Charlaine Harris - Dead in the Family

“This letter is written on the skin of one of the water sprites who drowned your parents.”

“Ick!” I cried, and dropped the letter on the kitchen table.

Claude was by my side in a flash. “What’s wrong?” he asked, looking around the kitchen as if he expected to see a troll pop up.

“This is skin! Skin!”

“What else would Niall write on?” He looked genuinely taken aback.

“Ewww!” Even to myself, I sounded a little too girly-girly. But honestly. skin?

“It’s clean,” Claude said, clearly hoping that would solve my problem. “It’s been processed.”

I gritted my teeth and reached down for my great-grandfather’s letter. I took a deep, steadying breath. Actually, the. material hardly smelled at all. Smothering a desire to put on oven mitts, I made myself focus on reading.

“Before I left your world, I made sure one of my human agents talked to several people who can help you evade the scrutiny of the human government. When I sold the pharmaceutical company we owned, I used much of my profit to ensure your freedom.”

I blinked, because my eyes were tearing up a little. He might not be a typical great-grandfather, but by golly, he’d done something wonderful for me.

“He’s bribed some government officials to call off the FBI? Is that what he’s done?”

“I have no idea,” Claude said, shrugging. “He wrote me, too, to let me know that I had an extra three hundred thousand dollars in my bank account. Also, Claudine hadn’t made a will, since she didn’t. ”

Expect to die. She had expected to raise a child with a fairy lover I’d never met. Claude shook himself and said in a cracked voice, “Niall produced a human body and a will, so I don’t have to wait years to prove her death. She left me almost everything. She said this to our father, Dillon, when she appeared to him as part of her death ritual.”

Fairies told their relatives they had passed, after they’d translated to spirit form. I wondered why Claudine had appeared to Dillon instead of to her brother, and I asked Claude, phrasing it as tactfully as I could.

“The next oldest receives the vision,” Claude said stiffly. “Our sister, Claudette, appeared to me, since I was older than her by a minute. Claudine made her death ritual to our father, since she was older than I.”

“So she told your dad she wanted you to have her share of the clubs?” It was pretty lucky for Claude that Claudine had let someone else know about her wishes. I wondered what happened if the oldest fae in the line was the one who was doing the dying. I’d save that question for later.

“Yes. Her share of the house. Her car. Though I already had one.” For some reason, Claude was looking self-conscious. And guilty. Why on earth would he look guilty?

“How do you ride in it?” I asked, sidetracked. “Since fairies have such issues with iron?”

“I wear the invisible gloves over exposed skin,” he said. “I put them on after every shower. And I’ve built up a little more tolerance with every decade of living in the human world.”

I returned to the letter. “There may be more I can do for you. I will let you know. Claudine left you a gift.”

“Oh, Claudine left me something, too? What?” I looked up at Claude, who didn’t look exactly pleased. I think he hadn’t known the contents of the letter for certain. If Niall hadn’t revealed Claudine’s legacy, Claude might not have. Fairies don’t lie, but they don’t always tell all the truth, either.

“She left you the money in her bank account,” he said, resigned. “It contains her wages from the department store and her share of the income from the clubs.”

“Aw. that was so nice of her.” I blinked a couple of times. I tried not to touch my savings account, and my checking account wasn’t too healthy because I’d missed a lot of work recently. Plus, my tips had suffered because I’d been so down. Smiling waitresses make more than sad waitresses.

I could sure use a few hundred dollars. Maybe I could buy some new clothes, and I really needed a new toilet in the hall bathroom. “How do you do a transfer like that?”

“You’ll get a check from Mr. Cataliades. He is handling the estate.”

Mr. Cataliades—if he had a first name, I’d never heard it—was a lawyer, and he was also (mostly) a demon. He handled the human legal affairs of many supernaturals in Louisiana. I felt subtly better when Claude said his name, because I knew Mr. Cataliades had no bone to pick with me.

Well, I had to make up my mind about Claude’s housemate proposal.

“Let me make a phone call,” I said, and pointed to the coffeepot. “If you need some more, I can make some. Are you hungry?”

Claude shook his head.

“Then after I call Amelia, you and I need to have a little chitchat.” I went to the phone in my bedroom. Amelia was an earlier riser than me, because my job kept me up late. She answered her cell phone on the second ring. “Sookie,” she said, and she didn’t sound as gloomy as I’d anticipated. “What’s up?”

I couldn’t think of any casual way to lead into my question. “My cousin would like to stay here for a while,” I said. “He could use the bedroom across from mine, but if he stays upstairs, we’d each have a little more privacy. If you’re coming back anytime soon, of course he’ll go on and put his stuff in the downstairs bedroom. I just didn’t want you to come back to find someone sleeping in your bed.”

There was a long silence. I braced myself.

“Sookie,” she said, “I love you. You know that. And I loved living with you. It was a godsend to have somewhere to go after that thing with Bob. But right now I’m stuck in New Orleans for a while. I’m just. in the middle of a lot of stuff.”

I’d expected this, but it was still a tough moment. I hadn’t really expected her to come back. I’d hoped she’d heal faster in New Orleans—and it was true she hadn’t mentioned Tray. It sounded like more than grieving was going on. “You’re okay?”

“I am,” she said. “And I’ve been training with Octavia some more.” Octavia, her mentor in witchcraft, had returned to New Orleans with her long-lost love. “Also, I finally got. judged. I’ve got to pay a penalty for—you know—the thing with Bob.”

“The thing with Bob” was Amelia’s way of referring to accidentally turning her lover into a cat. Octavia had returned Bob to his human form, but naturally Bob hadn’t been happy with Amelia, and neither had Octavia. Though Amelia had been training in her craft, clearly transformational magic had been beyond her skills.

“So, they’re not going to whip you or anything, right?” I asked, trying to sound as if I were joking. “After all, it’s not like he died.” Just lost a big chunk of his life and missed Katrina entirely, including being able to inform his family that he’d survived.

“Some of them would whip me if they could. But that’s not how we witches roll.” Amelia tried to laugh, but it wasn’t convincing. “As a penalty, I’ve got to do, like, community service.”

“Like picking up litter or tutoring kids?”

“Well. mixing potions and making up bags of common ingredients so they’re ready to hand. Working extra hours in the magic store, and killing chickens for rituals every now and then. Doing a lot of legwork. Without pay.”

“ That sucks,” I said, because money is almost always a touchy subject with me. Amelia had grown up rich, but I had not. If someone deprives me of income, I get pissed off. I had a fleeting moment of wondering how much Claudine’s bank account might have had in it, and I blessed her for thinking of me.

“Yeah, well, Katrina wiped the New Orleans covens out. We lost some members who’ll never come back, so we don’t get their contributions anymore, and I never use my dad’s money for the coven.”