All Together Dead

WE WERE IN THE KITCHEN WHEN AMELIA RETURNED. I'd fed Bob, her cat, since she'd been so tactful earlier and deserved some reward. Tact does not come naturally to Amelia.

Bob ignored his kibble in favor of watching Quinn fry bacon, and I was slicing tomatoes. I'd gotten out the cheese and the mayonnaise and the mustard and the pickles, anything I could imagine a man might want on a bacon sandwich. I'd pulled on some old shorts and a T-shirt, while Quinn had gotten his bag from his truck and put on his workout clothes - a tank top and worn shorts made from sweat material.

Amelia gave Quinn a top-to-bottom scan when he turned back to the stove, and then she looked at me, grinning broadly. "You guys have a good reunion?" she said, tossing her shopping bags on the kitchen table.

"Up to your room, please," I said, because otherwise Amelia would want us to admire every single thing she'd bought. With a pout, Amelia snagged the bags and carried them upstairs, returning in a minute to ask Quinn if there was enough bacon for her.

"Sure," Quinn said obligingly, taking out some strips and putting a few more in the pan.

I liked a man who could cook. While I set out plates and silverware, I was pleasantly aware of the tenderness I felt south of my belly button and of my overwhelmingly relaxed mood. I got three glasses out of the cabinet but kind of forgot what I was doing on my way to the refrigerator, since Quinn stepped away from the stove to give me a quick kiss. His lips were so warm and firm, they reminded me of something else that had been warm and firm. I flashed on my astonished moment of revelation when Quinn had slid into me for the first time. Considering that my only previous sexual encounters had been with vampires, who are definitely on the cool side, you can imagine what a startling experience a breathing lover with a heartbeat and a warm penis would be. In fact, shape-shifters tended to run a bit warmer than regular humans. Even through the condom, I'd been able to feel the heat.

"What?" Quinn asked. "Why the look?" He was smiling quizzically.

I smiled. "I was just thinking of your temperature," I said.

"Hey, you knew I was hot," he said with a grin. "What about the thought reading?" he said more seriously. "How did that work out?"

I thought it was great that he'd even wondered. "I can't call your thoughts any trouble," I said, unable to suppress a huge grin. "It might be a stretch to count 'yesyesyesyespleasepleaseplease' as a thought."

"Not a problem then," he said, totally unembarrassed.

"Not a problem. As long as you're wrapped in the moment and you're happy, I'm gonna be happy."

"Well, hot damn." Quinn turned back to the stove. "That's just great."

I thought it was, too.

Just great.

Amelia ate her sandwich with a good appetite and then picked Bob up to feed him little bits of bacon she'd saved. The big black-and-white cat purred up a storm.

"So," said Quinn, after his first sandwich had disappeared with amazing quickness, "this is the guy you changed by accident?"

"Yeah," said Amelia, scratching Bob's ears. "This is the guy." Amelia was sitting cross-legged in the kitchen chair, which is something I simply couldn't do, and she was focused on the cat. "The little fella," she crooned. "My fuzzy wuzzy honey, isn't he? Isn't he?" Quinn looked mildly disgusted, but I was just as guilty of talking baby talk to Bob when I was alone with him. Bob the witch had been a skinny, weird guy with a kind of geeky charm. Amelia had told me Bob had been a hairdresser; I'd decided if that were true, he'd fixed hair at a funeral parlor. Black pants, white shirt, bicycle? Have you ever known a hairdresser who presented himself that way?

"So," Quinn said. "What are you doing about it?"

"I'm studying," Amelia said. "I'm trying to figure out what I did wrong, so I can make it right. It would be easier if I could..." Her voice trailed off in a guilty kind of way.

"If you could talk to your mentor?" I said helpfully.

She scowled at me. "Yeah," she said. "If I could talk to my mentor."

"Why don't you?" Quinn asked.

"One, I wasn't supposed to use transformational magic. That's pretty much a no-no. Two, I've looked for her online since Katrina, on every message board witches use, and I can't find any news of her. She might have gone to a shelter somewhere, she might be staying with her kids or some friend, or she might have died in the flooding."

