“I started thinking about why you might be here,” Sookie said, to fill the fraught silence. “So I called Quiana. She’s an orphan, so she hasn’t got a permanent place to live. She’s like you, as I can see you’ve realized. And she hasn’t had any training or ‘mentoring,’ as they call it now.” Sookie beamed at him. She clearly felt she’d solved the mystery of why Xylda had manifested herself in Manfred’s dream—so he could rescue Quiana. Manfred spared a moment from his contemplation of the girl to understand that Sookie was a rescuer, and she could not conceive that he might not see himself that way.
“You want to get out of here,” he said to Quiana. It was evident in every line of the girl’s body. “You want to meet other people like yourself.”
“Yes,” Quiana Wong said. She had a heavy Southern accent. “I don’t fit in anywhere. I do want to meet more people like me. You’re the first one.”
“Quiana’s mom was half Chinese, half African-American,” Sookie said quietly. “Her dad was no-account white.”
Quiana nodded. “He was that and more.”
“They’re gone?” Manfred said. “Dead?”
Quiana nodded again. “They fought all the time anyway,” she said flatly. “Neither of them could rise to the challenge of being together, but they couldn’t let each other go, either.”
“What do you do now?” Manfred asked her.
“I’m a nanny,” the girl said. “I take care of twins.”
“I’m not going to be too popular with Tara,” Sookie muttered, turning to put more hot dogs on the rotating grill. “Hey, Quiana, can you load up more popcorn?”
Quiana obliged, and then Manfred had to step aside as she became busy. The concession stand was just as noisy as the spectator area, with the background noises from the popper, the chatter of customers, the hum of the crowds, and the crackling of the sound system. Children too young to sit still to watch a game were running and yelling in the space between the back of the stands and the concession stand. While Manfred waited, Quiana Wong and Sookie served a man wanting two bottles of water and a candy bar, a little girl who wanted a hot dog with mustard and pickles, and a boy with braces who wanted a Coke and some nachos. There were also requests for candy bars, bags of potato chips, and sunflower seeds. Two other volunteers were just as busy at the window on the other side.
To Manfred’s relief, two plump middle-aged women popped into the stand to relieve Sookie and Quiana, who stepped outside, looking tired. By silent mutual consent, the trio drifted over to an empty area near the fence surrounding the fields, far enough from the entrance booth and the clusters of players to remain unheard.
“I’m eighteen,” Quiana said. “I’m free. I graduated high school.”
“And you want me to take you when I leave, to find a psychic you can stay with and learn from.” Manfred wanted to be sure he understood what was on the plate.
“That’s what I want more than anything in the world. I know it can’t be you. That wouldn’t be right. I need to learn how to control this power, without the sex thing getting messed up with it.”
She meant each disjointed phrase, meant it absolutely. Manfred noticed that Sookie was looking at Quiana almost sadly, and he was sure the blonde was revisiting her own teen years in Bon Temps, when she, too, had been on the fringes of everything.
“I’m thinking,” Manfred said, when he realized both Sookie and Quiana were waiting for him to speak. Who would take Quiana? If his grandmother had been among the living, his course of action would have been easy. He considered the possible choices in his small community—small in numbers, but spread all across the United States and Canada. To his surprise, a name popped into his mind.
“I do know someone. Marilyn Finn. She’s got a going business, real small, but she has genuine talent. She needs some help.” She’d told him so via e-mail, not a week before. She’d hinted around that he himself might like a place to stay and work, now that his grandmother was gone. “What . . . are you?”
“Spirits can get into me,” she said. “I don’t know what to call it.”
“You’re a true psychic,” he said. “That’s what I’d call you, anyway. Quiana, let me step away and give her a quick call.”
“Great,” Quiana said, but her eyes closed and she swayed for a moment. Then she looked at Manfred with an eerie directness, as if she could see through the backs of his eyes and into his brain. “I see you in the desert,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I see you in an old place, with lots of old things, and people who have amazing secrets.” Then her eyes were focused on the outside of Manfred again. “Sorry. Sometimes I have the foreseeing, too.”
Manfred took a deep breath and waited for a moment. She seemed to be through exhibiting her talents, and he was profoundly glad. “Ah, thanks for the heads-up on that. Back to Marilyn. You’d have to work hard. I’m assuming she’d have you meeting clients and giving them the procedure to follow during the readings, taking the money, answering the e-mails, and so on. But Marilyn has a lot of contacts in our community, and she’s more social than I am. You’d meet a lot of people and you’d learn a lot. She’s a good woman, too.”
“Anything is better than sleeping in a room with my cousin’s two little boys,” Quiana said earnestly.
Manfred gave her a quick smile, walked away, and made a phone call, his back to the two women, though he knew as far as Sookie was concerned this privacy was only an illusion. He was relieved to hear Marilyn Finn answer the phone herself.
