Chapter 19

"It's mostly the northern-facing windows," Jason said. I picked up the old towel rolled up against the master bedroom window frame to examine what he was talking about. The towel felt damp under my fingers, and the wooden frame behind it was speckled with mold. The rain had been coming down steadily since lunch time, and I could see where it pooled along the paint-peeled window frame.

Crabsticks.

"It can't just be resealed?" I asked.

"That's fine temporarily, but it's kind of like putting a band-aid on a broken leg, don't ya think?"

Jason and Michele had been quick to pack up the farmhouse. I hadn't realized but they were already sleeping back at their old place. Mr. C managed to pull some strings along with Sid Matt Lancaster and escrow was shortened to a week. Now my home sat mostly empty and ready for me to decide what to do with it next. "I told you already I replaced some of the guttering," he continued, "but the half the shingles up on the roof are rusted and need replacing."

"Fine, fine. I get it." I sighed and took in the state of the bedroom. The floors were scratched and marked, ready for a buff and polish. The paint could do with another fresh coat.

"Sook, maybe it's time to seriously consider selling?"

"I can't do that."

"You were willing to before."

"I was financially backed into a corner before!" I tugged unhappily at my ponytail. "I'm not sure what I'll do with this place. I guess I better look into making some repairs."

"Now that you're a cashed-up business woman." He grinned, hooked his arm around my neck and tried to noogie me.

"I'm hardly cashed up!" I said fighting him off with an elbow to the stomach. Sometimes it felt like Jason had forgotten to grow up. We made our way downstairs into the living room. All that was left now was Gran's old mission-style bookcase and a coffee table. "I could stand to invest a little money into this old place."

"I can tell you now, it ain't no investment. You won't get that money back if you decide to sell." Like throwing money in a sink hole, he thought.

I scowled.

"I don't plan to get money back on investing it," I said. "If it were about that, Gran would've sold this old place long ago and moved us into a double-wide. It's about keeping history and family going."

"Fine, fine, whatever you think is best," he said with a shrug. "I figured you'd say that. I left a list of contractors on the kitchen table for you to call for quotes."

"Are you sure you're happy to keep mowing the lawns?"

"I already said I would, didn't I? Now c'mon. I'm dying in this humidity, let's go somewhere with air and have lunch."

Merlotte's was busy considering it was a Tuesday, and Jason and I followed the hostess to our table. Before I had the chance to sit in our booth, a set of arms flung themselves around.

"Sookie! No one told me you were back in town!" It was Kennedy, my right-hand gal from the Dogwood bar. I knew she'd returned to Merlotte's after the bar burned down, but I was surprised she'd hung on for so long here. She wrapped me in a tight hug.

"Hey, Kennedy."

"Now why are we so lucky to have you visiting us in this neck of the woods?"

"Had to come to Shreveport for work. A last-minute thing."

"Well, aren't we just lucky?" She led Jason and I over to a table. "Now y'all sit yourselves down right here, and I'll bring some menus and a pitcher of sweet tea. Extra lemon, just how you like it, Sook."

Thankfully, my arrival didn't stir up too much curiosity. I'd left Bon Temps more than a year ago and the gossip had also moved on. Sam was on the phone behind the bar and gave us a wave. He didn't seem particularly thrilled to see me.

The feeling was mutual.

I ordered a chicken basket with fries and Jason ordered Burgers Lafayette, the bar's specialty. A few familiar faces stopped by and said hello, and briefly I was reminded of the pleasures of small-town living. It was easy to fall into the anonymity of city life. It could be a comfort, but it could also be lonely. Here in Bon Temps, leaving your house didn't have to feel like leaving home at all.

Jason inhaled his lunch and left me with a kiss on the cheek and the check. I couldn't complain too much really, he'd taken the morning off work to pick me up from the hospital in Shreveport, and I'd been able to spend a little time with Michele and my nephew Corbett before heading over to the farmhouse.

Kennedy was behind the bar tidying up, so I moseyed over and paid. I left her a big tip which brightened her demeanor.

