Then I mentally married off Jason and Michele and gave them three little boys. I married off Terry and Jimmie and gave their Catahoulas many litters. I named Alcide packmaster for life and threw in a happy marriage to Kandace and a resultant daughter. I gave the du Rone twins full scholarships to Tulane, and for Sam ... I simply couldn't think of the best gift for Sam. Of course, the bar would prosper, but with his tendency to fall for women on the supernatural side ... well, the bar would prosper. Quinn would live happily ever after with his tigress, Tijgerin, and she would be able to rehabilitate the unpleasant Frannie, who would become a nurse.

I was probably skipping a few people. Oh, yeah, Holly and Hoyt. They'd have a girl and a boy, and Holly's son by her first marriage would love his stepdad and his new siblings. Hoyt's lifelong friendship with my brother would never come between the couple again, because my brother would never drag Hoyt into trouble. Again.

India would find some fine young woman, and the state of Louisiana would pass a bill to enable them to get married legally. No one would ever, ever make lesbian jokes or misquote scripture at them ... as long as I was fantasizing.

"Bill, what's your favorite fantasy?" I asked. Weirdly enough, I felt much better after designing all these happy endings.

Bill glanced over at me quizzically. We were almost to my house. "My favorite fantasy? You come down into my daytime resting place stark naked," he said, and I could see the gleam of his teeth as he smiled. "Oh, wait," Bill said. "That's already happened."

"There's gotta be more to it," I said. Then I could have bitten off my tongue.

"Oh, there is." His eyes told me exactly what happened after that.

"And that's your fantasy? That I come into your house naked and have sex with you?"

"After that, you tell me that you have sent Eric on his way, that you want to be mine forever, and that to share my life you will permit me to make you a vampire like me."

The silence now was thick, and the fun had drained out of the fantasy.

Then Bill added, "You know what I'd say when you told me this? I'd tell you I would never do such a thing. Because I love you."

And this, ladies and gentlemen, concluded our evening's entertainment.

Chapter 14

When I woke up in my own bed, the sun was glaring outside. I did not have to work today; getting to skip on your special day was a Merlotte's rule. Last night had been an incredible night, all in all. I'd rescued two hostages, helped to get a bunch of bad rogue Weres off the streets, and begun unraveling a conspiracy. Hard to top that!

I'd also been kidnapped and bitterly disillusioned.

I wanted to look good because my spirits were so low. When I was getting dressed to run errands and to go to an appointment I'd made days before, I put on my makeup and brushed my hair up into a ponytail that cascaded down from the crown of my head. While I was cleaning out my purse in the process of finding a pair of earrings, my hand closed around the cluviel dor. I pulled it out and gazed down at it, the pale green soothing any anxiety I had about the day to come. I rubbed it between my hands and enjoyed the warmth and the smoothness.

I wondered (for the fiftieth time) if I needed any special spell to activate its magic. On the whole, I figured not. My grandmother would have passed such a spell along to me, though as a staunch Christian she disapproved of magic. But she wouldn't have neglected some element I might find necessary for my protection.

I should put it back into my makeup drawer with the usual light camouflage. But I didn't. After a brief debate, I slid the round object into my skirt pocket. I understood, finally, that having it was no good if it was inaccessible. Leaving it in the drawer was equivalent to having an unloaded gun when burglars broke into your house.

From now on, the cluviel dor went where I went.

If Eric ... if he decided to leave with Freyda, would I use it? According to Mr. Cataliades, since I loved Eric, if I made a wish for him, it would be granted. I tried to picture myself saying, "Eric must not choose to go with Freyda."

On the other hand ... if he decided to go with the queen, he loved me less than he loved the possibilities in his future with her. Would I want to stay with someone on those terms?

A lot of bad things could happen today, but I was going to keep my fingers crossed that they wouldn't. I just wanted one happy day.

