Deadlocked

An hour later, having come home to a blessedly cool and empty house, I was sitting at my kitchen table with my best stationery and a black pen. I was trying to decide how to begin the letter, the one I’d promised Bel enos I’d attempt to send to Faery. I had doubts about how wel this was going to go.

The last time I’d fed something into the portal, it had been eaten. Granted, it had been a human body.

My first attempt had run on for five handwritten pages. It was now in the kitchen trash can. I had to condense what I needed to convey. Urgency!

That was the message.

Dear Great-Grandfather, I began. I hesitated. And Claude, I added. Bellenos and Dermot are worried that the fae at Hooligans are getting too restless to stay confined to the building. They miss Claude and his leadership. We are all afraid something bad will happen if this situation doesn’t change soon. Please let us know what’s going on. Can you send a return letter through this portal? Or send Claude back? Love, Sookie I read it over, decided it was as close as I was going to get to what I wanted to say ( Claude, get your butt back here now! ). I wrote both Nial ’s and Claude’s names on the envelope, which was real pretty—cream with pink and red roses on the border. I almost put a stamp on the upper right corner before I realized it would be a ridiculous waste.

Between the heat, the bugs, and the burgeoning undergrowth, my jaunt into the woods to “mail” my letter was not as pleasant as my previous rambles had been. Sweat poured down my face, and my hair was sticking to my neck. A devil’s walking stick scratched me deeply enough to make me bleed. I paused by a big clump of the plumy bushes that only seem to grow big out in the sun—Gran would have had a name for them, but I didn’t—and I heard a deer moving around inside the dense growth. At least Bellenos left me one, I thought, and told myself I was being ridiculous.

We had plenty of deer. Plenty.

To my relief, the portal was stil in the little clearing where I’d last seen it, but it looked smal er. Not that it’s easy to define the size of a patch of shimmery air—but last time it had been large enough to admit a very smal human body. Now, that wouldn’t be possible without taking a chainsaw to the body beforehand.

Either the portal was shrinking natural y, or Nial had decided a size reduction would prevent me from popping anything else unauthorized into Faery. I knelt before the patch of wavery air, which hovered about knee-high just above the blackberry vines and the grasses. I popped the letter into the quavering patch, and it vanished.

Though I held my breath in anticipation, nothing happened. I didn’t hear the snarling of last time, but I found the silence kind of depressing. I don’t know what I’d expected, but I’d half hoped I’d get some signal. Maybe a chime? Or the sound of a gong? A recording saying, We’ve received your message and will attempt to deliver it? That would have been nice.

I relaxed and smiled, amused at my own sil iness. Hoisting myself up, I made my difficult way back through the woods. I could hardly wait to strip off my sweaty, dirty clothes and get into my shower. As I emerged from the shadow of the trees and into the waning afternoon, I saw that would have to be a pleasure delayed.

In my absence I’d acquired some visitors. Three people I didn’t know, al looking to be in their midforties, were standing by a car as if they’d been on the point of getting into it to drive away. If only I’d stayed by the portal a few more minutes! The little group was oddly assorted. The man standing by the driver’s door had coppery brown hair and a short beard, and he was wearing gold-rimmed glasses. He wore khakis and a pale blue oxford cloth shirt with the sleeves rol ed up, practical y a summertime white-col ar work uniform. The other man was a real contrast. His jeans were stained, and his T-shirt said he liked pussies, with an oh-so-clever drawing of a Persian cat. Subtle, huh? I caught a whiff of otherness coming from him; he wasn’t real y human, but I didn’t want to get any closer to investigate what his true nature might be.

His female companion was wearing a low-cut T shirt, dark green with gold studs as a decoration, and white shorts. Her bare legs were heavily tattooed.

“Afternoon,” I said, not even trying to sound welcoming. I could hear trouble coming from their brains. Wait. Didn’t the sleazy couple look just a little familiar?

“Hel o,” said the woman, an olive-skinned brunette with raccoon eye makeup. She took a drag on her cigarette. “You Sookie Stackhouse?”

“I am. And you are?”

“We’re the Rowes. I’m Georgene and this is Oscar. This man,” and she pointed at the driver, “is Harp Powel .”

“I’m sorry?” I said. “Do I know you?”

“Kym’s parents,” the woman said.

I was even sorrier I’d come back to the house.

Cal me ungracious, but I wasn’t going to ask them in. They hadn’t cal ed ahead, they had no reason to talk to me, and above al else— I had been down this road before with the Pelts.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. “But I’m not sure why you’ve come here.”

“You talked to our girl before she died,” Oscar Rowe said. “We just wanted to know what was on her mind.”

Though they didn’t realize it, they’d come to the right place to find out. Knowing what was on people’s minds was my specialty. But I wasn’t getting good brain readings from either of them. Instead of grief and regret, I was getting avid curiosity … an emotion more suited to people who slow down to goggle at road accidents than to grieving parents.

I turned slightly to look at their companion. “And you, Mr. Powel ? What’s your role here?” I’d been aware of his intense observation.

“I’m thinking of doing a book about Kym’s life,” Harp Powel said. “And her death.”

I could add that up in my head: lurid past, pretty girl, died outside a vampire’s house during a party with interesting guests. It wouldn’t be a biography of the desperate, emotional y disturbed Kym I’d met so briefly. Harp Powel was thinking of writing a true-crime novel with pictures in the middle: Kym as a cute youngster, Kym in high school, Kym as a stripper, and maybe Kym as a corpse. Bringing the Rowes with him was a