Dead Ever After: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

by Charlaine Harris

  “Does he not hate me anymore?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” said Mr. Cataliades. “But I’m sure he’ll admit you couldn’t have killed Arlene Fowler and that he was wrong to drive the investigation in a false direction. The district attorney is going to be embarrassed, too.”

  “As long as they know I couldn’t and didn’t kill Arlene, they can dance naked on the courthouse lawn and I’ll show up to clap,” I said, and Diantha laughed.

  “To get back to your query via text message,” Mr. Cataliades said. “We don’t know who is responsible for capturing Amelia’s father or for placing him in . . . whatever you’ve found him in.”

  “My vampire hole,” I explained. “See? In here.” I led the way into the bedroom and opened the closet. I knelt with some difficulty and reached in for the hidden lever Eric had had installed. It hitched up the edge of the false floor. Then it was easy to work my fingers under the edge and hoist it up, especially when Mr. Cataliades knelt beside me to help. The lid came up easily and we swung it out of the closet. We looked down into Copley Carmichael’s face. He wasn’t as angry as before, but that might have been because he’d spent some more hours in there. The hole had been made for a night’s shelter for a vampire, not for a permanent resting place. An adult could lie down in it in a fetal position, without curling up tightly. At least it was deep enough that he could sit up with his back against the wall.

  “Luckily for him, he is not a tall man,” said Mr. Cataliades.

  “Small in stature, large in venom,” I said. Mr. C chuckled.

  “He’sasnakeallright,” Diantha said. “He’sinprettybadshape.”

  “Shall we hoist him out?” Mr. Cataliades suggested.

  I moved out of the way so Diantha could take my place. “I’m not much up to hoisting,” I explained. “Shot.”

  “Yes, we heard,” Mr. C said. “Glad you’re better. We’ve been tracking various people.”

  “Okay, you’ll have to fill me in,” I said. For two creatures who’d come to help me, they were certainly matter-of-fact about my getting shot. And who’d they been tracking? Had they been successful? Where had they spent the night before?

  And where was Barry?

  With no apparent effort, the two pulled Copley Carmichael up out of the hole and propped him against the wall.

  “Excuse me,” I said to Mr. Cataliades, who was looking at Amelia’s father with a speculative gleam in his eye. “Where is Barry Bellboy?”

  “He detected a familiar brain signature,” Mr. Cataliades said absently. He checked Copley’s pulse with a large finger. Diantha squatted to peer into the captive’s eyes curiously. “He told us he’d catch up with us later.”

  “How did he tell you this?”

  “Via text messaging,” Mr. Cataliades said distastefully. “While we were following a false trail for Glassport.”

  My teeth were on edge. “Should we be worried about him?”

  “He’s got his car and a cell phone,” Diantha said slowly and carefully. “And he has our numbers. Uncle, did you check your other messages?”

  Mr. Cataliades made a face. “No, Sookie’s news startled me so much I gave up on doing so.” He brought out his phone and began looking at it and pressing things on the screen. “This man is dehydrated and bruised, but he doesn’t have internal injuries,” he told me, nodding toward our captive.

  “What am I supposed to do with him?”

  “Whateveryouwant,” Diantha said, with a certain amount of glee.

  Copley Carmichael’s eyes widened with fear.

  “Of course, he did try to have me killed,” I said thoughtfully. “And he didn’t care who got caught up in his vendetta against me. Hey, Mr. Carmichael, you see this big bandage on my shoulder? That’s courtesy of your man Tyrese. He almost got your daughter, too.” The man’s color wasn’t good, but it got worse. “And you know what happened to Tyrese? He got shot dead,” I said.

  But this wasn’t a pastime I could really call fun. Even though Carmichael deserved a lot of bad things, taunting him would not make me feel better about myself or anything else.

  “I wonder if he’s responsible for the voodoo doll, or whatever it was, in Alcee’s car,” I said.

  I watched his face carefully as I said this, and all I got was a blank stare. I did not believe Copley had put a hex or curse on the detective.

  Mr. Cataliades said, “Yes, I do have a message from Barry. Voice mail.” He held the phone to his ear.

