I’d forgotten all about Amelia. I’d stepped right into my own trough of depression.

She snapped me out of it. “That’s just a big fat excuse,” she said tartly. “Come on, Sookie. You love him, or you don’t. Don’t keep putting off thinking about it by blaming everything on your bond. Wah, wah, wah. If you hate the bond so much, why haven’t you explored how you can get free of it?” She took in the expression on my face, and the irritation faded out of her own. “Do you want me to ask Octavia?” she asked in a milder voice. “If anyone would know, she would.”

“Yes, I’d like to find out,” I said, after a moment. I took a deep breath. “You’re right, I guess. I’ve been so depressed I’ve put off making any decisions, or acting on the ones I’ve already made. Eric’s one of a kind. But I find him. a little overwhelming.” He was a strong personality, and he was used to being the big fish in the pond. He also knew he had infinite time ahead of him.

I did not.

He hadn’t brought that up yet, but sooner or later, he would.

“Overwhelming or not, I love him,” I continued. I’d never said it out loud. “And I guess that’s the bottom line.”

“I guess it is.” Amelia tried to smile at me, but it was a woeful attempt. “Listen, you keep that up, the self-knowledge thing.” She stood for a moment, her expression frozen into the half smile. “Well, Sook, I better get on the road. My dad’s expecting me. He’ll be all up in my business the minute I get back to New Orleans.”

Amelia’s dad was rich, powerful, and had no belief in Amelia’s power at all. He was very wrong not to respect her witchcraft. Amelia had been born with the potential for the power in her, as every true witch is. Once Amelia had some more training and discipline, she was going to be really scary—scary on purpose, rather than because of the drastic nature of her mistakes. I hoped her mentor, Octavia, had a program in place to develop and train Amelia’s talent.

After I waved Amelia down the driveway, the broad smile dropped from my face. I sat on the porch steps and cried. It didn’t take much for me to be in tears these days, and my friend’s departure was just the trigger now. There was so much to weep about.

My sister-in-law, Crystal, had been murdered. My brother’s friend Mel had been executed. Tray and Claudine and Clancy the vampire had been killed in the line of duty. Since both Crystal and Claudine had been pregnant, that added two more deaths to the list.

Probably that should have made me long for peace above all else. But instead of turning into the Bon Temps Gandhi, in my heart I held the knowledge that there were plenty of people I wanted dead. I wasn’t directly responsible for most of the deaths that were scattered in my wake, but I was haunted by the feeling that none of them would have happened if it weren’t for me. In my darkest moments—and this was one of them—I wondered if my life was worth the price that had been paid for it.

MARCH

THE END OF THE FIRST WEEK

My cousin Claude was sitting on the front porch when I got up on a cloudy, brisk morning a few days after Amelia’s departure. Claude wasn’t as skilled at masking his presence as my great-grandfather Niall was. Because Claude was fae, I couldn’t read his mind—but I could tell his mind was there, if that isn’t too obscure a way to put it. I carried my coffee out to the porch, though the air was nippy, because drinking that first cup on the porch had been one of my favorite things to do before I. before the Fae War.

I hadn’t seen my cousin in weeks. I hadn’t seen him during the Fae War, and he hadn’t contacted me since the death of Claudine.

I’d brought an extra mug for Claude, and I handed it to him. He accepted it silently. I’d considered the possibility he might throw it in my face. His unexpected presence had knocked me off course. I had no idea what to expect. The breeze lifted his long black hair, tossed it around like rippling ebony ribbons. His caramel eyes were red-rimmed.

“How did she die?” he said.

I sat on the top step. “I didn’t see it,” I said, hunching over my knees. “We were in that old building Dr. Ludwig was using as a hospital. I think Claudine was trying to stop the other fairies from coming down the corridor to get into the room where I was holed up with Bill and Eric and Tray.” I looked over at Claude to make sure he knew the place, and he nodded. “I’m pretty sure that it was Breandan who killed her, because one of her knitting needles was stuck in his shoulder when he busted into our room.”

Breandan, my great-grandfather’s enemy, had also been a prince of the fae. Breandan had believed that humans and the fae should not consort. He’d believed that to the point of fanaticism. He’d wanted the fae to completely abstain from their forays into the human world, despite the fae’s large financial stake in mundane commerce and the products it had produced. products that helped them blend into the modern world. Breandan had especially hated the occasional taking of human lovers, a fae indulgence, and he’d hated the children born as a result of such liaisons. He’d wanted the fae separate, walled away into their own world, consorting only with their own kind.

Oddly enough, that’s what my great-grandfather had decided to do after defeating the fairy who believed in this apartheid policy. After all the bloodshed, Niall concluded that peace among the fae and safety for humans could be reached only if the fae blocked themselves into their world. Breandan had achieved his ends by his own death. In my worst moments, I thought that Niall’s final decision had made the whole war unnecessary.

“She was defending you,” Claude said, pulling me back into the moment. There was nothing in his voice. Not blame, not anger, not a question.

“Yeah.” That had been part of her job, defending me, by Niall’s orders.

I took a long sip of coffee. Claude’s sat untouched on the arm of the porch swing. Maybe Claude was wondering if he should kill me. Claudine had been his last surviving sibling.

“You knew about the pregnancy,” he said finally.

“She told me right before she was killed.” I put down my mug and wrapped my arms around my knees. I waited for the blow to fall. At first I didn’t mind all that much, which was even more horrible.

Claude said, “I understand Neave and Lochlan had hold of you. Is that why you’re limping?” The change of subject caught me off guard.

“Yeah,” I said. “They had me for a couple of hours. Niall and Bill Compton killed them. Just so you know—it was Bill who killed Breandan, with my grandmother’s iron trowel.” Though the trowel had been in my family’s toolshed for decades, I associated it with Gran.

Claude sat, beautiful and unreadable, for a long time. He never looked at me directly nor drank his coffee. When he’d reached some inner conclusion, he rose and left, walking down the driveway toward Hummingbird Road. I don’t know where his car was parked. For all I knew, he’d walked all the way from Monroe, or flown over on a magic carpet. I went into the house, sank to my knees right inside the door, and cried. My hands were shaking. My wrists ached.

The whole time we’d been talking, I’d been waiting for him to make his move.

I realized I wanted to live.

MARCH

THE SECOND WEEK

JB said, “Raise your arm all the way up, Sookie!” His handsome face was creased with concentration. Holding the five-pound weight, I slowly lifted my left arm. Geez Louise, it hurt. Same with the right.

“Okay, now the legs,” JB said, when my arms were shaking with strain. JB wasn’t a licensed physical therapist, but he was a personal trainer, so he’d had practical experience helping people get over various injuries. Maybe he’d never faced an assortment like mine, since I’d been bitten, cut, and tortured. But I hadn’t had to explain the details to JB, and he wouldn’t notice that my injuries were far from typical of those incurred in a car accident. I didn’t want any speculation going around Bon Temps about my physical problems—so I made the occasional visits to Dr. Amy Ludwig, who looked suspiciously like a hobbit, and I enlisted the help of JB du Rone, who was a good trainer but dumb as a box of rocks.