Deadlocked (4 page)

“It was consumed entirely, if that was your purpose. Please abstain in the future. We don’t want there to be crowding around the portal,” he said in gentle admonishment, rather as though I’d been feeding pets from the dinner table.

“Sorry,” I said. “So—why are you here?” I heard the bluntness of my words and felt myself turning red. “I mean, to what do I owe the honor of your visit? Can I get you a drink or something to eat?”

“No thank you, dearest. Where have you been this evening? You smell of the fae and humans and many other things.”

I took a deep breath and tried to explain Ladies Only night at Hooligans. With every sentence, I felt more of a fool. You should have seen Niall’s face when I told him that one night a week, human women paid to watch men take their clothes off. He sure didn’t get it.

“Do men do this also?” he asked. “Go in groups to special buildings, pay to watch women undress?”

I said, “Yes, men
much
more often than women. The other nights, that’s what happens at Hooligans.”

“And Claude makes money this way,” Niall said wonderingly. “Why don’t the men just ask the women to take their clothes off, if they want to see their bodies?”

I took another deep breath but let it out without attempting further explanation. Some topics were just too complicated to tackle, especially with a fairy who’d never lived in our world. Niall was a tourist, not a resident. “Can we bypass this whole discussion until another time, or maybe until never? Surely there’s something more important you want to talk about?” I said.

“Of course. May I sit?”

“Be my guest.” We sat on the couch, angled forward so we were looking into each other’s faces. There’s nothing like having a fairy examine you to make you acutely aware of your every flaw.

“You’ve recovered well,” he said, to my surprise.

“I have,” I said, trying not to glance down, as if my scarred thigh would show through my clothing. “It took a while.” Niall meant I looked good for someone who’d been tortured. Two notorious fairies who’d had their teeth sharpened like the elves’ had left me with some permanent physical damage. Niall and Bill had arrived in time to save my body parts and my sanity, if not all of my actual flesh. “Thanks for coming in time,” I said, forcing a smile on my face. “I’ll never forget how glad I was to see you-all.”

Niall waved away my gratitude. “You are my blood,” he said. That was reason enough for him. I thought about my great-uncle Dermot, Niall’s half-human son, who believed Niall had cast a crazy spell on him. Kind of contradictory, huh? I almost pointed that out to Great-Grandfather, but I did want to keep the peace since I hadn’t seen him in so long.

“When I came through the portal tonight, I smelled blood in the ground around your house,” he said abruptly. “Human blood, fae blood. Now I can tell there is fae blood upstairs in your attic, recently spilled. And fairies are living here now. Who?” Niall’s smooth hands took mine, and I felt a flush of well-being.

“Claude and Dermot have been living here, kind of off and on,” I said. “When Eric stays over, they spend the night in Claude’s house in Monroe.”

Niall looked very, very thoughtful. “What reason did Claude give you for wanting to be in your house? Why did you permit this? Have you had sex with him?” He didn’t sound angry or distressed, but the questions themselves had a certain edge.

“I don’t have sex with relatives, first off,” I said, an edge to my own voice. My boss, Sam Merlotte, had told me that the fae didn’t necessarily consider such relationships taboo, but I sure did. I took yet another deep breath. I would hyperventilate if Niall stayed very long.

I tried again, this time making an effort to modify my indignation. “Sex between relatives is not something humans condone,” I told him, making myself stop right there before adding any codicils. “I have slept in the same bed with Dermot and Claude, because they told me that would make them feel better. And I admit it helped me, too. They both seem kind of lost, since they’re not able to enter Faery. A bunch of the fae got left outside, and they’re pretty miserable.” I did my best not to sound reproachful, but Hooligans was like Ellis Island in lockdown.

Niall was not going to be diverted. “Of course Claude would want to be close to you,” he said. “The company of others with fairy blood is always desirable. Did you suspect … he had any other reason?”

Was this a hint, or just a simple hesitation in Niall’s speech? As a matter of fact, I
did
think the two fairies had another reason for their attraction to me and my house, but I thought—I hoped—this reason was quite unconscious. This was a chance to unburden myself of a great secret and gain more information about an object I had in my possession. I opened my mouth to tell Niall about what I’d found in a secret compartment in an old desk.

