Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set

by Charlaine Harris

  Jade Flower slithered out of the backseat next and added her eyes to those scanning the area. Protecting the queen with their bodies, they moved into the courtyard. Sigebert got out next, ax in hand, and waited for me. After I’d joined him on the sidewalk, he and Wybert took me through the open gateway with less ceremony than the others had taken the queen.

  I’d seen the queen at my own home, unguarded by anyone but Cataliades. I’d seen the queen in her own office, guarded by one person. I guess I didn’t realize until that moment how important security was for Sophie-Anne, how precarious her hold on power must be. I wanted to know against whom all these guards were protecting her. Who wanted to kill the Louisiana queen? Maybe all vampire rulers were in this much danger—or maybe it was just Sophie-Anne. Suddenly the vampire conference in the fall seemed like a much scarier proposition than it had before.

  The courtyard was well lit, and Amelia was standing on the circular driveway with three friends. For the record, none of them were crones with broomsticks. One of them was a kid who looked just like a Mormon missionary: black pants, white shirt, dark tie, polished black shoes. There was a bicycle leaning up against the tree in the center of the circle. Maybe he was a Mormon missionary. He looked so young that I thought he might still be growing. The tall woman standing beside him was in her sixties, but she had a Bowflex body. She was wearing a tight T-shirt, knit slacks, sandals, and a pair of huge hoop earrings. The third witch was about my age, in her mid- to late twenties, and she was Hispanic. She had full cheeks, bright red lips, and rippling black hair, and she was short and had more curves than an S turn. Sigebert admired her especially (I could tell by his leer), but she ignored all the vampires as if she couldn’t see them.

  Amelia might have been startled by the influx of vampires, but she handled introductions with aplomb. Evidently the queen had already identified herself before I approached. “Your Majesty,” Amelia was saying, “These are my co-practitioners.” She swept her hand before them as if she were showing off a car to the studio audience. “Bob Jessup, Patsy Sellers, Terencia Rodriguez—Terry, we call her.”

  The witches glanced at each other before nodding briefly to the queen. It was hard to tell how she took that lack of deference, her face was so glass-smooth—but she nodded back, and the atmosphere remained tolerable.

  “We were just preparing for our reconstruction,” Amelia said. She sounded absolutely confident, but I noticed that her hands were trembling. Her thoughts were not nearly as confident as her voice, either. Amelia was running over their preparations in her head, frantically itemizing the magic stuff she’d assembled, anxiously reassessing her companions to satisfy herself they were up to the ritual, and so on. Amelia, I belatedly realized, was a perfectionist.

  I wondered where Claudine was. Maybe she’d seen the vamps coming and prudently fled to some dark corner. While I was looking around for her, I had a moment when the heartache I was staving off just plain ambushed me. It was like the moments I had after my grandmother died, when I’d be doing something familiar like brushing my teeth, and all of a sudden the blackness would overwhelm me. It took a moment or two to collect myself and swim back to the surface again.

  It would be like that for a while, and I’d just have to grit my teeth and bear it.

  I made myself take notice of those around me. The witches had assumed their positions. Bob settled himself in a lawn chair in the courtyard, and I watched with a tiny flare of interest as he drew powdered stuff from little snack-size Ziploc bags and got a box of matches out of his chest pocket. Amelia bounded up the stairs to the apartment, Terry stationed herself halfway down the stairs, and the tall older witch, Patsy, was already standing on the gallery looking down at us.

  “If you all want to watch, probably up here would be best,” Amelia called, and the queen and I went up the stairs. The guards gathered in a clump by the gate so they’d be as far away from the magic as they could be; even Jade Flower seemed respectful of the power that was about to be put to use, even if she did not respect the witches as people.

  As a matter of course, Andre followed the queen up the stairs, but I thought there was a less than enthusiastic droop to his shoulders.

  It was nice to focus on something new instead of mulling over my miseries, and I listened with interest as Amelia, who looked like she should be out playing beach volleyball, instead gave us instructions on the magic spell she was about to cast.

