Read Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel for Free Online

clothing. “It took a while.” Niall meant I looked good for someone who’d been tortured. Two notorious fairies who’d had their teeth sharpened like the elves’ had left me with some permanent physical damage. Niall and Bill had arrived in time to save my body parts and my sanity, if not all of my actual flesh. “Thanks for coming in time,” I said, forcing a smile on my face. “I’ll never forget how glad I was to see you-all.”
    Niall waved away my gratitude. “You are my blood,” he said. That was reason enough for him. I thought about my great-uncle Dermot, Niall’s half-human son, who believed Niall had cast a crazy spell on him. Kind of contradictory, huh? I almost pointed that out to Great-Grandfather, but I did want to keep the peace since I hadn’t seen him in so long.
    “When I came through the portal tonight, I smelled blood in the ground around your house,” he said abruptly. “Human blood, fae blood. Now I can tell there is fae blood upstairs in your attic, recently spilled. And fairies are living here now. Who?” Niall’s smooth hands took mine, and I felt a flush of well-being.
    “Claude and Dermot have been living here, kind of off and on,” I said. “When Eric stays over, they spend the night in Claude’s house in Monroe.”
    Niall looked very, very thoughtful. “What reason did Claude give you for wanting to be in your house? Why did you permit this? Have you had sex with him?” He didn’t sound angry or distressed, but the questions themselves had a certain edge.
    “I don’t have sex with relatives, first off,” I said, an edge to my own voice. My boss, Sam Merlotte, had told me that the fae didn’t necessarily consider such relationships taboo, but I sure did. I took yet another deep breath. I would hyperventilate if Niall stayed very long.
    I tried again, this time making an effort to modify my indignation. “Sex between relatives is not something humans condone,” I told him, making myself stop right there before adding any codicils. “I have slept in the same bed with Dermot and Claude, because they told me that would make them feel better. And I admit it helped me, too. They both seem kind of lost, since they’re not able to enter Faery. A bunch of the fae got left outside, and they’re pretty miserable.” I did my best not to sound reproachful, but Hooligans was like Ellis Island in lockdown.
    Niall was not going to be diverted. “Of course Claude would want to be close to you,” he said. “The company of others with fairy blood is always desirable. Did you suspect … he had any other reason?”
    Was this a hint, or just a simple hesitation in Niall’s speech? As a matter of fact, I did think the two fairies had another reason for their attraction to me and my house, but I thought—I hoped—this reason was quite unconscious. This was a chance to unburden myself of a great secret and gain more information about an object I had in mypossession. I opened my mouth to tell Niall about what I’d found in a secret compartment in an old desk.
    But the sense of caution I’d developed in my life as a telepath … well, that sense jumped up and down, screaming, “Shut up!”
    I said, “Do you think they had another reason?”
    I noticed Niall had mentioned only his full-fairy grandson, Claude, not his half-human son Dermot. Since Niall had always acted very lovingly toward me, and my blood had only a trace of fairy, I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t equally loving toward Dermot. Dermot had done some bad things, but he’d been under a spell. Niall wasn’t cutting him any slack for that. Just at the moment, Niall was looking at me doubtfully, his head cocked to one side.
    My cheeks yanked up in my brightest smile. I felt increasingly uneasy. “Claude and Dermot have been real helpers. They carried down all the old stuff in the attic. I sold it to an antiques dealer in Shreveport.” Niall smiled back at me and stood. Before I could say Jack Robinson, he’d