Chapter 24
Something warm and thin was trickling down my throat, as a rich, alto voice sang a song that could only be a lullaby. The French words were meaningless to me, but they slipped over my muddled mind with the same sweet warmth of the liquid sliding down my throat.
The song paused and the voice spoke. "That's it. One more spoonful, cher." The tang of metal and the sweetness of the liquid coated my tongue and I swallowed it down without hesitation, as the voice began to hum the melody. A cottony fabric dabbed at the dribble on my chin.
"Thank you," I muttered.
"Mais oui, Sookie."
It was the sound of my own name that ripped me away from my sleepy in-between haze. My eyes shot open and I shot up. Sunlight poured into my eyes—and into my room. Dazed, I looked down. This was my nightgown. This was my bed. Those were my sheets. I turned my head. That was not my friend.
"You!" I hissed. "Get out of my house." I tried to get up but I couldn't move my arms more than an inch and my legs at all. I glared back at the witch, her startling grey eyes curious, her lips rounded in amusement. I pushed my power into her mind, and she pushed me out as easily as a hand draws aside a thin curtain.
"Good morning—or afternoon, really. You've been asleep for hours." Her grey gaze inspected me as if with care. "You are healed. Remarkable. You are more remarkable than when I first met you last summer."
"The winter solstice isn't until tonight," I said mulishly, as if that was an important thing to bring up when the woman who'd been gunning for my life was a foot from my bed—singing me songs and spooning me turnip broth, judging by the swirls left in the bowl and the aftertaste in my mouth. "Why are you here? Why did you attack me last night?"
"It wasn't night, cher. It was nearly dawn. And I couldn't risk you running off on me! I was so worried when you left the party."
An unpleasant frisson of ice shot up my spine. There had been a spy in my midst. I recalled there had been a spy at Joe's other party—who had tattled to Bill about Eric's proposition. But Bill couldn't be behind an attack on me. This witch liked her pawns, perhaps the King had been checkmated unawares.
She tucked my hair behind my ear. "Tell me Sookie—is it alright if I call you Sookie? I consider you a friend." My gaping shock was a yes, apparently, and she bullied on: "Do young children wait until five o'clock in the afternoon to run down the stairs on Christmas day and open their presents?"
"No?" A question. I doubted everything, including enduring holiday traditions.
"No, of course not! Christmas is all day, from morning to night. The Winter Solstice isn't any different." She patted my immobilized knees, or the lumps of them under my quilt. "We are a people of life, Sookie; a religion of the light. Our sacred day is from sunrise to sunrise, different from some Abrahamic religions whose holy days are marked from sunset to sunset."
Oh goodie. A history of religion lesson from a psychopathic witch. Alex had said she was as brilliant as he was—so far she had been as nauseatingly preachy. She was dressed how I imagined a professor to dress—a stuffy blouse, a wooly cardigan, and tailored slacks— all black.
"So are you saying that I'm the Christmas present you couldn't wait to get your hands on and open up?"
The dark smile on her face was answer enough—chilling me to my very marrow. I had a sickening certainty my choice of words had been spot on. This woman intended on opening me up.
"At the very least, I couldn't wait to take a peek and play with the pretty packaging until Christmas night when the other guests are due to arrive. I do apologize that you were banged up—vampires are so violent. I did try to look out for you as best I could."
"You did a piss poor job of it then."
"C'est vrai!" she exclaimed.
My bewilderment was soon pointed in a different direction when my bedroom door opened and my granddaughter walked in. I called out her name, but Grace ignored me. Her mind was shut off to me as if she were asleep. A gauzy sheen coated her green eyes, and with a blow to my gut, I realized she was under a spell.
"Release Grace now, witch." My eyes sparked and my flame simmered.
The woman blinked at me with her alien eyes like I had spoken a different language—different than the two she spoke, and then a gleeful grin spread over her face, an accordion of wrinkles covering her soft brown skin.
