Dead Reckoning (Sookie Stackhouse #11)(24)
Author: Charlaine Harris

I felt my mouth drop open. "Wait," I said, and it came out in a hoarse croak. "Niall said he couldn’t visit because his half-human son Fintan guarded us from him. That Fintan was actually our grandfather."

"This is why Fintan guarded you from the fae. He didn’t want his father interfering in your lives the way he had interfered in his own. But Niall had his ways, and nonetheless, he found that the essential spark had passed Jason by. He became . . . uninterested," Claude said.

I waited.

He continued, "That’s why he took so many years to make your acquaintance. He could have evaded Fintan, but he assumed you would be the same as Jason . . . attractive to humans and supernaturals, but other than that, essentially a normal human."

"But then he heard you weren’t," Dermot said.

"Heard? From who? Whom?" My grandmother would have been proud.

"From Eric. They had a few business dealings together, and Niall thought to ask Eric to alert him to events in your life. Eric would tell Niall from time to time what you were up to. There came a time when Eric thought you needed the protection of your great-grandfather, and of course you were withering."

Huh?

"So Grandfather sent Claudine, and then when she grew worried she couldn’t take care of you, he decided to meet you himself. Eric arranged that, too. I suppose he thought that he would get Niall’s goodwill as kind of a finder’s fee." Dermot shrugged. "That seems to have worked for Eric. Vampires are all venal and selfish."

The words "pot" and "kettle" popped into my mind.

I said, "So Niall appeared in my life and made himself known to me, via Eric’s intervention. And that precipitated the fairy war, because the water fairies didn’t want any more contact with humans, much less a minor royal who was only one-eighth fairy." Thanks, guys. I loved hearing that a whole war was my fault.

"Yes," Claude said judiciously. "That’s a fair summary. And so the war came, and after many deaths Niall made the decision to seal off Faery." He sighed heavily. "I was left outside, and Dermot, too."

"And by the way, I’m not withering," I pointed out with some sharpness. "I mean, do I look withered to you?" I knew I was ignoring the big picture, but I was getting angry. Or maybe, even angrier.

"You have only a little fae blood," Dermot said gently, as if that would be a crushing reminder. "You are aging."

I couldn’t deny that. "So why am I feeling more and more like one of you, if I have such a little dab of fairy in me?"

"Our sum is more than our parts," Dermot said. "I’m half-human, but the longer I’m with Claude, the stronger my magic is. Claude, though a full- blooded fairy, has been in the human world for so long he was getting weak. Now he’s stronger. You only have a dash of fae blood, but the longer you’re with us, the more prominent an element it is in your nature."

"Like priming a pump?" I said doubtfully. "I don’t get it."

"Like–like–washing a new red garment with the whites," said Dermot triumphantly, who had done that very thing the week before. Everyone in our house had pink socks now.

"But wouldn’t that mean Claude was getting less red? I mean, less fae? If we’re absorbing some of his?" "No," Claude said, with some complacence. "I am redder than I was."

Dermot nodded. "Me, too."

"I haven’t really noticed any difference," I said.

"Are you not stronger than you were?"

"Well . . . yeah. Some days." It wasn’t like ingesting vampire blood, which would give you increased strength for an indeterminate period, if it didn’t make you batshit crazy. It was more like I felt increased vigor. I felt, in fact . . . younger. And since I was only in my twenties, that was just unnerving.

"Don’t you long to see Niall again?" Claude asked.

"Sometimes." Every day.

"Are you not happy when we sleep in the bed with you?"

"Yeah. But just so you know, I think it’s kind of creepy, too."

"Humans," Claude said to Dermot, with a blend of exasperation and patronage in his voice. Dermot shrugged. After all, he was half-human.

"And yet you chose to stay here," I said.

"I wonder every day if I made a mistake."

"Why are you two still here, if you’re so nuts about Niall and your life in Faery? How did you get the letter from Niall that you gave me a month ago, the one where he told me he’d used all his influence to make the FBI leave me alone?" I glared at them suspiciously. "Was that letter a forgery?"

"No, it was genuine," Dermot said. "And we’re here because we both love and fear our prince."

"Okay," I said, ready to change subjects because I couldn’t get into a debate about their feelings. "What’s a portal, exactly?"

"It’s a thin place in the membrane," Claude said. I looked at Claude blankly, and he elaborated. "There’s a sort of magical membrane between our world–the supernatural world–and yours. At a thin place, that membrane is permeable. The fae world is accessible. As are the parts of your world that are normally invisible to you."

"Huh?"

Claude was on a roll. "Portals usually stay in the same vicinity, though they may shift a little. We use them to get from your world to ours. At the site of the portal in your woods, Niall left an aperture. The slit isn’t big enough for one of us to pass through standing up, but objects can be transferred."

Like a mail slot in a door. "See? Was that so hard?" I said. "Can you think of some more honest things to tell me?"

"Like what?"

"Like why all those fae are at Hooligans, acting as strippers and bouncers and whatnot. They’re not all fairies. I don’t even know what they are. Why would they end up with you two?"

"Because they have nowhere else to go," Dermot said simply. "They were all shut out. Some on purpose, like Claude, and some not . . . like me."

"So Niall closed off access to Faery and left some of his people outside?"

"Yes. He was trying to keep all those fairies who still wanted to kill humans inside, and he was too hasty," Claude said. I noticed that Dermot, whom Niall had bespelled in a cruel way, looked dubious at this explanation.

"I understood that Niall had good reasons for closing the fae off," I said slowly. "He said experience had taught him that there’s always trouble when fairies and humans mix. He didn’t want the fairies to crossbreed with humans anymore because so many of the fae hate the consequence– half-breeds." I looked apologetically at Dermot, who shrugged. He was used to it. "Niall never intended to see me again. Are you two really so anxious to go into the world of the fae and stay there?"