Saturday morning, I went for a nine am pilates class with Amelia. We got a spot in the front row, which Amelia normally griped about but personally I liked. Being so close to the instructor forced me to not slack off for even a second. I pushed myself as hard as I could. Hard enough so that I hoped I'd be feeling the burn of infrequently-used muscles over the coming week.

I wondered how all-encompassing my healing ability was. I certainly wasn't superhuman. Superficial injuries seemed to heal quicker than usual, but it was by no means instant. My arm, for example. While I'd experienced more than my fair share of injuries and pain in my life, I did like to feel at least some-what human. Pain was part of that. I wanted the aches and pains that came from living a good life.

We met with Hannah afterward for brunch at a café along the promenade a few blocks away from the gym. I guess this made me a real city girl—meeting friends in a busy café on a sunny weekend morning for brunch. We got a seat by the window that looked out onto Canal Street. The streets were bustling with foot traffic, mostly tourists. Amelia and Hannah ordered something called 'The Big Texas Breakfast' to share while I chose a spinach omelet with a side of bacon and a bottomless cup of chicory coffee.

"Felix was accepted by my top pick for preschool," Amelia announced proudly after the waitress delivered our breakfasts. The Big Texas Breakfast proved to be a large cast-iron skillet filled with potato hash, breakfast sausage, poached eggs and topped with an alarming amount of cheese and diced jalapeños.

"I didn't realize it was so cutthroat," I said as I cracked some pepper over my eggs. "You have to apply like a college?"

"Oh yeah, I've heard stories of people enrolling kids into preschool before they're even born," Hannah said. "It's beyond ridiculous."

"The way they carry on, you'd think his preschool grades go on his college transcript. There were full-on interviews—with both me and Bob, orientation days, a trial, the whole gamut," Amelia said, and then spoke at length about the indignities that elite private preschools put prospective families through before enrolling kids.

I picked at my breakfast, half-listening and smiling as they chatted.

"Are you okay?" Amelia asked when Hannah got up to use the bathroom. "It's like you're a million miles away."

"I'm fine. Just didn't sleep well last night."

My night had been filled with strange and surreal dreams of cemeteries and vampires being attacked, as coffins floated by on dark rivers into dark corridors. I reached up to thumb the hummingbird necklace that rested at the hollow of my throat. It had been a necessity this morning. My mind and thoughts were scattered like someone had dumped out confetti inside my brain. The mental silence at least offset some of my off-kilter mood.

Amelia gave me a knowing smile. "Let me guess—vampires. Or should I say vampire? As in singular, tall, blond?"

"It's nothing like that," I said, lying as bald-faced as they come.

"You know what they say?"

"No. I don't, Amelia," I griped, though I could guess what was coming. "What do they say?"

"The best way to get over someone is to get under someone."

I wrinkled my nose. "That's not really my style and you know it."

"You won't know unless you try!"

I made a show of pinching myself.

"What?" she said indignantly.

"Do I have déjà vu? I feel like we've had this conversation before… many months ago."

I thought of Danny and how, despite the fact I'd enjoyed my relationship with him, loved his sweet and charming company, the dinner dates, sleepovers, late night phone calls after work—how despite all that, it hadn't been enough. It had been keeping up appearances. Specifically, me keeping up human appearances.

"It's all besides the point," I said. "This isn't even about Eric. I'm just tired and feeling distracted."

I'd called Agent Ray when I'd gotten home the night before to tell him about the discovery of vampire blood in one of the cemetery vaults. Somehow the agent had pulled some strings and a forensics team was scraping the scene at this very moment.

"You gotta let that vampire of yours know at some time or another," Amelia sing-songed.

"What vampire?" Hannah said, sliding back into her seat. She picked up her coffee cup, taking a sip and gazing over the rim to regard me. "You mean Eric?"

"You told her?" I said, setting down my fork with a clatter. I thought I'd made myself abundantly clear on the topic the last time we spoke. In fact, I knew I had.

