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That damned dried daffodil seemed to laugh at me. Its fading yellow petals bent and twirled like the arms of the hats of court jokers. It mocked me—remaining dead regardless of the stringent and sharp daggers my eyes stabbed into it with.

I sat in Gran's gardens with the soil sullying my white dress and all of my bouquets of dead flowers surrounding me in a pentagram-like order. I was sure it looked as though I was trying to perform an ancient ritual with all the old crones of Bon Temps. If anyone were to peak into the backyard they'd probably think me some wacky witch, but with Sookie gone hardly anyone ever visited besides Jason.

I hadn't heard anything from Eric since I'd rescinded his invitation, nor had I heard anything from Sookie. I'd been spending my time the past few nights trying to harness whatever peculiar power slept inside of me... All between my night shifts at Merlotte's, of course.

I picked up the daffodil from the ground and looked at it with a hard, long glower. Nothing. I scooped up handfuls of dirt and even asked God to reveal His light in me once more. Nothing. Then I asked Mother Nature… Nothing. After the daffodil trials proved fruitless, I moved on to a handful of dried thyme.

There was no energy coursing through my body that the earth gave to me—only the jumpy, spastic buoyancy I'd received from three large mugs of black coffee and the organic verve handed to me by the sun's rays. Otherwise, there was nothing. I was beginning to think that my life would only be one of vulnerability—that to my lack of control over my faculties. If I could not control myself, than I would likely reveal myself at the most untimely moments to the most inconvenient people. I was vulnerable.

I wanted to slap myself for beginning to cry, but I was too self-pitying at that very moment to work up the effort to do so. I didn't wail or bawl, I just cried that hushed and suppressed little weep that only the earthworms in the dirt could hear. I felt like a child for crying because I didn't think what I was crying over licensed my tears, but I did so anyway. I was cursed by something unnatural and mystical to know more than I should, and I had no way of controlling it.

A couple of tears slipped down my sun-baked cheeks and dripped off my jaw, hitting the piles of dead flowers around me. I didn't cry for long, but my tears made damp circles in my dress. I eventually held shut my eyes for a few moments, letting my eyelashes cluster with crystalline droplets of water. I waited until I'd pressed out all the tears.

I opened my eyes and a bright and blooming garden surrounded me—stronger and more vibrant than that which had not yet met my tears. A new scent filled the air—one best encapsulating the scent of new life. Starry-eyed with my translucent, trembling tears, I lowered my head towards the revived flower-heads and watched their long, green tails stiffen and fill with fresh water. Their stems did not disappear into roots that dove into the ground, they were still chopped unevenly and bundled together—but those perished plants that had been pressed or dried or left on the kitchen counters and dining room table were once again the picture of spring.

I picked up a windflower who's leaves seemed to smile at me and held it to my chest, letting the small and aromatic dew in the white petals soak into my skin. I felt like flowers were growing in my stomach—trumpet vine climbing up my ribcage and weaving between each pale and slender rib like it were climbing the lattice patchwork of a trellis. My eyelashes extended into the careful, skinny petals of a thistle and the looping roots of cherry blossom trees pulled me into the ground.

"Georgina?" The bucolic and endearing voice of a sibling called. I opened my eyes to the sky which seemed to descend onto me like opalescent teardrops of invisible tears.

A head poked into my enchanted line of vision. It was blonde and tanned and puzzled.

"What in God's name are you doin'?" Jason asked.

I sat up abruptly and that imperceptible shield, sewn together by the flowers, that wrapped me with an earthen cloak dissipated into the humid Southern air.

"Oh," I mumbled. I pushed back my hair and cleared my throat. "What's up, Jason?"

"Listen, George, you know I love you an' all but I'm a little freaked out by what's goin' on here," he broke it down to me. "I mean, I miss Gran jus' as much as you do but layin' in her garden ain't goin' to do nothin'."

"Oh, will you fuck off?" I rolled my eyes, standing up and sweeping pellets of soil from my flimsy frock.

Jason sighed. "Hoyt's here."

I nodded, precariously stepping around any semblance or appendage of one of the flowers that lay by my feet. "Y'all want anything to eat?" I walked past Jason on the lawn and he followed closely behind me, like a puppy on my heels at the sound of food.

"What'cha got?"

"I ain't been cooking much lately, but 'fore Sookie went on her mysterious adventure into Mississippi, her and I made us some cherry pie. Care for any?" I asked.

