I had depressed the hell out of myself in the space of a minute.
"Do I have enough fairy in me to be any help to you?" That was all I could think of to say.
"Yes," he said very simply. "I already feel better." This seemed a weird echo of my conversation with Bill. Claude halfway smiled. If Claude looked incredible when he was unhappy, he looked divine when he smiled. "Since you've been in the company of fairies, it's accentuated your streak of fairy essence. By the way, I have a letter for you."
"Who from?"
"Niall."
"How's that possible? I understood the fae world was shut off now."
"He has his ways," Claude said evasively. "He's the only prince now, and very powerful."
He has his ways. "Humph," I said. "Okay, let's see it."
Claude pulled an envelope out of his overnight bag. It was buff-colored and sealed with a blue blob of wax. In the wax was imprinted a bird, its wings spread in flight.
"So there's a fairy mailbox," I said. "And you can send and receive letters?"
"This letter, anyway."
Fae were very good at evasion. I huffed out a breath of exasperation.
I got a knife and slid it under the seal. The paper I extracted from the envelope had a very curious texture.
"Dearest great-granddaughter," it began. "There are things I didn't get to say to you and many things I didn't get to do for you before my plans collapsed in the war."
Okay.
"This letter is written on the skin of one of the water sprites who drowned your parents."
"Ick!" I cried, and dropped the letter on the kitchen table.
Claude was by my side in a flash. "What's wrong?" he asked, looking around the kitchen as if he expected to see a troll pop up.
"This is skin! Skin!"
"What else would Niall write on?" He looked genuinely taken aback.
"Ewww!" Even to myself, I sounded a little too girly-girly. But honestly ... skin?
"It's clean," Claude said, clearly hoping that would solve my problem. "It's been processed."
I gritted my teeth and reached down for my great-grandfather's letter. I took a deep, steadying breath. Actually, the ... material hardly smelled at all. Smothering a desire to put on oven mitts, I made myself focus on reading.
"Before I left your world, I made sure one of my human agents talked to several people who can help you evade the scrutiny of the human government. When I sold the pharmaceutical company we owned, I used much of my profit to ensure your freedom."
I blinked, because my eyes were tearing up a little. He might not be a typical great-grandfather, but by golly, he'd done something wonderful for me.
"He's bribed some government officials to call off the FBI? Is that what he's done?"
"I have no idea," Claude said, shrugging. "He wrote me, too, to let me know that I had an extra three hundred thousand dollars in my bank account. Also, Claudine hadn't made a will, since she didn't ..."
Expect to die. She had expected to raise a child with a fairy lover I'd never met. Claude shook himself and said in a cracked voice, "Niall produced a human body and a will, so I don't have to wait years to prove her death. She left me almost everything. She said this to our father, Dillon, when she appeared to him as part of her death ritual."
Fairies told their relatives they had passed, after they'd translated to spirit form. I wondered why Claudine had appeared to Dillon instead of to her brother, and I asked Claude, phrasing it as tactfully as I could.
"The next oldest receives the vision," Claude said stiffly. "Our sister, Claudette, appeared to me, since I was older than her by a minute. Claudine made her death ritual to our father, since she was older than I."
"So she told your dad she wanted you to have her share of the clubs?" It was pretty lucky for Claude that Claudine had let someone else know about her wishes. I wondered what happened if the oldest fae in the line was the one who was doing the dying. I'd save that question for later.
"Yes. Her share of the house. Her car. Though I already had one." For some reason, Claude was looking self-conscious. And guilty. Why on earth would he look guilty?
"How do you ride in it?" I asked, sidetracked. "Since fairies have such issues with iron?"
"I wear the invisible gloves over exposed skin," he said. "I put them on after every shower. And I've built up a little more tolerance with every decade of living in the human world."
I returned to the letter. "There may be more I can do for you. I will let you know. Claudine left you a gift."
"Oh, Claudine left me something, too? What?" I looked up at Claude, who didn't look exactly pleased. I think he hadn't known the contents of the letter for certain. If Niall hadn't revealed Claudine's legacy, Claude might not have. Fairies don't lie, but they don't always tell all the truth, either.
"She left you the money in her bank account," he said, resigned. "It contains her wages from the department store and her share of the income from the clubs."
"Aw ... that was so nice of her." I blinked a couple of times. I tried not to touch my savings account, and my checking account wasn't too healthy because I'd missed a lot of work recently. Plus, my tips had suffered because I'd been so down. Smiling waitresses make more than sad waitresses.
I could sure use a few hundred dollars. Maybe I could buy some new clothes, and I really needed a new toilet in the hall bathroom. "How do you do a transfer like that?"
"You'll get a check from Mr. Cataliades. He is handling the estate."
Mr. Cataliades - if he had a first name, I'd never heard it - was a lawyer, and he was also (mostly) a demon. He handled the human legal affairs of many supernaturals in Louisiana. I felt subtly better when Claude said his name, because I knew Mr. Cataliades had no bone to pick with me.
Well, I had to make up my mind about Claude's housemate proposal.
"Let me make a phone call," I said, and pointed to the coffeepot. "If you need some more, I can make some. Are you hungry?"
Claude shook his head.
"Then after I call Amelia, you and I need to have a little chitchat." I went to the phone in my bedroom. Amelia was an earlier riser than me, because my job kept me up late. She answered her cell phone on the second ring. "Sookie," she said, and she didn't sound as gloomy as I'd anticipated. "What's up?"
I couldn't think of any casual way to lead into my question. "My cousin would like to stay here for a while," I said. "He could use the bedroom across from mine, but if he stays upstairs, we'd each have a little more privacy. If you're coming back anytime soon, of course he'll go on and put his stuff in the downstairs bedroom. I just didn't want you to come back to find someone sleeping in your bed."