But the sense of caution I’d developed in my life as a telepath … well, that sense jumped up and down, screaming, “Shut up!”

I said, “Do
you
think they had another reason?”

I noticed Niall had mentioned only his full-fairy grandson, Claude, not his half-human son Dermot. Since Niall had always acted very lovingly toward me, and my blood had only a trace of fairy, I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t equally loving toward Dermot. Dermot had done some bad things, but he’d been under a spell. Niall wasn’t cutting him any slack for that. Just at the moment, Niall was looking at me doubtfully, his head cocked to one side.

My cheeks yanked up in my brightest smile. I felt increasingly uneasy. “Claude and Dermot have been real helpers. They carried down all the old stuff in the attic. I sold it to an antiques dealer in Shreveport.” Niall smiled back at me and stood. Before I could say Jack Robinson, he’d glided up the stairs. He came back down them a couple of minutes later. I spent the time sitting there with my mouth hanging open. Even for a fairy, this was odd behavior. “I guess you were up there sniffing Dermot’s blood?” I said warily.

“I can tell I have irritated you, dearest.” Niall smiled at me, and his beauty warmed me. “Why was there bleeding in the attic?”

Niall didn’t even use the pronoun “he.” I said, “A human came in looking for me. Dermot was working and didn’t hear him coming. The human clocked him one. Hit him on the head,” I explained, when Niall looked confused.

“Is that the human whose blood I smelled outside in the ground?”

There’d been so many. Vampires and humans, Weres and fairies. I actually had to think a minute. “Could be,” I said at last. “Bellenos healed Dermot, and they caught the guys …” I fell silent. At the mention of Bellenos’s name, Niall’s eyes flashed, and not with joy.

“Bellenos, the elf,” he said.

“Yes.”

His head turned sharply, and I knew he’d heard something I hadn’t.

We’d been too involved in our conversation to hear a car on the driveway, apparently; but Niall had heard the key in the lock.

“Cousin, did you enjoy the show?” Claude called from the kitchen, and I had time to think,
Another OSM
, before Claude and Dermot walked into the living room.

There was a frozen silence. The three fairies were looking back and forth like gunfighters at the OK Corral. Each one waited for the other to make some decisive gesture that would determine whether they fought or talked.

“My house, my rules,” I said, and shot up from the couch like someone had lit my ass on fire. “No brawling! Not! Any!”

There was another beat of the tense silence, and then Claude said, “Of course not, Sookie. Prince Niall—Grandfather—I had feared I’d never see you again.”

“Claude,” Niall said, nodding at his grandson.

“Hello, Father,” said Dermot very quietly.

Niall didn’t look at his child.

Awkward.

Chapter 2

Fairies. Never simple. My grandmother Adele would definitely
have
agreed. She’d had a long affair with Dermot’s fraternal twin, Fintan, and my aunt Linda and my father, Corbett, (both dead for years now) had been the results.

“Maybe it’s time for some plain speaking,” I said, trying to look confident. “Niall, maybe you could tell us why you’re pretending Dermot isn’t standing right here. And why you put that crazy spell on him.” Dr. Phil to the fae—that was me.

Or not. Niall gave me his most lordly look.

“This one defied me,” he said, tilting his head at his son.

Dermot bowed his head. I didn’t know if he was keeping his eyes down so he wouldn’t provoke Niall or if he was concealing rage or if he just couldn’t think of where to begin.

Being related to Niall, even at two removes, was not easy. I couldn’t imagine having a closer tie. If Niall’s beauty and power had been united with a coherent course of action and a nobleness of purpose, he would have been very like an angel.

This conviction could not have popped into my head at a more inconvenient moment.

“You’re looking at me strangely,” Niall said. “What’s wrong, dearest one?”

“In the time he’s spent here,” I said, “my great-uncle has been kind, hardworking, and smart. The only thing that’s been wrong with Dermot is a bit of mental fragility, a direct result of being made crazy for years. So, why’d you do that? ‘He defied me’ isn’t really an answer.”

“You haven’t got the right to question me,” Niall said, in his most royal voice. “I am the only living prince of Faery.”

