"Not that my butt could get into them," I said.
"Not that your butt should want to," she said, equally harshly. "You can cut that out right now, Sookie Stackhouse."
I looked up at her, letting her see the pain inside me.
"Yeah, I get that," she said, her hand patting me gently on the cheek. "And that sucks big-time. But you have to write it off. He's only one guy."
He'd been the first guy. "My grandmother served him lemonade," I said, and somehow that triggered the tears again.
"Hey," Amelia said. "Fuck him, right?"
I looked at the young witch. She was pretty and tough and off-the-wall nuts, I thought. She was okay. "Yeah," I said. "When can you do the ecto thing?"
She said, "I have to make some phone calls, see who I can get together. Night's always better for magic, of course. When will you go pay your call to the queen?"
I thought for a moment. "Just at full dark," I said. "Maybe about seven."
"Should take about two hours," Amelia said, and Claudine nodded. "Okay, I'll ask them to be here at ten, to have a little wiggle room. You know, it would be great if the queen would pay for this."
"How much do you want to charge?"
"I'd do it for nothing, to have the experience and be able to say I'd done one," Amelia said frankly, "but the others will need some bucks. Say, three hundred apiece, plus materials."
"And you'll need three more witches?"
"I'd like to have three more, though whether I can get the ones I want on this short notice... well, I'll do the best I can. Two might do. And the materials ought to be..." She did some rapid mental calculations. "Somewhere in the ballpark of sixty dollars."
"What will I need to do? I mean, what's my part?"
"Observe. I'll do the heavy lifting."
"I'll ask the queen." I took a deep breath. "If she won't pay for it, I will."
"Okay, then. We're set." She limped out of the bedroom happily, counting off things on her fingers. I heard her go down the stairs.
Claudine said, "I have to treat your arm. And then we need to go find you something to wear."
"I don't want to spend money on a courtesy call to the vampire queen." Especially since I might have to foot the bill for the witches.
"You don't have to. It's my treat."
"You may be my fairy godmother, but you don't have to spend money on me." I had a sudden revelation. "It's you who paid my hospital bill in Clarice."
Claudine shrugged. "Hey, it's money that came in from the strip club, not from my regular job." Claudine co-owned the strip club in Ruston, with Claude, who did all the day-today running of the place. Claudine was a customer service person at a department store. People forgot their complaints once they were confronted with Claudine's smile.
It was true that I didn't mind spending the strip club money as much as I would have hated using up Claudine's personal savings. Not logical, but true.
Claudine had parked her car in the courtyard on the circular drive, and she was sitting in it when I came down the stairs. She'd gotten a first aid kit from the car, and she'd bandaged my arm and helped me into some clothes. My arm was sore but it didn't seem to be infected. I was weak, as if I'd had the flu or some other illness involving high fever and lots of fluids. So I was moving slowly.
I was wearing blue jeans and sandals and a T-shirt, because that was what I had.
"You definitely can't call on the queen in that," she said, gently but decisively. Whether she was very familiar with New Orleans or just had good shopping karma, Claudine drove directly to a store in the Garden District. It was the kind of shop I'd dismiss as being for more sophisticated women with lots more money than I had, if I'd been shopping by myself. Claudine pulled right into the parking lot, and in forty-five minutes we had a dress. It was chiffon, short-sleeved, and it had lots of colors in it: turquoise, copper, brown, ivory. The strappy sandals that I wore with it were brown.
All I needed was a membership to the country club.
Claudine had appropriated the price tag.
"Just wear your hair loose," Claudine advised. "You don't need fancy hair with that dress."
"Yeah, there is a lot going on in it," I said. "Who's Diane von Furstenburg? Isn't it real expensive? Isn't it a little bare for the season?"
"You might be a little cool wearing it in March," Claudine conceded. "But it'll be good to wear every summer for years. You'll look great. And the queen will know you took the time to wear something special to meet her."
"You can't go with me?" I asked, feeling a little wistful. "No, of course, you can't." Vampires buzz around fairies like hummingbirds around sugar water.
"I might not survive," she said, managing to sound embarrassed that such a possibility would keep her from my side.
"Don't worry about it. After all, the worst thing has already happened, right?" I spread my hands. "They used to threaten me, you know? If I didn't do thus and such, they'd take it out on Bill. Hey, guess what? I don't care any more."
"Think before you speak," Claudine advised. "You can't mouth off to the queen. Even a goblin won't mouth off to the queen."
"I promise," I said. "I really appreciate your coming all this way, Claudine."
Claudine gave me a big hug. It was like an embrace with a soft tree, since Claudine was so tall and slim. "I wish you hadn't needed me to," she said.
Chapter 17
The queen owned a block of buildings in down-town New Orleans, maybe three blocks from the edge of the French Quarter. That tells you what kind of money she was pulling in, right there. We had an early dinner - I realized I was really hungry - and then Claudine dropped me off two blocks away, because the traffic and tourist congestion were intense close to the queen's headquarters. Though the general public didn't know Sophie-Anne Leclerq was a queen, they knew she was a very wealthy vampire who owned a hell of a lot of real estate and spent lots of money in the community. Plus, her bodyguards were colorful and had gotten special permits to carry arms in the city limits. This meant her office building/living quarters were on the tourist list of things to see, especially at night.
Though traffic did surround the building during the day, at night the square of streets around it was open only to pedestrians. Buses parked a block away, and the tour guides would lead the out-of-towners past the altered building. Walking tours and gaggles of independent tourists included what the guides called "Vampire Headquarters" in their plans.