning, just a kiss from me had helped him heal up some. And that was before I was all super-charged. Oh King Bill and that proposition hanging over my head like a bough of toxic mistletoe. Royals. Always offering something with strings attached and coming in with an angle.

"What did Freyda want in exchange for allowing someone to drink from me ?" I asked, frosting the resentment on thick.

"In exchange for returning back to normal—to return to Oklahoma. If Alex is healed, we will leave the night after the solstice—waiting a night as a precaution."

"Without getting your revenge? Without finding the witch?"

Eric crossed his arms. This was not open for discussion.

"She must really hate Louisiana." I glimpsed a smile from Pam in my periphery. Alex stared at nothing, his boyish face slack. I remembered how different he'd appeared when he had smiled last night. Almost human.

"Alright," I sighed. "I'll do it, but I have some conditions." I matched Eric's steely gaze with my own version. "I want my questions answered—by you, by him, by any vampire I ask."

"Whatever we are able to answer, we will."

"And truthfully."

Eric almost smirked. "Truthfully." This wasn't my first rodeo with them. "Anything else, Sookie?"

I stood up, smoothing out my jeans and rolling up my left sweater sleeve. "I want a million dollars."

Pam actually laughed this time, Karin whistled, Alex moaned, but my eyes were on Eric. Amusement was not on his mind, nor on his face. Good, because I wasn't joking. Let's see if he would put his money where his own slimy proposition had been. And hey, I needed an updated retirement plan. Pam had been right.

"Only if it works," Eric answered in a chilling voice.

"Alright then."

Things happened quickly from there. Eric ordered Karin and Pam out of the room, neither very happy with the command. They were like children denied the chance of seeing a magic show. I walked up to Alex, trying to remember the last time someone—the someone beside me—had drank from me. I didn't have a clue. My memory of the feel of it was as vibrant as ever—pain, followed by pleasure, followed by emptiness.

"You'll stop, him, right?" I said to the Maker, my eyes on the progeny. To Alex's credit, he was mastering a stoic mien. From all the hoopla over the uptick in my appetizing scent, I'd half expected him to rub his hands together and cackle.

Eric touched me on the shoulder, and I looked up at him. He wore the most serious expression I'd ever seen on his oft-mischievous, always pretty face. "I will not let him harm you." Somehow all the silly, chic leather he was wearing made his promise more momentous.

"I believe you."

Let's see if his control was all it was cracked up to be. I took a long breath and placed my wrist an inch from the vampire's fangs. "Thank you," he muttered and bit into me.

The sharp pain passed quickly, morphing into a tickling, sweet sensation that flowed out from the bite and into the rest of my body. But something was different. A heat was spiraling with the blood speeding through my veins. Lightning in a bottle. An indefinable spark. Life absorbing death as the day absorbs the night. My head began to wobble. My body to sway. The world seemed somehow farther away.

And then the dizziness stopped. I realized it was because Alex had finished drinking, he was dabbing at my wound with his saliva. I blinked at him and did a double-take. If that was Alex. His skin wasn't only healed—it glowed, smooth and tight and full against his bones, bones that no longer stuck out at odd angles. Only in his eyes was there a trace of a malady. The whites were the faintest shade of salmon, the irises as blistering blue as ever. The glow was fading from his skin when I turned to Eric to gauge his reaction.

Bad move on my part. The instant I locked eyes with him, his lips locked onto mine. His hands slid up and down my arms, around my back, clutching at my sweater. His lips—oh, his lips—cool and demanding and hungry. Breathless, I was caught up in his beautiful chaos. And then I came back to ground, back to myself. And so did he.

I was panting. He was silent. Alex was unhooking his IVs. Thankful for the distraction, I asked him if he thought that was a wise idea.

"Yes. I haven't felt this good since—well, since ever." He jumped up and grabbed me by the arms, grinning in that Paul Walker meets boy from Boston way. "You are..." his eyes searched my face as his mind searched for the word, "divine. En levende gudinde."

He kissed me on the forehead and dropped his grip. "Translation?"I asked Eric without looking at him, recalling that Alex had been Danish in his human life. I figured the Viking had a handle on all Scandinavian languages.

