Dead and Gone ss(v-9 Page 12

  “Dead,” Claudine translated before she took a bite of her chicken.

  Claude shrugged. “Yes, Rogan’s dead. He was the only one who could rein in Breandan. And you should know, Breandan’s the one who—” But Claude stopped in midsentence, because his sister had her hand clamped down on his arm. A woman who was feeding a little boy French fries looked over at us curiously, her attention attracted by Claudine’s sudden gesture. Claudine gave Claude a look that could blister paint. He nodded, removed his arm from her grip, and began to speak again. “Breandan disagrees very strongly with Niall about policy. He . . .”

  The twins looked at each other. Finally Claudine nodded.

  “Breandan believes all the humans with fairy blood should be eradicated. He believes every time one of us mates with a human, we lose some of our magic.”

  I cleared my throat, trying to get rid of the lump of fear that had risen to block it. “So Breandan’s an enemy. Any more royalty on Niall’s side?” I asked in a choked voice.

  “A less-than-prince. His title doesn’t translate,” Claude said. “Our father, Dillon son of Niall, and his first wife, Branna. Our mother is Binne. If Niall goes to the Summerlands, Dillon will replace him as prince. But of course he must wait.”

  The names were unfamiliar. The first one sounded almost like Dylan, the second sounded like BEE-nah. “Spell those, please,” I said, and Claudine said, “B-I-N-N-E. D-I-L-L-O-N. Niall didn’t live happily with Branna, and it took him a long time to love our father, Dillon. Niall preferred his half-human sons.” She smiled at me to reassure me that humans were okay with her, I guess.

  Niall had told me once I was his only living relative. But that wasn’t true. Niall was definitely swayed by emotion, not facts. I needed to remember that. Claude and Claudine didn’t seem to blame Niall’s partiality on me, to my huge relief.

  “So who’s on Breandan’s side?” I asked.

  “Dermot,” said Claudine. She looked at me expectantly.

  I knew that name. I struggled to remember where I’d heard it.

  “He’s my grandfather Fintan’s brother,” I said slowly. “Niall’s other son by Einin. But he’s half human.” Einin had been a human woman seduced by Niall centuries ago. (She’d thought he was an angel, which gives you some idea how good fairies can look when they don’t need to look human.) My half-human great-uncle was trying to kill his dad?

  “Did Niall tell you that Fintan and Dermot were twins?” Claude asked.

  “No,” I said, astonished.

  “Dermot was the younger by a few minutes. The twins were not identical, you understand,” he said. He was enjoying my ignorance. “They were . . .” He paused, looked baffled. “I don’t know the right term,” he said.

  “Fraternal. Okay, interesting, but so?”

  “Actually,” Claudine said, looking down intently at her chicken, “your brother, Jason, is the spitting image of Dermot.”

  “Are you suggesting that . . . What are you suggesting?” I was ready to be indignant, once I knew why.

  “We’re only telling you that this is why Niall has been naturally inclined to favor you over your brother,” Claude said. “Niall loved Fintan, but Dermot defied Niall at every turn. He openly rebelled against our grandfather and pledged his loyalty to Breandan, though Breandan despises him. In addition to Dermot’s resemblance to Jason, which is only a quirk of genes, Dermot is an asshole like Jason. You can see why Niall doesn’t claim kinship with your brother.”

  I felt a moment’s pity for Jason until my common sense woke me up. “So Niall has enemies besides Breandan and Dermot?”

  “They have their own followers and associates, including a few assassins.”

  “But your dad and your mom are on Niall’s side?”

  “Yes. Others are, too, of course. All of us sky people.”

  “So I have to watch out for any approaching fairies, and they might attack me at any time because I’m Niall’s blood.”

  “Yes. The fae world is too dangerous. Especially now. That’s one reason we live in the human world.” Claude glanced at Claudine, who was wolfing chicken nuggets like she’d been starving.

  Claudine swallowed, patted her mouth with the paper napkin, and said, “Here’s the most important point.” She popped in another nugget and glanced at Claude, signaling him to take over.

