From Dead to Worse

by Charlaine Harris

Chapter 17

  Amelia and Octavia were sitting at the kitchen table the next day when I shambled out. Amelia had used up all the coffee, but at least she'd washed the pot and it took only a few minutes to make myself a much-needed cup. Amelia and her mentor kept a tactful conversation going while I bumbled around getting some cereal, adding some sweetener, pouring milk over it. I hunched over the bowl because I didn't want to dribble milk down my tank top. And by the way, it was getting too cold to wear a tank top around the house. I pulled on a cheap jacket made of sweats material and was able to finish my coffee and cereal in comfort.

  "What's up, you two?" I asked, signaling I was ready to interact with the rest of the world.

  "Amelia told me about your problem," Octavia said. "And about your very kind offer. "

  Ah-oh. What offer?

  I nodded wisely, as if I had a clue.

  "I'll be so glad to be out of my niece's house, you have no idea," the older woman said earnestly. "Janesha has three little ones, including one toddler, and a boyfriend that comes and goes. I'm sleeping on the living room couch, and when the kids get up in the morning, they come in and turn on the cartoons. Whether or not I'm up. It's their house, of course, and I've been there for weeks, so they've lost the sense that I'm company. "

  I gathered that Octavia was going to be sleeping in the bedroom opposite me or in the extra one upstairs. I was voting for the one upstairs.

  "And you know, now that I'm older, I need quicker access to a bathroom. " She looked at me with that humorous deprecation people show when they're admitting to a passage-of-time condition. "So downstairs would be wonderful, especially since my knees are arthritic. Did I tell you Janesha's apartment is upstairs?"

  "No," I said through numb lips. Geez, this had happened so fast.

  "Now, about your problem. I'm not a black witch at all, but you need to get these young women out of your life, both Ms. Pelt's agent and Ms. Pelt herself. "

  I nodded vigorously.

  "So," Amelia said, unable to keep quiet any longer, "we've come up with a plan. "

  "I'm all ears," I said, and poured myself a second cup of coffee. I needed it.

  "The simplest way to get rid of Tanya, of course, is to tell your friend Calvin Norris what she's doing," Octavia said.

  I gaped at her. "Ah, that seems likely to result in some pretty bad things happening to Tanya," I said.

  "Isn't that what you want?" Octavia looked innocent in a real sly way.

  "Well, yeah, but I don't want her to die. I mean, I don't want anything she can't get over to happen to her. I just want her away and not coming back. "

  Amelia said, " 'Away and not coming back' sounds pretty final to me. "

  It sounded that way to me, too. "I'll rephrase. I want her to be off somewhere living her life but far away from me," I said. "Is that clear enough?" I wasn't trying to sound sharp; I just wanted to express myself.

  "Yes, young lady, I think we can understand that," said Octavia with frost in her voice.

  "I don't want there to be any misunderstanding here," I said. "There's a lot at stake. I think Calvin kind of likes Tanya. On the other hand, I bet he could scare her pretty effectively. "

  "Enough to get her to leave forever?"

  "You'd have to demonstrate that you were telling the truth," Amelia said. "About her sabotaging you. "

  "What do you have in mind?" I asked.

  "Okay, here's what we think," Amelia said, and just like that, Phase One was in place. It turned out to be something I could have thought of myself, but the witches' help made the planning run much more smoothly.

  I called Calvin at home, and asked him to stop by when he had a minute to spare around lunchtime. He sounded surprised to hear from me, but he agreed to come.

  He got a further surprise when he came into the kitchen and found Amelia and Octavia there. Calvin, the leader of the werepanthers who lived in the little community of Hotshot, had met Amelia several times before, but Octavia was new to him. He respected her immediately because he was able to sense her power. That was a big help.

  Calvin was probably in his midforties, strong and solid, sure of himself. His hair was graying, but he was straight as an arrow in posture, and he possessed a huge calm that couldn't fail to impress. He'd been interested in me for a while, and I'd only been sorry I couldn't feel the same way. He was a good man.

  "What's up, Sookie?" he said after he'd turned down the offer of cookies or tea or Coke.

  I took a deep breath. "I don't like to be a tale-teller, Calvin, but we have a problem," I said.

  "Tanya," he said immediately.

  "Yeah," I said, not bothering to hide my relief.

