Charlaine Harris - Deadlocked

“No, not a lie,” said Dermot sadly. “My father hated me because he thought I’d always worked against him. But I was cursed. I thought he’d done the cursing, but I see now it must have been Claude al along. Claude, you betrayed me and then kept me trotting behind you like a dog.”

Claude began to speak in another language, and then the fae moved with an unbelievable speed. Gift yanked off her bra top, and Harley stuffed it in Claude’s mouth. It would have been petty of me to take any notice of Gift’s bare chest, so I rose above it.

“That was a secret fairy language?” I hated to ask, but I just wanted to know. My days of ignorance were over.

Dirk nodded. “We speak to each other that way; it’s what we have in common: ful fairy, demon, angel, al the half-breeds.”

“Dermot, did you and Claude real y come here because of my fairy blood?” I asked Dermot. Claude’s mouth was otherwise occupied.

“Yes,” Dermot said uncertainly. “Though Claude said there was something here that attracted him, and he spent hours when you were gone searching your house. When he couldn’t find what he wanted here, he thought perhaps it was in the furniture you sold. He went to that shop and broke in to examine al the furniture again.”

I felt a little bubble of rage float to the top of my brain. “Though I was nice enough to let him live with me. He searched my house. Went through my stuff. While I was gone.”

Dermot nodded. From the guilty glance he gave me, I was pretty damn sure Claude had enlisted my great-uncle in his search.

“What was he looking for?” Harley asked curiously.

“He sensed a fairy object in Sookie’s house, a fairy influence.”

They al looked at me, simultaneously, with sharp attention.

“Gran—you-al know my fairy blood comes from my grandmother and Fintan, right?” They al nodded and blinked. I was sure glad I hadn’t been trying to keep that a secret. “Gran was friends with Mr. Cataliades, through Fintan.” They nodded again, more slowly. “He left something here, but when he stopped by a few days ago, he picked it up.”

They appeared to accept that pretty wel . At least no one leaped up to say, “You liar, you have it in your pocket!”

Claude thrashed on the floor. Clearly, he wanted to put in his two cents’ worth, and I was glad the bra was in his mouth.

“If I’m getting to ask questions …” I said, waiting for Bel enos to interrupt, to tel me my time was up. But that didn’t happen.

“Claude, I know you tried to sabotage me and Eric. But I don’t know why.”

Dirk raised interrogative eyebrows. Did I want him to remove the gag?

“Maybe you can just let me know if I get something right,” I suggested, hoping that the gag stayed in. “Did you go to Jannalynn for help because you wanted to enlist a shifter of some kind?”

Glaring at me, Claude nodded.

“Who’s that?” Dermot whispered, as if the air would answer him.

“Jannalynn Hopper is the second of the Long Tooth pack in Shreveport,” I said. “She’s been dating my boss, Sam Merlotte. But she hates me, which is a long story for some other time, though it’s pretty boring. Anyway, I knew she’d love to do me a bad turn if she could. And the young woman who got murdered in Eric’s front yard turned out to be a half-Were with a death wish and severe financial problems, ripe for a desperate plan, I figure. Claude, you gave her some of your blood to make her al uring to Eric, I think?”

The fae al looked absolutely aghast. I couldn’t have said anything more abhorrent to them. “You gave your sacred blood to a mongrel?” hissed Gift, and kicked Claude heartily.

Claude closed his eyes and nodded.

Maybe he wanted them to kil him on the spot. Kym Rowe hadn’t been the only person to develop a wish to die.

“So I get how you did it … but why? Why did you want Eric to lose control? What benefit to you?”

“Oh, I know that one!” Dermot said brightly.

I sighed. “Maybe you would explain.”

“Claude told me several times that if we could get Nial to return to your side, we could attack him here in the human world, where he wouldn’t be surrounded by his supporters,” Dermot said. “But I ignored his scheming. I was sure Nial wouldn’t return and couldn’t return, because he was firm in his resolution to stay in Faery. But Claude argued that Nial loves you so much that if something happened to you, he’d come to your side. So he tried to ruin Eric, thinking that at best you and Eric would fight and Eric would hurt you. Or you’d be arrested for murdering him, and you’d need your great-grandfather. At the very least, you would throw Eric aside and your misery would bring Nial running.”

“I was pretty miserable,” I said slowly. “And I was even more miserable last night.”

“And here I am,” said a voice I recognized. “I’ve come in response to your letter, which opened my eyes to many things.”

He was glowing. My great-grandfather hadn’t troubled with his human appearance, either. The white-blond hair floated in the air around him. His face was radiant, his eyes like fairy lights on a white tree.

The little cluster of fae in my living room fel to their knees.

He put his arms around me, and I felt his incredible beauty, his terrifying magic, and his crazy devotion.

There was nothing human about him.

He put his mouth right by my ear. “I know you have it,” he said.

Suddenly we were standing in my bedroom instead of in the living room. “You gonna take it?” I asked, in the smal est possible voice. Those were fae in the living room. They might hear.

“Don’t even show it to me,” he said. “It was from my son to his loved one. He intended it for a human. It should stay in human hands.”

“But you real y, real y want it.”

“I do, and I have very poor impulse control.”

“Okay. No looks.” Danger. I was trying to relax, but it’s not easy loving and being loved by a powerful prince who has no human frame of reference; furthermore, one whose great age has kind of unhinged him. Just a little bit. From time to time. “What wil happen to the fae in my living room?”

“I wil take them with me,” Nial said. “I have taken care of a lot of things while Claude was with me. I never let him know what I already understood about him. I know what happened to Dermot. I have forgiven Dermot.”

Okay, that was good.

“Wil you close Faery? For good?”

“Soon,” he whispered, his lips again uncomfortably close to my ear. “You have not asked yet who told your lover that you have the … object.”

“That would be a good thing for me to learn.”

“You need to know.” His arms grew uncomfortably tight around me. I made myself relax against him.

“It was me,” Nial said, almost inaudibly.

I jerked back as if he’d pinched my butt. “What?”

The bril iant eyes bored into mine. “You had to know,” he said. “You had to know what would happen if he believed you had power.”

“Please tel me you didn’t engineer the whole Appius thing?” That would be more than I could bear.

“No. Eric is unfortunate in that people feel the need to take him down a peg, including his own maker. The Roman wanted to keep control over so vital a being even after his own death, which became far more likely once he turned the child. So unstable. Appius Livius Ocel a made mistakes in his whole long existence. Perhaps changing Eric was his finest hour. He created the perfect vampire. Eric’s only flaw is you.”

“But …” I couldn’t think of what I’d been about to say.

“Of course, that’s not how I perceive it, dearest. You are the one right impulse Eric has had in five hundred years or more. Wel , Pam is al right.