When he snapped his phone shut and walked back to the thin girl and the robust blonde, he was smiling with relief. “She said okay,” Manfred told them. He didn’t add that he had been bound to promise to do two large favors for Marilyn in return.
“Thank you,” Sookie said sincerely. But Manfred could tell she had reservations. Any sane woman would, at the prospect of sending a girl into a completely blind situation on the say-so of a brand-new acquaintance.
Quiana was openly excited.
“I swear to you, it’s on the up and up,” Manfred told Sookie. She flushed.
“I’m holding you to that,” she said. “And Quiana will let me know if it’s not.” She hesitated, then quietly said, “You’re doing a good thing.”
In Sookie’s eyes, Manfred could see he was cast in the role of rescuer of a fair young maiden. He glanced at Quiana, trying not to smile. He had to admit that he didn’t exactly find her fair, and he was pretty sure she was no maiden. But he did have a lot of sympathy for her: that would have to do.
Maybe Sookie is right. Maybe this is why Xylda sent me, Manfred thought. Not to meet Sookie Stackhouse, or thwart the Mudbug coach, but to rescue Quiana. Have I gotten to the goal, Grandma?
“So . . . how will this work?” Quiana asked, suddenly getting down to brass tacks. “I’ve gotta tell the du Rones I’m leaving. The parents of the twins. I owe that to them. Where does this Marilyn Finn live? How do I get there? Am I going to be staying in her house with her?”
“Marilyn lives in Oakmont, Pennsylvania,” Manfred said. “It’s got a lot of charm. I’ll take you to the airport in Shreveport when I leave here, and we’ll go in and work out the best route for you. Then we’ll call Marilyn, and she’ll meet you at the airport when you land. Marilyn and I are splitting your ticket.”
“What if I don’t like her?”
“Then we’ll work out something else,” Manfred said. “But I’m hoping you two will get along fine.” Manfred tried to keep You’d better out of his voice, but Quiana understood. She gave him a sharp nod.
“If it doesn’t work out, you call me,” Sookie said, and Quiana looked relieved.
The Lady Falcons were clustered under a tree about five yards away, and their coach was giving them a serious lecture, rehashing the things they’d done right and the things they’d done wrong. The lecture ended at that moment, and the girls dispersed, some running to get in line
at the concession booth, some meeting with their parents, who’d been waiting a respectful distance away. When Sookie, Manfred, and Quiana walked back to the booth (Quiana had to retrieve her purse), a couple of Lady Falcons approached, obviously wanting to talk to Sookie. One of them was Ashley Stark.
Quiana reached into the little building and grabbed her purse, and told Manfred she was going to her cousin’s home to call the du Rones and to pack her things. She pointed down the street from the softball fields to a row of dilapidated houses that had obviously all been built at the same unhappy time by the same inept builder.
With the understanding that he would pick her up in an hour, Manfred tuned in to the conversation Sookie was having with Ashley.
“That was the weirdest thing I ever saw,” Ashley was saying, and Manfred thought, Uh-oh. Though it was wounding to always be regarded as fraudulent, if not worse, Manfred truly believed that the world was better off in general if fewer people believed in the other world, the hidden world.
Sookie said, “It was a fluke, Ashley. You got a great hit in the last inning, Manfred says.” She introduced him briefly, but Ashley hardly spared him a glance. She was too worried. Sookie returned to the previous topic. “I just know someone’s going to pay attention,” she said, hugging the senior.
“I want it more than anything,” Ashley said. “If I’m ever going to get out of here . . .” Manfred could read the intensity in the girl, the iron in her.
Sookie jerked her head to the left and said, “Look, Ashley. I think someone’s waiting for you.”
Manfred turned to look in the direction Sookie had indicated, and he saw a man and a woman who were clearly Ashley’s parents, if resemblance was any indication. They were standing with the scout from Louisiana Tech. They were all smiling.
Ashley took a deep, ragged breath. Her back stiffened. She said, “Talk to you later, Miss Sookie,” and walked off to meet her future.
Manfred was almost bursting. “Maybe she’s destined for great things, or for some spectacular moment, and that’s why Xylda sent me here . . . to make sure she got that chance.”
Sookie Stackhouse laughed out loud. “You got to have one reason?” She sobered quickly. “Seriously, you lead a simple life if things happen to you for only one reason.”
Manfred felt himself flush. He couldn’t imagine that a barmaid in a hick town could have that complex a life. “Right,” he said, and there was an edge to his voice.
She looked at him with a touch of surprise and a little sorrow. “I didn’t mean to insult you,” she said.
For one of the few times in his brief life, Manfred was ashamed of himself. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, trying to keep the reluctance out of his voice. “Maybe Xylda wanted me to come here for five different reasons. She loved her little games. She always challenged me. She never made it easy.”