"No!" Amelia said. "Cross my heart." She made a crossing motion as further proof.

"No one needs to tell me anything," Hannah said with a scoff. "The moment his name comes up at work you go all… weird."

My eyes widened and I felt a panicked flush at my neck. "I don't, do I?" Cheese and rice, was I really that obvious? The thought was utterly mortifying. Were all my colleagues aware? Desmond? I thought I played it cool. Was it obvious to everyone? Even Eric?

Lord, help me.

"It's not that you go all starry-eyed when his name comes up," Hannah said. "You just get quiet and introspective. You can tell your mind goes elsewhere."

I pushed my plate away, appetite ruined.

"Girl, you got it bad," Hannah said with a tut. "When are you going to tell him?"

"She already did, and he shot her down," Amelia said.

"Oof," Hannah said with a wince. "That's rough. It's tricky with exes. Maybe it's better that way?"

"I think she needs to lay it all out on the table," Amelia said.

"I kind of did that, remember?" I hedged. I was uncomfortable with the subject. I tried in vain to think of ways to segue the conversation into a completely different direction. "And you're right it is tricky. I'm gonna talk to him, I will. The timing has to be right first."

"Yeah, and knowing you two, whatever happened when he shot you down… I bet you both purposefully took whatever each of you said in bad faith, got mad at one another, and decided that was that, rather than having a sensible conversation." Amelia raised a brow daring me to question her.

"Really? Is that what they were like?" Hannah said. "I can't imagine you being like that, Sookie. You weren't like that with Danny at all!"

"I don't know what it is about her with that vampire. They're something else. They both just expect the worst of one another and act accordingly. Like teenagers."

"That sounds too messy for me," Hannah said, lifting her coffee cup to take another sip. "Maybe y'all are better off divorced."

"Hush—both of you," I said. "You're talking like I'm not here! If I seem out of sorts today, it's because I had a rotten sleep last night and my mind is caught up on some extra work I'm doing."

I was in two minds about telling Amelia about how I was moonlighting for Agent Ray. Eric's suggestion to get her to track the mystery blood was a good one, but not practical. That service would come at a hefty price, one likely out of reach for Agent Ray's cold case budget. I'd see what this morning's efforts with the forensic team would yield and then consider getting my witchy friend involved.

"Speaking of extra work," I said to Amelia, "any progress with Bubba?"

Amelia groaned and stabbed at a piece of sausage in her skillet. "That damned curse has been a stick in my craw. And your bestie Thalia breathing down my neck doesn't help any."

"Thalia doesn't breathe," I reminded her. A waitress came over and topped up our coffees. "Has she really been a pain? I can ask her to lay off you."

Amelia waved a hand. "It's fine. It's… whatever. I'm just annoyed I can't get to the bottom of it. This is the first real hurdle in my consulting work that I've come across where I haven't been able to work my way through a problem or around it."

Amelia could be kind of a flake sometimes when it came to her being a friend, but when it came to magic, she took her responsibilities as a practitioner and her business extremely seriously. It was a quality of hers I loved.

"It's like there's no curse there," she continued, "not even a whiff of magic. Or maybe it's magic I'm not capable of detecting. I've been in touch with a coven in Miami to see if anyone there might have any idea what happened, since that's where it all started." Her tone was flat and without hope.

"I take it they haven't been helpful."

Amelia pulled a face. "I might need to fly over and meet them in person."

"In my experience witches aren't the most approachable bunch," I said it as carefully as I could without insulting my friend. I thought of my run-in with witches back in Oklahoma. And even in Dallas investigating the deaths connected to Lydia Ryker's murder. Further back even to the witch war. I shivered.

"Don't I know it?" Hannah shot-in with a sly smile. Her quip effectively burst the bubble of Amelia's terse mood.

"Hey!" she said and poked Hannah in the ribs. "I heard no complaints about my approachability in bed this morning!"

They burst out in giggles, loud enough to turn the heads of those at the closest table.