"Living goddess."

Alex was circling the room, literally bouncing off the walls. It was a little unnerving for me to realize my blood was a kind of intoxicant—and serious tonic now. Eric watched his son with a passive amusement.

"Alex—you were still drained. I think you're feeling a bit of an adrenaline rush. You're doomed to crash if you don't steady."

He threw his head and laughed like I'd recited the most hilarious limerick. "Master," he bowed to Eric. "Allow me to pay half of her commission. It was an outright bargain." He began singing a lilting tune in what I assumed was Danish. Naturally, he had perfect pitch. Gorgeous. Rich. Could sing. Brains. Enjoyed talking. Once I was ready, I think I'd date at academic conferences. He skipped across the room and flung open the door, yodeling for his sisters to come back. The two appeared instantly. Karin touched her brother's face and winked at me for the second time tonight. Pam embraced him and mouthed "thank you," to me.

The two sisters had other places to be—considering their outfits either a heavy metal concert or a Grease Revival party (which were a thing)—and after a swift farewell to me and their brother, departed. I had hoped Pam would have stuck it out with me, but she seemed especially eager to leave her Maker's presence. I didn't wonder at why. Not sure what I'd do if my dad/boss had ripped my spouse's hands off. Cry, probably, for starters.

My own mind and emotions were settling back down—it would take all night and probably some alcohol to come totally down from wherever that kiss had shot me. Giving my blood turned out to be the simple part. "Alex. Is your mind clear, too?"

He halted his third trip vamp running around the room, and closed his eyes. Tranquil at last.

"No," he said.

My hopes plummeted as high as they had been sailing.

"Oh."

He closed his eyes again. "Let me expound. My mind has always been clear. It is my tongue that is cursed." He shook his head, once, twice, three times, and then his mouth popped open. He met my worried gaze, and made a half smile. "I find I can tell you about your family, and those directly related

to their involvement."

I can't say what my heart did then—stop? Fly away? Drop down to my hopes on the ground?

"It may be tricky. I still have a magic gag order on things related to the coven and those in power who support them." He waved his hand for me to take a seat. My head was still a little light, and I chose the chair that had somehow become mine. Eric, whose eye I hadn't really been able to meet since our little lip lock, crossed the room, and leaned against the wall next to me, sticking his hands in his tight leather pants. His waist was eye level with me. Focus. Not on that. After a couple more errant ogles, I kept my attention on Alex. He'd been pacing the room, slowly, perhaps working out what he could say and how to say it. He began, his voice no longer that raspy rumble, but a smooth baritone.

"The vampires who took me—I had met them in a bar in New Orleans two nights before they found me with your granddaughter. They knew where I was that night because they had planted her in my path. Grace was always meant to be bait. For me."

"But Pam introduced you to Grace. Not these other vampires," I pointed out, starved to learn the truth and Grace's role.

"They took some risks in using ignorant players as their pawns, but undoubtedly they were banking on known variables—Grace's natural allure. My sister's love of danger and mischief. My attraction to ambitious beauties. They had done their homework. Humans and vampires alike love to pretend that their actions are mysterious outgrowths of their individual wills. But creature behavior is as predictable and quantifiable as calculating the time it will take a certain train going at a certain speed, in certain weather conditions, to a certain destination."

Thanks numbers man. Statistics were not my speciality. Far from it. I wasn't any Jon Nash up and comer. I only cared about one thing—

"So Grace and Pam weren't in on the plan."

"No, not intentionally."

That breath I had been holding since he'd told me not to trust my granddaughter flattened out of my lungs. My spirit inhaled. I could have cried. I almost did. "The other vampires glamoured Grace to go to Fangtasia the same night as you?" I asked, hand over heart. "They made her do it?"

"No, they didn't need to."

"Didn't need to? Why?"

Here, Alex paused, his next words came haltingly: "As you're well aware, I'm sure, Grace is a devout Mother Naturist. The vampires I met in New Orleans—also Mother Naturists." Alex saw my incredulity and said, "Religion is not a rite for only the living."