  “We’ve set the time to two hours before I saw Jake arrive,” she said. “So you may see a lot of boring and extraneous stuff. If that gets old, I can try to speed up the events.”

  Suddenly I had a thought that blinded me by its sheer serendipity. I would ask Amelia to return to Bon Temps with me, and there I would ask her to repeat this procedure in my yard; then I would know what had happened to poor Gladiola. I felt much better once I’d had this idea, and I made myself pay attention to the here and now.

  Amelia called out “Begin!” and immediately began reciting words, I suppose in Latin. I heard a faint echo come up from the stairs and the courtyard as the other witches joined in.

  We didn’t know what to expect, and it was oddly boring to hear the chanting continue after a couple of minutes. I began to wonder what would happen to me if the queen got very bored.

  Then my cousin Hadley walked into the living room.

  I was so shocked, I almost spoke to her. When I looked for just a second longer, I could tell it wasn’t really Hadley. It had the shape of her, and it moved like her, but this simulacrum was only washed with color. Her hair was not a true dark, but a glistening impression of dark. She looked like tinted water, walking. You could see the surface’s shimmer. I looked at her eagerly: it had been so long since we’d seen each other. Hadley looked older, of course. She looked harder, too, with a sardonic set to her mouth and a skeptical look to her eyes.

  Oblivious to the presence of anyone else in the room, the reconstruction went over to the loveseat, picked up a phantom remote control, and turned on the television. I actually glanced at the screen to see if it would show anything, but of course, it didn’t.

  I felt a movement beside me and I glanced at the queen. If I had been shocked, she was electrified. I had never really thought the queen could have truly loved Hadley, but I saw now that she had, as much as she was able.

  We watched Hadley glance at the television from time to time while she painted her toenails, drank a phantom glass of blood, and made a phone call. We couldn’t hear her. We could only see, and that within a limited range. The object she reached for would appear the minute her hand touched it, but not before, so you could be sure of what she had only when she began to use it. When she leaned forward to replace the glass of blood on the table, and her hand was still holding the glass, we’d see the glass, the table with its other objects, and Hadley, all at once, all with that glistening patina. The ghost table was imposed over the real table, which was still in almost exactly the same space as it had been that night, just to make it weirder. When Hadley let go of the glass, both glass and table winked out of existence.

  Andre’s eyes were wide and staring when I glanced back at him, and it was the most expression I’d seen on his face. If the queen was grieving and I was fascinated and sad, Andre was simply freaked out.

  We stood through a few more minutes of this until Hadley evidently heard a knock at the door. (Her head turned toward the door, and she looked surprised.) She rose (the phantom loveseat, perhaps two inches to the right of the real one, became nonexistent) and padded across the floor. She stepped through my sneakers, which were sitting side by side next to the loveseat.

  Okay, that was weird. This whole thing was weird, but fascinating.

  Presumably the people in the courtyard had watched the caller come up the outside stairs, since I heard a loud curse from one of the Berts—Wybert, I thought. When Hadley opened a phantom door, Patsy, who’d been stationed outside on the gallery, pushed open the real door so we could see. From Amelia’s chagrined
face, I could tell she hadn’t thought that one through ahead of time.

  Standing at the door was (phantom) Waldo, a vampire who had been with the queen for years. He had been much punished in the years before his death, and it had left him with permanently wrinkled skin. Since Waldo had been an ultrathin albino before this punishment, he’d looked awful the one and only night I’d known him. As a watery ghost creature, he looked better, actually.

  Hadley looked surprised to see him. That expression was strong enough to be easily recognizable. Then she looked disgusted. But she stepped back to let him in.

  When she strolled back to the table to pick up her glass, Waldo glanced around him, as if to see if anyone else was there. The temptation to warn Hadley was so strong it was almost irresistible.

  After some conversation, which of course we couldn’t understand, Hadley shrugged and seemed to agree to some plan. Presumably, this was the idea Waldo had told me about the night he’d confessed to killing my cousin. He’d said it had been Hadley’s idea to go to St. Louis Cemetery Number One to raise the ghost of voodooienne Marie Laveau, but from this evidence it seemed Waldo was the one who had suggested the excursion.