"You stickin' around here for a few days?" she asked.

"I actually have to get back to Shreveport this afternoon. Does Sam still keep that bus schedule behind the bar?"

"The bus? Don't be so ridiculous." Kennedy popped around into corridor where Sam was emerging from his office.

"No!" I said, trying to stop what I saw unfolding in a sort of awful slow-motion. "It's really not necessary."

"Sam? You still heading out to Shreveport this afternoon?" Kennedy called.

"Planning on it," he said, and moved around her into the bar area to deposit rolls of dimes into the cash register. Was he purposefully not making eye contact with me?

"Perfect," said Kennedy. "Sookie needs a ride to Shreveport. You're fine to give her a ride, right?"

Sam froze like a deer in headlight. "Sure," he said slowly. If he were Pinocchio, I wondered just how much his nose would be growing right now.

"You can chew me out or thank me later," Kennedy whispered as I gathered my things to leave. "But you two need to bury the hatchet."

"Not unless he apologizes first," I hissed back.

As we bounced along down Hummingbird Road in Sam's old pickup, the tension spanned miles between us, though we sat less than two feet apart.

"I was planning on catching the bus," I said eventually. Read between the lines, Sam: I don't want to be enduring this any more than you.

"That's fine. Happy to give you a lift. How's New Orleans been treating you?"

"Fine."

"Jason said you're doing well at work. Some sort of legal secretary?"

"Yep, that's right. How's the bar?"

"Great." His fingers tapped idly on the steering wheel and the silence stretched between us. This was legitimately awful. "Josie's expecting."

"Oh! Wow. Congratulations." See? I could do this. Barely a hint of falsity peeking through.

"Due right on Valentine's Day. We're not telling everyone yet; she's only eleven weeks along. On bed rest until things are a little safer."

It was notoriously difficult for weres and shifters to carry to full-term, especially for the first-born child where it was guaranteed to be two-natured.

"I'm really happy for you both. I'm sure everything will be just fine," I said. "I bet Bernie's over the moon."

"Yeah, Mom's already buying stuff. We'll have a nursery filled with items before we even get a chance to shop for anything ourselves."

I wondered, if in another life, what it would be like if it were me? Sam and I going through the same motions. Me pregnant, his momma fussing over me, turning my old childhood bedroom at the farmhouse into a nursery, shopping in baby stores for items, having a baby shower. It elicited a strange feelings from me–part wistfulness and part relief.

"I've hired Terry to extend the trailer to fit another room for the baby, and Mom said she'll move down for the first couple months after the baby's born to help out."

Scratch that, now I felt all relief. Bernie was damned overbearing.

"How's Josie gonna handle that?" I asked.

"Mom is going to rent one of my bungalows. Josie's already talking about setting visitor hours. Can't say I blame her," he added with a chuckle. We pulled off Hummingbird Road onto the freeway, and soon the scenery blurred into the familiar patchwork collection of fields and forest.

"I'm seeing someone," I said suddenly. And then just as suddenly wanted to kick myself. Why tell him? To what end?

"Eric?"

"No," I said and screwed up my face. "Why would you think that?"

"I heard about the shakeup in vampire politics this last month. Eric's in New Orleans now, right?"

"I'm not seeing him. I'm seeing someone I sort of met through work."

"Living or dead?"

"He's human."

"Really?" Sam's eyes widened a fraction with surprise.

"What's so unbelievable about that?"

"You could hardly stand being around humans all day at the bar. How're you going to manage a human relationship?"

"I don't think that's any of your business, Sam."

I watched Sam bite back whatever else he wanted to say. Instead, he shook his head and stared ahead at the road. I got the gist of it from the feelings he was radiating. Skepticism. Annoyance. Disappointment.

"I wasn't looking for your approval," I said tightly. "We can just change the subject, okay?"

"Fine by me."

A couple of miles passed in uneasy silence before I decided to speak again.

"I actually have a question you might be able to help me with," I said.