"Sounds scrumptious, sis."

Hoyt had lumbered into the kitchen in a faded construction tee-shirt and one worn pair of Levis. When he sat down in the rickety chair at the kitchen table, the plates on the drying rack shivered with a twinkling rattle of porcelain. "How you doing, Hoyt?" I asked, scaling the table and walking to the fridge.

"Just fine, Georgina," he smiled.

I looked at him with a hospitable smile but I felt it leave my face in a sinking pout when I caught sight of the muddy footprints of extra-large boots blemish my immaculate floor. "Now Hoyt Fortenberry, look at what you done to my nice, clean kitchen floor!"

He fearfully turned his head to look at the mess he'd made and stood up; he sent the chair flying away with a clatter. "I'm real sorry, Georgina. I'll clean it."

"You better."

Jason huffed, popping his head above the opened refrigerator door. "Do you got to be such a neat freak?"

"Do you got to be such a pig?"

"I ain't no pig!"

"Excuse me, I lived with you for the first fifteen years of my life. I think I'm justified to make a statement like that. Now do you want pie or not?"

Jason opened his mouth but kept the words locked inside when I pulled the pie from the fridge and wavered it before his eyes. "Yes m'am."

"Then sit down."

Jason obediently slammed his bottom down in the chair opposite Hoyt's just at the same time his oafish friend sat back down. Out of the third of pie remaining, I cut them two bulky slices of cherry pie and warmed them up in the microwave for a few minutes. Hoyt and Jason chattered about their work at the construction site that morning while I watched the fuchsia compote ooze from the doughy mesh of the pie top. Blushing bubbles gurgled from the crystallized crust and coursed in berry rivulets down the glistening pie tray. The pie was almost the color of those carnations clipped and bundled and revivified lying in the garden out back. Those exploding bulbs that I had brought color and fragility back into…

The microwave timer went off and I opened its small door, releasing a warm air that diffused throughout the room. Foolishly, I reached into the small box and touched the tray.

"Don't you miss warm apple pie, Bill?" Sookie said behind me, her voice affectionate and too warm for the cold companion it was directed towards.

I spun around and looked at the table with wide eyes, seeing only Jason and Hoyt stare back at me with matching, unnerved eyes. "Y'alright, George?" Jason asked slowly.

"Yes. Sorry, touched that hot plate with my bare hands."

"Mhm," Jason hummed, the undertone of which undeniably suspicious. "Rookie mistake, kid."

"I know," I said with raised eyebrows as I carried the pie tin over with a wisely-chosen oven mitt.

"What happened to Pie-Pro 2.0?" Jason asked with curious eyes. He looked to Hoyt, his eyebrows lowered and explanatory. "After Gran, respectively."

Hoyt closed his eyes and nodded—much to Jason's comfort. It was one of those understanding expressions that only seemed to be compatible between two men in a moment of tenderness.

"Just off my game today, I s'pose," I bit the inside of my lip, knowing where my mind focused instead of the warming of pies.

Jason tilted his head to the ceiling with his mouth open, trying to cool the scalding pie in his mouth but keeping it planted in his salivating maw. After a few minutes of the awkward cooling process, he swallowed and sighed in the agreeable bliss only gifted by homemade pies. "George?"

"Yeah?"

"Hoyt here was jus' telling me that his Mama heard from Loretta Halstead who heard from Mary Ellen Walden—"

"It wasn't Mary Ellen, it was Jolene Walden," Hoyt corrected.

"Whatever. Hoyt was jus' telling me that there was a fanger o'er here the other night."

I pursed my lips, leaning into the counter until the surface's edge dug into the dimples at the bottom of my back. Jason's mention of Eric sent my head into the same buzz the old vampire had left my head in those few nights back. I thought of his lips on mine and the illusion his touch sent me into. With a tough bite of my tongue by chastising teeth, I pushed away the thought.

"An' how is that any of your business? Or Hoyt's, or Maxine's, or Loretta's, or Mary Ellen's, or Jolene's?"

"'Cause you're my sister, George. I already got one off and about with them God forsaken bloodsuckers, I won't have another," Jason warned. When Jason got tough on Sookie for matters like these, I tended to stand back and watch with a malicious smile pushing at the corners of my lips—watching like the Cheshire Cat from the foliage of the dark-topped elms. I rarely joined along, but looking back I am now glad I didn't; his attacks were proprietorial and overbearing.