"No, of course not." I glanced at Eric—his face. He might as well be a statue. Not a blink. Not a breath. Not a move. I had hoped he would have clued me in—clearly, there was something there. I'd never been to worship with my family members who practiced the new religion, although I had gone to a cook out hosted by them for the last Fourth of July.

"These naturist vampires," Alex said slowly, "persuaded me to come with them that night by giving me three choices: kill you or kill Grace—or if neither, they would kill us three. I chose you, as they knew I would. Myself? A young, pretty human my sister had introduced me to? Or her elderly grandmother I had never met?"

"Not much of a choice, " I said. He seemed to want me to confirm that he had made the right decision, to kill me. I certainly couldn't fault him for it. But I couldn't give him an attaboy either.

"On the night they found me, I left with them to," a pause, "learn about my target—you, or your older self. I learned nothing more than your face and address, the make of your car. No personal history. They directed me to find a cubby for the day and to complete my mission the following night as it was almost dawn. They would be watching me. If I informed anyone of my directive, they would torture me, kill me, etcetera. I hatched my own plan. There were obviously other things going on and I assumed they intended on staking me once I had finished my task."

"But you were asked to kidnap me, right?"

"Yes, to capture and then kill you. They didn't tell me at the time when that would take place. I had figured no more than the night after your abduction. I learned about the winter solstice during my own abduction."

"Right." I noticed I was on the edge of the chair.

"I asked them if I could return to Grace—she had already been involved. They thought it was a good idea. They trust her, or trust their ability to easily find her and use her. For my part, I took her as an insurance policy. During my meeting with them, some involved were not very circumspect. I was able estimate your granddaughter's value to them. She has grown very convenient—"

"Why? How?" I gagged on these two questions but a cascade of others rushed through my mind—What had these vampires wanted with my granddaughter? How often had they influenced her? How many times had Grace been glamoured—not glamoured? Alex had said they hadn't needed to glamour her. The gaps in his story were about witches—I knew that. So had she been spelled? Was she striving to be a witch herself? Frantic of thought, I almost missed Alex's answer.

"Some of those who took me value her for her connection to vampire royalty."

I frowned. Her connection? Had she foolishly bragged to the wrong people about bedding the King of Louisiana? Or how she called the Sheriff of Area 5 Aunt? I knew the answer—of course, she had. Of course my headstrong, ruthless Grace had been felled by the oldest axe in the forest—pride.

"So what went wrong?"

"I did. The weather did. Everything did."

"The perfect storm."

He smiled without warmth. "Too right you are. I knew I was missing some giant piece to the puzzle. I deduced it must be related to the grandmother, to you. Grace was in her car still when I returned, I knew she would be. I had been the one to glamour her to forget everything that had happened once we'd left the bar and to fall asleep as soon as I'd gone. I had the superintendent invite me into her apartment. It was just before dawn. I didn't have much time to snoop."

So Grace had been right—about not inviting Alex inside, at least. Oh poor Grace. I knew she had hardened the last year or so. I thought it was stress from work. Her ambitions eating away the softer aspects of her nature. But it hadn't been her own greed roughening her mind. It had been the plots of vampires and witches, even if Alex couldn't define the witches' role.

"Why had you left her in the car?" I asked, an abiding ache for my granddaughter's misuse taking root deep within.

"Another vampire's idea. He wanted her to think I'd raped her and left her. It amused him, and the others. I didn't feel I could gain their trust by bringing her in from the garage. Remember—they had told me they were watching me."

"Nice." It was anything but. Just like this conversation. It was without a doubt the oddest and creepiest one-on-one I had ever had. To talk so formally about the failed attempt on my life with the failed assassin—and murderer of my husband. To inexplicably like the odd murderer. Sharp little punctures from jagged butterflies tore up my insides. These were nerves with a bite.

"When did you learn who I was, Alex? You're talking like you'd never heard of me before those vampires ordered you to kill me."

"I hadn't heard a whisper of you all my life, human or vampire." He glanced at his stone-still Maker. "That evening, when I rose, Grace was beyond startled. She calmed down quickly. I asked her about you. I learned that you were part Fae, and a telepath. And most importantly, that," another eye flick to Eric, "my Maker had been in love with you many years before, that you had been his wife and had left him for the—for Sam."