"Are you about to shine, Sookie?" The witch waved a hand at Grace. "Cher, is this what you told me about the other day? Your grandmother can command the sunlight?"
That flickering heat was rising, flushing my skin. Laughing, the witch grabbed ahold of my useless arm—but did not immediately release her grip. Laughing more loudly, she threw back her head and sighed an exclamation of pure pleasure, holding my arm even tighter. Another breathy sigh from her extinguished my fire to ash.
Eyes closed, the witch carelessly threw my arm back into my lap, fanning herself and muttering, "douce, douce, douce." Horrified, I turned to my granddaughter. She had witnessed the entire strange exchange standing at the foot of my bed. When our eyes met—something like recognition flickered in her gaze.
"Mon petit choux," the witch sang, "please clear away your grandmother's bowl. She finished all of her broth, and then you may leave to go to work."
I gathered Grace was "mo-petty-shoe," because that spark of genuine animation fizzled from her gaze and she dutifully walked over to the witch, accepted the proffered bowl, and exited the door without so much as a backward glance.
"What have you done to Grace?"
The witch was smoothing her hair—the lush white hair that curled around to her elbows—and stopped coiffing it at my question. "Nothing that has not been done before—or that will damage her in any way. We are a people of nature—our ways do not harm."
"Tell that to Sam. You killed my husband," I seethed. "I will pay you back for all the harm you have done to my family."
The genuine sadness on her face was a slap across my own. "That was not my plan. Do you know how much more work that caused me? How it almost ruined everything? I have had to use every last ounce of my considerable intellect to figure out a way to mitigate that catastrophe." She blew out her cheeks. "Most inconvenient. But I did rally. I did Sookie. It will all work out. You helped make it possible. I would not have found the solution without you!"
She smiled with her lips at me then—as if I would be glad she had come through on top—as if I understood a word of what she was saying. I focused again to break into her thoughts and was immediately and easily rebuffed. Her mouth suddenly formed an "oh" and she placed a dainty hand across her chest. "I know what I will do! I drained that horrible vampire who tried to hurt our Grace and who stirred all the others up into a killing spree. I shall give you some of the proceeds from the sale of his blood."
I stared at her, forehead furrowed in a mess of confusion. If I could have moved my arms, I would have slapped myself across the face. I'd never actually met a really, truly mad, evil genius—I mean who has? But I was fairly certain I was in the presence of one now.
As an aside, she said: "If I use my own cut, the cartel bosses won't mind."
"So you are in league with a vampire cartel."
"A necessary but lucrative evil. Those vampires are so hypocritical about where their blood money—get it—goes, else I would do more."
"Don't you plan on killing me tonight?" I asked. "Not sure a few bucks from a bloodsucker will help me out."
"Well yes, but it's rather impolite of you not to thank me for the gesture. It's the thought that counts, after all."
She was giving me tips on manners? And her free advice wasn't at an end.
"While we are on the topic of some of your less-than-genteel proclivities," her bayou accent as heavy as the air in August, "may I say that it pains me that you have so swiftly fallen into the same destructive habits of your youth with your renewed body."
I had no idea what she meant—again—until she gently glided her fingertips across the bite marks on each of my wrists—the bite marks that had healed as much as they had when I was my younger self. The sight of them was so unexpected, I actually asked aloud why they hadn't faded with my cuts and bruises from the crash.
"Because they are the marks of death, cher," the witch answered me in a quiet voice. "It is the same reason the undead most likely cannot touch you when you shine." She read the question on my face and answered it for me. "I was able to touch you—as any living creature could—because the living are meant to walk in the sun, to grow from its light. Have you ever seen what the sun does to a corpse?" She now read the answer on my face to the question she had asked. I hadn't thought about it—but I hadn't burned Jennings when I had shined while holding his hand.
Her fingertips brushed against my left wrist. "Alex," she said thoughtfully, "you healed him then, as I had intended to do tonight." Lightly she touched my other wrist. "And who might this be? Ah! The Viking." Her touch lingered. I wished I could move my arm away.
