He could take it as he chose. “I’m gonna go open the shades in the living room. Have some more coffee. I think I’ve got some Toaster Strudels in the freezer if you’re hungry.” I walked down the hal to the living room, trying not to hurry, trying to make my footsteps regular and nonchalant. I even went directly to one of the front windows and raised the blind. “It’s gonna be a pretty day,” I cal ed, turned, and in one gesture swept up the cluviel dor and put it in my nightshirt pocket. Dermot was halfway down the stairs.
He said, “Did I hear Claude’s voice?” and made as if to hurry past me. Apparently, he hadn’t even looked at what I’d picked up, which was a relief
—but not at the top of my list of problems just at the moment.
“Yes, he’s home,” I said, in what I hoped was a natural voice, but I gripped Dermot’s arm as he went by me. I looked at him with as much warning as I could pack into my eyes.
Dermot’s blue eyes, so like Jason’s, widened in shock. There was no gesture I could make that would clearly translate as “I think he wants to do something awful to us! He kil ed Kym Rowe for some reason I can’t fathom, and I think he cursed you!” but at least Dermot understood that caution was cal ed for.
“I told him you weren’t here,” I whispered. He nodded.
“Claude,” he cal ed. “Where have you been? Sookie didn’t hear me come in last night, she says. The other fae are champing at the bit to hear your news.” He started toward the kitchen.
But he met Claude coming into the living room. I didn’t think Claude had witnessed our silent col oquy, but at this point I wouldn’t put money on anything good. Yesterday had been my good day, apparently, even though it had ended as badly as I thought it could have. I’d been wrong! Claude could have returned last night. Yep, that would have been worse.
“Dermot,” said Claude. His voice was so cold it stopped Dermot dead. I went on and opened the other blind.
“What’s wrong? Why have you returned without Father?” Dermot said.
“Grandfather has issues he must deal with,” Claude snarled. “In Faery.”
“What did you do?” Dermot asked. He was brave. I was trying to unobtrusively creep into my room to retrieve my cel phone. I didn’t know whom I would cal ; I didn’t know who could deal with a fairy. “What did you do, Claude?”
“I thought that when I went back with him, I would find support for our program,” Claude said.
Uh-oh. I didn’t like the sound of that. I took two more steps to my left. Hooligans! I’d cal the fae at Hooligans! Wait. Unless they were backing Claude in whatever the hel his program was. Shit. What should I do? Dermot wasn’t armed. He was wearing sleep pants and no shirt.
My shotgun was in the closet by the front door. Maybe the closet should be my goal, instead of the cel phone. Did I have Hooligans on speed dial? How long would it take the police to get out here if I hit 911? Would Claude kil them?
“And you didn’t?” Dermot said. “I’m not sure what program you mean, Claude?”
“You naïve simpleton,” Claude said scathingly. “How hard have you worked at ignoring what was going on al around you, so you could stay with us?”
Claude was just being mean now. If I’d had any sleep, I wouldn’t have snapped then, but I hadn’t, and I did. “Claude Crane, you are just being an A-number-one asshole,” I exploded. “And you shut up right now!”
I’d succeeded in startling Claude, and he turned his gaze on me for just a second, but Dermot took advantage of that second to hit Claude as hard as he could, which proved to be plenty hard. Claude lurched to his right, and Dermot kept punching. Of course, the element of surprise was gone after the first blow. Claude had another skil besides stripping. He could fight dirty.
The two launched into it, two beautiful men doing something so ugly I could hardly bear to watch.
The heaviest thing around was a lamp that had belonged to my great-grandmother. With a flash of reluctance I picked it up. I proposed to bash Claude’s head in, if I got the opportunity.
But then my back door flew open and Bel enos bounded through my kitchen and down the hal . He had a true sword in his hand, instead of his deer-hunting spear. Gift was with him, long knives in both her hands. Three more of the Monroe fae were with them: two of the strippers, the fairy
“policeman” and the part demon who’d worn leather when he’d come onstage. The curvy ticket taker fol owed. She hadn’t bothered with looking human today.
“Help Dermot!” I yel ed, hoping that was what they’d come to do. To my overwhelming relief, they whooped with excitement and threw themselves into the brawl. There was a lot of unnecessary punching and biting, but when they were sure Claude was subdued, they al began laughing. Even Dermot.
At least I was able to put the lamp back on the table.
“Would someone tel me what’s going on?” I asked. I felt (as usual with the supes) two steps behind the crowd, and no telepath enjoys feeling that way. I was going to have to hang around with humans for a long time to make up for this sad ignorance.
“My dearest sister,” Bel enos said. He smiled that disconcerting smile at me. He looked especial y toothy today, and since there was blood between some of those teeth, the effect was not reassuring.
“Hi, y’al ,” was the best I could do, but they al grinned back, and Gift gave Dermot an enthusiastic kiss. Her extra eyelid flickered down and up again, almost too fast for me to note.
In the meantime, Claude was lying on the floor in a panting, bloody bundle. There was stil plenty of fight in him, from the glares he was throwing around, but he was so clearly outnumbered that it seemed he’d given up … at least temporarily. The ticket taker was sitting on his legs, and the two strippers were each pinning one arm.
Gift came to sit by me; I’d col apsed on the couch. She put her arm around me. “Claude was trying to incite us to rebel against Nial ,” she said kindly. “Sister, I’m surprised he didn’t try to test your loyalty, too.”
“Wel , he wouldn’t have gotten very far!” I said. “I would have thrown him out in a New York minute!”
“Then see, that was intel igent of you, Claude,” said Bel enos, bending over to speak to Claude face-to-face. “One of the few intel igent things you did.” Claude glared at him.
Dermot shook his handsome head. “Al this time I thought I must try to emulate Claude, because he had been so successful out here in the human world. But I realized that when he thought people were pleased with him, he didn’t perceive that it was only because he is beautiful. Much more often, when he talked to people, they came to regard him with dislike. I couldn’t believe it, but he’d done wel in spite of himself, not because of his own talents.”
“He does like children,” I said weakly. “And he’s nice to pregnant women.”
“Yes, that’s true,” the policeman stripper said. “By the way, you can just cal me Dirk, my stripping name. Siobhan is sitting on Claude’s legs. And this is Harley. I’m sure you remember Harley.”
“Oh, yeah, who could forget Harley?” I said. Even under the circumstances, I had a gratifying flashback of how Harley’s straight black hair and coppery red body had looked under the lights at Hooligans. Harley tried to bow from a crouching position, which isn’t easy, and Siobhan grinned at me. “So … Claude real y was locked out of Faery, along with you-al ? That wasn’t a lie?”
“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.