  “What’s that in his hand?” Amelia said, as quietly as she could, and Patsy stepped in from the gallery to check.

  “Brochure,” she called to Amelia, trying to use equally hushed tones. “About Marie Laveau.”

  Hadley looked at the watch on her wrist and said something to Waldo. It was something unkind, judging by Hadley’s expression and the jerk of her head as she indicated the door. She was saying “No,” as clearly as body language could say it.

  And yet the next night she had gone with him. What had happened to change her mind?

  Hadley walked back to her bedroom and we followed her. Looking back, we watched Waldo leave the apartment, putting the brochure on the table by the door as he departed.

  It felt oddly voyeuristic to stand in Hadley’s bedroom with Amelia, the queen, and Andre, watching Hadley take off a bathrobe and put on a very fancy dress.

  “She wore that to the party the night before the wedding,” the queen said quietly. It was a skintight, cut-down-to-here red dress decked with darker red sequins and some gorgeous alligator pumps. Hadley was going to make the queen regret what she was losing, evidently.

  We watched Hadley primp in the mirror, do her hair two different ways, and mull her choice of lipsticks for a very long time. The novelty was wearing off the process, and I was willing to fast-forward, but the queen just couldn’t get enough of seeing her beloved again. I sure wasn’t going to protest, especially since the queen was footing the bill.

  Hadley turned back and forth in front of her full-length mirror, appeared satisfied with what she saw, then burst into tears.

  “Oh, my dear,” the queen said quietly. “I am so sorry.”

  I knew exactly how Hadley felt, and for the first time I felt the kinship with my cousin I’d lost through the years of separation. In this reconstruction, it was the night before the queen’s wedding, and Hadley was going to have to go to a party and watch the queen and her fiancé be a couple. And the next night she would have to attend their wedding; or so she thought. She didn’t know that she’d be dead by then; finally, definitely dead.

  “Someone coming up,” called Bob the witch. His voice wafted through the open French windows onto the gallery. In the phantom, ghostly world, the doorbell must have rung, because Hadley stiffened, gave herself a last look in the mirror (right through us, since we were standing in front of it) and visibly braced herself. When Hadley walked down the hall, she had a familiar sway to her hips and her watery face was set in a cold half smile.

  She pulled open the door. Since the witch Patsy had left the actual door open after Waldo had “arrived,” we could see this happening. Jake Purifoy was dressed in a tux, and he looked very good, as Amelia had said. I glanced at Amelia when he stepped into the apartment, and she was eyeing the phantasm regretfully.

  He didn’t care for being sent to pick up the queen’s honeybun, you could tell, but he was too politic and too courteous to take that out on Hadley. He stood patiently while she got a tiny purse and gave her hair a final combing, and then the two were out the door.

  “Coming down out there,” Bob called, and we went out the door and across the gallery to look over the railing. The two phantoms were getting into a glistening car and driving out of the courtyard. That was where the area affected by the spell came to an end. As the ghost car passed through the gate area, it winked out of existence right by the group of vampires who were clustered by the opening. Sigebert and Wybert were wide-eyed and solemn, Jade Flower appeared disgruntled, and Rasul looked faintly amused, as if he were thinking of the good stories he’d have to tell in the guards’ mess hall.

  “Time to fast-forward,” Amelia called. She was looking tired now, and I wondered how great a strain coordinating this act of witchcraft was placing on the young witch.

  Patsy, Terry, Bob, and Amelia began to say another spell in unison. If there was a weak link in this team effort, it was Terry. The round-faced little witch was sweating profusely and shaking with the effort of keeping her magical end up. I felt a little worried as I saw the strain on her face.

  “Take it easy, easy!” Amelia exhorted her team, having read the same signs. Then they all resumed chanting, and Terry seemed to be pacing herself a bit better; she didn’t look so desperate.

