III.
From the moment he woke, he knew something was wrong. He opened his eyes and there was silence. None of the usual pleasant hum, the warm feeling of her humor, the whirring of her working life, her lush affection. He rose and searched through his mind and couldn't find her. It was like she was gone. With a sense of urgency he looked for the cell phone and then turned it on, which he usually preferred not to do at home, since it meant he could be located there by triangulation. He looked at his clock. It was 6:12 pm. It seemed to take forever for the screens on fucking thing to load everything he thought to himself. And then the messages began to appear in the inbox. Skipping around ones that could wait he found Merlotte, Amelia Broadway, another Merlotte. He sat down again and paused for a minute before opening the messages. Was she dead? Because surely, he felt nothing. Nothing at all of her. He opened the first message, time stamped at 11:30 am.
Sookie a no show at work. Never happened before. Not answering at house or cell. Hope she is with you?
Amelia Broadway's message, 11:45 am,
Heard from Sam. Sookie not in house. Bedroom feels odd. Very concerned. Calling Sam back, message to Bill.
Merlotte's second message, 4:45 pm
Finally got to her house. Something is wrong. Fae scent in house. Not Niall Brigant. Not Claudine. Waiting at house. Concerned.
He dressed as quickly as he could, called Pam, and then flew.
When he got to the house shortly after 6:30 pm Amelia, Sam, Bill, that waitress he knew worked with her at Merlotte's, Holly, were there, along with two other women he had never seen before. He nodded to everyone and then Sam and Bill went into the house with him. Amelia followed and explained that she hadn't touched a thing and that she'd barely entered the room on Sam's instruction. She noted that Sookie would never have left a wet bath towel on her bed, clothes on the floor or left a coffee cup standing on her dresser and that something in the room didn't feel right.
The scent of fae in the room was still strong yet it was slightly odd. It was definitely not that of Niall or Claudine or, in fact, any fairy he knew personally. But there was another odd scent. Not quite fae. He walked around looking at the room, trying to remember it from last night. Things seemed pretty much the same except for three things. There was a bath towel on the bed, the nightgown on the floor near the dresser and the coffee cup. Then as he knelt down to look around on the floor, he noticed her cell phone was on the floor near the nightgown. It was open.
He retrieved it and after clearing the missed call notice found that she had been in the phonebook and had entered a sole letter, 'N'. He put it on the dresser, next to the coffee cup, which he noted, was still half full. He took out his own phone and began dialing, while looking back at the others.
Amelia spoke up. "I have three other witches here. I want to try to do an ectoplasmic reconstruction."
Eric held up his hand, asking her to pause. Then he walked out of the room and they all followed. He murmured something in a low voice into the phone, waited to hear a reply and then began talking again with some urgency. Sam and Bill just looked at one another. Everyone was tense, worried. Eric went out on the back porch and his conversation turned heated with whomever he was talking. Bill leaned slightly in that direction as if straining to hear. The call finished and Eric came back into the house.
Within moments, Claudine and Claude popped into the living room, giving the two vampires a wide berth. Eric greeted them with a nod and gestured that they should follow him to the room and told Bill to stay back in the living area of the house. They emerged a few minutes later with Claudine looking very worried, Amelia thought. She had her hand over her mouth and was wide-eyed. Claude looked puzzled.
"I would like to do an ectoplasmic reconstruction, so that we can see what happened in her room," Amelia repeated. "We need to see what went on."
Claudine thought for a moment and then asked, "Can you reconstruct things if fairies were involved? If there was magic involved in her disappearance?"
Amelia looked thoughtful for a minute. "Really, it should work on recreating anything in the room that was in corporeal form. Beyond that, I don't know."
Eric looked thoughtful for several minutes. "Can we do it with the others outside the room and you being the only one inside with us? This is not information we would want to have passed around. It's either that, or the others will have to agree to be glamoured either by us, or by Claudine." He nodded to Claudine.