"I believe you had your main income from your rental property. What are your plans now? What's the state of your property?" Quinn asked, carrying his plate and mine to the sink. He wasn't being bashful with the personal questions tonight. I waited with interest to hear Amelia's answers. I'd always wanted to know a lot of things about Amelia that were just plain rude to ask: like, What was she living on now? Though she had worked part-time for my friend Tara Thornton at Tara's Togs while Tara's help was sick, Amelia's outgo far exceeded her visible income. That meant she had good credit, some savings, or another source of income besides the tarot readings she'd done in a shop off Jackson Square and her rent money, which now wasn't coming in. Her mom had left her some money. It must have been a chunk.

"Well, I've been back into New Orleans once since the storm," Amelia said. "You've met Everett, my tenant?"

Quinn nodded.

"When he could get to a phone, he reported some damage to the bottom floor, where I live. There were trees and branches down, and of course there wasn't electricity or water for a couple of weeks. But the neighborhood didn't suffer as badly as some, thank God, and when the electricity was back on, I snuck down there." Amelia took a deep breath. I could hear right from her brain that she was scared to venture into the territory she was about to reveal to us. "I, um, went to talk to my dad about fixing the roof. Right then, we had a blue roof like half the people around us." The blue plastic that covered damaged roofs was the new norm in New Orleans.

This was the first time Amelia had mentioned her family to me, in more than a very general way. I'd learned more from her thoughts than I'd learned from her conversation, and I had to be careful not to mix the two sources when we talked. I could see her dad's presence in her head, love and resentment mixing in her thoughts to form a confused mishmash.

"Your dad is going to repair your house?" Quinn asked casually. He was excavating in my Tupperware box in which I stored any cookies that happened to cross my threshold - not a frequent occurrence, since I have a tendency to put on weight when sweets are in the house. Amelia had no such problem, and she'd stocked the box with a couple of kinds of Keebler cookies and told Quinn he was welcome to help himself.

Amelia nodded, much more fascinated by Bob's fur than she had been a moment before. "Yeah, he's got a crew on it," she said.

This was news to me.

"So who is your dad?" Quinn was keeping up the directness. So far it had worked for him.

Amelia squirmed on the kitchen chair, making Bob raise his head in protest.

"Copley Carmichael," she muttered.

We were both silent with shock. After a minute, she looked up at us. "What?" she said. "Okay, so he's famous. Okay, so he's rich. So?"

"Different last name?" I said.

"I use my mom's. I got tired of people being weird around me," Amelia said pointedly.

Quinn and I exchanged glances. Copley Carmichael was a big name in the state of Louisiana. He had fingers in all kinds of financial pies, and all those fingers were pretty dirty. But he was an old-fashioned human wheeler-dealer: no whiff of the supernatural around Copley Carmichael.

"Does he know you're a witch?" I asked.

"He doesn't believe it for a minute," Amelia said, sounding frustrated and forlorn. "He thinks I'm a deluded little wannabe, that I'm hanging with weird little people and doing weird little jobs to stick my tongue out at him. He wouldn't believe in vampires if he hadn't seen them over and over."

"What about your mom?" Quinn asked. I got myself a refill on my tea. I knew the answer to this one.

"Dead," Amelia told him. "Three years ago. That's when I moved out of my dad's house and into the bottom floor of the house on Chloe. He'd given it to me when I graduated from high school so I'd have my own income, but he made me manage it myself so I'd have the experience."

That seemed like a pretty good deal to me. Hesitantly I said, "Wasn't that the right thing to do? Get you to learn by doing?"

"Well, yeah," she admitted. "But when I moved out, he wanted to give me an allowance...at my age! I knew I had to make it on my own. Between the rent, and the money I picked up doing fortunes, and magic jobs I got on my own, I've been making a living." She threw up her head proudly.

Amelia didn't seem to realize the rent was income from a gift of her father's, not something she'd actually earned. Amelia was truly pleased as punch with her own self-sufficiency. My new friend, whom I'd acquired almost by accident, was a bundle of contradictions. Since she was a very clear broadcaster, I got her thoughts loud and clear. When I was alone with Amelia, I had to shield like crazy. I'd relaxed with Quinn around, but I shouldn't have. I was getting a whole mess from Amelia's head.

