Chapter 2

I woke early the next morning, feeling unexpectedly invigorated. The sun was peeking between fluffy white clouds and birds were singing. I pulled the shades all the way open and admired the garden in all its lush overgrown glory. Yes, that would be my agenda for today. Gardening and study.

I got my hands dirty after a quick breakfast of fruit, toast and coffee. The garden was beautiful but borderline unmanageable. My fairy great-grandfather had oh-so graciously blessed the lands on which this old farmhouse stood, and as a result the garden had a way of getting unruly the moment you turned your back. Back when I lived here full time, the vegetable patch was consistently producing bountiful crops, which had indeed been a blessing. Now, the patch had gone to seed and was wild with weeds.

I set to weeding the garden beds that hugged all sides of the house, and as the sun climbed steadily higher, I moved onto pruning the big apple tree out back. I cast off my shirt and soaked up the sun in my denim cut-offs and bikini top. It felt good to bask in direct sunlight. I called it quits before midday, and as I climbed the porch steps, I noticed a letter waiting for me on the newly pruned rosebush. A letter from my great-grandfather. I snatched it up with a burst of pleasure. It'd been a good while since I'd heard from Niall.

After I washed my hands, I took the letter and a glass of sweet tea onto the porch swing. The letter was sealed with a wax stamp-the royal family insignia. My family's insignia. It was a sort of Celtic looking symbol; a strange swirling pattern that represented the sky fairies. I released the seal and quickly scanned the letter. He was well and inquired after me and my studies. He was keeping tabs on me somehow. Jason had never mentioned any letters arriving for me while he and Michele lived here for those few months, so I wondered how it was possible that Niall knew I was back home again. Was he keeping tabs on me? The fairy portals were meant to be closed for good. I immediately saw the obvious flaw in that thinking. If the portal was truly sealed shut, then how was I able to still receive letters from Niall?

I also could've sworn I'd seen Dermot at a bar on the night of the coronation, but that meant utterly nothing. I'd been drunk as a skunk that night and the bar was dark. I grimaced and pushed the memory of that night away. However, the fact the letter contained an unusual lack of any news about my great-uncle Dermot set off alarm bells. I packed those concerns away into the same mental box I'd packed my concerns about Bubba and any trouble he may have brought with him into Louisiana.

I spent the rest of the day studying and worked on an upcoming assignment. Kennedy and I then met for dinner at Merlotte's, which was busy with the usual Friday night hubbub. Sam's other half Josie served us, and she was noticeably showing. And noticeably flashing the engagement ring on her finger. Good for her. Good for Sam. Though I didn't think it was necessary for her to keep waving it in my face as she served us and as she cleared the table. Kennedy rolled her eyes at me when we left and made a comment about the pettiness of small towns. I was sweet as pie to her, and found it came quite naturally to me now. I was genuinely excited for them.

I got back home late. Kennedy was good company and it was fun to catch up with folks from home. Kennedy told me she was taking an online accountancy course; and, in a brief surprising moment, she confessed that I inspired her, what with my move and career change. That threw me for a loop. Who knew little old me would be inspiring?

I settled in for an early night, climbing into bed before the clock struck nine. I was out like a light not even three pages into my bodice ripper. I'd picked the book up from a yard sale earlier that week, and though it was promising to be a good one, I was exhausted.

My cellphone rang sometime in the night and snatched me suddenly from sleep.

"Did anything happen when Bubba was at your house?"

"Did anything happen?"

"Yes," Pam said.

"What do you mean?" My voice was thick with sleep.

Pam let out a sharp, impatient huff. "I mean," she said, "did any incidents occur while Bubba was in your care yesterday evening?"

I sat up in bed and turned on my bedside lamp. It steeped the room in a warm glow. I caught sight of myself in my mirror and pressed down a rogue lock of hair pointing sideward.

"He appeared at my door," I heard myself saying. I was half-asleep, my mind still lost in the dream I'd been having. It'd been something pleasant. "I called you. He had some TrueBlood. We made small talk, watched TV."

"And nothing else?"

"No. Like what?"

"No glasses smashed? A bookcase didn't fall over? A candle didn't tip and set your priceless Turkish rug on fire?"