"Lord, you two are sickening," I muttered.

"Nearly three months strong," Amelia said, with a happy little wiggle of her shoulders.

"That's practically a decade in lesbian years," Hannah said. I hadn't expected much beyond a fling for these two, but I was pleased to see how well they hit it off.

"You know, maybe you just need someone to test the waters on your behalf?" Hannah said to me. She leaned back in her seat and rested her slender arm over the back of Amelia's seat beside her. "You know… find out if the possibility of something with you and Eric is there?"

"Test the waters?" I said, doubtfully.

"You know, get Amelia to pal it up with him and ask what he thinks of you?"

"It'd be like I'm in high school all over again," Amelia said.

"No, please, no. Don't do anything like that. Besides, I can tell he's enjoying the bachelor life in the city at the moment." I thought of his little fling with Emily, and how at ease he'd seemed when we'd talked at the palace the other night. I gave Amelia a little kick under the table. I was done discussing this.

"Just leave it, Han," Amelia said, "I already promised her I wouldn't talk to Eric."

I smiled at Amelia. Maybe she wasn't such a flake, after all.

"You know," I said, emptying a sugar packet into my coffee after the waitress had come by to top up my cup, "I think I need to be okay with being single first before pursuing a love life. Even putting aside any romantic feelings, I want to have a full life regardless of if I have someone to share it with."

I'd need to make it fulfilling if my life expectancy was as long as I suspected it to be.

"Remind me to get Sookie a vibrator for Christmas," Hannah mumbled out the side of her mouth to Amelia—a comment that caught me so off guard I snorted my sip of coffee up the back of my nose.

We left the café a little while later and went our separate ways. Amelia and Hannah went to pick up Felix from Bob's place while I went on foot to do a bit of shopping. I wanted to find some warmer items that would be suitable for work now the weather was cooling. I found a few boutiques in my price range and settled on several new pieces. A pair of black slacks that gave my legs the appearance they were longer and more willowy than they really were, some new black pumps, a velvety wrap-around blouse in deep green that could make its way into my evening-wear should the need arise. The last stop was a pencil skirt in a boutique that was a little higher than my usual price range. I stood at the mirror outside the change room umming and ahhing at how it looked on me until the sales assistant came over to cajole me into buying it.

The skirt was a matte black leather that belted at the waist. It fit like a glove without being tight or clingy.

"You don't think it's too much for an office?" I asked.

"Try it with a plain cotton button up," she said and went to find one on the floor. She returned a moment later, removing a white shirt from a hanger for me to try. "It won't be too much. Trust me. That skirt looks fantastic on you."

With the white cotton blouse, it looked chic and refined. I was sold. I bought both items. It was authentic leather, so it stretched my budget… but wasn't that the point of retail therapy? The higher the price the higher the endorphin hit, right? It helped that I could hear that the retail assistant thought it made my silhouette look fantastic. Yes, I took my necklace off to check. With that price tag I needed to be sure.

Mr. Cataliades had said he would like me to accompany him to court now that the trial date for the demon case was approaching. I didn't want to wear the same outfits over and over to court. It was an exciting moment in my newfound career, and new outfits seemed an appropriate way to mark the event. I'd sat in on a couple of short court appearances when I'd first begun working, mostly to see the partners in action. That had been a treat, but I had never been asked to assist. I was equal parts excited and daunted. There were literally over ten thousand pages of documentation that I would need to haul to court and keep track of during the case. Yay, demon law. I was assisting Mr. C purely in a clerical capacity, ensuring the filing and documentation were in order, and that evidence was ready to present; but working side-by-side with Mr. C always proved to be gratifying. He was firm in his approach as a boss but made sure I wasn't struggling to keep up. He commanded respect and drew the best out of his employees, myself included. At least so I hoped.