Amelia said, "Sure. We just need the right positions. They do not have to be in the specific room. We need to establish the boundary."
"Then do it," Eric said grimly.
Claudine said in a low voice to Eric, "Should we wait for the Prince?"
"It will take a while for you to set this up, right Amelia?" Eric asked her.
"Yes," she said nervously.
"Well then, go ahead and start working on it. Claudine, maybe you want to tell your Prince to put a move on it, since he wasn't very receptive when I spoke to him earlier."
Eric then went outside and sat on the back porch, looking off into the woods behind the house. He looked grim.
Sam and Bill followed him out. Bill seemed confused and in general eager, to get Eric outside to question him.
Bill said, "So let me get this straight. Sookie Stackhouse is related to the Prince of the Fae? How?"
Eric just waved his hand in the air in an annoyed fashion. "She's his great-granddaughter. He revealed the fact about four months ago. It's a long and complicated mess and he still hasn't come clean on some of it. I've known him for several centuries and he's got many enemies."
Bill seemed to absorb that information. "Did you know this before?"
"No, of course not, Bill. I didn't know, she didn't know." He seemed to think it was a topic for discussion another time.
"So what do you think happened?" Sam asked Eric, rather more pertinently.
"I think they knew the house was being watched at night and they waited until after dawn. They were obviously able to completely bypass the wards on the house, which means whoever we're dealing with is pretty magical or had been here before. I think…" and here he hesitated before saying, "I think she's a bargaining chip. At least I'm hoping that's what she is. Because if she isn't, then things may be much worse."
He stared off into the woods. He had to try to remain focused. If he allowed himself any emotion it would make it harder and perhaps more dangerous. He looked at facts. First, he could not understand how they could have found her. The only ones that knew directly of her location, and even he thought of her very existence, should be Niall, Claudine and Claude. Had they taken Jason? He wondered.
"Sam, call Jason and see if he picks up," Eric requested.
Sam called Jason and he answered. He rather lamely, since they were on the outs still, asked if Jason had seen or talked to Sookie today. Jason sounded puzzled as he said "Of course not, she hardly speaks to me." He chatted on for a minute and then said goodbye.
Eric took it all in. Clearly either they hadn't done their homework on Niall Brigant's great-grandchildren, he thought to himself, or they thought the only one that really mattered was Sookie. She was the only one that Niall wanted to meet, and she was the one possessed of the unusual gift. He wondered about something. He got up and went back inside.
In the living room he stood at a fair distance from Claudine and Claude, so as to avoid making them uncomfortable (the house just reeked of fae…) and asked,
"Claudine, have you ever had any indication that Sookie can read you? Read the fae mind?"
Claudine paused for a moment and thought carefully about it. "No, not… not really. But she's very cautious about reading people she's close to, because she's always trying to give people their privacy. What do you think Claude?"
Claude thought about it. "I think she thinks I'm too self-centered to be interested enough to bother," he said with a snide tone. "But that time when we did the photoshoot… in some ways I think she could pick up on some things. It was like she picked up on how I felt. I don't know if it was really reading me as in directly reading my thoughts. She does feel something. But I don't think it's like she is with humans or with the Weres, no."
Eric stalked back out to the porch. If she couldn't be very useful to them as a Fae reading telepath, then she was only useful to them as Niall Brigant's great-granddaughter, which meant she was a hostage, a bargaining chip, or that she had been kidnapped for ransom, because Niall was very wealthy. There were very few among the Fae who would try something like this he thought to himself. It was likely someone who was really a powerful enemy, who was still counting on the thought that his mostly human great-grandchild would matter enough to force Niall's hand on something. The whole Fae society was crumbling. They were dangerous times. Regardless, they did not have a lot of time. She was human, and expendable and if they didn't act quickly or decisively he had no question in his mind that they'd kill her. They could kill her just for what she's seen and heard, he thought.