  "She's a sly one," he said, and I was sorry to hear an element of admiration in his voice.

  "She's a spy," Amelia said. Amelia could cut right to the chase.

  "Who for?" Calvin tilted his head to one side, unsurprised and curious.

  I told him an edited version of the story, a story I was extremely sick of repeating. Calvin needed to know that the Pelts had a big beef with me, that Sandra would hound me to my grave, that Tanya had been planted as a gadfly.

  Calvin stretched out his legs while he listened, his arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing brand-new jeans and a plaid shirt. He smelled like fresh-cut trees.

  "You want to put a spell on her?" he asked Amelia when I'd finished.

  "We do," she said. "But we need you to get her here. "

  "What would the effect be? Would it hurt her?"

  "She'd lose interest in doing harm to Sookie and all her family. She wouldn't want to obey Sandra Pelt anymore. It wouldn't hurt her physically at all. "

  "Would this change her mentally?"

  "No," Octavia said. "But it's not as sure a spell as the one that would make her not want to be here anymore. If we cast that one, she'd leave here, and she wouldn't want to come back. "

  Calvin mulled this over. "I kind of like that ole girl," he said. "She's a live one. I've been pretty concerned over the trouble she's causing Crystal and Jason, though, and I've been wondering what steps to take about Crystal's crazy spending. I guess this kind of brings the issue front and center. "

  "You like her?" I said. I wanted all cards on the table.

  "I said that. "

  "No, I mean, you like her. "

  "Well, her and me, we've had some good times now and then. "

  "You don't want her to go away," I said. "You want to try the other thing. "

  "That's about the size of it. You're right: she can't stay and keep on going like she is. She either changes her ways, or she leaves. " He looked unhappy about that. "You working today, Sookie?"

  I looked at the wall calendar. "No, it's my day off. " I'd have two days in a row off.

  "I'll get aholt of her and bring her by tonight. That give you ladies enough time?"

  The two witches looked at each other and consulted silently.

  "Yes, that will be fine," Octavia said.

  "I'll get her here by seven," Calvin said.

  This was moving with unexpected smoothness.

  "Thanks, Calvin," I said. "This is really helpful. "

  "This'll kill a lot of birds with one stone, if it works," Calvin said. "Of course, if it don't work, you two ladies won't be my favorite people. " His voice was completely matter-of-fact.

  The two witches didn't look happy.

  Calvin eyed Bob, who happened to stroll into the room. "Hello, brother," Calvin said to the cat. He gave Amelia a narrowed-eye look. "Seems to me like your magic don't work all the time. "

  Amelia looked guilty and offended simultaneously. "We'll get this to work," she said, tight-lipped. "You just see. "

  "I aim to. "

  I spent the rest of the day doing my laundry, redoing my nails,
changing my sheets - all those tasks you save up for your day off. I went by the library to swap books and absolutely nothing happened. One of Barbara Beck's part-time assistants was on duty, which was good. I didn't want to experience the horror of the attack all over again, as I surely would in every encounter with Barbara for a long time to come. I noticed the stain was gone from the library floor.

  After that, I went to the grocery store. No Weres attacked, no vampires rose. No one tried to kill me or anyone I knew. No secret relatives revealed themselves, and not a soul tried to involve me in his or her problems, marital or otherwise.

  I was practically reeking with normality by the time I got home.

  Tonight was my cooking night, and I'd decided to fix pork chops. I have a favorite homemade breading mix that I make in a huge batch, so I soaked the chops in milk and then dredged them with the mix so they were ready for the oven. I fixed baked apples stuffed with raisins and cinnamon and butter and popped them in to bake and I flavored some canned green beans and some canned corn and put them on low heat. After a while, I opened the oven to put in the meat. I thought about making biscuits, but there seemed to be more than enough calories on board.

  While I cooked, the witches were doing stuff in the living room. They seemed to be having a good old time. I could hear Octavia's voice, which sounded very much like it was in teaching mode. Every now and then, Amelia would ask a question.

  I did a lot of muttering to myself while I cooked. I hoped this magical procedure worked, and I was grateful to the witches for being so willing to help. But I was feeling a little sideswiped on the domestic front. My brief mention to Amelia that Octavia could stay with us for a little while had been a spur of the moment thing. (I could tell I was going to have to be more careful in conversations with my roomie from now on. ) Octavia hadn't said she'd be in my house for a weekend, or a month, or any measure of time. That scared me.