I wandered back to the car, enjoying the sunshine and warmth on my face. The shopping trip was fun but it brought my old friend Tara to mind. It had been an age since I'd talked to her. We'd fallen out of touch after my falling out with Sam and things sort of fizzled away after I moved. I hated that I'd become a fair-weather friend to her. We had so much history behind our friendship. I promised myself to give her a call next time I had a moment.

My cell rang. Agent Ray. I tossed the shopping bags on the passenger seat and answered. He told me that they had found the bloody vault and that the area had been processed with a small forensics team. Then he told me how long it would take to get results. I wanted to knock my head against the steering wheel. It would be months for the evidence to go through the state lab. It was the nature of the beast when dealing with the government, he said. Any movement in the case from here on in would be slow going. This was a cold case and as such would fall to the bottom on the priority list when it came to forensic testing. This wasn't a TV show, he said. Testing took weeks, sometimes months to complete—and that was when it was fast-tracked. The buzz of my retail-high faded as I drove home.

I stayed in on Saturday night, turning my efforts elsewhere. I studied first and then consulted my textbooks deciding how to best to proceed with sorting out Eric's assassination problem. This involved mostly reading relevant sections from Foundations of Legal Writing. This was one issue I felt reasonably confident I could resolve quickly.

I slept well that night and the next morning, I did the unimaginable and went back to the gym. This time for a dreaded spin class. I suffered and sweated my way through it, and afterward showered, changing into my favorite denim cut offs and an LSU tee. I drove over to the office, I found a spot out front, a loading zone that converted to free parking on the weekend. I let myself in the building and passed a handful of associates, working through their weekend. They barely lifted their heads from their computer screens to acknowledge me walking past in my decidedly un-work-like attire.

I sat at my desk and loaded up my laptop. I spent a little time looking through the usual investigative channels trying to hunt down Eric's would-be assassin. Through my work, I had access to investigative databases, but predictably I found nothing of note on Claire Duvall. No criminal record, no recent changes to her credit history. She'd graduated middle of the pack at University of Tulsa in communications. The girl didn't even have a Facebook account. There was an old Myspace page, but it seemed long abandoned. None of this worried me, however. It wasn't her that I was trying to track down.

It took me all of three seconds to find her father's info online; a simple web search was all that was required. To say he was loaded was an understatement. In the 80s, he was the cofounder of an Oklahoma-based natural gas company, and now, nearly thirty years on, he was an-almost billionaire sitting as a chairman and CEO of Oklahoma's largest energy company. A company with very shaky PR at the moment, particularly as it was heavily involved with fracking. Between Claire and Father-Dearest, it was her father with the most to lose. So, this was where I was directing my attention.

I put together the necessary correspondence, emailed it through to Mr. C to check, who responded quickly with a few small alterations and then signed off on it. I'd called him on my way into the office from the gym to run my idea past him, to which he'd readily agreed. I just hoped Eric wouldn't mind that we'd be billing him for a few extra hours this month. I printed the letter plus a copy on company letterhead and couldn't help but smile as I slid them into their respective envelopes. It felt good.

Instead of waiting until nightfall, I went to see if there was a letter box I could drop the envelope off at Eric's bar. I parked a couple of blocks away and walked on over. The door to his bar was cracked open and I saw Emily inside, crouched in front of some plastic wrapped chairs.

"Knock-knock," I said and pushed the door open.

"We're not open for business!" she called.

"It's just me. I'm dropping off a letter."

"Oh, it's you. Hi." She flipped her long bangs off her forehead with an exhausted huff. She got to her feet with a wince and took the envelope from me. "He's not being served, is he?" She asked, looking at the law office name printed on the envelope.

"No," I said. "I just thought it wasn't worth sending it via post. I was hoping to slide it through the door for him to see tonight."

"You work at a law firm?" She eyed the letterhead on the envelope and then me skeptically.

"Yes, but not ordinarily dressed like this." I'd let my hair air dry and it liked to frizz in humid air, so I'd just tied it back in a pony.