"Alright, shoot."

"I was wondering if you know about any twoey, or any sort of creature, that can take on the shape of another human?" He frequented those online shifter message boards, and plus being a shifter, I figured he'd have a better idea than most seeing as he could turn into practically all of God's many creatures, humans being the exception.

"Not in the shifter community. I mean, even the idea is pretty taboo. It ain't right."

"Okay. What about other creatures?"

"Other creatures? What do you mean?"

"Do you know of any other creatures that possess that ability? Like a supernatural being off the beaten path?"

"I mean, I've heard in Celtic lore there're some beings that can assume human form. Plus, Skinwalkers and the like. But that's, you know, lore. Why do you want to know?"

"Work related."

"How does that relate to your work as a legal secretary?"

"I'm working for Mr. C," I said, and after a breath also added, "part of my role is also as an investigator."

"Investigator? Jesus, Sookie."

"So?"

"How's it any different to the work you used to do for vamps?"

"Plenty different."

"You're lying."

I scowled at him. "Fine. I'll admit, at the moment it's quite similar, but ninety percent of the time it's different."

"Sorry," he said with a slow shake of his head. "But I just don't get you."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"You spend so much of your time trying to play at being human that you don't seem to realize you're closer than you think to being vampire, or fairy, or whatever. No matter how much you deny it."

"Excuse me?"

"Say it ain't so."

"I breathe like a human, Sam. I bleed like a human. Excuse me for believin' I belong along with the rest of them."

"But do you think like one?"

I opened my mouth to retort but the words wouldn't come. Instead, I stared down at my finger, the one I'd cut with the wine glass the night of my thirtieth birthday. It had healed cleanly overnight, no trace of a scar. Surprising considering how deep it had been. More than surprising. Confounding. It scared me.

"I don't know how a human thinks," I said eventually. To my surprise, tears pricked my eyes.

"We both know that's a lie. You know exactly how humans think. It's why you can't stand to be with them."

"I don't know what you want me to say," I said.

He sighed. "Nothing, Sook, nothing. Forget I said anything. But to answer your question, can't say I've ever heard a shifter do such a thing. I don't know what you're caught up in, I just hope you're keeping out of trouble." And away from vampires, he added mentally as an afterthought.

"I try to keep out of it, but it comes looking for me."

"If that's what you tell yourself."

At the end of the ride, wonder of all wonders, Sam did decide to apologize. Both for upsetting me during the drive and for his callous behavior after the Dogwood bar had burned down. I accepted. I was never one to hold a grudge. Yet I felt completely unaffected by his apology. I liked Sam; he'd been a great friend. Our paths had run parallel for so long, then they converged briefly, and now we were back on our separate roads once more. He was part of my life no longer.

"I'll never forget all you've done for me, Sookie. More than I could ever reasonably expect or thank you for," he said. That was an understatement. I'd brought him back from the dead. "And if there's anything I can help you with down the road, please give me a shout."

He dropped me off out the front of the Marriot, and I let myself into my room. It was only three p.m., though it could've been the middle of the night for how weary I felt.

I unpacked my work laptop from my overnight bag and checked my inbox, caught up on a little admin work and responded to some emails. There was always more to do. That was one thing I missed from working at the bar. Not so much from when I owned The Dogwood, but when I waitressed at Merlotte's. The feeling of completion and satisfaction when working a closing shift. Filling the napkin holders, stacking chairs on tables, wiping down the menus and setting them out ready for the next shift. You'd turn off the lights and Sam would lock up and you knew everything was done.

I woke with a jolt to the fire alarm blaring. I sat up with a gasp, fumbling blindly in the dark. I switched on the lamp beside the bed and realized it wasn't a fire alarm, but in fact my cell phone. My heart hammered in my chest. I answered the phone.

"Miss Stackhouse." It was Mr. C.

"Good evening," I croaked.

"Did I wake you?"

"No, it's fine. How is everything?" I checked the beside alarm clock. It was nine p.m. Yikes, I'd been out to it for nearly five hours.