  I could have cornered Amelia and told her, "You didn't ask me if Octavia could stay right now at this moment, and it's my house," I supposed. But I did have a free room, and Octavia did need someplace to stay. It was a little late to discover that I wasn't entirely happy at having a third person in the house - a third person I barely knew.

  Maybe I could find a job for Octavia, because regular earnings would allow the older woman her independence and she'd move out of here. I wondered about the state of her house in New Orleans. I assumed it was unlivable. For all the power she had, I guess even Octavia couldn't undo the damage a hurricane had done. After her references to stairs and increased bathroom needs, I'd revised her age upward, but she still didn't seem any older than, say, sixty-three. That was practically a spring chicken, these days.

  I called Octavia and Amelia to the table at six o'clock. I had the table set and the iced tea poured, but I let them serve their own plates from the stove. Not elegant, but it did save on dishes.

  We didn't talk a lot as we ate. All three of us were thinking about the evening to come. As much as I disliked her, I was a little worried about Tanya.

  I felt funny about the idea of altering someone, but the bottom line was, I needed Tanya off my back and out of my life and the lives of those around me. Or I needed her to get a new attitude about what she was doing in Bon Temps. I couldn't see any way around those facts. In line with my new practicality, I'd realized that if I had to choose between continuing my life with Tanya's interference or continuing my life with Tanya altered, there was no contest.

  I cleared the plates away. Normally, if one of us cooked, the other did the dishes, but the two women had magical preparations to make. It was just as well; I wanted to keep busy.

  We heard the gravel crunching under the wheels of a truck at 7:05.

  When we'd asked him to have her here at seven, I hadn't realized he'd bring her as a parcel.

  Calvin carried Tanya in over his shoulder. Tanya was compact, but no featherweight. Calvin was definitely working, but his breathing was nice and even and he hadn't broken a sweat. Tanya's hands and ankles were bound, but I noticed he'd wrapped a scarf under the rope so she wouldn't get chafed. And (thank God) she was gagged, but with a jaunty red bandanna. Yes, the head werepanther definitely had a thing for Tanya.

  Of course, she was mad as a disturbed rattler, wriggling and twisting and glaring. She tried to kick Calvin, and he slapped her on her butt. "You stop that now," he said, but not as if he was particularly upset. "You've done wrong; you got to take your medicine. "

  He'd come in the front door, and now he dumped Tanya on the couch.

  The witches had drawn some things in chalk on the floor of the living room, a process that hadn't found much favor with me. Amelia had assured me she could clean it all up, and since she was a champion cleaner, I'd let them proceed.

  There were various piles of things (I really didn't want to look too closely) set around in bowls. Octavia lit the material in one bowl and carried it over to Tanya. She wafted the smoke toward Tanya with her hand. I took an extra step back, and Calvin, who was standing behind the couch and holding Tanya by the shoulders, turned his head. Tanya held her breath as long as she could.

  After breathing the smoke, she relaxed.

  "She needs to be sitting there," Octavia said, pointing to an area circled by chalky symbols. Calvin plonked Tanya down on a straight-backed chair in the middle. She stayed put, thanks to the mysterious smoke.

  Octavia started chanting in a language I didn't understand. Amelia's spells had always been in Latin, or at least a primitive form of it (she'd told me that), but I thought Octavia was more diverse. She was speaking something that sounded entirely different.

  I'd been very nervous about this ritual, but it turned out to be pretty boring unless you were one of the participants. I wished I could open the windows to get the smell of the smoke out of the house, and I was glad Amelia had thought to take the batteries out of the smoke detectors. Tanya was clearly feeling something, but I wasn't sure it was the removal of the Pelt effect.

  "Tanya Grissom," Octavia said, "yank the roots of evil out of your soul and remove yourself from the influence of those who would use you for evil ends. " Octavia made several gestures over Tanya while holding a curious item that looked awfully like a human bone wound around with a vine. I tried not to wonder where she'd gotten the bone.

  Tanya squealed beneath her gag, and her back arched alarmingly. Then she relaxed.

  Amelia made a gesture, and Calvin bent over to untie the red bandanna that had made Tanya look like a small bandit. He pulled another handkerchief, a clean white one, out of Tanya's mouth. She'd definitely been abducted with affection and consideration.

