A few more answers: thanks to CH for letting me take her characters out to play.

Part 30

"You brought her here?" I looked at Pam, absolutely incredulous that she could have been so thoughtless as to have brought Sookie right to the woman who had destroyed her life. I should not have doubted Pam, but at that moment I did.

"She's been watching videos." Pam said with a smirk. And I noticed, as my Sookie stepped out of the shadows, that she was also carrying the leather journal I had given her, clutched in her left hand like a bible, or perhaps better described as a lifeline. Perhaps they were the same things as I think back on it now.

"Don't kill her Eric." Sookie asked me again. It hurt to hear the uncertainty in her voice, she had been so strong before, before I had brought the full wrath of the curse down on her once again.

Slowly, very slowly, I let the witch back down to her feet, but kept my hand at her throat so she would not be tempted to try anything foolish; well, anything else foolish. Sookie came to nearly stand at my side; she looked up at me with a bewildered expression, searching for something in now seeing me again. And I understood what 'video' it was that Pam had had her watching; it was the security footage of the bar, the night previous, when we had danced, and when we had been intimate in nearly the same spot as we found ourselves standing in just then.

I found I liked the way she gazed at me, there was wonder there, not the mindless awe I tended to receive from the patrons of the club who had had too many, but a childlike curiosity as if she was seeing me properly for the first time; at least as I wanted her to see me once again. He lips were drawn into the tiniest of smiles, hardly anything a human might have noticed, but I did. I encouraged her with my own smile and nod. Satisfied, I supposed, she turned her eyes to the witch in my hand.

"Why did you do this to me?" She asked, very calmly, very quietly.

"Because this vampire had to know the suffering he caused me." The witch replied in a bit of a strangled voice. I did not loosen my grasp on her.

Sookie crinkled her brow as she continued to examine the witch like a specimen in a petri dish.

"Do you know me?"

"No."

"Then why did you do this to me?" Sookie repeated the question, her voice a little higher, and her intonation a little more forceful.

"You were a means to an end." The witch tried to make her voice sound angry, but that seemed exceedingly hard through the grip of my fingers.

I could hear the desperation in the next question, Sookie's quest to find some kind of meaning where there was likely none. My dead heart ached for her just then.

"But I've done absolutely nothing to you?"

"But your boyfriend here has."

Sookie looked up to me and then back to the witch. I could feel something building in her mind, and it was powerful.

"I have done nothing to you." Another decibel was added to her voice.

"My children are gone!" The witch wailed back.

"And you've taken my family and my friends and my lover from me! And I have done nothing to you!" Oh, how I do love the assertive Sookie, when she is not asserting herself against me that is. And I did love hearing her say the word 'lover' out loud, it is an ego thing, I make no apologies.

"Give me back my memories! All of them!" She got really close to the witch and I worried for an instant that the hag would try to reach out for her, but she did not.

"No."

"Why not!"

"You cannot give me back my children."

"I didn't take them from you! And neither did he!" Apparently she had overheard some of our earlier conversation. There was a moan from across the dance floor where the other witch had landed in a heap. Pam was on her in an instant, dragging the still semi-conscious body back to where we were.

"Is she important to you?" Sookie asked the question, and I could see her trying to look into Marie's mind as she did it. Her lips pursed together in a wry grin that complimented her narrowed gaze; she had obviously found something she considered useful. "She's your apprentice. You think of her as another daughter."

Oh my brilliant, darling Sookie.

"Remove this curse or I will kill her." I told the witch, Sookie did not flinch as I said it, her expression did not change from the piercing gaze she had on the witch. "And then I will kill you."

"Then you will never be able to tell this girl how much you love her. Can you send her away?" I could hear the wavering in her voice; it pleased me because I knew the witch was breaking. I could almost taste the sweetness of it.

"He doesn't have to send me away. I can live the rest of my life not hearing those words from him; it will not make the sentiment any less valid. I know the truth." I was surprised at Sookie just then; the sentiment seemed so deep for one with no basis of comparison.

"But you will have nothing then girl."

Sookie stepped back to my side and I felt her reach out to take my left hand in her right, holding it tightly. I had missed that touch, and I had been so afraid that I might never feel it again. I should have never doubted her strength, and her uncommon, common sense. In a way she was so much like me, and her next statement cemented that fortitude I still admire her for.

"I will have everything I need." She turned to me. "Kill her Eric."

"As you wish my lover." I began to squeeze the witch's throat. The other witch, Amelia, who by then had regained most of her senses, began to scream, as Pam bared her fangs and made for her throat.

"Please?" The witch in my hand mewled.

"Remove the curse!" I roared at her.

"I will. Just leave Amelia alone, please."

With the shit-eating grin I had come to expect from Pam when she won an argument, or was generally proven right about something, she pulled her mouth back and let the girl fall to the floor again, quietly sobbing.

"I'll need some ingredients." Marie said in a defeated whisper.

I let her go.

"Give me a list!"

Pam had volunteered, before I needed to ask, to accompany Amelia on her little shopping trip. The girl was still shaking, and I liked that. I needed her to be afraid; too afraid to try anything stupid when I let her go.

