Dead Ever After: A True Blood Novel

some of the time.” I could hardly beg off any more shifts at Merlotte’s, management or no management. Besides, working was better than thinking. I’d had my days of thinking after I’d resurrected Sam, and a fat lot of good it had done me.
    “I completely understand,” the lawyer said. “I think perhaps you will need us to stay in the house.”
    “Us? Diantha’s coming with you?”
    “Almost certainly, and also your friend Amelia and perhaps her young man,” he said. “According to Amelia, you need all the help you can get. Her father called her concerning you. He told her he’d seen an article in the papers about you.”
    That was heartwarming, since I’d only met Copley Carmichael once, and he and Amelia had anything but a smooth relationship. “Wonderful,” I said, trying hard to sound sincere. “By the way, Mr. Cataliades, do you know someone named Leslie Gelbman?”
    “No,” he said instantly. “Why do you ask?”
    I described the phone call and told him what Andy had discovered.
    “Interesting and disturbing,” he said succinctly. “I’ll drive by that house before we leave.”
    “When do you think you’ll get here?”
    “Tomorrow morning,” he said. “Until we arrive, be extremely careful.”
    “I’ll try,” I said, and he hung up.
    The sun had just gone down by the time I’d eaten a salad and had my shower. I had a towel wrapped around my head (and nothing else on) when the phone rang. I answered it in my bedroom.
    “Sookie,” Bill said, his voice cool and smooth and soothing. “How are you tonight?”
    “Just fine, thanks,” I said. “Really tired.” Hint, hint.
    “Would you mind very much if I come over to your house for just a few moments? I have a visitor, a man you’ve met before. He’s a writer.”
    “Oh, he came here with Kym Rowe’s parents, right? Harp something?” His previous visit was not a pleasant memory.
    “Harp Powell,” Bill said. “He’s writing a book about Kym’s life.”
    Biography of a Dead Half-Breed: The Short Life of a Young Stripper. I really couldn’t imagine how Harp Powell could spin the depressing tale of Kym Rowe into literary gold. But Bill thought writers were great, even small-time writers like Harp Powell.
    “If we could just take a few minutes of your time?” Bill said gently. “I know the past few days have been very bad ones for you.”
    Sounded like he’d gotten the message, probably via Danny Prideaux, about my sojourn in jail.
    I said, “Okay, give me ten minutes, and then you can come over for a short visit.” When my great-grandfather Niall had left this land, he’d put a lot of magic in the ground. Though it was delightful to see the yard blooming and bearing fruit and being green, I found myself thinking I would have traded all the plants in the yard for one really good protection spell. Too late now! Niall had taken my dog of a cousin, Claude, back into Faery to punish him for his rebellion and his attempt to steal from me, and left me with a lot of tomatoes in return. The last person to lay wards around my house had been Bellenos, the elf, and though he’d scorned other people’s protective circles, I didn’t exactly trust Bellenos’s. I’d rather have a gun than magic any day, but maybe that was just American of me. I had the shotgun in the coat closet by the front door and Daddy’s rediscovered critter rifle in the kitchen. When Michele and Jason had turned out all of Jason’s closets and storage areas in preparation for Michele moving in, they’d found all kinds of stuff, items I’d vaguely wondered about for years, including my mom’s wedding dress. (While I’d gotten Gran’s house when she passed, Jason had inherited my parents’ place.)
    I glimpsed the wedding dress in the back of my closet when I opened it to pull out something to wear for my fairly unwelcome guests. Every time I saw the flounced skirt, I was reminded just how different I was from my mother; but every time, I wished I’d gotten to know her as an adult.
    I shook myself and pulled out a T-shirt and jeans. I didn’t fool with makeup, and my hair was still damp when the two men knocked at my back door. Bill had seen me in every stage of being dressed or undressed that was possible, and I didn’t care what Harp Powell thought.
    The reporter practically bolted into my kitchen. He looked agitated.
    “Did you see that?” he asked me.
    “What? Hello, by the way. ‘Thanks, Ms. Stackhouse, for inviting me into your home