Amelia announced that she was ready. Holly looked very scared, he noticed. The other two women looked as if they were equal to the task. Amelia stated that the two more experienced witches would be outside the house. They were opening the windows so everyone could hear the chant. Holly would be inside, next door, in case she ran into trouble reciting the Latin. Then she explained that Holly was more of a novice. He rolled his eyes wondering if this was going to work at all. Each of the four had some sort of bag of powdered stuff he noted.
Just as everyone got into position, Niall arrived. He walked in and nodded to Claudine and Claude and regarded Eric coolly. Claudine went over and explained about the ectoplasmic reconstruction. Niall looked a bit skeptical. Amelia called them into Sookie's room, the Fae on one side, vampires and Sam on the other, and pressed them against the walls out of the way. She positioned herself near the doorway. Holly was in Octavia's bedroom next door and on the other side of the bathroom wall. The other two witches, in heavy jackets because of the chilly temperatures, were outside, one on the back porch near the kitchen and another on the side of the house outside Sookie's open bedroom window.
Amelia placed some of the powdered material from the bag on Sookie's bathtowel, which remained on the bed and the she mixed more with some hair from Sookie's hairbrush, and cast it around the four corners of the room.
"Begin!" called out Amelia. They simultaneously began chanting in Latin. After several minutes a liquid image began to appear in the bed. It began to take shape and became recognizable as Sookie. Eric, and really everyone except Amelia, leaned forward in rapt fascination. The chanting stopped. The liquid Sookie rose from the bed, stretched and went out to the kitchen. Amelia held her hand up, indicating they should wait in the room. The reconstructed Sookie came back into the room with a cup of coffee in her hand.
"It's on a timer, so it's already made when she gets up," she explained by way of explanation. She had given Sookie the coffee machine, which even ground the coffee fresh right in the maker, as a Christmas present.
The liquid, ectoplasmic Sookie put down the coffee cup, which seemed to disappear after she let go of it. Then she stripped out of her liquid nightgown and left it on the dresser and it too disappeared. She started the shower running in her bathroom and picked up the cup, which reappeared, and sipped her coffee while waiting for the water to get warm. She took a quick shower, perhaps five minutes at the most. Everyone looked around the room, wondering when any intruder would arrive, but nothing untoward appeared to take place yet.
The ectoplasmic Sookie exited the shower with the towel wrapped around her. She dropped it on the bed and it merged with the actual towel still there. Everything she touched seemed to have a liquid counterpart that dissolved away to the real one as she left each object behind. She took out clean clothes from the dresser and started to dress. She looked at her inner thigh after putting on panties and then put on her slacks. She put on a bra after examining her left breast. Finally she slipped on a shirt. She brushed her hair and put it into a ponytail. Then she examined her neck even more carefully in the mirror. She went back into the bathroom and started to apply some makeup, rubbing something onto her neck, and then mascara, from the looks of the reconstruction's motions. She took up her toothbrush but then seemed to think better of it and put it back down. Then it happened. Shortly before she exited the bathroom the man appeared suddenly in the room. He was about six feet tall and seemed dark haired. Eric sensed that Niall stiffened noticeably.
She exited the bathroom reaching for her coffee cup and then jumped when she saw the man. She opened her mouth as if she had cried out alarmed, clapped her hand over her mouth and then her mouth moved as if she was talking to the man. It was then that Eric realized that she clearly knew him. Her body language showed that she knew him, but she was very caught off-guard that he was in her house, and she was afraid. She edged closer to her dresser, closer to the door of the room. She was clearly unsettled, and increasingly afraid. As she swept by the dresser, the liquid nightgown reappeared and fell on the floor joining the real one, revealing the cell phone on the dresser, which she picked up and held in her right hand behind her.