Silence lapsed as I tried to wrap my head around what she was asking of me.

"Are these random examples or things that have happened to you?"

"Yes." Her response was a sharp hiss.

"Oh, poor Bubba. He's having rotten luck."

"Poor Bubba? How about my pristine condition, priceless Turkish rug, an antique from the Ottoman empire? Priceless!"

"He wouldn't stop going on about being cursed," I said, talking over Pam as she continued to expound upon the loss of her precious rug.

"Yes, he's kept that up. Frankly, considering the calamity here tonight I wouldn't be surprised."

"Really? Is there even such a thing as a curse?"

"Yes. It should be no surprise to you."

It took me a second. "That was different, it was a witch and she put a spell on him to forget himself. It wasn't as though the world was crumbling around him."

"Well, I'm inclined to believe Bubba. Things began the moment he was in my care on the way back to Shreveport."

"What do you mean 'things'? What happened?"

"My car got a flat tire. Evidently, when he got in the car, Bubba had somehow kicked a rock, lodging it in the wheel. Then after I ruined good hosiery replacing said tire, the car electrics died when he tried to change the radio station. We left it on the interstate."

"How bizarre. Could it be chalked up to bad luck?"

"Doubtful. I sent Maxwell to go and get it towed and my car started up fine. Perfect working order."

"Huh. Now that's weird."

"That was my exact reaction, particularly when it occurred to me that nothing seemed to have happened when he was in your care last night," she said.

"He seemed fine the entire time he was here. I mean his usual scattered self, but fine."

In the background of the call, I heard glass shatter.

"Fuck a zombie!"

"What?"

"He just walked through my glass sliding door to the patio." Pam let out a shriek of frustration. "Stop stomping all over the glass! You're going to–" I heard a thump and Bubba yowl. "–fall," she finished.

"You have to get him out of there," I said.

I realized I'd stepped in proverbial you-know-what the moment the words left my lips.

"Great idea. And since you mention it..." Pam said.

And that was how I got roped into driving the King of Rock across the great state of Louisiana to Queen Thalia's palace in New Orleans.

"She's your friend, after all," Pam assured me, "she'll take it better if it's you foisting him over."

•───── ─────•

Pam arrived with Bubba at nightfall the following night.

"I've added you to my roadside service membership," she said to me. "So if you run into any car troubles you can phone them."

"You're really counting on this curse not kicking in with him in my presence."

Bubba was patrolling my yard. Looking for cats, probably. He had a penchant for them, or their blood to be precise.

"Maybe it's your otherness, your fairy, that nullifies it?"

"Or maybe a car will careen into our lane on the interstate and we'll crash?"

She shot me a withered, tired stare.

"Trust me, it's fine," she said, brushing off her black blouse. "You don't want to know the list of calamities that befell us on our way here. Whatever is happening to him doesn't happen when he's around you."

They'd come on foot. Clearly, she didn't trust her car to get them here safely.

"Is that why there are twigs in your hair?" I picked some shrubbery from her blonde locks.

She scowled and took it from me, throwing it into the bushes by the porch steps. "A tree limb fell on us. I was running with him at top speed, he stuck out his arm and a tree practically landed on us. Trapping us. Snapping my heel."

I hadn't wanted to mention her barefoot state, and I just barely managed to swallow my smile.

"For whatever reason," she continued, "he's fine in your presence."

Indeed, Pam was right. The drive back to New Orleans was uneventful. Bubba and I made small talk, and he was in good spirits. He sang along to the radio at multiple points which made my early return back to the city worth it. Bubba didn't sing for everyone and if he did, you counted yourself lucky. Coming home early wasn't such a disruption, I was only cutting my trip short by one night. I was due back at work on Monday. My sabbatical in Bon Temps had been drawing to an end.

Bleary eyed, I delivered Bubba safe and sound to Thalia's palace in New Orleans' French Quarter sometime after two am.

Thalia was lounging in her drawing room, sitting on a velour settee with a stack of papers beside her. It was just her. No sign of Rasul or Eric. The guard left the three of us alone, and I declined Thalia's gesture for me to sit.

"If I sit then I sleep," I said, and smile blearily. "I can't stay." My bed was calling me. And the apartment was still a ten-minute drive away.