"Auspicious. It seems your words had the right effect this morning."

"Is that so?"

"Miss van Buren has retracted her statement and as a result the D.A. has chosen not to press charges."

"What about the witness?"

"Miss van Buren claims it was a consensual act that the neighbor witnessed, simply a case of mistaking the nature of what he walked in on."

"So, Pam is—"

"I'm out." Pam's voice came over the line. "You better get your fairy butt down to Fangtasia because I'm dedicating tonight to you."

I laughed. "Alright, but not immediately. I think Thalia was going to help me with something, but I could come by afterward?"

The idea of a letting my hair down and catching up with my old pal actually didn't seem so bad. Plus, I figured all of us—Thalia, Eric, Pam and myself—needed to discuss what exactly had happened to Pam and why she was targeted. I just hoped researching Thalia's library would prove fruitful. Grasping at straws was proving tiresome. Frankly, it was a little past grasping at straws. It felt like banging my head against a brick wall while people around us were dying and getting hurt.

"Listen to you on first name basis with the queen," Pam said amusedly.

"I knew her before she was royalty."

"So did I, but you won't see me risking my neck to not address her correctly." She paused for a moment before speaking again. "How was Chloe this morning?"

"Fine. Recovering but in fine spirits, more or less. Have you spoken to her?"

"Not yet. I'm going to go to the hospital now."

"You've missed visiting hours."

"Like that would stop me." Well, it had certainly never stopped Eric or Bill in the past. "Do you think she would welcome my presence?" Pam asked quietly.

I'd honestly never heard Pam sound so uncertain.

"I think so." But I couldn't be sure.

Mr. C got back on the line, and we finished up the call outlining some of the work I'd caught up on and a couple of things he wanted me to do first thing in the morning. He said to arrange a bus trip or car hire so I could get to New Orleans and that he would comp the cost. I hung up and checked my messages.

There was one from Danny, but I decided to leave it and check Thalia's first. She was informing me she that she was enroute to pick me up. The message had arrived twenty minutes earlier, so I leaped into action. I changed outfits, brushed my teeth, and turned my messy hair into a style that appeared deliberate rather than unintentional, though truthfully it ended up looking a little of both. Thalia called not a minute later to say she were waiting in the parking lot.

"You're unguarded tonight," I said hopping into the front seat of the SUV. I didn't think I'd ever seen Thalia drive, which worried me. She seemed to resist most modern things. The way she used her cellphone reminded me of the way I'd seen Gran type on our old computer, one finger at a time and with extreme reluctance.

"Eric is not my guard. I don't need a guard," she said with a glower.

"I don't doubt that," I said as she pulled out onto a main road. We were headed south-east and away from the city. "I just thought it was royal protocol."

"What protocol?" She sniffed. "I make my own protocol."

A short, surprisingly smooth, drive later, we ended up at East Shreveport near Spring Lake and in the driveway of a small, stone cottage with a black thatched roof. The windows were dark. The home looked both modern and ancient.

"This is where you lived, huh?"

"If I could erase it from your memory, I would," she said.

"Oh, ease up. I'm not planning on selling your dirty secrets to the tabloids."

"You wouldn't find any."

"But I bet if I could, I'd make a pretty penny on them," I said, and Thalia made a sort of rasping sound, that I realized a moment later was a laugh. I noted the large bronze statue of a bull in her front yard and felt it wise not to say anything else. As she unlocked the front door to the house, Eric arrived with a loud thump on the lawn. We both turned to look. His hair was damp and wild from the misty rain; he'd flown and seemed wobbly on his feet.

"You said you wouldn't come," said Thalia.

"Changed my mind," he replied, brushing moisture off the shoulders of his leather jacket.

"Very well."

We followed Thalia in pitch black darkness down a long, slate-floored hallway, lined with all manner of swords and weaponry. At the end of the hall, a piece was hung on brass hooks—a short doubled-edged sword. It was lit from above like a museum piece.

"What that's?" I asked. It seemed important.

