Dead and Gone

asking to be lived. “Well, I need to go to the library. I need to pick up a pair of pants at the dry cleaners.” I hadn’t checked the label before that particular purchase. “I have to work the day shift at Merlotte’s. I guess that’s it.”
    “Okay,” Jason said. “Though those errands don’t sound exactly urgent.” There was a long pause. Suddenly he said, “Are you okay?”
    “Yeah,” I said cautiously. “Should I not be?”
    “The weirdest thing happened this morning. Mel slept at my place last night, since he was the worse for wear after he met me at the Bayou. So early this morning, there was a knock at the door. I answered it, and this guy was there, and he was, I don’t know, nuts or something. The strangest part was, this guy looked a lot like me.”
    “Oh, no.” I sat on the stool abruptly.
    “He wasn’t right, sis,” Jason said. “I don’t know what was wrong with him, but he wasn’t right. He just started talking when Mel answered the door, like we knew who he was. He was saying crazy stuff. Mel tried to get between him and me, and he threw Mel clear across the room and called him a killer. Mel might’ve broken his neck if he hadn’t landed on the couch.”
    “Mel’s okay, then.”
    “Yeah, he’s okay. Pretty mad, but you know . . .”
    “Sure.” Mel’s feelings were not the most important issue here. “So what did he do next?”
    “He said some shit about now that he was face-to-face with me he could see why my great-grandfather didn’t want me around, and crossbreeds should all die, but I was clearly blood of his blood, and he’d decided I should know what’s going on around me. He said I was ignorant. I didn’t understand a lot of it, and I still don’t get what he was. He wasn’t a vamp, and I know he wasn’t a shifter of any kind or I’d’ve smelled him.”
    “You’re okay—that’s the big thing, right?” Had I been wrong all along about keeping Jason out of the fairy loop?
    “Yeah,” he said, his voice abruptly going all cautious and wary. “You’re not going to tell me what this is all about, are you?”
    “Come over here, and we’ll talk about it. Please, please, don’t open the door unless you know who’s there. This guy is bad, Jason, and he’s not picky about who he hurts. I think you and Mel were real lucky.”
    “You got someone there with you?”
    “Not since Tray left.”
    “I’m your brother. I’ll come over if you need me,” Jason said with unexpected dignity.
    “I really appreciate that,” I said.
    I got two for the price of one. Mel came with Jason. This was awkward, because I had some family stuff to tell Jason, and I couldn’t with Mel around. With unexpected tact, Mel told Jason that he had to run home and get an ice pack for his shoulder, which was badly bruised. While Mel was gone, I sat Jason down on the other side of the kitchen table, and I said, “I got some things to tell you.”
    “About Crystal?”
    “No, I haven’t heard anything about that yet. This is about us. This is about Gran. You’re going to have a hard time believing this.” I’d given him fair warning. I remembered how upset I’d been when my great-grandfather had told me about how my half-fairy grandfather, Fintan, had met my grandmother, and how she’d ended up having two children with him, our dad and our aunt Linda.
    Now Fintan was dead—murdered—and our grandmother was dead, and our father and his sister were dead. But we were living, and just a small part fairy, and that made us a target for our great-grandfather’s enemies.
    “And one of those enemies,” I said after I’d told him our family history, “is our half-human great-uncle, Fintan’s brother, Dermot. He told Tray and Amelia that his name was Drake, I guess because it sounded more modern. Dermot looks like you, and he’s the one who showed up at your house. I don’t know what his deal is. He joined up with Breandan, Niall’s big enemy, even though he’s half-human himself and, therefore, exactly what Breandan hates. So when you said he was crazy, I guess there’s your explanation. He seems to want to connect with you, but he hates you, too.”
    Jason sat staring at me. His face was completely vacant. His thoughts had gotten caught in a traffic jam. Finally he said, “You tell me he was trying to get Tray and Amelia to introduce you? And neither of them knew what he was?”
    I nodded. There was some more silence.
    “So why did he want to meet you? Did he