A Touch of Dead

house in the woods, I’d had time to change from my Merlotte’s outfit into some black jeans and a sage green twinset (JCPenney on sale), since the night was chilly. I’d let my hair down from its ponytail.
    “You should wear blue instead of green,” Claudine said, “to go with your eyes.”
    “Thanks for the fashion tip.”
    “You’re welcome.” Claudine sounded happy to share her style sense with me. But her smile, usually so radiant, seemed tinged with sadness.
    “What do you want me to find out from these people?” I asked.
    “We’ll talk about it when we get there,” she said, and after that she wouldn’t tell me anything else as we drove east. Ordinarily Claudine babbles. I was beginning to feel it wasn’t smart of me to have accepted this job.
    Claudine and her brother lived in a big ranch-style house in suburban Monroe, a town that not only had a Wal-Mart, but a whole mall. She knocked on the front door in a pattern. After a minute, the door opened.
My eyes widened. Claudine hadn’t mentioned that her brother was her twin.
    If Claude had put on his sister’s clothes, he could have passed for her; it was eerie. His hair was shorter, but not by a lot; he had it pulled back to the nape of his neck, but his ears were covered. His shoulders were broader, but I couldn’t see a trace of a beard, even this late at night. Maybe male fairies don’t have body hair? Claude looked like a Calvin Klein underwear model; in fact, if the designer had been there, he’d have signed the twins on the spot, and there’d have been drool all over the contract.
    Claude stepped back to let us enter. “This is the one?” he said to Claudine.
    She nodded. “Sookie, my brother, Claude.”
    “A pleasure,” I said. I extended my hand. With some surprise, he took it and shook. He looked at his sister. “She’s a trusting one.”
    “Humans,” Claudine said, and shrugged.
    Claude led me through a very conventional living room, down a paneled hall to the family room. A man was sitting in a chair, because he had no choice. He was tied to it with what looked like nylon cord. He was
a small man, buff, blond, and brown-eyed. He looked about my age, twenty-six.
    “Hey,” I said, not liking the squeak in my voice, “why is that man tied?”
    “Otherwise, he’d run away,” Claude said, surprised.
    I covered my face with my hands for a second. “Listen, you two, I don’t mind looking at this guy if he’s done something wrong, or if you want to eliminate him as a suspect in a crime committed against you. But if you just want to find out if he really loves you, or something silly like that . . . What’s your purpose?”
    “We think he killed our triplet, Claudette.”
    I almost said, “There were three of you?” then realized that wasn’t the most important part of the sentence.
    “You think he murdered your sister.”
    Claudine and Claude nodded in unison. “Tonight,” Claude said.
    “Okeydokey,” I muttered, and bent over the blond. “I’m taking the gag off.”
    They looked unhappy, but I slid the handkerchief down to his neck. The young man said, “I didn’t do it.”
    “Good. Do you know what I am?”

    “No. You’re not a thing like them, are you?”
    I don’t know what he thought Claude and Claudine were, what little otherworldly attribute they’d sprung on him. I lifted my hair to show him that my ears were round, not pointed, but he still looked dissatisfied.
    “Not a vamp?” he asked.
    Showed him my teeth. The canines only extend when vamps are excited by blood, battle, or sex, but they’re noticeably sharp even when they’re retracted. My canines are quite normal.
    “I’m just a regular human,” I said. “Well, that’s not quite true. I can read your thoughts.”
    He looked terrified.
    “What are you scared for? If you didn’t kill anybody, you have nothing to fear.” I made my voice warm, like butter melting on corn on the cob.
    “What will they do to me? What if you make a mistake and tell them I did it? What are they gonna do?”
    Good question. I looked up at the two.
    “We’ll kill him and eat him,” Claudine said, with a ravishing smile. When the blond man looked from her to Claude, his eyes wide with terror, she winked at me.
    For all I knew, Claudine might be serious. I couldn’t
remember if I’d ever seen her eat or not. We were treading on dangerous ground. I try to support my own race when I can. Or at least get ’em out of situations alive.
    I should