  “If you see someone who looks like your brother, but isn’t . . .” Claude said.

  Claudine swallowed. “Run like hell,” she advised.

  Chapter 9

  I drove home more confused than ever. Though I loved my great-grandfather as much as I could on our short acquaintance . . . and I was absolutely ready to love him even more, and I was willing to back him up to the limit because we were kin . . . I still didn’t know how to fight this war, or how to dodge it, either. Fairies did not want to be known to the human world, and they never would. They weren’t like the wereanimals or the vampires, who wanted to share in the planet with us. There was much less reason for the fairies to keep in line with human policies and rules. They could do anything they wished and vanish back into their secret place.

  For about the millionth time, I wished I had a normal great-grandfather instead of this improbable, glorious, and inconvenient fairy prince version.

  Then I was ashamed of myself. I should be happy for what I’d been given. I hoped God hadn’t noticed my lapse of appreciation.

  I’d already had a busy day, and it was only two o’clock. This wasn’t shaping up to be my normal day off. Usually I did laundry, cleaned house, went to the store, read, paid bills. . . . But today was so pretty I wanted to stay outside. I wanted to work on something that would allow me to think at the same time. There sure was plenty to mull over.

  I looked at the flower beds around the house and decided to weed. This was my least-favorite chore, maybe because it was the one I’d often been assigned as a child. Gran had believed we should be brought up to work. It was in her honor that I tried to keep the flower beds looking nice, and now I sighed and made up my mind to get the job done. I’d start with the bed by the driveway, on the south side of the house.

  I went over to our metal toolshed, the latest in a series of toolsheds that had served the Stackhouse family over the generations we’d lived on this spot. I opened the door with the familiar mingled feelings of pleasure and horror, because someday I was going to have to put in some serious work cleaning out the interior. I still had my grandmother’s old trowel; there was no telling who’d used it before her. It was ancient but so well taken care of that it was better than any modern substitute. I stepped into the shadowy shed and found my gardening gloves and the trowel.

  I knew from watchingAntiques Roadshow that there were people who collected old farm implements. This toolshed would be an Aladdin’s cave to such a collector. My family didn’t believe in letting things go if they still worked. Though chock-full, the shed was orderly, because that had been my grandfather’s way. When we’d come to live with him and Gran, he’d drawn an outline for every commonly used tool. That was where he’d wanted that tool to be replaced every time it was used, and that was where it was still kept now. I could reach unerringly for the trowel, which was maybe the oldest tool in the shed. It was heavy, sharper, and narrower than its modern counterparts, but its shape was familiar to my hand.

  If it had been really, truly spring, I’d have changed back into my bikini to combine business with pleasure. But though the sun was still shining, I wasn’t in a carefree mood any longer. I pulled my gardening gloves on, because I didn’t want to ruin my fingernails. Some of these weeds seemed to fight back. One grew on a thick, fleshy stalk, and it had sharp points on its leaves. If you let it grow long enough, it blossomed. It was really ugly and prickly, and it had to be removed by its roots. There were quite a few of them springing up among the emerging cannas.

  Gran would have had a fit.

  I crouched and set to work. With my right hand, I sank the trowel in the soft dirt of the flower bed, lo
osening the roots of the nasty weed, and pulled it up with my left hand. I shook the stalk to get the dirt off the roots and then tossed it aside. Before I’d started I’d put a radio out on the back porch. In no time at all, I was singing along with LeAnn Rimes. I began to feel less troubled. In a few minutes, I had a respectable pile of uprooted weeds and a glow of virtue.

  If he hadn’t spoken, it would have ended differently. But since he was full of himself, he had to open his mouth. His pride saved my life.

  Also, he picked some unwise words. Saying, “I’ll enjoy killing you for my lord,” is just not the way to make my acquaintance.

  I have good reflexes, and I erupted from my squatting position with the trowel in my hand and I drove it upward into his stomach. It slid right in, as if it were designed to be a fairy-killing weapon.

  And that was exactly what it turned out to be, because the trowel was iron and he was a fairy.