"Give me the details," she said. I explained the events of the previous evening with Bubba cutting in to emphatically back me up.

"The evil eye, ma'am, your majesty," he said solemnly. "It has cast its blighted gaze upon me."

Thalia's eyes widened a fraction and looked to me.

"You might need to get in touch with Amelia," I said. "And get him in a room without anything breakable... or flammable, for that matter."

Thalia called one of her human staff to accompany Bubba to the media room on the next floor and she walked me to the side entrance of the palace from where I'd entered. Amelia's company, Mystic Consulting, had the whole area warded with particularly strong magic that had most everyday folk unwittingly avoiding that area of the street, so I'd been able to find a park right at the side gate.

"You enjoyed your time home?"

"It was nice, thanks for asking." I fished around in my handbag for my keys.

"Nice?" She said the word flatly and her lips pulled down in a grimace, clearly displeased by my response.

"I was studying. It couldn't be much more than that."

"How about restorative? Enjoyable?"

It took me a moment, but I got it. I grinned at her.

"I see you've been flicking through the present I got you."

"Perusing." Her dark eye glittered as I laughed.

When I'd first met Thalia at Fangtasia, she had spoken with such a thick accent and choppy English that I'd just assumed she'd never bothered to learn the language. But after she accompanied me to Oklahoma, I'd come to realize she used it as a ruse to keep people at arm's length, like a sort of anti-social armor. Her English was vastly better than she let on. But years of talking in stilted English hadn't exactly made her a skilled orator. I could count on one hand the number of times she'd spoken to me about anything at length. I'd bought her the thesaurus as a joke after the coronation, though she'd just about had my head for it. Yes, as far as my female friends went, she was the most prickly.

"You're finding your feet here?" I asked her. I withdrew the car keys but lingered at the threshold of the door. It opened to a small ornamental garden with a cobblestone path that led to a wrought-iron gate and onto the street.

"The state is promising," she said.

"Even with the recession?"

She nodded. "Felipe's underlings had money disappearing into various unknown channels. Mishandled investments. Now, with help, it can be rectified."

With help. I knew exactly who that help was. I felt a small dastardly knot tighten in my stomach.

"And where is Eric?" I kept my tone light, disinterested. Merely asking out of politeness of course, no other reason, none at all.

Thalia gestured out toward the dark city behind me. "Busy."

Fine. If that was the case, I didn't want to know.

Thalia's head tilted, her sensitive vampire hearing catching some commotion inside that I wasn't privy to. "Bubba," she said with a glower, and we parted with barely a goodbye. I got back to the apartment and had just enough energy left in my tank to clean my teeth and wash my face, before I collapsed face first onto my bed. I awoke with a gasp to Diantha bouncing onto the bed next to me.

I'd been dreaming. I had been sitting my paralegal certification exam and when I sat at my desk I realized that not only had I forgot my pencil, I'd also forgotten my clothes… and to study.

"Are you okay?"

"No," I said, and rolled over pulling my blankets with me. Whatever her reason was for waking me, I didn't want to know about it. "I need more sleep."

"You were having a bad dream," she said. "I heard you shouting."

"I'm fine."

"It's nearly midday."

I could only manage an unintelligible grunt and pulled my pillow over my head.

"I'm going to the market." She let the temptation dangle. I lifted the pillow a fraction from my eyes.

"The French market?"

"You know it. When was the last time we went?"

I made another noise of protest.

"Fresh lemonade, that muffaletta you like."

"The muffaletta you like," I said. It was an Italian sandwich the size of a dinner plate stuffed with various deli meats and olive spread.

"That hot guy you like on the produce stands."

"The hot guy you like." He was barely 20 and covered in piercings. Diantha and he had made goo-goo eyes the last few times we'd seen him there.

She smiled at me, flashing two shiny rows of slightly too-pointy teeth. I realized I'd missed her these last few weeks. Missed girl time. The quiet life of my farmhouse in Bon Temps had been restorative but lonely.

"Fine," I said. "But I need a shower first."

"Then you better get your butt out of bed." To punctuate her point, she smacked me hard on the derriere through my duvet. My pillow missed as I threw it at her departing figure.