  I waited impatiently.

  Finally, Mr. Cataliades lowered the phone. He looked serious. “Barry says he is following Johan Glassport,” he said. “That is not a safe thing to do.”

  “Barry knows Glassport killed Arlene,” I said. “He shouldn’t take the chance.”

  “He wants to identify Glassport’s companion.”

  “Where was he when he left the message?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t say. But he left the message at nine last night.”

  “That’s bad,” I said. “Really bad.” The problem was, I couldn’t think of anything to do about it, and I couldn’t imagine what to do with Copley Carmichael.

  A knock at my door startled us all. I was definitely distracted. I hadn’t even heard a car come up the driveway. My neighbor from up the road, Lorinda Prescott, was at the front door with her fabulous supper dish that was supposed to be scooped up with tortilla chips. And she’d brought Tostitos, too. “I just wanted to thank you for the delicious tomatoes,” she said. “I’ve never tasted any as good. What brand were they?”

  “I just bought ’em at the lawn and garden center,” I said. “Please come have a seat.” Lorinda said she wouldn’t stay long, but I had to introduce her to my company. While Lorinda was being charmed by Mr. Cataliades, I raised an eyebrow at Diantha, who slipped back down the hall to shut the door to the guest bedroom, where Copley Carmichael was still propped against the wall. After that, Diantha and Mr. Cataliades went upstairs, having said polite things to Lorinda, who seemed a bit stunned at Diantha’s ensemble.

  “I’m so glad you’ve got someone staying with you while you’re getting better,” she said. She paused, and her brow wrinkled. “My goodness, what’s that noise?”

  A dull thumping sound was issuing from the guest bedroom. Damn. “That’s probably . . . gosh, I guess they shut their dog in that room!” I said. I called up the stairs, “Mr. C! The dog’s acting up! Can you get Coco to calm down?”

  “I do beg your pardon,” Mr. Cataliades said, gliding down the stairs. “I will make the animal keep silent.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and tried not to notice that Lorinda was looking a little shocked to hear Mr. C call his dog “the animal.” He went down the hall, and I heard the door to the guest room open and close. The thumping ceased abruptly.

  Mr. Cataliades reappeared, bowing to Lorinda on his way through the living room to the stairs. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Prescott,” he said, and vanished into one of the upstairs rooms.

  “Gosh,” said Lorinda. “He’s mighty formal.”

  “Comes from an old New Orleans family,” I explained. A couple of minutes later, Lorinda decided she needed to get home to start supper, and I bowed her out of the house with lots of pleasantries.

  When she was gone, I breathed out a deep sigh of relief. I was hurrying to the guest bedroom . . . and the phone rang. It was Michele, checking up on me, which was a nice thing for her to do, but real bad timing.

  “Hi, Michele!” I said, trying to sound perky and healthy.

  “Hey, nearly-sister-in-law,” she said. “How are you today?”

  “So much better,” I said. That was only half a lie. I was better.

  “Can I come by and pick up your laundry? I’m doing mine tonight, so Jason and me can go line dancing tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, have a good time!” It had been ages since I’d been dancing. “I’m caught up on my laundry, thanks so much.”

  “Why don’t you come to Stompin’ Sally’s with us, if you’re feel
ing so much better?”

  “If my shoulder isn’t too sore, I’d love to,” I said impulsively. “Can I let you know tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Anytime before eight, that’s when we’re leaving.”

  I finally got to the guest bedroom. Copley was there, unconscious, still breathing. I hadn’t been sure how Mr. C had silenced him, but at least it was not by snapping his neck. And I still didn’t know what to do about him.

  I called up the stairs to Mr. C and Diantha to tell them supper was ready. They came down the stairs lickety-split. Each of us had a heaping bowlful of the ground meat, beans, sauce, and chopped peppers, and I shared out the bag of tortilla chips to use in scooping up the mixture. I had some shredded cheese, too. And Tara had left a pie made by Mrs. du Rone, so we even had dessert. By tacit agreement, we didn’t discuss the disposition of Copley Carmichael until we’d finished eating. The locusts were singing their evening chorale while we tried to reach a consensus.