"Fine. I can put this on his desk..." she said. I made a move to leave but she stopped me. "Since you're here, could I ask for a little help?" She gestured to the chairs. "I need to move them all to the upstairs bar area and unwrap them."

"Eric can move them in a fraction of the time we can and won't even crack a sweat." There were a lot of chairs. More than a dozen. It was the weekend, my tired muscles and I really wanted to go home and not move for the rest of the day.

"He's stressed. It's making me stressed. I want things to… not be stressed."

I listened to her thoughts in a way I considered most nosy—with all my shields down, no regard for her privacy. She didn't have any idea who I was or how I figured into Eric's past. Wow, that stung.

"Is it normal for a designer to be so hands on with interior decoration?"

"Yes." Though Emily admitted to herself she may have gone a little above and beyond in terms of services provided for her client. I grimaced and looked away. Well, I did have to admit that she had done a spectacular job of designing the entire bar. There was no furniture downstairs yet other than the fixed barstools, but I could just imagine it on opening night, with its trendy and warm ambiance, filled with patrons, the band playing under a spotlight.

"Is Eric your boyfriend?" I asked. I had no shame. And now she was wondering how I figured into Eric's past.

"Hardly. I couldn't call him a boy, and I can barely call him a friend. We don't know each other nearly enough."

"Fine," I said with a sigh, still somehow dissatisfied with her response.

"I have a man, but he's up in Nashville. We've been doing the long distance thing for a while now."

"Oh," I said, surprised. "And he doesn't mind that…"

"We're committed, but we've been doing the long distance thing a while. We decided to loosen the straps to make it work." She shrugged. "He's at the tail end of a three year project for his work up there, so he'll be back soon. And things will go back to the status quo."

I felt the depth of her anticipation and excitement at the prospect of having him home again. Whatever worked for them, I supposed. Their arrangement struck me as extremely modern. I couldn't imagine myself ever being okay with something like that.

"Let me help you," I said.

We lugged the furniture upstairs piece-by-piece and sat on our butts on the freshly varnished herringbone floors in the upstairs VIP bar, peeling the plastic off the chairs. They were Scandinavian in style in a honey-colored oak and black leather.

"These are nice," I said.

"Aren't they? They cost a small fortune."

"I can only imagine." I had ordered the cheapest wooden stools and seating I could for The Dogwood, and these had to be easily five times the price.

"Did you really own a bar?" she asked.

"Once upon a time," I said. "Just your run-of-the-mill small-town bar. Nothing on par with this."

"Those are my favorite types of bars. Where you can just let your hair down, have a beer, and not have to worry about impressing anybody."

I smiled. "Yeah, it was exactly like that."

"What happened to it? …Seeing as you work in law now. Did you sell it?"

I let out a big puff of air as I exhaled. "I wish. It burnt down."

"Wow, that's a hell of a thing. I'm sorry."

"It led me where I am now. So, I guess I can't complain. It was a painful reminder not to mess with bad vampires." Her eyes widened and I cursed myself internally. I hadn't meant to reveal so much. "You don't need to worry about Eric," I hastened to say. "He's not like that."

"He's something else though," she said and tugged an armful of plastic away from the chair she was unwrapping. "You seem to know him well then, what's he like?"

"He's not a bad guy, if that's what you're getting at," I said.

"Yeah, but is he a good guy?"

"I don't…" I trailed off trying to form the right words.

"He can't be defined by a single signifier, can he?" she added. We both laughed knowingly.

"He's a lot of things," I agreed.

"That he is." She was thinking of their latest meeting. They had slept together a couple of times when they first met, but the shine of their dalliance had worn off quickly for her, particularly as the stress of getting the bar ready grew.

"He's been a bit of an ass this week," I said with some sympathy.

"Tell me about it. He's scared off half the contractors."

"As long as you call him out on it." I pulled off the wrapping for the last chair and tossed it on the pile with the rest. "I better go."

"I'll make sure he gets that letter."

"Thanks," I said, and we shared a genuine smile.