Half an hour later we were on the streetcar heading north-east toward the French Market. The market actually took up a span of six blocks in the French Quarter, with an undercover flea market and countless cafes, bars and stores. The market was the oldest of its kind in the United States and in a previous life had been a Native American trading post. Eventually when European colonizers arrived they dedicated (although 'stole' might be the better term) the area to hold a market, beginning in 1791. Yes, the market was crazy old. It attracted tons of tourists in peak season, but it was an enjoyable way to spend a Sunday afternoon, window shopping and buying produce for the week. Diantha and I often made the trip if our social schedules aligned.

We hopped off the streetcar and made a beeline for the undercover open-air cafes. Large fans on the high ceiling whirred, stirring around the melting-pot aromas of Creole food and freshly roasted coffee. It was stinking hot, and the change in season up north hadn't had a chance to make its way to New Orleans yet. I was glad I'd chosen to wear a loose sundress and open toed-sandals. We ordered two large to-go teas, laden with ice, and made our way through the bustling crowd.

"I'm starving," I said.

"You mentioned that already," Diantha said. "We get our vegetables for the week first, then we eat."

We made the trek down to the produce store, and between the two of us made a quick meal plan for the week. We tried to share cooking, a lot like how Amelia and I handled it when we lived together, though Diantha often picked up the slack if I was working late and vice versa. We filled our woven market bags with enough produce to make three different meals that would last us the length of the week, plus fruit to restock the bowl. One of us would pick up the meat from the grocery store near home.

I peeled a banana off the bunch as soon as we left, and we made our way outside across a large stone courtyard back toward the cafes.

"Your cute guy wasn't there," I said and took a bite.

"Bummer." Diantha agreed.

"You should ask him out."

She pulled a face at this. "He's too young."

I laughed. "What's too young? Eric had over 900 years on me."

"The kid is fresh as a daisy. You can see it in his eyes. He's probably not even old enough to drink. Twenty, at most." When Diantha spoke, it was so quick that every word melded into one another. I understood her just fine, but not so much when we first moved in together. It was a little like learning a language. It had taken me a while to adjust to her speedy speech. A little like how it'd taken me a while to adjust to Felix's toddler-speak when I was nannying briefly for Amelia the year before.

"So he's just a bit of eye candy then?" I asked.

Diantha chuckled. "Café crush."

"Sorry? Café what?"

"That's what Gladiola called it. Café crush. When you see someone out and about frequently, you have the hots for each other but no intention of acting on it. You just enjoy it for what it is, get a little rush out of seeing them. Café crush."

I'd finished my banana and tossed the peel in a nearby trash can. My ex-boyfriend Danny had started as a café crush. I'd never planned on acting on it... Then I did and three months later we were over, done and dusted. Stupid me for thinking I could maintain a relationship with a human.

I looked back at Diantha, who'd gone uncharacteristically quiet. Her chunky boots dragged against the ground, her gaze lost in the crowd.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Gladiola's birthday was last week."

"I had no idea." I felt a rush of shame, while I'd been moping about in Bon Temps lamenting over the sorry state of my love life, Diantha had been home alone thinking about, grieving, her murdered sister. The murdered sister who had died on my property in Bon Temps three and a half years earlier.

I looped my arm through Diantha's, much to both our surprise since we weren't exactly touchy feely types with one another, but the action came on instinct. "If I'd known, I would've come home earlier to hang out with you."

"It's fine," Diantha said and from her mind I caught a flash of Gladiola's face. She was the younger sister of the two, a lot like Diantha, though her face was more heart-shaped.

"I wish I could've met her."

"She would've hated you."

I snorted with amusement. "Why do you say that?"

"You're way too boring for her. She would've thought you were vanilla."

"I try to be," I said drolly. "Life is spicy enough." We made an odd-looking pair, strolling arm-in-arm through the markets. Me, a sunny and tanned blonde in a floral dress, and Diantha with her heroin-chic frame, green hair, dressed in neon-orange utility pants and a metallic crop top.

"I am basically the extreme opposite of the nasty thoughts that creepy old man over there is thinking about us," I said and nodded to a sweaty tourist sitting at a seafood bar gawping at us. Diantha cracked up and gave him the finger.

"Oh my God, you are so embarrassing!" I hissed and dragged her quickly away.