“My gran was real different from the way you describe Miss Xylda,” Sookie said. “She never played games. She stepped off the beaten track one time, and she regretted that transgression, in some ways, all her days. She was a little superstitious, though. She always thought bad things came in threes.”
“Xylda said it was oversimplification to believe that events happen in threes—three deaths, three good things, three bad things. She said it all depended on your time frame.” Manfred smiled, trying to smooth things over.
“If you add things up over a year, or over four months?”
“Or an hour,” Manfred said. “She thought if you fixed on three, you limited yourself.”
“She was quite the psychologist,” Sookie said.
“Yes, in her way,” Manfred agreed. He allowed himself to feel the sharpness of the grief he’d experienced when she’d passed, far away from home in the cold mountains. “She knew human nature, that’s for sure. She wasn’t able to control her own,” he added slowly. “But she understood how people would react; at least, most often. I don’t think she ever met anyone like you.”
Sookie smiled and turned to look between the stands at the scoreboard. It indicated that the next game was into its second inning. The Red Ditch Gators were playing a team from Deux Arbres.
“That Deux Arbres team is supposed to be pretty good,” Sookie said, her eyes narrowed against the bright sun. There was a chorus of shouts from the bleachers. Manfred knew later they were yelling, “Heads up!” But what he heard in his head was his grandmother’s voice, saying, Look in the blue hereafter.
His hand shot out above Sookie’s head without his conscious decision.
For the first time in his life, Manfred Bernardo caught a softball.
He stood frozen in astonishment and delight and horror for a couple of seconds, time enough for Sookie to jump back, looking up at his hand (which stung like the very devil). She lowered her eyes to his face. Her own were full of astonishment and relief.
“Good catch,” called one of the Lady Falcons. It was curly-haired Georgia Allen. “Want me to take it back to the field?”
“Sure,” Manfred said. “Thanks.” He dropped the ball into her hand.
He had a sudden vision of what could have happened, the kind that did no one any good at all. He saw the ball hitting Sookie on top of her blond head. He saw her crumple to the ground, unconscious. He saw the ambulance ride, the bleed into the brain, the blackness. Then that vision evaporated, because that future was not hers anymore. He had changed it by showing up in Bon Temps, Louisiana, on a brisk bright day in early spring.
“So I reckon you won the game,” Sookie said quietly. And he understood that she had seen the vision in his head. “Look what you worked into a few hours. You can sure multitask.”
“It was my pleasure,” he said, trying for a courtliness he’d never aspired to achieve.
“And mine,” she said, nodding thoughtfully. “You call me, you hear? You’re being real good to help Quiana. But she may not suit your friend Marilyn.”
“At least she’ll be able to get help to understand how to live with this trait, from Marilyn,” Manfred said. “There aren’t that many of us.”
“And Ashley will get her scholarship. I wouldn’t have known it was the assistant coach affecting the pitches if you hadn’t spotted him.”
“We stopped him for this game.” Cheaters kept on cheating. They couldn’t resist.
“And my skull is in one piece.”
“That, most important of all.”
“So I owe you one,” she said, and Manfred could tell that this was a serious statement from her. If Sookie Stackhouse owed you one, she stood ready to help you anytime, anyplace.
“No,” said Manfred, surprising himself. “I learned a lot today. I think we’re even.”
“Time for me to get back to work,” she said, glancing down at her watch. “You taking off?”
“Yeah, I’ll pick Quiana up and head out of town. We’ll go directly to the airport. She’ll call you when she gets to Marilyn’s, I’m sure.”
“You let me know when you get to your desert place, the one Quiana thought you should find,” she said.
“I will,” he promised. “It may not be for a while. I never thought of going to the desert before.” He laughed, and she laughed with him.
“Who’s to say that a prophecy is not just your inner wishes divined and spoken out loud?” she said. “After all, when you talked to your grandmother about the rule of three, the one she considered so silly, maybe she had another rule in mind—that your good deeds should always outnumber the bad.”
She gave him a little hug then, before she returned to the concession stand for another shift. He saw her begin to scoop up popcorn to fill the striped bags.
And Manfred, wondering if the good things he had done would ever outnumber the bad—or even the neutral—went to his car to pick up a girl he hardly knew to take her to begin the rest of her life with a stranger.
He figured that wa
s what Xylda would have wanted. I don’t know what you think, Xylda, he thought. I figure I won.
CHARLAINE HARRIS is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse and Midnight, Texas, fantasy/mystery series and the Aurora Teagarden, Harper Connelly, and Lily Bard mystery series. Her books have inspired HBO’s True Blood, NBC’s Midnight, Texas, and the Aurora Teagarden movies for Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. She has lived in the South her entire life.
Visit her on the Web at charlaineharris.com, facebook.com/CharlaineHarris, and twitter.com/RealCharlaine.
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The Complete Sookie Stackhouse Stories (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood) Page 33