Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

in his hand, instead of his deer-hunting spear. Gift was with him, long knives in both her hands. Three more of the Monroe fae were with them: two of the strippers, the fairy “policeman” and the part demon who’d worn leather when he’d come onstage. The curvy ticket taker followed. She hadn’t bothered with looking human today.
    “Help Dermot!” I yelled, hoping that was what they’d come to do. To my overwhelming relief, they whooped with excitement and threw themselves into the brawl. There was a lot of unnecessary punching and biting, but when they were sure Claude was subdued, they all began laughing. Even Dermot.
    At least I was able to put the lamp back on the table.
    “Would someone tell me what’s going on?” I asked. I felt (as usual with the supes) two steps behind the crowd, and no telepath enjoys feeling that way. I was going to have to hang around with humans for a long time to make up for this sad ignorance.
    “My dearest sister,” Bellenos said. He smiled that disconcertingsmile at me. He looked especially toothy today, and since there was blood between some of those teeth, the effect was not reassuring.
    “Hi, y’all,” was the best I could do, but they all grinned back, and Gift gave Dermot an enthusiastic kiss. Her extra eyelid flickered down and up again, almost too fast for me to note.
    In the meantime, Claude was lying on the floor in a panting, bloody bundle. There was still plenty of fight in him, from the glares he was throwing around, but he was so clearly outnumbered that it seemed he’d given up … at least temporarily. The ticket taker was sitting on his legs, and the two strippers were each pinning one arm.
    Gift came to sit by me; I’d collapsed on the couch. She put her arm around me. “Claude was trying to incite us to rebel against Niall,” she said kindly. “Sister, I’m surprised he didn’t try to test your loyalty, too.”
    “Well, he wouldn’t have gotten very far!” I said. “I would have thrown him out in a New York minute!”
    “Then see, that was intelligent of you, Claude,” said Bellenos, bending over to speak to Claude face-to-face. “One of the few intelligent things you did.” Claude glared at him.
    Dermot shook his handsome head. “All this time I thought I must try to emulate Claude, because he had been so successful out here in the human world. But I realized that when he thought people were pleased with him, he didn’t perceive that it was only because he is beautiful. Much more often, when he talked to people, they came to regard him with dislike. I couldn’t believe it, but he’d done well in spite of himself, not because of his own talents.”
    “He does like children,” I said weakly. “And he’s nice to pregnant women.”
    “Yes, that’s true,” the policeman stripper said. “By the way, youcan just call me Dirk, my stripping name. Siobhan is sitting on Claude’s legs. And this is Harley. I’m sure you remember Harley.”
    “Oh, yeah, who could forget Harley?” I said. Even under the circumstances, I had a gratifying flashback of how Harley’s straight black hair and coppery red body had looked under the lights at Hooligans. Harley tried to bow from a crouching position, which isn’t easy, and Siobhan grinned at me. “So … Claude really was locked out of Faery, along with you-all? That wasn’t a lie?”
    “No, not a lie,” said Dermot sadly. “My father hated me because he thought I’d always worked against him. But I was cursed. I thought he’d done the cursing, but I see now it must have been Claude all along. Claude, you betrayed me and then kept me trotting behind you like a dog.”
    Claude began to speak in another language, and then the fae moved with an unbelievable speed. Gift yanked off her bra top, and Harley stuffed it in Claude’s mouth. It would have been petty of me to take any notice of Gift’s bare chest, so I rose above it.
    “That was a secret fairy language?” I hated to ask, but I just wanted to know. My days of ignorance were over.
    Dirk nodded. “We speak to each other that way; it’s what we have in common: full fairy, demon, angel, all the half-breeds.”
    “Dermot, did you and Claude really come here because of my fairy blood?” I asked Dermot. Claude’s mouth was otherwise occupied.
    “Yes,” Dermot said uncertainly. “Though Claude said there was something here that attracted him, and he spent hours when you were gone searching your house. When he couldn’t find