Thoughtful still, she looked me in the eye. "Did you make love to him in your new form?"
"That's none of—"
"That's a no, I take it."
"Did you drink his blood again?"
"No," and because I wanted her to know I had figured out some of her plan, "not that it matters since you plan on magically repairing our bond."
My eyes were slits, and my face hard after my pronouncement. Again she caught me flat-footed by a change of topic.
"Tell me, cher, are your children like other children?"
For some reason—maybe the mama bear in me—I felt compelled to answer in defense of her insinuation that my kids would be anything but perfectly normal human beings—even though I knew they were not—that streak of the Fae pulsed in their blood. "They're the same as anybody."
"Apart from your second born, of course, who shares your gifts." She tapped her temple. "It took me the better part of four months to get this spell right, but I knew it was necessary. Some in our congregation tested a less potent form of it on your son—though we had thought it would be you there."
The coven of witches at the ectoplasm spell of Grace's car, whose minds had been difficult for Jennings to read. So this witch had her thumb in everyone's pies. Where was that car now? Likely concaved into a twisted heap on the side of the highway.
"I don't know why I'm answering your questions—you've already spelled Grace into telling you everything about her family."
"You know as well as I do that, apart from the telepathy and demon connection, she would have loved to puff herself up in front of her priestess by boasting of her unusual grandmother."
I looked away from that slightly askew gleam in her gaze, and I was glad that my face was hidden from her when she spoke her next words—because they pushed me to the edge.
"His blood has been in you always, Sookie. It has aged with you; it has flourished in you. It was never drained from you—it was never transfused or siphoned. And as for the bond, that was merely muted. For the both of you. Your sweet, talented but over-ambitious friend did nothing more than turn the volume completely down. She cut the antenna, not the power cord. There is no repair to be made. I merely need to turn up the volume so that you might hear the music again."
"To sing the forgotten song," I whispered, staring at my limp arms.
"Yes, I like that. I am certain you have almost heard it since his return into your life. I do wonder that you did not hear it before. You say that your children are as other children—but I saw the lie in your eye. You must think it is all the workings of the Fae—for that is surely mostly true—but you have overlooked the other influences in their make-up. For the past several months, I have watched you, and watched your children. They can be protective to the point of violence. They can be selfish—more selfish than most. Secretive but loyal. They love life with reckless disregard—even your sweet Adele, so shy and demure, loves her husband with a frightening ferocity. Admit it, if not to me, then to yourself—"
"They're mine and Sam's kids."
She stared at me with those eyes—this witch whose name I did not know, whose reasons for wanting me dead were a mystery to me—and replied, "This is not a question of paternity or genetics. This is not logic. This is magic."
I had heard that phrase before—Alex had said it when telling me about my supernatural cocktail of blood. It hadn't made sense then, and it didn't now. My kids were Sam's and my flesh and blood and babies. And that was logic and magic, to me.
The witch leaned in and roughly grabbed my chin. "You must understand this, cher. We are all of the same earth—we are of the earth and when we die our blood and bodies return to the earth—even the ash of the undead. This earth that we almost destroyed; this earth that needs the blessings of our labors not the refuse of our lusts. We will destroy her again if we do not act while we can. You have witnessed for yourself what the blood of the supernatural, blessed by the magic of your people, has done on your land. Why would your body molded of earth, doubly blessed, be any different? Or the fruit that you have born unable to be enriched in the same way as tomato plants? I can understand you failing to sense this before your change, but not after it—though it has always been there."
Suddenly she kissed me on the mouth, a harsh, cruel kiss. I pressed my lips together and tried to turn away—but she got what she wanted—I shined, unable to control my fire while on the brink. She moaned and sighed as her lips moved sickly against my frozen but fiery mouth. When my flame died, she pulled back. "Tonight should be fun," she panted.
"You disgust me," I said. "And you will never get what you want from me."