As I was getting up from the dressing table, I had second thoughts about leaving the cluviel dor in my pocket. Was it really safe to carry such an irreplaceable object around with me? Apparently all the fae collected at Hooligans could tell there was something special about me despite my minimal dash of fairy blood. That special thing must be my proximity to, or ownership of, the cluviel dor. I shouldn't underestimate how much they'd want it if they knew I had it, not with their terrible desire to be back in the world they loved. I hesitated, pondered again replacing it in the drawer.

But then I thought, Unloaded gun. And I popped it from my pocket into my purse, which latched shut and was therefore more secure.

I heard a car pull up outside. I looked out the living room windows to see that my caller was Detective Cara Ambroselli. I shrugged. I wasn't going to let anything bother me today.

She came in with a sidekick, a young guy whose name I couldn't remember. He had short brown hair, brown eyes, undistinguished clothes, and he wasn't tall or very thin or very muscular or very anything. Even his thoughts were fairly neutral. He was nuts about Ambroselli, that was something about him I could empathize with. And Ambroselli simply thought of him as her adjutant.

"This is Jay Osborn," Detective Ambroselli said. "You're all dressed up today."

"I have an appointment this morning," I said. "I can only give you a few minutes." I waved my hand at the couch, and I sat opposite them.

Osborn was looking around the room, recognizing the age of the house, of its furnishings. Ambroselli was concentrating on me.

"T-Rex is quite a fan of yours," she said.

It was lucky I'd been warned ahead of time. "That's pretty weird," I said. "I just met him the night Kym Rowe got killed. And I have a boyfriend." Theoretically.

"He's called me to see if I'd give up your phone number."

"I guess that says it all, that he doesn't have it." I shrugged.

Then we went over the evening at Eric's again, from beginning to end. But just when I thought we'd wound up, Ambroselli decided to throw in one last question.

"Were you late that night because you wanted to make a big entrance?"

I blinked. "Huh?"

"Coming in late to get T-Rex's attention?" She was asking questions at random. She didn't believe this.

"If I'd wanted to get his attention, I guess I would have come earlier to spend as much time with him as I could," I said. "The ladies he was with were good-looking women, and I don't know why he'd be specially interested in me."

"Maybe your vampire boyfriend wanted T-Rex to be his friend. Couldn't hurt to have a popular guy like a wrestler on your side, in public opinion."

"I don't think I'm the strongest bribe Eric could come up with," I said. I laughed.

Ambroselli was at an impasse in the case. She was hoping that by going from witness to witness and scattering half-truths and asking questions she might stir up some fact that she could use. Though I could sort of sympathize with her, she was wasting my time.

"T-Rex hasn't called me, and I don't expect him to," I said, after a moment. "If you'll excuse me, I have to leave myself."

Ambroselli and Osborn stood and slowly took their departure, trying to look as though they'd learned something significant.

When I got to Bon Temps, I dropped by to pick up my dishes from Tara's house. The twins were asleep. Tara was slumped on the couch, almost dozing herself. I was glad I'd knocked very quietly. I think she would have thrown the pans at my head if I'd woken up Sara and Rob.

"Where's JB?" I whispered.

"He went to get some more diapers," she whispered back.

"How's the breastfeeding going?"

"I feel like Elsie the cow," she said. "I don't know why I even button my blouse."

"Is it hard? To get them to nurse?"

"About as hard as getting a vampire to bite you," she said.

I grinned. It was nice to hear that Tara could joke about something that had once made her crazy.

"By the way," Tara said as I turned to go, "Is there something weird going on at Hooligans?"

"What do you mean?" I jerked around, very much on the alert.

"Maybe that answers my question," she said. "That was quite a reaction, Sookie."

I had no idea how to answer her. I said, "Has JB had any trouble there?"

"No, he loves everybody on the strip team," she said. "We finally had a good talk about it. You know, and I know, that he loves to be admired, bless his heart. And there's a lot to admire about JB."

I nodded. He was lovely. Not bright; never that. But lovely.

"But he thinks there's something wrong?"