"So, could your dad help you find your mentor?" Quinn asked.

Amelia looked blank for a moment, as if she was considering that. "I don't see how," she said slowly. "He's a powerful guy; you know that. But he's having as much trouble in New Orleans since Katrina as the rest of the people are."

Except he had a lot more money and he could go somewhere else, returning when he pleased, which most of the inhabitants of the city could not. I closed my mouth to keep this observation to myself. Time to change the topic.

"Amelia," I said. "How well did you know Bob, anyway? Who's looking for him?"

She looked a little frightened, not Amelia's normal thing. "I'm wondering, too," she said. "I just knew Bob to speak to, before that night. But I do know that Bob had - has - great friends in the magic community. I don't think any of them know we got together. That night, the night before the queen's ball when the shit hit the fan between the Arkansas vamps and our vamps, Bob and I went back to my place after we'd left Terry and Patsy at the pizza place. Bob called in sick to work the next day, since we had celebrated so hard, and then he spent that day with me."

"So it's possible Bob's family has been looking for him for months? Wondering if he's dead or alive?"

"Hey, chill. I'm not that awful. Bob was raised by his aunt, but they don't get along at all. He hasn't had much contact with her for years. I'm sure he does have friends that are worrying, and I'm really, really sorry about that. But even if they knew what had happened, that wouldn't help Bob, right? And since Katrina, everyone in New Orleans has a lot to worry about."

At this interesting point in the discussion, the phone rang. I was closest, so I picked it up. My brother's voice was almost electric with excitement.

"Sookie, you need to come out to Hotshot in about an hour."

"Why?"

"Me and Crystal are getting married. Surprise!"

While this was not a total shock (Jason had been "dating" Crystal Norris for several months), the suddenness of the ceremony made me anxious.

"Is Crystal pregnant again?" I asked suspiciously. She'd miscarried a baby of Jason's not long ago.

"Yes!" Jason said, like that was the best news he could possibly impart. "And this time, we'll be married when the baby comes."

Jason was ignoring reality, as he was increasingly willing to do. The reality was that Crystal had been pregnant at least once before she was pregnant by Jason, and she had lost that child, too. The community at Hotshot was a victim of its own inbreeding.

"Okay, I'll be there," I said. "Can Amelia and Quinn come, too?"

"Sure," Jason said. "Crystal and me'll be proud to have them."

"Is there anything I can bring?"

"No, Calvin and them are getting ready to cook. It's all going to be outside. We got lights strung up. I think they'll have a big pot of jambalaya, some dirty rice, and coleslaw, and me and my buddies are bringing the alcohol. Just come looking pretty! See you at Hotshot in an hour. Don't be late."

I hung up and sat there for a minute, my hand still clutching the cordless phone. That was just like Jason: come in an hour to a ceremony planned at the last minute for the worst possible reason, and don't be late! At least he hadn't asked me to bring a cake.

"Sookie, you okay?" Quinn asked.

"My brother Jason's getting married tonight," I said, trying to keep my voice even. "We're invited to the wedding, and we need to be there in an hour." I'd always figured Jason wouldn't marry a woman I truly adored; he'd always shown a partiality to tough sluts. And that was Crystal, sure enough. Crystal was also a werepanther, a member of a community that guarded its own secrets jealously. In fact, my brother was now a werepanther himself because he'd been bitten over and over by a rival for Crystal's attentions.

Jason was older than I, and God knows, he'd had his share of women. I had to assume he knew when one suited him.

I emerged from my thoughts to find that Amelia was looking startled and excited. She loved to go out and party, and the chances for that around Bon Temps were limited. Quinn, who'd met Jason when he was visiting me, looked at me with a skeptical raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, I know," I said. "It's crazy and dumb. But Crystal's pregnant again, and there's no stopping him. Do you two want to come along with me? You don't have to. I'm afraid I've got to get ready right now."

Amelia said, "Oh, goody, I can wear my new outfit," and sped upstairs to tear the tags off.

Quinn said, "Babe, do you want me to come?"

"Yes, please," I said. He came over to me and wrapped his heavy arms around me. I felt comforted, even though I knew Quinn was thinking what a fool Jason was.

I pretty much agreed with him.