Dead and Gone

advised.

Chapter 9
    I drove home more confused than ever. Though I loved my great-grandfather as much as I could on our short acquaintance . . . and I was absolutely ready to love him even more, and I was willing to back him up to the limit because we were kin . . . I still didn’t know how to fight this war, or how to dodge it, either. Fairies did not want to be known to the human world, and they never would. They weren’t like the wereanimals or the vampires, who wanted to share in the planet with us. There was much less reason for the fairies to keep in line with human policies and rules. They could do anything they wished and vanish back into their secret place.
    For about the millionth time, I wished I had a normal great-grandfather instead of this improbable, glorious, and inconvenient fairy prince version.
    Then I was ashamed of myself. I should be happy for what I’d been given. I hoped God hadn’t noticed my lapse of appreciation.
    I’d already had a busy day, and it was only two o’clock. This wasn’t shaping up to be my normal day off. Usually I did laundry, cleaned house, went to the store, read, paid bills. . . . But today was so pretty I wanted to stay outside. I wanted to work on something that would allow me to think at the same time. There sure was plenty to mull over.
    I looked at the flower beds around the house and decided to weed. This was my least-favorite chore, maybe because it was the one I’d often been assigned as a child. Gran had believed we should be brought up to work. It was in her honor that I tried to keep the flower beds looking nice, and now I sighed and made up my mind to get the job done. I’d start with the bed by the driveway, on the south side of the house.
    I went over to our metal toolshed, the latest in a series of toolsheds that had served the Stackhouse family over the generations we’d lived on this spot. I opened the door with the familiar mingled feelings of pleasure and horror, because someday I was going to have to put in some serious work cleaning out the interior. I still had my grandmother’s old trowel; there was no telling who’d used it before her. It was ancient but so well taken care of that it was better than any modern substitute. I stepped into the shadowy shed and found my gardening gloves and the trowel.
    I knew from watching Antiques Roadshow that there were people who collected old farm implements. This toolshed would be an Aladdin’s cave to such a collector. My family didn’t believe in letting things go if they still worked. Though chock-full, the shed was orderly, because that had been my grandfather’s way. When we’d come to live with him and Gran, he’d drawn an outline for every commonly used tool. That was where he’d wanted that tool to be replaced every time it was used, and that was where it was still kept now. I could reach unerringly for the trowel, which was maybe the oldest tool in the shed. It was heavy, sharper, and narrower than its modern counterparts, but its shape was familiar to my hand.
    If it had been really, truly spring, I’d have changed back into my bikini to combine business with pleasure. But though the sun was still shining, I wasn’t in a carefree mood any longer. I pulled my gardening gloves on, because I didn’t want to ruin my fingernails. Some of these weeds seemed to fight back. One grew on a thick, fleshy stalk, and it had sharp points on its leaves. If you let it grow long enough, it blossomed. It was really ugly and prickly, and it had to be removed by its roots. There were quite a few of them springing up among the emerging cannas.
    Gran would have had a fit.
    I crouched and set to work. With my right hand, I sank the trowel in the soft dirt of the flower bed, loosening the roots of the nasty weed, and pulled it up with my left hand. I shook the stalk to get the dirt off the roots and then tossed it aside. Before I’d started I’d put a radio out on the back porch. In no time at all, I was singing along with LeAnn Rimes. I began to feel less troubled. In a few minutes, I had a respectable pile of uprooted weeds and a glow of virtue.
    If he hadn’t spoken, it would have ended differently. But since he was full of himself, he had to open his mouth. His pride saved my life.
    Also, he picked some unwise words. Saying, “I’ll enjoy killing you for my lord,” is just not the way to make my acquaintance.
    I have good reflexes, and I erupted from my squatting position with the trowel in my