"If you are not back in an hour missy I will kill this woman here." I gestured to Marie who was leaning in a wilted sort of manner against the bar. I watched her shudder. I liked that too.

"And before you go. Fix Arthur." My bartender, my weak-minded bartender was polishing glasses as if nothing at all out of the ordinary was going on around him. If I had not known prior to that that he had been enchanted, that would have been the 'thump over the head' clue.

Amelia nodded and walked over to Arthur.

"Darling?" She said, drawing his attention to her. He looked at her and smiled. "Come here." He leaned over the bar to her. She placed a hand on his cheek, after drawing the long black glove from it. "I release you." She whispered, and then kissed him on the mouth. I watched his eyes, at first soften as she touched him, and then widen as his recollection returned, not enough recollection to pull away from her mouth I noted; Amelia did have a certain charm about her, if you liked the gothic, dark type of girl.

"Amy?"

"Hi darling." She tried to smile through pursed lips. Arthur looked around at everyone, absolute confusion on his face.

"What's going on here?"

"I will explain it all to you later Arthur. Your girlfriend is going out now."

"Umm, okay Eric, sure. Ah, see you later Amy?"

"With any luck darling." Amelia's words did not sound convincing, I was glad she understood the severity of the situation she had gotten herself into.

"Arthur? Will you put the 'Closed for a Private Function' sign out front?" I did not want any customers showing up to further complicate our tremulous detent. He nodded and went into the back to find the object I had requested.

"And Pam?" I began. She cut me off.

"I'll call the contractor to replace the door." That I had damaged when I heaved the braiser through it. "And fix the bar." That had met my fist. Gods I loved that woman. She took Amelia by the collar of her cloak and dragged her out the front door, pulling out her cell phone with the other hand. She probably had the man on speed dial. Not that I lost my temper that often, but things did seem to get broken around Fangtasia fairly regularly. I will take credit for a portion of them.

"Thank you Pam."

"What would you do without me Eric?" She grinned, obviously feeling that things were back on the right track. I was not yet convinced of that, but her attitude helped me to feel a modicum of hope. Looking at Sookie, gave me another.

"Oh, and I called Papa B, he'll be here within the hour I imagine." She closed the door behind herself and Amelia, as best she could. I could hear her laughter. Apparently I amused her. I turned my attention back to the ladies, at my bar.

"Sit down witch." I motioned to the stool she seemed so intent on avoiding.

"You can't glamour me Vampire." A thread of bravado still remained in her it seemed.

"I am not attempting to Glamour you, I am giving you an order, and one I expect you to carry out." The serious look in my eyes was obviously enough to get my point across. She sat in the high-backed chair, and in a moment I had her hands bound behind her with the packing tape I keep behind the bar for liquor cases. I had no intention of letting her wander about or make any hand gestures that I would later regret. Truthfully, I had only a minimal idea of how her spells were cast, and while I knew that some most certainly involved potions, I could not be certain that others did not involve signs, and incantations. To that end, I wrapped a bar towel across her mouth and tied it tight. She could still breathe of course, but could do little else. She seemed to understand and did not fight me.

Sookie watched the whole proceeding without saying a word, either in support or admonishment of me. Arthur returned from the back and busied himself with the sign. I filled him in on the events in the same back booth I had used to question him. His shocked expression, and then his humble apologies did not give me any satisfaction, except in their sincerity. I decided that I was not going to fire him just then. He went back to the bar, promising to watch Marie, which gave me a few minutes relatively alone with Sookie.

"How are you Sookie?" I whispered it to her, she was still staring at the witch, and at me, trying to put feelings to the words she had been reading and the images she had watched no doubt.

"I feel empty Eric. I'm sorry; I can't come up with anything better than that. I feel like I should know so much more than I do about what is going on, and that I should feel so much more. It's like a word; just on the tip of your tongue, which you just can't vocalize. Does that make any sense?"

I nodded, because I did understand that confusion, the search for a fragment just seemingly out of reach.

"I love you." Tumbled out of her mouth, with the oddest expression on her face. The words brought me no happiness however, because she seemed so confused saying them. "I watched us together, and I could see, from the way you held me, from the way I looked at you that it was true. But it was like watching a movie. I see it, I feel happiness at the images, but I don't have the connection."

"You will my Beauty, very soon." I tried to reassure her.

"I want that Eric, I want to feel the way I looked in that video, the way I wrote in this book." She held up the journal. "I want all of this to be real."

"It is real Sookie." I dared to reach out and take her hand. She shuddered, perhaps at the coolness of my skin, perhaps in lingering fear of me. I did not want to explore the possibilities of the latter. Her gaze continued to sweep the room slowly, grasping for the thread of recognition. I wondered where the powerful Sookie had disappeared to again, but of course, she was running on pure instinct and adrenaline. Fight or flight, I had seen the first when she confronted Marie, and now I was seeing the second as she fought with herself.

"I will give it all back to you Sookie." I whispered, and finally she leaned herself into my chest and let me hold her gently. I could feel her tears through my shirt.

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