"Cher, if all I get from you are those two petites morts—French really captures the essence of a thing, to call an orgasm a little death, quite prophetic for you—then I will consider myself as having broken even. "
"I was told specifically not to open my door to a vampire tonight," I said.
"Always sage advice."
"You told Alex to tell me that. Why?"
"Isn't obvious? It's the first rule of magic every amateur magician learns—distraction."
Another pat on my knees and she rose to go. "It's been lovely to care for you this morning and afternoon, Sookie. Thanks to the Mother for the opportunity to nurture one of her daughters. See you at the Rising of the Moon."
"Wait—where are you going? What spell did you put on me? And what if I need to use the bathroom?"
"Spell? How could I spell you? You've managed to work around my magic thus far. Why do you think I made Grace leave so quickly? Miraculously, you've undone so much, apart from my anti-mind eavesdropping spell—which took some fancy footing and fairy blood—do you know there are some Fae left in France? I have so little of their blood, however, I must use it sparingly. I tell you, you and I should start a cartel of Fae blood. We'd make a killing—oh, ha! No pun intended."
With that, she threw back my covers.
Duct tape. Duct tape and—
"Is that an ankle monitor? Am I under house arrest?"
"No, cher, you're grounded to your room—the anklet will shock you and notify us if you step foot outside the door or window, or attempt to disable it," she started ticking things off her fingers, "the muscle relaxant in your arms should fade in about an hour, you need to be showered, shaved and dressed in the exact outfit hanging, no additions whatsoever, in your closet by seven o'clock, hair down please; no calls, obviously we took your phone, but I mean no hollering out your window like some lovesick Rapunzel; and one more thing, let's see—oh yes, there is a Christmas basket on the other side of your bed, with summer sausage and wine and cheese, if you're peckish. Ignore the dark chocolate wrapper—I was weak, forgive me." She paused at my doorway, adding as an afterthought: "Naturally, while we wish no one harm, we will hurt your family should you disobey. I can get to them as easily as I got to Grace—or to you."
A lovely smile, an elegant wave, and she left. Numb, I listened as my front door shut and a car drove away. Grounded? I had never been grounded before in my life. The witch's kiss had been like a bath of slime and grease. I wanted to shower—not because she wanted me to wash, but because I needed to scald her touch from my mouth. Try as I might, I had to wait for forty-five minutes before my arms worked and I could rip off the duct tape and walk to my bathroom. During that time, I parsed out what she had said versus what I had thought before—and was more confused than ever.
Under the hot rain of my shower, my mind continued to play over our conversation. She had wanted Sam alive for tonight and had to find a "work around" since he had been killed. Was that why Sam would be returning? And Bill heard about it because he knew some of the witches involved? Was he aware of their real agenda? No matter what I may believe, I knew Bill would never support a plan to kill me. How could he stalk me and dream of bedding me? Obviously, some of those witches who had performed the ectoplasm spell had really been spies sent from Psycho Witch. I didn't believe Bill had known about them.
That wasn't what really bothered me. And as gross and humiliating as her kiss had been, her insinuations about the source of my children's complicated natures weighed on me as a ten-ton slab of rotten meat—out-disgusting my other concerns. My kids were not in anyway his kids. So his blood had never truly left my body. So what. So our bond had been muted not ended. So what.
I screamed into the water streaming into my face. All that crap last night about music I could no longer remember, tunes I could no longer whistle. It was about him. About our bond. I screamed again, because I wanted to throw the weird bitch's words back in her freaky face and I couldn't. They were stuck on me, ground into my body. Even during our post-bond/pre-break-up phase—as we had drifted away from each other—our blood had been silently calling us back to one another. All these years I had lived a happy, full life without him—not only without him, but in spite of him, in defiance of him, on top of whatever rubble had remained of our love after he had broken my heart. And in his own way, the bastard had done the same. We had moved on.
I didn't want to crave someone like I'd been craving Eric. I didn't want to be craved either. I wanted to just be. That also wasn't going to happen.
What did it matter. I was going to die tonight—a few bucks wealthier, but dead.