"Watch your mouth, Jason!" I slapped him over the head.

"I hate it when you hit me!"

"Well, you're fixin' for another slap if you want'a keep talking to me like I'm your kid! You don't got no jurisdiction over who I choose to spend my time with."

Jason's dark eyes softened—not in a sympathetic or understanding way, but in the way they subside to those of a child lost in a problem when he doesn't understand a word that someone has used. He looked at Hoyt expectantly.

"It's like power… She's sayin' you don't got any power over her social life."

Jason looked back over to me, his eyes like rocks again. "Uh-uh! I promised Gran that I'd take care'a you! So, guess what? This jurisdiction actually is mine!" He cried.

I scoffed dryly at his failed attempt at using vocabulary beyond his grasp. "You are dumber than a box of hair, Jason Stackhouse."

I began making my way out of the kitchen as he groaned in fury—his chair rocking back and forth as he bounced around trying to think of the right response. "You ain't got no right to speak to me that way, woman!" He exclaimed weakly.

At the sound of his retort, I made an immediate one-eighty. Marching back to the table with a tight scowl of clenching teeth and a wild head of honey-orange hair like the frilly hat of a marigold, I swiped Jason's plate of pie up from the table and dumped it down the garbage disposal before he could stop me.

"Georgina!" Jason bellowed, looking at the slice of pie sliding down the drain like it were the Titanic slipping into the midnight Arctic waters.

"Enjoy your pie, Hoyt," I said politely to Jason's guest as I left the kitchen.

Hoyt chuckled, swallowing down hunks of gooey pie.

Merlotte's was exceptionally busy that night. Consequently, I had been slaving around my whole shift without a moment's rest yet. One six-person party of rednecks, who without a doubt had six matching rifles out in their rusty old trucks adorned with American flags and bald eagle bobbleheads, had decided to harass me partway through my shift about the color of the hair on my head in comparison to the color of the hair on other parts of my body. I also had the pleasure of another drunken hillbilly asking me to give him a "big wet one" at eleven o'clock. This hillbilly was an ex-mechanic named Herb, who had spent most of his afternoons and evenings slobbering across the bar at Merlotte's since '03—according to popular legend. I had to ask Arlene what a "big wet one" was, but not even she was entirely sure. After these two pleasant encounters, I had a five-minute contemplation in Sam's office about quitting, but then I remembered I needed some semblance of an income and I headed back to my tables.

Since it was a Wednesday and those early weekdays started heavily but died relatively early, I was cleaning up at midnight when an unexpected figure walked in. Arlene and I were wiping the tables when the winsome countenance of Pam appeared in the reflection of one of the buffed tabletops.

"Uh-uh…" Arlene shook her head fiercely, holding up her two pointer fingers and forming a cross—as if it could be used in defense against Pam. "I'm out'a here Gee, you call me when you're all good and done with the vampire, 'kay?"

I looked at Arlene as she backed away into the hallway which disappeared into Sam's office. Her crucifix necklace of sterling silver glittered and her fingers stayed pointed in the holy shape. "Alright, Arlene," I sighed. "Hello Pam."

"Georgina, I have to say, I expected you to play a more reputable role in the society of Bon Temps. You're made out to be more than some lackluster waitress," Pam commended, looking around the modest restaurant with puckered lips turned downwards in abhorrence.

"There ain't no reputable role in the community of Bon Temps. You could be a waitress, a mayor, a fangbanger, or a real estate agent… An' everyone'd still look at you like some half-assed hick."

Pam chuckled, clearly finding the societal limitations of Bon Temps laughable. However unbending these unspoken boundaries were, I quite liked living within them. The Southern charm of living out on a hill of grass under the hot yellow sun seemingly without a guise of correct grammar or ties to the urban world was gratifying in my mind, like sweet tea on the tongue.

"What're you here for, Pam?"

"I think you could take a pretty damn good guess."

I exhaled a short breath and threw my rag at the bar, wiping my soapy hands on my waist apron. "S'pose I do."

Not only was I unsure of how to approach this conversation, but I didn't even know how to explain myself. If I told her I didn't know how I had touched her and somehow translated a terrible image into her head, she'd tell Eric that I was weak but potentially useful and they'd use me at their will. My best choice was to lie about the extent of my control over my abilities.