"That's one version of events." I shook my head. "The wrong one."

Eric finally moved, at least his lips: "And yet, he learned it from your own grandchild."

"Wrong or not," Alex broke in—perhaps to avoid an argument about an ancient he said-she said, "I was stuck. I saw one out. I took it. Before we left for your town, I altered Grace's memory of the previous night. I wanted her to remember that I had said your name."

"Why did you want her to remember?"

"So that I would be remembered, and hopefully discovered—even if it was only my ashes. To be lost and forgotten is the only true death," briefly he traveled to another place. "I had no intention of following my orders after learning who you were, who you had been, to my Master. I knew that meant I would die. Unfortunately, some of the naturist vampires joined me—and Grace— in Bon Temps to assist. In reality, they were there to enforce that I did my job."

"Why did Grace come?"

"I had planned on going to your house to try and warn you. I thought you would trust me as a friend to your kin. It didn't matter, as luck would have it, when we drove into town, the naturist vampires pointed out your car. It was only a matter of minutes from then that the storm came and the rest as they say, is history."

"I don't think I'm familiar with that history."

I bit my lip. This was all too much, and somehow not nearly enough, as if I had been wandering in a desert of lies and confusion since Sam's passing—finding mere droplets of information to quench my thirst, and on arriving at the oasis, no longer able to drink the water. But I had to try.

"You don't want to hear this."

"But I need to."

He took several minutes before he would answer, pacing around the room, his voice soft and pained. "They had me track your car. The tree came down, landing on the hood, and I rushed to the car. But it wasn't you. Your husband saw me. The other vampires came then. They took Grace from where I'd compelled her to stay hidden—under the eaves of a nearby willow tree. Her grandfather saw her, shifted, and tried to save her. It was chaotic. I had to keep the one who had tried to assault Grace the night before from finishing the attempt. There were too many of the other vampires. They easily overpowered your husband. They began torturing him, including Grace's assailant. That freed me up, but I was inadequate against the others. I chose the simplest option, and stopped their fun by killing Sam."

Alex had the decency to turn away as my tears began to pour down my face. He permitted me to weep in silence. Silence is the only companion for those who mourn.

"What next, Alex? Sam dies and what?" I rubbed my tears from my face. "You made the mistake why didn't they go and finish me off? Make a clean break of it?"

"It would have looked too suspicious—the creatures who took me," a longer pause, "have managed to conduct their many illicit businesses and criminal activities by staying under the radar. They calculated the risk of achieving their goals with you so soon after Sam's death and decided it wasn't worth the exposure."

"And draining and locking you up in the King's house was worth it?"

"I owe that plan to your granddaughter. The draining and locking up combo was my punishment for screwing the pooch—the naturist vampires got a real kick out of that, considering how I had messed—"

"I get it." I didn't find much humor in the macabre joke. It just made me remember I'd never see that sweet collie again.

"In the end, I was unable to leverage Grace, but she did spare my life as it turns out. She is a talented lawyer. She convinced," another pause, and a shrug, "the coven leader—"

"Why did you do that? Why can you talk about the witch?" I asked.

"I think for the same reason I can speak many things about her during my period of internment. You broke through that spell, as well." He gathered his thoughts and recommenced, "Grace persuaded the coven leader, who arrived right as the fray ended, to drain me right away, cloaking me in the King's house. It had ample cubbies, was close by to where we already were, and always vacant. They never expected their cloaking spell to be broken. They never expected you—but I'm convinced your granddaughter had you in mind. She was glamoured, of course, before being returned to her apartment, but she was mistress of her own during my sentencing."

"I don't know why she would think that. I'd never broken a spell," I said quietly.

"Fae magic works on a different frequency than witches' magic. You didn't really break their spell. You worked around it, like a backdoor in a software code. You can only use the back door. The witches had only locked the front door, so to speak. Not that Grace would have understood any of this, but she is cunning. Very cunning."

I studied the vampire, searching beneath the palor for the person, behind the monster for the man. "You like her. You really like Grace."