My mood did not improve from there. I spent an hour fiddling with the damn anklet, shocking myself and healing, shocking myself and healing. Finally I gave up, chucking the eye lash curler I had been using as a last resort picklock across my room. Eyeballing the basket for most of that hour, I relented and wolfed down almost the entire thing. I had to leave the lemon cookies for the birds. For the last few years, I'd developed an allergy to lemons. And given that I was more fairy now, somehow, I figured my reaction had probably progressed from hives to anaphylaxis.
The wine helped to make the rest of the day a little kinder—I was now mopey but also loopy. (I'd been a featherweight my entire life.) I sipped on the novelty bottle, swerving around my room, singing, curling my hair, overdoing my make-up and rubbing it off, trying on some of my new clothes I had bought a week ago—had that really only been a week ago? That witch really was insane if she thought I was leaving my house, or my room, wearing the "outfit" she had provided for me—a long-sleeved, floor-length, golden-tinted shift made of a fabric more sheer and glossy than chiffon, with a diving neckline that connected around the navel, and embroidered along every hem and fold, a rich, colorful leafy pattern of silk thread. No shoes. No underwear. No bra. Maybe some women can get away with that, but my rack required support.
A few times I tried to escape, but the buzzing shock of the anklet forced me to scamper back inside my room. The one time I made it down the stairs, gritting my teeth from the pain, a huge man in black barreled into me as I fled from the back door. He left my house but not my property once he'd deposited me in my room. Unforgivably, his mind was as asleep as Grace's had been. I couldn't find a work around him or his spell. After that failure, I totally caved and drained the three other tiny wine bottles. If I was leaving this world tonight, I was leaving it buzzed.
If I only I were a teleport, and not a telepath—I'd be out of this pickle lickety-split. Floating on the fumes of red wine, I closed my eyes and envisioned myself flying away from here, flying higher than I flew with Eric last night. I would fly to each one of my kids—my in no way tainted by vampire blood kids—Julianne and Neal would be one stop since he had randomly decided to visit his sister, Adele after that, and finally Jennings. As I imagined the face of my second born, I sent him a little message. "I'm in trouble darling. They are going to kill me tonight. Save me. I'm at home until 7." It would never reach him, but it was comforting to try.
As a joke, I tried on the stupid shift and preened around my room, pretending like I was a fairy goddess who granted three wishes to all passersby. The catch? They couldn't ask me with words. They had to play charades, and if I guessed wrong—oh well! That was the wish they got. I had fun with my little game until I remembered what Eric had accused me of last night—or this morning—or whenever we had argued and made out and I had cooked him—that I was a great pretender. Screw you, Viking! I glanced down at the see-through shift. He'd say yes please, if I told him off wearing this. Hell he'd say that if I was wearing a silver barbed wire dress; I'd barbecued him and he still wanted to splay me open and dive right in.
That wasn't totally his overactive sex drive. That hide and seek sex fiend in me since my change had not been a figment of my imagination. That much I understood now. In truth, it was a miracle I hadn't jumped Eric, Gile, hell probably even Bill. And an even bigger miracle that they hadn't done the same. If I took my experience with crispy Eric as gospel, then for a vampire, the seduction of my shine was enough to make the pain of burning pleasurable. Yay for me?
That wasn't the extent or purpose of my ability to capture the sun—just the easiest to achieve. I didn't have time to figure this all out. Maybe it wasn't something I even could figure out.
Wine always made me sleepy—sweaty and weepy, too—but especially sleepy. Naked but for the ridiculous shift, I passed out around sunset and instantly fell into a dream.