  Amelia said, “Slow . . . down . . . now,” and the chanting eased its pace.

  The car appeared again in the gate, this time running right through Sigebert, who’d taken a step forward, the better to watch Terry, I suspected. It lurched to an abrupt stop half-in, half-out of the aperture.

  Hadley threw herself out of the car. She was weeping, and from the looks of her face, she’d been weeping for some time. Jake Purifoy emerged from his side and stood there, his hands on the top of his door, talking across the roof of the car at Hadley.

  For the first time, the queen’s personal bodyguard spoke. Andre said, “Hadley, you have to cut this out. People will notice, and the new king will do something about it. He’s the jealous kind, you know? He doesn’t care about—” Here Andre lost the thread, and shook his head. “He cares about keeping face.”

  We all stared at him. Was he channeling?

  The queen’s bodyguard switched his gaze to the ectoplasmic Hadley. Andre said, “But Jake, I can’t stand it. I know she has to do this politically, but she’s sending me away! I can’t take it.”

  Andre could read lips. Even ectoplasmic lips. He began speaking again.

  “Hadley, go up and sleep on it. You can’t go to the wedding if you’re going to create a scene. You know that would embarrass the queen, and it would ruin the ceremony. My boss will kill me if that happens. This is the biggest event we’ve ever worked.”

  He was talking about Quinn, I realized. Jake Purifoy was the employee Quinn had told me was missing.

  “I can’t stand it,” Hadley repeated. She was shrieking, I could tell from the way her mouth moved, but luckily Andre saw no need to imitate that. It was eerie enough hearing the words come out of his mouth. “I’ve done something terrible!” The melodramatic words sounded very strange in Andre’s monotone.

  Hadley ran up the stairs, and Terry automatically moved out of the way to let her pass. Hadley unlocked the (already open) door and stormed into her apartment. We turned to watch Jake. Jake sighed, straightened up, and stepped away from the car, which vanished. He flipped open a cell phone and punched in a number. He spoke into the phone for less than a minute, with no pause for an answer, so it was safe to assume he’d gotten voice mail.

  Andre said, “Boss, I have to tell you I think there’s going to be trouble. The girlfriend won’t be able to control herself on the day.”

  Oh my God, tell me Quinn didn’t have Hadley killed! I thought, feeling absolutely sick at the thought. But even as the idea formed fully, Jake wandered over to the rear of the car, which ap
peared again as he brushed against it. He ran his hand lovingly along the line of the trunk, stepping closer and closer to the area outside the gate, and suddenly a hand reached out and grabbed him. The witches’ area did not extend beyond the walls, so the rest of the body was absent, and the effect of a hand materializing from nowhere and seizing the unsuspecting Were was as scary as anything in a horror movie.

  This was exactly like one of those dreams where you see danger approaching, but you can’t speak. No warnings on our part could alter what had already happened. But we were all shocked. The brothers Bert cried out, Jade Flower drew her sword without my even seeing her hand move, and the queen’s mouth fell open.

  We could see only Jake’s feet, thrashing. Then they lay still.

  We all stood and looked at each other, even the witches, their concentration wavering until the courtyard began to fill with mist.

  “Witches!” Amelia called harshly. “Back to work!” In a moment, everything had cleared up. But Jake’s feet were still, and in a moment, their outline grew still more faint; he was fading out of sight like all the other lifeless objects. In a few seconds, though, my cousin appeared on the gallery above, looking down. Her expression was cautious and worried. She’d heard something. We registered the moment when she saw the body, and she came down the stairs with vampiric speed. She leaped through the gate and was lost to sight, but in a moment she was back in, dragging the body by the feet. As long as she was touching it, the body was visible as a table or chair would have been. Then she bent over the corpse, and now we could see that Jake had a huge wound in his neck. The wound was sickening, though I have to say that the vamps watching did not look sickened, but enthralled.

  Ectoplasmic Hadley looked around her, hoping for help that didn’t come. She looked desperately uncertain. Her fingers never left Jake’s neck as she felt for his pulse.