  "I can't believe you're doing this to me!" Tanya shrieked the second her mouth would work. "I can't believe you kidnapped me like a caveman, you big jerk!" If her hands had been free, Calvin would have taken a pummeling. "And what the hell is up with this smoke? Sookie, are you trying to burn your house down? Hey, woman, would you get that crap out of my face?" Tanya batted at the vine-wrapped bone with her bound hands.

  "I'm Octavia Fant. "

  "Well, goody, Octavia Fant. Get me out of these ropes!" Octavia and Amelia exchanged glances.

  Tanya appealed to me. "Sookie, tell these nuts to let me go! Calvin, I was halfway interested in you before you tied me up and dumped me here! What did you think you were doing?"

  "Saving your life," Calvin said. "You ain't gonna run now, are you? We got some talking to do. "

  "Okay," Tanya said slowly, as she realized (I could hear her) that something serious was afoot. "What's all this about?"

  "Sandra Pelt," I said.

  "Yeah, I know Sandra. What about her?"

  "What's your connection?" Amelia asked.

  "What's your interest, Amy?" Tanya countered.

  "Amelia," I corrected, sitting on the big ottoman in front of Tanya. "And you need to answer this question. "

&
nbsp; Tanya gave me a sharp look - she had a repertoire of them - and said, "I used to have a cousin who was adopted by the Pelts, and Sandra was my cousin's adopted sister. "

  "Do you have a close friendship with Sandra?" I said.

  "No, not especially. I haven't seen her in a while. "

  "You didn't make a bargain with her recently?"

  "No, Sandra and I don't see each other too much. "

  "What do you think of her?" Octavia asked.

  "I think she's a double-barreled bitch. But I sort of admire her," Tanya said. "If Sandra wants something, she goes after it. " She shrugged. "She's kind of extreme for my taste. "

  "So if she told you to ruin someone's life, you wouldn't do it?" Octavia was eyeing Tanya intently.

  "I got better fish to fry than that," Tanya said. "She can go around ruining lives on her own, if she wants to do it so bad. "

  "You wouldn't be a part of that?"

  "No," Tanya said. She was sincere, I could tell. In fact, she was beginning to get anxious at our line of questioning. "Ah, have I done something bad to somebody?"

  "I think you got in a little over your head," Calvin said. "These nice ladies have intervened. Amelia and Miss Octavia are, ah, wise women. And you know Sookie already. "

  "Yeah, I know Sookie. " Tanya gave me a sour look. "She won't make friends with me no matter what I do. "

  Well, yeah, I didn't want you close enough to stab me in the back, I thought, but I didn't say anything.

  "Tanya, you've taken my sister-in-law shopping a little too much lately," I said.

  Tanya burst into laughter. "Too much retail therapy for the pregnant bride?" she said. But then she looked puzzled. "Yeah, it does seem like we went to the mall in Monroe too many times for my checkbook. Where'd I get the money? I don't even like shopping that much. Why'd I do that?"

  "You're not going to do it anymore," Calvin said.

  "You don't tell me what I'm going to do, Calvin Norris!" Tanya shot back. "I won't go shopping because I don't want to go, not because you tell me not to. "

  Calvin looked relieved.

  Amelia and Octavia looked relieved.

  We all nodded simultaneously. This was Tanya, all right. And she seemed to be minus the destructive guidance of Sandra Pelt. I didn't know if Sandra had whipped up some witchcraft of her own, or if she'd just offered Tanya a lot of money and talked her into thinking Debbie's death was my fault, but the witches appeared to have been successful in excising the tainted Sandra portion of Tanya's character.

  I felt oddly deflated at this easy - easy to me, that is - removal of a real thorn in my side. I found myself wishing we could abduct Sandra Pelt and reprogram her, too. I didn't think she'd be as easy to convert. There had been some big pathology going on in the Pelt family.

  The witches were happy. Calvin was pleased. I was relieved. Calvin told Tanya he was going to take her back to Hotshot. The somewhat-puzzled Tanya made her departure with a lot more dignity than her entrance. She didn't understand why she'd been in my house and she didn't seem to remember what the witches had done. But she also didn't seem upset about that confusion in her memory.

  The best of all possible worlds.