"First off, I think it's important that you know I didn't bring this up—Eric did. Seems like you didn't threaten him like you did me; in fact, you did quite the opposite. Only harsh condition you sent him away with was perhaps a nasty case of blue balls."

"He told you about that?" I asked in a fragile voice, not knowing how to react to the knowledge that Pam knew about the escapade him and I had faced.

"Of course he did. Going for the fish, huh? Or should I say shark... You sure you don't want to start off with someone a pinch younger than Eric?" She smiled sinfully, flashing cerulean eyes in my direction with a sadistic glare. "Do you have any idea how much experience he has? How many women he's been with? And by the looks of you," she hummed, instantly materializing in front of me with a gust of electric air. One cold and elegant hand held my waist and the other pushed up my chin to raise my lips to the height of hers. "I'd say you'd have none."

"I'm not interested in Eric like that," I laughed a little harder than I should have, the coral shading on my cheeks perhaps hinting at this. I drew away from her touch and sheltered myself behind the protection of the bar after a few long strides. "Now, I imagine you came here for another reason than inquiring about mine and Eric's…skirmish."

Pam wore a tailored skirt and blazer of lavender tweed; beige suede adorned her feet in ageless pumps and her golden hair twirled into a bun at the crown of her head. She smelled like cinnamon when she approached me once more and my cheeks flushed with an unsettled heat. Sometimes Pam made my heart feel like it was dripping with warm honey.

"Fine," she continued in her monotonous purr. I sprayed a sanitizing spritz onto an old blue rag and began wiping down the bar. Colorful liquors and juices slid away with each run of the rag. "What was that?"

I quietly resumed my cleaning and thought quickly of an effective response—to no avail, however, because I ended up stuttering and humming in my discomfort and lack of grace. "It's just what I do."

"What you…do?" Pam repeated critically. "Georgina, first you revived some stupid flower with just a look then you put something inside my head I had no control over. I want to know what you did."

I looked back into the hallway, which faded into darkness about five feet in. I had no way of knowing where Arlene was hiding from Pam nor where Sam was milling about, but I was sure I didn't feel comfortable with having this conversation in a spot where any of my coworkers or late-night customers could overhear the content of mine and Pam's discussion.

I bit my lip and looked at the analog clock hanging beneath the exit sign by the kitchen door. I threw another rag at Pam and it hit her suited abdomen then fell to the floor.

"Pardon?"

"Help me clean so I can head home, then we'll talk," I explained. Pam looked at the rag as if it were some unidentifiable creature she had never before seen. After a long and lost stare at the rag, she slowly bent down and picked it up with the tips of her pointer finger and thumb nails. She walked over to the sink and dropped it in the metal tub.

"Why would I ever help you?"

"Because the faster I get done with this, the faster you'll be gettin' your answers."

She looked at the rag with another look of pronounced antipathy. "You know, I could have this shithole as clean as a whistle in less than a thirty seconds."

I stopped my ferocious scrubbing and looked at her with wide eyes. "Please?"

Within ten second of a figure whirling around the place like a ghost, the restaurant was glistening in its cleanliness. Once Pam stopped flying around like a buzzing bee, she was at the door and opening it, looking back at me. "You coming?"

In my rearview mirror I saw the taupe road twist and disappear into marshy forest. Pam's pensive glare still penetrated my cheek and I made an effort not to look her way. We were almost home and I hadn't answered any of her questions yet under the posturing that not even the car was a safe place to talk. It wasn't entirely untrue—I would put a considerable amount of things on the line just so no one knew about me like they knew about Sookie. I refused to become someone that everyone passed around and used to their own benefit.

When I turned off the engine and opened the door to my car, Pam was already out and waiting on my front porch. I unlocked the door and stepped in, sliding off my sneakers and walking into the foyer. "Come on in, Pam."

She walked in and looked around, pursing her lips in the way she always did. She followed my trail into the kitchen, where I proceeded to automatically head into the cleaning closet—stocked with newly-purchased but thoroughly-used supplies. I reached for the bottle of dish soap and took it to the sink where Hoyt and Jason had left their dirty and crumb-covered plates.

"So spill," Pam commanded.

"It's something I can do… Know things that not everyone else knows."

"Like Sookie?"

"No," I muttered, shaking my head. "I can't read minds."

"What are you doing then?"

