Dead Ever After (Sookie Stackhouse #13)(68)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"I’m so glad you’ve got someone staying with you while you’re getting better," she said. She paused, and her brow wrinkled. "My goodness, what’s that noise?"

A dull thumping sound was issuing from the guest bedroom. Damn. "That’s probably . . . gosh, I guess they shut their dog in that room!" I said. I called up the stairs, "Mr. C! The dog’s acting up! Can you get Coco to calm down?"

"I do beg your pardon," Mr. Cataliades said, gliding down the stairs. "I will make the animal keep silent."

"Thanks," I said, and tried not to notice that Lorinda was looking a little shocked to hear Mr. C call his dog "the animal." He went down the hall, and I heard the door to the guest room open and close. The thumping ceased abruptly.

Mr. Cataliades reappeared, bowing to Lorinda on his way through the living room to the stairs. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Prescott," he said, and vanished into one of the upstairs rooms.

"Gosh," said Lorinda. "He’s mighty formal."

"Comes from an old New Orleans family," I explained. A couple of minutes later, Lorinda decided she needed to get home to start supper, and I bowed her out of the house with lots of pleasantries.

When she was gone, I breathed out a deep sigh of relief. I was hurrying to the guest bedroom . . . and the phone rang. It was Michele, checking up on me, which was a nice thing for her to do, but real bad timing.

"Hi, Michele!" I said, trying to sound perky and healthy.

"Hey, nearly-sister-in-law," she said. "How are you today?"

"So much better," I said. That was only half a lie. I was better.

"Can I come by and pick up your laundry? I’m doing mine tonight, so Jason and me can go line dancing tomorrow night."

"Oh, have a good time!" It had been ages since I’d been dancing. "I’m caught up on my laundry, thanks so much."

"Why don’t you come to Stompin’ Sally’s with us, if you’re feeling so much better?"

"If my shoulder isn’t too sore, I’d love to," I said impulsively. "Can I let you know tomorrow afternoon?"

"Sure," she said. "Anytime before eight, that’s when we’re leaving."

I finally got to the guest bedroom. Copley was there, unconscious, still breathing. I hadn’t been sure how Mr. C had silenced him, but at least it was not by snapping his neck. And I still didn’t know what to do about him.

I called up the stairs to Mr. C and Diantha to tell them supper was ready. They came down the stairs lickety-split. Each of us had a heaping bowlful of the ground meat, beans, sauce, and chopped peppers, and I shared out the bag of tortilla chips to use in scooping up the mixture. I had some shredded cheese, too. And Tara had left a pie made by Mrs. du Rone, so we even had dessert. By tacit agreement, we didn’t discuss the disposition of Copley Carmichael until we’d finished eating. The locusts were singing their evening chorale while we tried to reach a consensus.

Diantha’s opinion was that we should kill him.

Mr. Cataliades wanted to lay some heavy magic on him and put him back in place in New Orleans. Like substituting a ringer for the real Copley Carmichael. Obviously, he had a plan for using the new version of Amelia’s father.

I couldn’t see letting him back into the world, a soulless, devil-tied creature with no impulse for good. But I didn’t want to kill anyone else, either. My own soul was dark enough. While we debated and the long evening turned into darkness, there was another knock at the back door.

I couldn’t believe I’d ever longed for a visitor.

This one was a vampire, and she didn’t bring any food.

Pam glided in, followed closely by Karin. They looked like pale sisters. But Pam seemed energized, somehow. After I’d introduced the two vampires to the two part-demons, they took seats at the kitchen table and Pam said, "I feel that I’ve interrupted you when you were talking about something important."

"Yes," I said, "but I’m glad you’re here. Maybe you can think of a good solution for this situation." After all, if anyone was good at disposing of humans or bodies, it was Pam. And perhaps Karin was even better, since she’d had longer to practice. A lightbulb lit up suddenly in my brain. "Ladies, I wondered if either of you happens to know how a man ended up in my bedroom closet?"

Karin raised her hand, as if she were in grade school. "I am responsible," she said. "He was skulking. You have many people watching you, Sookie. He came through the woods the night you were in the hospital, and he didn’t know what had happened, that you weren’t here. He meant you ill, if the gun and knife he had on him are any indicators, but your magic circle didn’t stop him as Bill says it stopped Horst. I would have liked to see that. Instead, I had to stop him. I didn’t kill him since I thought you might want to talk to him."

"He did mean me ill, and I thank you most sincerely for stopping him," I said. "I just don’t know what to do with him now."

Pam said, "Kill him. He is your enemy, and he wants to kill you." This sounded pretty funny coming from someone who was wearing flowered crops and a teal T-shirt. Diantha nodded vigorously in wholehearted agreement.

"Pam, I just can’t."

Pam shook her head at my weakness. Karin said, "Sister Pam, we could take him with us and . . . think about a solution."

Okay, I knew that was a euphemism for "get him out of sight and kill him."

"You can’t wipe his memory?" I said hopefully.

"No," Karin said. "He has no soul."

It was news to me that you couldn’t put the whammy on a soulless person, but then, it had never come up before. I hoped it would never come up again.

"I’m sure I can find a use for him," Pam said, and I straightened up. There was something expansive about the way my vampire buddy said that, something that made me pay attention.

Mr. Cataliades, who’d had more years than I to study language (both body and spoken), said, "Miss Pam, do we have reason to congratulate you?"

Pam closed her eyes in contentment, like a lovely blond cat. "You do," she said, and a tiny smile curved her lips. Karin smiled, too, more broadly.

It took a minute for me to get it. "You’re the sheriff now, Pam?"

"I am," she said, opening her eyes, her smile growing. "Felipe saw reason. Plus, it was on Eric’s wish list. But a wish list . . . Felipe didn’t have to honor it."

"Eric left a wish list." I was trying not to feel sorry for Eric, going to a strange territory with a strange queen, without his trusty henchwoman at his side.

"I think Bill told you about a few of his conditions," Pam said, and her voice was neutral. "He had a few wishes he expressed to Freyda in return for signing a two-hundred-year marriage contract instead of the customary one hundred."