The reconstructed man put out his hands as if suggesting that she should not fear him. She kept looking off into a corner, oddly, Eric thought, as if she felt something else in the room that they could not see. It was as if she must pick up a thought signature, he thought to himself, belonging to someone who is concealed there. She tried edging closer to the door to her room, talking to the man. Her movements showed that she was increasingly frightened. She kept glancing uneasily off into the corner, near where a standing mirror was placed. Suddenly, she tried to make a move for the door and a second man revealed himself, in the corner that she had glanced at several times. Claudine gasped and even Claude leaned away from the wall, farther into the room. Niall lowered his head. The second man commanded something, pointing at Sookie. Something about him looked familiar to Eric. He had seen him before, a long time ago. The first man grabbed Sookie and dragged her easily into the center of the room. She seemed to be asking what they wanted of her. She fiddled with the phone in her right hand behind her back, seeming to push buttons slowly, as if by trying to gauge their position on the keypad. The second man, stepping from the shadows in the corner of the room, laughed at her. He reached out and grasped her face roughly at the chin and looked down at her closely. He was as tall as Niall, but much darker in coloring. He let go of her face, again roughly, and then walked around her and knocked the phone from her hand, onto the floor, to where Eric had found it, but then it faded, since the real phone had been picked up and placed elsewhere. They spoke briefly. She looked angry, but so very frightened, on the verge of tears. The first man now seemed somehow remorseful, holding her, almost protectively so, his arms wrapped around her. Then the second man motioned to them, grabbed her wrist, and off they disappeared, into the corner with the mirror. She was gone.
Amelia looked exhausted. The witches chanted some closing of the spell and the reconstruction was at an end.
Eric turned to the three fairies off to his left. Claudine was crying. Clearly, it was as bad as he thought had thought it was. But how did she know the first man? Where had she met another fairy, and why had she never mentioned him?
"Well?" he asked Niall.
Niall looked very drawn and sober. He just shook his head.
"Who was the first man? She knew him. You clearly knew him," said Eric.
Niall stood straight and tall and looked at Eric as he spoke. "His name is Preston Pardloe. He met her at Christmastime. I… introduced them, so to speak."
Eric was not liking what he was sensing. "Introduced them in what sense?"
Niall walked out of the room. Wandering slowly toward the living area of the house, as if mulling something over carefully.
When he reached the living room he turned to Eric and said, "At Christmas, I gave Sookie a gift. Because she was alone. Preston visited her. But he was not told she was my great-grandchild."
"What sort of 'gift'?" asked Eric coldly.
Eric looked at him with a hard stare, as did Bill. Claudine and Claude, who had followed them out of the room and were now pressed against a wall at a fair distance from the vampires, looked toward Niall as if they, too, wondered about the nature of this 'gift'. Sam sat in one of the living room armchairs with his head in his hands. Amelia hadn't even exited the bedroom area and was with Holly, talking through the window to the other witches.
Niall leaned against the wall near the kitchen and looked as if he was beginning to surmise that he had miscalculated several things.
"She had been alone, for some time. I asked Preston, who is very adept at changing shape, to appear as a Were, and to give her… pleasure."
At this Claudine gasped in outrage. "You did what? You had someone to seduce her after what had already happened to her under the orders of the vampire Queen? You tricked her? How could you!" She looked completely indignant and as if she was completely forgetting that she was talking to him as her Prince. Bill Compton winced and looked away.
"You said she had broken with her 'boyfriend'. I wanted to please her," Niall replied to directly her.
Eric just closed his eyes and silently shook his head.
Claudine stamped her foot in outrage. "Are you mad?" she said fiercely. She narrowed her eyes looking at Niall. "I've watched her for years. You just make no effort to learn to see things from her perspective, to see her values or understand their morality. She never would have done such a thing without some sort of magic. What have you done? Can you think she will forgive you for such a thing? And then the man turns out to have been in league with Dermot?! What were you thinking? Years of looking after her come to this?" She looked at him fiercely and wild-eyed. Claude put his arm around her and looked at Niall as if even he, too, was rather put off by the whole thing. Niall looked at her with unbridled fury.
