Definitely Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #6)(55)
Author: Charlaine Harris

Okay, that was weird. This whole thing was weird, but fascinating.

Presumably the people in the courtyard had watched the caller come up the outside stairs, since I heard a loud curse from one of the Berts – Wybert, I thought. When Hadley opened a phantom door, Patsy, who’d been stationed outside on the gallery, pushed open the real door so we could see. From Amelia’s chagrined face, I could tell she hadn’t thought that one through ahead of time.

Standing at the door was (phantom) Waldo, a vampire who had been with the queen for years. He had been much punished in the years before his death, and it had left him with permanently wrinkled skin. Since Waldo had been an ultrathin albino before this punishment, he’d looked awful the one and only night I’d known him. As a watery ghost creature, he looked better, actually.

Hadley looked surprised to see him. That expression was strong enough to be easily recognizable. Then she looked disgusted. But she stepped back to let him in.

When she strolled back to the table to pick up her glass, Waldo glanced around him, as if to see if anyone else was there. The temptation to warn Hadley was so strong it was almost irresistible.

After some conversation, which of course we couldn’t understand, Hadley shrugged and seemed to agree to some plan. Presumably, this was the idea Waldo had told me about the night he’d confessed to killing my cousin. He’d said it had been Hadley’s idea to go to St. Louis Cemetery Number One to raise the ghost of voodooienne Marie Laveau, but from this evidence it seemed Waldo was the one who had suggested the excursion.

"What’s that in his hand?" Amelia said, as quietly as she could, and Patsy stepped in from the gallery to check.

"Brochure," she called to Amelia, trying to use equally hushed tones. "About Marie Laveau."

Hadley looked at the watch on her wrist and said something to Waldo. It was something unkind, judging by Hadley’s expression and the jerk of her head as she indicated the door. She was saying "No," as clearly as body language could say it.

And yet the next night she had gone with him. What had happened to change her mind?

Hadley walked back to her bedroom and we followed her. Looking back, we watched Waldo leave the apartment, putting the brochure on the table by the door as he departed.

It felt oddly voyeuristic to stand in Hadley’s bedroom with Amelia, the queen, and Andre, watching Hadley take off a bathrobe and put on a very fancy dress.

"She wore that to the party the night before the wedding," the queen said quietly. It was a skintight, cut-down-to-here red dress decked with darker red sequins and some gorgeous alligator pumps. Hadley was going to make the queen regret what she was losing, evidently.

We watched Hadley primp in the mirror, do her hair two different ways, and mull her choice of lipsticks for a very long time. The novelty was wearing off the process, and I was willing to fast-forward, but the queen just couldn’t get enough of seeing her beloved again. I sure wasn’t going to protest, especially since the queen was footing the bill.

Hadley turned back and forth in front of her full-length mirror, appeared satisfied with what she saw, then burst into tears.

"Oh, my dear," the queen said quietly. "I am so sorry."

I knew exactly how Hadley felt, and for the first time I felt the kinship with my cousin I’d lost through the years of separation. In this reconstruction, it was the night before the queen’s wedding, and Hadley was going to have to go to a party and watch the queen and her fiance be a couple. And the next night she would have to attend their wedding; or so she thought. She didn’t know that she’d be dead by then; finally, definitely dead.

"Someone coming up," called Bob the witch. His voice wafted through the open French windows onto the gallery. In the phantom, ghostly world, the doorbell must have rung, because Hadley stiffened, gave herself a last look in the mirror (right through us, since we were standing in front of it) and visibly braced herself. When Hadley walked down the hall, she had a familiar sway to her hips and her watery face was set in a cold half smile.

She pulled open the door. Since the witch Patsy had left the actual door open after Waldo had "arrived," we could see this happening. Jake Purifoy was dressed in a tux, and he looked very good, as Amelia had said. I glanced at Amelia when he stepped into the apartment, and she was eyeing the phantasm regretfully.

He didn’t care for being sent to pick up the queen’s honeybun, you could tell, but he was too politic and too courteous to take that out on Hadley. He stood patiently while she got a tiny purse and gave her hair a final combing, and then the two were out the door.

"Coming down out there," Bob called, and we went out the door and across the gallery to look over the railing. The two phantoms were getting into a glistening car and driving out of the courtyard. That was where the area affected by the spell came to an end. As the ghost car passed through the gate area, it winked out of existence right by the group of vampires who were clustered by the opening. Sigebert and Wybert were wide-eyed and solemn, Jade Flower appeared disgruntled, and Rasul looked faintly amused, as if he were thinking of the good stories he’d have to tell in the guards’ mess hall.

"Time to fast-forward," Amelia called. She was looking tired now, and I wondered how great a strain coordinating this act of witchcraft was placing on the young witch.

Patsy, Terry, Bob, and Amelia began to say another spell in unison. If there was a weak link in this team effort, it was Terry. The round-faced little witch was sweating profusely and shaking with the effort of keeping her magical end up. I felt a little worried as I saw the strain on her face.

"Take it easy, easy!" Amelia exhorted her team, having read the same signs. Then they all resumed chanting, and Terry seemed to be pacing herself a bit better; she didn’t look so desperate.

Amelia said, "Slow… down… now," and the chanting eased its pace.

The car appeared again in the gate, this time running right through Sigebert, who’d taken a step forward, the better to watch Terry, I suspected. It lurched to an abrupt stop half-in, half-out of the aperture.

Hadley threw herself out of the car. She was weeping, and from the looks of her face, she’d been weeping for some time. Jake Purifoy emerged from his side and stood there, his hands on the top of his door, talking across the roof of the car at Hadley.

For the first time, the queen’s personal bodyguard spoke. Andre said, "Hadley, you have to cut this out. People will notice, and the new king will do something about it. He’s the jealous kind, you know? He doesn’t care about – " Here Andre lost the thread, and shook his head. "He cares about keeping face."