  I leaped back and dropped into a half crouch, still gripping the bloody trowel, and waited to see what he’d do. He was looking down at the blood seeping through his fingers with an expression of absolute amazement, as if he couldn’t believe I’d ruined his ensemble. Then he looked at me, his eyes pale blue and huge, and there was a big question on his face, as if he were asking me if I’d really done that to him, if it wasn’t some kind of mistake.

  I began backing up to the porch steps, never taking my eyes from him, but he wasn’t a threat any longer. As I reached behind me to open the screen door, my would-be murderer crumpled to the ground, still looking surprised.

  I retreated into the house and locked the door. Then I walked on trembling legs over to the window above the kitchen sink and peered out, leaning as far over the sink as I could. From this angle I could see only a bit of the crumpled body. “Okay,” I said out loud.“Okay.” He was dead, looked like. It had been soquick .

  I started to pick up the wall phone, noticed how my hands were shaking, and spotted my cell phone on the counter where I’d been charging it. Since this was a crisis that definitely called for the head honcho, I speed-dialed my great-grandfather’s big, secret emergency number. I thought the situation qualified. A male voice, not Niall’s, answered. “Yes?” the voice said with a cautious tone.

  “Ah, is Niall there?”

  “I can reach him. Can I help you?”

  Steady, I told myself.Steady . “Would you please tell him I’ve killed a fairy and he’s laid out in my yard and I don’t know what to do with the body?”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Yes, I’ll tell him that.”

  “Pretty soon, you think? Because I’m alone and I’m kind of freaked out.”

  “Yes. Quite soon.”

  “And someone will come?” Geez Louise, I sounded whiny. I made my spine stiffen. “I mean, I can load him in my car trunk, I guess, or I could call the sheriff.” I wanted to impress this unknown with the fact that I wasn’t completely needy and helpless. “But there’s the whole thing with you guys being secret, and he didn’t seem to have a weapon, and obviously I can’t prove this guy said he’d enjoy killing me.”

  “You . . . have killed a fairy.”

  “Isaid that. Way back.” Mr. Slow-on-the-Uptake. I peered out the window again. “Yeah, he’s still not moving. Dead and gone.”

  This time the silence lasted so long that I thought I must have blanked out and missed something. I said, “I’m sorry?”

  “Are you really? We’ll be there very soon.” And he hung up.

  I couldn’t not look, and I couldn’t bear to look. I’d seen the dead before, both human and nonhuman. And since the night I’d met Bill Compton in Merlotte’s, I’d seen more than my share of bodies. Not that that was Bill’s fault, of course.

  I had goose pimples all over.

  In about five minutes, Niall and another fairy walked out of the woods. There must be some kind of portal out there. Maybe Scotty had beamed them up. Or down. And maybe I wasn’t thinking too clearly.

  The two fairies stopped when they saw the body and then exchanged a few words. They seemed astonished. But they weren’t scared, and they weren’t acting like they expected the guy to get up and fight, so I crept across the back porch and out the screen door.

  They knew I was there, but they continued their eyeballing of the body.

  My great-grandfather raised his arm and I crept under it. He held me to him, and I glanced up to see that he was smiling.

  Okay,that was unexpected.

  “You’re a credit to our family. You’ve killed my enemy,” he said. “I was so right about humans.” He looked proud as punch.

  “This is a good thing?”

  The other fairy laughed and looked at me for the first time. He had hair the color of butterscotch, and his eyes matched his hair, which to me was so weird that it was really off-putting—though like all the fairies I’d met, he was gorgeous. I had to suppress a sigh. Between the vampires and the fairies, I was doomed to be a plain Jane.

  “I’m Dillon,” he said.

  “Oh, Claudine’s dad. Nice to meet you. I guess your name means something, too?” I said.

  “Lightning,” he said, and gave me a particularly winsome smile.

  “Who is this?” I said, jerking my head at the body.

  “He was Murry,” Niall said. “He was a close friend of my nephew Breandan.”

  Murry looked very young; to the human eye, he’d been perhaps eighteen. “He said he was looking forward to killing me,” I told them.