  Diantha’s opinion was that we should kill him.

  Mr. Cataliades wanted to lay some heavy magic on him and put him back in place in New Orleans. Like substituting a ringer for the real Copley Carmichael. Obviously, he had a plan for using the new version of Amelia’s father.

  I couldn’t see letting him back into the world, a soulless, devil-tied creature with no impulse for good. But I didn’t want to kill anyone else, either. My own soul was dark enough. While we debated and the long evening turned into darkness, there was another knock at the back door.

  I couldn’t believe I’d ever longed for a visitor.

  This one was a vampire, and she didn’t bring any food.

  Pam glided in, followed closely by Karin. They looked like pale sisters. But Pam seemed energized, somehow. After I’d introduced the two vampires to the two part-demons, they took seats at the kitchen table and Pam said, “I feel that I’ve interrupted you when you were talking about something important.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but I’m glad you’re here. Maybe you can think of a good solution for this situation.” After all, if anyone was good at disposing of humans or bodies, it was Pam. And perhaps Karin was even better, since she’d had longer to practice. A lightbulb lit up suddenly in my brain. “Ladies, I wondered if either of you happens to know how a man ended up in my bedroom closet?”

  Karin raised her hand, as if she were in grade school. “I am responsible,” she said. “He was skulking. You have many people watching you, Sookie. He came through the woods the night you were in the hospital, and he didn’t know what had happened, that you weren’t here. He meant you ill, if the gun and knife he had on him are any indicators, but your magic circle didn’t stop him as Bill says it stopped Horst. I would have liked to see that. Instead, I had to stop him. I didn’t kill him since I thought you might want to talk to him.”

  “He did mean me ill, and I thank you most sincerely for stopping him,” I said. “I just don’t know what to do with him now.”

  Pam said, “Kill him. He is your enemy, and he wants to kill you.” This sounded pretty funny coming from someone who was wearing flowered crops and a teal T-shirt. Diantha nodded vigorously in wholehearted agreement.

  “Pam, I just can’t.”

  Pam shook her head at my weakness. Karin said, “Sister Pam, we could take him with us and . . . think about a solution.”

  Okay, I knew that was a euphemism for “get him out of sight and kill him.”

  “You can’t wipe his memory?” I said hopefully.

  “No,” Karin said. “He has no soul.”

  It was news to me that you couldn’t put the whammy on a soulless person, but then, it had never come up before. I hoped it would never come up again.

  “I’m sure I can find a use for him,” Pam said, and I straightened up. There was something expansive about the way my vampire buddy said that, something that made me pay attention.

  Mr. Cataliades, who’d had more years than I to study language (both body and spoken), said, “Miss Pam, do we have reason to congratulate you?”

  Pam closed her eyes in contentment, like a lovely blond cat. “You do,” she said, and a tiny smile curved her lips. Karin smiled, too, more broadly.

  It took a minute for me to get it. “You’re the sheriff now, Pam?”

  “I am,” she said, opening her eyes, her smile growing. “Felipe saw reason. Plus, it was on Eric’s wish list. But a wish list . . . Felipe didn’t have to honor it.”

  “Eric left a wish list.” I was trying not to feel sorry for Eric, going to a strange territory with a strange queen, without his trusty henchwoman at his side.

  “I think Bill told you about a few of his conditions,” Pam said, and her voice was neutral. “He had a few wishes he expressed to Freyda in return for signing a two-hundred-year marriage contract instead of the customary one hundred.”

  “I would be . . . interested . . . to hear what else was on it. The list.”

  “On the selfish side, he told Sam that he could not tell you that Sam had actually been the moving force behind bailing you out. On the less selfish side, he made it an absolute condition of his marrying Freyda that you never be harmed by any vampire. Not harassed, not tasted, not killed, not made a servant.”

  “That was thoughtful,” I said. In fact, that changed my whole future. And it wiped out the bitterness I’d begun to feel toward a man I’d loved a lot. I opened my eyes to see the pale faces staring at me with round blue eyes, eerily alike. “Okay, what else?”

