“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.
“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?”