  “But instead, you killed him. How did you do it?” Dillon asked, as if he was asking how I rolled out a flaky piecrust.

  “With my grandmother’s trowel,” I said. “Actually, it’s been in my family for a long time. Not like we make a fetish of gardening tools or anything; it just works and it’s there and there’s no need to buy another one.” Babbling.

  They both looked at me. I couldn’t tell if they thought I was nuts or what.

  “Could you show us this gardening tool?” Niall said.

  “Sure. Do you-all want some tea or something? I think we’ve got some Pepsi and some lemonade.” No, no, not lemonade! They’d die! “Sorry, cancel the lemonade. Tea?”

  “No,” said Niall quite gently. “I think not now.”

  I’d dropped the bloody trowel in among the cannas. When I picked it up and approached them, Dillon flinched. “Iron!” he said.

  “You don’t have the gloves on,” Niall said to his son chid ingly, and took the trowel from me. His hands were covered with the clear flexible coating developed in fairy-owned chemical factories. Coated with this substance, fairies were able to go out in the human world with some degree of assurance that they wouldn’t get poisoned in the process.

  Dillon looked chastened. “No, sorry, Father.”

  Niall shook his head as if he were disappointed in Dillon, but his attention was really on the trowel. He might have been prepared to handle something poisonous to him, but I noticed he still handled it very carefully.

  “It went into him really easily,” I said, and had to repress a sudden wave of nausea. “I don’t know why. It’s sharp, but it’s not that sharp.”

  “Iron can part our flesh like a hot knife in butter,” Niall said.

  “Ugh.” Well, at least I knew I hadn’t suddenly gotten superstrong.

  “He surprised you?” Dillon asked. Though he didn’t have the fine, fine wrinkles that made my great-grandfather even more beautiful, Dillon looked only a little younger than Niall, which made their relationship all the more disorienting. But when I looked down at the corpse once more, I was completely back in the present.

  “He sure did surprise me. I was just working away weeding the flower bed, and the next thing you know, he was standing right there telling me how much he was looking forward to killing me. I’d never done a thing to him. And he scared me, so I kind of came up in a rush with the trowel, and I got him in the stomach.” Again, I wrestled with my own stomach’s tendency to heave.

  “Did he
speak any more?” My great-grandfather was trying to ask me casually, but he seemed pretty interested in my answer.

  “No, sir,” I said. “He kind of looked surprised, and then he . . . he died.” I walked over to the steps and sat down rather suddenly and heavily.

  “It’s not exactly like I feel guilty,” I said in a rush of words. “It’s just that he was trying to kill me and he was happy about it and I never did a thing to him. I didn’t know anything about him, and now he’s dead.”

  Dillon knelt in front of me. He looked into my face. He didn’t exactly look kind, but he looked less detached. “He was your enemy, and now he is dead,” he said. “This is cause for rejoicing.”

  “Not exactly,” I said. I didn’t know how to explain.

  “You’re aChristian ,” he said, as if he’d discovered I was a hermaphrodite or a fruitarian.

  “I’m a real bad one,” I said hurriedly. His lips compressed, and I could see he was trying hard not to laugh. I’d never felt less like mirth, with the man I’d killed lying a few feet away. I wondered how many years Murry had walked this earth, and now he was crumpled in a lifeless heap, his blood staining my gravel. Wait a minute! He wasn’t anymore. He was turning to . . . dust. It wasn’t anything like the gradual flaking away of a vampire; it was more like someone was erasing Murry.

  “Are you cold?” Niall asked. He didn’t seem to think the disappearance of bits of the body was anything unusual.

  “No, sir. I’m just all upset. I mean, I was sunbathing and then I went to see Claude and Claudine, and now here I am.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the body’s incremental disappearance.

  “You’ve been lying in the sun and gardening.We like the sun and sky,” he said, as if that was proof positive I had a special relationship with the fairy branch of my family. He smiled at me. He was so beautiful. I felt like an adolescent when I was around him, an adolescent with acne and baby fat. Now I felt like amurderous adolescent.