I went over to our metal toolshed, the latest in a series of toolsheds that had served the Stackhouse family over the generations we'd lived on this spot. I opened the door with the familiar mingled feelings of pleasure and horror, because someday I was going to have to put in some serious work cleaning out the interior. I still had my grandmother's old trowel; there was no telling who'd used it before her. It was ancient but so well taken care of that it was better than any modern substitute. I stepped into the shadowy shed and found my gardening gloves and the trowel.
I knew from watching Antiques Roadshow that there were people who collected old farm implements. This toolshed would be an Aladdin's cave to such a collector. My family didn't believe in letting things go if they still worked. Though chock-full, the shed was orderly, because that had been my grandfather's way. When we'd come to live with him and Gran, he'd drawn an outline for every commonly used tool. That was where he'd wanted that tool to be replaced every time it was used, and that was where it was still kept now. I could reach unerringly for the trowel, which was maybe the oldest tool in the shed. It was heavy, sharper, and narrower than its modern counterparts, but its shape was familiar to my hand.
If it had been really, truly spring, I'd have changed back into my bikini to combine business with pleasure. But though the sun was still shining, I wasn't in a carefree mood any longer. I pulled my gardening gloves on, because I didn't want to ruin my fingernails. Some of these weeds seemed to fight back. One grew on a thick, fleshy stalk, and it had sharp points on its leaves. If you let it grow long enough, it blossomed. It was really ugly and prickly, and it had to be removed by its roots. There were quite a few of them springing up among the emerging cannas.
Gran would have had a fit.
I crouched and set to work. With my right hand, I sank the trowel in the soft dirt of the flower bed, loosening the roots of the nasty weed, and pulled it up with my left hand. I shook the stalk to get the dirt off the roots and then tossed it aside. Before I'd started I'd put a radio out on the back porch. In no time at all, I was singing along with LeAnn Rimes. I began to feel less troubled. In a few minutes, I had a respectable pile of uprooted weeds and a glow of virtue.
If he hadn't spoken, it would have ended differently. But since he was full of himself, he had to open his mouth. His pride saved my life.
Also, he picked some unwise words. Saying, "I'll enjoy killing you for my lord," is just not the way to make my acquaintance.
I have good reflexes, and I erupted from my squatting position with the trowel in my hand and I drove it upward into his stomach. It slid right in, as if it were designed to be a fairy-killing weapon.
And that was exactly what it turned out to be, because the trowel was iron and he was a fairy.
I leaped back and dropped into a half crouch, still gripping the bloody trowel, and waited to see what he'd do. He was looking down at the blood seeping through his fingers with an expression of absolute amazement, as if he couldn't believe I'd ruined his ensemble. Then he looked at me, his eyes pale blue and huge, and there was a big question on his face, as if he were asking me if I'd really done that to him, if it wasn't some kind of mistake.
I began backing up to the porch steps, never taking my eyes from him, but he wasn't a threat any longer. As I reached behind me to open the screen door, my would-be murderer crumpled to the ground, still looking surprised.
I retreated into the house and locked the door. Then I walked on trembling legs over to the window above the kitchen sink and peered out, leaning as far over the sink as I could. From this angle I could see only a bit of the crumpled body. "Okay," I said out loud."Okay." He was dead, looked like. It had been so quick .
I started to pick up the wall phone, noticed how my hands were shaking, and spotted my cell phone on the counter where I'd been charging it. Since this was a crisis that definitely called for the head honcho, I speed-dialed my great-grandfather's big, secret emergency number. I thought the situation qualified. A male voice, not Niall's, answered. "Yes?" the voice said with a cautious tone.
"Ah, is Niall there?"
"I can reach him. Can I help you?"
Steady,I told myself.Steady . "Would you please tell him I've killed a fairy and he's laid out in my yard and I don't know what to do with the body?"
There was a moment of silence.
"Yes, I'll tell him that."
"Pretty soon, you think? Because I'm alone and I'm kind of freaked out."
"Yes. Quite soon."
"And someone will come?" Geez Louise, I sounded whiny. I made my spine stiffen. "I mean, I can load him in my car trunk, I guess, or I could call the sheriff." I wanted to impress this unknown with the fact that I wasn't completely needy and helpless. "But there's the whole thing with you guys being secret, and he didn't seem to have a weapon, and obviously I can't prove this guy said he'd enjoy killing me."
"You ... have killed a fairy."
"Is aid that. Way back." Mr. Slow-on-the-Uptake. I peered out the window again. "Yeah, he's still not moving. Dead and gone."
This time the silence lasted so long that I thought I must have blanked out and missed something. I said, "I'm sorry?"
"Are you really? We'll be there very soon." And he hung up.
I couldn't not look, and I couldn't bear to look. I'd seen the dead before, both human and nonhuman. And since the night I'd met Bill Compton in Merlotte's, I'd seen more than my share of bodies. Not that that was Bill's fault, of course.
I had goose pimples all over.
In about five minutes, Niall and another fairy walked out of the woods. There must be some kind of portal out there. Maybe Scotty had beamed them up. Or down. And maybe I wasn't thinking too clearly.
The two fairies stopped when they saw the body and then exchanged a few words. They seemed astonished. But they weren't scared, and they weren't acting like they expected the guy to get up and fight, so I crept across the back porch and out the screen door.
They knew I was there, but they continued their eyeballing of the body.
My great-grandfather raised his arm and I crept under it. He held me to him, and I glanced up to see that he was smiling.
Okay,that was unexpected.
"You're a credit to our family. You've killed my enemy," he said. "I was so right about humans." He looked proud as punch.
"This is a good thing?"
The other fairy laughed and looked at me for the first time. He had hair the color of butterscotch, and his eyes matched his hair, which to me was so weird that it was really off-putting - though like all the fairies I'd met, he was gorgeous. I had to suppress a sigh. Between the vampires and the fairies, I was doomed to be a plain Jane.