Just to clarify, I've set this story after Katrina, which means I don't have to deal with SA, and that when Eric refers to some New Orleans' sites it is after that terrible devastation. I think that may happen later in the books, but it worked for me here, just in case you were wondering.

Part 23

Something woke me, it wasn't nightfall yet, I knew that much, and a quick check of the clock showed me that it was only just past two in the afternoon. Sookie wasn't in bed, but I could still feel her presence close by, which was probably why I hadn't woken as she had left me. I wrapped myself in a robe and opened the door of the bedroom. There was no danger to me, the basement was quite light tight. She looked up at me, just putting down her phone; presumably the ring of that was what had awakened me prematurely.

"Eric? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you." I hardly registered the words; I was looking at her hair, her beautiful, long blond hair, pulled up in a ponytail once again. A shiver ran up my spine, which really was just irrational looking back on it.

"Eric? What's wrong?" She must have thought that I was sleepwalking or something, I can't imagine the stare was comforting, though at least it wasn't accentuated by a gap-mouthed expression of disbelief.

"Your hair."

"Yes?"

"You're wearing it up?"

"I've been writing." She patted the journal, lying beside her on the couch. I hadn't seen it there. "It kept falling in my eyes."

"Of course." I muttered to myself, it was practical and quite reasonable. I didn't know why I'd been so upset. Well, yes I did. It reminded me of all the times I'd seen her before, when she'd been with Bill, when she hadn't been mine. It had made my gut flip-flop.

"You don't like it up?" She made to pull it out but I stopped her, sitting beside her on the small couch.

"No, it's fine Sookie."

She screwed up her forehead at me, knowing I was lying, and yanked out the elastic anyways.

"I'll wear it down."

"I'm being petty Sookie."

"It reminded you of something?"

I combed out the strands; curling them in my fingers and then letting them fall over her shoulders carefully.

"You've been writing?" She sighed at my pitiful attempt to change the subject.

"I wanted to write down everything you told me about yesterday, about the things Bill did to me. And I wanted to write down about how scared I felt about everything." She smiled weakly up at me and played with the placket of my robe, embroidered with a curling dragon. "Until you brought me home." I leaned into her and kissed her forehead. "I've been so caught up in my own misery I'd nearly forgotten that all of this was meant to threaten you somehow Eric, and you've done so much to restore my memory instead of searching for what that threat is."

"It is hard for me to see any of this as a threat Sookie, not when it has brought me you. And besides, when we find the person, or persons who have done this to you, we will have all our answers."

She looked thoughtfully down at the phone in her hand just then, and then back up at me.

"Eric, do I have any money?" Apparently she was learning how to change a subject as fluidly as I had.

"You mean in your purse? I don't know, I didn't look."

"No, not like that. I found a credit card in my bag and I just wondered, if I went shopping, if I could pay it off?"

I had some knowledge of her broader finances; mostly because of the fees I had paid her to accompany me on my little trips. She had been very honest with her requests then, and I was well aware that her job at Merlotte's didn't pay enough to resurface her driveway though it was in desperate need, or replace her rusted hatchback.

"I don't know that you have a great deal of money put away Sookie." I tried to be as tactful as possible in telling her that I suspected she was mostly broke.

"Oh." She seemed a little flat at my answer. "Diantha just called, she and Gladiola want to take me shopping. I thought it would be nice to get some things, that suitcase wasn't big and I'm running out of stuff."

I was an idiot.

"Sookie, of course you should go shopping. Here," I rose from the couch and went to my safe. Opening it I pulled out an envelope of bills and handed her a substantial wad, a thousand dollars at least. It was good to be the boss.

"I can't take this Eric." She tried to force it back into my hand.

"Of course you can. I am the one keeping you away from your home and all your things. You are in my care now, and I say you should go shopping. Spend it all; tell me if you need more, I'll pay your credit card bill. And go someplace nice to shop. I insist."

"Eric?"

"Please Sookie, it would make me very happy if you did this. Buy yourself some beautiful things, you deserve them."

"Umm, okay then, I guess."

I was glad she hadn't fought me on that. I would have hated to have had to insisted on the matter. I wasn't a very pleasant person when I didn't get my way, especially when I hadn't had enough sleep.

"I'll just call Diantha back and tell her I'd like to go, she said she could pick me up and we could have dinner out too." I loved that she was allowing herself to get excited about going out, her voice had risen with an innocent happiness that I hadn't heard in a long while, and I knew she would be in excellent hands with Diantha and Gladiola.

"I'll see you later at the club then I guess?" I asked, not completely certain about her plans.

"Yeah, I'll have them drop me off there after dinner. I can model everything for you." She grinned; I sincerely hoped that there would be a stop at Victoria's Secret. I kept that thought to myself and I headed back to bed. I was hanging up my robe when a thought occurred to me, perhaps born on the recently viewed surveillance footage.

"Sookie?' I called out.

"Don't worry, no club clothes, they aren't very practical anyways." She answered.

Maybe she knew me too well?

