Both the fairies nodded when I mentioned the firebombing. They looked interested, but uninvolved — a look I was used to seeing from vampires. They didn’t really care a whole hell of a bunch about what happened to humans they didn’t know. If they’d ever read John Donne, they would have disagreed with his idea that no man is an island. Most humans were on one big island, to the fairies, and that island was adrift on a sea called I Totally Don’t Care.
“People talk in bars, so I’m sure they talk in strip clubs. Please let me know if you hear anything about who did it. This is important to me. If you could ask the staff at Hooligans to listen for talk about the bombing, I’d sure appreciate it.”
Dermot said, “Is business bad at Sam’s, Sookie?”
“Yes,” I said, not completely surprised at this turn of conversation. “And the new bar up off the highway is making inroads into our clientele. I don’t know if it’s the novelty of Vic’s Redneck Roadhouse and Vampire’s Kiss pulling people away, or if folks are turned off because Sam’s a shifter, but it’s not going so good at Merlotte’s.”
I was trying to decide how much I wanted to tell them about Victor and his evilness when Claude suddenly said, “You’d be out of a job,” and closed his mouth, as if that had sparked a chain of thoughts.
Everyone was mighty interested in what I’d be doing if Merlotte’s closed. “Sam would be out of his living,” I pointed out, as I half turned to go to the kitchen to get another cup of coffee. “Which is way more important than my job. I can find another place to work.”
“He could run a bar somewhere else,” Claude said, shrugging.
“He’d have to leave Bon Temps,” I said sharply.
“That wouldn’t suit you, would it?” Claude looked thoughtful in a way that made me distinctly uneasy.
“He’s my best friend,” I said. “You know that.” Maybe that was the first time I had said that aloud, but I guess I’d known it for quite a while. “Oh, by the way, if you want to know what happened to Cait, you might try contacting a human guy with gray eyes who works at Vampire’s Kiss. The name on his uniform was Colton.” I knew some places just handed out name tags every night, without any worries about who actually owned the name. But at least it was a start. I started back to the kitchen.
“Wait,” Dermot said, so abruptly that I turned my head to look at him. “When are the antiques people coming to look at your junk?”
“Should be here in a couple hours.”
Dermot said, “The attic is more or less empty. Didn’t you plan to clean it?”
“That’s what I was thinking of doing this morning.”
“Do you want us to help?” Dermot asked.
Claude was clearly appalled. He glared at Dermot.
We were back on more familiar ground, and I, for one, was grateful. Until I’d had a chance to think all this new information through, I couldn’t even guess at the right questions to ask. “Thanks,” I said. “It would be great if you could carry up one of the big garbage cans. Then after I sweep and pick up all the bits and pieces, you could tote it down.” Having relatives who are superhumanly strong can be very handy.
I went to the back porch to gather up my cleaning supplies, and when I trudged upstairs with laden arms, I saw that Claude’s door was closed. My previous tenant, Amelia, had turned one upstairs bedroom into a pretty little boudoir with a cheap (but cute) dressing table, chest of drawers, and bed. Amelia had used another bedroom as her living room, complete with two comfortable chairs, a television, and a large desk, which now stood empty. The day we’d cleaned out the attic, I’d noticed that Dermot had set up a cot in the former living room.
Before I’d had time to say “Jack Robinson,” Dermot appeared at the attic door carrying the garbage can. He set it down and looked around him. “I think it looked better with the family things in it,” he said, and I had to agree. In the daylight streaming through the filthy windows, the attic looked sad and shabby.
“It’ll be fine when it’s clean,” I said with determination, and I set to with the broom, sweeping down all the cobwebs, and then started in on the dust and debris on the planks of the floor. To my surprise, Dermot picked up a few rags and the glass cleaner, and began to work on the windows.
It seemed wiser not to comment. After Dermot finished the windows, he held the dustpan while I swept the accumulated dirt into it. When we’d completed that task and I’d brought up the vacuum to take care of the last of the dust, he said, “These walls need paint.”
That was like saying the desert needs water. Maybe there had once been paint, but it had long ago chipped or worn away, and the indeterminate color remaining on the walls had been scuffed and stained by the many items leaning against them. “Well, yes. Sanding and painting. The floor needs it, too.” I tapped with my foot. My forebears had gone crazy with whitewash when the second story had been added to the house.
“You’ll only need part of this space for storage,” Dermot said, out of the blue. “Assuming the antiques dealers buy the larger pieces and you don’t move them back up here.”
“That’s true.” Dermot seemed to have a point, but it was lost on me. “What are you saying?” I asked bluntly.
“You could make a third bedroom up here if you only used that end as your storage,” Dermot said. “See, that part?”
He was pointing to a place where the slope of the roof formed a natural area, about seven feet deep and the width of the house. “It wouldn’t be hard to partition that off, hang some doors,” my great-uncle said.
Dermot knew how to hang doors? I must have looked astonished because he told me, “I’ve been watching HGTV on Amelia’s television.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to think of a more intelligent remark. I still felt at sea. “Well, we could do that. But I don’t think I need another room. I mean, who’s going to want to live here?”
“Aren’t more bedrooms always a good thing? On the television, the hosts say they are. And I could move into such a room. Claude and I could share the television room as a sitting room. We would each have our own room.”
I felt humiliated that I hadn’t ever thought of asking if Dermot minded sharing a room with Claude. Obviously, he did. Sleeping on a cot in the little sitting room . . . I’d been a bad hostess. I looked at Dermot with more attention than I’d given him before. He had sounded . . . hopeful. Maybe my new tenant was underemployed. I realized that I didn’t know exactly what Dermot did at the club. I’d taken it for granted that he’d leave with Claude when Claude went to Monroe, but I’d never been curious enough to ask what Dermot did when he got there. What if being part fairy was the only thing he had in common with the self-centered Claude?
“If you think you have the time to do the work, I’d be glad to buy the materials,” I said, not quite sure where the words came from. “In fact, if you could sand, prime, and paint the whole thing, and build the partition, I’d sure appreciate it. I’d be glad to pay you for the job. Why don’t we go to the lumberyard in Clarice on my next day off? If you could figure out how much lumber and paint we need?”
Dermot lit up like a Christmas tree. “I can try, and I know how to rent a sander,” he said. “You trust me to do this?”
“I do,” I said, not sure I really meant that. But after all, what could make the attic look worse than it did now? I began to feel enthusiastic myself. “It would be great to have this room redone. You need to tell me what you think would be a fair wage.”
“Absolutely not,” he said. “You have given me a home and the reassurance of your presence. This is the least I can do for you.”
I couldn’t argue with Dermot when he put it that way. There’s such a thing as being too determined not to accept a gift, and I assessed this as just such a situation.