“I don’t know why that means I can’t ask you questions. I’m an
American
,” I said, standing tall.

The beautiful eyes examined me coldly. “I love you,” he said very unlovingly, “but you’re presuming too much.”

“If you love me, or even if you just respect me a little, you need to answer my question. I love Dermot, too.”

Claude was standing absolutely still, doing a great imitation of Switzerland. I knew he wasn’t going to chime in on my side or Dermot’s side or even Niall’s side. To Claude, the only side was his.

“You allied yourself with the water fairies,” Niall said to Dermot.

“After you cursed me,” Dermot protested, looking up at his father briefly.

“You helped them kill Sookie’s father,” Niall said. “Your nephew.”

“I did not,” Dermot said quietly. “And I’m not mistaken in this. Even Sookie believes this, and she lets me stay here.”

“You weren’t in your right mind. I know you would never do that if you hadn’t been cursed,” I said.

“You see her kindness, and yet you have none for me,” Dermot told Niall. “Why did you curse me? Why?” He was looking directly at his father, his distress written all over his face.

“But I didn’t,” Niall said. He sounded genuinely surprised. Finally, he was addressing Dermot directly. “I wouldn’t addle the brains of my own son, half-human or not.”

“Claude told me it was you who bespelled me.” Dermot looked at Claude, who was still waiting to see which way the frog would jump.

“Claude,” Niall said, the power in his voice making my head pound, “who told you this?”

“It’s common knowledge among the fae,” Claude said. He’d been preparing himself for this, was braced to make his answer.

“According to whom?” Niall was not going to give up.

“Murry told me this.”

“Murry told you I had cursed my son? Murry, the friend of my enemy Breandan?” Niall’s elegant face was incredulous.

The Murry I killed with Gran’s trowel?
I thought, but I knew it was better not to interrupt.

“Murry told me this before he switched his allegiance,” Claude said defensively.

“And who had told Murry?” Niall said, an edge of exasperation in his voice.

“I don’t know.” Claude shrugged. “He sounded so certain, I never questioned him.”

“Claude, come with me,” Niall said, after a moment’s fraught silence. “We will talk to your father and to the rest of our people. We’ll discover who spread this rumor about me. And we’ll know who actually cursed Dermot, made him behave so.”

I would have thought Claude would be ecstatic, since he’d been ready to return to Faery ever since entrance had been denied him. But he looked absolutely vexed, just for a moment.

“What about Dermot?” I asked.

“It’s too dangerous for him now,” Niall said. “The one who cursed him may be waiting to take further action against him. I’ll take Claude with me … and, Claude, if you cause any trouble with your human ways …”

“I understand. Dermot, will you take over at the club until I return?”

“I will,” said Dermot, but he looked so dazed by the sudden turn of events that I wasn’t sure he knew what he was saying.

Niall bent to kiss me on the mouth, and the subtle smell of fairy filled my nose. Then he and Claude flowed out the back door and into the woods. “Walked” is simply too jerky a word to describe their progress.

Dermot and I were left alone in my shabby living room. To my consternation, my great-uncle (who looked a tiny bit younger than me) began to weep. His knees crumpled, his whole body shook, and he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.

I covered the few feet between us and sank to the floor beside him. I put my arm around him and said, “I sure didn’t expect any of
that
.” I surprised a laugh out of him. He hiccupped, raising reddened eyes to meet mine. I stretched my free arm to reach the box of tissues on the table by the recliner. I extracted one and used it to pat Dermot’s wet cheeks.

“I can’t believe you’re being so nice to me,” he said. “It’s seemed incredible to me from the beginning, considering what Claude told you.”

I had been a little surprised myself, to tell you the truth.

I spoke from my heart. “I’m not convinced you were even there the night my parents died. If you were, I think you were under a compulsion. In my experience of you, you’ve been a total sweetie.”

He leaned against me like a tired child. By now, a human guy would have made a huge effort to pull himself together. He’d be embarrassed at displaying vulnerability. Dermot seemed quite willing to let me comfort him.

“Are you feeling better now?” I asked, after a couple of minutes.

He inhaled deeply. I knew he was drawing in my fairy scent and that it would help him. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”