It was odd waking up without her in the house, I knew it had only been a few days, but things just felt empty. I had gotten used to talking to someone when I woke; besides Pam, and it was different walking around in silence as I washed and dressed and checked my messages and the mail. I debated phoning Sookie, just to see how things were going, but I didn't. Though I did check my phone and finally found a message from Mr. Cataliades, telling me that he was going to be emailing me a file that I should look at, at my earliest convenience. Apparently not checking my email regularly was a habit many people knew about. I settled back down at my desk, it was far too early to go down to the club, and I flipped open my laptop again.

As he had promised, the file was there, the transcript of a telephone conversation he'd apparently had with a local witch. It seemed that they were okay talking to demons, just not vampires, and, as per the invoice at the end of the email, not too shy about selling out their own kind for money.

'I hear you're looking for information 'bout a memory spell?'

'I am.' That line was credited to Mr. Cataliades, the other ones were simply labeled 'caller'. I noted that the colloquialisms of the language that this person had used were faithfully reproduced.

'You know dat's a specialty of one family, don't you?'

'Do tell?'

'Anything in it for the information?'

'Always.'

'Ever hear of the Stonebrooks?'

If he hadn't, I had, Marnie, who went by Hallow, and her brother Mark.

'I have.'

'They're quite famous for it, hear tell they even spelled a vamp once.'

That would have been me.

'But the Stonebrooks are dead. Did they pass their secrets on to anyone?'

'Stonebrooks didn't share much, 'cept with family. 'Was their Mama taught them kids the ways of mixing ash and herb.'

'So if someone else was using their spells?'

'Gotta be someone close to 'dem. Why don't you have a look 'round Charity, you get you some answers 'der.'

Charity was a hospital in New Orleans, but it had been closed after the hurricane. The caller must have meant University Hospital, at least if I was looking for records. I'd never had the need or the pleasure of visiting either institution, but it was an interesting direction indeed.

The rest of the conversation as transcribed was of little interest to me, mostly dealing with a cashier's cheques to be picked up in the New Orleans office, blah, blah, lawyer stuff, as Pam would say. I paid Mr. Cataliades so I didn't have to read those things.

The email went on to say that he was going to be requesting information from the hospital about Marnie Stonebrook and her brother. His line of thinking was that there might be another sibling out there; a sibling with motivation to harm me. I agreed with his reasoning, but not his methods. It could take weeks to get a hospital to open up medical records if they ever would, but it wouldn't take me long at all to get what was needed. I put on a tight black tee shirt, and my blue jeans, a sport coat, and pulled my hair back into a leather lace at the nape of my neck, and I left for New Orleans.

One of the first things my father taught me was to walk like a king, eyes forward, back straight, determined look, focused on my objective and nothing else. It might have looked ridiculous on a six year old, but it served me well from seven on. I walked right through the front doors of the hospital, asked for directions to medical records, and didn't even have to glamour anyone to find it. Of course, it never hurt to look good while doing it.

Once there I leaned down on the counter on my elbows and flashed my brightest smile at the lady sitting behind the glass wall and asked if I could please be allowed back to find the records on the Stonebrook family. I would have liked to believe it was my dazzling personality that got me access, but I knew better. In a few minutes she'd put up her 'Be Right Back' sign and was accessing the electronic records for me. I rested a hand on her shoulder, and leaned in to read the screen. I watched the screen roll through two birth certificates, a death certificate, and some Emergency Room notes, mixed amongst other sheets, scribbled with medical jargon, and obviously scanned from some paper chart or note pad. I wondered how any pharmacist could actually read a doctor's prescriptions after viewing that gobbledygook. I knew it wasn't going to be as easy as I had hoped to decipher it all.

I suggested that my helpful new friend might want to print out the file for me, and after a few minutes of watching the antiquated hospital printer spit out one sheet at a time I had a decent pile to take with me and mull over at my leisure. I tucked it into an envelope, at least the hospital still had those around, and returned my friend to her post, none the wiser for what had transpired. I strode out, looking every bit as if I owned the place, and walked back over to the cemetery where I had sat with Sookie only the night before, which actually was not far away, when you walked at the speed I did.

It wasn't that cemeteries were particularly favorite haunts of mine, it would be a little odd for a dead man to enjoy hanging around decaying corpses, and marble monuments to lives well lived, unless I was displaying myself to whatever forces of nature I had beaten in a supreme 'fuck you', or, I was mourning the fact that I had no such memorial. Hell, I could build myself a statue if I ever got that truly melancholic. There wasn't anyone left to mourn me anyways. No, people left you alone in a cemetery, they didn't try to make small talk, or ask you for the time, or try to take your picture for their trip scrapbook. I didn't even have to snarl at anyone to make them go away. It was a win win for me as I saw it. Wrong again.

I had barely gotten through the birth certificates for Marnie/Hallow and her brother when I was disturbed. At first it was just a scent on the air, wet dog, and something sweet; an incongruous mix to say the least. But it only took me a moment to sort them out, and I'm not even a werewolf.

"I know you're there." I spoke out to the darkness to my left, "Even if you did try to approach me from down wind."

It wasn't the scent of the sweetness so much that helped me to pinpoint its source, but the pang in my gut, the addiction no vampire who had ever tasted it could get out of his system.

"And you brought yourself a little protector too I see."

"At least all your senses haven't been dulled by your hormones Vampire."