"He's noticed some strange things," she said carefully. "None of the other guys could ever meet him for lunch, and they could never tell him what their day job was, and they seemed to pretty much live at the club."

I didn't know what to tell her. "I wonder how JB got hired," I said, to fill in until I could think of a good way to warn her off Hooligans. I was sure the du Rones still needed extra money, though the twins had been able to leave the hospital at the regular time.

"How he got hired? He'd heard about Ladies Only night from the women at the gym, and they all told him he was built well enough to perform," Tara said rather proudly. "So one day he went over to Hooligans on his lunch hour." One of the babies started fussing, and Tara darted into their tiny room to emerge with Sara. Or Robbie. "If one starts crying, the other one will," she whispered. She jiggled the baby gently, humming to the child. It was as if she'd been a mother for years, instead of a few days. When the little head rested on her chest, she murmured, "Anyway, your cousin Claude said since JB'd helped you recover from your ordeal-did he mean your car wreck?-that he'd give JB a job. Also ..." She met my eyes briefly. "Remember, I met Claude when I was pregnant? He was the one who told me I'd have twins that day in the park? He told JB he understood a father has to provide for his children."

It hadn't been a car wreck I needed to recover from, but torture, of course. JB had helped me with physical therapy for weeks; I did remember telling Claude about that. Ha! Claude's kindness to JB was a good thing to hear, especially at this point in time. But I knew what my cousin really was, and I knew he was scheming some terrible thing.

I left the little house after running a finger over the soft, soft baby cheek. "You're so lucky," I whispered to Tara.

"I tell myself that every day," she said. "Every day." In my friend's head, I could see the kaleidoscope of miserable scenes that had composed her childhood: her alcoholic parents, the parade of drug users through her home, her own determination to rise above the shack, rise above the degradation and squalor. This small, neat house, these beautiful babies, a sober husband-this was heaven to Tara.

"Take care of yourself, Sookie," she said, looking at me with some anxiety. She hadn't been my friend this long for nothing.

"You just watch out for those young'uns. Don't you worry about me. I'm doing okay." I gave my friend the most convincing smile I could summon, and I let myself out of the house very quietly, easing the door shut.

I went to the drive-through at the bank to use the ATM, and then I drove to the newly opened law offices of Beth Osiecki and Jarrell Hilburn. There were those who would argue that Bon Temps was overburdened with lawyers, but all of them seemed to be busy and thriving, and since Sid Matt Lancaster, who'd had a huge practice, had recently passed away, all his clients needed new representation.

Why'd I picked the new kids on the block?

For that very reason: They were new, and I didn't know them, and they didn't know me. I wanted to start with a clean slate. I'd seen Hilburn before, for my transaction with Sam. Today I was seeing Osiecki, who specialized in estate planning. And since she was new, she'd agreed to see me on a Saturday.

A girl barely out of her teens was sitting at the receptionist's desk in the tiny anteroom of the storefront office. Osiecki and Hilburn had rented the first floor of an old building right off the square. The electrical system would need overhauling, I was sure, but they'd painted and brought in good secondhand office furniture. Some potted plants made everything look a little nicer, and there wasn't any canned music playing, which was a huge plus. The girl, who didn't even have a name plaque, beamed at me and checked her appointment book, which had large white spaces.

"You must be Ms. Stackhouse," she said.

"Yes. I have an appointment with Ms. Osiecki?" I sounded out the name.

"Oh-seek-ee," she said very quietly, presumably so the owner of the name wouldn't hear her correction.

I nodded, to show I'd gotten it now.

"I'll see if she's ready," the girl said, leaping to her feet and making her way to the little corridor leading to the rest of the space. There was a door on the left and a door on the right, and after that the area seemed to widen into a common space. I could glimpse a big table and a bookcase full of heavy books, the kind of books I would never pick up to read.

I heard a brisk knock and a murmur, and then the teenager was back. "Ms. Osiecki will see you now," she said, with an expansive sweep of her hand.

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