  Maybe Jason and Crystal could work things out now that Tanya's pernicious influence was gone. After all, Crystal had really wanted to marry Jason, and she had seemed genuinely pleased that she was pregnant again. Why she was so discontented now. . . I simply didn't get it.

  I could add her to the long list of people I didn't understand.

  While the witches cleaned up the living room with the windows open - though it was a chilly night, I wanted to get rid of the lingering smell of the herbs - I sprawled on my bed with a book. I found I wasn't focused enough to read. Finally, I decided to go outside, and I threw on a hoody and called to Amelia to let her know. I sat in one of the wooden chairs Amelia and I had bought at Wal-Mart at end-of-summer clearance-sale prices, and I admired the matching table with its umbrella all over again. I reminded myself to take the umbrella down and cover the furniture for the winter. Then I leaned back and let go of my thoughts.

  For a while it was nice to simply be outside, smelling the trees and the ground, hearing a whip-poor-will give its enigmatic call from the surrounding woods. The security light made me feel safe, though I knew that was an illusion. If there's light, you can just see what's coming for you a little more clearly.

  Bill stepped out of the woods and strolled silently over to the yard set. He sat in one of the other chairs.

  We didn't speak for several moments. I didn't feel the surge of anguish I'd felt over the past few months when he was around. He barely disturbed the fall night with his presence, he was so much a part of it.

  "Selah has moved to Little Rock," he said.

  "How come?"

  "She got a position with a large firm," he said. "It was what she told me she wanted. They specialize in vampire properties. "

  "She hooked on vamps?"

  "I believe so. Not my doing. "

  "Weren't you her first?" Maybe I sounded a little bitter. He'd been my first, in every way.

  "Don't," he said, and turned his face toward me. It was radiantly pale. "No," he said finally. "I was not her first. And I always knew it was the vampire in me that attracted her, not the person who was a vampire. "

  I understood what he was saying. When I'd learned he'd been ordered to ingratiate himself with me, I'd felt it was the telepath in me that had gotten his attention, not the woman who was the telepath. "What goes around, comes around," I said.

  "I never cared about her," he said. "Or very little. " He shrugged. "There've been so many like her. "

  "I'm not sure how you think this is going to make me feel. "

  "I'm only telling you the truth. There has been only one you. " And then he got up and walked back into the woods, human slow, letting me watch him leave.

  Apparently Bill was conducting a kind of stealth campaign to win back my regard. I wondered if he dreamed I could love him again. I still felt pain when I thought of the night I'd learned the truth. I figured my regard would be the outer limits of what he could hope to earn. Trust, love? I couldn't see that happening.

  I sat outside for a few more minutes, thinking about the evening I'd just had. One enemy agent down. The enemy herself to go. Then I thought of the police search for the missing people, all Weres, in Shreveport. I wondered when they'd give up.

  Surely I wouldn't have to deal with Were politics again any time soon; the survivors would be absorbed in setting their house in order.

  I hoped Alcide was enjoying being the leader, and I wondered if he'd succeeded in creating yet another little purebred Were the night of the takeover. I wondered who had taken the Furnan children.

  As long as I was speculating, I wondered where Felipe de Castro had established his headquarters in Louisiana or if he'd stayed in Vegas. I wondered if anyone had told Bubba that Louisiana was under a new regime, and I wondered if I'd ever see him again. He had one of the most famous faces in the world, but his head had been sadly addled by being brought over at the last possible second by a vampire working in the morgue in Memphis. Bubba had not weathered Katrina well; he'd gotten cut off from the other New Orleans vampires and had had to subsist on rats and small animals (left-behind pet cats, I suspected) until he'd been rescued one night by a search party of Baton Rouge vamps. The last I'd heard, they'd had to send him out of state for rest and recuperation. Maybe he'd wind up in Vegas. He'd always done well in Vegas, when he was alive.

  Suddenly, I realized I was stiff with sitting so long, and the night had grown uncomfortably cold. My jacket wasn't doing the job. It was time to go inside and go to bed. The rest of the house was dark, and I figured Octavia and Amelia were exhausted by their witch work.

  I heaved myself up from the chair, let the umbrella down
, and opened the toolshed door, leaning the umbrella against a bench where the man I'd thought was my grandfather had made repairs. I shut the toolshed door, feeling I was shutting summer inside.