  “That Karin guard your house from your woods, every night for a year.”

  Eric had already saved my life again and he wasn’t even here. “That was real thoughtful, too,” I said, though with an effort.

  “Sookie, take my advice,” Pam said. “I’m going to give it to you for free. This was not ‘nice’ of Eric. This was Eric protecting what used to be his, to show Freyda that he is loyal and protects his own. This is not a sentimental gesture.”

  Karin said, “We will do anything for Eric. We love him. But we know him better than anyone, and this calculation is one of Eric’s strengths.”

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, “I agree.” But I also knew that Eric liked to kill two birds with one stone. I thought the truth lay somewhere in between.

  “Since we agree that Eric is so practical, how come Eric can do without you both?”

  “Freyda’s condition. She did not want him to bring his children with him; she wanted him to assimilate into her vampires without having a cadre of his own people.”

  That was real smart. I had a second of thinking how lonely Eric would be without anyone familiar around, and then I choked off that sadness at the throat.

  “Thank you, Pam,” I said. “Freyda banned me from Oklahoma, which is not important. But Felipe banned me from Fangtasia, so I won’t be visiting you at work. However, I’d love to see you from time to time. If you’re not too important now that you’re sheriff!”

  She inclined her head with an elaborately regal gesture, meant to amuse. “I’m sure we can meet somewhere in the middle,” she said. “You’re the only human friend I’ve ever had, and I would miss you a little if I never saw you again.”

  “Oh, keep up the warm and cuddly,” I said. “Karin, thanks for stopping this man from killing me and for putting him in here. I’m guessing the house was unlocked?”

  “Yes, wide open,” she said. “Your brother, Jason, came to get some things he needed for your hospital stay, and forgot to lock it.”

  “Ah . . . and how do you know that?”

  “I may have asked him a few questions. I had no idea what had happened at your house, and I could smell your blood.”

  She’d taken him under with her vampire wiles and interrogated him. I sighed. “Okay, bypassing that, I guess Copley came along later?”

  “Yes, two hours later. He had a rental car. He parked it in the cemetery.”

  I could only laugh. The police had removed Copley’s own car, driven there by Tyrese. Copley had re
peated the pattern of his bodyguard, but hours later. But by now I’d resolved I wouldn’t have Copley in my house any longer. “If he left his rental car so close, maybe you all should drive him away in it. I assume the keys are in his pockets.”

  Diantha obligingly went to look and returned with the keys. Searching for things was definitely her favorite occupation.

  Mr. Cataliades and Diantha offered to move the prisoner outside. Mr. C carried Amelia’s father over his shoulder, and Copley’s head bounced limply against Mr. C’s broad back. But I had to harden my heart about it. He couldn’t be hypnotized, and he couldn’t be set free, and I couldn’t keep him prisoner forever. I tried not to think that it would have been better (by which I meant easier) if Karin had killed him immediately.

  When Eric’s children rose to leave, I got up, too. To my astonishment, they gave me a cold kiss apiece, Karin on the forehead and Pam on the lips.

  Pam said, “Eric told me that you refused his healing blood. But if I may offer mine?”

  My shoulder was aching and throbbing, and I figured this might be the last time in my life I could dodge physical pain. “Okay,” I said, and took off the bandage.

  Pam bit her own wrist and let her blood drip sluggishly onto the ugly wound on my shoulder. It was puffy and red, and scabby and sore, and altogether yucky. Even Karin made a moue of distaste. As the dark blood ran slowly over the damaged flesh, Karin’s cool fingers gently massaged it into my skin. Within a minute, the pain subsided and the redness vanished. The skin itched with healing.

  “Thanks, Pam. Karin, thanks for looking out for me.” I looked at the two women who were so like me and yet so completely different. Hesitantly, I said, “I know Eric intended to turn . . .”

  “Don’t talk about it,” Pam said. “We’re as close to friends as we can be, human and vampire. We’ll never be more, and I hope never less. You don’t want us to think too much about how it would be if you became like us.” I made a resolution then and there to never refer to Eric’s intention of having the three of us as his children.