This time I wasn't the owl, or the wolf who transformed into a vampire woman. I was the moon. My light flowed around me as an ethereal mist. Far below, the scene from my graveyard played out: the owl dropping the blood red rose onto the grave, the wolf howling and becoming the vampire woman. The first time I had dreamed of her, I had thought she was Freyda in a blonde wig; the second time, I was her. From the vantage point of the moon, all was made clear to me. As the owl soared toward me, and the woman stepped from the shadows of the trees into my silver light, I could see her face. She didn't have one; she had every face. Adele and Grace and Pam and the Coven Witch, and the faces of men as well, Jennings and Neal and Bill and Eric and Gile. The only face I didn't see was mine. The owl had reached the heights of its flight and looked directly at me. I could read its mind, and I recognized the voice: "Choose you, Sookie," Sam said. "Tonight, choose yourself."
For the second time today I woke up to a strange witch in my room. I knew she was a witch because I couldn't read her mind—although I sensed some of her emotions: excitement, intrigue, desire. It was as if she had taken a diluted version of whatever anti-telepathy potion Coven Bitch had concocted. That was only the first reason I knew she was a witch. I also remembered her as the coven leader who had performed the ectoplasm spell that I had seen in Jen's mind. And the third reason—
"You're Stephanie Gale. That pro-witch spokesperson on all the news talk shows." I sat up, and noting her lingering gaze on my sheer-covered breasts, grabbed one of the pillows to cover me up. She slid her eyes up to my face, finally. The pro-witch movement knew what it was doing in choosing her as their public face: Auburn hair, golden eyes and a Colgate smile.
"Harriet—" Stephanie said.
"Who's that?"
"Harriet Lune, the most powerful witch in centuries—the one who watched over you today?"
Watched over me? Assaulted me and threatened me—and seriously creeped me out, she had meant. But hey, she spun for a living. The famous witch had kept on talking: "She really didn't believe you would do it!"
"Do what?"
"Wear the shift—like I said. She'll be thrilled you complied. With all your efforts to escape today, she was resigned to the likelihood of torturing that sweet little granddaughter of yours."
"If she does one more thing to Grace—"
"Not Grace! Who I met the other night and is just a peach, no that little muffin Riley. One of those awful vampires Harriet loves to work with is spending the night with Riley, and that too young but scrumptious Alcott and their mother, in their home. She thought she'd have to tell the bloodsucker to eat your granddaughter. I'm so happy you're dressed in the shift and Riley won't be that brute's dinner." She smiled at me and then bit her lower lip, her cheeks pink. "Can you give me advice on how to woo King Bill?"
My rage and fear switched to huh. "Umm...what?" I asked.
"He's so dreamy—Rhett Butler meets Andy Griffith." She smiled goofily now. Wow she really did a bang up job of hiding the crazy on the television. "I invited him to come tonight. I didn't tell him our plans for you—only that he might see a certain shifter who'd married one of his exes. I don't know. I kinda hoped he'd make it, for old time's sake or something."
Clearly this witch was a as batty as she was bewitched. Obsessive and slightly nerdy? Bill and she might have a shot. Stephanie looked at the watch on her wrist and jumped up. "Hopefully we can have a girl chat later. If he's into boobs like yours, I can always get an enhancement. But chop, chop. Time is of the essence."
My brain was fuzzy, somewhere between drunk and hungover. She started walking to the door, and it took me a minute to realize I could actually go with her. My anklet had been removed. I stood up, a little wobbly, but awake and as ready as I would ever be. As I crossed my room, I turned to my reflection in the antique mirror whose delicate frame Sam had carved.
Under the lights of our bedroom, the golden chiffon acted as nothing more than a coat of glitter paint on covering my nakedness, exposing my pink, pert nipples and blonde body hair, baring my imperfections and vulnerabilities to the world behind a veil of thinnest weave. In the dream, Sam had urged me to choose myself. My modesty would not be the issue that I would pit my interests against the lives of my family.
Something clicked in me. Something moved. The fug of wine and fear fell away. I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin. If I was going out like this, then to hell with them, I would hold my head high and strut my stuff for all it was worth. I was a fairy goddess, dammit, and it was time I started acting like it.
"You want Bill to like you," I said to the witch as I stormed past her, "then I suggest you die and come back as me."
Note: Sookie is coming out to fight. Yay! Thanks for the reviews.