"Oh, right, Miss I-Sealed-Up-The-Apartment-So-It-Would-Be-All-Fresh," I responded, irrationally indignant at this assault on my godmother's competence.
Amelia scrambled out of her chair, her skin flushed with anger. "Well, I did seal it up! He would have risen like that no matter when he rose! I just delayed it some!"
"It would have helped if we had known he was in there!"
"It would have helped if your ho of a cousin hadn't killed him in the first place!"
We both screeched to a halt in our dialogue. "Are you sure that's what happened?" I asked. "Claudine?"
"I don't know," she said, her voice placid. "I'm not omnipotent or omniscient. I just pop in to intervene when I can. You remember that time you fell asleep at the wheel and I got there in time to save you?"
And she'd nearly given me a heart attack in the process, appearing in the front seat of the car in the blink of an eye. "Yes," I said, trying to sound grateful and humble. "I remember."
"It's really, really hard to get somewhere that fast," she said. "I can only do that in a real emergency. I mean, a life-or-death emergency. Fortunately, I had a bit more time when your house was on fire…"
Claudine was not going to give us any rules, or even explain the nature of the rule maker. I'd just have to muddle through on my belief system, which had helped me out all my life. Come to think of it, if I was completely wrong, I didn't want to know.
"Interesting," said Amelia. "But we have a few more things to talk about."
Maybe she was being so hoity-toity because she didn't have her own fairy godmother.
"What do you want to talk about first?" I asked.
"Why'd you leave the hospital last night?" Her face was tight with resentment. "You should have told me. I hauled myself up these stairs last night to look for you, and there you were. And you'd barricaded the door. So I had to go back down the damn stairs again to get my keys, and let myself in the French windows, and hurry—on this leg—to the alarm system to turn it off. And then this dooms was sitting by your bed, and she could have done all of that."
"You couldn't open the windows with magic?" I asked.
"I was too tired," she said with dignity. "I had to recharge my magical batteries, so to speak."
"So to speak," I said, my voice dry. "Well, last night, I found out…" and I stopped dead. I simply couldn't speak of it.
"Found out what?" Amelia was exasperated, and I couldn't say as I blamed her.
"Bill, her first lover, was planted in Bon Temps to seduce her and gain her trust," Claudine said. "Last night, he admitted that to her face, and in front of her only other lover, another vampire."
As a synopsis, it was flawless.
"Well… that sucks," Amelia said faintly.
"Yeah," I said. "It does."
"Ouch."
"Yeah."
"I can't kill him for you," Claudine said. "I'd have to take too many steps backward."
"That's okay," I told her. "He's not worth your losing any brownie points."
"Oh, I'm not a brownie," Claudine explained kindly. "I thought you understood. I'm a full-blooded fairy."
Amelia was trying not to laugh, and I glared at her. "Just let it go, witch," I said.
"Yes, telepath."
"So what next?" I asked, in general. I would not talk any more about my broken heart and my demolished self-worth.
"We figure out what happened," the witch said.
"How? Call CSI?"
Claudine looked confused, so I guessed fairies didn't watch television.
"No," Amelia said, with elaborate patience. "We do an ectoplasmic reconstruction."
I was sure that my expression matched Claudine's, now.
"Okay, let me explain," Amelia said, grinning all over. "This is what we do."
Amelia, in seventh heaven at this exhibition of her wonderful witch powers, told Claudine and me at length about the procedure. It was time- and energy-consuming, she said, which was why it wasn't done more often. And you had to gather at least four witches, she estimated, to cover the amount of square footage involved in Jake's murder.
"And I'll need real witches," Amelia said. "Quality workers, not some hedgerow Wiccan." Amelia went off on Wiccans for a good long while. She despised Wiccans (unfairly) as tree-hugging wannabes—that came out of Amelia's thoughts clearly enough. I regretted Amelia's prejudice, as I'd met some impressive Wiccans.
Claudine looked down at me, her expression doubtful. "I'm not sure we ought to be here for this," she said.
"You can go, Claudine." I was ready to experiment with anything, just to take my mind off the big hole in my heart. "I'm going to stay to watch. I have to know what happened here. There are too many mysteries in my life, right now."
"But you have to go to the queen's tonight," Claudine said. "You missed last night. Visiting the queen is a dress-up occasion. I have to take you shopping. You don't want to wear any of your cousin's clothes."
"Not that my butt could get into them," I said.
"Not that your butt should want to," she said, equally harshly. "You can cut that out right now, Sookie Stackhouse."
I looked up at her, letting her see the pain inside me.
"Yeah, I get that," she said, her hand patting me gently on the cheek. "And that sucks big-time. But you have to write it off. He's only one guy."
He'd been the first guy. "My grandmother served him lemonade," I said, and somehow that triggered the tears again.
"Hey," Amelia said. "Fuck him, right?"
I looked at the young witch. She was pretty and tough and off-the-wall nuts, I thought. She was okay. "Yeah," I said. "When can you do the ecto thing?"
She said, "I have to make some phone calls, see who I can get together. Night's always better for magic, of course. When will you go pay your call to the queen?"
I thought for a moment. "Just at full dark," I said. "Maybe about seven."
"Should take about two hours," Amelia said, and Claudine nodded. "Okay, I'll ask them to be here at ten, to have a little wiggle room. You know, it would be great if the queen would pay for this."
"How much do you want to charge?"
"I'd do it for nothing, to have the experience and be able to say I'd done one," Amelia said frankly, "but the others will need some bucks. Say, three hundred apiece, plus materials."
"And you'll need three more witches?"
"I'd like to have three more, though whether I can get the ones I want on this short notice… well, I'll do the best I can. Two might do. And the materials ought to be…" She did some rapid mental calculations. "Somewhere in the ballpark of sixty dollars."
"What will I need to do? I mean, what's my part?"
"Observe. I'll do the heavy lifting."
"I'll ask the queen." I took a deep breath. "If she won't pay for it, I will."
"Okay, then. We're set." She limped out of the bedroom happily, counting off things on her fingers. I heard her go down the stairs.
Claudine said, "I have to treat your arm. And then we need to go find you something to wear."
"I don't want to spend money on a courtesy call to the vampire queen." Especially since I might have to foot the bill for the witches.
"You don't have to. It's my treat."
"You may be my fairy godmother, but you don't have to spend money on me." I had a sudden revelation. "It's you who paid my hospital bill in Clarice."
Claudine shrugged. "Hey, it's money that came in from the strip club, not from my regular job." Claudine co-owned the strip club in Ruston, with Claude, who did all the day-today running of the place. Claudine was a customer service person at a department store. People forgot their complaints once they were confronted with Claudine's smile.