"I had not touched a human woman in that way since coming over, until your Grace. It was exquisite."

There often resides a granule of good in even the most evil of mixtures. I guess Alex's authentic affection for my granddaughter was it. But I couldn't think about that. I could hardly think at all. All these explanations bogged down my mind, and the further it sunk, the more questions floated to the surface. "Why didn't Heidi smell Grace or any other vampires?"

"They used their cloaking spell, on everyone there but Mr. Merlotte and myself. They also magicked away his torture wounds."

The most obvious question. I thumbed in its direction.

"Why didn't you contact Eric during this?" Threat or no threat, he should have talked to his Maker.

Alex cast his neon gaze over my shoulder, lost for a moment in reverie. "My Maker is the most powerful vampire warrior who has ever existed. My sisters' lethalness is legendary. I had not been tested. I wanted to prove myself worthy of his ancient blood."

No wonder Grace and Alex had hit it off; they were both driven—and, at times, incredibly dumb. Alex approached Eric and fell to his knees. "Now my humiliation is complete, Master. The cruelest act of revenge for my mistake was to sever my bond with you."

This hero worship of Eric was getting to be a bit too much for me. I wanted to say: "Cheer up. He's fed you a bunch of his blood, even if it didn't help so much." Instead I kept quiet and stared at the floor. I wasn't going to go Pollyanna on him, except in my mind. And I had a bone to pick, or a vein to bleed? However it might be said. I hadn't forgotten about Mr. Perfect Maker's blood hoarding.

Alex was full-on sobbing now, blood tears streaming down his cheeks. I found I couldn't look away; he was so refined in his tragedy. Eric leaned forward and bade his son to rise. He clamped a hand on each of Alex's shoulders. "This is not a true severing. This is witches' magic. You are blood of my blood. What the witches cut, we can repair."

"Yes, Master," Alex humbly whispered, but I hardly heard it. A memory from long ago soared to the fore of my mind—a witch's chant, a red string scissored, a blood bond broken. Alex's cryptic words from earlier this evening snapped into place. My stomach flipped and a lump of dread choked up my throat. I was so close to the edge of my chair, I literally fell off it. Alex's cool hand immediately grabbed my wrist and lifted me to my feet. His keen, tear-stained eyes studied me.

"Cunning as your granddaughter. You figured it out. Good."

I looked to Eric, his expression was unknowable, but I had an inkling he'd figured this out long ago, maybe even before I had found Alex.

"They used Alex so you would come to Louisiana."

"Yes."

"They want to restore our blood bond."

"Yes."

"They're targeting you as much as me."

"I wouldn't say that—but I am meant to act a part."

I turned to Alex. "Do you know why?"

"No. I do not know what the witches plan to do with you, apart from kill you, or what role my Master might play. I have my guesses. The coven leader never confided that to me, and even if she had, I doubt I could reveal it. I only know what they hope to achieve through you—the unlocking of the supernatural world, and that such an act endangers us all."

Great. We had come full circle, back to the start of our conversation. "Sweet Almighty Mother," I muttered. And then I fell down again—right back in my chair. I could feel it—some crucial answer.

"Grace is a Mother naturist. Those vampires are Mother naturists. The witches must be too." My hand flew to my mouth and I looked at Alex. "The coven leader—she has grey eyes and a bayou accent. I saw her outside my dry cleaners—she mentioned the solstice. But I knew I'd seen her before. And now I remember where. She was at the Fourth of July cookout that I went to with Grace."

I knew Alex couldn't tell me I was right, but I didn't need him to tell me anything. I knew it for myself. I couldn't say what she wanted with Eric or a blood bond. But I knew who she was. The witch who wanted to kill me was the head priestess of Grace's church.

Note: Blah. So many things to fit in—and in the next as well, which has a much needed face of twixt Eric and his ladies. I had it in my head that I could fit it all in a chapter and get to the solstice...too many words. One of you guessed the coven leader (or Im sure many of you did) but Nicolle1977 pointed it out in her review. Fun! I had so many versions of this and the next chapter ... Thanks for the reviews. I gobble them up. Cheers!