"A sword from my youth."

"A thrusting sword," Eric remarked. "For close quarter fighting."

Through the hall, Thalia pointed us in the direction of an addition at the end of the house. She opened the heavy door and turned on a light. Warm yellow light bathed the room, revealing a small space lined with shelves of books and a large wooden credenza on one side. A leather reading chair sat in the center of the room and beside it a low coffee table with a marble chess set on top. It was cozy, and I could just picture Thalia sitting here and reading.

Thalia opened a large panel at the front of the credenza. Inside was another shelf of books. Unlike the books adorning the walls, these were older. Much older. Their spines were cracked and weathered. I reached across to touch one, but my hand was promptly slapped away.

"The oils in your skin are damaging," she said. Ok-ay then. I rubbed my stinging fingers. "Vampires have no such issue," she added.

"Ah, I like this one," Eric said and carefully removed a book.

"What is it?" I asked leaning around his shoulder.

"Argonautica," he said, turning pages. He began reading aloud, though it was gobble-de-gook to my ears. The script was indecipherable also.

"What's it about?" I asked.

"It tells the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts to retrieve the golden fleece," Thalia said to me. To Eric, she said, "Your Ancient Greek has improved."

"It seemed wise to brush up with on my language skills with a Greek queen on the throne," he said, not lifting his gaze from the page. He was in a weird mood.

"What else have you got there?" I asked Thalia. She'd extracted a thick leather-bound book from the shelf that resembled those old encyclopedias door-to-door salesmen used to hawk.

"I stole from a hedge witch," she said and shifted the chess set to sit the book down on the low table.

"Stole it?" I kneeled down next to her to examine it alongside her.

She shrugged. "She was delicious."

"Please. No further explanation required."

The book was in markedly better condition than the others, and I wondered how recently the hedge witch had suffered her fate, whatever it was, at the hands of Thalia.

The pages of the tome were stiff and thick, written with the distinctive scrawl of a nib and ink. I cautiously made my way through. The book was a bestiary on all manner of supernatural creatures, big and small, vampires, werewolves, pixies, brownies, goblins, a terrifying array of demons, and even low-level Gods. Some pages were dedicated to entire species, whereas others described single individuals that possessed strange abilities. I could barely make out the writing, so Thalia translated for me softly in her deep, accented murmur.

I took notes on a scrap of paper Thalia procured for me. I detailed any creature that possessed the ability to mimic the shape of humans, which was a spare few. Eric paused reading for a moment to regard the list, the corner of his mouth twisting into an odd smile.

"Do you recognize any of these names?" I asked him. Our list amounted a grand total of four names.

"Some." He pointed to the name Púca, a Celtic fairy.

"A fairy? But how likely is this to be a fairy? They've all gone."

"As far as we know," Thalia muttered.

"Púcaí are considered omens of fortune, both good and bad."

"Púcaí? As in plural? It's not a single individual?" I asked. The witch's listing in the book made it seem like it was the name of a distinct person.

"She probably didn't know," said Thalia. "Some of the information is incomplete." She nodded to the page which described a Chinese creature that could take the form of both a fox and a beautiful woman, the listing was half finished.

"What need would a witch have for such a book?" I asked.

"She was documenting creatures in her attempts to steal powers." Thalia's eyes glittered darkly in memory.

"Is that a thing? Can witches really do that?"

Eric scoffed. "Unlikely."

"She wasn't successful," Thalia said. "She lured me to her home to extract my immortality. As far as I could tell she had not been successful in any other previous attempts at stealing powers."

"And now?"

"Now she is dust. She did not live to see another day."

"Alright, alright. I already told you I don't wanna to know." As much as I liked and respected my vampire friends, to be friendly with them often meant ignoring huge rafts of their horrifying past conduct.

Eric made a little noise beside me.

"What?" I said, looking up.

"It's so easy for you to ignore the parts of our species you don't like in order to make use of the parts you do."

