Definitely Dead

had been the cause of much grief to her mother and much pain to my grandmother. If she’d lived, maybe she’d have tried to make up for that—or maybe she wouldn’t. She hadn’t had the chance.
    I took a deep breath. I opened the door. “Mr. Cataliades,” I said, feeling my anxious smile stretch my lips unconvincingly. The queen’s lawyer was a man composed of circles, his face round and his belly rounder, his eyes beady and circular and dark. I didn’t think he was human—or perhaps not wholly human—but I wasn’t sure what he could be. Not a vampire; here he was, in broad daylight. Not Were, or shifter; no red buzz surrounding his brain.
    “Miss Stackhouse,” he said, beaming at me. “What a pleasure to see you again.”
    “And you also,” I said, lying through my teeth. I hesitated, suddenly feeling achy and jumpy. I was sure Cataliades, like all the other supes I encountered, would know I was having my time of the month. Just great. “Won’t you come in?”
    “Thank you, my dear,” he said, and I stepped aside, filled with misgivings, to let this creature enter my home.
    “Please, have a seat,” I said, determined to be polite. “Would you care for a drink?”
    “No, thank you. You seem to be on your way somewhere.” He was frowning at the purse I’d tossed on my chair on my way to the door.
    Okay, something I wasn’t understanding, here. “Yes,” I said, raising my eyebrows in query. “I had planned on going to the grocery store, but I can put that off for an hour or so.”
    “You’re not packed to return to New Orleans with me?”
    “What?”
    “You received my message?”
    “What message?”
    We stared at each other, mutually dismayed.
    “I sent a messenger to you with a letter from my law office,” Mr. Cataliades said. “She should have arrived here four nights ago. The letter was sealed with magic. No one but you could open it.”
    I shook my head, my blank expression telling him what I needed to say.
    “You are saying that Gladiola didn’t get here? I expected her to arrive here Wednesday night, at the latest. She wouldn’t have come in a car. She likes to run.” He smiled indulgently for just a second. But then the smile vanished. If I’d blinked, I would have missed it. “Wednesday night,” he prompted me.
    “That was the night I heard someone outside the house,” I said. I shivered, remembering how tense I’d been that night. “No one came to the door. No one tried to break in. No one called to me. There was only the sense of something moving, and all the animals fell silent.”
    It was impossible for someone as powerful as the supernatural lawyer to look bewildered, but he did look very thoughtful. After a moment he rose ponderously and bowed to me, gesturing toward the door. We went back outside. On the front porch, he turned to the car and beckoned.
    A very lean woman slid from behind the wheel. She was younger than me, maybe in her very early twenties. Like Mr. Cataliades, she was only partly human. Her dark red hair was spiked, her makeup laid on with a trowel. Even the striking outfit of the girl in the Hair of the Dog paled in comparison to this young woman’s. She wore striped stockings, alternating bands of shocking pink and black, and her ankle boots were black and extremely high-heeled. Her skirt was transparent, black, and ruffled, and her pink tank top was her sole upper garment.
    She just about took my breath away.
    “Hi, howareya?” she said brightly, her smile revealing very sharp white teeth a dentist would fall in love with, right before he lost a finger.
    “Hello,” I said. I held out my hand. “I’m Sookie Stackhouse.”
    She covered the ground between us very speedily, even in the ridiculous heels. Her hand was tiny and bony. “Pleased- tameetya,” she said. “Diantha.”
    “Pretty name,” I said, after I figured out it wasn’t another run-on sentence.
    “Thankya.”
    “Diantha,” Mr. Cataliades said, “I need to you to conduct a search for me.” ’
    “To find?”
    “I’m very afraid we are looking for Glad’s remains.”
    The smile fell from the girl’s face.
    “No shit,” she said quite clearly.
    “No, Diantha,” the lawyer said. “No shit.”
    Diantha sat on the steps and pulled off her shoes and her striped tights. It didn’t seem to bother her at all that without the tights, her transparent skirt left nothing to the imagination. Since Mr. Cataliades’s expression didn’t change in the least, I