"So you want to clear out Hadley's apartment because you think your building won't be targeted any more? By these thieves who've learned that Hadley's dead?"

"Right," she said, taking a final gulp of her coffee. "I kind of like knowing someone else is here, too. Having the apartment empty just gives me the creeps. At least vampires can't leave ghosts behind."

"I didn't know that," I said. And I'd never thought about it, either.

"No vamp ghosts," Amelia said blithely. "Nary a one. Got to be human to leave a ghost behind. Hey, you want me to do a reading on you? I know, I know, it's kind of scary, but I promise, I'm good at it!" She was thinking that it would be fun to give me a touristy-type thrill, since I wouldn't be in New Orleans long; she also believed that the nicer she was to me, the quicker I'd clean out Hadley's place so she could have the use of it back.

"Sure," I said slowly. "You can do a reading, right now, if you want." This might be a good measure of how gifted a witch Amelia really was. She sure didn't bear any resemblance to the witch stereotype. Amelia looked scrubbed and glowing and healthy, like a happy suburban housewife with a Ford Explorer and an Irish setter. But quick as a wink, Amelia extricated a Tarot pack from a pocket of her cargo shorts and leaned over the coffee table to deal them out. She did this in a quick and professional way that didn't make a bit of sense to me.

After poring over the pictures for a minute, her gaze stopped roaming over the cards and fixed on the table. Her face reddened, and she closed her eyes as if she were feeling mortified. Of course, she was.

"Okay," she said at last, her voice calm and flat. "What are you?"

"Telepath."

"I'm always making assumptions! Why don't I learn!"

"No one thinks of me as scary," I said, trying to sound gentle, and she winced.

"Well, I won't make that mistake again," she said. "You did seem more knowledgeable about supes than the ordinary person."

"And learning more every day." Even to myself, my voice sounded grim.

"Now I'll have to tell my advisor that I blew it," my landlady said. She looked as gloomy as it was possible for her to look. Not very.

"You have a… mentor?"

"Yeah, an older witch who kind of monitors our progress the first three years of being a professional."

"How do you know when you're a professional?"

"Oh, you have to pass the exam," Amelia explained, getting to her feet and going over to the sink. In a New York minute, she had washed the coffeepot and the filter apparatus, put them neatly in the drainer, and wiped out the sink.

"So we'll start packing up stuff tomorrow?" I said.

"What's wrong with right now?"

"I'd like to go through Hadley's things by myself, first," I said, trying not to sound irritated.

"Oh. Well, sure you would." She tried to look as if she'd thought of that already. "And I guess you have to go over to the queen's tonight, huh?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, I'll bet they're expecting you. Was there a tall, dark, and handsome vamp out there with you last night? He sure looked familiar."

"Bill Compton," I said. "Yes, he's lived in Louisiana for years and he's done some work for the queen."

She looked at me, her clear blue eyes surprised. "Oh, I thought he knew your cousin."

"No," I said. "Thanks for getting me up so I could start work, and thanks for being willing to help me."

She was pleased that she was leaving, because I hadn't been what she'd expected, and she wanted to think about me some and make some phone calls to sisters in the craft in the Bon Temps area. "Holly Cleary," I said. "She's the one I know best."

Amelia gasped and said a shaky good-bye. She left as unexpectedly as she'd arrived.

I felt old all of a sudden. I'd just been showing off, and I'd reduced a confident, happy young witch to an anxious woman in the space of an hour.

But as I got out a pad and pencil—right where they should be, in the drawer closest to the telephone—to figure out my plan of action, I consoled myself with the thought that Amelia had needed the mental slap in the face pretty badly. If it hadn't come from me, it might have come from someone who actually meant her harm.

Chapter 15

I needed boxes, that was for sure. So I'd also need strapping tape, lots of it, and a Magic Marker, and probably scissors. And finally, I'd need a truck to take whatever I salvaged back to Bon Temps. I could ask Jason to drive down, or I could rent a truck, or I could ask Mr. Cataliades if he knew of a truck I could borrow. If there was a lot of stuff, maybe I would rent a car and a trailer. I'd never done such a thing, but how hard could it be? Since I didn't have a ride right now, there was no way to obtain the supplies. But I might as well start sorting, since the sooner I finished, the sooner I could get back to work and away from the New Orleans vampires. I was glad, in a corner of my mind, that Bill had come, too. As angry as I sometimes felt with him, he was familiar. After all, he'd been the first vampire I'd ever met, and it still seemed almost miraculous to me how it had happened.

He'd come into the bar, and I'd been fascinated with the discovery that I couldn't hear his thoughts. Then later the same evening, I'd rescued him from drainers. I sighed, thinking how good it had been until he'd been recalled by his maker, Lorena, now also definitely dead.

I shook myself. This wasn't the time for a trip down memory lane. This was the time for action and decision. I decided to start with the clothes.

After fifteen minutes, I realized that the clothes were going to be easy. I was going to give most of them away. Not only was my taste radically different from my cousin's, but her hips and breasts had been smaller and her coloring had been different from mine. Hadley had liked dark, dramatic clothes, and I was altogether a lower-key person. I did sort of wonder about one or two of the black wispy blouses and skirts, but when I tried them on, I looked just like one of the fangbangers who hung around Eric's bar. Not the image I was going for. I put only a handful of tank tops and a couple of pairs of shorts and sleep pants in the "keep" pile.

I found a large box of garbage bags and used those to pack the clothes away. As I finished with each bag, I set it out on the gallery to keep the apartment clear of clutter.

It was about noon when I started to work, and the hours passed quickly after I found out how to operate Hadley's CD player. A lot of the music she had was by artists who'd never been high on my list, no big surprise there—but it was interesting listening. She had a horde of CDs: No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails, Eminem, Usher.

I'd started on the drawers in the bedroom when it just began turning dark. I paused for a moment to stand on the gallery in the mild evening, and watch the city wake up for the dark hours ahead. New Orleans was a city of the night now. It had always been a place with a brawling and brazen nightlife, but now it was such a center for the undead that its entire character had changed. A lot of the jazz on Bourbon Street was played these days by hands that had last seen sunlight decades before. I could catch a faint spatter of notes on the air, the music of faraway revels. I sat on a chair on the gallery and listened for a while, and I hoped I'd get to see some of the city while I was here. New Orleans is like no other place in America, both before the vampire influx and after it. I sighed and realized I was hungry. Of course, Hadley didn't have any food in the apartment, and I wasn't about to start drinking blood. I hated to ask Amelia for anything else. Tonight, whoever came to pick me up to go to the queen's might be willing to take me to the grocery store. Maybe I should shower and change?