"Do not think to tell me your opinion on my actions, Claudine Crane…"
Meanwhile, as they argued, Eric had grown to his full height at the sound of Dermot's name. In mere seconds, he was on Niall, and grabbed him by the neck, slamming the huge fairy into the wall. Claudine screamed and Claude grabbed her, pushing her behind him as Bill sprang in front of them to guard Eric's back. Niall seemed totally caught off-guard by Eric's attack.
Eric snarled at Niall, "Tell me where to find that misbegotten son of yours. You and all your scheming… What have you done to her? What have you brought upon her? Your gift? Putting her into his hands? It's the same as handing her to your enemies!" He gripped Niall's throat with his left hand and slammed him into the wall again, rattling everything in the house. His right hand pushed on Niall's chest. Sam, and Amelia, who had just exited the bedroom with Holly, were alarmed, as they looked from Eric and Niall to Bill facing off against Claudine and Claude. Holly scooted out of the room and went out the front door, just trying to get away from the scene.
"You showed no interest, Viking," said Niall hoarsely. "She was with someone else when I met her, though bound to you. What difference does it make you? She was alone. Preston was not in league with them. I had known him for some time. She deserved attention, companionship and the pleasure." Niall started to glow brightly as if he had lost his patience and would tolerate no more from Eric. His hair started to swirl and his eyes sparked.
At Niall's words, Eric slammed Niall into the wall yet again, then punched his right hand through the wall next to him and appeared to grab onto something. Slowly, creating an awful groaning sound that vibrated in the walls, he pulled an iron reinforcement bar out of the concrete in the wall. His hand was raw and bloody as he gripped the bar and pulled it free from the wall. Claudine screamed as it emerged. He pressed it flat against Niall's chest, and Niall's brightness dimmed and he gasped.
"You will tell me where to look for them, or they can start scrambling for a new Prince. She is mine and you knew it!" shouted Eric, his eyes glowing like rubies.
Niall gasped from the pain of the iron so close to his flesh. Eric's hand was still very tight around his throat.
"If I am dead, she is worthless to them, Eric," he rasped out. "That will most certainly guarantee that they will kill her. While I am alive they can try to use her as a pawn. That is our only chance of recovering her. Remember why I asked you to bring her to meet me. Remember that I knew you could protect her in ways I could not."
Eric drew still closer to him, fangs now within biting distance of Niall's neck. "Chose me why? To help you start yet another war? Is that the game Niall? Another war between the vampires and the Fae? Do you really think me that simple?" He pulled the bent reinforcement rod away from Niall's chest and then grasped it like a weapon, pressing one end against his chest again as if to stab him with it.
Claudine sobbed openly while Sam stood up and tried to think of something, anything he could do to intervene, to settle things down again. There was nothing. Bill turned to see what was happening behind him but almost instantly turned back to the fairies in front of him in case they should try to intervene. Amelia just stood open-mouthed, taking in the scene.
Niall looked Eric in the eye and said hoarsely, "I give you my word I will help you find her. We will make no war. I will do everything in my power to avert a war. We will find her, Eric. I give you my word. We will get her back."
Eric stared him in the eyes for several moments and then loosened his grip, letting Niall slide down the wall slightly. Then he pressed the rod flat against one of Niall's cheeks, burning him with the cold iron.
"If they kill her I assure you that I will kill you and everyone of them involved. You remember this while you think of how we proceed. You, your son, all of them. Every fucking one. I will hunt you all down to the ends of this earth, to the very bounds of hell. Don't think I don't know where you hide Niall. There is no place you can go that I will not find you. After my more than thousand years on this earth, you are no match for me, Prince." He spat the last part out at him.
And with that he tossed Niall aside, out onto the center of the living room carpet. The acrid scent from the iron-burned flesh wafted through the room. Bill, Sam, Amelia and the fairy twins were wide-eyed and silent, looking away from both Niall and Eric.
He walked off to the kitchen and got a bottle of blood out of the refrigerator. While he heated it in the microwave he looked at the note, still taped to refrigerator door.