“Yes,” I said. “I might hear something in the bar.”
They left after that, and I was glad to see them go. It was my day off. I felt I should do something special today to celebrate, since I was coming off such a difficult time, but I couldn’t think of anything to do. I looked at the Weather Channel and saw the high for today was supposed to be in the sixties. I decided winter was officially over, even though it was still January. It would get cold again, but I was going to enjoy the day.
I got my old chaise longue out of the storage shed and set it up in the backyard. I slicked my hair up in a ponytail and doubled it over so it wouldn’t hang down. I put on my smallest bikini, which was bright orange and turquoise. I covered myself in tanning lotion. I took a radio and the book I was reading and a towel, and went out to the yard. Yep, it was cool. Yep, I got goose bumps when a breeze came up. But this was always a happy day on my calendar, the first day I got to sun-bathe. I was going to enjoy it. I needed it.
Every year I thought of all the reasons I shouldn’t lie out in the sun. Every year I added up my virtues: I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke, and I very seldom had sex, though I was willing to change that. But I loved my sun, and it was bright in the sky today. Sooner or later I’d pay for it, but it remained my weakness. I wondered if maybe my fairy blood would give me a pass on the possibility of skin cancer. Nope: my aunt Linda had died of cancer, and she’d had more fairy blood than I had. Well . . . dammit.
I lay on my back, my eyes closed, dark glasses keeping the glare to a minimum. I sighed blissfully, ignoring the fact that I was a little on the cold side. I carefully didn’t think about many things: Crystal, mysterious ill-wishing fairies, the FBI. After fifteen minutes, I switched to my stomach, listening to the country-and-western station from Shreveport, singing along from time to time since no one was around to hear me. I have an awful voice.
“Whatchadoing?” asked a voice right by my ear.
I’d never levitated before, but I think I did then, rising about six inches off the low folding chaise. I squawked, too.
“Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea,” I wheezed when I finally realized that the voice belonged to Diantha, part-demon niece of the half-demon lawyer Mr. Cataliades. “Diantha, you scared me so bad I almost jumped out of my skin.”
Diantha was laughing silently, her lean, flat body bobbing up and down. She was sitting cross-legged on the ground, and she was wearing red Lycra running shorts and a black-and-green patterned T-shirt. Red Converses with yellow socks completed her ensemble. She had a new scar, a long red puckered one that ran down her left calf.
“Explosion,” she said when she saw I was looking at it. Diantha had changed her hair color, too; it was a gleaming platinum. But the scar was bad enough to recapture my attention.
“You okay?” I asked. It was easy to adopt a terse style when you were talking to Diantha, whose conversation was like reading a telegram.
“Better,” she said, looking down at the scar herself. Then her strange green eyes met mine. “My uncle sent me.” This was the prelude to the message she had come to deliver, I understood, because she said it so slowly and distinctly.
“What does your uncle want to tell me?” I was still on my stomach, propped on my elbows. My breathing was back to normal.
“He says the fairies are moving around in this world. He says to be careful. He says they’ll take you if they can, and they’ll hurt you.” Diantha blinked at me.
“Why?” I asked, all my pleasure in the sun evaporating as if it had never been. I felt cold. I cast a nervous glance around the yard.
“Your great-grandfather has many enemies,” Diantha said slowly and carefully.
“Diantha, do you know why he has so many enemies?” That was a question I couldn’t ask my great-grandfather himself, or at least I hadn’t worked up the courage to do so.
Diantha looked at me quizzically. “They’re on one side; he’s on the other,” she said as if I were slow. “Theygotyergrandfather.”
“They . . . these other fairies killed my grandfather Fintan?”
She nodded vigorously. “Hedidn’ttellya,” she said.
“Niall? He just said his son had died.”
Diantha broke into a hoot of shrill laughter. “Youcouldsay- that,” she said, and doubled over, still laughing. “Choppedinta pieces!” She slapped me on the arm in her excess of amusement. I winced.
“Sorry,” she said. “Sorrysorrysorry.”
“Okay,” I said. “Just give me a minute.” I rubbed the arm vigorously to restore the feeling. How did you protect yourself if marauding fairies were after you?
“Who exactly am I supposed to be scared of?” I asked.
“Breandan,” she said. “Itmeanssomething; Iforgot.”
“Oh. What does ‘Niall’ mean?” Easily sidetracked, that was me.
“Cloud,” Diantha said. “All Niall’s people got sky names.”
“Okay. So Breandan is after me. Who is he?”
Diantha blinked. This was a very long conversation for her. “Your great-grandfather’s enemy,” she explained carefully, as if I were very dense. “The only other fairy prince.”
“Why did Mr. Cataliades send you?”
“Didyerbest,” she said in one breath. Her unblinking bright eyes latched onto mine, and she nodded and very gently patted my hand.
Ihad done my best to get everyone out of the Pyramid alive. But it hadn’t worked. It was kind of gratifying to know that the lawyer appreciated my efforts. I’d spent a week being angry at myself because I hadn’t uncovered the whole bombing plot more quickly. If I’d paid more attention, hadn’t let myself get so distracted by the other stuff going on around me . . .
“Also, yercheck’llcome.”
“Oh, good!” I could feel myself brighten, despite the worry caused by the rest of Diantha’s message. “Did you bring a letter for me, or anything like that?” I asked, hoping for a little more enlightenment.
Diantha shook her head, and the gelled spikes of her bright platinum hair trembled all over her head, making her look like an agitated porcupine. “Uncle has to stay neutral,” she said clearly. “Nopapernophonecallsnoemails. That’s why he sent me.”
Cataliades had really stuck his neck out for me. No, he’d stuckDiantha’s neck out. “What if they capture you, Diantha?” I said.
She shrugged a bony shoulder. “Godownfightin’,” she said. Her face grew sad. Though I can’t read demon minds in the same way I can read human ones, any fool could tell Diantha was thinking about her sister, Gladiola, who had died from the sweep of a vampire’s sword. But after a second, Diantha looked simply lethal. “Burn’em,” Diantha said. I sat up and raised my eyebrows to show I didn’t understand.
Diantha turned her hand up and looked at the palm. A tiny flicker of flame hovered right above it.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said. I was not a little impressed. I reminded myself to always stay on Diantha’s good side.
“Little,” she said, shrugging. I deduced from that that Diantha could make only a small flame, not a large one. Gladiola must have been taken completely by surprise by the vampire who’d killed her, because vampires were flammable, much more so than humans.
“Do fairies burn like vamps?”
She shook her head. “Buteverything’llburn,” she said, her voice certain and serious. “Sooner, later.”
I suppressed a shiver. “Do you want a drink or something to eat?” I asked.
“Naw.” She got up from the ground, dusted off her brilliant outfit. “Igottago.” She patted me on the head and turned, and then she was gone, running faster than any deer.
I lay back down on the chaise to think about all this. Now Niall had warned me, Mr. Cataliades had warned me, and I felt well and truly scared.
But the warnings, though timely, didn’t give me any practical information about how to guard against this threat. It might materialize at any time or in any place, as far as I could tell. I could assume the enemy fairies wouldn’t storm Merlotte’s and haul me out of there, since the fae were so secretive; but other than that, I didn’t have a clue about what form the attack would take or how to defend myself. Would locked doors keep fairies out? Did they have to be granted entry, like vampires? No, I couldn’t recall having to tell Niall he could come in, and he’d been to the house.