"I beg your pardon," I said. "What in the heck is that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what you think it means." Eric shut the book, returning it to its place on the shelf, then left the room.

"What crawled up his ass?" I asked Thalia. I stared at the empty doorway he'd just marched through. You'd think he'd be in a good mood after things worked out for Pam. Thalia grunted, which was really no answer at all, and returned the hedge witch's compendium back onto the shelf.

"We've found everything we can here," she informed me, pulling the lid of the credenza closed.

Eric was waiting for us outside by the SUV, arms crossed, with an expression as hard as cured concrete. Thalia said something to him in Greek, to which he also replied in the same tongue.

"Shotgun," I announced loudly, choosing to ignore Eric's little temper tantrum. I moved past him to open the front passenger door.

"Don't bother. I'm flying."

I tried to ignore his mood. I really did. Tried to ignore the derision in his tone, and his holier than though attitude, but the heat at the collar of my neck was rising and I was powerless to stop it.

"Have I done something to annoy you that I don't know about?" I said, whirling around. "And since when have I been the one to use vampires? By my record it has overwhelmingly been the other way around. Y'all have used me as you've seen fit and for your own devices since you first entered my life."

"I haven't," Thalia said and unlocked the car.

"There's always an exception to the rule," I said, more nastily than I intended. I stopped myself and exhaled in a loud huff. "Sorry."

"Fine," Thalia said clearly unbothered by my outburst.

"Quit excusing her childish behavior," Eric said to her.

"Childish?" I all but screeched.

"We have bigger problems than you finding issue in my every word and action, as per usual. You think this list will get us any closer? My vampire progeny narrowly avoided a murder charge tonight. And we are no closer than we were weeks ago."

"She narrowly avoided a murder charge? How about a young woman was nearly drained to death last night? Of course, you wouldn't consider the mortal toll." I threw my hands up in the air. "Or is this not about stopping a killer? Are you helping solely to save vampire face for the President Alpha?"

His cold expression answered that question conclusively for me.

"I don't know why I'm surprised," I said bitterly.

"Me either," he replied. "Stop ascribing human motivations to someone who is light years away from human."

"Believe me. I won't make that mistake again."

He glowered at me again, nodded once to Thalia, and then left the way he came—via the dark misty night.

Thalia started the car and we traveled back into the city in silence. I tried not to waste any more energy in working out what got Eric into such a horn-tossing mood. I reached over and turned on the radio. As the strains of an old Lynyrd Skynyrd song faded out, the hourly news break began. More protests were cropping up around the country. Lydia Ryker's image was held up in rallies. Human politicians were talking of forcing weres and vampires to register their DNA on a national database so they could be better tracked in the event they committed future crimes. Conservatives were calling for an end of the vampire-human marriage act.

I promptly switched the radio off in disgust.

Things were getting worse. Weres had fought hard to repeal legislation forcing them to register. The same for the proponents of the supe marriage act. And we were making no headway in solving Lydia's murder. From what Ryker had last told us, the FBI investigation had essentially ground to a halt. I had no idea what I was going to tell him when we checked in on the phone with him later that night on the phone.

The fatigue or just the futility of it all bore down on me. My throat felt thick with emotion.

"I was not aware things were so severe between you and Eric," Thalia said.

"We've spent way too much time together this last week," I said once I could speak. "And I've long given up trying to guess what goes on in that thick Viking skull of his. You would've thought he'd be in a better mood considering Pam was released without charges."

"Man is the inventor of stupidity," Thalia offered.

"He was acting strangely then, wasn't he?" The moment I spoke the words, a strange crawling sensation crept along my legs. "And since when has he ever used the phrase 'my vampire progeny' when referring to Pam?"

Thalia was quiet for a moment before responding. "Yes. His mannerism was different. The way he flew in, his gestures."

The creeping sensation had graduated to pure, cold terror.

"Fucking hell," Thalia said, forcing the words through her clenched teeth. She looked ready to crush skulls.

"That wasn't Eric, was it?"

Thalia shifted down a gear and floored it to Fangtasia.