A Touch of Dead

track after all those years.
    Niall smiled at me. All the tiny wrinkles that fissured his fine skin moved when he smiled, and somehow that just added to his charm. He had a load of wrapped boxes, to add to my general level of amazement.
    “Please come in, Great-grandfather,” I said. “I’m so happy to see you! Can you have Christmas dinner with me?”
    “Yes,” he said. “That’s why I’ve come. Though,” he added, “I was not invited.”
    “Oh,” I said, feeling ridiculously ill-mannered. “I just never thought you’d be interested in coming. I mean, after all, you’re not . . .” I hesitated, not wanting to be tacky.
    “Not Christian,” he said gently. “No, dear one, but you love Christmas, and I thought I would share it with you.”
    “Yay,” I said.
    I’d actually wrapped a present for him, intending to give it to him when I next encountered him (for seeing Niall was not a regular event), so I was able to bask in
complete happiness. He gave me an opal necklace, I gave him some new ties (that black one had to go) and a Shreveport Mudbugs pennant (local color).
    When the food was ready, we ate dinner, and he thought it was all very good.
    It was a great Christmas.

    The creature Sookie Stackhouse knew as Preston was standing in the woods. He could see Sookie and her great-grandfather moving around in the living room.
    “She really is lovely, and sweet as nectar,” he said to his companion, the hulking Were who’d searched Sookie’s house. “I only had to use a touch of magic to get the attraction started.”
    “How’d Niall get you to do it?” asked the Were. He really was a werewolf, unlike Preston, who was a fairy with a gift for transforming himself.
    “Oh, he helped me out of a jam once,” Preston said. “Let’s just say it involved an elf and a warlock, and leave it at that. Niall said he wanted to make this human’s Christmas very happy, that she had no family and was deserving.” He watched rather wistfully as Sookie’s
figure crossed the window. “Niall set up the whole story tailored to her needs. She’s not speaking to her brother, so he was the one who ‘loaned out’ her woods. She loves to help people, so I was ‘hurt’; she loves to protect people, so I was ‘hunted.’ She hadn’t had sex in a long time, so I seduced her.” Preston sighed. “I’d love to do it all over again. It was wonderful, if you like humans. But Niall said no further contact, and his word is law.”
    “Why do you think he did all this for her?”
    “I’ve no idea. How’d he rope you and Curt into this?”
    “Oh, we work for one of his businesses as a courier. He knew we do a little community theater, that kind of thing.” The Were looked unconvincingly modest. “So I got the part of Big Threatening Brute, and Curt was Other Brute.”
    “And a good job you did,” Preston the fairy said brac ingly. “Well, back to my own neck of the woods. See you later, Ralph.”
    “’Bye now,” Ralph said, and Preston popped out of sight.
    “How the hell do they do that?” Ralph said, and stomped off through the woods to his waiting motorcycle
and his buddy Curt. He had a pocketful of cash and a story he was charged to keep secret.
    Inside the old house, Niall Brigant, fairy prince and loving great-grandfather, pricked his ears at the faint sound of Preston’s and Ralph’s departures. He knew it was audible to only his ears. He smiled down at his great-granddaughter. He didn’t understand Christmas, but he understood that it was a time humans received and gave gifts, and drew together as families. As he looked at Sookie’s happy face, he knew he had given her a unique yuletide memory.
    “Merry Christmas, Sookie,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek.