All Together Dead

her nature and because she’s trying to work her way up the magical ladder to become an angel. Tonight, Claudine’s face was unusually serious. My heart sank. I wanted to go to bed, and I wanted to miss Quinn in private, and I wanted to get over the jangling my nerves had taken at Merlotte’s. I didn’t want bad news.
    Claudine settled at the kitchen table across from me and held my hands. She spared a look for Amelia. “Take a hike, witch,” she said, and I was shocked.
    “Pointy-eared bitch,” muttered Amelia, getting up with her mug of tea.
    “Mate killer,” responded Claudine.
    “He’s not dead!” shrieked Amelia. “He’s just—different!”
    Claudine snorted, and actually that was an adequate response.
    I was too tired to scold Claudine for her unprecedented rudeness, and she was holding my hands too tight for me to be pleased about her comforting presence. “What’s up?” I asked. Amelia stomped out of the room, and I heard her shoes on the stairs up to the second floor.
    “No vampires here?” Claudine said, her voice anxious. You know how a chocoholic feels about chunky fudge ice cream, double dipped in dark chocolate? That’s how vamps feel about fairies.
    “Yeah, the house is empty except for me, you, Amelia, and Bob,” I said. I was not going to deny Bob his personhood, though sometimes it was pretty hard to recall, especially when his litter box needed cleaning.
    “You’re going to this summit?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    That was a good question. “The queen is paying me,” I said.
    “Do you need the money so badly?”
    I started to dismiss her concern, but then I gave it some serious thought. Claudine had done a lot for me, and the least I could do for her was think about what she said.
    “I can live without it,” I said. After all, I still had some of the money Eric had paid me for hiding him from a group of witches. But a chunk of it had gone, as money seems to; the insurance hadn’t covered everything that had been damaged or destroyed by the fire that had consumed my kitchen the winter before, and I’d upgraded my appliances, and I’d made a donation to the volunteer fire department. They’d come so quickly and tried so hard to save the kitchen and my car.
    Then Jason had needed help to pay the doctor’s bill for Crystal’s miscarriage.
    I found I missed that layer of padding between being solvent and being broke. I wanted to reinforce it, replenish it. My little boat sailed on precarious financial waters, and I wanted to have a towboat around to keep it afloat.
    “I can live without it,” I said, more firmly, “but I don’t want to.”
    Claudine sighed. Her face was full of woe. “I can’t go with you,” she said. “You know how vampires are around us. I can’t even put in an appearance.”
    “I understand,” I said, a bit surprised. I’d never dreamed of Claudine’s going.
    “And I think there’s going to be trouble,” she said.
    “What kind?” The last time I’d gone to a vampire social gathering, there had been big trouble, major trouble, the bloodiest kind of trouble.
    “I don’t know,” Claudine said. “But I feel it coming, and I think you should stay home. Claude does, too.”
    Claude didn’t give a rat’s ass what happened to me, but Claudine was generous enough to include her brother in her kindness. As far as I could tell, Claude’s benefit to the world was strictly as a decoration. He was utterly selfish, had no social skills, and was absolutely beautiful.
    “I’m sorry, Claudine, and I’ll miss you while I’m in Rhodes,” I said. “But I’ve obligated myself to go.”
    “Going in the train of a vampire,” Claudine said dismally. “It’ll mark you as one of their world, for good. You’ll never be an innocent bystander again. Too many creatures will know who you are and where you can be found.”
    It wasn’t so much what Claudine said as the way she said it that made cold prickles run up my spine and crawl along my scalp. She was right. I had no defense, though I rather thought that I was already into the vamp world too deeply to opt out.
    Sitting there in my kitchen with the late afternoon sun slanting through the window, I had one of those illuminations that changes you forever. Amelia was silent upstairs. Bob had come back into the room to sit by his food bowl and stare at Claudine. Claudine herself was gleaming in a beam of sunlight that hit her square in the face. Most people would be showing every