Definitely Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #6)(47)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"Explain the fairy godmother thing," I said. I didn’t want to talk about anything more urgent, not just yet.

"Fairies are your basic supernatural being," Claudine said. "From us come elves and brownies and angels and demons. Water sprites, green men, all the natural spirits… all are some form of fairy."

"So you’re what?" Amelia asked. It hadn’t occurred to Amelia to leave, and that seemed to be okay with Claudine, too.

"I’m trying to become an angel," Claudine said softly. Her huge brown eyes looked luminous. "After years of being… well, a good citizen, I guess you’d call it, I got a person to guard. The Sook, here. And she’s really kept me busy." Claudine looked proud and happy.

"You’re not supposed to prevent pain?" I asked. If so, Claudine was doing a lousy job.

"No, I wish I could." The expression on Claudine’s oval face was downcast. "But I can help you recover from disasters, and sometimes I can prevent them."

"Things would be worse without you around?"

She nodded vigorously.

"I’ll take your word for it," I said. "How come I rated a fairy godmother?"

"I’m not allowed to say," Claudine said, and Amelia rolled her eyes.

"We’re not learning a lot, here," she said. "And in view of the problems we had last night, maybe you’re not the most competent fairy godmother, huh?"

"Oh, right, Miss I-Sealed-Up-The-Apartment-So-It-Would-Be-All-Fresh," I responded, irrationally indignant at this assault on my godmother’s competence.

Amelia scrambled out of her chair, her skin flushed with anger. "Well, I did seal it up! He would have risen like that no matter when he rose! I just delayed it some!"

"It would have helped if we had known he was in there!"

"It would have helped if your ho of a cousin hadn’t killed him in the first place!"

We both screeched to a halt in our dialogue. "Are you sure that’s what happened?" I asked. "Claudine?"

"I don’t know," she said, her voice placid. "I’m not omnipotent or omniscient. I just pop in to intervene when I can. You remember that time you fell asleep at the wheel and I got there in time to save you?"

And she’d nearly given me a heart attack in the process, appearing in the front seat of the car in the blink of an eye. "Yes," I said, trying to sound grateful and humble. "I remember."

"It’s really, really hard to get somewhere that fast," she said. "I can only do that in a real emergency. I mean, a life-or-death emergency. Fortunately, I had a bit more time when your house was on fire…"

Claudine was not going to give us any rules, or even explain the nature of the rule maker. I’d just have to muddle through on my belief system, which had helped me out all my life. Come to think of it, if I was completely wrong, I didn’t want to know.

"Interesting," said Amelia. "But we have a few more things to talk about."

Maybe she was being so hoity-toity because she didn’t have her own fairy godmother.

"What do you want to talk about first?" I asked.

"Why’d you leave the hospital last night?" Her face was tight with resentment. "You should have told me. I hauled myself up these stairs last night to look for you, and there you were. And you’d barricaded the door. So I had to go back down the damn stairs again to get my keys, and let myself in the French windows, and hurry – on this leg – to the alarm system to turn it off. And then this dooms was sitting by your bed, and she could have done all of that."

"You couldn’t open the windows with magic?" I asked.

"I was too tired," she said with dignity. "I had to recharge my magical batteries, so to speak."

"So to speak," I said, my voice dry. "Well, last night, I found out…" and I stopped dead. I simply couldn’t speak of it.

"Found out what?" Amelia was exasperated, and I couldn’t say as I blamed her.

"Bill, her first lover, was planted in Bon Temps to seduce her and gain her trust," Claudine said. "Last night, he admitted that to her face, and in front of her only other lover, another vampire."

As a synopsis, it was flawless.

"Well… that sucks," Amelia said faintly.

"Yeah," I said. "It does."

"Ouch."

"Yeah."

"I can’t kill him for you," Claudine said. "I’d have to take too many steps backward."

"That’s okay," I told her. "He’s not worth your losing any brownie points."

"Oh, I’m not a brownie," Claudine explained kindly. "I thought you understood. I’m a full-blooded fairy."

Amelia was trying not to laugh, and I glared at her. "Just let it go, witch," I said.

"Yes, telepath."

"So what next?" I asked, in general. I would not talk any more about my broken heart and my demolished self-worth.

"We figure out what happened," the witch said.

"How? Call CSI?"

Claudine looked confused, so I guessed fairies didn’t watch television.

"No," Amelia said, with elaborate patience. "We do an ectoplasmic reconstruction."

I was sure that my expression matched Claudine’s, now.

"Okay, let me explain," Amelia said, grinning all over. "This is what we do."

Amelia, in seventh heaven at this exhibition of her wonderful witch powers, told Claudine and me at length about the procedure. It was time- and energy-consuming, she said, which was why it wasn’t done more often. And you had to gather at least four witches, she estimated, to cover the amount of square footage involved in Jake’s murder.

"And I’ll need real witches," Amelia said. "Quality workers, not some hedgerow Wiccan." Amelia went off on Wiccans for a good long while. She despised Wiccans (unfairly) as tree-hugging wannabes – that came out of Amelia’s thoughts clearly enough. I regretted Amelia’s prejudice, as I’d met some impressive Wiccans.

Claudine looked down at me, her expression doubtful. "I’m not sure we ought to be here for this," she said.

"You can go, Claudine." I was ready to experiment with anything, just to take my mind off the big hole in my heart. "I’m going to stay to watch. I have to know what happened here. There are too many mysteries in my life, right now."

"But you have to go to the queen’s tonight," Claudine said. "You missed last night. Visiting the queen is a dress-up occasion. I have to take you shopping. You don’t want to wear any of your cousin’s clothes."