I scrubbed the dishes hard with a sponge beneath the running water. I thought about Gran's great, old mind telling me that I shouldn't consider myself different from everyone else. I was special, but I was the same. She'd said I wasn't a mind-reader like Sookie but a past-reader. If someone had played Hearts on my dining room table and I sat down there a week after they had and touched the deck of cards they used, maybe I would see my nine cards lined up in front of me and three face-up a few inches beyond that. I would be sitting at the dining table, staying quiet and pretending I saw what everyone else saw—an empty dining table—but I would really be seeing what went on there a week past.

I explained this to Pam best I could, except I included something about being able to control whether I wanted to see something or not. So, Pam turned around and slid the toaster over to me. I looked at the reflective surface as it displayed a distorted picture of my face and I felt her eyes on me expectantly.

"The toaster?" I asked.

"The toaster."

I touched the cool surface with my fingertips and nothing in front of me changed. I couldn't control it nor could I see what had happened to the toaster in the past. But my eyes fidgeted and moved like I was seeing someone place toast in the toaster and pop it out, spreading some blonde marmalade over it with a dull butter knife. "Jason made toast o'er here for breakfast three days ago. He put butter and marmalade on it, but I was upstairs sleepin'."

Again, not entirely untrue. Jason was here three days ago for breakfast and made himself toast with butter and marmalade, but I'd been sitting at the kitchen table with him, not sleeping upstairs. And after he'd had his toast, Jason's slugged two cans of beer and some iced tea. I didn't need to be some psychic to know that, I just had needed to be sitting down at the kitchen table watching him—which I was.

Pam hummed. "Fine. Then what about all those people who were being…crucified and bled out? What on earth was that?"

"Just an old memory I picked up a while back," I fibbed. "What I can do ain't that useful, but I had to do the best I could to get you not to say anythin' to Eric."

I hoped discreetly telling Pam I wasn't helpful would help my cause, but based on her raised eyebrow and cold expression, I was worried what I'd said hadn't convinced her.

"And why wouldn't you want Eric to know?"

"'Cause I ain't going to let myself be used by you dead folk like you use Sookie. I don't want that life, and I ain't vacillating over that matter like Sookie. I want a normal life—and not in that half-assed way Sookie does where she talks that talk then goes off to Mississippi to hunt down some damned werewolves so she can find her vampire boyfriend. I won't have that life," I stated. It was a rare occurrence where I truly stood up for myself, but when matters such as these came up I was adamant.

"You're smarter than Sookie, and I'll give you credit for that. But you're hypocritical too. Aren't you the one who almost just let a thousand year-old Viking vampire god up her petticoat?"

I frowned, leaving her side and retrieving some iced tea from the fridge. "Maybe I did, but that don't mean I'll let him boss me around. And I rescinded his invitation into my house anyway; he ain't comin' back."

Pam's heels clicked in a dainty rhythm on the floor, she went to the pace of the second-hand of a clock. I heard her weight shift and a long sigh leave her mouth. "Fine. Explain the flowers."

"That I can't say nothin' about. I just like flowers and I don't like to see them die, and if I do see them die…they just don't."

"So it's…just flowers?"

"Yep."

Not a lie, so far it was just flowers.

"Well, that's damn useless and weird as Hell. But it's hard to say things surprise me anymore, this town is full of supernatural shit such as yourself. Hell, the only thing that's surprised me lately is that Eric is just now giving you a second glance and his head isn't one-hundred percent up Sookie's stupid ass."

I laughed, my body trembling with laughter at the remark and Pam's eyebrows alleviating of pressure at the twinkling sound. Perhaps she didn't expect me—typically more mousy than most—to do anything besides respond to her questions blatantly or obscurely, but the laughter at Sookie's expense seemed to take her by surprise. "And that, too. I knew you were hiding something all along, but I didn't expect it was an agreeable personality alongside a second sight," she smiled.

"I have an agreeable personality?" I looked at her with a small grin and light eyes.

"I guess so, but don't let it go to your head."

Despite her supercilious behavior and glacial demeanor, I did like Pam. Unlike most, she was unafraid to be candid, and with that was revealed the legitimacy of her compliments. Her keen insight into others was admirable as well. Perhaps I looked at her judgements subjectively, but her understanding of Sookie was faultless. Like me, she didn't understand all the fuss about the bratty blonde girl.

From my waist apron, my phone rang impatiently. Pam watched the black cloth of the pouch vibrate with the intrusion of a late-night caller and I reached for it, flipping open the sliver lid to my cell phone delicately.

"Hello?"