Dead Reckoning: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

charity.
    “It’s a love offering,” I said, grinning at him. “Like we took up at church last Sunday.” That love offering had been for the missionaries in Uganda, and this one was for Merlotte’s Bar.
    “I’d believe that,” he said, and met my eyes.
    I kept my smile, but I began to feel a little self-conscious. “I have to go get ready,” I said.
    “What for?” His reddish eyebrows drew together.
    “Tara’s baby shower,” I said. “It’s an old-fashioned gals-only party, so you didn’t get invited.”
    “I’ll try to contain my misery,” he said. He didn’t move.
    “Are you getting up to go to the bank?” I asked sweetly.
    “Uh, yeah, getting up right now.” He did get out of the chair and call down the hall to let the servers know he was running a quick errand. I got in my car at the same time he got in his truck. I don’t know about Sam, but I was feeling really good.
    I did stop by my lawyer’s to tell him what I’d done. This would be my human, local lawyer, not Mr. Cataliades. Whom, by the way, I hadn’t heard from.
    I swung by Maxine’s house to get the punch, thanked her profusely, left her a list of what I was going to do and had done for the shower arrangements (to her puzzlement), and took the frozen containers back to my house to pop in the little chest freezer on my back porch. I had the ginger ale set out on the counter to mix with the frozen juices.
    I was as prepared as I could be for the baby shower.
    Now I had to get ready to kill Victor.

Chapter 14
    Sam called me as I was putting on my makeup.
    “Hi,��� I said. “You got the check to the bank, yes?”
    “Yes,” he said. “Since you told me like a million times. No problem there. I’m calling to tell you I just got a very weird phone call from your friend Amelia. She said she was calling me because you wouldn’t want to talk to her. She said it was about that thing you found. She looked it up. The cluviel dor?” He sounded it out very carefully.
    “Yeah?”
    “She didn’t want to talk over the phone to me about it, but she said to tell you urgently to check your e-mail. She said you were pretty bad about forgetting to do that. She didn’t seem to think you’d answer your phone if you knew from your caller ID that it was her on the phone.”
    “I’ll go look at my e-mail right now.”
    “Sookie?”
    “Yeah?”
    “You okay?”
    Almost certainly not. “Sure, Sam. Thanks for standing in place of the answering machine.”
    “No problem.”
    Amelia had certainly figured out how to get my attention. I took the cluviel dor out of the drawer and took it with me to the little desk in the living room where I’d put the computer. Yes, I had a lot of mail.
    Most of it was junk, but there was one from Amelia, sure enough, and one from Mr. Cataliades that had come two days before. Color me surprised.
    I was so curious I opened his message first. Though he wasn’t brief, he was to the point.
Miss Stackhouse,

I got your message on my answering machine. I have been traveling so certain individuals cannot find me. I have many friends, but also many enemies. I am watching you closely, but I hope not intrusively. You’re the only person
I know who has as many enemies as I. I’ve done the best I can to keep you a step ahead of that hellspawn Sandra Pelt. She’s not dead yet, though. Beware.
I don’t believe you knew that I was a great friend of your grandfather, Fintan. I knew your grandmother, though not well. In fact, I met your father and his sister, and your brother Jason, though he will never remember it since he was quite small. So were you when I first saw you. They were all disappointments except you.
I think you must have found the cluviel dor, since I plucked the term out of Miss Amelia’s head when I saw her at the shop. I don’t know where your grandmother hid it, I only know she was given one, because I gave it to her. If you have discovered it, I advise you to be very careful about its use. Think once, and twice, and three times before you expend its energy. You can change the world, you know. Any series of events you alter by magic can have unexpected repercussions in history. I’ll contact you again when I can, and perhaps stop by to explain more fully. Best wishes for your survival.

Desmond Cataliades, attorney-at-law, your sponsor
    As Pam might say, “Fuck a zombie.” Mr. Cataliades was indeed my sponsor, the dark stranger who’d visited Gran. What did that mean? And he said he