“I have a little situation here that I have to resolve.” If I was alive after it was resolved . . . but I wasn’t going to imagine that. I tried to think of a palatable excuse, and of course, I did have one. “My sister-in-law just died,” I told Remy. “Can I call you when I’m not so busy with the details of . . .” I couldn’t think of a way to wrap up that sentence. “I promise it’ll be soon. If you don’t have a day off, maybe Kristen could bring him?” Kristen was Remy’s girlfriend.
“Well, that’s part of the problem,” Remy said, and he sounded tired but also a little amused. “Hunter told Kristen that he knew she didn’t really like him, and that she should stop thinking about his daddy without any clothes on.”
I drew a deep breath, tried not to laugh, didn’t manage it. “Iam sorry,” I said. “How did Kristen handle that?”
“She started crying. Then she told me she loved me but my kid was a freak, and she left.”
“Worst possible scenario,” I said. “Ah . . . do you think she’ll tell other people?”
“Don’t see why she wouldn’t.”
This sounded depressingly familiar: shades of my painful childhood. “Remy, I’m sorry,” I said. Remy had seemed like a nice guy on our brief acquaintance, and I had been able to see he was devoted to his son. “If it makes you feel any better, I survived that somehow.”
“But did your parents?” There was a trace of a smile in his voice, to his credit.
“No,” I said. “However, it didn’t have anything to do with me. They got caught by a flash flood when they were driving home one night. It was pouring rain, visibility was terrible, the water was black like the road, and they just drove down onto the bridge and got swept away.” Something buzzed in my brain, some kind of signal that this thought was significant.
“I’m sorry, I was just joking,” Remy was saying in a shocked voice.
“No, no problem. Just one of those things,” I said, the way you do when you don’t want the other person to fuss about your feelings.
We left it that I would call him when I had “some free time.” (That actually meant “when no one’s trying to kill me,” but I didn’t explain that to Remy.) I hung up and sat on the stool by the kitchen counter. I was thinking about my parents’ deaths for the first time in a while. I had some sad memories, but that was the saddest of all. Jason had been ten, and I had been seven, so my recollection wasn’t precise, but we’d talked about it over the years, of course, and my grandmother had recounted the story many times, especially as she grew older. It never varied. The torrential rain, the road leading down into the little hollow where the creek ran, the black water . . . and they’d been swept away into the dark. The truck had been found the next day; their bodies, a day or two after that.
I got dressed for work automatically. I slicked my hair up in an extra-tight ponytail, making sure any stray hairs were gelled into place. As I was tying my shoes, Amelia dashed downstairs to tell me that she’d checked her witch reference books.
“The best way to kill fairies is with iron.” Her face was lit with triumph. I hated to rain on her parade. Lemons were even better, but it was kind of hard to slip a fairy a lemon without the fairy realizing it.
“I knew that,” I said, trying not to sound depressed. “I mean, I appreciate the effort, but I need to be able to knock them out.” So I could run away. I didn’t know if I could stand to have to hose down the driveway again.
Of course, killing the enemy beat the alternative: letting them catch me and do what they wished with me.
Amelia was ready for her date with Tray. She was wearing high heels with her designer jeans, an unusual look for Amelia.
“What’s with the heels?” I asked, and Amelia grinned, displaying her excellent white teeth.
“Tray likes ’em,” she said. “With the jeans onor off. You should see the lingerie I’m wearing!”
“I’ll pass,” I said.
“If you want to meet us after you get off work, I’m betting Drake will be there. He’s seriously interested in getting to know you. And he’s cute, though his looks may not exactly appeal to you.”
“Why? What’s this Drake look like?” I asked, mildly curious.
“That’s the freaky part. He looks a lot like your brother.” Amelia looked at me doubtfully. “That might weird you out, huh?”
I felt all the blood drain out of my face. I’d gotten to my feet to leave, but I sat down abruptly.
“Sookie? What’s the matter? Sookie?” Amelia was hovering around me anxiously.
“Amelia,” I croaked, “you got to avoid this guy. I mean it. You and Tray get away from him. And for God’s sake, don’t answer any questions about me!”
I could see from the guilt on her face she had already answered quite a few. Though she was a clever witch, Amelia couldn’t always tell when people weren’t reallypeople . Evidently, neither could Tray—though the sweet smell of even a half fairy should have alerted a Were. Maybe Dermot had the same scent-masking ability that his father, my great-grandfather, did.
“Who is he?” Amelia asked. She was scared, which was good.
“He’s . . .” I tried to formulate the best explanation. “He wants to kill me.”
“Does this have something to do with Crystal’s death?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. I tried to give the possibility some rational consideration, found my brain simply couldn’t deal with the idea.
“I don’t get it,” Amelia said. “We have months—well, weeks—of nothing but plain old life, and then, all of a sudden, here we are!” She threw up her hands.
“You can move back to New Orleans if you want to,” I said, my voice faltering. Of course, Amelia knew she could leave anytime she wanted, but I wanted to make it clear I wasn’t sucking her into my problems unless she chose to be sucked. So to speak.
“No,” she said firmly. “I like it here, and my house in New Orleans isn’t ready, anyway.”
She kept saying that. Not that I wanted her to leave, but I couldn’t see what the delay was. After all, her dad was a builder.
“You don’t miss New Orleans?”
“Of course I do,” Amelia said. “But I like it here, and I like my little suite upstairs, and I like Tray, and I like my little jobs that keep me going. And I also like—ahell of a lot—being out of my dad’s line of sight.” She patted me on the shoulder. “You go off to work and don’t worry. If I haven’t thought of anything by morning, I’ll call Octavia. Now that I know the deal about this Drake, I’ll stonewall him. And Tray will, too. No one can stonewall like Tray.”
“He’s very dangerous, Amelia,” I said. I couldn’t impress that on my roommate emphatically enough.
“Yeah, yeah, I get that,” she said. “But you know, I’m not any little honey myself, and Dawson can fight with the best of ’em.”
We gave each other a hug, and I allowed myself to immerse in Amelia’s mind. It was warm, busy, curious, and . . . forward-looking. No brooding on the past for Amelia Broadway. She gave me a pat on the back to signal she was letting go, and we stepped back from each other.
I ran by the bank, then I stopped at Wal-Mart. After a bit of searching, I found one little rack of water guns. I got a two-pack of the clear plastic version, one blue and one yellow. When I thought of the ferocity and strength of the fairy race, and the fact that it took all I had to open the damn blister pack and extricate the water pistols, my chosen method of defense seemed ludicrous. I’d be armed with a plastic water pistol and a trowel.
I tried to clear my mind of all the worries that were plaguing me. There was so much to think about. . . . Actually, there was so much to fear. It might be time to take a leaf from Amelia’s book and look forward. What did I need to dotonight ? Which one of my ongoing worries could I actually do something to solve? I could listen in the bar tonight for clues about Crystal’s death, as Jason had asked me to do. (I would have done it anyway, but it seemed even more important to track down her killers now that danger seemed to be piling up from all directions.) I could arm myself against fairy attack. I could be alert for any more Fellowship gangs. And I could try to arrange some more defense.