Deadlocked

considering what Claude told you.”

I had been a little surprised myself, to tel you the truth.

I spoke from my heart. “I’m not convinced you were even there the night my parents died. If you were, I think you were under a compulsion. In my experience of you, you’ve been a total sweetie.”

He leaned against me like a tired child. By now, a human guy would have made a huge effort to pul himself together. He’d be embarrassed at displaying vulnerability. Dermot seemed quite wil ing to let me comfort him.

“Are you feeling better now?” I asked, after a couple of minutes.

He inhaled deeply. I knew he was drawing in my fairy scent and that it would help him. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

“You probably need to get a shower and have a good night’s sleep,” I advised him, floundering for something to say that wouldn’t sound total y lame, like I was coddling a toddler. “I bet Nial and Claude’l be back in no time, and you’l get to …” Then I had to trail off, since I didn’t know what it was Dermot truly wanted. Claude, who’d been desperate to find a way to enter Faery, had gotten his wish. I’d assumed that had been Dermot’s goal, too. After Claude and I had broken the spel on Dermot, I’d never asked him.

As Dermot trudged off to the bathroom, I went around the house checking al the windows and doors, part of my nightly ritual. I washed and dried a couple of dishes while I tried to imagine what Claude and Nial might be doing at this moment. What could Faery look like? Like Oz, in the movie?

“Sookie,” said Dermot, and I jerked myself into the here and now. He was standing in the kitchen wearing plaid sleep pants, his normal night gear. His golden hair was stil damp from the shower.

“Feeling better?” I smiled at him.

“Yes. Could we sleep together tonight?”

It was as though he’d asked, “Can we catch a camel and keep it as a pet?” Because of Nial ’s questions about Claude and me, Dermot’s request struck me kind of weird. I just wasn’t in a fairy-loving mood, no matter how innocently he intended it. And truthful y, I wasn’t sure he hadn’t meant we should do more than sleep. “Ahhhhh … no.”

Dermot looked so disappointed that I caught myself feeling guilty. I couldn’t stand it; I had to explain.

“Listen, I understand that you don’t intend that we have sex together, and I know that a couple of times in the past we’ve al slept in the same bed and we al slept like rocks…. It was a good thing, a healing thing. But there are maybe ten reasons I don’t want to do that again. Number one, it’s just real y peculiar, to a human. Two, I love Eric and I should only bunk down with him. Three, you’re related to me, so sleeping in the same bed should make me feel real y squicky inside. Also, you look enough like my brother to pass for him, which makes any kind of vaguely sexual situation double squicky. I know that’s not ten, but I think that’s enough.”

“You don’t find me attractive?”

“Completely beside the point!” My voice was rising, and I paused to give myself a second. I continued in a quieter tone. “It doesn’t make any difference how attractive I find you. Of course you’re handsome. Just like my brother. But I have no sex feelings about you, and I kind of feel the sleeping-together thing is just odd. So we’re not doing the fairy sleep-athon of comfort anymore.”

“I’m sorry I’ve upset you,” he said, even more miserably.

I felt guilty again. But I made myself suppress the twinge. “I don’t think anyone in the world has a great-uncle like you,” I said, but my voice was fond.

“I’l never bring it up again. I only sought comfort.” He gave me Big Eyes. There was a hint of laughter turning up the corners of his mouth.

“You’l just have to comfort yourself,” I said tartly.

He was smiling as he left the kitchen.

That night, for the first time in forever, I locked my bedroom door. I felt bad when I turned the latch, like I was dishonoring Dermot with my suspicions. But the last few years had taught me that one of my grandmother’s favorite sayings was true. An ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure.

If Dermot turned my doorknob during the night, I was too soundly asleep to hear it. And maybe my ability to drop off that deeply meant that on a basic level I trusted my great-uncle. Or trusted the lock. When I woke the next day, I could hear him working upstairs in the attic. His footsteps sounded right above my head.

“I made some coffee,” I cal ed up the stairs. He was down in a minute. Somewhere he’d acquired a pair of denim overal s, and since he wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath, he looked like he was about to take his place in the stripper lineup from the night before as the Sexy Farmer with the Big Pitchfork. I asked Sexy Farmer with a silent gesture if he wanted any toast, and he nodded, happy as a kid. Dermot loved plum jam, and I had a jar made by Maxine Fortenberry, Hol y’s future mother-in-law. His smile widened when he saw it.

“I was trying to get as much work finished as I could while it wasn’t so hot,” he explained. “I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

“Nope. I slept like a rock. What are you doing up there today?” Dermot had been inspired by HGTV to hang some doors in the walk-in attic to block off a part of the big room for storage, and he was turning the rest of the floored space into a bedroom for himself. He and Claude had been more or less bunking together in the smal bedroom and sitting room on the second floor. When we’d cleared out the attic, Dermot had decided to

“repurpose” the space. He’d already painted the wal s and refinished and resealed the plank floor. I believe he’d recaulked the windows, too.

“The floor is dry now, so I built the new wal s. Now I’m actual y putting in the hardware to hang the doors. I’m hoping to get that done today and tomorrow. So if you have anything you want to store, the space wil be ready.”

When Dermot and Claude had helped me carry everything down from the packed attic, I’d gotten rid of the accumulated Stackhouse debris—

generations of discarded trash and treasures. I was practical enough to know that moldering things untouched