“Why?”
“Because the Weres tell me a fairy’s been back there very recently.” I kept my eyes fixed on his. “And if it’s not you, who could it be?”
“There aren’t many fairies left,” Claude said.
Again, evasion. “If there are other fairies that didn’t make it in before the portal was shut, you could hang around with them,” I said. “You wouldn’t need to stay with me, with my little dash of fairy blood. Yet here you are. And somewhere in my woods is yet another fairy.” I eyed his expression. “I don’t see you excited about tracking down whoever it is. What’s the deal? Why don’t you dash out there, find the fairy, do some bonding, and be happy?”
Claude looked down. “The last portal to close was in your woods,” he said. “Possibly it’s not completely shut. And I know Dermot, your great-uncle, was on the outside. If Dermot is the fairy the Weres sensed, he wouldn’t be glad to see me.”
I thought he would have more to say, but he stopped right there.
That was plenty of bad news, and another whopping dollop of dodging the issue. I was still dubious about his goals, but Claude was family, and I had precious little family left. “All right,” I said, opening a kitchen drawer where I stowed odds and ends. “Here’s a key. We’ll see how this pans out. I have to go to work this afternoon, by the way. And we have to have a talk. You know that I’ve got a boyfriend, right?” I was already feeling kind of embarrassed.
“Who are you seeing?” Claude asked, with a sort of professional interest.
“Ah, well. Eric Northman.”
Claude whistled. He looked both admiring and cautious. “Does Eric spend the night? I need to know if he’s going to jump me.” Claude looked as though that wouldn’t be totally unwelcome. But the pertinent issue was that fairies are really intoxicating to vampires, like catnip to cats. Eric would have a hard time restraining himself from biting if Claude was close to him.
“That would probably end badly for you,” I said. “But I think, with a little care, we can get around it.” Eric seldom spent the night at my house because he liked to be back in Shreveport before dawn. He had so much work to get through every night that he’d found it was better for him to wake up in Shreveport. I do have a hidden place where a vampire can stay in relative safety, but it’s not exactly deluxe, not like Eric’s house.
I was a little more concerned about the possibility of Claude bringing strange men back to my house. I didn’t want to encounter someone I didn’t know when I was on my way to the kitchen in my nightie. Amelia had had a couple of overnight guests, but they’d been people I knew. I took a deep breath, hoping what I was about to say wouldn’t come out homophobic. “Claude, it’s not that I don’t want you to have a good time,” I said, wishing this conversation were over and done with. I admired Claude’s unblushing acceptance of the fact that I had a sex life, and I only wished I could match that nonchalance.
“If I want to have sex with someone you don’t know, I’ll take him to my house in Monroe,” Claude said, with a wicked little smile. He could be perceptive when he chose, I noted. “Or I’ll let you know ahead of time. That okay?”
“Sure,” I said, surprised at Claude’s easy compliance. But he’d said all the right words. I relaxed some as I showed Claude where strategic kitchen stuff was, gave him some tips on the washer and the dryer, and told him the hall bathroom was all his. Then I led him upstairs. Amelia had worked hard on making one of the little bedrooms pretty, and she’d decorated the other one as a sitting room. She’d taken her laptop with her, but the TV was still there. I checked to make sure that the bed was made up with clean linens and the closet was mostly clear of Amelia’s clothing. I pointed out the door to the walk-in attic, in case he needed to store anything. Claude pulled it open and took a step inside. He looked around at the shadowy, crowded space. Generations of Stackhouses had stored things they thought they might need someday, and I admit it was a little on the cluttered and chaotic side.
“You need to go through this,” he said. “Do you even know what’s up here?”
“Family debris,” I said, looking in with some dismay. I’d just never worked up the heart to tackle it since Gran died.
“I’ll help you,” Claude declared. “That will be my payment to you for my room.”
I opened my mouth to point out that Amelia had given me cash, but then I reflected, again, that he was family. “That would be great,” I said. “Though I don’t know if I’m up to it yet.” My wrists had been aching this morning, though they were definitely better than they’d been. “And there are some other jobs around the house that are beyond me, if you wouldn’t mind giving a hand.”
He bowed. “I would be delighted,” he said.
This was a different side of Claude from the one I’d come to know and disparage.
Grief and loneliness seemed to have woken something in the beautiful fairy; he appeared to have come to the realization that he had to show a little kindness to other people if he wanted to receive kindness in return. Claude seemed to understand that he needed others, especially now that his sisters were gone.
I was a little more at ease with our arrangement by the time I left for work. I’d listened to Claude moving around upstairs for a while, and then he’d come down with an armful of hair-care products to arrange in the bathroom. I’d already put out clean towels for him. He seemed satisfied with the bathroom, which was very old-fashioned. But then Claude had been alive in a time before indoor plumbing, so maybe he saw it from a different perspective. Truthfully, hearing someone else in the house had relaxed something deep inside me, a tension I hadn’t even known I felt.
“Hey, Sam,” I said. He was behind the bar when I came out of the back room, where I’d left my purse and put on an apron. Merlotte’s wasn’t very busy. Holly, as always, was talking to her Hoyt, who was dawdling over his supper. With her Merlotte’s T-shirt, Holly was wearing pink and green plaid shorts instead of the regulation black.
“Looking good, Holly,” I called, and she gave me a radiant smile. While Hoyt beamed, Holly held out her hand to show off a brand-new ring.
I let out a shriek and hugged her. “Oh, this is so great!” I said. “Holly, it’s so pretty! So, have you picked a date yet?”
“It’ll be in the fall, probably,” Holly said. “Hoyt has to work long hours through the spring and summer. That’s his busy time, so we figured maybe October or November.”
“Sookie,” Hoyt said, his voice dropping and his face growing solemn. “Now that Jason and I have mended our fences, I’m going to ask him to be my best man.”
I glanced very quickly over to Holly, who’d never been a big Jason fan. She was still smiling, and if I could detect the reservations she had, Hoyt couldn’t.
I said, “He’ll be thrilled.”
I had to hustle off to make the rounds of my tables, but I smiled while I worked. I wondered if they’d have the ceremony after dark. Then Eric could go with me. That would be great! That would transform me from “poor Sookie who hasn’t even ever been engaged” to “Sookie who brought the gorgeous guy to the wedding.” Then I thought of a contingency plan. If the wedding was a daytime wedding, I could get Claude to go with me! He looked exactly like a romance cover model. He’d been a romance cover model. (Ever read The Lady and the Stableboy, or Lord Darlington’s Naughty Marriage? Woo-hoo!)
I was unhappily aware that I was thinking about the wedding strictly in terms of my own feelings. but there’s nothing more forlorn than being an old maid at a wedding. I realize that it’s silly to feel like you’re on the shelf at twenty-seven. But I had missed some prime time, and I was increasingly conscious of that fact. So many of my high school friends had gotten married (some more than once), and some of them were pregnant—like Tara, who was coming through the door in an oversized T-shirt.